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Slam of the North
Out at Slam in the North (I think that’s what it was called) tonight in Durham at the Assembly Rooms. This was I think my first time going to a... poetry slam? Spoken word competition?
Fifteen people or so got up and read a poem of theirs, and then there was an interlude and they came back and read a second poem each, but in reverse order. Then a panel of three judges came up with scores and two of the universities won: Durham and Sheffield.
During the interval the three judges did some poetry. Two of the judges were so-so, and the third judge, who was from Newcastle, was much better. Is it okay to say that some poetry is so-so and that some is much better? The only way I know to talk about poetry criticism is to say that one's own is rubbish.
I felt a little bit out of place when we first arrived — most of the competitors were young women and I’m just some middle class white guy — but the space was welcoming and there was a sort of excited tension amongst the readers that drew me in. I even snapped my fingers at one point.
I’m glad that I went, and I want to go to another. Two hours of folks trying to translate their Personal Experience into language with as little filter as possible is something that I get vanishingly little of these days — but which I think is fundamental to appreciating life among people.
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Macbeth (1623, 2025)
Better than I remember. I read Hamlet and Macbeth at around the same time, a long time ago, and I remember disliking Macbeth. Thinking that it was a bit dark and messy.
Still definitely dark. But much tighter than I remember. There's very little fat on the story — it's all propulsive and action-driven. There's not a ton of soliloquising or emotional gymnastics. No scenes where people go off and just mull around. I dig it.
Just after reading it we went to see the film of the production with David Tennant from back in February 2025. It was good but some of the casting choices were weird. David Tennant was actually remarkably not good. Banquo was terrific, and Macduff got better and better as the play went on. The person who played Malcolm gave off the impression that they hadn't rehearsed at all, and in fact that there was a person with cue cards standing just offscreen. Rigid, table-read-type stuff. The visual language was very cool, but maybe not particularly original.
Play, by William Shakespeare |
Show, with David Tennant | -
Zoe Explains It All
Zoe Explains It All with aplomb - Tyne Theatre & Opera House In Newcastle tonight for Zoe Explains It All, a two-woman show riffing on education, employment, and interpersonal relationships. Zoe is very clear from the start that she's not going to explain it all, because that would take too much time.
Zoe—just Zoe—is a character portrayed by a comedian whose real name I cannot seem to find on the Internet. It's a characters she's portrayed for, appearently, 13 years—and in such time she's had the opportunity to flesh Zoe out into a real enough person that you're not sure, at first blush, whether the whole thing is real or not. This lays the groundwork for taking the audience on wacky bits just beyond the pale of belief.
Bits aside, the character is internally consistent but unpredictable, which makes for compelling Riff Comedy. She's quick and clever, naïve but confident and charming, wrapped in a dog-print fleece and dog-print leggings that don't feel like a gimmick. She has a sort of extremely opinionated worldview that encourages tangents and invites you in on the joke. It's almost as if she's portraying a pastiche of a certain self-interested gammonish type of person—but she plays it with such infectious authenticity that you come around to her side whether you want to or not.
She's hosting a quiz next week and we've already signed up.
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Julius Caesar
Wasn't impressed, which was surprising! We saw the RSC's Taming of the Shrew a couple years ago, and Romeo and Juliet sometime in the interval since, and thought they were both dynamic, modern interpretations of Shakespeare. Good job, RSC, keep doing what you'e doing.
This one felt stale. The stage was mostly bare, but for a giant rotating cube that the actors could climb on top or inside of. Costumes were generic, the whole cast clad in modern-day dress in shades of grey and beige with no indication of rank or status, which didn't help to distinguish senators from proles or, indeed, Caesar from anyone else. The ghosts of dead characters came back in lively colours, but I couldn't discern the meaning of this. Significant scenes were questionably punctuated by industrial music and the whole cast coming together for a bit of rhythmic dancing. I'm not sure what the meaning of this was either, but it robbed the performance of inertia.
A couple of other complaints: rather than red blood, conspirators marked Caesar with a thick black ink when they pounced—but the black ink didn't stand out against the characters' black-and-grey outfits, and the inkstains stuck around for the rest of the play. I get the sense that the director was trying to indicate, Macbeth-like, that the stain of murder was upon them, but it just made the cast look shabby—not bloodstained.
Finally, I'm not sure if this is the fault of the directing, the acting, or the play itself, but everything that comes after Caesar's death felt messy, muddy, unclear. I get that the play is just trying to tie up loose ends after the intermission, but the play seemed to be doing its utmost to shed my attention.
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The Mountain Goats
The Albert Hall doesn't quite live up to the original in London, but it's a beautiful venue nonetheless, a step up from the usual. Back in Manchester for the Mountain Goats show at The Albert Hall (no not that one). I said it last time and I'll say it again: Manchester is probably the best city in the UK. The best one in England at least. It has the busy feeling of something happening everywhere that you get in the big cities—which I love—but there's always a little nook that you can escape to if you feel overwhelmed. You get the sense that through every door, there's a fractal of interior life waiting to be explored and experienced.
Anyway, after dinner we made our way over to the venue (by foot; Manchester is very walkable) and found a spot. The Albert Hall has a regular pit-type area, level with the stage, but it also has a horseshoe-shaped mezzanine above the stage, with tiered seating. No assigned seats—everyone just sort of plonked down wherever space could be made—so we had to meander about for a little while before we found a spot to park ourselves. I haven't been to a seated gig for a while, but it was a welcome change of pace!
The Mountain Goats, predictably, have a sort of mid-2000s indie energy that's very catching for people of Sam & my vintage. Think: bootcut jeans, crumpled sport jackets, glasses, bouncing up and down while playing an acoustic guitar. John Darnielle has a commanding stage presence—he's got such a distinct voice and vibe that you can't help but look in his direction, even if he sort of looks like Death Cab meets John Oliver.
I think the real standout of the night was multi-instrumentalist Matt Douglas, who filled out the sound with keyboard, saxophone, electric guitar, and backing vocals. The Mountain Goats have a very distinct sound, courtesy in no small part to Darnielle's voice, but Douglas did a fantastic job of adding complexity and surprise throughout.
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