Doctor Who "Deep Breath" review: all hail Peter Capaldi, shame about the script.

Why is Peter Capaldi flashing his red bits like a lady baboon, and other questions.

SPOILER ALERT

Anna Chen's review of Dr Who "Deep Breath" first broadcast BBC1, Saturday 23rd August 2014

The Dalek was eyeing up some poor bastard on the far side of the room. It hadn't yet seen me, so I backed away. Far scarier in the actual metal than on screen, its presence only three feet away sent my heart pounding to 11, so loud it was sure to hear me. It swung round and I froze, skewered by its cyclops stare. Me and a Dalek. Eyeball to eyeballs. An inhuman rorschach inkblot of a creation, sucking out all the dark matter in my soul and planting it into this single embodiment of EE-vuhl. It waved its sink-plunger at me and I took another couple of steps back. People laughed, my mother among them. Surely a nervous, entirely inappropriate, reaction to the horror before them? I sensed another malign presence. I slowly turned to where the people were looking and tittering ... to find a Cyberman bent right over me, arms outstretched for a bearhug.

I screamed an eight-year-old's scream and ran as fast as I could, missing the Cyberman's grip by a whisker, past the Ice Warriors, the Monoids and the Fish People, and screeched to a halt before the Yeti blocking my way outta here. A moment's relief because the Yeti was surely just a big teddy bear. All that cuddly fur waiting for a kid to snuggle into. But this was no oversized furry playmate: this was a sinister, silent, unbelievably huge furball with fangs and a bad manicure standing between me and the exit. I stared at it, suddenly aware of depths of alien viciousness. Knowing I was beaten, I broke into a fit of weeping and heard the laughter rise. I swear that Yeti was heaving along to the jollity. It shifted a little to one side leaving a space just big enough for me to squeeze through and then made a final swipe. I yelped and leapt several feet in one bound, vowing I would return one day to vanquish the monsters that had landed at the Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition.

That was one of the few times Doctor Who ever pressed my terror button. Doctor Who was always about the permanance of the British empire and our values; as much in the outlands of space and time as here among Britainland's acres of melamine and fresh paint. Why else, after 51 years, is there still a white male at the helm of the Tardis aided by a trusty gurl assistant? Terror was the series' way of reminding you how lucky you were to be alive at such a secure, stable time ... if you lived in the British Isles rather than, say, post-second-world-war Korea, Yemen, Kenya, or Malaya. Any disruption of the status quo was certain to be corrected by the Doctor, with equilibrium restored by the end of the series and our place in the universe nailed.

Nuthin' changes except when it does. This year, for its twelfth reincarnation and eighth series of the modern reboot, Doctor Who goes full-tilt steampunk, calling once again on the Victorian era for validation in a world that's a little less secure, a little less reliable. Terror springs from newscasts and comes knocking at the door. Casting Malcolm Tucker (who bears a passing resemblance to actor Peter Capaldi) is inspired. Gravitas, grit, a laser tongue and a weary intelligence far beyond that of the mere mortals surrounding him make him the perfect Timelord in this, our hour of need.

Sadly, 'Deep Breath', the first episode of the long-awaited new series introducing Capaldi, inhales superb production values, along with some solid acting, but exhales a godawful script from Dr Who veteran Steven Moffat. Dwahlinks, you call that DIALOGUE? Monologues, more like: with declamations to the audience requiring actors to remain rooted unresponsively to the spot instead of reacting the way people, you know, react! The old vagrant and the robot boss have to freeze and endure long narcissistic screeds of character-establishing bollox that should never have made it out of Moffat's notebooks.

The episode opens promisingly with a Godzilla-scale tyrannosaurus rex as the chosen delivery method of the Tardis, the new Doctor and his companion, Clara (Jenna Coleman). After terrorising London, it is swiftly dispatched by a gentleman cyborg who harvests humans for body parts and requires some dinosaur optical nerve; although how first incinerating the creature aids raptor recycling is never made clear. The story then unravels with one damn thing after another rather than pearls finely strung to develop a complete whole: a meandering scene concerning a bad-smelling homeless man, some absurd short-cut ratiocination from Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh), and lo-o-ong event-free dialogue in Mancini's restaurant. You know it's an idiot-plot when the heroes stumble on their nemesis as he's recharging and don't even unplug him. Clara is saved from the cyborg's cannibalising restaurant by the crimebusting Paternoster gang. They escape by taking the deep breath of the title and holding it, thereby avoiding detection by the murderous bots who only want to find their "promised land". The Doctor, still befuddled by the stresses of his regeneration, may or may not have pushed the cyborg gent out of his human-skin balloon at the clunking denouement, although suicide under the torture of being forced to listen to him rant while barely getting a word in edgewise, isn't ruled out. There's not a lot of outwitting going on.

When Joss Whedon-manque Russell T Davies first rebooted the franchise, his achilles heel was his adoption of the surface characteristics of Buffy and Angel with only the slimmest understanding of how plot and character interact, resulting in relentlessly annoying hysteria and a lack of story dynamic. He gave us sentiment instead of profound emotional involvement, lurches instead of arcs-within-arcs that dipped and soared along with our spirits. Bad habits have stuck.

I was always shown (and told!) that the rule was 'show, don't tell'. The Doctor babbles exposition like a mofo in a stinker of a script in search of a storyline. Note to producers: making characters talk 13 to the dozen like coke-fiends doesn't mean we won't notice little things like plot-holes and entire missing throughlines. Have none of you heard of PACING? Longeurs stretched into longdays as sub-Buffy banter held up the promised action while we were expected to genuflect before the awesomeness of Moffat's one-liners, a vanity process not far removed from pounding rock for diamonds — yes, there were a few but by the time they surfaced I was too exhausted to care.

You can lesbian-lizard-snog all you like in order to establish your LGBT credentials, but class hierarchy is alive and very unwell in the world of Doctor Who. Any subversive value resides in the relationship between Lady Handbag, Madame Vastra, and her maid-wife being normalised, not hollered triumphantly every two minutes. Uncool! Why're we back in very unsubversive days when maids and butlers were the norm (know your place, kids), and where the white "ninja" maid appropriates eastern skills but the only actual East Asian (Clem So) in sight is a robot? Reactionary mindset leaking at the edges? Even Harry Potter had an East Asian girlfriend until she was dumped for a white girl under circumstances never satisfactorily explained. In fact, not much ethnic minority presence at all in this one.

And why does the Doctor keep exposing his frock-coat's red silk lining like a lady baboon flashing her in-oestrus labia? So many questions, so much left dangling.

We wade through a swamp of exposition so thick you could stand a spoon up in it. The origins and rationale of the cyborg aliens aren't revealed through the clever workings of the script: Capaldi has to bark them out while the cyborg stares glassily, politely waiting for him to finish.

The cyborg's not too bright, anyhow. Eons of farming humans in order to make a skin balloon when he could have used whatever material Victorian dirigibles were made from, or simply bought some animal skins from the local abbatoir?

The funniest moments are owned by Strax the over-literal butler (Dan Starkey) whose knocking out of Clara with a rolled up copy of The Times was authentic laugh-out-loud slapstick.

Clara goggles her way through like someone who's been told she has pretty eyes (which she does) and has given up blinking for fear of hiding them. Her shrill tantrums have been praised as the mark of a strong woman. Surely, the critics have mistaken petulant for "feisty"? Having her throw strops and hissy-fits at inappropriate moments is a singularly ham-fisted method of telegraphing that this is not your dad's submissive Dr Who companion but an incredibly dated Grrrl Power trope that the BBC has only just twigged exists. Brattish and bossy when she could be co-operative, sensitive and insightful (but there I go again, talking about myself: it's catching), Clara is the template for the privileged breed of management who climb up the echelons of the BBC and walk off with those million-quid payoffs. FFS, don't try this at home, kids.

