FEATURE - Anton Walbrook

Powell & Pressburger's production company, The Archers, had its own informal acting company. A regular member was Anton Walbrook, who appeared in four of their films - 49th Parrallel - The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp -  The Red Shoes  - Oh Rosalinda!  In these he plays a wide range of characters from a manipulative impresario to a peasant farmer. Walbrook's work is not that widely known or appreciated these days. So who was he?

In all his film performances he appears calm, deliberated, emotionally expressive, way above the abilities of the contemporaries around him. It is significant that Walbrook was frequently given pivotal monologues, the one that gave voice to the central theme and beating heart of the movie. Pressburger, who shared a similar emigre state of mind, wrote these parts with Walbrook in mind. Often bringing in aspects of his own and Walbrooks character or experience for the parts he was to play. Knowing he would be able to make them shine.

Walbrook had this unerring capacity to humanise, to reveal the emotional truth in the words he was given. His subtle vocal range, its light and shade, was able to suggest unspoken feeling and thought, often in an almost throw away manner or gesture. He was one of the most skilled actors of his generation.

Adolf Anton Wilhelm Wohlbruck was born in Austria, the latest generation in a family of actors and performers. He studied with Max Reinhardt and had an extremely successful acting career in Austria and Germany. Handsome, suave and a bit of a dandy, he was considered a heart throb on stage and screen. 

By 1936, the Nazi regime's intentions were now crystal clear. Walbrook found himself in Hollywood doing over dubs on a German film, and decided not to return home. Sensibly he dropped Adolf as his first name, and as Anton Walbrook began his new career. The Americans at first were very suspicious, thinking he might be a spy. Asking him why it had taken him so long to come to his negative assessment of the Nazi's. The same question is asked of Theo in Life & Death of Colonel Blimp. We do not know how Walbrook himself responded. But in the speech Pressburger composed, he speaks of his love for the country of his birth, but hatred for the poisonous regime that had taken it over. He had, understandably, mixed feelings.

Apart from his work for The Archers he performed in many British films. An early version of Gaslight in 1940, and two films about Victoria & Albert playing opposite Anna Neagle, as Prince Albert. These sorts of roles, as 'the good German' or the vaguely continental Northern European foreigner, proved to be his bread and butter. Yet he frequently raised them to be considerably more substantial than that, because of his superlative acting ability.

His acting career spanned over forty years. And though he is best known for his films, he continued doing theatre work through out this period. Then, before the sixties arrived, he didn't so much retire but fade into the background. He only made appearances on German stage and TV later in life. His reasons for retreating from international fame in this way is not clear, and are as elusive to grasp as the personality of Walbrook itself is. There was a unique sophistication to him, but also an air of unknowable secrecy.  Did anyone understand who Anton Walbrook really was, even though they'd acted with him?

Moral Shearer who starred with him in The Red Shoes, said that on set he was a bit of a loner. He wore dark shades all the time and very consciously ate separately from everyone else. Which paints a picture of a quiet, reclusive, introverted man who needed time alone. Someone, perhaps, who would light up only when he performed. Maybe that legendary intensity and charisma he generated on screen, was part of a cathartic release, a mysterious alchemical element in him he needed to nurture. One that necessarily required solitude outside of that. Feeling himself to be an outsider wherever he was.

He'd chosen to leave Germany in 1936 because his family background was mixed race. His Mother, though a Catholic, was from a Jewish background and Walbrook himself was homosexual. His being distantly part Jewish might well have been overlooked, but persistent questioning about his sexuality was beginning to unsettle and frighten him. So doubly vulnerable to Nazi ideological purity he feared for his safety, and fled to settle in Britain whilst he still could.

With regards to his sexuality we are, of course, dealing with a very different era. In the 1930's - 40's being out, or even suggesting you were a gay man, just was not possible. Whether anyone who worked with him knew he was gay, few would think it proper to mention. There are stories of him regularly frequenting gay clubs in Berlin in the 20's and 30's, of affairs with a Norwegian painter, flings on set with Micheal Redgrave. were all rumoured. But none of this became public knowledge because everyone, including Walbrook himself, remained tight lipped. When he could have spilled the beans on his gay life on film sets, he chose not to. He was, either from habit or fear, an intensely private man.

