Fruity stuff

I'm chuffed to have had another piece published by The Manchester Review, which you can read below with some lovely photographs by Jonathan Keenan or on the site by following this link.

Orlando, Royal Exchange, reviewed by Sarah-Clare Conlon

Subheaded “a magical comedy about love and time travel” and featuring former Coronation Street actress Suranne Jones (who trod the boards very persuasively for the first time here in 2009’s Blithe Spirit), Orlando is likely to get plenty of bums on seats whether this and other reviews are positive or not. In fact, an arts blogger pal confided that his plus-one went on the strength of the celebrity casting alone. Still, if the usually reticent can be tempted in through a theatre’s doors for whatever reason and is then presented with something as impressive as this Max Webster-directed stage adaptation by Sarah Ruhl (which premiered in New York in 2010) of Virginia Woolf’s famous sex change novel, who cares?

Living up to the Royal Exchange’s consistently high standards, the props and costumes do not disappoint – from the incarnation of the Great Frost of 1608 to the ingenious 1920s car ride, and from the pantomime dame Queen Elizabeth’s fairy-lit dress to Orlando’s clipper hat as she sails back to London from Constantinople. The production is also liberally sprinkled with amazing effects, not least the jaw-dropping aerial work with Molly Gromadzki making incredible use of the round as she portrays Sasha the Russian princess skating along the frozen Thames and seducing the young man version of Orlando.

Yet the juicy strawberries atop this delicious Victoria sponge have got to be the performances, all incredibly accomplished and delivered with such vim, the cast members seem honestly to be enjoying themselves, not just doing their day job. Aside from Jones and Gromadzki, there is a chorus made up of three male narrators played by Richard Hope, Thomas Arnold and Tunji Kasim, who also provide sound effects (an annoying bluebottle, for example) and take on the roles of sideline characters such as the Captain of the ship of the Russian Embassy and the hilarious S&M-loving Archduchess/Archduke.

Talking of which, the success of the script relies heavily on racy references and jokes, both visual and spoken (“May I give you more sauce, Ma’am?” the ship’s captain asks to much laughter), but thanks to the actors’ slickness, reciting speeches in perfect unison, for example, and the boundary-pushing presentation of the show, there’s never any threat of it teetering over the edge into pure bawdy Vaudeville. It’s good fun, but intelligent, and intelligent yet accessible.

“You’re many things to many people”, Orlando the character is told. Orlando the stage production could well be the same.

Orlando continues until 22 March at the Royal Exchange. See royalexchange.co.uk/orlando for booking details.

Taking flight

"It isn't about fame… It's about enduring, about bearing your cross," says the young actress Nina, played by the young actress Sophie Robinson, and indeed Library Theatre's production of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull is all about fame lost and found through acting and writing: "We all need the theatre, we couldn't live without it", we're told from the offset.

We meet a lauded writer, Boris Trigorin (played by Graeme Hawley), who is constantly jotting things down in a notebook but who scoffs at his own work and fails to see what all the fuss is about: "I'm a citizen, a person, I should write about the troubles of the world… I should write something important." He is dating Arkadina (Susie Trayling), a washed-up leading lady who misses the limelight and now has to resort to basking in the glow of her boyfriend's glory. Her son Konstantin (Ben Allen, pictured; photo by Jonathan Keenan) is a troubled playwright (and a slightly camp hipster, with his sarcastic "well done, her" interjections), who puts on a performance for the friends and family he is surrounded by at his uncle Sorin's country house. The one-hander with Nina in the starring role, put on the pedestal of the makeshift platform in the garden by love-sick Konstantin, receives generally poor reviews from the on-stage audience (sat with their backs to the real auditorium audience, hence creating a feeling that we are all in it together - it is a terrible show). Arkadina's shriek of "I'm not going to sit through that gibberish, experimental nonsense" is met by the doctor's rather comical retort: "God, you really are all so dramatic."