"In the name of the British Empire," cries Madame Vastra as her gang perform their rescue. Drip, drip, drip. Doctor Who is the hard-wiring of young minds into the values of the Establishment, not those of our real British society. The post-war period of freedom and relative prosperity for the masses is at an end, the party's over and the Doctor has reincarnated into the child-catcher. Protect your tender budding brains. Retain your critical faculties even as you chow down on your (intermittently tasty) comfort food.

An ideological battleground. Review of Doctor Who season finale: Death in Heaven.

Review of the rebooted Sherlock: The Blind Banker.

Is the media ready to accept East Asians as part of British diversity? by actress Lucy Sheen

Actress Lucy Sheen asks what many of us are wondering.

Is the media ready to accept East Asians as part of British diversity?

So after a hopeful start to last week with the launch of Act For Change campaign, the broad acceptance from ITV and the BBC that quotas for BAME artists and creatives are a good thing, to help ensure the diversity and variety that we experience in reality is reflected back in the media.

That was not what I was expecting to hear, very welcome, but then I’m a cynic. I’ve had over thirty years of watching , being actively involved when I was young enthusiastic and naively optimistic. When I say that I was involved, I was as ‘involved’ as those in power would allow a young East Asian to be involved. Back in the days when I would have been referred to as an Oriental. Yes folks, you read it right. ORIENTAL. Not that such language and terms are being used nowadays …

So when it comes to matters of equality and diversity, especially being an East Asian, where we are a minority within the minorities and still being treated appalling, is it any wonder after thirty years that I have evolved into the cynic that I am now.

Why would now be any different to all the those other initiatives, schemes and past “interventions?”

Well . . .

Since the dreadful Royal Shakespeare controversy back in 2012 with their casting of The Orphan of Zhao things have never quite been the same, in my opinion, within the BAME community. (Sidebar, oh how I wish we could find a better term to use when referring to ourselves. Maybe it’s the dyslexic in me but whenever I see BAME I some how always fleeting see the word BLAME. Anyway that’s a whole separate post on it’s own).

And this is the American production of The Orphan of Zhao. Exact same play produced by the American Conservatory Theater – RSC et el take note

The classical foot in the mouth from the cradle of The Bard was probably the best thing that could have occurred for the British East Asians. It drew together many people from across the cultural and ethnic spectrum which is the reality of Britain. Hell it drew in support from around the world! The Orphan of Zhao wasn’t just seen as an East Asian “problem” and an insult to only British East Asians.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

It is a fault within our supposed multicultural, tolerant liberal society. Differing racial and ethnic groups came together and recognised that the British part of being East Asian, in fact Black or Asian was consistently being ignored and conveniently erased. If used, it was only when it was expedient for others to do so and always at our own expense. The British East Asian Artist group, in my personal opinion, has done more, been instrumental in more and has spoken out more, about the deplorable, lamentable and yes one could say ‘criminal’ state of affairs for British East Asian Artists. More movement, realistic engagement, instigation for change and equality has occurred in the short time since the BEAA (British East Asian Artists Group) was founded in 2012 then in all the previous years. Through the efforts and campaigning of the BEAA (British East Asian Artists Group) East Asians now find themselves at the table in vital and essential talks with the very institutions that have hitherto seemingly ignored British East Asians, such as the BBC (British Broadcasting Company) and Politicians. The BEAA actively supports both Act For Change and the TV Collective and has been instrumental in getting involved and achieving representation in talks with Ed Vaizey MP and the BBC.

The Arts Council of England published the findings of an independent report claiming that the arts and culture sector accounts for 0.4% of gross domestic product, with £5.9 billion worth of gross value added to the UK economy in 2011. London theatres enjoyed record ticket attendances and revenues in 2013, generating £97.5m of VAT receipts for the UK Treasury. Attendances for 2013 were up 4% on 2012 to 14,587,276 with gross sales rising by 11% year on year to £585.5m, according to the figures from the Society of London Theatre.

On stage in 2013 was an amazing year for British East Asian Artists:
The Arrest of Ai Weiwei at The Hamsptead Theatre in April. Chimerica in May at the Almeida Theatre then transferring to the Westend The Harold Pinter Theatre. Yellowface at The Park Theatre in May and then the Royal National Theatre at the Shed, The Fu Manchu Complex written by British East Asian actor, writer and activist Daniel York in September, The World of Extreme Happiness at The Royal National Theatre in The Shed in October and Golden Child at The New Diorama. It was an explosion of East Asian talent on stage and off. The productions found audiences. People bought tickets and put their bums on the seats. Audiences the mirrored the variety and diversity of the British population. People went to see shows about East Asians, with East Asian themes. And shock horror performed by British East Asian actors. Two things it can’t now be said there are no East Asian performers – or yes there are but then consistently only concentrating interest a small meagre handful of performers.

Secondly, no longer can it be said, “oh there isn’t an audience for such plays.”

Britain is a diverse and mixed country in terms of the people who now inhabit these shores.

In London, the 2011 Census, London’s population was 8.17 million, making it the most populous European city. More than 4 out of every ten Londoners (42 per cent) identify themselves as belonging to another group other than Caucasian. What everyone thinks about this state of affairs is an entirely different matter. Britain is not going to suddenly revert back to being a predominantly Caucasian country, sorry (well actually I am not) UKIP et all. The world has moved on, literally and so has its people from country to country, crossing continents and time zones.

So why hasn’t the British culture, our Theatre, Film and Television moved to reflect the diversity we see on our streets? I can’t believe that in the popular media I don’t regularly see characters the reflect me. I’m not talking about the odd Chinese waiter, tongue tied tourist, or the occasional Doctor or Surgeon or even overseas student.

When I turn on my TV, when I see another East Asian, it’s usually a characterisation from a very narrow perspective. Seldom do I see myself, or people who look like like me, portrayed in an accurate and realistic manner, let alone as being British. I have to make do with the heavily accented, menial and or illegal worker. Occasionally there’ll be a Doctor, a secretary or a nerdy student. Apparently there is no in between. As an East Asian more times than not, you’re isolated, socially separated by language, culture and ingrained biggatory.

As an overseas East Asian character you’re allowed to be intelligent, successful and financially well off, but you can also be ruthless, dodgy and somehow an inherently flawed human being. But on the upside you’ll be seen as authentic.

I’m standing right in front of you, as are many others, with not a “me no spleakie” accent, DVD seller or Machiavellian master of crime to be seen anywhere.

Is this continued white washing, an attempt to keep the British cultural landscape western and Caucasian? Is it an almost subliminal subconscious last stand? The last vestiges of institutional and structural racism? An attempt by the old guard in society to divide and rule and thereby some how keep the colonials in their place?

It’s not as if there aren’t the talented and trained East Asian artists out there. Where we fall down is the inability, or lack of willingness on the part of the British media to embrace East Asians. Unlike their colleagues of Black British and British Asian heritage who have been incorporated (to some degree) into the cultural landscape. Comedy shows and serials have been set around or based on their respective communities. Characters from specific ethnicities that draw the audience into an alternative view of British life.

