Everyman steps beyond

We finally got to see the NT production of Everyman on the South Bank this week. Tickets have been scarce and I had to book about three months ahead. Ironically, there was huge array of HD production vehicles and a large satellite dish parked alongside the theatre because there's to be a live broadcast version to cinemas around now.

The story is quite well-known; a 500-year old morality play about how Everyman (everyone) is called to their God by the agent of Death and judged by their good deeds. The Everyman in the play wants other allegorical supporters to speak in his favour, but Fellowship, Family, Material Goods and Knowledge won't play along. It goes a bit guilt-trippy Catholic after that, with Penance and Confession making appearances.

At least, it does in the original version.

This is a bangin' overhaul set in a clubby metropolis, where Everyman is having a big party for his 40th birthday accompanied by the longest line of cocaine it is possible to imagine.

Naturally - and no spoiler because it's the premise of the piece - there are consequences and a dry-witted Death appears complete with a police forensic outfit.

The modernised script has been written by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and Chiwetel Ejiofor impressively plays Everyman.

There's some stabbingly good lines in this version, which has removed much of the religion and secularised many of the discussions, whilst keeping a clean version of a God in the mix.

We get more about how Everyman is spending the earth and the pervasiveness of materialism. The Judgement by Another has been largely removed although Death as an Agent inevitably persists.

It isn't supposed to be a realistic story, although I found the energetic Ejiofor character difficult to pinpoint. He's supposed to be hyper-rich in this modern take, starting out in a smooth-looking suit. His friends for his birthday bash don't quite carry the same haute couture and it's difficult to tell the doorman from the divine. But then, I suppose Everyman is also supposed to get stripped back to his essence?

Because it starts with Ejiofor living it really large, there's something of a challenge to balance a tone which already begins at a maximum volume.

And there's almost a life lesson, in that the original play would get the audience to think about their own condition and path through the world. This version emphasised the consumerism and perhaps became altogether more flighty as a consequence.

I'll put this into the 'Glad I've seen it' category.

#yarnbomb exploits of @ukmixtape for #edfringe

We were #yarnbombed by the Button Theatre on twitter a couple of days ago and decided it was only right to respond.

A certain person will recognise these crazy characters standing in for the Mixtapers. It's best to look at the real poster as well to get the best impression.

I can hardly tell the difference.


Get tickets to see your new Mixtape friends:
Underbelly Booking Office
Edinburgh Fringe Booking Office
Live Theatre Preview

a short video explaining @ukmixtape ahead of #edfringe

I suppose I should mention the posters and flyer somewhere too.

Meantime, get tickets to see your new Mixtape friends:
Underbelly Booking Office
Edinburgh Fringe Booking Office
Live Theatre Preview

Amy

I'd expected the movie 'Amy' to be some sort of bio-pic, and was surprised to see it was well-cut raw footage of Amy Winehouse. It describes the progressive toxicity of fame and its effect on the singer. There's plenty of happy camcorder extracts in the first section but as the quality of the footage improves she becomes more famous but more troubled.

There's telling early cutaway scenes of her talking to camcorder saying she's not sure she can handle fame and wants to just make music. It's obviously un-scripted, unlike many of today's pop stars who have had the media training to spout on about their latest single and tour dates.

Later a pernicious introduction of drugs into Amy's world and the sadly familiar story of 'they want piece of me' as she is loaded into tours and record contracts. The documentary leaves the viewer to draw conclusions about some of those close to her and their motivations.

Throughout there's plenty of opportunity to examine Amy's twisty lyrics and their frequently autobiographical nature.

Included are some great live performance extracts both in the studio and on tour which later shows things start to go wrong spiralling towards the sad ending.

I'll prefer her rainy performances of Glastonbury of 2007, when she actually performed twice (Pyramid and Jazz) compared to her notoriety in 2008 where we stood at the back of a huge crowd many of whom were there expecting a sideshow as well as the performance.

getting my summer on?

On the way to a nearby town, the main motorway is coned for most of its length, whilst it is made into a Smart Motorway. Then a short gap of normal motorway (no cones) and then another set of cones for the last 4-5 miles. Turn off the motorway and the route towards the exit has a separate set of cones because of a separate roundabout upgrade. I don't think it will be a smart roundabout, but who knows?

Anyway, eventually I arrive in the actual town centre (with its confusing multi storey parking) and finally emerge on foot into the shopping area.

"This is the place to get your summer on" proclaim the signs, although the actual mall appears to be suffering from the traffic blockade. I idly counted nine closed shops in the first few minutes walkabout. An area on the floor which once sported a concession stand now has a kind of green stain, left behind when stand holders had moved away. Adjacent, the bank has gone and next door the opticians proclaims in large print that it has moved.

Amazon Prime and internet shopping march on, whilst this mall becomes troubled with a combination of the current poor road access and the general economy. Yet, curiously, across the road there's a massive hole where another new store is supposedly being built.

wheat and poppies

Something I notice if I'm out on my regular bike routes is the way that the landscape changes. Both the street scenes as people wear different clothes but more dramatically the fields which entirely change according to where they are in the seasonal calendar.

This field still has wheat growing, but a couple of other recently abundant large fields I pass are now populated mainly by crows, scavenging the aftermath of the farmer's tractor.

And this year, along the edges, someone seems to have turned the poppy count up to a particularly high setting just about everywhere.

the opposite of lightning

Here in rashbre central we've a fair collection of iPhones, iPads and similar. There's some of the old kind with the long connector and also the newer type with the small connector.

