Playing for Real

An audio recording of "Biography on Stage", a panel discussion at the British Academy, featuring Michael Pennington is available now as a podcast, to listen or to download, here. Enjoy!!

Kann denn Liebe Sünde sein? - Dürer was right

As Peter Brook pointed out, there was an air of sadness, I'd rather say melancholy, prevailing in Love is My Sin, thus Dürer is right in calling melancholy the humour of the artist. And yet there is a deeper meaning to this melancholy and both Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida hint at it. Is it any wonder btw that Peter Brook was also talking of deconstruction?! I would very much recommend reading the wonderful essay "Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and other Ruins"/"Memoires d'Aveugle.L'Autoportrait et autres Ruines" by Derrida, in fact it is contained in a catalogue of an exhibition curated by Derrida and apart from the text, this book also offers reproductions of great works of art. Oddly this essay seems to be reflected in these lines from Sonnet 27:

And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,

Looking on darkness which the blind do see:

Save that my soul's imaginary sight

Presents their shadow to my sightless view,

which was part of the selection performed...

The next lines of the poem means, though unknown before, a lot to me and for that reason almost blew my mind ;-)

Which like a jewel hung in ghastly night

Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.

Kann denn Liebe Sünde sein? - To disprove Jaques - although the correct French spelling would be Jacques!

More yet of Love is My Sin - something to come to terms with that will truly keep me busy for the next weeks. It struck me that the two performers were ageless, though I knew their "real" age being 67 and 80. Jaques' notion of the seven ages of man were completely turned upside down. Natasha Parry was and is a very attractive woman, also physically, what a beautiful face, what  a wonderfully shaped body. And Michael Pennington not only defied Jaques with his appearance but also the flyer of his own one-man show Sweet William, he is hardly heading for second childishness again, oh no, I've seen him there in all three times at once, the past (of which I regretfully know but little, but here virtually all his efforts yet shown), the present and the hopeful future (one might guess what I'm hoping for)!!

BTW there was some scholar bashing going on at the aftershow talk and though I might agree  a lot with it, yet there are some scholars that are rather unusual and deserve a lot of high esteem and hugs for their efforts. To me this is Professor Brian Gibbons, whose seminar and lectures I had the pleasure to attend in Münster!!! Not somebody who gave answers, but somebody who made us think about the possible and impossible, and I loved the way he recited poems, especially one by Beckett. Believe me though there was seemingly little content, a whole frightening, terrible landscape opened up before my eyes, the lecture series was entitled "Landscape and Introspection" !!!

Kann denn Liebe Sünde sein?

Love is My Sin starring Natasha Parry and Michael Pennington, accompanied by Franck Krawczyk, directed by Peter Brook, enacted at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, January 7th 2011...review soon to be added, so far only: It's been overwhelming!!!

Es war furchtbar schön mit vielem Dank an Caravaggio !

Queen Mab II

When watching  episode 5 of the tv series Playing Shakespeare entitled Set Speeches and Soliloquies, I observed the following : When John Barton asks Michael Pennington to deliver "To Be or Not To Be" - which in itself had an air of being rather preposterous, "hic Rhodos, hic salta", work yourself into Hamlet at once ;-), here and now!!- , he asks him to deliver it in two distinct ways, first just to himself - excluding the audience - and then addressing the audience, including it. Observing what he does very closely though - and gratefully enough we can since the camera catches the final part in close up - it feels like Michael Pennington, instead of going for the "either - or" , settles for the "and/or", he takes the audience on a trip into Hamlet's mind, or even better, he has created a dream - Hamlet - and has shared this dream with us.