The Fosters (1976-1977), Black Silk (1985), South of the Border (1988), Goodness Gracious Me (1988-2014), Desmond’s (1989-1994), Prime Suspect 2 (1992), The Kumars at nos. 42 (2001-2006), 55 Degrees North (2004–2005), Luther (2010-2013).

The East Asians have had Johnny Ho in the Chinese Detective (1981 – 1982) and that’s it.

It doesn’t happen often enough across the diverse spectrum of British society. The tragedy is why has this not progressed? The world continues to evolve but British popular media and drama apparently does not or will not? When will I be able to see The Lees from nos.8 or Penny Fields or what about Jean and Enid a black comedy set in an OAP home where the central character, Jean (imaginatively nick-named Chinese Jean by the nursing staff) forms an unlikely friendship with Enid new Staff nurse. If you’re interested in the latter then leave me a message and I’ll happily send over a synopsis or meet with you and talk.

I don’t want to be here in another thirty years still talking about the same issues.

As Anna Chen writer, political blogger, performance poet, stand up comedian and BEAA activist recently wrote: "For someone who’s pretty hard to miss, I’m surprisingly invisible. There’s a whole load of us feeling the same way, and we’re getting behind Act for Change."

Attitudes have to change, in the boardrooms, casting suites and commissioning offices.

Something has got to give, I hope that this is the beginning.

Read Lucy Sheen's full article here

British East Asian Artists and Diaspora music take the diversity debate into Parliament

Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) artists demand representation that reflects British Society 

Last February, the British East Asian Artists wrote an open letter to broadcasters and culture minister Ed Vaizey about the pitiful almost non-existent representation of east Asians in the media despite being the third largest minority in Britain. Vaizey, who had been holding round-table discussions with black actors, including Lenny Henry about continued exclusion, immediately wrote back inviting us to participate in future round-table discussions.

British East Asian actor Daniel York followed up with a powerful piece on the racial pecking order and structural inequality in British theatre and television in which he quotes American sociologist David T Wellman numbering the "culturally sanctioned strategies for defending social advantage based on race”.

In every political and cultural sphere in Britain, Black, Asian and Mixed Ethnic (BAME) people are excluded (see my last post with an illustration of this dynamic in action).

Yesterday, I went to the well-attended Diaspora Equality in Music round-table discussion chaired by Rt Honourable David Lammy MP for Tottenham at the House of Commons.

Sixty or so people (mostly from the Black community) listened to Diaspora founder, Rose Nunu, lay out her objective of trying to ensure that BAME is at the heart of the music industry. "The Diversity landscape is not diverse," she said, requesting recommendations to change the landscape.

One startling figure she gave was that, while the UK music industry employs more than 100,000 people and generates £3.8 billion a year, 95.7 per cent of its workforce is white. At the current rate of loss, its questionable whether there will be any BAME representation in the music industry by 2020. The music industry is more fragmented now than at any time in the past 10 years.

Various lines of action were explored with a strong vocal presence from the business end aiming at increasing the workforce.

Beverley Mason FRSA said there had been a decrease in BAME representation since 2011. (This reminded me of Caitlin Moran telling an audience that the majority of pop artists are now privately educated, nudging out the working classes from one of their few conduits of social mobility.)

However, Mason reeled off a list of figures showing how diversity was a reality factor in the cold light of economics: as the market place becomes more global and competitive, companies actually benefit from being inclusive, She said, "Diversity has to be embedded in the culture. It is a mindset, not an add-on to the budget like tea and biscuits."

The advantages include fresh sources of creativity and problem solving from new perspectives. Varied cultural background and life experience reward companies and organisations that embrace change. It takes good leadership to implement diversity and inclusivity but, as I've witnessed on the political left and in the arts, the white privately educated establishment have a vested interest in keeping out those BAME sources.

David Lammy said, "We get fantastic music because different music from across continents come together." Hybrids are always healthier than a mono-culture for all concerned. Despite Lammy having previously been Minister for Culture, "No-one from the BBC's phoned me up asking me to be on the board. I'm available."

When one speaker told of her tribulations getting one night of the Proms devoted to gospel for the first time but which was then dropped as a regular event, Lammy expressed the room's disappointment. "One night in a whole Prom season? This is unlike the US experience where the 40 per cent BAME presence is a permanent fixture. What would it be like if there was 10 years of that inclusion, and not just one?"

BAME makes up 40 per cent of London's population. Politics, the music industry and the arts trail behind even the Metropolitan Police in terms of numbers. In the legal profession, BAME representation stands at over 10 per cent. It is an alarming set of figures that needs to be addressed.

It was pointed out to cheers, that the music is diverse but the money and power behind it isn't. A speaker from the floor said, "The music industry is in the toilet," and urged musicians, "Don't work for a record company. Get seed-funding, set up your own companies, start an industry."

This was a fine as far as it went but I was soon getting the impression of small outfits scrambling around and manoeuvering on the Titanic while the ship goes down.

So it was interesting to hear another perspective from a speaker arguing that they needed support for those who already exist.

"We have a culture of diversity. We are scrapping for different corners while young people are dying. It's a culture and community that won't support itself. There hasn't been action at a movement level since Soul to Soul. We need to bridge the gap between commerce and community. There are larger and deeper issues, and those with power should be held to account until we see tangible results."

It remains to be seen whether music can be transformed into a channel of social change for the good. Will the corner of the industry as discussed here be challenging the power that relegates BAME to a resented add-on, or joining it in an unholy scrum for the advantage of individuals? Are we, as has happened in left politics, building a new establishment within the establishment? The debate is well under way.

BBC axes The Review Show

This Sunday sees the last edition of The Review Show, ending a longstanding BBCTV arts strand. Already shunted from its weekly Friday spot on BBC2 to a monthly graveyard shift on BBC4, even that has proven too much for the philistines at the top who have decided to axe it. All those ginormous management salaries in return from destroying our common cultural experience. Well done.

The Review Show was a must-watch for sharp informed cultural debate anchored by Kirsty Walk and her regulars: Germaine Greer, Tom Paulin, Tony Parsons, Paul Morley and Mark Kermode. Alison Pearson may be an unpleasant right-wing idiot but her flaws could be absorbed by her panel peers.

Before that, its forerunner, The Late Review, was a nightly event on BBC2 from 1994, presented by Tracy McCloud.

We used to have Arena, The Old Grey Whistle Test, Top of the Pops (pre-scandal), Melvyn Bragg, and Newsnight Review down from its weekly slot.

Now BBC2's The Culture Show and Later With Jools are the last men standing. Jools Holland is increasingly looking like a fish caught in a tiny pool as the tide goes out.

What happened to regular doses of animation, dance, silent movies, international cinema, movie greats, Play for Today and all the other cultural coverage that was woven into the fabric of the media reflecting our rich and illustrious arts mix? You used to be able to get a solid education in the arts just from watching the BBC. Now it's wall-to-wall Simon Cowellesque copies and business shills.

The BBC promises better arts coverage just as they drop their arts show. I guess there's not enough room for reality shows, soaps and ghastly "talent" contests harking back to They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Make us stupid, why dontcha? Capitalism demands it and the men and women running the media are serving it up with a spoon.

Feng Xiaogang in conversation at the BFI: holding a mirror up to Chinese society

Last night's pre-screening gala talk at the BFI by film director Feng Xiaogang climaxed the Spectacular China season of his films while launching the year-long Electric Shadows collaboration between the BFI and China.

