Harry Lloyd : Notes From Underground ****

[October 8th] There before my very eyes was Harry Lloyd but, due to my own ignorance, it was only until the next day that I realised it was the Game of Thrones and Doctor Who star. Blissfully I sat there, eye-to-eye, in front of him as he snuggled up to a rag, arm in a sling, on a decomposing armchair. Peering through the corner of my eye, resisting the temptation to blush, I was aware of the lead actor’s attractiveness, under his greasy hair, bushy moustache and beard, even if he instilled the most unlikeable character.

Lloyd’s performance was hypnotising. His ability to entice and enunciate all that there was in this Victorian fear-and-loathing character, as portrayed in Dostoyevsky’s 1864 novella Notes from Underground, made complete sense for a complicated and mentally challenging monologue of a play.

On the Coronet’s brand new stage, Lloyd represents a misanthropist who locks himself away from society. He’s a veteran actor who proved he understood the text – he also knew how to manoeuvre on the little stage comprised of (I reckon) 1500 hardback books stacked on top of each other. The Nottinghill Coronet, newly owned by the theatre company The Print Room, as you and I, may, know it is a cosy, red-lit, three tier cinema with a proscenium arch, yet now it is part of a five year renovation plan to make it into a larger theatre. However, without delay, the little auditorium encompassing the French director, Gerald Garutti‘s Notes from the Underground is ready to get The Print Room on the road.

The novella has influenced such existential antiheroes from Travis Bickle to Gregor Samsa and their ramblings of abhorring the world and the mundane constraints of societal frameworks, questioning human actions, free will, wants and desires. This anonymous and hyper sensitive Russian is fixated on logic, reason, the human condition and is overwhelmed by deeper philosophical ideas that challenge his being and ability to live.

Looking closely into Lloyd’s dark and reclusive man, we perceive an uncontrollable persona tainted by his own self awareness; his shuffling, anger, shouting, whispering, muttering and inward insecurities convey the sense of a man full of contradictions. Confidently he speaks to a phantom audience by addressing the air, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ which leads onto anecdotes of his life above; some funny, some odd and some uncomfortable to listen to. He confesses his fear of walking into a well-to-do man, his complex over a dinner with old school friends and his cruel behaviour towards a girl. 

Garutti, the designer and director of the 70 minute show cleverly dressed him in moderate Victorian costume but not too elaborate that the audience can’t empathise with. They first presented the production in a nightclub in Paris in the Bains-Douche and the Atelier Delacroix which proved successful and shall undoubtedly be the case at the Print Room as well.

In an interview with Matt Trueman, arts editor for the Guardian, Lloyd told him, ‘We can all go there on occasion… where you just get wrapped up and twisted in your brain and you understand that, logically, there really is no point and no way out; the place where you are completely alone and can’t share anything.’ In many, or very little, ways there are traces of this cynic in us all mired by the additive and scattered nature of social media and news traffic. 

Unsettling and, at times, hard to keep up with, given the mash up of anecdotes and existentialism, Notes from Underground is a good watch if you like Mr Lloyd but, more importantly, if you fancy being pushed out of your comfort zone, or  society for a moment, just like our Russian 'scuzz'.  

The production is showing until November 1st. Book tickets here.

Opera Erratica's 'Triptych' at the Print Room - New opera merged with contemporary art. The insights are endless ****

Who would have thought that talented opera voices, in this case Opera Erratica, a repurposed recording of an English audio course and a socially polite orgy, could work together simultaneously and make an audience chuckle. This comes as the comedic and middle part of the three sections that make up ‘Triptych’ named ‘A Party.’ Its composer Thomas Smetryns attempts to prove how socialisation depends on the language we use and does this with panache. The singers, stroke, performance artists, hold cheeky smiles and mischievous twinkles in their eyes that lead to a silly yet playful performance of throwing clothes in the air, whistling, reversing and slowing down the tempo of voices (which amusingly mimic foreign languages) and conclude with a group synchronised sexual climax from a 1950s LP repeating the verb, ‘to come’ in the background.    

‘Triptych’ which is showing at the Print Room, is a fresh contemporary opera that experiments with various mediums including visual art, voice, fashion, performance art, projected images, electronica and video. Gavin Turk, international contemporary artist designed the set as a ‘fake’ art gallery securing physical focal points for the singers which was adaptable for all three parts: a comedy, tragedy and a story about nuns which echo the musical mastery of opera composer, Puccini and his Il trittico. However, besides this distinction, there is no resemblance to the 19^th century classical opera in any shape or form.

The first part, ‘Reunion’ by Christian Mason is a sacred ceremony that is sung mercifully in the name of God in tandem with an interview with a would-be nun talking to her ex-lover of past and present experiences. All singers of Opera Erratica (Kate Symonds-Joy, Lucy Goddard, Oskar McCarthy, Callie Swarbrick and Catherine Carter) show off their true operatic prowess by letting their voices describe the sorrow and holiness of the convert’s sacrifice. The execution of light humming that build up to a vocally strenuous and highly concentrated harmonisation from all voices give an audience a hefty performance which puts church choirs to shame. This, and interesting backdrops of moving dots which float in parallel to the voices as well as Swarbrick’s zoomed in pretty face develops the visual senses and heightens the intensity of the opera. However, Swarbrick needlessly stands naked with her back to the audience, which is an artistic device that was pointlessly added. ‘Reunion’ is a multi-layered piece of voices which although intriguing only warmed to the audience half way through its performance.

The last piece is Chris Mayo’s ‘The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered’, which goes back to 1972 reliving the mysterious life of Richard Nickels and his fascination of Louis Sullivan architecture. Electronic music creeps in and large projections of moving blue prints of these building glide across the set, however a lot of questions are left unanswered. Singers start a sentence and pass the words to each other to create a cleverly constructed musical collage - and creative collaboration - that make up bits and pieces of Nickel’s character. Yet, still it was hard to appreciate all part of Mayo’s piece but the music.

Opera Erratica’s director Patrick Eakin Young has introduced a stylish mish mash of what hasn't been done before. Smetryns’s piece is the favourite, which interestingly enough has the least opera, proving that there is still a lot more Opera Erratica can offer. There is potential when there’s an open-minded audience willing to see new opera merged with art, which deconstructs the norm. The insights are endless.

(Production dates: 17 May - 7 June 2014)
 www.the-print-room.org