{"id":12796,"date":"2025-01-07T16:34:38","date_gmt":"2025-01-07T15:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12796"},"modified":"2025-01-07T16:34:38","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T15:34:38","slug":"blue-now-aviva-studios-reviewed-by-clare-patterson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12796","title":{"rendered":"Blue Now, Aviva Studios, reviewed by Clare Patterson"},"content":{"rendered":"

A moving live staging of Derek Jarman’s intimate final work<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Blue Now | Aviva Studios | 8th<\/sup> December 2024
Reviewed by Clare Patterson<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over three decades after the original release of Derek Jarman\u2019s Blue <\/em>(1993), director Neil Bartlett brings a live stage performance of Jarman\u2019s visionary final film to Aviva Studios. Sitting down in the theatre, I wonder what the \u201cnow\u201d is in Blue Now<\/em>, a film situated pointedly during the AIDS crisis, but which also has endless thematic resonances with our current moment. Pandemics, uncaring governments, genocides (one of the few changes to Jarman\u2019s script is to add Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan, and Congo, when Jarman mentions the war in Bosnia), and a public climate of homophobia and transphobia are just a few of the echoes from Jarman\u2019s time to ours. Are we here to draw these out, or simply to sit with Jarman\u2019s work now, together, and let it wash over us?<\/p>\n

A cast of contemporary art, theatre and poetry\u2019s most luminous queer voices – Travis Alabanza,\u00a0Julie Hesmondhalgh,\u00a0Jay Bernard\u00a0and\u00a0Joelle Taylor \u2013 speak Jarman\u2019s script, taking over from the original film cast of Tilda Swinton, Nigel Terry, John Quentin and Jarman himself. The performers sit bathed in orange light, reading from scripts like an orchestra following a libretto, their voices forthright and unwavering and with a pleasing variety of accent. Accompanying them live is cellist Lucy Railton, whose highly skilled playing provides mournful accompaniment, long, deep notes of heartbreaking intensity. This is soundtracked by original composer Simon Fisher Turner\u2019s score, almost entirely newly composed for this performance, which moves from shimmering ambient to industrial-inflected techno, interspersed with sound samples \u2013 the lapping of the sea against the shore, the crunch of gravel beneath feet, but also the anxious, electronic beeping of hospital machines.<\/p>\n

The experience differs in small ways from seeing Jarman\u2019s original film, which was part of a retrospective on his work at Manchester Art Gallery in 2021 and 22, and is also available to watch online. In the gallery people move around you, pausing in ten-minute bursts, unable to stand or sit on uncomfortable benches for extended periods. Here, everyone is sat for a night at the theatre, drinks in hand, polite chatter before the house lights go down. Once in darkness, everyone\u2019s faces are bathed in blue light, the audiences\u2019 skin reflecting a soft glow of the International Klein Blue projected on stage.<\/p>\n

Jarman\u2019s script, almost unchanged, is as striking and immediate as ever – at turns furious, lyrical, tender and funny, grappling with the loss of his sight, which caused him to see only in shades of blue towards the end of his life, as well as grief for countless lost friends and the knowledge of his own impending morality. Blue <\/em>was Jarman\u2019s last film, released four months before his death from AIDS-related complications in early 1994.<\/p>\n

The language throughout is florid and rich, alternating between poetic ruminations on the colour blue – the colour of \u201cterrestrial paradise\u201d, which \u201ctranscends the solemn geography of human limits\u201d \u2013 and descriptions of his daily life, the mundanity of doctors\u2019 appointments, hospital visits, drug trials, pain. Among all the rich, linguistic beauty of Jarman\u2019s script, it is often the most simple repetition which cuts to the heart \u2013 first, the optician\u2019s routine of \u201clook left, look down, look up, look right\u201d when examining his damaged, infected retina, then the list of names of lost friends that goes on and on and on, heartbreaking in its simplicity, every name a whole human life, every name a whole world. The furious, vital life force of Blue<\/em> pours from the stage in the short performance (a little over 60 minutes). As the house lights come up, I am rattled, heartbroken, genuinely moved.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur names will be forgotten \/ In time \/ No one will remember our work\u201d wrote Jarman, one of the final lines of Blue<\/em> \u2013 now, over 30 years later, it seems unlikely that will happen any time soon.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Clare Patterson<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A moving live staging of Derek Jarman’s intimate final work Blue Now | Aviva Studios | 8th December 2024Reviewed by Clare Patterson Over three decades after the original release of Derek Jarman\u2019s Blue (1993), director Neil Bartlett brings a live stage performance of Jarman\u2019s visionary final film to Aviva Studios. Sitting down in the theatre, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[14,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nBlue Now, Aviva Studios, reviewed by Clare Patterson - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12796\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Blue Now, Aviva Studios, reviewed by Clare Patterson - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A moving live staging of Derek Jarman’s intimate final work Blue Now | Aviva Studios | 8th December 2024Reviewed by Clare Patterson Over three decades after the original release of Derek Jarman\u2019s Blue (1993), director Neil Bartlett brings a live stage performance of Jarman\u2019s visionary final film to Aviva Studios. 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