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It is difficult to understand what drew director Peter Wilson to this insipid, lazy and sentimental play, but one has to admire the effort he and the cast have put into making the best of it. However, you can only work with the material at hand, and Tim Firth’s script is mostly excruciating. It manages to be both predictable and un-naturalistic, and the lines that Alan (Gerard Kearns) and Frank (Matthew Kelly) are given to speak leave them with such flat characters that it was difficult to muster the energy to care when they were in mortal peril.

The dialogue is clumsy and over-reliant on the (misguided) belief that having a Yorkshire accent is intrinsically funny. Do we really subscribe to such lazy stereotypes? The premise – that all Northerners are a bit thick and therefore funny – grates hugely, especially when staged in the West End of London. Kelly and Kearns deserve better.

And, to give credit where it’s due, Wilson does his best to elevate the script and to give them a bit more to work with. They try to flesh out under-developed and unsympathetic characters, but the words are lacking in wit, verve or energy – so that we never really care what happens to either of them. When Frank sort-of threatens to jump off the roof, there is no sense that the audience is tense, willing him not to jump. Firth fails to invest him with sufficient depth, and we don’t feel any emotional attachment to him. Likewise, when young Alan appears to be throwing away his dreams for a dead-end job, it is all to easy to shrug and head for the nearest bar.

Morgan Large’s design is great: the space is used cleverly, it is easy to believe that we are witnessing exchanges 60-stories above the ground, and the dilapidation of the building and surrounding Batley are convincing. Tony Simpson’s lighting and Gareth Owen’s sound are well-judged, and complement the drabness of story and setting.

There are some nice moments, but these are mostly down to Wilson’s judgement: the laughs come from well-time pauses, the odd lifted eyebrow, the interaction between Kelly and Kearns, rather than from the script itself. Despite these brief glimpses of humour, though, this comedy commits the biggest sin of all: it just isn’t funny.

Sign of the Times is playing at the Duchess Theatre until 28th May.

To the percussive clicks of a keyboard and the electronic beeps and chirps that invade our lives, Protein reflects on the nature of human interaction in a digital age. Sounds promising? Title aside, I thought so too. Unfortunately, the piece has delusions of grandeur but misses its mark.

Let’s start with the title: LOL. Where I come from, “lol” means “laugh out loud”, not “lots of love”, and has become a reflexive punctuation mark in casual conversations, rather than a phrase that has a great deal of meaning. The fact that Protein felt the need to spell out that LOL can mean “lots of love”, “lots of luck”, “laughing out loud”, “lack of laughter”, “lack of love”, “lack of luck”, “life on line”, “love on line” and also, apparently, “losers on line” and “log off loser”, in its promotional material suggests the lack of coherent decision-making that characterises the piece. This dabbling the world of online interactions feels rather half-hearted, while trying to appear committed. What could have been an interesting exploration of how we present ourselves online, and how this affects relationships and potential relationships, was instead a rather stilted and over-worked set of vignettes, with very little connecting purpose.

Perhaps this lack of connectedness was intentional – a look at the fragmentary nature of today’s society – or perhaps the piece just lacked a clear idea of where it was going. Either way, it was often unsatisfying to watch, and eked out a slim idea to 70 mins. The piece was “conceived and directed” by Luca Silvestrini and “devised and performed” by the six dancers; I wonder if this lack of a single choreographer has led to a kind of ‘devise by committee’ approach, and that’s why the piece feels so bitty. The dancers themselves, Patsy Browne-Hope, Omar Gordon, Kip Johnson, Sally Marie, Fernanda Prata and Stuart Waters, are lithe and committed, but never seem comfortable with the demanded audience interaction. It was refreshing to see the six dancers (three men, three women) mix up their partnerships to portray same-sex couples as well as heterosexual ones, but this was not enough to redeem a piece that was shallow but aiming to be deep.

The piece was danced to the sounds of Skype, MSN, etc., to words spoken by the dancers, and to pre-recorded and distorted words and phrases (composed by Andy Pink). Much of the language was lifted straight from lonely hearts ads, or was ostensibly email text from one member of a dating website to another. Again, this could have been an interesting idea, especially if the choreography has concentrated on the emotions, the loneliness and the fear of rejection, rather than on the narrative. Sadly, the overly earnest script quickly descended into trite cliché, wallowing in pseudo-philosophical insights and becoming too shallow to be taken as seriously as it took itself. There were some witty moments in the script, which provided the nicest moments of dance, too, but they were too few and too far between.

