That unnamed thing that comes after love
I've seen a couple of things recently that haven't really hit the spot with me. Ring at BAC made out like it was going to be scary and then wasn't, Money The Gameshow was so gameshowy that the serious bits were lost. In hindsight, even Port only made me warm and fuzzy because of its geography. I had started to worry that I was hitting one of those yeah whatevs phases of my career as an audience member, where nothing gets me off for a few months. And then today I saw Mydidae.
It's a proper drama about serious things performed in a tiny room with real nakedness. I'm pretty certain there was some fake wee but other than that it was all REAL and LIVE and CLOSE and IMPORTANT. And I was absolutely spellbound. It's so easy to forget, when you're as fickle and sensationalist as I am, that all you really need is a wonderful script and some incredible actors. Mydidae had all of that, even before anyone took their clothes off. Two people and one relationship and all the history and closeness and pain that lives in it. It was an hour and a quarter of the most compelling drama I think I've ever seen. And yes I know I don't go to very many drama-y plays but that's still saying something so shut up. Seriously. So good. I don't want to say too much about the story because the show is one long surprise and I want to keep it that way, but it's fair to say that it left me reeling a bit. (I don't even know what that means really. Is it a fishing thing? It definitely left me feeling a bit spinny and out of control, so maybe it is a fishing thing.) I walked over the bridge to the Hayward in a bit of a trance, but was slowly rebuilt into a human being by THIS BEAUTIFUL THING by Leo Villareal (that's a person, not a football team).
It's called Cylinder II, the first exhibit in Light Show, and you can't tell from the photo but it moves like the most gorgeous cascade of rain and fireworks and shooting stars and neurons and waterfalls and big eyes and arrows and sucky growy things and tidal waves and sci-fi iris scanners and it's just the most engaging, the most calming thing I've seen in a very long time. I returned to it after looking round the rest of the exhibition and heard a young couple having the most intense post-break-up talk, about how she wants to go travelling and it's important that she does it on her own and how he just wants her to be happy and would never hold her back and about how they both thought that the other was the person they had always wanted to be with until it turned out that they didn't. Every so often one of them would say "Shall we keep moving?" and the other would reply "No, it's nice here, looking at this together."
