The Seven Acts of Mercy + Radical Sounds - 02-03-17

The Seven Acts of Mercy + Radical Sounds

No mention has been made so far on this oft talked about blog about a play I went to Stratford-Upon-Avon to see. Anders Lustgarten's The Seven Acts of Mercy’s main subject matter was the last days of Caravaggio – the revered painter and brawler.

We’d heard mainly bad things about the rock-hard benches at the Swan Theatre. However the seats in the Lower Circle were fine, although to have been at ground level in the stalls would have improved the experience two-fold. Located within the enormous main RSC theatre complex on the river, I was slightly green around the edges with envy regarding those going to see the Shakespeare play in the main theatre; Henry V.

The Seven Acts of Mercy started well with a darkly lit violent scene involving Caravaggio and an aggressor who had been sent by some dangerous Sicilian brothers to seek him out. They were after blood after the artist had killed one of their family while holed up on the island. Swarthy, vicious, swearing like a trooper, the famous artist dispatched him with a sword drawn warning, but also, he had been warned; his life was in danger. It was an effective opening, my mind was taken to a world of cutthroats and thieves, lurking in the shadows and doorways of Naples back streets.  Every time the action returned to 16^th century Italy, my interest revived.

But the play was mainly set in the present day, centring around a grey haired Scouser and his grandson, the elder endlessly educating the teenager on the rights and wrongs of the universe according to SWP doctrine. Need;ess to say it was dry as a bone but there was some humour; the biggest laugh of the night was at the start of part two, after the interval. His prodigal son has returned and the three generations of the family are watching a football match on TV. The son is a baddy because of his job, but far worse is the fact he is a Liverpool fan in the midst of Evertonians. Grandfather then goes into a speech in which he compares each political party to a football team. “Ukip are Chelsea “ he announced to great laughs. Eh ? How do you work that out? Man Utd were the greens, City were Lib Dems and sin of sins, Liverpool were  New Labour. The scene went down well but I was seething, already bored by the tedium of this story overloaded with leftie lectures delivered in scouse. What this strand had to do with Caravaggio I had no clue - but i am told it was to do with using street people as models for his mainly classical paintings, as was the case in the present as the young lad took pictures of other characters on his phone, The play has far more scouse than Italian art and I was completely bored well beyond the end. Its one thing to ram political views down the audience’s necks, but to alienate so many by insulting so many teams seemed crass in the extreme.

Radical Sounds at Senate House 02/03/17

Orlando Harrison did a great job organising this interesting event in a large lecture hall in Senate House. The sound quality was spectacular, especially used well in the last segment regarding Baader Meinhoff. The sounds went round the room using a quadrophonic set up skilfully, and when O took to the synth, playing along live, we were momentarily in the realms of gorgeousness. A soundscape accompanies words and a picture, Huey Newton of the Black Panthers was the main subject of another section of words and sounds.

Some of the poetry reading left me cold, but a ranting and shaking man from Berlin battled his nerves and delivered some well worked scenes from Kreuzberg's squatter scene. It seems the urban guerrillas are still manning the barricades in  2017 Berlin. There was also a display of LGBT, anarchist and revolutionary literature upstairs, for which we had to register and become day visitors to the library. I counted over 100 people in the audience, many of whom were experts in sending bad vibes and the evil eye to others who were trying to enjoy the experience by having some fun. Fun ? No sir, revolution is a fun free zone. Don’t you know that ?