January Culture Wrap-Up
Queer theatre, introspective novels and murder podcasts.
First up I have to confess something. I wrote the title to this piece and then immediately started googling if it was Wrap Up or Wrap-Up. I wrote the latter initially and then changed it to the former BUT if you yourself need to know, apparently my natural instincts are sharper than my second guesses (is that a metaphor for life or what?) and Wrap-Up is the appropriate presentation when used as a noun.
Moving on.
This will be my first little substack culture wrap-up. This is an element of lots of the newsletters I read regularly that I never tire of and I particularly love when the recommendations from various publications do not overlap. Currently my theatre recommendations will most likely be London or Manchester centric but I will attempt to cover more ground in my other cultural dalliances, and avoid centering on new releases or hot properties.
THEATRE
The play tells an important and perhaps, to most of us, lesser known story about governmental action (and otherwise) on climate change. However it’s also a maddening watch, reflecting as it does on how our legal and governmental systems are continuing to put profit and power above the wellbeing of both people and the planet.
I saw two shows in January and both were bangers. Thanks to a generous Christmas gift from our friends Henry and Caroline we went to see Kyoto at Soho Place. I was particularly excited about this as I hadn’t been to this venue before, having missed the much lauded Big Little Things musical I’d been desperate to see back in 2023. The theatre is gorgeous, though possibly a little shiny and velvety for my personal tastes, and seems to cater well in terms of accessibility as far as I can tell which is something that’s so great about building new theatres. Our beautiful old theatres are often not well suited to adapt to modern Health and Safety guidelines and many aren’t as accessible as they should be. Kyoto is a blisteringly scathing telling of the birth of environmental activism being enacted in law in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Though, as you might imagine, the play delves into a lot of pretty sturdy historical and legal information, the storytelling is fast-paced, dynamic and often very comedic. The theatre is set in the round, with representatives from each country around the central stage and actors physically climbing in and out of the audience to take their turn onstage. Specific issues are briskly explained in debates volleyed between representatives while the central figure in this telling, oil lobbyist Don Pearlman, stalks in and out of the conversations, his presence only sometimes noted by other characters. Pearlman is played by Stephen Kunken with charisma. You are charmed for way too long into his descent into outrageously tampering with the process of COP. The play tells an important and perhaps, to most of us, lesser known story about governmental action (and otherwise) on climate change. However it’s also a maddening watch, reflecting as it does on how our legal and governmental systems are continuing to put profit and power above the wellbeing of both people and the planet. Stand out performances for me were delivered by Jorge Bosch as Raul Estrada-Oyuela and Jenna Augen as Shirley Pearlman, wife of Don. I won’t lie though - it’s fairly long and political power play isn’t always my cup of tea, so although I enjoyed it and find much of it entertaining, it was a pretty tiring show to watch!
Believe me, it’s alive! And much of this is due to the dynamism and stage presence of Virgina Gay, the playwright and lead. Her performance feels authentic, hilarious and heartwarming all at once, all the time.
The other play I saw this month was one I’d failed to get tickets for in Edinburgh and only got standing room in London, but it was totally worth the awkwardness of standing pressed against two strangers for an evening. This little gem was Cyrano at the Park Theatre. I’m apparently on a mission to catch every stage production of Cyrano de Bergerac one of my favourite plays, and I’ve never seen one I haven’t enjoyed. That said, I wasn’t expecting this queer retelling to rival the Jamie Lloyd production in the West End where James McAvoy seductively growled into a microphone for a couple of hours. But, surprise, it was a riot! Rather than performing the actual script in its entirety, this production toyed with the concept of the original play in two ways. First, Cyrano is a queer woman. Secondly, they pinpoint certain moments in the play and retell them in another way to raise questions about why we retell old stories, why we embrace sad endings, why don’t we interrogate what characters stand for in a play and if that changes over time?
The three key characters - Cyrano, Roxane and Christian - are beautifully performed and updated for our modern world. A chorus of three representing the old and new guards of theatre interact directly with the actors to constantly check-in and ask key questions. When I read blurbs and reviews I thought, as you might be doing now, that this seemed like a surefire way to ruin a beautiful classic with moral posturing. But, believe me, it’s alive! The play moves fast, it’s sexy, funny, bizarre. It’s also, importantly, full of love for the original text even as it pulls it apart. And much of this is due to the dynamism and stage presence of Virgina Gay, the playwright and lead. Her performance feels authentic, hilarious and heartwarming all at once, all the time. At the top you’d be mistaken for thinking you’ve walked into a stand-up comedy show, by the end you’re desperate for her to be happy. A corker.