What is annoying is that even the small connector type doesn't always work to recharge or communicate.

We get those 'accessory won't charge' messages sometimes or the device just sits on a connector without showing the lightning flash symbol.

There's various reasons - a few of the cables are probably emergency purchases from 'non Apple' suppliers and so they don't have the right microchip built into them.

Then there's the charging from a USB strip, which won't provide as much power as one of those little power blocks provided with a new device.

I'm sure Apple would say its all because they have made the cable intelligent, with digital signalling multiplexed via a micro controller in the cable. I'd have thought that the two basic functions of charge and sync (the basic four wire connection) would have been made persistent, but apparently not. Default connection is 'Fail Dumb'.

It's plain annoying though, having to retry various cables and power chargers to find a combination that works.

a few ants short of a picnic

Inevitably, a few days of bright sunshine here and the wildlife comes out in force.

The bees that enjoy one of the bright areas of our garden provide a continual hum from their contented buzzing. But it's indoors that we have had a small ant incident.

They have become very organised and somehow managed to drill their way through a window frame, making a small gateway from their outdoor world (acceptable and probably aerating the soil) to the indoor world (no, no, no) where they had started some so far fruitless expeditions.

I've had to discourage them, creating a small amount of ant carnage, and it does seem to have worked.

The thing I can't understand is that slight sensation on the skin after they've been around.

It's like an ant is walking around on me, but when I look there's none there.

Well, most of the time, anyway.

I suppose I should call it a manual?

It's ages since I read an actual computer manual. It was always considered something of a last resort.

It used to be an indication of the cost of the software purchased that there would be one, two or even more manuals included. I seem to remember that Avid's video editing software came with about five and the option to buy another four or five for the more advanced functions. Even Apple's Logic Pro had a good kilo of paper in the box.

It probably goes back to the original IBM PC, which came with several big manuals. Each was provided in a slip box and with a ring binder so that the pages could be easily updated.

Nowadays an Apple Watch has more raw compute power and connectivity, yet comes with a mere leaflet to explain the use.

Back to my current manual reading.

I've been using Adobe Lightroom for at least six months and consider myself pretty adept at most of its functions. But I splashed out on a real paper guidebook by Scott Kelby for around £30, which has a kind of old-school heft in its 500 or so pages.

And I've found it to be genuinely useful. It's not set out like a reference manual, more a guide to use, with some quite chatty sections explaining the clever bits.

I keep finding out little shortcuts that actually save me time and it somehow doesn't feel quite like reading a - you know - manual.

revisiting Dada-ist album covers

Even the new Apple service still uses the word 'Mixtape' to describe some of its generated playlists.

There's a couple of things missing now, compared with the old days of physically recording each track so that they could be played sequentially.

One was sitting listening to the recording process. Now it's just drag and drop.

Another was designing a cover for the tape. Some just had scribbled track listings whilst others might get the full graphics and Letraset treatment.

Increasingly physical media just shows a picture of the artist but I thought here I'd resurrect the old random Dadaist Rock Album creation method, last used here in 2008.

Wikipedia
1. Go to Wikipedia and hit "random".The first article title is the name of the artist.

Random Quotations
2. Go to "Random Quotations". The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page will be the title of the new album.

Flickr
3. Go to Flickr and click on "Explore the Last Seven Days". The third Creative Commons picture will be the album cover.

So, here for a laugh, is one of the old Dada-ist ones...although some might prefer the term anti-art for this particular not-even-square design.

Udderbelly in the sunshine in preparation for @FollowTheCow

As well as the moody street pictures, we at Mixtape took a few at the Udderbelly on the South Bank the udder day. It was a kind of pre kickoff fest in the Love Shack bar.

For anyone that hasn't visited the Udderbelly in the South Bank, it's good fun, even to go there for a drink in the Beach bar or other areas. We were able to meet a few other shows too, and took a few joint pictures. Here's a few:

First of all, the Houses of Parliament, with a Golden Mixtape, naturally.

Maybe to add a piece of blatant Mixtape advertising outside the London Eye. We did take some others too where we'd ahem replaced the C*ca C*la signage,which is the Eye's current sponsor.

Then there's the actual shows:
64 Squares

Brute:

The Eulogy of Toby Peach:

And an early sighting of a purple cow with a golden mixtape. There will be others, I'm sure.

@ukmixtape is staying 6mm from the bleed line for #edfringe

It's surprising how the #edfringe deadlines are rapidly approaching. Today was another one for a leaflet insert. We'd got one kind of graphic and needed another one, so some hasty editing was required. At least there's plenty of pictures from the photo-shoot last Sunday, and most of them are respectable.

We've got some moody indie band shots:

Some well-behaved '50s pub scenes:

Oops, I meant well-behaved and 1950s.

A few cake shots:

Until it started to get out of hand:

So we moved to the boy band pictures:

And formed the girl band as well:

It will take a little time to get to the location shots from the river's bridges and the seaside, so here's one of those wall shots to keep things going:

Next is the fun of A5 leaflet production. We must remember to allow for the 3mm bleed line on all margins and another 3mm for the edge line as well as setting the output to CMYK. Print ready PDFs will be produced.

Now it's time to break open Indesign.

Get tickets to see your new Mixtape friends:
Underbelly Booking Office
Edinburgh Fringe Booking Office
Live Theatre Preview