The dancers seemed bogged down by the earnestness of the piece, and they struggled to dance naturally while reciting their lines. I fail to see the value in having the lines spoken live – a recording would have left the dancers much freer. The piece also fell into the trap of dancing to the words, with one movement for each syllable and almost miming the story, rather than the dance taking on a life of its own. The pervading feeling was a sense that the company just don’t really get the way online communication works; the characters created by the words and dance feel like stereotypes, where ‘real’ people would have been more interesting.

LOL – Lots of Love by Protein played at The Place. For more shows and information see its website here: www.theplace.org.uk

I have written in defence of Twitter before (here, if you’re interested), but the Opera North/Lee Hall fiasco today reveals something that’s bad about such an instant medium. Twitter encourages knee-jerk responses which are often misinformed and always unhelpful. These then get re-tweeted, and the outrage grows. Very few people bother to gather all the facts and read the offending article/comments/statement before weighing in with an opinion or a damning critique. Twitter has been full of criticism this morning for Opera North, a Facebook group has been set up in defence of Hall, and the vitriol being directed at Opera North is growing.

Let me make it very clear: I would never defend either censorship or homophobia, but it seems to me that neither of these things has actually been perpetrated by Opera North. Lee Hall wrote a piece in the Guardian this morning claiming that the community opera he’s working on has been cancelled over references to an adult character’s sexuality because he has reached “an impasse” with the school which is providing 300 children to perform in the opera. I would personally argue that schools have an active duty to teach children about homosexuality and thus begin to cut down on homophobia, bullying and the pejorative use of the word “gay”. Furthermore, to remove all 300 children two weeks before the performance was due to happen is unnecessarily disruptive, and must be incredibly frustrating for both Hall and Opera North, who have both invested time and, in the case of Opera North, money, in the project.

However, I fail to see how the school’s apparently small-minded decision is Opera North’s fault. Its statement says that it tried to reach a compromise which all parties were happy with, in order that the performance might go ahead. I admire Hall for sticking to his guns, and understand his anger that Opera North did not offer him unconditional support. The statement could certainly have been worded more strongly, and could have categorically stated that Opera North has no problem with the libretto and would like the school to reconsider. But, Opera North obviously has a lot invested in its relationship with the local community, and to dismiss or criticise the school’s decision outright could do it a lot of damage in the long run. This was an arse-covering decision, not a homophobic one.

If there is blame to be apportioned, surely we should be laying at the door of the school and the local authority who decided that it was “inappropriate” to mention then some men “prefer lads to lasses” in front of four-year-olds. Surely, this is the bigger issue? That a school, an educational establishment, feels that it cannot let its pupils be in an environment where an adult talks about being gay? As Thomas Hescott rather eloquently puts it, the school should view it as talking about equality, not sex. Sexuality and sex are different, and the school should have the wit to recognise this.

In short, Opera North has not “banned” Hall’s opera. It has been put in an impossible position as mediator between two sides who have reached an “impasse” and the school no longer wishes to discuss it. I don’t see how Opera North is supposed to magic a new cast of 300 schoolchildren out of thin air, especially as the previous cast had been rehearsing for months. It’s an unpleasant and tricky situation, but slinging muck at Opera North only muddies the waters and draws attention away from the real issue: why shouldn’t children “as young as four” learn that some boys like boys, some girls like girls, and some people like both? This is what we should be outraged about.

Ideas too big for a little woman: why Alcott’s representation of acceptable femininity is a betrayal of independent women.

Don’t you feel that it is pleasanter to help one another, to have daily duties which make leisure sweet when it comes, to bear and forebear, that home may be comfortable and lovely?…Work is wholesome…good for the health and spirits, and gives us a sense of power and independence’,1
says Marmee, which characterises the moralistic tone of Alcott’s novel. She preaches the need for the girls to be able to provide a haven for their future families, to become ‘angels of the hearth’ and necessarily enclose themselves in the domestic sphere. This is a very narrow view of what constitutes ‘power and independence’, particularly when one considers Alcott’s own life and the independence that she had as a single, self-sufficient woman. I read this view of a contented repression as a betrayal of Alcott’s own ideals, and I shall explore how and why this is the case in this essay.