BOOKS
I kicked off the year with a Christmas gift from my sister - The Material by Camille Bordas. I used to work in comedy for quite a long time so this book immediately appealed to me as it follows a group of American MFA Stand-Up Comedy students over one day as they prepare for a show that evening. Although it’s a pretty eventful day, the focus on the book is interestingly on the process of generating comedy material. The students, both personally and together, consistently debate what makes something funny, whether that’s the words, the rhythm, the tone, the context…the list goes on. Seeing comedians struggle on stage was always the worst part of the experience for me, and I enjoyed this insight into how that might be experienced by the performer and how it might impact how they shape and change the material. As the students are newer comics, I thought it was apt that Bordas also delved into the MFA teachers’ thoughts as well. As more experienced comedians their reflections of how life and art can converge and how one’s performing style might be forced to change with the times, was a great addition to the book and offered it more depth. As you’d expect the book touches on cancel culture, improper behaviour and whether some things should be off topic in comedy. I personally really enjoyed this novel, although I have no idea how broad a demographic it will appeal to.
One of the Good Guys by Araminta Hall
I LOVED Araminta Hall’s previous thriller This Kind of Cruelty and this book promised offer up a similar premise so I whipped it off the Oxfam Bookshop shelf in mere seconds. One of the Good Guys follows Cole, Lennie and Mel. Mel has recently left her husband Cole. When he relocates to a rural area he hits it off with local artist Lennie. Lennie appreciates everything about Cole that Mel didn’t. How keen he is to have children. How he wants to protect and look after his woman. That he values family and nature more than the corporate grind. Each section of the book is told from one of the characters’ point of view and slowly the story starts to unravel. Could not put it down! There were a few moments that I found a little difficult to suspend my disbelief for but overall I love how Hall delves into the way people can convince themselves of anything if they need to. A twisty-turny thriller than I loved nearly as much as This Kind of Cruelty!
I’ve actually never read any Rachel Joyce before but I’ve had Perfect on my shelf for ages, so I decided to give it a go because I know she’s well loved. I didn’t know when I first acquired the novel that it had an OCD-centric storyline and it was a nice surprise, because I’ve read very few novels that do. Perfect is a beautiful book. I was really gripped and often couldn’t wait to curl up with it at the end of the day. It switches between two timelines - modern day and 1972. In the modern day we’re introduced to Jim, whose life hasn’t worked out as planned. He works in a supermarket and lives in a van. His brain is deeply affected by years of invasive treatments for severe OCD and he is forced to perform compulsive rituals every night. In 1972 we meet Byron, a sensitive boy who lives with his mother and sister in a country home, where they’re visited on weekends by their overbearing father. His friend James tells him about the addition of two seconds to the clock that year and, when he thinks its happening, Byron panics and grabs his mother when she’s driving them to school, beginning a process that throws them all into a long, hot, dangerous Summer. I think the concept of this tale is genius and I basically wish I’d written it! Joyce writes beautifully, creating such a sense of foreboding atmosphere that I was constantly on edge, wanting to shout at the characters to wake up and start communicating properly! I think that it’s very powerful as a story in its own right, but it also captures the invisible creeping intensity of OCD in a realistic but in no way soapbox-y way. While reading I thought I wouldn’t have any criticisms about this novel but, right towards the end, Joyce throws in a few things that felt a bit gratuitous to me and slightly undermined how subtle and measured it had all felt. Regardless, this is a recommend from me.
TV
Bob’s Burgers - Disney +
Kind of an oldie now, but always a goodie in my household. If you haven’t watched Bob’s Burgers yet, you’re missing out. I challenge you to find me a more heartwarming, family-centric laugh fest. It’s my number one animation pick.
Don’t Die - Netflix
Honestly, when I started watching this I thought it’d be a bit of a laugh. Bryan Johnson is a billionaire who does a lot of crazy things in the pursuit of living forever. That’s all I knew about him from newspaper headlines. However, this documentary was a surprisingly multi-faceted and moving portrait of a complicated man and our modern world.
PODCASTS
I caught up on this podcast that first came out in 2019. Ruja Ignatova, founder of supposed cryptocurrency OneCoin, went missing in 2017. This podcast searches for her by digging into the fraud she perpetuated and following leads. Gets pretty dark but it’s interesting and the reporting is very good.
Kill List was recommend by Jamie Barlett (of The Missing Crytoqueen) and is quite addictive. The journalist and his team hacked into a sham murder-for-hire website and accessed the kill list aka the list of victims who have hits out on them. When the police didn’t or couldn’t act on the information they went about warning these people themselves. A strange concept with lots of intriguing case studies. I wasn’t a huge fan of the lead narrator/journalist’s style which too often conflated his personal feelings with the stories, but regardless I listened to the entire thing in fascination.
Recently I have been feeling less than unruffled in my parenting approaches and I found Janet Lansbury’s soothing podcasts helpful. I’m cautious about parenting advice but I listened to an episode called Be Careful What You Teach which talked about how we seem to want to foist more and more structured learning onto our children too early, when really they need to be able to focus on growing and making brain connections through play.
Thanks for reading. Would be keen to know if culture wrap-ups (see, I remembered) are of interest, or if that’s something that’s quite fulfilled already thank you very much. Also, I tend to give a lot of detail but perhaps you’d prefer something more quickly scanned with a few key phrases? What have you been reading, watching, listening to lately? I’d love to know.