How to write about Marina Abramović? How to write about Andrew Scott and what he pulls off in Vanya and I’m not just talking about his top. Did you know he plays all parts? I’ll say that again. He plays all of the parts. From the moment he walks on stage and flicks the lights, gets a laugh, gets us engaged and on his side and begins to speak, a conversation between Maureen and Michael and we’re in, we accept. A slight change of voice, character motifs to make the switch easier; Helena with her necklace, Ivan with his sunglasses, Crater with his face a bit screwed up. Ninety minutes of one man and a family in the countryside on a stage with his props, the ball Michael bounces, the scarf Sonia twists, the Belfast vowels for Alexander, Elizabeth who hardly speaks at all, the dog who appears very late in the action to whom he says where have you been and gets a laugh because where have any of them been but in our minds eye and his, this performer who treats us to the impossible. He has sex. Twice. He walks in on himself. He held us in his two hands as if he had hands of eight. And we believed him. And Abramović? The Royal Academy is become her playground till January next year and if you are passing through London or near enough to take a sharp turn, take it. There are naked people appearing in doorways and I noticed how the men walked between them, the women walked around. There is a room that invites you to take off your shoes, put down your bags, stand in rocks, sit on copper, lie with your head in a scoop of stone. There is a skeleton on a breathing woman, she blinks, the people watch. And there is Marina Abramović everywhere in luminous still meditation of thought and practice, the slow washing in a shower, the horse on which she celebrates her father, the flag she holds, the bones that pile, the waves that crash at her face, how her hair drops through the platform under blue sky, how she levitates in the kitchen and carries the milk, her screaming and slapping and the hours she spent staring, there is the table of things when she became object. Performance. Each according to its own, their bodies put through expression, these artists who give or they will die.
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I wonder if there is film of it. Must check.
Absolutely cannot wait to get my teeth into both. Thanks, Eleanor