The repressed and repressive view of what constitutes acceptable femininity that Marmee espouses and epitomises is generally presented in the novel as the ‘right’ way to be, despite the fact that married contentment couldn’t be further from Alcott’s own experiences: ‘Alcott herself remained vigilantly single her entire life.’2 While ‘vigilantly’ might be stretching the point, it is true that Alcott herself never subscribed to the expected conventions of marriage and family, which is why one might expect her to allow her characters the same freedom. Meg’s desire to move into her own domestic sphere, exemplified by her ‘castle in the air’3 is largely influenced by the girls’ idealisation of their mother and the domesticated femininity that she represents. ‘Marmee’ is what ‘keep[s] the home pleasant and the domestic machinery running smoothly’4, and she leads by example, teaching and preaching a restricted view of femininity that generally points towards marriage, because ‘to be loved and chosen by a good man is the best and sweetest thing that can happen to a woman’5. She goes on to say ‘better old maids than…unmaidenly girls, running about to find husbands’6, which, far from suggesting that marriage is not essential, reinforces my point – Marmee would rather her daughters missed out on the ‘best and sweetest thing that can happen to a woman’ than degrade themselves or act in an ‘unfeminine’ way.

It has been suggested that Beth is the personification of Marmee’s old-fashioned way of femininity, that Alcott is suggesting that it cannot survive the social upheaval and family fragmentation of this time, and therefore has to sicken and eventually die (as Beth does in Good Wives) in order to make way for a metaphorical ‘new way’, represented by the vibrant, unconventional Jo. This view rests on the claim that Jo’s unconventionality is presented as a good thing in the text and is being used by Alcott to teach her young readership a new way to ‘be’ in an age of alienation and hard work. While it is possible to construct such an argument, I find it essentially flawed because Alcott presents Jo as at her most contented within her self and most praised by those around her when she is at her most submissive, peaceable and selfless – i.e. when she is most like Beth. Meg praises Jo for keeping her temper, (‘I am so glad, Jo,’7) and Jo herself says that ‘to be independent and to earn the praise of those she loved were the dearest wishes of her heart’8. Alcott says that
There are many Beth’s in this world, shy and quiet, sitting in corners till needed, and living for others so cheerfully that no-one sees the sacrifices till the little cricket on the hearth stops chirping, and the sweet, sunshiny presence vanishes, leaving silence and shadow behind.9
This suggests that the Beths of the world make it a better place and provide solace and sweetness for those around them, which is why I disagree with the view that the old feminine ways are dead or dying and the idea that Jo’s wild ways are better. This is also why the fact that although Jo wishes to be independent this does not undermine her desire to earn praise by being acceptably feminine, because ‘by some strange attraction of opposites’10 she is closet to Beth of all her sisters and therefore is most influenced and guided by her.

There are moments where the problems with the ‘angel of the hearth’ philosophy that Marmee and Beth epitomise are shown, and many critics have commented on these as examples of Alcott’s undermining of this kind of submissive femininity. The most seized upon moment is Marmee’s confession to Jo that ‘I am angry nearly every day of my life’11. This is used as proof that Marmee is unhappy within this ‘repressive domesticity’12, that Alcott is therefore against this repression, and that through Jo she is arguing that a new kind of femininity is emerging and should be encouraged. However, this one moment is not enough to overturn the narrative view of the rest of the novel where Marmee is happy apart from not having her husband by her side, and domestic contentment is a shared goal.