After a start as slow as wet cement, it livened up considerably once Feng and his adroit translator bypassed a disappointingly dull interviewer and some stunningly tedious questions such as, "What inspired you?" "Who were your mentors?" elicited a dry, "I'm sure I had mentors but I can't recall who."

Feng covered the basics of his early career, which began over 20 years ago in the 1990s. His realisation that his contemporaries — the Beijing Film Academy "Fifth Generation" filmmakers like Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou and their focus on the deeper meaning of life, humanity, and the whole philosophical shebang — were leaving audiences cold, led him to make films that reflected people's lives. People hadn't fully recovered from the Cultural Revolution and were still suffering, he reckoned, and needed a lighter tone. Working his way up via the hard route as an army set-designer, followed by a spell in TV, Feng's escapist bent and outright commercial considerations, facilitated by a sensitivity to the needs of the market, helped the Chinese film industry grow from mere tens of millions into the $3.5 billion behemoth it is today.

Finding it safer to play with comedy in the post-Tiananmen Square political climate, he helmed the New Year films (hesui pian) trilogy Party A, Party B (1997), Be There or Be Square (1998) and Sorry Baby (1999), light, frothy comedies that took a swipe at authority figures without ever really challenging authority. The huge success of Cell Phone, his 2003 exploration of extra-martial affairs, launched his career into the stratosphere.

Staying apolitical but now confident enough to expand his subject matter, he made the politically neutral but visually dazzling Assembly (2007) about the civil war between the nationalist Kuomintang and Communist forces in the late 1940s, which led to the foundation of the People's Republic of China in 1949. He admits to being influenced by Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, rather than any of cinema's intellectual heavyweights: no Tarkovsky or Fassbinder here. (He's said to be the "Chinese Spielberg", so make of that what you will.) There was also a Korean movie which inspired him. As the cost of Korean talent was a fifth of Hollywood's, he was soon employing them to make his film.

Aftershock (2010), looking at the devastation of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, is another blockbuster, albeit one which critiques the state of the collective Chinese mindset. At the centre is the Sophie's Choice dilemma facing the mother: which of her twins, son or daughter, should she drag from the rubble?

Feng is ruthless when it comes to actors. He'll have none of that nurturing nonsense and he's happy to sack those who can't cut the wasabi. He says that one way he directs is to use Toms Hanks and Cruise as reference points for the opposite ends of the acting scale he requires. "Can you be like Tom Hanks?", he'll say to his poor thesps; really confusing them when he adds the further refinement that they should pitch their performance "halfway between."

Well into his stride by now, Feng enlarges on what drives him to create film. Talking about Back to 1942 (completed in 2012, China's official entry for this year's Academy Awards, and screened after the talk), an epic tragedy about the Henan famine under Kuomintang rule and Japanese invasion that killed three million, he says he doesn't just want to depict darkness and misery for the sake of it; rather, he wants to draw a connection between contemporary China and what was happening in 1942.

His passionate insistence that he mirrors Chinese society, reflecting back its imperfections in order that they may be corrected, is an indication that, having passed through its Gilded Age, China is entering an introspective phase examining the implications of China's new-found wealth. He detects a spiritual impoverishment, but locates its cause in a lack of religion, castigating hypocritical Buddhists and Taoists whose prayers and sacrifices at the altar of their beliefs are in fact only "doing a deal" in return for health and wealth. He reviles the destruction of the environment for quick cash, and the theft of intellectual property. When the audience laughs at the inclusion of football match rigging in his list of crimes, he chastises them: it's no laughing matter. These are all symptoms of what's going wrong with the Chinese. "You can't be a great people if you only care about short-term values."

The Chinese people having been tortured by misery and wars for a century, Feng says things have been getting better for the past 30 years, and he concludes that the Chinese are now ready to look at themselves. A frisson of discomfort ripples around the room when he compares the Chinese unfavourably with the Israelis, whom he sees as having endured misery and developed courage: "Chinese are less than the Israelis." Your humble correspondent wondered exactly which lessons China was supposed to learn from 'plucky little Israel' but our intrepid interviewer crushed the life out of any possible enquiry by immediately blurting, "I'm not going there."

Feng also took the opportunity to announce his forthcoming remake of A World Without Thieves with British producer Duncan Kenworthy (Four Weddings and a Funeral), and that they already have a first draft of the script.

David Cameron's visit to China last year resulted in a year-long Electric Shadows season of Chinese movies, exhibition and education at the BFI, of which Spectacular China is a part. There's a Chinese-British co-production treaty imminent, and a summer season of Chinese films en route to the BFI. Stay tuned for further updates.

Paul Robeson on Resonance FM 5.30 Tues, Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge

MADAM MIAOW'S CULTURE LOUNGE 6/8
News, music and poetry
RESONANCE 104.4FM
Presented by Anna Chen
5.30-6.30pm Tuesday 19th November
http://resonancefm.com/listen
https://soundcloud.com/resonance-fm/sets/madam-miaow-says

PAUL ROBESON, MEET ANNA MAY WONG
Guests: Tayo Aluko and Dr Diana Yeh. With Charles Shaar Murray.

In this Tuesday's Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge on Resonance FM, the world's first internationally renowned African American singing star Paul Robeson and the Hollywood screen legend Anna May Wong chat about their lives and why they are now cultural icons. Well, they would if they were still alive.

However, we do have Tayo Aluko whose award-winning show, Call Mr Robeson, has played around the world. And Anna Chen — who introduced new audiences to the Chinese American film star in her 2009 BBC Radio 4 profile, A Celestial Star in Piccadilly, and has performed her solo show Anna May Wong Must Die! — talks about Anna May Wong who became chums with Robeson when they met in Europe.

With Dr Diana Yeh talking about some of the forgotten pioneering Black and Asian stars of the stage in the early 20th century, and Charles Shaar Murray.

As a famed singer and actor persecuted for his radical politics and civil-rights campaigning, Paul Robeson has the dimensions of an American tragic hero. ... Tayo Aluko does a fine job in evoking his dynamic presence and in reminding us of the inhospitable attitude to dissent in the land of the free. Michael Billington, Guardian

PAUL ROBESON, MEET ANNA MAY WONG — 5.30pm TUESDAY 19TH NOVEMBER

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or afterwards

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Previously On Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge …
https://soundcloud.com/resonance-fm/sets/madam-miaow-says



(To listen to Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge series on Resonance FM for WINDOWS, download VLC media player)

Monkey goes Western: Madam Miaow on Resonance FM, Tues 5.30

MADAM MIAOW'S CULTURE LOUNGE 5/8
News, music and poetry
RESONANCE 104.4FM
Presented by Anna Chen
5.30-6.30pm Tuesday 12th November 2013
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or
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Monkey goes Western: Chinese cultural innovation in the West

The Innovators: Dr Who's 50th anniversary; Chinese science fiction; China music and drama in the West

In this Tuesday's Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge on Resonance FM, Anna Chen looks at Chinese cultural innovation in the 21st century, with actor Lucy Sheen. Charles Shaar Murray reviews Big In China, Alan Paul's new book about forming a blues band in China.

Exploring Beijing Blues; Mayday the Chinese Beatles; Chinese science fiction at the 50th anniversary of Dr Who; and is this a new era for Chinese in British theatre after the Royal Shakespeare Company's Orphan of Zhao casting debacle?

[EDIT: Steven Ip has problems with his Tardis so can't make it but will be a guest next year when Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge comes back.]

MONKEY GOES WESTERN: Chinese cultural innovation — 5.30pm TUESDAY 12TH NOVEMBER
Listen live
or afterwards
listen online

Previously … the shows so far ...



