New home for all of my work & tweets

From today onwards Emmabarnett.org will be the new digital home of all my writing, broadcasting and tweeting. Please click on the link above to see my work.

Cheers,

Emma

Twitter got me.... retiring this blog four years on

Having realised that it is nearly a year since I last updated this blog, I think it’s time to officially pen a long-overdue retirement letter.

It has served me well since 2006 when I created it as a journalism student. However, now all I seem to have the time or inclination to update regularly is my Twitter feed. Communicative technology has moved on and happily, so have I.

I will continue to keep my story feed flowing at the top of this page, publishing links to my latest articles, which can also be found on my Telegraph journalist page.

Many thanks indeed,

Emma Barnett

Site specific theatre is the future

Sixteen is an unforgettable social and theatrical experience. Would I recommend to it to everyone? Probably not, but being about a council estate, while being staged in an actual council estate, makes this a gritty and all too real experience for even the most broad-minded.

It’s the eve of October’s 16th birthday and the official opening of the Kensal Youth Club. Raised in an illegal squat by her failed actor father Mikey and failed chef aunt Beth, the squat has finally become legitimate, and trying to become the heart of the estate’s community.

However, there is a nasty undertone to the preparations, as the severe bruises all over October’s body take centre stage, tacitly and then later, loudly.

Paedophilia and incest are unpalatable topics society wants to bury and forget. And yet in Sixteen, we are forced to confront it as a possible reality between father and daughter, Mikey and October.

Tension mounts as October’s mother, Oleta, who abandoned her in the squat at birth, returns as a relatively high-flying journalist, with twisted messages for the nest she left behind.

SPID specialises in site-specific theatre and it’s a very powerful tool. By staging this play in the heart of a real-life council estate, when the Kensal Youth Club comes under attack from angry youths outside, the audience sat around the performance space on old sofas and mattresses, feel just as vulnerable as the characters. The environment forces the spectators to become part of the action and removes the usual comfort blanket of being a bystander.

Sixteen is violent, emotional and uncomfortable. All the things a play sometimes needs to be. You go to the theatre to be removed from your world and transported elsewhere. This really does that and makes you think about other parts of society. Mark Frost delivers a fantastic portrayal of Mikey, while Hoda Bentaher’s October is a heart-renderingly damaged performance. Unfortunately the only role which didn’t seem to gel narratively or seem at all conceivable was Laurietta Essien’s Oleta.

Sixteen, written by Helena Thompson, is showing at Kensal House Estate, Ladbroke Grove, July 23-August 28.

Review published Monday August 3 2009 in The Stage newspaper

State of the Rag

Just been to see State of Play with Aussie bad boy Russell Crowe and her Maj, Helen Mirren.

I actually really enjoyed it, despite Ben Affleck’s regular occurrence on screen. In fact he was rather good – although his lips seem to have got thinner and he’s grown a facial wart.

The plot is gripping and as a journo, it makes you love the old skool investigative hacks even more. The blogger is ripped apart – oh the irony as I post these thoughts on the very same mocked vehicle – and the revenue strain newspapers are facing is communicated throughout. The conflict of newspapers’ destinies mixed in with the constant temptation to lower editorial standards to sell copies and buck the downward revenue trend, is all packed in.

Except Mirren really isn’t a very convincing editor at all. Rarely am I disappointed by Dame Helen, but in this film she is too weak and too exaggerated in the same breath.

But she sure scrubs up well – as I saw with my very own eyes at the Baftas three nights ago. Just thought I would drop that in there….

Crowe is cast perfectly and leads a strong plot magnificently. Go see and judge for yourself.

Wanted: Sexy, Powerful, Haunting Hedda

I am reviewing plays for TimeOut now, which is great. Went to see Hedda Gabler at the Courtyard Theatre, Hoxton, last week and still not a patch on the ultimate Gabler - Amanda Donohoe [pictured] - Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre, October 2001.

 

Hedda Gabler, the female Hamlet, conjures up images of lust, manipulation and a terrible descent into despair. Ibsen’s masterpiece may have been published in 1890, but his powerful protagonist will always pull the crowd. Gabler returns from a honeymoon tour with her new husband, the bumbling academic, George Tesman, only to find life as Mrs Tesman is not quite all she hoped for. An old admirer reappears, her husband’s academic rival, Eilert Lovborg, and Gabler’s jealousy is ignited by his spiritual connection with a sweetly innocent Mrs Elvsted and the success of his latest book. Fully consumed, she sets about bringing everyone down.

 

Each director creates their own Gabler, however Dean Taylor’s vision lacks the subtlety which gives the character its enduring allure. Gabler (Josephine Short) begins so ostensibly tortured that she burns out almost immediately. You want to see her gradually descend into no longer being the mistress of her own thoughts. Instead Short delivers it all up-front and the audience is patronised by a recurring eerie piano soundtrack that plays each time she is moved to destruction. She does however, have the looks and full voice to give the character presence.

 

By far the strongest performance comes from Lovborg (Greg Cheverall) who beautifully nails the odd appeal of a clever man clinging to sanity’s edge. The lovesick Mrs Elvsted (Sarah Fortune) and the imposing Judge Brack (Daniel Jennings) are also convincing. However ultimately it’s Hedda you come to see and this delivery just doesn’t pack the punch it ought.

 http://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/event/134991/hedda-gabler.html

Skiing Break

Skiing time for me... so anon.

Catch you in a week.....

Branded Humour

Two nights ago I had the pleasure of hearing the wonderfully droll Jo Brand at a WACL (Women in Advertising and Communications – London) event at Le Meridien Hotel on Piccadilly.

It was my first time at a WACL event and to my pleasant surprise, men were allowed in too. I had visions of being back at school – no boys allowed – but thankfully some testosterone was permitted – even if they found Brand’s humour quite hard to stomach at times. I liked watching the blokes squirm a little.

Brand was on true top form, cracking her usual self deprecating range of jokes – my personal favourite being her gag about plaiting her unshaved bikini line before a charity swim.

I then met her properly outside having a fag and we bonded over Dulwich village - where she lives and my boyfriend is from. “Big up the south east London massive” was our parting phase despite my Mancunian roots…

She is a legend.

And by the way, WACL is cool. I direct that at all those male media types who joke that it stands for wide arsed something lesbians. Fact.