Furthermore, I would argue that the scene between Jo and her mother actually disrupts the idea that Jo represents a new way of being a woman in the world. Some critics have suggested that Alcott criticises Marmee for being submissive while praising Jo for being tomboyish (and by extension, masculine and independent). I disagree with this reading of Jo because she is condemned by other characters in the book innumerable times for being ‘boyish’ or ‘manly’ -‘I detest rude, unladylike girls…don’t Jo, it’s so boyish!’13 Her ‘gentlemanly manner’14 is accepted (although not acceptable) while her father is away, so long as the ‘manly’ things she does are for the good of the family – for example taking on the more physically demanding household tasks or earning a living. While she is presented as the ‘black sheep’15 of the family for being such a tomboy, it is worth noting that ‘Jo’s pilgrimage of moral development takes place almost wholly in interior spaces – both literal and symbolic’16 which, I think, illustrates that even if one was inclined to read the text as encouraging young women to develop outside of their pre-assigned gender and societal roles, this view cannot be sustained because even in Alcott’s most wayward character this development remains within the confines of her family. The thrust of the book follows Jo’s emotional journey as she learns how to control her ‘quick temper, sharp tongue and restless spirit’17 and learn ‘not only the bitterness of remorse and despair, but also the sweetness of self-denial and self-control’18. This last sentence undermines the idea that Marmee is an example of frustrated womanhood, because it is she who preaches the ‘sweetness’ of such subjugation. It also worth briefly noting that in order to please her mother and to believe that she is serving God, Jo must overcome her ‘restless spirit’, which implies that she must settle down -within the constraints of ‘Bunyanesque self-denial’19 and acceptable femininity.

The way in which Alcott shows Jo growing up and into her predefined gender role is what makes me believe that Alcott betrayed her own opinions in writing Little Women. It is easy to assume that Alcott wrote Little Women to please an assumed audience of young girls, and therefore wrote the book more from economic necessity than a desire write a moralised bildungsroman. But, an ‘experience as a female domestic [servant] taught Alcott a lesson in the inequity among male and female roles and unfair treatment of the nineteenth century women under the patriarchal society,’ and instilled an ‘unending rage against the cultural limitations imposed on female development’20, which means that her seeming encouragement to women to accept domestic roles and the intrinsic inequality therein is particularly odd. One can imagine a single woman perhaps idealising marriage and the domestic sphere as a romantic contrast to the necessity for her to support herself, but Alcott’s choice of spinsterhood and ‘ambivalence about the cult of feminine altruism and its domestic context’21 argues against such idealisation on her part. She also wrote sensationalist fiction under several pseudonyms,22 which earned her far more money and sold better than the ‘moral pap’23 that she called Little Women. Moreover, Alcott’s sensationalist fiction ‘examine[s] the darker side of human nature and criticize[s] [sic] the Victorian ideal of femininity as unrealistic and false. Her subversive sensational stories…defied nineteenth-century values of womanhood’24, which further shows that she did not believe what she preaches in Little Women. Strickland argues that ‘by writing and reading thrillers, women could pretend to be the femme fatale; a woman that owns herself and her sexuality. She [Alcott] uses her power for her own gain and to undermine the patriarchy’25 of society, which does not sound like the author of Little Women, a novel that perpetuates patriarchy and female submissiveness.

There is little suggestion in the novel that Jo should persevere in her ‘manly ways’, either from society, from herself, or from the authorial voice: even when we might expect Alcott to intervene in the story and take Jo’s part she does not. The narrative voice frequently interjects with opinions and comments,26 and Alcott cannot break the narrative up in this way without realising that her readers are going to assume that she is present in her novel, and therefore to feel that her moralising and encouragement towards marriage is a form of betrayal. This idea of betrayal is particularly noteworthy in Jo’s ambitions to write because this is where Jo’s story most closely parallels Alcott’s own experiences27, and yet the authorial voice is quite patronising and dismissive of Jo’s writing, calling her book ‘only half a dozen little fairy tales’28, which immediately diminishes them and their importance. Moreover, Jo’s eventual ‘financial independence [in Good Wives] is domesticated, her stories transformed into payments for the butcher, a new carpet, groceries, and gowns’29, which reiterates that a woman earning her own money is only acceptable if it is used to further the creation of an idealised and romanticised domestic space, a haven for the hard-working men. Alcott herself
carefully constructed her role as a writer born out of economic necessity, portraying herself as the perfect Victorian woman, who sacrifices her own needs for those of her family. Thus, she negotiates the autonomous and self-fulfilling act of writing as merely work to support herself and her family, simultaneously denying her ego and selfhood30.
She then constructs exactly the same role for Jo; Jo writes partly for her own pleasure, but this is mostly ignored and her writing is presented as an economic necessity; ‘in time I may be able to support myself and help the girls’31. This highlights the clear parallel between Alcott and Jo, and makes it all the more surprising that Alcott does not allow Jo the freedoms that she enjoyed.

