Almeida Young Critics review The Paper Man
We had the distinct pleasure of welcoming the Almeida Young Critics to The Paper Man at Soho Theatre a couple weeks ago. The Almeida Young Critics are a group of 10 young people aged 15–25 who work with the Almeida over a year to produce responses to theatre across London.You can read more about the group here.
Here are a few of their responses to the show 👇
Sometimes touching, sometimes joyful, sometimes uncomfortable, and always complicated, I’m finding The Paper Man a tricky show to review. In some ways that implies that I found it a tricky show to watch, but I didn’t really, mostly. I found it funny and engaging and o p e n.
So what is The Paper Man about? It’s sort of about football. Originally, it was supposed to be about the eponymous ‘paper man’, Matthias Sindelar, once the world’s best footballer, who lead the Austrian team to victory against the Nazi orders. An apt story of resistance in a time of escalating far-right violence. The idea to make a show about Sindelar came from Lee Simpson, Improbable’s co-artistic director. Simpson cast four women to help him make and perform the show (Vera Chok, Jess Mabel Jones, Keziah Joseph, and Adrienne Quartly), and quickly found that they were resisting the direction he wanted for the show, uninterested in making ‘yet another show about a dead white man’.
I would say there are broadly three things going on in The Paper Man:
1. The telling of the story of Matthias Sindelar, complete with evocative shadow puppetry (Jess Mabel Jones) and mournful cello playing (Adrienne Quartly).
2. The telling of the performers’ own relationships with football, from Lee Simpson’s self-confessed addiction, to Jess Mabel Jones’ tale of pulling boys from the sidelines of school games.
3. The telling and showing of the making of the show.
The Paper Man shows its workings, laying out pieces of the puzzle one after another, saying ‘see, this is how we got to where we are now, and where we are now is how we got here’. I tend to feel some resistance towards work that places a lot of its emphasis on ‘process’. It can feel a bit unready, a bit like you’re seeing the bits you shouldn’t be seeing, stuff that’s unfinished. Or it can also feel like ‘oh wow what a beautiful, transformational, formative experience these guys have had in making this, which I didn’t get to be a part of, and what I’m seeing is that being condensed into 90 minutes and it feels slightly unsatisfying’. I think it’s really hard to pull off process heavy shows, that put the rehearsal and making on stage, but The Paper Man does it. It does it by making that its subject. Ultimately, for me, it’s a show about telling and making, about how we tell stories and make theatre now in 2019.
I read that The Paper Man was devised through using Open Space Technology, which is a system through which the work/agendas are shaped by the people involved – diminishing hierarchy and inviting fluidity and openness, a process called ‘self-organising’. No wonder then that it ended up like this, with lots of different things going on, different threads, and everyone seemingly talking about what they want to talk about. That really excites me as a working practice, but also slightly scares me as an audience member.
Unsurprisingly, given its genesis, it’s quite episodic. I’m not always sure of what each episode is doing, but I enjoy each one in some way. And even that thought I just had there is written in to the show. There’s a bit where the show’s sound designer Adrienne Quartly comes on stage to a song (I think it was Pet Shop Boys’ It’s A Sin) and holds up placards telling the story of how formative this song was for her as a teenager. At the end of that bit Lee Simpson comes on and says something along the lines of ‘ok well I’m not really sure why that bit’s relevant to the show…’. I mean, same, but I don’t mind that it was there because I really enjoyed it and found it touching and relatable (particularly as a queer woman I guess?). The point is, they know exactly what they’re doing. The show is constantly self-aware.
There’s clear affection between Lee Simpson and the other performers, and at the beginning and end of the show they really seem like a cohesive ensemble. But a lot of the time they do also seem like an entity separate from him. The Sindelar bits, largely led by Simpson, are the most traditionally ‘theatre-y’ bits. These sections are often very beautiful, but they do feel remote from the cast members’ own stories, which feel much more immediate and ‘real’ (whatever that means). It’s weird watching that dynamic between the two forms played out on stage, and I’m not entirely sure what the end result is and what I think about this opposition.
Looking back at the notes I took whilst watching I can see that I’ve scrawled ‘openness’ and ‘vulnerability’ several times. The heavy use of improvisation and the performers’ own biographies both feel open and vulnerable, and openness and vulnerability can really feel like endearing qualities in a performance. And The Paper Man and all its performers were, indeed, very endearing. That might sound a bit patronising, but I don’t mean it to be at all. There’s a real feeling of generosity.
