EleanorTurney.co.uk

Ok, I give up. I failed utterly. Having begun this month full of misplaced confidence, I must now admit that the great NaNoWriMo has defeated me. For those of you who don’t know what I’m on about, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month – see what they did there? The idea is that no-one who writes sets out to write a first draft, people set out to write a finished novel. This is impossible (debate…) and frustrating, and leads to many projects being abandoned. I have had this problem, obsessively re-writing the first 6,000 words of a story but never actually getting any more than that on the page. So, NaNoWriMo gets people to pledge to write a fifty thousand word novel in a month. 30 days. November. 50k. Ha. That’s 1,666 words a day. It’s not coincidence that the last three digits of that are the devil’s number.

I started well, by cheating. Well, I had written the beginning of this novel (it’s a children’s story, a kind of modern fairytale, since you ask) so many times that I sort of knew where I was going. So the first 6,000 words or so were easy. A day’s work. Then I conveniently got sick. Ill enough to stay off work, but well enough that when I woke up from my fevered sleep I could plough through a few thousand more words. And so, for a week or so, I was on track, ahead of the game, even. But then, sadly, life intervened. I’m still getting my head around the whole full-time-job thing, and what with that and Boyfriend stealing my laptop for a week (not strictly true, but effectively true), I found myself rapidly falling by the wayside. I had followed the advice of the official NaNo website (www.nanowrimo.org) and told as many people as possible that I was doing this project, in order to keep me going when I got lazy through the fear of the shame that would ensue were I to quietly give up. I should point out that this was general advice and not specifically aimed at me, although it was fairly pertinent! Having gleefully announced my growing word counts to all and sundry, suddenly I was less forthcoming, and had to defend myself to Boyfriend’s Dad that I wasn’t just writing the same work over and over again, a la Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

Anyway, I wrote lots yesterday, but too little too late, and as midnight gets closer I am writing this rather than having one last push, as I think 24,347 words might be a little beyond even my speedy typing. So, me and my half-a-novel are going to gracefully retire, and get an early night before braving the icy winds of Cambridge to cycle to work horribly early tomorrow morning. It’s funny, even though by any objective criteria I abjectly failed to complete a self-imposed task, I’m still pretty chuffed that I’ve got 26,653 words. That’s more than I’ve ever written before, so onwards and upwards, and I’ll post if/when I finish it…

This was a strangely plodding performance of five short pieces. With an interval between each, the vignettes were invested with a gravitas they did not necessarily merit. That is not to bash all five with the same pointe shoe, there were some nice moments throughout, but although the dance was skilfully executed and often exciting and engaging to watch, this felt like a performance that had been cobbled together rather than arranged, and was curiously dissatisfying despite the technical excellence of the dancers.

However, the first piece, ‘Blue Roses’, was beautiful, moving, and visually impressive. Danced to the prologue and final scene of Tennessee Williams’ ‘Glass Menagerie’, the piece captured the poignancy of the play, although it teetered on the same precipice of sentimentality that hampers the play. The dancers moved to the word without music, which was surprisingly effective, apart from an odd choreographic tendency to insist on a movement for every syllable. This worked for the jerky style of the physically disabled and painfully shy Laura (Anita Hitchins), but for eloquent Tom (Dane Hurst) and charming Jim (Franklyn Lee), it often felt too busy – the movement distracted and detracted from the words. I am well aware that a dance piece that transcends the music/words could be a good thing, but my literary bias baulks at an over-shadowing of the words. The two dancers playing Amanda were generally superb, and the concept of having two dancers represent the same character  - to emphasise her contradictory nature – was clever and well done. However, as with the whole evening, there were small discrepancies that drew the eye and spoiled the overall effect: the two weren’t quite together some of the time, which suggested being under-rehearsed.

This feeling of being not quite ready to perform was pervasive, and surprising given that all of the pieces had been performed before. The third piece ‘The Moor’s Pavane’, was rather dull and overblown, and did not seem sure of itself, despite being billed as José Limón’s masterwork. The programme notes claimed that the intension wasn’t to retell the story of Othello, but in fact it did just that with some rather feeble mime and a heavily symbolic handkerchief. The choreography was plain and uninspired, and the dancers seemed bored with what they were doing. This was by far the weakest of the five pieces, and could have been improved by a more abstract representation of the Othello story rather than a literal re-telling.