Alcott does not present the girls as perfect; but in their receptivity to Marmee’s domesticity and their willingness to ‘conquer themselves’32 they represent a form of the ideal woman – one who is aware of her own failings and attempts to rectify them with the help of parent, God and, eventually, husband, as Marmee does. Marmee’s own failings are an interesting example of patriarchy at work in the novel, she is aware of her temper and it is through Marmee’s awareness of ‘how much I owe him’33 (Mr. March) that she attempts to conquer her anger and ‘is ashamed to do otherwise before him’34. It has been argued that Mr. March’s absence is what leaves Jo free to become ‘the man of the family’35, but as Murphy argues, his physical absence from the text does not stop him being the ‘primary agent of trivialization [sic]’36 – it is he who uses the phrase ‘little women’37 which both exemplifies Victorian ideals of childhood (where children are just miniature adults) and belittles their efforts to be ‘grown-up’ women. Jo, originally at least, does not want to be a woman, little or otherwise, and her repeated expression that she ‘can’t get over [her] disappointment in not being a boy’38, is another point of contention with the presentation of domestic bliss as ‘the best and sweetest thing’39 that a woman could and should wish for. In fact, Jo regularly takes part in ‘boyish’ activities through her friendship with Laurie, she baldly states ‘I am not a young lady’40 and engages in acts of transvestism which are a far cry from the femininity urged by her mother and sisters.

This has lead some critics to argue that Jo is gay, a reading I find slightly ridiculous in the context of the time the novel was written and published. Quimby argues that the
cross-gender identification with a brother or male peer…explores a range of male-identified behaviors [sic] that generally direct [Jo’s] plot away from the expected trajectory of the girlhood narrative… Jo’s refusal of normative girlhood identifications and desires…she wants to be the man of the family, not the little woman; she wants to be a soldier, not a seamstress; and she wants to be like Laurie, not have him41.
However, the assumption that Jo’s wanting to be like Laurie rather than wanting him in a heterosexual sense is as neat an opposite as soldier/seamstress or man/woman is absurd. Firstly, Laurie’s relationship with all the girls is platonic, not just his relationship with Jo and all the girls specifically think they are too young for romantic involvement regardless of their personal desires, and secondly the above idea only holds water if one agrees that Jo does move away from the ‘expected trajectory of…girlhood’, and I would argue strongly that she does not. Jo may be a ‘wild girl’42, but she is a girl nonetheless, and one who ultimately does conform to gender expectations; ‘I’ll be as prim as I can and not get into any scrapes’43. Her tomboyish-ness and her wish to ‘marry Meg myself, and keep her safe in the family’44 stem more from a desire to keep her already fragmented family together than any potential lesbian leanings. Jo’s transvestism would be remarkable, especially given that she sells her hair45, if it were not for ‘The Pickwick Portfolio’46 where all of the girls adopt masculine personae. Their willing transvestism for the purposes of fiction places it firmly in the realm of play and make-believe; there is little seriousness behind it, which negates the idea that Jo actually wants to be a man, despite her fierce protectiveness of her sisters.

In fact, the women in the play are defined through their relationships with men rather than each other, which underlines the inescapable patriarchy of the novel, despite it having a female author. Jo is defined through her relationship with Laurie, Marmee through her relationship with her absent husband, and Meg through her blossoming relationship with Mr. Brooke. Marmee’s complaints stem from having given up her husband to her country47 and therefore having to ‘to keep his little daughters safe and good for him’48, the implication being that everything she does with and for the girls is actually for her husband. Jo’s relationship with Laurie not only encourages her tomboyish ways, but brings out her most feminine side: Jo’s statement that ‘he’ll…keep us from being sentimental…we can do so little for him, and he does so much for us’49, almost exactly echoes Marmee’s wish to please Mr. March, and hints at a heterosexual desire in Jo to please Laurie because he is a man. Furthermore, even in her writing, where she is sometimes at her most independent, Jo models herself on Laurie, ‘his contributions [to The Pickwick Portfolio] were excellent, being patriotic, classical, comical or dramatic, but never sentimental. Jo regarded them as worthy of Bacon, Milton or Shakespeare, and remodelled her own works with good effect, she thought’.50 Alcott’s snide addition of ‘she thought’ implies that not only does Jo have a skewed view of what is great writing (it seems unlikely that Laurie’s talents really match Shakespeare’s!) but that her efforts to rewrite her own work in a more masculine way are bound to fail.