(To listen to Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge series on Resonance FM for WINDOWS, download VLC media player)

Madam Mao's Golden Oldies repeated 26 Oct BBC R4 at 3.30pm

MADAM MAO'S GOLDEN OLDIES
REPEATED 26TH OCTOBER 2013, FIRST BROADCAST 17TH JULY 2012
BBC Radio 4 at 3.30pm, Saturday 26th October 2013
Presented and co-written by Anna Chen
Produced by Mukti Jain Campion for Culture Wise

In Madam Mao's Golden Oldies, I revisit the Chinese Cultural Revolution Model Operas that I first heard as a child in the 1960s and 70s and discover how they are, somewhat surprisingly, enjoying a new lease of life.

Growing up as a London-born red-nappy kid with Beatles and Bowie as my soundtrack, I was occasionally dragged by my parents to the Chinese legation in Portland Place (it had lost its official embassy status due to the cold war ruckus) for screenings of the latest movie spectacular to emerge from the arts commissar, Chairman Mao's wife, Jiang Qing. These were the Yangbanxi, the Eight Model Operas; films with titles such as The Red Detachment of Women and Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy.

These state-sponsored works combined opera and ballet with simple plots about brave peasants uniting to defeat evil landlords, Japanese invaders and other enemies of the revolution. Heroes looked like heroes with rouged faces, kohl-lined eyes and great hair, while villains were easily identified by their sneaky demeanor and bad porn moustaches.

My Hollywood sensibility found these crude melodramas puzzling and somewhat turgid but then they weren't made for (relatively) pampered East End kids like me: they were made for the peasants and workers who had rarely if ever been represented in their own culture.

Within living memory, mass starvation, imperialist conquest and the horrors of the Japanese invasion had devastated the nation. Barely twenty years into its communist revolution, the population was struggling to get back onto its feet.

Madam Mao not only banned the traditional Beijing operas and their stories about emperors and princesses, but also cast out decadent western music and movies as being a corrupting influence on the masses. Quelle surprise when it later transpired that the former actress was fond of indulging her tastes in the privacy of her own screening room. But Jiang Qing was canny enough to harness the emotive power of these works with the help of the Chinese cultural intelligentsia who hadn't fallen out of favour.

In the programme, a variety of people who were intimately involved in the model operas recount their experience. Among them, Anchee Min, author of Red Azalea, had been plucked from working in the fields because she was used to "carrying 300 pounds of manure". Jingdong Cai is now conductor at Stanford but learnt his trade in Madam Mao's army of young musicians

Madam Mao's favourite films? The Sound of Music and Jane Eyre. No, not the classic Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine version, but the crappy George C Scott remake. Now, what does that tell you about arbiters of taste?

MADAM MAO'S GOLDEN OLDIES
BBC Radio 4 at 3.30pm, Saturday 26th October 2013
Presented and co-written by Anna Chen
Produced by Mukti Jain Campion for Culture Wise
Available for seven days after broadcast on iPlayer

Anna Chen's upcoming performances: Bohemia N12, the Fu Manchu Complex public debate and BBC Radio 4's Overwhelming China

Charles Shaar Murray and I are reading poetry tonight at the Bohemian Community Centre pub, 762-764 High Rd Finchley N12, brought to us by the Friern Barnet library occupy crew who won a new lease of life for the only public space in the area, a lovely little purpose-built library that was about to be swallowed whole by developers. They appear to be doing another grand job and liberating an abandoned pub for the community. 7-11pm. Phoenix Rainbow MCs.

I'm also reading poetry at tomorrow's pre-The Fu Manchu Complex public debate at the Oval House Theatre, 4.30-6.30pm. The main event in the evening, a satire by actor Daniel York who was at the centre of the RSC The Orphan of Zhao controversy, is a satirical view of the yellow peril scare that is going through a revival at the moment.

Dan and I have been interviewed for Overwhelming China, a programme examining the origins of the anti-Chinese mania ratcheting up as China heads for superpower status. To be broadcast 11am, Friday 1st November on BBC Radio 4.

Before I forget, I am hosting a short series of Madam Miaow Says on Resonance 104.4FM commencing Tuesday 15th October at 5.30pm for an hour. We launch with "Other: Where Art Thou?" exploring yellowface, the return of blackface and the general backward march of representation for effniks. With Dan York, Julie Cheung-Inhin and Emily Seu-see Hung, and music from Charles Shaar Murray and Melody Brown.

The Hothouse Project alternative counter-culture education group now on Facebook

Charles Shaar Murray's Journalism as Craft and Art writing course goes live tonight in NW6 for eight weeks.

The Hothouse Project is now on Facebook and here's what amounts to our manifesto:

Charles Shaar Murray's "Journalism as Craft and Art" writing course is the basis of our alternative education group, The Hothouse Project, featuring the best of the ideals and artistic values of classic counter-culture. We share rigorous, hard-headed journalistic craft, to bring literary quality into even the most mundane journalistic tasks, and offer an inspiring alternative to the flatlining culture, showing you how to inject style and subversion into a timid, conformist media landscape. We'll skill you up, sharpen your claws, broaden your bandwith and widescreen your horizons. Covering writing skills from journalism to poetry and publishing.

Don't worry if you missed this one — there's another one along in the Spring — details to come. Get in touch if you wish to know more or reserve a place.

Anna at Stoke Newington Literary Festival Sunday 5.15pm

I'm performing at the Stoke Newington Literary Festival tomorrow (Sunday 9th June) at 5.15pm in the Budvar Marquee. Here's a poem.

THE DISS PERSISTS

For are we not a cruel race?
I'm told that often,
By people who are cruel
Who make a virtue of their viciousness
In the way only the truly callous can
Who then turn around and say
Ha! We can do that to you,
True, we can,
And there's nothing you can do.

So here I am,
Furiously stroking my pussy
Like a comic-book villain
And twirling my moustache
Which I call Lyrical
Because I wax it.

I am your reflection in the deepest night
When your bowels pack-up and collapse in fright
I am the yellow brick road to hell,
I am that part of you that is not well
Yellow dog, yellow peril,
Yellow fear, yellow feral,
Yellow fever
A letterbox beaver
The stripes on a wasp
The colour of piss
I resist
But still the diss persists
And still the diss persists
Should I slit my wrists
Or just get pissed?
I grind my teeth and shake my fist
I'm diced and dissed
I remain unkissed
And still the diss persists
Still the diss persists

So stick me with a yellow star
I see it coming down the tracks
Must be heroin left over from the opium wars
You should have stuck to crack

(Anna Chen 2010)

Stoke Newington Literary Festival

David Henry Hwang interview: race, class and Yellow Face

My Morning Star interview with David Henry Hwang, whose play Yellow Face launched London's new Park Theatre last month.

‘We're pretty good on race sometimes but terrible on class’ 
East Asian playwright DAVID HENRY HWANG talks to Anna Chen about issues of cultural assimilation and equality of opportunity 

ONLY six months before I finally meet David Henry Hwang, the Western world's most famous playwright of east Asian heritage, the British East Asian Artists (BEAA) led an international protest when the Royal Shakespeare Company gave a miserly three — minor — roles out of 17 to east Asian actors in their first Chinese play, The Orphan of Zhao.

Now we're enjoying the British premiere of Hwang's play Yellow Face which launches London's brand-new Park Theatre, a mere quarter of a century after its Tony Award-winning author first had a play performed here, the Broadway and West End mega-hit hit M Butterfly.

