Royal London Hospital Museum, Comedians
Oct. 14th, 2009 10:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slemslempikeFriday
In the afternoon I met up with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
khalinche, and went to the Royal London Hospital Museum. It's in the crypt of a church building, and a nice size. Small, but plenty to see without being crowded. The first thing on entry is a large old bell, which is rumoured to have been used to summon people to hold patients down on the operating table before anaesthesia. GOSH! It was arranged roughly historically, from the founding of the hospital in 1740, through various medical advances and Joseph Merrick (the Elephant Man) to the two world wars. Then there was a section on nurses (I really liked the attention to nursing in the museum, and how male nurses were introduced in the 1960s and what this meant for uniform changes).
The medical instruments were rather horrifying in places - especially the vicious-looking speculum whose labelled said "for vaginal and rectal examination, this speculum could cause injury to patients". !!!. There was a wooden case full of bladder stones which were eye-wateringly huge and surprisingly pretty. Then there was a small section of things that hadn't been fitted into the main section - letters from Jack the Ripper (very scratchy handwriting), a poverty map of East London with the poorest people being labelled as "near villainous", and a letter from George Washington with his false teeth in a box in the frame.
2 museums down, 199 to go! I had intended to get the tube back from Whitechapel, but it was so nice talking tokhalinche that we kept walking until we got to Mile End.
In the evening I went to see Comedians withlsugaralmond. The play is from 1975, which I found a little surprising. The setting is very seventies, but I had thought after seeing it that it might have been written later. The routines are, I think, newly devised for each production, so it would make sense that they evoked a more usual understanding of comedy eras, but also within the fixed text lots of the points about hatred and comedy seem to be in advance of the slightly later start and later peak of alternative comedy in the UK. It's a long play, three hours, and with a clock on stage the whole time as well. It didn't feel very long even so.
The first act is in a school classroom after hours, and six men and their tutor are talking and warming up before the show that's the culmination of the stand-up comedy class they've been doing. There's some tension - will they be good enough, will it get them away from the lives they don't like, why has Gethin changed his act at the last minute. The established comedian who's judging comes to give them a few tips. His ethos - the audience are stupid but don't let them know, give them what they want - is at odds with the tutor, who wants his students to get laughter from their jokes, but not only to chase the laughs, and takes them to task for telling jokes that hate women. When the tutor leaves the room for a moment, he tells the students that he will be willing to sign successful people up, but only if they fit in with his ethos and stick to traditional means.
The second act is in the club, where they are to perform during a break in the bingo. I bought the playtext a while ago, before I knew it would be on, and I think, though I'm not sure, that it is a description of the act to be performed, such as "tells stereotypical Irish jokes", and the demeanor of the performer. The first guy sticks to his guns and tells jokes about being Irish, rather than Irish jokes, and has a muted reception. The second and third guys start out trying to tell the acts they have developed, but lose their nerve quickly and instead go for stereotyped/offensive material about Jews and the Irish respectively. The fourth act is two brothers, one of whom is uptight and desperate to get a contract, and the other is more easy going and wants to do his act. Their act is supposed to be a fake ventriloquism act, with the easy-going brother as the dummy. They don't go down so well, and the uptight brother panics and tries to make the easy-going brother "tell the joke about the Pakistani up on a rape charge" to get the audience on side. EG is angry about this and there is a horribly tense part where he makes U sit on his knee and be the dummy, and tell the joke, which he does very badly. The final act is Gethin, and he is weird. His face painted as a mime, he plays a tiny violin until he sets fire to the bow and then stamps on it, breaking the instrument. He wheels out two well-dressed mannequins and tries to have a conversation with them, getting alternately angry and wheedling. When he tries to pin a flower on one mannequin's chest he pricks her and she bleeds everywhere.
The third act is the aftermath. The tutor is disappointed, but trying not to be angry with them. The judge gives the second and third guys contracts - but not paid ones, and tells the others that no-one is interested in what it's like being Irish, and that the brothers' act was a shambles. Gethin he doesn't say anything about. No-one is very happy. Those with contracts are uncomfortable with how they got them, and those without feel unappreciated. One by one they leave, until just Gethin is left with the tutor, braving himself to ask what he thought. He says that it was brilliant, and he hated it, because it was so full of rage, and he thinks that comedy needs some love in it, it can't just be hatred. I need to read the text, there was a lot of stuff, about the tutor having been in the army and going to a concentration camp just after the end of the war, and comedy in relation to this.
It was just a brilliant play, and everyone was excellent in it. It was odd having Keith Allen as the character most pushing don't rock the boat, stick to the stereotypes, just make them laugh, as I think of him as so rooted in The Comic Strip Presents etc. I think staging it must be quite tricky, working out how to convey the 1970s comedy scene to a later audience, getting between what would have been offensive then and now. Sometimes during the comedians' sets there were moments when the audience laughter seemed to me to be more than shock/recognition of the acts' bombing, like Al Murray/Jimmy Carr's audiences making me uncomfortable too.