Walbruck died in 1967 at the age of seventy. Though he'd mostly lived in Germany for the previous ten years, his body was returned to Hampstead Cemetery where it was interred. There had been rumours for a while, of an enduring decades long relationship with a local London florist Eugene Edwards. When Edwards died three years later, his body was interred with Walbrook's. The reason given at the time was in recognition of twenty three years of devoted secretarial service, which is a strange explanation. Perhaps this is a new euphemism. In some periods it seems, only in death, when buried three feet in the ground, could two gay men be seen together.

WATCHED - His House

Two refugees from Africa arrive in the UK illegally and suffer the loss of their child during the journey. After detention in a camp for asylum seekers they are moved to a sink housing estate and unusually are given a whole house to live in. But something is very odd and not right about this house.

His House is a horror movie that isn't afraid to deal with real life contemporary issues head on. It captures the other worldly sense of isolation of the couple. Outside are the usual rowdy noises of an urban suburb, but we rarely see the perpetrators. The spectre of racism hangs over and around them. The estate itself is a bit of a warren of back alleys and dead ends. Their garden outside becomes a dumping ground for everyone else's waste furniture and unwanted detritus. Their life turns into a living nightmare, plagued by past actions, the loss of the child, denial and increasing mental instability. 

All around them is suspicion and the actuality of the so called 'better lifestyle' they left their homeland for, but is this just too alien, is that why they do not feel right there.? His House is a courageous, absorbing and at times shocking debut movie by Remi Weeks, that surprises you with just how brilliantly it can deal with both its themes and its horror.

FEATURE 141 - Perfume Genius ~ No Shape

No Shape is Perfume Genius's fourth album, and its a defiant confirmation of his talent, giving fuller flesh to his idiosynchratic imagination. Visually there's always been something about him that's of the 1920's, slight of build, fey and winsome, but with a harder queenly eye that says don't mess with me. His voice has little basso profundo, though he utilises and enhances his voice's qualities well. So vocally, though slight, breathy and light in tone, on No Shape he gives it the most exotic, sensuous and dramatic of musical settings to frame it with. There is probably no pop artist working at the moment who ponders on his place in queerdom and the world at large, as this man.

The album's opener Slipaway which starts with an aboriginal tribal electro beat, that then explodes out into this dramaticly wide panorama, is an exhilerating flourish. 'don't look back, I want to break free, if you never see what's coming, there's no reason to hide'  he sings. Capturing the feeling of how falling in love can take you by suprise when it arrives. There has always a mode of transgressiveness surrounding Perfume Genius and his music. He wants to break out of limitations, personal, social and musical conventions of all kinds. We all may feel from time to time, that.our views of ourselves are self-limiting and witholding of our potential. Which is probably why its taken four albums for Perfume Genius to reach this level of achievement, it has been hard won.



There are many musical peaks on No Shape but Die 4 You is a truly beautiful thing. One that is hard to quite put into words. Exploiting PG's hushed vocal qualities, its a sinuous and heartfelt peaon to attraction and longing for a loved one. The video is a wonderful accompanyment to this song, like a surreal dream, full of wishfulfillment and a nebulous physical sense of the love object. Its artfully contrived, but somehow evoking the loneliness in longing, of waiting, the perilous febrile qualities of desire, how muscular intimacy and emotionally tenderness are fed by the precognition of our imaginations



In many ways just picking out a handful of tracks from an album that has such a cohesive feel and theme woven through it, leaves an incorrect impression of it. However, you have to attempt from giving snapshots to paint what the complete picture maybe like. With Wreath, there's a life giving urgency to it that propells it forward. As he sings 'I see the sun go down I see the sun come up, I'm moving just beyond the frame' it could seem like that urgency is to do with making the most of life, because who knows where the end of it is, just beyond the frame of it? 'I want to hover with no shape'. would indicate another reading, of the need to keep dying to yourself, to not stay the same out of habit, but to constantly shift shape, to keep breaking through to another way of being, 'to put a wreath upon the grave'. The video is joyous, an edited selection of  videos from people around the world miming or dancing in their own individual way to this track, it has a universality to it, encapsulating audi-visually what the words life affirming is meant to discribe.