And there are several more on the way with Chinglish and Golden Child expected this year.

Everyone's walking around the theatre with huge grins 'cause our Dave's in town. He's the nicest bloke you could wish to meet with the gentle manner of someone totally at ease with himself.

Hwang isn't just the first ethnically Asian playwright to succeed in the West. He’s got 20 plays, 10 musicals, plus film credits and writing galore on his CV and is recognised as one of the leading US playwrights and as a Grand Master of the theatre there.

Los Angeles-born in 1957, Hwang is the son of a penniless immigrant who became a millionaire banker. But the hip, young and educated Hwang is also a child of the civil rights, Vietnam and hippy eras and his writing reflects much of that progressive mindset.

His works have explored Chinese people’s experience from their first arrival in the modern US. After the first wave of immigration following the discovery of gold in California in 1848, the Chinese worked the mines, grew the food and built the railroads but were treated savagely by the dominant white population.

Suffering racist lynchings and mob attacks, their ill-treatment ran native Americans and African Americans a close third, To cap it all, the Exclusion Act of 1882 — only repealed in 1943 — specifically targeted the Chinese, banned miscegenation, denied them citizenship and turned them into aliens even unto the umpteenth generation.

Chinese Americans have played an important part in US radical politics since the civil rights movement of the 1950s. Perhaps the reason they are so far ahead of the British Chinese in fighting racism and exclusion is down to numbers, Hwang explains.

“When I was a kid, the majority of Asian Americans had actually been born in the US. We were inspired by the Black Power movement which expanded into a general third world power movement that Asians were part of,” he says.

"Since 1965, US immigration law has not favoured working-class labourers from Asia but people with tactical skills. So you have a generation of Asian immigrants who are upper class and educated with certain notions of entitlement that they apply to the US political system."

With that background, it might be expected that they are more likely to vote Republican than Democrat but that wasn’t the case in the last election, where 84 per cent of Asian Americans voted for Obama, Hwang says, the largest of any group except for African Americans.

"There's been a tendency for the Asian American community to split because a lot of Chinese Americans were anti-communist, but nobody really cares any more and so Democrats are perceived as being more fair to minorities. And Republicans are seen nowadays as being anti-science."

Asian American actors were lightning-fast in supporting the British east Asian struggle to take on the theatre establishment over the omission of our third largest ethnic minority from the stage.

Within days, while we were stunned rabbits in the headlights, both Hwang and the Asian American Performers Action Coalition (AAPAC) issued statements critical of the RSC's "laziness and lack of artistic integrity" and the "contradictory and fallacious nature" of their argument.

"We're pretty good on race sometimes but terrible on class. The US has obviously fallen short of its ideals but the ideal of equal opportunities is still there.

“So when Asians advocate equal opportunity in the States it's consistent with the Asian impulse to assimilate in a way that maybe is not as much as in Britain."

Hwang’s play Yellow Face garnered rave four-star reviews. A lone critic said it was irrelevant to a British audience but, as Hwang says, the play is about “some of the pitfalls in trying to create a multi-cultural society. It seems to me that would be relevant here."

As long as history doesn't veer into Pacific conflict and the Chinese don't suffer the same fate as Japanese Americans in 1942, which Hwang acknowledges is a slim possibility, we may have advanced the cause of anti-racism.

Each victory should be celebrated but "equal opportunity" is merely the first step to true equality and to that end we are going to have to look at what Hwang has to say about class.

Runs until June 16. Box office: (020) 7281-8813

Anna's 4 star review of Yellow Face

[EDIT: date of the Chinese Exclusion Act corrected to 1882 — not 1888.]

David Henry Hwang Yellow Face Q&A video Part 1

Here's the first part of the video from Saturday's Q&A session with Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang talking to Dr Amanda Rogers at London's new Park Theatre in the week of the British premiere of Yellow Face.

Produced by Special Relationship Productions (helmed by Kevin Shen and Lucy Fenton), Yellow Face was DHH's first play in the UK for a quarter of a century since his mega-hit M Butterfly opened in the West End in 1989.

Video by Anna Chen

Review of Yellow Face

Feature article on David Henry Hwang

Yellow Face review: triumph for David Henry Hwang launches London's new Park Theatre

Pic by Simon Annand

My review of Yellow Face in the Morning Star 
4 stars

Tuesday 28 May 2013 by Anna Chen
Yellow Face
Park Theatre, London N4

This smart and savvy comedy delivers a knock-out blow to any still-entrenched belief in certain crepuscular crannies of theatre land that east Asians can't produce culture.

Racism no longer has an outlet in blackface performance but yellowface lingers as a method of corralling an ethnic minority into a ghetto, depriving them of jobs and creative participation.

That's the context of the Obie award-winning Yellow Face, an admittedly autobiographical indulgence by David Henry Hwang which tells a funny and fast-paced story of his perennial war against the surreptitious devices used to keep Asians in their place, in particular the 1990s yellow-peril hysteria targeting President Bill Clinton and threatening to engulf American-Chinese people.

Having burned out as the "poster child for political correctness" in the battle of Miss Saigon - when American-Asian actors protested noisily against white British actor Jonathan Pryce reprising his part as the Asian engineer for the Broadway transfer of the musical - Tony award-winning playwright DHH (Kevin Shen) buckles down to work on his next play Face Value.

He inadvertently casts white actor Marcus G Dahlman (Ben Starr) in the leading Asian role and the subsequent cover-up reveals much more than it conceals.

Too sophisticated to lecture, Hwang skilfully navigates a series of real-life anti-Chinese events including the accusation that his banker father Henry (David Yip) is aiding an enemy - China - and the failed prosecution of Dr Wen Ho Lee as a nuclear spy for Beijing, harking back to the Rosenbergs' execution.

In reversing the situation and trying to manipulate his star Dahlman - "dollman," geddit? - Hwang exposes the absurdity of judging people by their skin.

It's the Siberian Jew Dahlman, building a successful career on an erroneous assumption that he is part Asian, who pleads: "It doesn't matter what someone looks like on the outside."

Hwang has long been respected as a writer of depth with an impressive body of work permeated by a progressive political perspective. In Yellow Face he argues that we should all be part of "the big song" as experienced by Dahlman, who finds peace and an identity with the Dong tribe of China.

Director Alex Sims mounts a technically sharp, elegant and enormously effective minimalist staging in-the-round for an excellent cast who mostly play multiple roles.

Actor-producer Kevin Shen pulls off several firsts with this British premiere of Yellow Face at north London's brand-new Park Theatre.

Following last year's still-rumbling RSC The Orphan Of Zhao controversy, Hwang's long-awaited theatrical resurfacing in Britain after a couple of decades provides a welcome addition to the debate around representation of east Asians in this country's culture.

Runs until June 16. Box office: (020) 7281-8813

See Anna's Morning Star feature on David Henry Hwang

Lost in London with Flying Lizards' Deborah Evans-Stickland

Spent an enjoyable Sunday with my mate Deborah Evans-Stickland — she of the Flying Lizards and the definitive version of "Money" (1979, written by Berry Gordy in the 1960s) that you hear played every time there's an item on ... er ... money. Given that we're in the pits of a recession that's fast turning into a depression and financial meltdown at least for us poor stiffs at the bottom of the heap, that's a lot.

I was too spaced out from a week of bronchitis and pain to get behind a steering wheel so she picked me up in NW6 to go to Blackheath in South East London where TV cameraman Jeff Willis was going to video us with his home kit for a laugh. On a map of London — North West to South East — that's top left diagonally to bottom right.