Some of the lines seemed to be played for laughs, which I'm not sure the author would have intended, and others felt like all the life had been sucked out of them. Meanwhile, any drama there had been (it is Chekhov, after all) in the first half became even more watered down in the second, with a couple of scenes featuring all the cast on stage at the same time but most of them, save Konstantin and Doctor Dorn (Christopher Wright) and then Konstantin and Trigorin, doing nothing. Absolutely nothing: not pretending to chat and drink or play cards or look out of the window at the lake view; nothing. It's like they've forgotten to act or haven't been given any direction, which seems odd as it's a Chris Honer production; the last from the experienced Artisic Director for Library Theatre, before Walter Meierjohann takes over for the birth of HOME, cut-and-shutting Library with Cornerhouse. In fact, some of the characters throughout came across as lacklustre - Medvedenko, Masha and Polina, for example, although this could be down to them merely serving as plot devices to facilitate the various, slightly excrutiating love triangles. In stark contrast, however, the estate manager Shamrayev (played by David Crelin, latterly Coronation Street's Colin Fishwick) is loud and proud, but the lack of consistency overall is unconvincing.

The reworking of Chekhov's play by Anya Reiss obviously brings it up to date for a modern audience, and there are some nice touches, such as the eponymous bird being presented in a Sainsbury's Bag For Life and Konstantin pouring water over his laptop so it blows up and he loses all his work (presumably in the original, he sets fire to his typed manuscript; I don't know). Less convincing were the costumes, which looked largely as if they had been sourced in Primark or Oxfam, and, other than perhaps Shamrayev and the old man Sorin (Peter Macqueen) with their country tweeds, seemed way off the mark for some of the characters, particularly the supposedly sophisticated arty types on holiday from the city.

So back to the writing aspect. "What's it like to read about yourself?" Nina asks Boris. His reply? "When they're nice, it's nice, and when they're not, it's not." Hopefully the words written here err more towards the former.

The Seagull continues until Saturday at The Lowry in Salford Quays. Evening performances Tuesday to Saturday inclusive start at 7.15pm. Thursday matinee is at 2pm and Saturday matinee is at 2.30pm. Click here to book tickets.

Pretty in prints

I recently had the pleasure of being allowed onto the hallowed top floor at the Gallery of Costume; a no-go zone for the general public. I was given a peek behind the scenes by Miles Lambert, who has curated the collection for some time now and really knows his Gucci from his Pucci, and I was there to preview the upcoming exhibition for Creative Tourist. This is the second in a series of retrospectives introduced last year (heads-up: the third will be Elsa Schiaparelli, Coco Chanel's greatest rival, so can't wait for that!). My feature was published yesterday, and you can read it here or, indeed, in a slightly extended version, here…

Fashion changes with the seasons, and the Gallery of Costume in Platt Fields is no slouch when it comes to following that trend. Hot on the heeled pumps of Christian Dior (you have until Sunday to catch Designer In Focus - read my review of that show here) is a brand-new show, again spanning a ten-year career; this time, of influential local-boy-done-good Ossie Clark. So for spring, it’s out with the old and in with the new(ish), fast forwarding from 1947-57 to 1967-77. And it’s all about bringing fashion back home: the Warrington-born designer was evacuated to Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire during the war (hence Ossie) then moved to Manchester in 1958 to study at the College Of Art.

“We wanted to do something British this time,” the gallery’s senior curator, Miles Lambert, tells me in his book-lined and glossy magazine-strewn office. “We also wanted a show that would connect with what ordinary, fashionable women bought – it will hopefully engage with women who might have actually worn the outfits.”

