it doesn’t matter how well written the ideas are if you can’t hear them and the magic at the heart of “The Real Thing” is lost. It isn’t there any more. I know what I love in the play because I’ve read it and I’ve seen it, but I wouldn’t have known it from this bad production
The play takes place in India, a quest for the truth behind three paintings of Flora and the truth about her friendship with an Indian artist Nirad Das (Firdous Banji) in 1930, months before her death. In the present (well, in the 1980s), Eleanor is joined by biographer Eldon Pike (Neal Huff) and Nizad’s son Anish (Bhavesh Patel) in a search for the truth behind the paintings.
The album is here because the tracks can function as songs, without really knowing what’s happening, just as separate songs, great songs with great words, lots of jukes. “There is no plane, no pilot, it is a thought experiment…” Perhaps. but one with a heart.
He only performed two songs but the great vocalese Jon Hendricks, at the age of 92, came onto Van Morrison’s stage at the Theater At Madison Square Garden, and stole the show from under his nose
Darkside – Tom Stoppard And Pink Floyd – A radio play that works as a record album that works as a radio with Stoppards rat-a-tat dialogue and concise storytelling. No, it isn’t “The Invention Of Love” but then neither is “The Coast Of Utopia”.
Love Is Love – Hello Steve Reich James Murphy for DFA Remix – David Bowie – Sure, he’s using an idea from Reich, but the way the clapping becomes the beat blows me away every time
Winner – Tom Stoppard – One of the most thrilling musical-theatrical experiences of the year has been the great Czech-English Playwright’s comedy about moral ethics inspired by Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon, Darkside.
If Hopsin was a little better he would be major, when he is in the mood, as he is on this sideswipe at current rappers, he is very aggressively funny.
Life Round Here – James Blake And Chance The Rapper – Haunting and beautiful, but of course that comes on the James Blake label, what doesb’t is Chance The Rapper, atonal rap so weird and in place – A-
“Who’s to say he didn’t save a serial killer? Or a mad bomber on a date with destiny? Or just people who fuck you up normally? Geography teachers or ticket inspectors or boyfriends who shag your best friend? People who write the small print, see over the penalties? People who go ‘I’m telling you for your own good’ and ‘can’t you read we’re closed’?”
The problem here is much the same as the problem on the entire album: the songs aren’t there. Oh the singing is powerful and felt, the instrumentation first rate, the atitude a poerfect mesh of here and now and then, but the song can’t sell it – B-
The greatest playwright of the 20th century writes a radio play incorporating elements of Dark Side Of The Moon. Voices by the likes of Bill Nighy and Rufus Selwell who act out thought experiments (like the sort you learnt in ethics class back at college, over the album played with most of the vocals removed in celebration of its 40th Anniversary. So where’s “Money”, eh? – B+
