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º May 14th-May 20th 2001
Sunday Closer to Heaven
Saturday
Friday Definitely a Rudolf
Thursday Speak, memory
Wednesday Alf, and others
Tuesday Sports and shorts
Monday Under aged sluts
º Sunday 20th May 2001
Four bloggers plus one went to a preview of "Closer to Heaven" last night: Jonathan, David and Dave will no doubt be airing their own views in due course. If you're planning to go see the show yourself (and, on balance, you should), you may wish to preserve your innocence by not reading what follows.
Personally, I knew very little about what to expect of the show other than that it's a 'gay' musical written by Jonathan Harvey (of 'Beautiful Thing' movie fame) in collaboration with the Pet Shop Boys. I was half expecting some sort of black-turtleneck workshop production, a suspicion enhanced by finding that it would be happening at The Arts Theatre in Great Newport Street, which I think of as home to children's drama and puppet shows. At £32.50 a ticket, I was hoping for something more...
In the event, the Arts turned out be a great venue and the show (with one major reservation) was, well, absolutely fabulous. The production values were extremely high: great costumes, excellent choreography and some fantastic mises en scène (not least a love scene played out in a double bed attached vertically to the back wall of the stage.)
Given this was only the fifth day of previews, I thought the cast performed very well: both the singing (via discreet mikes) and the dancing were pretty faultless. Frances Barber steals the show as Billie Tricks, the raddled night-club hostess. And the juve lead (Paul Keating) was fitter than a butcher's dog.
The problem was the plot. Or rather the lack of it.
The story is simply told. Long-lost daughter turns up at daddy's gay club and falls in love with the new barman, Straight Dave. Dave becomes a star podium dancer and is persuaded to enter negotiations with pervy pop impresario who needs a new lead singer for his boy band. World-weary diva advises Dave to follow his heart tra-la and, before you know it, Dave is getting a drug-fucked snog from Mile End Lee, the in-house dealer.
Security camera coverage of said snog is, somewhat unfortunately, transmitted live to the club owner's office where his daughter is taking him to task for his chemical abuse. Daughter and Dave quarrel. Dave and Lee get to shag on stage. So far so good: yer basic follow-yr-dream scenario, albeit recast in a gay milieu.
After the (beautifully executed) shagging scene, however, Closer to Heaven literally loses the plot. For no good reason that I could see, the entire cast indulge in a huge (and surprisingly non-cheesy) ketamine orgy (cue strobes and fractal graphics). Mile End Lee overdoses and dies: twitch-twitch-twitch, twitch...twitch. Dave has a loud lengthy fit of conscience at the graveside, followed by a big finish on a podium, long on uplifting sentiment but short on sense. The End.
You feel you've missed something.
The problem, I suspect, is a political one. Given the personalities involved, this was always going to be an overtly gay drama, hurrah. And, given it's a musical, the decision to set it in club-land is a no-brainer. But that means Harvey has to tilt at the obvious windmills: the trivial, drug-fucked metropolitan gay lifestyle. Easy pickings, and entertaining too.
But aren't all musicals about redemption, the triumph against overwhelming odds, the quest for personal salvation? And what does the gay community have of value to set against our current preoccupation with superficial hedonism? Solidarity? Hardly. A higher morality? Oh please.
All that remains is love.
Harvey has already shot that bolt with Beautiful Thing, where two boys on a council estate discover each other against overwhelming odds. In Closer to Heaven, he seems to be so wary of repeating himself, and so dazzled by the toy-box of music theatre, that he neglects to take the time to spell out just why we should care about the relationship between Dave and Lee: one quick shag and it's over. Not so much follow your dream as follow your cock.
There are hints of what might have been: both Dave and Lee start off as nominally straight, and Harvey could have made much more of their fight to find their sexuality. (As it is, it looks like nothing so much as a decision to go where the drugs are.) And there's no, repeat no, mention of AIDS. That's a tired topic, but couldn't you do something with the decision to get involved with someone who turns out to be positive?
Ten years ago, this show would have been an HIV-drama. Ten years on, there may be some credible political or moral high-ground to be had. As it is, Closer to Heaven, five years in the making, has nothing to say. But, by god, it has a lot of fun not saying it.
º Saturday 19th May 2001
"Closer to Heaven", the Pet Shop Boys cum Jonathan Harvey musical, tonight.
º Friday 18th May 2001
The Marx Brothers were famous for refusing to stick to the script of their stage shows. (At one rehearsal of The Cocoanuts, the writer George S Kaufman famously remarked "I may be wrong but I think I just heard one of the original lines.")