A witty solo, ‘Harmonica Breakdown’, finished the evening, and was a charming send-off. Anita Hutchins is a fine dancer, and had the charisma to carry off Jane Dudley’s simple choreography without looking unskilled. I would suggest that it is verging on pretension to dance a pas de deux with a suitcase, as in ‘cervaNtes’, and although Dane Hurst and Ana Lujan Sanchez danced with aplomb, the nudity was gratuitous and detracted from the delicate relationship the dancers were trying to portray. This was Sanchez’s own choreography, and on the evidence of this performance, perhaps she should stick to dancing.

It was difficult to settle into any kind of rhythm with these performances, as they were abruptly broken up by the breaks, and the different styles did not necessarily do a great company of dancers justice. Limón is over fond of the arabesque en attitude to the point where one wondered whether the dancers physically could straighten their legs, particularly during Dane Hurst’s otherwise hugely impressive solo, ‘Chaconne’.

This was a play that was almost too good for its own good. One needs something to look at if the play is dull or the acting poor, but no one could call this greatest of tragedies boring, and the acting outshone the bronzed set. The queasily tilted and revolving stage detracted from the sheer horror and power of the story. Ralph Fiennes’ charted Oedipus’ crushing realisation that he cannot escape his fate with style. His cocky Oedipus is gradually reduced to an animalistic howl of pain that re-echoes round the Olivier and cannot fail to move. Tireseis, played by Alan Howard, was unfailing in the mesmerising power of knowledge. His lisping, singsong voice was creepily effective, and his neat, bespectacled blindness uncomfortably foreshadowed the brutal and bloody portrayal of Oedipus’ self-inflicted blinding. His laughter made the idea that Oedipus could escape his fate laughable. The only woman in the piece, Jocasta, played by Clare Higgins (apart from a wordless sight of Antigone and Ismene to create a pathetic still of guilty man clutching innocent child at the very end) more than held her own. In amongst the chorus of suited older men she was fierce and loving and tender – uncomfortably motherly even as wife. Her realisation of who she was and what she’d done was heartbreaking. The idea that as a woman she had already lost a child (Oedipus) and husband (Laius) and then lost both again in discovering Oedipus’ identity was really hammered home. This was woman twice broken-hearted.

Creon is one of the less developed characters in the play, and I had a sense that he was struggling to understand why his character did some of the things that he did. This made some of them curiously unsatisfying, but then the Greek’s didn’t exactly go in for realism, and he could only work with the given script. The script lacked a strong sense of itself – approaching such a classic text I suppose one is torn between presenting Sophocles’ immortal words and stamping one’s own mark on it. This translation veered between archaic, almost Shakespearean diction (“blood will have blood” – someone should tell Macbeth that…) and much more modern, colloquial language. Either one is fine by my book, but make a decision and stick to it. Both together jarred. There were times when I wondered why the actors hadn’t rebelled and refused to say some of the clumsier lines. Also, on a personal quibble, the line “I am woe, I am agony, I am Oedipus” was replaced with “You know who I am”, which borders on sacrilege.

The play has spadefuls of dramatic irony, and with every curse that Oedipus heaped upon his own unwitting head the pantomimic desire to shout at him (he’s [behind] you!) was almost overwhelming. I controlled myself, fear not. The glittering set contrasted oddly with the National’s standard costume of plain black suits. This made the chorus into one ineffectual, indistinguishable mob. There were moments of course when the mob was needed. And there were moments when one wanted to knock their heads together. The music again sat oddly, with the chorus bursting into a capalla close-harmony, often prayers or lamentations – goodness knows there were enough moments that called for both. The noise itself was innocuous enough, but it was a mistake to have speaking over the singing, as words got lost. As with everything apart from the acting, it seemed an unnecessary decoration. The story is powerful enough and well acted enough to stand alone. I wanted Peter Brook to burst in the put them all in a white box. The phenomenal story and acting make everything else pale into insignificance and became a distraction.

This was woe, this was agony, this was Oedipus. Just not in so many words.