It’s great to see a diverse group of women performers given prominence on stage, taking control of the narrative and being themselves unapologetically. But I do think that the show necessarily puts a lot on the women involved, asks them to share a lot of themselves. The pro of this is that it’s them taking up space and making their voices and narratives heard, but is that at the expense of giving part of themselves away? There’s a bit where the four women get audience members to pick personal questions out of a bowl for each performer to answer. Lee chooses not to take part in this exercise. The idea of these questions is that they make the participants vulnerable, which then creates a closeness between everyone involved. We, the audience, are involved insofar as we pick the questions, but we’re not giving anything of ourselves away. It’s a weird power dynamic, and this section, for all its generosity and openness and charm, does feel uncomfortable.
I really liked this show. It’s a living, breathing piece of work, a little bit different every night, always moving and changing. I’m a theatre-maker and, specifically, a dramaturg. I’m constantly examining my own and others’ working practices, so that inevitably made this an exciting show for me. It’s about what stories we choose to tell and how we tell them and what we as artists want to participate in and the work we want to make and how we value it. Listen, this review was squeezed out of a document containing over two thousand words of notes. There are bits in there like ‘the set is germane, playful yet somehow also ominous’, which I’m just not going to address now because this particular review doesn’t feel like the place for that sort of thing. Suffice to say that it’s a sticky, fun, complicated, show that does something very exciting in addressing how we make work in this current political and artistic moment. Just go and see The Paper Man so we can talk about it, yeah?
What can I say about the Paper Man? It wasn’t a traditional play but rather a real show. The performers play with the audience and with what is real and not. There was so much meat on the bone it is hard to shred down. Essentially, Paper Man is about 3 women reaffirming their identities. They do this by reclaiming a space traditionally dominated by white men, the stage. The arc of the story is that the Improbable co-Artistic Director Lee Simpson, has brought them together to tell the story of Matthias Sindelar captain of the Austrian football team in the 1920s and 30s. To the dismay of Lee, the 3 women attempt to reconstruct the story, to take control and reuse Sindelars story for their own purpose. They will not just tell another white man’s story; instead they will rebel.
One of the ways they deconstruct Sindelar’s story, is by giving each character the spot light to relay a football memory. Not shying away from the stereotype that women don’t like football. Keziah told her story whilst playing football with Lee the only white male in the show, who ironically cut the story short by walking away. Vera Chok’s narrative was through a silent dance, the music trapped in her headphones, made it strangely moving to watch her jump from one side of the stage to the other, with just her breath as music. They were experimenting with how you tell a story, the power of the narrator and the different forms one uses for articulate truth.
For me, what made this creatively disjointed performance click, was in one of the many moments the actors broke the forth wall. In this specific scene, they turned to the audience and asked them to take a question out of a hat to then ask it to one of the actors. So, Keziah cheekily ran up the stairs to her mum who was sitting in the back, having the best time, and asked her to choose a question, which she then asked Jess: Do you think humour can easily cross the line to be offensive? Jess responded quickly with a no, and then said it depends who is saying the joke and then retracted the latter and stuck with the original no. For me, this specific question and this specific answer summarised the play. This question serendipitously responded to an earlier scene, whereby, Jess, Keziah and Vera, dressed in their black and white football gear, wearing Hitler’s moustache, dancing to heavy grime music and on occasion incorporating the Nazi salute with the Eminem rap battle arm bounce, while the sound technician, Adrienne Quartly, held up a sign saying Feminazi.
Writing it down plainly it does seem like a cause of concern, and probably makes you think- that is the definition of humour becoming offensive. But to be in the room and to have the previous scenes amounting to this moment, it made it almost revolutionary rather than baselessly offensive. For me, they were reclaiming an insult thrown left, right and centre by misogynists around the country. To me, it was a big ‘fuck you’ to the suppressors, oppressors, fascists and so was an empowering act to witness. 3 women from African, Chinese and British decent were having so much fun by using dancing to dominate the stage and show that they are proud of their feminism, owning the insult and in doing so ridiculing it. It made me question, what is offensive? What is humour? What is a revolutionary act? Obviously, this could have gone unbelievably badly and most of the time, it is the oppressors who feel comfortable enough to make offensive hollow jokes. But when executed well, it is liberating.
