Dear Sheddists,
the week before last sees an early birthday celebration as dear mrs electrofried and I make our way down to London for a long weekend. What joys are in store!
The festivities begin on Saturday with a visit to the The Photographers Gallery to see a triptych exhibition featuring the works of David Lynch, William Burroughs and Andy Warhol. Three more rum characters you are most unlikely to meet. We vote young Mr Lynch the best of the bunch for some stunning photographs of abandoned factory sites so redolent of an evening out in the finer parts of Dudley and the Black Country.
We call in on the way back to our hotel to sample the delights of The Salt Yard, a rather fine charcuterie bar tucked away just two minutes walk from Goodge Street tube-station. Despite the fact it's only six o' clock and the place is already full to the gunnels we're ushered downstairs and squeezed in to the last remaining vacant table whereupon we proceed to treat ourselves to an excellent selection of tasty tapas whilst reflecting on the events of the day.
A leisurely breakfast on Sunday sets us up nicely for a trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum. It's the first time we've visited and it proves a great delight. We're particularly impressed with the History of Fashion exhibition. Thoughts of my dearest in fetching whale-bone corsetry dull the pain of the subsequent extended visit to the museum's palatial Gift Shop and the ensuing rapid depletion of the electrofried bank account.
Having shopped till we dropped it's onwards and upwards to the photographic gallery where we admire a series of plates drawn from the museum's extensive collection. It's almost by accident we discover a second exhibition tucked away in one of the lesser travelled recesses on the ground floor. It's called 'Photographic Fictions' and amongst the exhibits are two versions of the same scene from the Crimean War taken by Roger Fenton. They're entitled 'Valley of the Shadow of Death'.
Back once more to our hotel for a restorative cup of tea and a short cap-nap before venturing just a few yards down the road to join the queue outside the former GPO Sorting Office next to Paddington Station. We're off to see Punchdrunk's amazing production of 'The Drowned Man'. Three hours of mayhem, mystery and murder amidst six hundred fellow audience members, all wearing identical white masks - it rounds off proceedings in a suitably surreal fashion!
All that remains on our return home is to read the papers and catch up on the news. The Independent runs an article on the Photographers Gallery exhibition whilst The Metro plumps for a story of Prince Harry's visit to 'The Drowned Man'. Then blow us down with a lightly greased feather, that night's edition of 'The One Show' features Roger Fenton's, 'Valley of the Shadow of Death'!!
I fear the paparazzi are closing in so please forgive me if I leave you now to pull tight the shutters across the windows of the West Wing,
yours as ever,
electrofried (mr)
Showing posts with label Punchdrunk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Punchdrunk. Show all posts
Thursday, 6 February 2014
Wednesday, 18 September 2013
Punch-drunk and reeling ....
Dear Sheddists,
it's not just the photography course that occupies my attentions during the recent sabbatical visit to London. On Wednesday evening I take the tube to Paddington and join a growing queue outside a huge disused warehouse just round the corner from the station. We've come to see Punchdrunk's production, 'The Drowned Man', an interactive play based loosely on Georg Buchner's, 'Woyzeck' and the warehouse is the venue for Temple Studios, a mythological Hollywood film-set.
We're shepherded into neat lines, issued with identical porcelain-white masks to be worn for the duration of the performance and instructed to remain silent at all times. We're then released into a dimly-lit labyrinthine corridor that twists first one way then another until at last we arrive at the doors of an old-fashioned elevator shaft. The lift opens and we're beckoned in by a commanding concierge. Once the doors close safe behind he provides the very briefest of introductions to just a few of the characters we will encounter during the night before ushering us out into the bottom floor of the warehouse.
It, too, is dimly lit but a little further investigation reveals it to be the setting for a 1940s American trailer park. We're left to roam, exploring the trailer-vans and surrounding areas in criss-crossing streams of white-porcelained solemnity. The intricate detail of the set is breath-taking; there are artifacts, posters, personal belongings. letters, photographs - all of which we are free to look at, pick up and examine to our hearts content. The letters, in particular, provide a number of a clues to the story that's about to unfold.