The producer of The Cocoanuts, Sam Harris, agreed one day to beard [the Marx brothers] in their dressing room and secure their obedience to the written text. Presently, noises were heard from the corridor with a thump and velocity not much like the sound of negotiations.
The producer's clothes hurtled out of the door, and a moment later the producer himself, stripped naked, who said to the writer and the songwriter: "I guess you better handle it."
- David Bromwich: 'Hail Freedonia' London Review of Books
Daft: Woman sues D'Oyly Carte because they won't let her play a virgin whilst eight months pregnant.
Daft: Next week is National Bandanna Week
Apparently, if anybody asks my first ex for news of me, he tells them I've left the country. Pretty creative thinking for someone who -quote- has made a career out of promoting fantastic deals that, somehow, never quite come off. -unquote-
This Nabokov quote (from 'Speak, Memory') made me think of his mother:
"She had spent her whole life in feeling miserable; this misery was her native element; its fluctuations, its varying depths, alone gave her the impression of moving and living. What bothers me is that a sense of misery, and nothing else, is not enough to make a permanent soul"
I hope I'm never like that. If I am, do me a favour and apply a quick slap, ok?
Much incidental delight in Martin Amis's sorta-kinda auto-biography Experience, much of it in the footnotes, which I intend to plunder unashamedly.
Last night, David laughed when I retailed Kingsley Amis's insight that there is a hangover-type for each and every one of Snow White's seven dwarves.
But then we fell to discussing whether it was, in fact, true and decided that, in fact, it was not. (What would a Doc hangover feel like?).
Truer, we felt, was the concept of a night-out for each of Santa's reindeer: Donner, Blitzen, Dancer, Prancer...
Given I currently have a cold-sore the size of a house, last night was definitely a Rudolf.
My core peer-group went to see Broken Hearts Club on Wednesday, and I missed out because I was working all evening. Another group went last night, and I had originally planned to go with them.
But then I read David's rather dismissive review, and decided against it.
If it's going to take Hollywood a hundred years to get round to making a movie that treats gay men as ordinary interesting people, I think I can probably wait a few months to see it on TV.
So I went out with David and set the world to rights over a beer or four, instead.
º Thursday 17th May 2001
My theory that there are only so many names and faces that one can hold in one's head at any given period has been confirmed and re-confirmed over the least few weeks:
Item At least one man at Sports and Shorts who shot me a proto-intimate look as if to say either "Don't I know you?" or "Why don't I know you?". (This just in nudges the odds towards the former.)
Item At least one man at the Fridge last Saturday week who called "Remember me? I'm Steve's friend from the White Swan!" and back to whom I called "Sure I know you, honey!" even as I walked away trying to work out if I even knew a Steve from The White Swan.
Item The man who accompanied me all the way from Canada Water to Vauxhall last Sunday, chatting away, whilst I desperately tried to remember who he was. And who at one stage said "Have you worked out how I know you yet?" (am I that transparent?) And who, when I admitted my ignorance, started an explanation based on a "Darren from the Joiners" that foundered when I tried to narrow down which Darren. ("Speedy Darren? Darren with the mullet? Little Darren? Lovely Darren?")
Maybe I should get out less.
Rain, rain,
Go away, and
Come again
Another day.
º Wednesday 16th May 2001
Every ideal evening, I think, should start with a little seasoning. Nothing too drastic: a mislaid packet of cigarettes, a longer than usual wait for the train, or (as last night) the discovery at the station that you've forgotten to bring out any money and have to go back home to get it, thus transforming an early arrival into a precisely punctual one. Pre-emptive seasoning, which points up the ease of the pleasures yet to come.
This ideal evening should continue with some attractive faces on the train, some banter with a busker, and then some slight sign of looming rain as you hit the open air, knowing that you're headed for a cosy evening in a warm pub.
At the pub, your friends will all be there, side by side, enough for quiz team of their own with no room for any other, but happy to see you nonetheless. You will whimsically pay a pound to form a team of one, and then see that team swell to three when others of your acquaintance arrive. One of the others will be someone you've Always Lightly Fancied (Alf).
As the quiz progresses, it will become clear that your team-mates do not know all of the answers and, indeed, that you even know some answers that they don't. This will make a very pleasant change. Drink will be taken.
As the scoring concludes, it will become gratifyingly clear that your friends are about to lose by their time-honoured half a point. Your own team will score...respectably. More drink will be taken. Alf (who must know half London) will surprise you by describing, in detail, how you and he first met.
The landlady will make a point of coming over to talk to you all, and to Alf (whom she knows well) especially. You will bask in reflected glory.
At closing-time, several of the party will head across town to another bar. You will agree to meet them there after a detour in which you hope to discover that Tesco Metro in Covent Garden now opens late and that you can buy something to eat later. It will do, and you will.