Similarly, Sindelar, protested on the football stage. Sindelar was told to loose or draw to the Nazis but refused and consequently won against the Germans. Sindelar then walked to the Nazi delegation and danced a solo, silent, Viennese Waltz. For me both acts of protest were extremely powerful, they didn’t chain themselves to objects, shout, resort to violence, or remain subdued but rather, they translated their frustration and presented their identities through something joyful, un-seemingly political and in a way silent. For Sindelar, some believe this led to his assassination of Carbon- monoxide poisoning a few months later. Witnessing the Feminazi dance in this context I was reminded of the freedom we have on stage and in this country, our lives aren’t on the line, but we still have causes to fight for and to play with. We can have the last laugh.
A Paper Man is clearly a feminist piece but also has the bravery to critise itself. They recognise the issues with white feminism, with a moving and deliberately awkward scene where Keziah tells Jess and Vera that the first woman football player was in fact a black woman called, Emma Clarke in 1800s as opposed to the famous white female football player Lily Parr in the 1920s, who was their poster girl for feminism and football throughout the show. Jess and Vera respond to Keziah’s sheepish reveal by saying, ‘we can’t tell everyone’s story’. Mic drop. Advocacy has its limits and that boundary is race. The scene ends with the 3 seemingly politically conscious women, shying away from the issue of white feminism and institutional racism, they have a cautious disagreement and each abort the stage. This conflict further highlights how complicated all the issues the play addresses are. There are fine lines between feminist fractions, between experiences, between doing something right and doing something wrong, between comedy and offense. Having fun and rebelling. We are all on the brink of paper thin boundaries.
My thoughts of the Paper Man…..on paper.
Improbable co-Artistic Director Lee Simpson, a former-football-addict wanted to retell Austrian footballer Matthias Sindelar stand against fascism in 1939 Nazi Germany, ‘Nazi and football’ was the premise, however, the thanks to his diverse and outspoken four-female co-stars, it was reduced into a small sub-plot. . Keziah, Jess, Vera and Adrienne richly layered the narrative with intimate discussions and debates, about race, stereotypes, and of course gender. Creating a half-acting, half-Q & A, participatory political production with backstage segments that ultimately felt like a conversational social commentary.
As the cast reviews their own progress in between scenes, Vera, dressed in black sportswear asks ‘If we need another show about a dead white man?’ whilst casually stretching. In the era of #MeToo, gender pay gap scandals, Irish Abortion Referendum, the answer points to no. An answer that the show illustrates with fun quirky flare, whereby several narratives are told in conjunction with Sindelar’s rise and rebellion. This features monologues of football memories, a sort of backstage expose in which the cast eats, changes and discuss the show and its topics; culminating into a commentary on racial and gender inequalities, with the treatment of football greats Emily Clarke and Lily Parr symbolising the difference of ‘girly goals’ and ‘boys goals’. I’m aware of the oxymoron, illustrating how history glorified dead white men, to contrasts how other greats are discarded due to their race and gender; as to just producing a show that focuses on those unrecognised heroes and heroines in their own accord. However, the irony is so creatively executed, that it powerfully exemplifies the injustices, helping to make the Paperman one of the most idiosyncratic shows that I have seen.
The exposed set of a white framed pillar, with wooden stools scattered across the stage also instrumental to the play’s authenticity. Much like the narrative, a layering process ensued; the cast overtly constructed the set in front of the audience, during scenes. They added white curtains, tinsel, created paper projections of the dancers to the soothing violins and the visuals of fluorescent lighting, creating a lively disco atmosphere. Even the sound designer is on stage throughout the play, dressed understatedly, like the rest of the female cast who were in either jeans, sportswear and plain tops. The DIY feel to the set design mirrored the show’s experimental essence, producing an immersive environment. As an audience, you were no longer just watching a social commentary, but also a participant. This added a lively unpredictability to the show, making the skilled actors think and react quickly, with impressive comical timing.
The show’s endearingly immature tones were cleverly offset with transitions in composition that forebode upcoming segments of thought-provoking conversations about racial and gender inequalities. The simplicity of Lee, a middle aged man, in jeans and a shirt, just standing to narrate the details of the Nazi’s systematic killing of Jewish people was an unsettling reminder of the two sides of humanity.
The show’s premise of ‘Nazis and football’ is not something I would’ve relied on for laughs, but laugh I did, along with everyone else. There were a few times however, where boundaries were crossed. Imagine, one minute you are swaying in a fun sing-along, then next minute there is an unnecessarily overly sexualised dance of three 20-something females dressed as referees, with Hitler mustaches, finishing off with a Nazi-salute.
So word of warning, the Paper Man might not be everyone’s taste. For some, it could be a crude kerfuffle, for others bold and brilliant. For me, it was the latter; complex topics told with an authentic accessibility.
