A Culture Vulturess speaks

I have been the lucky imbiber of much culture recently:

• The Walworth Farce at the National Theatre.   Go see!  Go see!  It's fabulous - clever, breakneck and funny, gradually unraveling into something more unsettling.   I really enjoyed it.  And then drank a medicinal whiskey or two in the bar at the BFI next door afterwards. 

• A concert by Kensington Symphony Orchestra at St John's, Smith Square.  They played Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe - I thought the cascades of notes sounded great in that big washy acoustic, but I'm told it all nearly came apart at the seams.  Although to what extent that comment was influenced by either false modesty or condescension (as in, "it may have been tolerable to a talentless mortal such as yourself, but a more discerning ear would have realised it was actually rubbish") on the part of the commenter, I cannot say*.  Next up, the Britten variations on a theme of Frank Bridge, which has some exceedingly difficult corners in it, but they did make a lovely sound.  Slightly too many variations, if you ask me, but then he was only a wee nipper when he wrote it, so you can't really blame him for a bit of youthful enthusiasm (plus I was a bit cold and tired so may have been lacking patience).  Apparently he wanted to name the variations after aspects of Bridge's character.  What a terrible idea.  Anyway, they finished up with the full version of de Falla's Three-cornered hat, which was suitably entertaining.  And then I went and shoehorned myself into a microscopic pub with the whole of the orchestra, in order to tuck away a little more medicinal whiskey.

• Platform - a film by Chinese director Jia Zhang Ke.  Described on the cover as an assured social satire.  Described by me as... um... well...  long, for one thing.  It followed a performing arts group for about 15 years as they gradually westernised in the post-Mao world.  To begin with they put on suitably approved productions before moving into pop music and spangly disco routines as time went on.  And they copped off with each other a bit, as these performing arts types do.  There was a trauma over an abortion, an illiterate cousin who signs all his rights away at the mine, a breakdown of the tour bus in the middle of nowhere.  All fascinating little pieces in their own right, but without any particular narrative thread running through.  I would have said that you could have put all these pieces in any order, except you definitely couldn't because of the sense of "progress" driving through in the background, which I suppose was the whole point - illustrating the passage of time without the need for giant labels on everything.  It finished (well, petered out) with one of the old troupe dandling a baby over a gas stove.  Not in a "set fire to the baby" way.  Just in an "oh what fun look at the flame, baby" way.   (Which given a small error of judgement could have been a set-fire-to-the-baby way after all, but didn't turn out to be, fortunately. )  No doubt my parents will now rush out to obtain this film, as they are drawn to films with subtitles, non-professional actors, no discernible storyline, etc etc.  They took me to one once (I'm inclined to say it was Belgian although I really can't recall anything but the pervading sense of gloom it engendered) which followed a girl living a shitty life in a shitty trailer park who had a shitty job and couldn't even manage to successfully gas herself (the gas ran out just after she sat down waiting to die).  The high spot of the film was watching her boil and eat a hard boiled egg in what I swear was real time.

* I could, but it would sound rude.