Lulu

Before this evening I had never heard of The Tiger Lillies - a macabre band that brought their grotesque ballads to the theatre stage in Lulu: A Murder Ballad. This was all part of a theatre-reviewing workshop that one of my tutors, Paul Prescott organised with Shakespeare scholar and Guardian theatre critic Andrew Dickson.

Annoyed at this photo. It looked fine on my camera but I didn't realise how out of focus it was. Ugh. This is a taster of what we experienced, here in the picture is Tiger Lillies frontman Martyn Jacques, complete with shabby suit and make-up

It was all so exciting! During the workshop we discussed what a 'review' really was - an opinion? A judgment? A recommendation (or not)? We were then given different reviews of the same play (Tennant's Richard II at the RSC) and compared them, discussed different readerships, different focuses, it was all really fun. Then Andy gave us some really helpful tips for reviewing and sent us off to see Lulu to send a review back to him.

Lulu, inspired by Wedekind's Lulu, was the morbid story of a girl born in the slums of Berlin, sold by her father to numerous men and being passed on from man to man, reaching the pinnacle of Paris society, and then returning to the gutter on the streets of London. It was certainly an interesting production, there definitely isn't much like it out there. The Tiger Lillies, a three-man band, performed a variety of instruments on a rather small foregrounding stage while dancer Laura Caldow silently embodied the character of Lulu behind a screen of projected images. I'm not sure how I felt about it all but it was interesting to observe the inversion - normally a static set and kinetic actors became a kinetic set and almost utterly static actors.

Wasn't so keen on the production itself - I just didn't feel like I 'got' it. Interesting discussion on whether, if you don't get the director's intentions, does that mean the play has failed? Managed to get my review in at around 11.30 (most critics have to get their reviews in BY 11.30pm that same evening) but I was a bit annoyed at myself. Despite not liking the play, I couldn't quite figure out why, and my review kind of reflected that in that it had no overarching concluding opinion. Oh well, something to learn from.