This implicit failure, and the fact that even Jo’s published writing is unpaid undermines the one thing that might have made Jo independent or a role-model for young women who want to escape their pre-defined gender roles. Alcott does this throughout the novel and not only does she not undermine a limited view of domestic femininity, but at some points she actively encourages it. For this reason, I find Little Women as a novel to be a betrayal of Alcott’s own views and, without being melodramatic, almost a negation of her own freedoms.

Works Cited:

Alcott, Louisa May: Little Women, Penguin Popular Classics, London, 1994.

Arac, Jonathan: The Emergence of American Literary Narrative, 1820-1860,
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2005.

Foote, Stephanie: Resentful Little Women: Gender and Class Feeling in
Louisa May Alcott, College Literature, 32.1, 2005, pp.63-85. Viewed online at: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/college _literature/v032/32.1foote.html, 17/11/07.

Murphy, Ann B: The Borders of Ethical, Erotic, and Artistic Possibilities in
“Little Women”, in Signs, Vol.15, no.3, The Ideology of Mothering: Disruption and Reproduction of Patriarchy, University of Chicago Press, Spring 1990, pp.562-585. Viewed online at: http://links.jstor.org/sici? sici= 0097-9740%28199021%2915%3 A3%3C562%3ATBOE EA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23 18/11/07.

Quimby, Karin: The Story of Jo: Literary Tomboys, Little Women and the
Sexual-Textual Politics of Narrative Desire, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 10.1 (2003) pp.1-22. Viewed online at: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_lesbian_and _gay_ studies/v010/10.1quimby.html, 17/11/07

Strickland, Margaret: Like a Wild Creature in its Cage, Paced That Handsome
Woman’: the Struggle Between Sentiment and Sensation in the Writings of Louisa May Alcott, Domestic Goddesses. Ed. Kim Wells, 1999. Viewed online at: http://www.womenwriters.net/domestic goddess/strickland .htm, 20/11/07.

Just read this on the Guardian theatre blog, and am angry… here are my thoughts:

ANLO was a poorly-thought-through scheme which never had the budget to do anything useful. The DCMS had this money which ACE could not turn down, and ACE was therefore forced into launching a project far too quickly. It was never enough money to make a real difference, it was rushed into being, the marketing budget was spent with nine months of the scheme left to run, the targets were quietly revised when take-up was lower than hoped… It has been mostly disappointing.

If you don’t live in London, and especially if you have a job, then available performances are few and far between – many theatres used the scheme to get rid of tickets they wouldn’t have sold otherwise, often at matinees, which are obviously no use if you work a 9-5 job. Add in a train fare to London, or taking a day’s holiday, and suddenly the “free” ticket becomes a bit pointless.

“A socially inclusive model for accessing theatre did not exist for young people until now.” This is just a ridiculous thing to say: theatres across the country offer cheap tickets (the RSC’s tickets start at £3.50 for students, the Royal Court has a ‘pay what you can night’, for example) and have excellent schemes designed to widen engagement, develop audiences and get young people into theatres. The ANLO money could have been far more productively used to promote existing campaigns on a national level.

The scheme claimed to be in place to encourage non-attenders, such as the author, to go to the theatre, as the ACE press office told me forcefully when I said that as a committed theatre-goer I’d never found a way of participating. My response then and now is this: if it’s designed for non-theatre-goers, then why advertise in theatres? That’s simply encouraging those people (such as me) who would have bought a ticket, to get a freebie instead.

I don’t in any way support cuts to the arts budget, and dread the damage that will be done if the Spending Review hits as hard as the arts sector currently fears. I urge you all to join www.ivaluethearts.org.uk, to sign the petition. But, I can’t mourn the end of ANLO, even if it only clawed back £100K. Stopping funding for projects that patently don’t work is a sensible way to start saving money, whatever your politics.

