Reader Reviews
About Bill (Landor Theatre, Inner London)
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 | When interviewed late in life Vladimir Horowitz said, “the instrument (i.e., the piano) inspires.” Kim Ismay is clearly the muse that inspires and animates the luminous new one-woman show, About Bill, the bad news being that like Horowitz’s almost psychic connection with the idiosyncratic music of Scriabin, I fear Kim may be the only truly worthy vessel capable of doing About Bill full justice. The finely chiselled blend of music, drama, story and characterization struck me as having a quality both original and timeless, and suspect will be just as, if not more relevant, 40 years hence. About Bill blends all the elements of Greek tragedy (you know things will end badly but still cannot avert your eyes), quintessentially sardonic British humour, and ever present/inescapable class distinctions fuelling said tragedy, all told through music and characterizations that frankly, leave me with only one regret, that I could not rewind every scene at least 7 times with my Sky remote to focus individually on each element. How one woman, a piano and string bass on such a sparse set could leave me feeling I had missed so much, is a question I will have to leave for neuroscience. The music was so authentic, I felt transported, so much so, that I found myself trying to play a version of “Name That Tune” only to realise, embarrassingly some time later, that it was original material. The beauty and genius of about Bill is its sparsity, and like the imaginary horses in Blood Brothers, it forces us to reactivate our lethargic, X-Factor-dulled imaginations to construct our own “Bill” with the fragmented retellings of the women in his life. Indeed, one could argue that the psychiatrist’s couch, one of only few props on stage, is a kind of metaphor for the audiences’ own Rorschach test as they construct their own personal version of the tragic “Bill.” Despite its Greek-like tragedy (real tragedy, not raising the retirement age above 50 or bringing Greek pensions from 1200 Euros per month more in line with the European average of 400), Kim somehow convinces us to root for Bill, despite La Forza Del “Bill’s” Destino. Even her on-stage Quick changes were the epitome of minimalism and a testament to the power of her characterizations, characterizations which so powerfully entrance the audience, as to render said changes invisible to the conscious mind. Ten years ago I wouldn’t have gotten half the jokes, but after being thoroughly inculcated into British culture and by extension, humour, I’m convinced they are simply the funniest people ever to walk the Earth. This is because true British humour (not the simian humour of the great unwashed who actually pay real money to watch Lee Evans sweat through a bad imitation of Gorillas in the mist), is always smart, humour tinged with cynicism (A cynic is just a well informed optimist) and hence a truth, truth that comes from such a long history of disappointment with politics and the class system underpinning it, highlighted beautifully in the different accents so effortlessly and authentically tossed off with such quintessential Ismay, aplomb. Indeed, one of the reasons I frequently argue Hitler could never have been English, is because the British psyche is far too in-tune with human foibles. I can just hear a Londoner in 1939 saying (with tongue in proverbial cheek much like the editorial message of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator), “I’m sure Hitler is a great leader, able to unite his people and build a modern society from the ashes of the Great War, but I doubt he’s a very good dancer, or fisherman or footballer?” It is this healthy scepticism that makes the British people the funniest and possibly most fatalistic body politic in the world today. Contrast this to the self-delusional/cosmetically-obsessed Hollywood culture which takes itself so excessively seriously as to view the sanitized (by British standards) hosting “irreverence” of Ricky Gervais as offensive. Indeed, Hollywood elites are simultaneously repelled and fascinated with Gervais, criticising him publicly for his “cruel” humour and masochistically re-inviting him back for more verbal lashings from his British riding crop. Indeed, the hypocrisy of Hollywood is always on full display exemplified by the ban on TV drinking and increasing demonization of on-screen smoking while half of Hollywood’s elite own timeshares at the Betty Ford Clinic. Gervais is as in tune with this as anyone, almost daring those hordes of Hollywood hypocrites to criticise him nursing a pint during the Golden Globes ceremony. I happen to be good friends with a founding member of the Foreign Press association, and he simply cannot understand what all the “hubbub” was about. He found Gervais quite harmless; of course he did, he’s part of the “foreign” press. At the risk of sending Bach, Handel and Vivaldi speed rolling in their graves, an analogy between the Baroque and classical periods seems in order. While the baroque period, with all its embellishments and some would say, excessively contrived decorative intricacies was the musical equivalent of Essex Girl makeup, Mozart represented the raw, natural beauty that only regular exercise, clean living and a positive outlook could produce. I believe that if Mozart could have known jazz, this is what it would have sounded like. No embellishments for their own sake, just pure substance and by extension, honesty. In short, About Bill was authentic without being “retro” or contrived. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic (something I’ve been accused of on occasion by lesser men), for me, this music has a timeless quality, every bit as relevant as West Side Story still remains today. Convinced that a side effect of being transported in Kim’s time theatrical time machine was what quantum physicists call “time compression” I asked my wife to check her watch to see how long the show actually was (my money was on somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes [about the same length of time I would perceive if watching the 1st 5 seconds of an advert for Two and a Half Men or Scrubs while I frantically search for the remote control, and by extension, the mute button, pushing it with the urgency of a paramedic performing life-saving chest compressions in order to shield my ears from the direct evidence of the end of western civilization]). I sometimes ask myself sarcastically, if Hitler were not defeated, could he have brought us anything worse than Scrubs or Two and a Half Men? And If so, what? I submit to you that for thinking people, there are most certainly worst things than death, and those two shows, along with countless others only slightly less insufferable, genuinely make me wonder if Western civilization can be saved. I’m not suggesting that Hitler should have not been defeated, just that somewhere along the way we demanded less of our higher artistic appetites, and traded the cheap, quick and easy cosmetics of “light entertainment” for the infinitely richer rewards of true beauty and art. Make no mistake, Kim Ismay is no more a mere “entertainer” than today’s politicians are “statesman.” She is an artist in the most ethereal sense, painting landscapes with a seemingly inexhaustible palette of colours, a palette that one is forced to speculate could only have been acquired over multiple lifetimes. How on God’s green Earth could Kim Ismay, with more talent packed into the nail clippings of her pinkie than all of Hollywood combined, be playing to 60 seats? Does she personify some kind of universal inverse relationship law that reduces the size of an audience in proportion to the quality of the performance, thus confirming why Scrubs and their ilk are so commercially successful? I simply refuse to entertain such a possibility, for that would be too pessimistic, even for the English. Sincerely, Timothy Winey - Timothy Winey | 20 Nov 11 |