Indeed, because, by the late 60s, Ossie Clark was a designer whose clothes were within reach of upwardly mobile women thanks to him launching one of the first-ever diffusion lines, producing more and selling for less. From 1968, Ossie Clark for Radley ran in tandem with the exclusive label Ossie Clark, which had been picked up by Alice Pollock for her Kensington boutique Quorum after his Royal College of Art graduation collection was featured in the August 1965 issue of Vogue. Miles shows me a photo of a Quorum-era piece he has just acquired: a pale pink minidress with a sporty trim (think Mary Quant on the tennis court), apparently designed for the American market.

It was in 1966 when Clark started to collaborate creatively with Bury-born textile designer Celia Birtwell (recently back in the public eye with collections at the much-lauded Noughties-revamped TopShop as well as John Lewis), whom he had met while he studied in Manchester and she in Salford, and whom he married in 1969, the newlyweds famously captured by David Hockney in the painting Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (see Early Reflections at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool for a retrospective of his work, unfortunately missing the Ossie and Celia portrait after an extended loan from the Tate a couple of years back).

Birtwell’s cutting-edge prints feature heavily in the Gallery of Costume retrospective, mainly on Clark’s renowned flattering and very feminine chiffon dresses and blouses, some complete with medieval princess sleeves, but also on a beautiful brushed cotton Biba-esque number as well as a fitted, quilted jacket. Clark was an expert with the scissors – famously saying: “I’m a master cutter; it’s all in my brain and my fingers” – and his precision can be best seen in a structured jacket owned by fashion journalist Suzy Menkes, perhaps purchased after she’d seen his 1971 show, which she described as “the most extraordinary moment in fashion history”.

Miles and I discuss fabrics: the jacket looks to be a treated satin, but I’m informed it’s more likely polyester, as Clark enjoyed using “modern” materials. Moss-crepe was another favourite with the designer and seven of his trademark draped maxi-evening gowns take centre stage in the first-floor dining room at Platt Hall: a “swirl of colour”, Miles describes the installation, showing me a rainbow of single-shaded dresses, including a bold mustard – another trademark, if the multiple yellow outfits here are anything to go by.

Many of the 25 pieces are on show in Manchester for the first time although they are all in the gallery’s permanent collection and some have been seen before in the main era-by-era display (the 1960-70s case has been redone as a result). British Fashion Genius continues in the changing exhibitions gallery on the ground floor, with short films featuring Ossie Clark designs being worn by Swinging 60s Chelsea girls, and magazines from the time, such as a 1973 Cosmopolitan with the cover model in one of his trademark brightly coloured plunge dresses. “It’s the only cover I could find,” Miles sighs. “A blast of light and then it’s gone.”

Ossie Clark: A British Fashion Genius, 1967-77, Gallery of Costume, Platt Hall, Platt Fields Park, Wilmslow Road, Manchester, M14 5LL, 1pm-5pm Mon-Fri, 10am-5pm Sat-Sun. 30 January – 29 June 2014, free. (Photographs courtesy Kerry Taylor Auctions, 2013 and Manchester City Galleries, 2013.) 

Plays win prizes

Earlier on, I got the chance to don my new frock and heels to join the suited and booted at the awards ceremony for the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2013, held at Manchester's lovely Royal Exchange theatre and introduced by "genial host" (his words) Dave Haslam. The preamble included a tasty spread and a quick round-up of the competition: 1,872 scripts were submitted this year, with extracts from the shortlist of 10 being presented today; four of those receiving prizes (1st prize £16,000 and three judges' prizes £8,000 each) and going into development. 

The ubiquitous DJ said the final 10 represented a "wonderful snapshot of the talent out there", while Exchange artistic director Sarah Frankcom was impressed by the "diverse subjects tackled" and said that "new playwriting is absolutely central to our work here at the Royal Exchange". Bruntwood chairman and one of the judges Mike Oglesby's words - "All 10 were absolutely fantastic plays and I'm sure they'll all go on to do fantastic things" - were reiterated by chair of the judges' panel, Radio 4's Dame Jenni Murray: "Really, 10 great, great plays. It was a really difficult job to distil the 2,000 entries down to 10 and then down to the final four." Still, she continued, with a nod to the Exchange's current production, Sweeney Todd: "We managed to come to an agreement without any blood on the floor."

