Theatre
Review
Crossed Wire, at the Burton Taylor Theatre November 26th - 30th at 7.30pm
On a surface level, Crossed Wire works fine. The rhythms and rhymes of the politician's speeches form pleasant, energetic poetry, and, although it could be tighter, the devised movements were fun to watch. Nick Gill's music is as wonderful as always, and the actors are uniformally competent, with Kate Fowler in particular distinguishing herself with her appropriately vacant beauty. And certain concepts in the play are extremely intelligent: the moment when a Blair puppet is constructed from screwed up sheets of The Guardian, especially, is surreally hilarious. Having said that,
I found Crossed Wire's content extremely suspect and its argument
logically flawed; the surface competency of the piece became only
a persuasive mask over this ideological dubiousness, albeit a fun
one to watch. Firstly, the relationship between "real" human
feeling and media reportage is far more complex than the black-and-white
dichotomy that Crossed Wire appears to set up. But moreover, all forms
of media expression - radio, television, broadsheet and tabloid news
- were treated as a conglomerate mass, with the same accusations levelled
at all modes. Snobbish it may sound, but I'm not sure it's fair to
treat Guardian reportage in the same way as trash celebrity gossip
mags; yes, both rely to a certain extent on human interest stories
and the emotional manipulation of their audience, but surely that
extent is crucial? It was a fun 45 minutes of theatre, and it did
make me laugh, but a jibe at Blairite-media culture is an easy one
to make, and Crossed Wire needed to have shown more originality of
material, and consistency of thought. And to have had a more viable
alternative to the downfalls of vox-pop culture than simply placing
a bucket over one's head. Minnie Saunders |