The braver members of the six-hundred strong audience begin to venture beyond the trailer-park to discover a deserted chapel, complete with over-flowing bath-tub and penitent rosaries, and on the other side of the floor a Wild-west film-set. Already, the boundaries between what is 'real' and what is recreated have dissolved into a misty hallucinogenic haze.
The first of the cast appears, a distraught lady, who leads away a number of the audience in the direction of a saloon-bar as her part of the story begins to unfold. But hers is but one of many and before long there are actors running this way and that, cutting and dicing the audience over and over again as we seek to keep up.
Apparently unconnected scenes unfold before us. Spurned lovers, shoot-outs and beatings, a bar-room serenade, a series of dressing-room dramas - the paths of the actors and their following audiences intertwined up and down the four levels of the warehouse.
Over the course of two and half hours it's absolutely impossible to keep up with more than a few strands of the story, but this fragmented quality just adds to the immersive and disorientating experience of the event. Each floor contains a number of different sets to explore, many of which mirror or mimic those on another level. The scariest of all is at the very top of the warehouse where the Sand-witch lives. Her lair includes a recreated funeral, complete with rows of straw-filled, motionless dummies.
As time passes the action becomes more and more frenetic until at last all the audience is brought together in the one set for the climax of the performance. I won't spoil the show by telling you what it is .. even if I had understood it!
We leave the warehouse, Punchdrunk and reeling ... what an evening!
Find out more here ...
best regards,
electrofried(mr)
it's not just the photography course that occupies my attentions during the recent sabbatical visit to London. On Wednesday evening I take the tube to Paddington and join a growing queue outside a huge disused warehouse just round the corner from the station. We've come to see Punchdrunk's production, 'The Drowned Man', an interactive play based loosely on Georg Buchner's, 'Woyzeck' and the warehouse is the venue for Temple Studios, a mythological Hollywood film-set.
We're shepherded into neat lines, issued with identical porcelain-white masks to be worn for the duration of the performance and instructed to remain silent at all times. We're then released into a dimly-lit labyrinthine corridor that twists first one way then another until at last we arrive at the doors of an old-fashioned elevator shaft. The lift opens and we're beckoned in by a commanding concierge. Once the doors close safe behind he provides the very briefest of introductions to just a few of the characters we will encounter during the night before ushering us out into the bottom floor of the warehouse.
It, too, is dimly lit but a little further investigation reveals it to be the setting for a 1940s American trailer park. We're left to roam, exploring the trailer-vans and surrounding areas in criss-crossing streams of white-porcelained solemnity. The intricate detail of the set is breath-taking; there are artifacts, posters, personal belongings. letters, photographs - all of which we are free to look at, pick up and examine to our hearts content. The letters, in particular, provide a number of a clues to the story that's about to unfold.
The braver members of the six-hundred strong audience begin to venture beyond the trailer-park to discover a deserted chapel, complete with over-flowing bath-tub and penitent rosaries, and on the other side of the floor a Wild-west film-set. Already, the boundaries between what is 'real' and what is recreated have dissolved into a misty hallucinogenic haze.
The first of the cast appears, a distraught lady, who leads away a number of the audience in the direction of a saloon-bar as her part of the story begins to unfold. But hers is but one of many and before long there are actors running this way and that, cutting and dicing the audience over and over again as we seek to keep up.
Apparently unconnected scenes unfold before us. Spurned lovers, shoot-outs and beatings, a bar-room serenade, a series of dressing-room dramas - the paths of the actors and their following audiences intertwined up and down the four levels of the warehouse.
Over the course of two and half hours it's absolutely impossible to keep up with more than a few strands of the story, but this fragmented quality just adds to the immersive and disorientating experience of the event. Each floor contains a number of different sets to explore, many of which mirror or mimic those on another level. The scariest of all is at the very top of the warehouse where the Sand-witch lives. Her lair includes a recreated funeral, complete with rows of straw-filled, motionless dummies.
As time passes the action becomes more and more frenetic until at last all the audience is brought together in the one set for the climax of the performance. I won't spoil the show by telling you what it is .. even if I had understood it!
We leave the warehouse, Punchdrunk and reeling ... what an evening!
Find out more here ...
best regards,
electrofried(mr)
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