Deborah arrived late with Mab the (possibly pregnant) husky because she'd neglected to bring a satnav and took a weird route. She'd stopped to ask directions and been given the "You don't want to start from here" answer which quite delighted me.

So we set off late and in the rain. It's amazing how much traffic turns out when it's raining, even on a slow Sunday like today.

"How do we get to the South Bank?" she asked me.

"Oh, down Abbey Road, cut though Camden and head for Waterloo Bridge." (Down and our left.)

This will mean nothing to those unfamiliar with our fair capital city but we ended up going down Abbey Road, west to Notting Hill, down through Hyde Park, and through Victoria. Instead of turning left for Westminster, we carried on south to Vauxhall Bridge, along the north embankment past Tate Britain, Millbank, Parliament Square and across the bridge to south of the river and no-man's land. To me. Elephant & Castle, Peckham, Deptford, Blackheath ... Instead of a nice straight line from top left to bottom right, we'd done a wide letter "d" and were now adding more letters of the alphabet.

A short detour for sushi, sarnis and a bean salad from an M&S refreshed us for the next leg of the journey and we were off again.

So a very very VERY late arrival.

In front of the camera, I asked: "So, Deborah, the iconic track 'Money' gets played a lot. Every time we hear it, does your bank balance go 'kerching' or does a kitten die?" Disappointingly, it doesn't go "kerching" but she did make one of the iconic records of the punk era, so who's counting?

We did good interview, everyone got fish and I directed us home — a straight line this time. But the unexpected deviations can't half be good fun when you're with a mate.

Video to come.

China In Britain at Westminster Uni: Anna and Charles Shaar Murray on the bill

I'm performing this afternoon at the China In Britain event at Westminster University, 4.45pm. It's a talk with performance extracts from my shows and a bit of poetry. The wonderful Charles Shaar Murray is my musical accompanist, playing guitar.

I'll be referring to various topics so here are the links for you to explore further.

Anna May Wong Must Die! here

Suzy Wrong — Human Cannon here

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon row with the Guardian here

Foot and Mouth Disease campaign here

The Copenhagen Climate Change Summit gamesmanship here

Sherlock — The Blind Banker review here

Niall Ferguson Civilisation review here

Review of Julia Lovell's The Opium War here

The Steampunk Opium Wars here

Anna's arts website here

Anna's YouTube

Translating China website
The Old Cinema, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW
Wednesday 18th July 2012

Anna May Wong Must Die! opens tomorrow: satire, crudity and politics

OK, this is it, guys and gals. Anna May Wong Must Die! gets its first London theatrical outing tomorrow night (Thursday 10th) at the New Diorama Theatre, followed by another on Saturday.

Legendary cultural writer Charles Shaar Murray and The Plague's Marc Jefferies will be providing live music.

I'm performing the show as a "work-in-progress" at the New Diorama Theatre as part of True Heart's In The Mirror season. Also performing during the week: Lucy Sheen and Veronica Needa. (Details on the webpage.)

I'll be on-script as it's still early days in the life of this piece (so no press), but I hope to come out of the week with the play nailed. I look forward to to hearing some solid feedback, especially from the Saturday Q&A session where the three of us will be chatting to the audience.

It's unusual, maybe even unique, to get three Chinese diaspora writers and performers together like this in one venue in one week so please do try to make it as we might never get this chance again.

ANNA MAY WONG MUST DIE!
Written and performed by Anna Chen
Live music accompaniment from Charles Shaar Murray and Marc Jefferies
Thursday 10th November 19:30
Saturday 12th November 20:30
£8.50/£6.50
(There will be a Q&A after the Saturday performance)
Presented by True Heart Theatre at the New Diorama Theatre, NW1
More info here

REVIEWS AND MEDIA FOR ANNA CHEN

"Charming, witty and sophisticated ... I am entranced, won over."
The Sunday Times

"Hard hitting and often hilarious ... arresting ... engrossing and provoking."
The Scotsman

"... sensitive, intelligent ... insistent and illuminating."
The Herald

"It's the stuff of brilliant satire ... riveting."
The List

"Very witty."
Graham Norton

"I'm taking you shoplifting."
Jenny Eclair

“Cutting edge …”
Stewart Lee

More press here

Anna Chen's poem about the cuts: Big Society

A little bit of politics, laydees an' gennelmen with "Big Society: on a conversation at the Foundling Museum".

Recorded at Café Art during the St Ives Arts Festival September 2011. Written in June 2011.

St Ives Festival 2011: Intro and Kicking A Dinosaur video
St Ives Festival 2011 pix: Artists & Tate Balloons
St Ives Festival 2011 pix: The Island and St Nicholas Chapel

St Ives poetry: Anna Chen reads Kicking A Dinosaur

Madam Miaow is back from St Ives ... and this time it's personal.

I had a delightful time in St Ives but it was an odd one. It got off to a disastrous start with me trashing my utterly reliable X-reg Ford Focus on the A30 on a foggy Bodmin Moor, aquaplaning into the back of a Jeep when the traffic came to a sudden stop due to an accident.

The damage was light enough for us to be able to complete the journey but the insurance declared it to be a write-off due to the age of the car — an estimated £1.500 repair bill for smashed bonnet and light plus suspected trouble with the suspension.

So, of course, unless we wanted to end up sitting on the street with a ton of luggage, our return required a hire-car which required both parts of the driving licence plus utility bill which, luckily, like everyone else, I always carry about my person. Only joking. Said paperwork was locked up in the filing cabinet at home in London which required my mailing keys to a friend who had to mail it back recorded delivery, and then there was the expense of the hire-car ... it was a right mess.

Sometimes, though, the universe requires a sacrifice in order for wonderful things to happen. Steve McIntosh got me a little gig at the new Café Art (see video above) on top of my regular appearances at Bob Devereux's Norway Square and the Big Frug, plus I did a lively set for Charles Shaar Murray and Buffalo Bill Smith at their St Ives Arts Club evening.

Another unusual element of the my stay was making a programme for BBC Radio 4 on the town: St Ives and Me. My lovely producer Chris Eldon-Lee stayed with us so we could record and show one aspect of what the town is about from the inside. It was great fun and I found out a few more facts I'd never heard in a lifetime of visiting and living there, all of which will be in the programme (broadcast 11.30am Thursday 1st Dec 2011).

I may not have had the R&R time on the beach relaxing and reading a book that I usually try to squeeze in, but there were plenty of activities to make up for it. I took part in the St Ives School of Painting all-night drawing marathon — a cabaret of talent from locals and professionals and professional locals, which we had to draw. Have you ever drawn moving subjects? I hadn't but I did a good enough job for one of my drawings to sell the next day in the art sale of the night's work. A whole tenner! I have officially sold in St Ives. Whoop!

I waded through a sea of balloons at the Tate, tried out the numerous local ciders competing for attention in some booze festival, fetched fish from Newlyn for a fish blow-out including one of Denise's awesome paellas and, best of all, hung out with dear friends. And, as the ultimate postcard, I'll have my radio programme sharing the experience to remind me of my stay.

I'll be posting pix soon.

St Ives Festival 2011 pix: Artists & Tate Balloons
St Ives Festival 2011 pix: The Island and St Nicholas Chapel
St Ives Festival 2011: "Big Society: on a conversation in the Foundling Museum" video
Steve McIntosh's festival blog and pix here.

