Rotting: The Redemptive Power Of Mushrooms
A Sinister Eco-Fable for Holy Week. Plus what's on (Apr 14-18)
I went out for lunch, accidentally drank a small pot of instant coffee, and the subsequent jitters, sleeplessness and migraine knocked me out for a few days. Hence, this week’s edition is three days late. Oddly, I can drink “proper coffee” without ill effects. But instant — lethal, and I’m still getting over it.
Meanwhile, my local news is that an emergency sitting of Parliament has saved the Scunthorpe steel works from closure. This Bill has now passed into law but Scunthorpe is not out of the woods yet. The Chinese owners allegedly tried to close the plant - essential for British strategic interests — by ruining the furnaces. They were thwarted by dedicated Scunthorpe engineers who kept the furnaces — called Anne and Bess after English monarchs — running against the odds for weeks, thereby (hopefully) saving the town.
It is the CCP I blame for this, not Yorkshire’s large but scattered ethnic Chinese community, which exists peaceably below the radar.
The decision has reprieved Hull as well as Scunthorpe since Hull’s tentative economic revival is led by the manufacture of steel-hungry wind turbines for North Sea wind farms.
It’s a story good enough for a movie, but I mention it only because of the cloth-eared response of a former theatre colleague, a self-styled North London intellectual, who posted a dreadful 1970s pop song by XTC as his commentary.
We're only making plans for Nigel We only want what's best for him We're only making plans for Nigel Nigel just needs that helping hand And if young Nigel says he's happy He must be happy He must be happy He must be happy in his world We're only making plans for Nigel He has his future in a British Steel We're only making plans for Nigel Nigel's whole future is as good as sealed, yeah
The song makes innovative use of electronics but the lyrics were never astute. In the 1970s when British Steel was a £2m-a-day, union-controlled nightmare no responsible middle-class parent would have wanted their son anywhere near the strike-ridden and archaic industry. What was at stake was not Nigel’s career (he was all right, he probably went into the City or founded a TV production company) but an eco-system that supported ordinary people in swathes of the British regions outside the South East. The song reeks of an arrogant carelessness, indeed ignorance, on the part of the creative establishment that continues today, and — with a few honourable exceptions — palpably doesn’t respect those earning a living in the manufacturing economy.
To conclude, it’s my former colleague’s metropolitan off-handedness, a shrug of distain that could not even be bothered to formulate an explicit opinion, that upsets me. It’s a standing joke on the Right that all the thinking Lefties “belong to us now” and that describes me exactly. The disconnect between the artistic enclave and the rest of society is what Yorkshire Theatre Newsletter is trying to redress. And deep down, I’d really love to be on the Left again — in a moderate British Left that has returned to its working class, Methodist roots and ditched both Marx and insanity.
Still in Hull, I was saddened to hear of the recent death of Hull Truck Theatre founder Mike Bradwell. On Hull Truck’s 50th anniversary I wrote an account of the acclaimed theatre’s history. It’s a classy city-centre venue, but it began life in a vanished theatrical era, when renegade artists would take over derelict housing and live off their social security cheques, safe in the knowledge that the city’s economic decline meant the authorities could never force them into a job.
Bradwell, who by coincidence had Scunthorpe roots, was a genuine groundbreaker and a thorn in the flesh of the theatrical establishment. He followed his own path and put real people centrestage. What a pity his ‘countercultural’ legacy has been co-opted by theatremakers whose so-called radicalism now consists of dutifully ticking the established diversity boxes on Arts Council England funding applications. It doesn’t make you Che Guevara, even if you do manage to score an ‘intersectionality’.
I’m grumpy as hell right now. My country is not in a good place. But here are some positives. Firstly, it’s Holy Week — always a significant festival in the calendar when I was growing up. And what could be more timely, in this season of death, rebirth, regeneration and renewal, than Ali Matthews’s extraordinary Mushroom Language: A Fungal Gothic.
To quote the website:
“Mushroom Language is an eco-horror devised piece about the cycles that shape us - eruption, reproduction and decay…
“Fungi are the third kingdom on earth. More like us than we realise, they are closer to animals than plants. Fungi can digest plastic and toxic waste, solve mazes, woo pigs, collaborate with plants to form lichen and change our brain chemistry. Mushrooms are slightly magical - and that’s before we get to psychedelics. To study fungi is to study death, birth, our changing planet and our inner landscapes.”
Our damp, mild climate gives rise to a funghal diversity that is as rich as anywhere in Europe, but Britain has a shortage of expert mycologists. So that’s another thing we’re doing badly at the moment. Sigh. Shakespeare North, Prescot, Apr 15 & 16, £5-£12.
Secondly, York Theatre Royal have released another tranche of tickets for Krapp’s Last Tape by Gary Oldman. You might be lucky if you move fast and don’t mind sitting apart from your friends. York Theatre Royal, £25-£85.
What else is on? Apr 13-18
The week before Easter is never an abundant one for theatre. But here’s an unexpected thing in an unexpected place: Falling Stars Theatre in association with FarrenHeight present Patrick Marber’s Strindberg-inspired drama After Miss Julie at Skipton Little Theatre. Class warfare in a country house on the night of Labour’s 1945 landslide election victory. Apr 18, £13 & £15.
Other oddities include Earnest? — a kind of game show inspired by Oscar Wilde’s play — at the Grand Theatre, Leeds, Apr 16, £25.50-£35.50, and We’re Not Getting A Dog — a work-in-progress storytelling show from Leeds-based comedian Sam Freeman in the Huddersfield Lawrence Batley Theatre’s small Cellar Space, Apr 16. This sounds like an intriguing bargain at £3-£10.
Family Entertainment
Apart from that, predictably for the school holidays, it’s mostly about family entertainment.
Hold Onto Your Butts isn’t what you think it is. Direct from the West End (if the small-scale Arts Theatre counts as the West End), this is an American company’s affectionate two-handed parody of the Hollywood dinosaur movie Jurassic Park. Marvel at foley artist Charlie Ive’s low-cost sound effects! Thrill to the sight of a grown man pretending to be a velociraptor! Hull Truck Theatre, Apr 15 & 16, £24, Slung Low, Leeds, Apr 19, pay what you can.
Storm Whale at York Theatre Royal is a children’s puppet show written and directed by Matt Aston based on a story by Benji Davies. It’s an in-house production in association with York-based Engine House Theatre, children’s theatre specialists Little Angel and The Marlowe, Canterbury. Apr 15-19, £10 & £15.
Attention all aspiring shield maidens! Wrongsemble’s ambitious touring production Three Little Vikings lands at The Junction, Goole, on Apr 18, £7.
And finally, an Easter Panto: The Wizard of Oz starring Karim Zeroual (CBBC & Strictly) at Bridlington Spa, Apr 18, £18 & £21
Liz x