The author sounds as thought she is doing the PR for this “ambitious two-year pilot”. It wasn’t ambitious, the targets were lowered. Further, these targets were not met in the first year of the project. We await the full evaluation with interest. In the meantime, I strongly believe that the article devalues the important work that theatres are constantly engaged in trying to widen access off their own backs, and without a pittance from ANLO.

A survey by Reader’s Digest has revealed so-called shocking statistics about the British public’s lack of knowledge of classical music. Now, noone is disputing that the figures look bad (75% did not know that Elgar wrote ‘Pomp and Circumstance’, and 27% did not know he was a composer), but are they actually surprising? Classical music still finds it hard to shake off the image that it is difficult and elitist, but a lot of music education doesn’t do much to help dispel this. Further, does not knowing Elgar’s name prevent an appreciation of Pomp and Circumstance? Of course not. Sixty-one per cent of respondents said they liked classical music, so not knowing names is clearly not putting people off. Not knowing who Lady Gaga is wouldn’t stop someone from dancing along, and this feels uncomfortably like a chance for those who are classical music aficionados to feel smug – which is really not going to help its image. It’s all very well to climb aboard one’s high horse and look down at those who think that Bocconcini is a composer (when, obviously, Boccooncini is an Italian cheese ball), but I didn’t know that, and I both listen to classical music and have Music A-level. A question like that is just setting people up to look foolish. That aside, the fact that one third of respondents to the survey never listened to classical music is the more pertinent figure – after all, it’s hardly gobsmacking that people have little specialist knowledge of a something they never listen to.

We’ve been having an interesting debate on the @ArtsPro Twitter account today, after the lovely Katie asked a question about whether it’s OK to Tweet at the theatre. Personally, I’m all for sharing experiences and opinions, but not during the show. No offence to anyone, but your opinion is not so important that it can’t wait until the interval/end of the show. By all means tweet about plays, and by all means tweet from inside theatre buildings, but during the actual play, phones off. And that includes iPhones, iPads, blackberries etc, too.

It’s not the noise I object to (although very few phones are silent), it’s the light. Back-lit screens are incredibly distracting when you’re sitting in the dark. So, by all means tell your followers if Jamie parker was fabulous as Prince Hal at the Globe (he was) or if Alan Bennett’s ‘The Habit of Art’ left you cold (it did). But wait until a suitable break. Please.

But, lots of people disagree, including this article, which I commented on when it first appeared (I’m @EllieFace, and I’m a curmudgeon). I reckon designated ‘tweet seats’ would be OK, so long as they were at the back of the stalls, where the audience can’t see. I don’t know how distracting it would be for the actors. What do you think?

Some thoughts on cycling, every day, in all weathers.

I am a misanthrope from the moment I put bum to saddle, until I dismount.
I used to only hate taxis. This soon extended to include all drivers. Now I hate other cyclists and pedestrians, too. Here are some of Eleanor’s tips for happy cycling. If everyone could follow these, I might start liking people again.

1. Drivers: If you’d like to suggest that I move forward/get out of your way, the usual verbal abuse, gesticulation and honking is sufficient. You really don’t need to drive into the back of my bike repeatedly to bump me forwards.

If you do hit me, have the decency to stop and make sure I can still stand. An apology is always welcome, too.

If you cut me up and I then catch up with you at the next set of traffic lights, I will then cycle at snail’s pace directly in front of you for as long as I safely can. Just so you know.

Driving up behind me and honking to make me jump isn’t funny. Especially up hill. I’m going as fast as I can.

Y’know that red or green stripe down the lefthand side of the road? The one with little white bikes painted on it? Can you guess what that’s for? Not cars. Ditto that nice box with bikes painted on it that sits in front of you at traffic lights. Incidentally, those yellow criss-cross boxes are not places to sit and wait for a traffic light to change colour, either.

You have mirrors. Use them. You also have eyes. Use them, too.

You have indicators. Use them, don’t just turn across me.