In the afternoon I met up with
khalinche, and went to the Royal London Hospital Museum. It's in the crypt of a church building, and a nice size. Small, but plenty to see without being crowded. The first thing on entry is a large old bell, which is rumoured to have been used to summon people to hold patients down on the operating table before anaesthesia. GOSH! It was arranged roughly historically, from the founding of the hospital in 1740, through various medical advances and Joseph Merrick (the Elephant Man) to the two world wars. Then there was a section on nurses (I really liked the attention to nursing in the museum, and how male nurses were introduced in the 1960s and what this meant for uniform changes). The medical instruments were rather horrifying in places - especially the vicious-looking speculum whose labelled said "for vaginal and rectal examination, this speculum could cause injury to patients". !!!. There was a wooden case full of bladder stones which were eye-wateringly huge and surprisingly pretty. Then there was a small section of things that hadn't been fitted into the main section - letters from Jack the Ripper (very scratchy handwriting), a poverty map of East London with the poorest people being labelled as "near villainous", and a letter from George Washington with his false teeth in a box in the frame.
2 museums down, 199 to go! I had intended to get the tube back from Whitechapel, but it was so nice talking to
khalinche that we kept walking until we got to Mile End.In the evening I went to see Comedians with
lsugaralmond. The play is from 1975, which I found a little surprising. The setting is very seventies, but I had thought after seeing it that it might have been written later. The routines are, I think, newly devised for each production, so it would make sense that they evoked a more usual understanding of comedy eras, but also within the fixed text lots of the points about hatred and comedy seem to be in advance of the slightly later start and later peak of alternative comedy in the UK. It's a long play, three hours, and with a clock on stage the whole time as well. It didn't feel very long even so. The first act is in a school classroom after hours, and six men and their tutor are talking and warming up before the show that's the culmination of the stand-up comedy class they've been doing. There's some tension - will they be good enough, will it get them away from the lives they don't like, why has Gethin changed his act at the last minute. The established comedian who's judging comes to give them a few tips. His ethos - the audience are stupid but don't let them know, give them what they want - is at odds with the tutor, who wants his students to get laughter from their jokes, but not only to chase the laughs, and takes them to task for telling jokes that hate women. When the tutor leaves the room for a moment, he tells the students that he will be willing to sign successful people up, but only if they fit in with his ethos and stick to traditional means.
The second act is in the club, where they are to perform during a break in the bingo. I bought the playtext a while ago, before I knew it would be on, and I think, though I'm not sure, that it is a description of the act to be performed, such as "tells stereotypical Irish jokes", and the demeanor of the performer. The first guy sticks to his guns and tells jokes about being Irish, rather than Irish jokes, and has a muted reception. The second and third guys start out trying to tell the acts they have developed, but lose their nerve quickly and instead go for stereotyped/offensive material about Jews and the Irish respectively. The fourth act is two brothers, one of whom is uptight and desperate to get a contract, and the other is more easy going and wants to do his act. Their act is supposed to be a fake ventriloquism act, with the easy-going brother as the dummy. They don't go down so well, and the uptight brother panics and tries to make the easy-going brother "tell the joke about the Pakistani up on a rape charge" to get the audience on side. EG is angry about this and there is a horribly tense part where he makes U sit on his knee and be the dummy, and tell the joke, which he does very badly. The final act is Gethin, and he is weird. His face painted as a mime, he plays a tiny violin until he sets fire to the bow and then stamps on it, breaking the instrument. He wheels out two well-dressed mannequins and tries to have a conversation with them, getting alternately angry and wheedling. When he tries to pin a flower on one mannequin's chest he pricks her and she bleeds everywhere.
The third act is the aftermath. The tutor is disappointed, but trying not to be angry with them. The judge gives the second and third guys contracts - but not paid ones, and tells the others that no-one is interested in what it's like being Irish, and that the brothers' act was a shambles. Gethin he doesn't say anything about. No-one is very happy. Those with contracts are uncomfortable with how they got them, and those without feel unappreciated. One by one they leave, until just Gethin is left with the tutor, braving himself to ask what he thought. He says that it was brilliant, and he hated it, because it was so full of rage, and he thinks that comedy needs some love in it, it can't just be hatred. I need to read the text, there was a lot of stuff, about the tutor having been in the army and going to a concentration camp just after the end of the war, and comedy in relation to this.
It was just a brilliant play, and everyone was excellent in it. It was odd having Keith Allen as the character most pushing don't rock the boat, stick to the stereotypes, just make them laugh, as I think of him as so rooted in The Comic Strip Presents etc. I think staging it must be quite tricky, working out how to convey the 1970s comedy scene to a later audience, getting between what would have been offensive then and now. Sometimes during the comedians' sets there were moments when the audience laughter seemed to me to be more than shock/recognition of the acts' bombing, like Al Murray/Jimmy Carr's audiences making me uncomfortable too.
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 09:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 09:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 10:01 am (UTC)Right, that's this Friday afternoon's activity sorted.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 09:47 am (UTC)Sometimes during the comedians' sets there were moments when the audience laughter seemed to me to be more than shock/recognition of the acts' bombing, like Al Murray/Jimmy Carr's audiences making me uncomfortable too.
I got that feeling sometimes during The Entertainer. Unsettling. I think The Comedians was written in the seventies, though interesting that it feels later. Sounds an interesting piece.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 09:55 am (UTC)Perhaps we could take in another hospital museum when we meet up in December? Nothing like a few uncomfortable looking probes to brighten up a Christmas time outing.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 10:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 05:04 pm (UTC)Also also I picked up a copy of Nation today, so I might even have read it by the time we go to see it.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 05:54 pm (UTC)