Homo homini lupus est - Sakhalin - An Evening with Michael Pennington Part 3

The ensuing talk dealt with Anton Chekhov's journey to Sakhalin in 1890. So it is arguable if it was an evening spent with Michael Pennington or rather one in the company of Anton Chekhov, for as the lecturer pointed out at the beginning the talk was a sort of "dramatisation" of this journey - mostly in Chekhov's own words (of course translated into English), though this time unlike in his one-man-play  "Anton Chekhov" (and I would rather use play instead of show, for here we actually meet the lead character(!!) and I highly recommend it to anybody who has not yet attended a performance!! It is worth any detour just to catch one) Michael Pennington was not dressed up to look like Chekhov. After some comment on the weather, which had been really extraordinarily snowy for England, he mentioned something that exactly echoes my thoughts and feelings when reading "Die Insel Sachalin" (Anton Chekhov's report on his journey). He said that when reading it and especially the anecdotes and small stories about Sakhalin's inhabitants, that are interspersed within the more scientifical and precisely stated facts of the report, one wishes it was just literature. I personally was and am still very shocked at the realisation that this was people's actual lives instead.
The first part of the evening took the audience along Chekhov's travel through Siberia and along the Amur River to Sakhalin, with excerpts from his letters. Then Michael Pennington read out some of the episodes and stories from the report. "Sakhalin Island" by Anton Chekhov is available in print.

At the end of his talk Michael Pennington referred to the fact that Chekhov's report though sort of ill-received in Russia, nevertheless served to better some of the appaling circumstances prisoners and settlers on Sakhalin had to live with. Personally I was very impressed by the talk and the artfulness of the lecturer, who not only did deliver Chekhov's disturbing report, but also left me with a warm feeling of hope despite the talk's  gloomy and dark subject.
For further reading I highly recommend not only "Sakhalin Island" by Anton Chekhov, but also "Rossya - A Journey Through Siberia" and "Are You There Crocodile - Inventing Anton Chekhov", both by Michael Pennington, both charming, insightful, highly readable, entertaining and surprising accounts of Michael Pennington's relationship to Russia and especially to Anton Chekhov.

Tradurre e Tradire - Я энаю Русский язык только немного

So I was standing in front of Pushkin House in London and the first thing I had to do was to ring the bell. After paying for the ticket for the evening's event - a talk as I was especially reminded by the seller at the desk (Was my English so bad, as I had only referred to the official title "An Evening with Michael Pennington"?!)  I had ordered, I took a look around and settled into the library, where there was also an exhibition of photographs. While I was looking at one and commenting on a cigarette, I was addressed in the following way: "Ich spreche auch Deutsch." And my subsequent reply, summing up all I do remember of my two semesters of Russian at the Westfälische Wilhelms Universität 21 years ago, was : "Я энаю Русский язык только немного", which really is a shame but I had just this one year of Russian and quit it again to study the fine arts at the Kunstakademie.

So the main event of the evening and the true reason for my journey was advancing and in the library I heard a voice that sounded familiar gently and tenderly commenting on the fact that whomever he was addressing had been all too kind to attend this event on an evening like this.

 

Anyway I decided to go upstairs and settle for some seat at the back of the auditorium, expecting the things to come...

To be continued...

Snowy Weather - An Evening with Michael Pennington

 

If  anybody is interested in an account of the evening and the journey, these subsequent posts (and some yet to come) http://das-unmoegliche.blogspot.com/2010/12/to-go-or-not-to-go-is-surely-no.html and http://das-unmoegliche.blogspot.com/2010/12/tradurre-e-tradire.html do offer more insight.

Strange chances, as it is I felt a little bit ignorant at not giving it even a  thought to go to the Almeida instead and give Stephen Dillane a chance to convince me of his Solness, yet I've found out yesterday (December 21st) that the performance of the Master Builder at the Almeida on November 30th was cancelled due to the fact that Stephen Dillane could not make it to the theatre because of the snow!!! (I do not blame him for getting stuck on his way, looking into the landscape from the Eurostar there really seemed to be very adverse weather conditions!!)

A Final Word about The Master Builder

I do not actually know if it is partially owed to David Edgar's new translation or rather only to the very accurate delivery of the lines at Chichester's Minerva Theatre, but there were certain antithetical concepts clearly expressed there. Words like "duty","pleasure","god", "human" were distictinctly ringing in the air, it's been quite a revelation and like somebody in the audience observed almost Shakespearian.

Some further musings

The tragic moment in The Master Builder (or in most any artist's life) arrives , when Solness finally breaks down and let's Hilde have a glimpse behind his carefully erected facade. All the bitterness about having sacrificed his own happiness to defy a jealous (definitely Protestant) god, who would have him but built edifices for his (god's) glory, and people not realising this sacrifice, ie not becoming happy in the homes Solness erects for them ("all they wanted were four walls"), bursts free in this liberating breakdown. Here Michael Pennington is surely at his best and overwhelmingly magnificent, this was the moment that gave me shivers during both performances. :-)  Wahnsinn!!!