Those "snapshots" were then brought to life by a short interview with each of the 10 shortlisted writers, in no particular order, followed by a brief excerpt of their play acted out in the round; enough of a snippet to get a feel for the works, all very varied. I was hooked in by Kate Lock's Russian Dolls, about a blind woman and her young offender carer, and Alice Birch's December showed promise; especially given all I've been learning recently about the importance of conflict in creative writing. I was also intrigued by the vision of a dystopic alternative reality provided by David Kantouras' Waste along with the glimpse of life and love in Korea in In-Sook Chappell's P'Young Yang. There was also Dorm by Lynda Radley and Imam by Toby Clarke, but taking the judges' prizes were the Welsh-accented Bird by Katherine Chandler, Uganda-set The Rolling Stone by Chris Urch and Essex-based So Here We Are (though I'm sure the latter was announced incorrectly as Somewhere From Here) by Luke Norris. Which leaves us with Yen, the fourth play from South London playwright, Anna Jordan, whose work (the press release informs me) has been performed at the Bush Theatre, Soho Theatre and Riverside Studios in London.

This was a really interesting showcase to brand-new works, and it will spur me on to try and catch some of the productions when they hit the stage in months to come. The next Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting will be in two years' time; 2015 marking its 10th anniversary. Good stuff.

Live literature

I've been published by The Manchester Review. Here is a reproduction.

Deborah Levy & Sarah Hall

Thursday 17 October, 7.30pm, International Anthony Burgess Foundation - part of Manchester Literature Festival 2013

While live Tweeting from Thursday evening’s celebration of the short story, it struck me that both quotes I picked out to share with the ether involved the word “great”. How fitting, I mused: more compact doesn’t have to mean less impact; just because something is bijou size-wise doesn’t mean it can’t be big on effect.

As if to prove the greatness of short stories, Dr Kaye Mitchell of the University of Manchester’s Centre For New Writing drops into her introduction mention of Alice Munro and Lydia Davis, both recently crowned champions of the form. Something to do with a Nobel Prize and a Man Booker International Prize. “We’re recognising the international status of the short story at the moment – it seems to be a good time for it,” suggests Mitchell. And tonight’s guests, Deborah Levy and Sarah Hall, both Man Booker shortlist alumni, aren’t exactly lagging behind in the gong-collecting; in fact, only in the last fortnight did Hall pick up the BBC National Short Story Award, for which Levy was nominated in 2012.

Mitchell says that Metro newspaper described Hall’s collection, The Beautiful Indifference, as “luscious, sensuous stories”; The Guardian, meanwhile, called them “dark, fierce and sensual”. Hall reads the first of the bunch, Butcher’s Perfume; a Cumbrian tale of schoolyard bullying and bonding that packs a punch in more ways than one. Levy reads from the second of her short story collections, Black Vodka, prologuing it with an ice-breaking anecdote: “The curious thing about titling the collection Black Vodka is whenever it gets translated my publishers keep taking me to the best vodka bars they can find when I just want to stay in my hotel room. My next collection is going to be about hypochondria and is called Hot Milk!”

Cue laughter from the audience, in which are sitting a number of other critically acclaimed writers, then we’re down to the serious business of discussing the art of the short story. “Great short stories are a drop of something potent,” says Hall, and Levy nods. “I see something and it prints on my mind, like a photograph,” she explains. “I want short stories to be very vital and intense. I think about their metabolism when I write them – their heartbeat is very fast.” Conversely, they can be a long time in the making, with a “ridiculous amount of rewrites”. Hall agrees: “It took a while for this collection to come together, but I don’t think that’s unusual. Short stories are very difficult to perfect.” “There is a feeling, when you’ve pulled off a short story, of great satisfaction,” affirms Levy. Great stuff.