Speed limits are there for a reason. Those really annoying “if you hit me at 30 there’s an 80% chance I’ll live” ads are true for cyclists as well as children. Although, see above, I’d really rather you didn’t hit me at all.

2. Cyclists: Signal. Using your arm. Make it obvious where you’re going. Not only are you less likely to get squished, but people won’t hate you. Anyone who is not a confident/good enough cyclist not to be able to signal without swerving all over the road SHOULD NOT BE ON THE ROAD.

Having said that, don’t cycle on the pavement. Everyone hates you. And it’s illegal.

Wear a helmet, because not wearing one is screamingly moronic. Ditto cycling after dark without lights. That’s just asking to be killed.

If I overtake you and you then catch up with me at the next set of traffic lights, don’t muscle your way in front of me. That just means I have to overtake you again in 2 mins.

3. Pedestrians: Remember that bikes are silent. You have eyes. Use them.

Make a clear distinction between road and pavement. On one you definitely have right of way. On the other, get out the way.

That’s all for now. No more cycling until Monday. I can feel my blood pressure dropping already.

Stephen Hough’s blog for the Telegraph the other day quoted Grant Hiroshima as being “so disturbed” at people laughing at Phèdre and Helen Mirren’s tragically doomed character that he almost walked out. Hiroshima “wonder[s] if this represents the inabililty of these audiences to register tragedy. Have we come to that point at which tragedy has lost the battle with irony and cynicism?” Well, I for one certainly have the ability to register tragedy – when something is tragic. “Has modern entertainment so dulled the consciousness that an entire audience can just miss the point altogether?” asks Hiroshima, which seems rather snobbish to me. It seems to imply that his reaction to the play is more ‘right’, more ‘worthy’, than those who laughed. I am on the side of the audience here. I saw the play two weeks ago, and I laughed. I didn’t laugh because I missed the point – I knew the play was a tragedy and that there was going to be a high body count at the end. Not a good start for those expecting laughs. But the play is so far removed from anything realistic or naturalistic that the overblown language and distraught gestures did become laughable. Hiroshima seems to be missing the point that people will laugh if they find something funny – and the fact that he didn’t find it funny is no fault of anyone else’s.

I admit that the giggles can stem from the fact that it too uncomfortable to watch someone else in pain (a tribute to Mirren as an actress) and the natural way to relieve the tension is to giggle. But there are moments when the sheer ridiculousness of the play is funny. The melodramatic, sweeping scale of the drama and tragedy piling up to totally screw up everyone and everything has its funny moments. We, as audiences, are not used to Greek tragedy, and as a genre it often seems false and removed from real human reaction, which lessons the impact of the tragedy.

To suggest that we are desensitised and no longer able to feel tragedy is absurd – I have cried like a baby at Romeo & Juliet and countless other plays. In most plays where someone dies/something tragic happens, the audience is saddened – but it has to be done well and believably. The fault likes with this production rather than with the audience or with society as a whole. It didn’t have enough conviction in its own tragedy to carry it off. The last scene (where the body of Hippolytus is dragged across the stage leaving a bloody trail) was genuinely sombre, but the rest was just too hysterical for it to be possible to empathise with any of the characters, and this remove makes it much easier to see the funny side of the dramatic irony.

I also object to the point about “these audiences”, which seems to differentiate theatre audiences from cinema audiences, and as such is elitist and foolish.

*Clears throat* IT IS NOT, REPEAT NOT, OK TO TWITTER DURING A THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE. No matter what Ruth Jamieson says. All phones off for the whole show. No exceptions – if you are too important to turn your phone off, don’t go to the theatre. Or the cinema. Stay at home, nursing your thumb-RSI. The light of a phone screen in a dark auditorium is fantastically annoying. Ushers should be able to confiscate phones, like sweets from a naughty child. I also think that I should be able to smack you in the back of the head if you take your phone out during a show, but I accept that I may be in a minority of one.

Talking about a show is one of the pleasures of going to the theatre, but believe me, your opinions are not so fabulously interesting that they can’t wait until the interval or the bus ride home. They don’t need to be shared every time you have a thought. Don’t get me wrong, I like twitter, I like texting, and I absolutely love banging on about plays I’ve seen. But even I, egomaniacal as I am, manage to contain my pearls until the lights come up.