Alf will buy you a drink when you get to the next bar, and you will start a long conversation, during which he will reveal that, actually, both of his previous boyfriends were in their forties. He will affirm that these days he prefers older men.
The ideal evening will end with, either (A) torrid sex, or (B) a heated discussion about how Malta has simply got to be the next big gay holiday destination.
º Tuesday 15th May 2001
And speaking of fetish nights, guess who needs: "a performer to be part of a show at the Three Pigs party on Bank Holiday Sunday May 27. You will be fisted by an amputee (left hand missing) and you must be able to play-pierce. I am offering guest list plus 75 and drinks."
The 'Richard' who steamed down from London for a date with one of the heroes of BBC2's amiable Brighton out the Closet (late, every night for the next two weeks) looked remarkably like one of the Richards that we know. But surely we'd have heard? (Update: It is the Richard we know. It's just that nobody saw fit to mention it to me. Hmmmph.)
And, speaking of personality quizzes, you may want to take The Procrastination Quiz sometime soon. On the other hand, as nanny used to say, why put off till tomorrow what you need never do at all?
According to the eMode Career Makeover, I am a Foreman - practical, down-to-earth, a team-player with "a deep understanding for the mechanical complexity behind how things work - architecture, machines, and even people."
So far, so good, as is the recommendation that I should become a baker (which I rather fancy). But surgeon? Police officer?? Athlete??? Lumberjack????
There are times when I think I'm missing something about fetish wear: off-hand, I can't think of any item of clothing that gives me that secret inner glow that I imagine as the wellspring of obsession.
But, then again, there are times when I think maybe I just expect too much: certainly a large proportion of the gay men I meet seem to enjoy 'specialised' clothing as much for its fancy-dress aspect as for anything deeper.
Costume has always been an important part of gay culture, after all - from the frocks and frou-frou of the original molly-houses through Tom of Finland leather to clone and skinhead chic. Raiding the straight dressing-up-box has an important part to play in social empowerment, proving we can take effeminate or butch role-models and work them to the max. And any event where people have made an effort to follow a theme has a built-in inclusivity.
What with leather and denim now so thoroughly anoydne, so Gap-mainstream, I suspect that the more extreme bondage gear that characterises clubs like Fist is where that dressing-up game runs right on over the edge of the kinky cliff. (But, who knows, maybe all those people in gas-masks really do get pleasure from them, above and beyond being seen in the latest trendy outfit.)
The more extreme that look gets, however, the wider a market gap opens for some other fetish look - ideally one that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, allows for competitive variation and looks mildly sexy to boot.
Enter, to the sound of cheering crowds, the Sportswear Night.
These days, London has 'Shoot', and 'Score', and hosts of others - not least the relatively venerable 'Sports and Shorts' at the Stag in Victoria, once every couple of months. I went to the latter for the first time last Saturday and had an excellent time.
Given advance warning, I did think about a referee's outfit (with a rainbow whistle and some pink cards) but, remembering that old adage about never accepting an invitation that demands a change of clothing, I finally opted simply to dress even more casually than usual.
I was definitely in a minority: Andy and Adam, Andy, Alex and Matthew, and even David, all had suitable soccer kits and even Dorian sported a rather horny pair of shorts. Not that it mattered very much, the whole evening being notable for its lack of attitude.
As David reports, the organised-sports aspect of the evening was pretty perfunctory - though the mud-wrestling proved surprisingly shocking, especially for people on the top-deck of a number eleven bus. (Previous events have included popping two people in a large cloth bag and requiring them to change into each other's outfits. I'm sorry to have missed that.)
And I was surprised - pleasantly surprised - by how uncompetitive the costumes were (though maybe that just proves, once again, that I'm too clever for my own good) - no referee's outfits, no ju-jitsu suits, no snorkel and flippers...
The music (on a Eurovision night) was bland to the point of oblivion; the men (and it was an all male affair) were the usual mix of one part cute, one part vile, and eight parts average; the venue was quite a way off the beaten track. So why did I have such a good time? Bizarrely enough, given most gay men's miserable memories of team games, I think the answer was simple camaraderie. Which takes us full circle to the inclusiveness of fancy-dress, I guess.
The next Sports and Shorts evening is Saturday 7th July. I may have to go shopping before then. See you there?
º Monday 14th May 2001
I'm not sure I'm flattered to be ranked third in a Yahoo search for "under aged sluts" but you have to admit that the text it offers is intriguing: "... And the two aged sluts were a hoot: "One or two stiff ones send me ... off the entire area when a five foot crack appeared under the weight of the crowds..."
......previous entries