THEATRE REVIEW - Yerma - Encore Broadcast - 21st September

I had read wildly ecstatic reviews of the Young Vic's production of Yerma before I went to its broadcast at the Sheringham Little Theatre. All mention the much garlanded performance of Billie Piper' in particular. This can make one wary that your perceptions are being pre-primed by heightened superlatives being dished out like exotic hors d'oeuvres. However, this time I must say it was all deserved, to every last full stop and exclamation mark.

This production, written and directed by the Australian Director Simon Stone, has extensively adapted and transposed the original Lorca play, moving the setting from rural Spain to contemporary London.  Not being fully familiar with the original text I'm not aware to what extent he has remained loyal to the narrative. Though having seen other Lorca and read his poetry I can tell that, even though the dialogue is at variance, it is faithful to the tone and feeling of barely restrained, if not unfettered, passion that is distinctive of Lorca's dramatic style, as he slowly cranks up the emotionally tense atmosphere.

The stage set is a large glass plated, carpeted room,  It looked like one of those confining boxy interiors you see a distorted grotesque figure splurging out of in a Francis Bacon painting. In some respects Lorca and Bacon are similar; in that their output on the stage and on canvas is visceral. As though a bucket of butchers offal has been tipped over the floor. The glass box gives visual representation here to things both transparent and caged, those pent up feelings lie just under that bland beige carpet. Those unsaid things are now to be exposed via a torturous dramatic process. Yerma, is in the tradition of a Greek tragedy, placed in an ordinary domestic setting, similar in many respects to any play by Arthur Miller. You know from the outset that this idyllic situation you are first presented with will not last, that it will not turn out well for anyone, someone will by the end die, either at their own or another's hand.

The pivotal character is Eva, a woman in her mid thirties who realises her biological clock is ticking.  The time within which to have a child is running out. She ambushes her partner John with her desire to have a child by him. He goes along with it, afraid he'll lose her otherwise. Eva is a successful journalist and blogger, who uses her own life and difficulties as frank source material. So everything that happens in her life gets broadcast to the world outside.  The years pass with still no baby, her desperation, ,jealousy of her sister and mistrust for how little time John is giving to the baby project, all these feelings end up disastrously exposed for public consumption. Relationships fracture.

Yerma means barren, someone here is infertile, is it Eva or is it John? But Eva is surrounded by people who are emotionally barren, a mother who is unable to express love or affection, a sister unable to walk away from an empty abusive relationship, a husband so evasively out of touch with himself he's unable to be openly truthful with her.

Billie Piper's performance as Eva sets Lorca's heightened melodrama alight, in a flare of combustible despair, frustration and anger. Though she begins by showing her as playful and self assertive, over the length of the play she gradually sours as her wish to have a child becomes a maddening, overriding obsession. One that eventually removes the support of those around her and the stability of her own self. At times this is a raw raging performance, emotionally uncomfortable yet compelling, it is startling to watch.  Yerma is that unfortunately rare thing, a completely female centred narrative. This inevitably makes other characters less rounded, as they come in and out of Eva's whirlwind. Nonetheless, they are well played, particularly Brendan Cowell as John and John MacMillan as the hapless ex lover Victor.

The updated contemporary language, is often apt and frequently base, coarsely filled with profanities. Stone's version, like Lorca's rarely dresses matters up in polite acceptable language, the language, though often poetically heightened, always rings true. One couple in our audience walked out within the first ten minutes, shortly after the dialogue about why John prefers 'bum sex' with her! But that 'bum sex' dialogue is a major pointer towards how John really feels, in his heart of hearts he doesn't want them to have children. This deception is what corrodes their love for each other.

The original play had a chorus who led you from one scene to another, as it has an episodic structure covering many months and years. In this production its marked by projected chapter numbers, titles and headlines that delineate the downward spiral. The chorus here is a choral one, that sings increasingly dissonant verses, often abruptly truncated like badly edited TV intermissions. This gives the play a similar feeling to one of those 'found footage' films, with awkward jump cuts, out of focus, wobbly camera angles encasing a fractured narrative. As filmed, Yerma is one of the most disturbing and compulsive pieces of theatre I've seen in a very long time. Goodness knows what it was like for those seeing it live in the theatre itself.