The theatre’s publicist didn’t know what was going on. “It’s kind of a secret,” she said, awkwardly. I turned up anyway. It was a night last July. The theatre was packed. The average age in the audience seemed about 25. A young woman stood up on the stage and took up a microphone. She told us all to stand up. I like a lot of different things in my theatre; participation is not one of them. The woman said she wanted to perform a luck ritual, and told us to turn around three times. With her American accent, audience manipulation and “empowerment” lingo, I felt I’d stumbled into a self-help rally. I thought about leaving.
New voices in Irish politics
In Immigration & asylum, Ireland, Travel on July 2, 2009 at 11:21 amIn the run up to the local elections, I travelled around the country talking to immigrant candidates. This podcast, for FOMACS and Le Monde Diplomatique, is one of the results.
Michael Frayn: failed playwright
In Theatre on July 1, 2009 at 9:33 pmMichael Frayn was a spectacularly unsuccessful playwright.
The Cambridge Footlights has for years provided British comedy with a litany of its brightest stars, from the Monty Python team to Fry and Laurie. In his final year at Cambridge, Frayn got the opportunity to write most of the Footlights annual Spring Revue.
Normally, the Revue is full of topical satire on current affairs, showbiz and the media, and transfers to the West End. Frayn decided to take an original approach and, heavily influenced by a play he had seen in London, he set about writing a more austere kind of comedy. As he recalls in his collection of essays, ‘Stage Directions’, “the humour was to be entirely abstract.”
