Theatre: I Am Camera – A Play Inspired by Christopher Isherwood
This year marks the twenty fifth anniversary of Christopher Isherwood’s death and this commemoration brings a renewed interest in his life and work. Christopher and his Kind, A Single Man and I Am Camera are all work inspired by Isherwood and his novels. Cornelius Cooke’s new revival of John Van Druten’s 1951 play hosts a cast of talented young actors and brings to life the tensions of Berlin during the early 1930’s.
Isherwood was both a journalist and novelist and spent a time living in Nazi Germany during the thirties. His novels offer insight into the state of pre World War Two Germany and explore the poverty and indulgences of the 1920’s and the threat of fascism and anti-Semitism that was building at the time. An interesting blend of fact and fiction, Isherwood’s novels use himself as character, participant and self to explore the tensions of the period.
This new production of I Am Camera which also marks the play’s sixtieth birthday uses a chapter from Goodbye to Berlin in which Isherwood meets the charismatic, infamous Sally Bowles. Vicky Campbell’s performance explores the underside of her seemingly self confident, quirky exterior, which are at once a hollow charade and a cry for help. Like Graham Greene’s Ida Arnold, Sally is at heart an innocent, and this is what renders her such an intriguing character. Sally and Christopher have a whirlwind friendship, trying to find enough money to stay a float, with Sally providing the dramatic narrative, as she creates mayhem where ever she goes. It is the comedy of Isherwood’s work which is really brought to life in this piece, his observation of human nature is at times absurd, but there is always an underlying threat of reality breaking through the characters’ own portrayal of themselves.
Mark Johnston’s Isherwood makes great use of the role of narrator, he is at once immersed in the story, an omnipotent narrator making witty remarks to the audience and at the same time is writing it all down in what was to become Goodbye to Berlin.
A great cast, well directed and beautifully staged, the play is a must see for fans of Isherwood, and truly brings to life the characters and story of The Berlin Novels. I Am Camera runs until 29th May at The Rosemary Branch Theatre, Islington.
In Search of Lost Tim, by Chris Meade (digital fiction)
I just finished Chris Meade’s experimental fiction (what he calls ‘magical musical graphical digital fiction’), and I wanted to share. In Search of Lost Tim (the title is a pun on the original translated title for Proust’s A La Recherche du Temps Perdu) combines drawings, videos, songs, puppets, slideshows, photos and prose to deliver an appealing tale of time travelling, love and loss. Tim of the title is actually Tim Times Two: one going through boyhood in the sixties, and one in the future, where everything has gone a bit Austin Powers (proving that everything comes around again eventually) and he’s a big noise in the the government. Future Tim communicates with Young Tim by means of the Futurizer, giving him missions to prevent the course of history being corrupted – the sort of thing every boy should have!
We see young Tim as a puppet, voiced by Meade, and read his accounts of his dull home life and crappy school life. The video segments, delivered as YouTube clips, are surprisingly touching given the simplicity of the puppet being used, while the diary passages are well written. Future Tim, along with his sidekick, known only as… Sidekick, is drawn in an engaging cartoon style. There’s also a genuinely bloggy-looking blog for a girl called Jenny, who seems to have stumbled across Tim’s time-spanning communications by accident, but turns out to be very central to saving the universe! Read more
Magazine Review: Black Static 5
I’m busy losing myself in David Moody‘s Autumn apocalypse, so expect a review of that series soon. In the meantime, and interspersed between my regrettably irregular reviews, I’m planning on popping up some comments and links to genre magazines I subscribe to, and refer to regularly, as well as a few web places that may or may not be of interest to you.
Black Static is edited by Andy Cox and published by TTA Press. After a few months’ hiatus, (wherein the publication formerly known as The Third Alternative – a mixture of sf, fantasy and horror – refocused on the darkside, redesigned with David Gentry‘s ambiguously appropriate artwork, and renamed), Black Static is now at a fifth issue, (although my timing will undoubtedly ensure that number six drops through my letterbox the day this review goes up).
What’s in it? An intriguing blend of consistently high quality dark fiction, and some fascinating non-fiction columns. On opening a magazine I inevitably find myself gravitating towards the latter, be it comment or reviews, before getting stuck into the fiction; so it’s these I’ll concentrate on first.
The 21 Steps, by Charles Cumming (digital fiction)
Penguin have launched a new site called We Tell Stories – subtitled Six Stories, Six Authors, Six Weeks – which is designed to showcase digital fiction. Each of the stories is a homage to a Penguin Classic, and the first is The 21 Steps, by Charles Cumming, which in title and style is obviously inspired by John Buchan’s classic The 39 Steps (which I admit that I have not yet read).
What makes this first story innovative is that is essentially a mash-up of a simple linear adventure story with Google Maps. The text appears in bubbles attached to points on the map (occasionally you get richer content, such as a text message actually shown on the display of a mobile phone, or a photo of what the narrator is describing), and as you click the links to move the story forward (there is a lot of clicking), the narrator’s journey is plotted on the map. As you switch from chapter to chapter, the style and scale of the maps change. This can be quite exciting at first – it starts in the new St Pancras International station (which I liked because they used to be a client of mine!) – but when the action is all set in one building, for example an Edinburgh hotel, it seems a bit pointless to have a bird’s eye view.
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