Takeaway review: Theatre Royal Stratford East

Takeaway
Theatre Royal Stratford East

The cast were fab, the energy level of the production was sky-high, but why was all that talent wasted on a heartless non-story about such an unsympathetic character?
Takeaway, a musical touted by some as a long-awaited breakthrough for UK Chinese, is a delight in so many ways that it's sad to report that where it failed, it bombed big time.

British Chinese are easy to please at the moment. Having been starved of representations of ourselves for so long, the sight of five, yes, FIVE Chinese out of the nine-strong cast almost had me on my knees singing the Hallelujah Chorus. With one black, two South Asians and one white actor, the self-styled multi-culti Arcola Theatre in Hackney should eat their hearts out and only wish they could aspire to the rainbow head-count over at Stratford East, given as they are to all-white casts in plays about the mysterious Orient (see More Light).

The lovely Stephen Hoo (a Ricki Beadle-Blair regular) stars as Eddie Woo in this tale of an East London lad working in his Dad's takeaway, The Happy Family. (May I just say that sitting this close to a set with a big menu staring back at me had me salivating for ribs throughout? I'm that suggestible.) The conceit in writer Robert Lee's premise is wonderful: the Chinese male, commonly defined in colonialist terms as feminised and either asexual or over-sexed without the adequate equipment to fulfil the drive, is represented here by a handsome dude who wants to become a sex-god showbiz star.

That the sex-god is old-timer Tom Jones (who was always a bit of a joke before his savvy son gave him a make-over in the 1980s and made him sing Prince's Kiss) knocks the gilt off the gingerbread a tad, but the overall "thrust" of the hi-energy staging provides hardly time for a quizzical "Hunh?" before we're caught up in the next dazzling showstopper.

But toe-tapping tunes (Leon Ko), beautiful lighting (Paul Anderson) and design (Foxton) plus imaginative choreography (Jason Pennycooke) aren't enough to divert you from the gaping hole at the centre of the piece.

Lee has cast his net across the culture and trawled a haul of lurid clichés which he plonks almost wholly unmediated on the stage. As I've said before, restating stereotypes is not the same as subverting them, and the show shoves one long tidal-wave of negative depictions at us, albeit dressed up cute. There's much pandering to gems such as "Made in China" being synonymous with tat despite high end technology being produced there; "Britain has the class, not China"; "small eyes, smaller dreams". And there are even several references to small dicks. Yaaaaaawn! It's not the size of the stereotypes, hun, it's what you do with them.

Full of self-loathing dressed up with a modicum of wit, the John Chinaman song and the Ching Chong segment at the funeral could all have been blistering satire shedding light on the nature of such negative depictions. But all I came out with was a sense that the writer is ashamed of being Chinese. Similarly, the dream sequence ending Act 1 was promising and looked as if it was going to undermine the stereotypes, but what it really told us was that Eddie has nightmares about being Chinese. The actor who had to deliver those self-abasing songs deserves a shout-out: Windson Liong as the uncommunicative chef at The Happy Family does a solid job and should be given tons of work after this. (In fact there are no weak links in the acting department: Ozzie Yue plays the most sympathetic character as the hard-working widower trying to raise his wastrel son. His song about his hopes and dreams for Eddie is touching. And Shelley Williams stands out as the comedy star, nipping effortlessly from accent to accent: her turn as the drunk priest was hilarious.)

Unintentional absurdities abounded, like Pik-sen Lim's Madam Chu having fled Hong Kong when the communists took power. Hong Kong?!! She had to flee to Britain from British-owned HK, ya see. Right.

What really killed the show stone dead for me, though, was the repeated depiction of anyone who cared about the Morecambe Bay cocklepickers as loons somehow deserving ridicule and loathing, reinforcing the notion that real Chinese don't value life. Twenty-one of our poorest human beings died doing a shit job for poverty pay: picking the cockles that probably ended up in the freezers of takeaway businesses like The Happy Family. A handful of campaigners ensured that they weren't written off as mere "criminals" in the way some of Woo's fellow UK petit bourgeoisie were attempting to do.

Lee sneers at and satirises Chinese activism when it barely exists as a force, at least in terms of meaningful numbers. We need more. Woo's takeaway might not have survived the Foot & Mouth Disease accusation by government and swathes of the media in 2000 that the Chinese caused the outbreak if it hadn't been for a few activists, such as the one played by Gabby Wong, going into action and saving his Dad's business. The resulting thousand-strong protest attracted international media attention and resulted in an abject public apology and vindication from the minister, Nick Brown.

What's American writer Robert Lee ever done for UK Chinese, and what does he know about us? What did Lee do when Morrissey called the Chinese a subspecies? What's he saying about the current wave of Yellow Peril attacks in the media? Maybe he's been brilliant, but I've never heard of him and I've been paying attention. All he can do is bellyache about bunny-boiler girlfriends and obsess over a granddaddy figure whom his lead character seeks to emulate. He can't even establish his protagonist as an original, a sui generis, only a copy. Jeez, no wonder we have no equivalent of Anna May Wong.

Still, what's the trashing of a few Chinese if it means casting yourself as Not Other in the eyes of those you envy?

If Eddie Woo failed his A levels at 21, is he just too thick to comprehend other ways of looking at the world? Solipsistic and incapable of forging relationships, he skates on the surface of life, lying to his Dad and girlfriends, rude to the kitchen help. Others with a deeper connection to the world are a puzzle to him. That would have been a subject worth pursuing dramatically, but the suspicion lingers that this flimsiest of stories is largely autobiographical: the writer's own flaws and limitations writ large on the stage with no prospect of examination or exploration.

Takeaway life is not all there is to the Chinese diaspora experience. Characters who reflect a bigger world out there and a richer world within are excoriated by a tiny Tory mindset which hasn't developed beyond X-Factor TV show values.

The greatest musicals leave you moved and feeling somehow bigger: Carousel, West Side Story, Sweeney Todd. Even Blood Brothers has a tragedic plot under the pizzazz. But I left the theatre feeling I'd been party to something small and mean. Takeaway shrieks a lot but has nothing to say. In comparison with what other practitioners of this genre have achieved, this is vacuous, visionless tat. "Made in China", indeed.

UPDATE: Thursday 30th June 2011 A rather limp response in the Guardian from writer Robert Lee who can't tell the difference between anger and disdain, and who pleads the "irony" defence. Still has nothing to say about mocking the 21 cocklepickers who died at Morecambe Bay, either. Sample joke: the emergency services didn't respond to the dying Chinese who were trapped on sandbanks with the sea rising because they couldn't understand their accents. How droll. Glad to see the old stereotypes alive and well at Stratford East.

Lucy Sheen reviews Takeaway here

Gwei Mui not impressed here

TAKEAWAY

Book and Lyrics by Robert Lee
Music by Leon Ko
Directed by Kerry Michael
Set & Costume Designer Foxton
Musical Director Robert Hyman
Choreographer Jason Pennycooke
Lighting Designer Paul Anderson
Sound Designer John Leonard
Associate Choreographer Farrah Hussain
Assistant Director Amy Ip
Casting Sooki McShane CDG and Lucy Jenkins CDG

Cast
Marcus Ellard, Stephen Hoo, Natasha Jayetileke, Pik-sen Lim, Windson Liong, Gloria Onitiri, Shelley Williams, Gabby Wong, Ozzie Yue.

Takeaway runs at the Theatre Royal Stratford East until 9 July 2011. Tickets are £16 – £24 (concessions available). To book tickets phone 020 8534 0310 or visit www.stratfordeast.com.

Photos here