Jubilee

Derek Jarman, James Whaley, Chris Goode

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786823892
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Studi su tematiche LGBT

Faith in the establishment collapsing everywhere. The far right on the march. Culture wars and random violence – all decked out in red, white and blue. But a spirit of anarchy hangs in the air, the desire to burn it all down and start over. Derek Jarman's iconic film captured punk at its giddy height: a riot of music, DIY fashion, and every kind of sex – with a little pyromania thrown in. Forty years on, this new stage adaptation of Jubilee remixes it for the social and political turmoil of 2017. The cast of the original production at the Royal Exchange Manchester was led by one of the film's original cast members, legendary punk warrior Toyah Willcox.Centred around a marauding girl gang on a killing spree and a time-travelling Queen Elizabeth I, it's a story of what happens when creativity and nihilism collide.

PART 1

0. PRE-SHOW

A dimly lit squat, known to its inhabitants as H.Q. A chaotic landscape of necessary junk. No one home.

In the centre of the space, QUEEN ELIZABETH sits at an outsize dressing table. Candle light; numerous mirrors multiply the candles. A skull. Various artefacts. A touch of Rembrandt about the composition. The QUEEN is applying the last of her make-up, her costume, etc. – painstakingly assembling her identity.

DR DEE watches her protectively from the shadows.

1.

DR DEE spies a Dansette-style record player amid the bric-a-brac of H.Q., with a pile of punk records next to it, classic and contemporary, interspersed with the occasional charity shop treasure – ironic easy listening or marginal 80’s pop. He looks through the records, selects one, takes the disc out of its sleeve, puts it on the turntable, sets it playing. It is a sound effects record: English sea birds, wind, waves, a coastal ambience.

For now, ELIZABETH does not notice DEE’s presence, or the sound coming from the record player.

Floating above the coastal sounds, we hear the words of Rilke in intimate voiceover – the ghost of Heathcote Williams, probably…

VOICE: Who if I cried would hear me among the angelic orders? And even if one of them suddenly pressed me against his heart, I should fade in the strength of his stronger existence. For beauty’s nothing but the begininng of Terror we’re still just able to bear, and why we adore it so is because it serenely disdains to destroy us.

A roll of distant thunder. For the first time, QUEEN ELIZABETH notices the presence of DEE.

ELIZABETH: John Dee, some pretty distractions, which you call angels, call forth to forget our cares.

JOHN DEE: Your Majesty, as once a virgin fashioned the whole earth, so by a virgin it shall have rebirth. So says the old sage wisdom.

ELIZABETH: Dear our own Dr John, our triumphant antinomy, our kingdom’s eyes, it pleaseth me to see and have discourse with angels.

DEE takes his staff and points it to the four corners of the compass as he speaks.

JOHN DEE: Your Majesty, this spell we cast in the name of Christ Jesus and his Angelic hosts, calling forth a fiery spiritual creature: our angel, Ariel. – Metatron! Angel commander! I cast for Ariel, pearl of fire, my only star. Send forth my flower, my green herb.

The smoke and ashes of the past, which hang like morning mist in veils across the universe, now part in swirls and eddies, and through them, my star, my angel Ariel flies with mirrored eyes, leaving a sparkling phosphorescent trail across the universe. Down, down he plummets towards earth, through the great vacuum, on the curve of infinity – like a fiery rose he descends!

A sudden burst of radiant light as ARIEL materialises aloft. Thunderclap. QUEEN ELIZABETH is frightened. She shields her eyes against the light.

A bed of etheral music, out-of-focus movement within it.

ARIEL: All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come
To answer thy best pleasure; be’t to fly,
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
On the curl’d clouds, to thy strong bidding task
Ariel and all his quality.

ELIZABETH: This vision far exceedeth all expectation. Such an abstract never before I spied!

JOHN DEE: An angel, your Majesty, is the sun’s true shadow. – Spirit Ariel! Her Majesty seeks to have knowledge, to swim in those pure waters that are the essence which binds all creation.

The music is starting to come into focus.

ARIEL: By me this task shall be performed, for I am that pure and clarified spirit by which thou may’st turn all metals into gold. Sweet Majesty, pluck up thy heart and be merry, for I shall reveal to thee the shadow of this time.

The music suddenly coalesces, revealing itself as the huge guitar riff from ‘Two Librans’ by The Fall. Overlaid with sounds of gunfire, aerial bombardment, all-out war…

The lights go on throughout H.Q.

Despite the loudness of the music we can just make out the DIRECTOR’S voice in v/o:

DIRECTOR: And cue Temi.

A sudden influx of figures – some of the inhabitants of the squat:

MAD comes first, carrying a machine gun. She has fun threatening the audience, always with a grin of pleasure. Bouncing off the walls already, thrilled by the chaos that builds around her.

ANGEL and SPHINX, pushing CRABS in a shopping trolley. CRABS is delighting in being pushed around. She wears Audrey Hepburn sunglasses, sucks Lolita-like on a Chupa Chup, flips through a high-end fashion magazine full of pictures of pretty boys.

ANGEL and SPHINX desert CRABS and her trolley. They can’t keep their hands off each other a moment longer. They kiss wildly and tear at each others’ clothes, until in no time at all they are both naked and making out passionately on a dirty mattress on the floor. Lots of love and laughter.

Finally, AMYL comes just a little way into the space. She is pushing an old-fashioned pram which is on fire. MAD is delighted and intercepts the pram. She wheels it around while AMYL smiles at the mayhem, still lurking on the edge of the room. Eventually, MAD wheels the flaming pram away.

A DOG – or is it just some random guy in dog fetish gear? – runs into the room and excitedly scampers round and round, barking at everything and everyone.

Throughout all this, DR DEE is escorting QUEEN ELIZABETH to a place of greater safety: a provisional royal box to which ARIEL is still putting the finishing touches as the QUEEN is led up the stairs. A throne-like chair surrounded by yet more junk – dismembered mannequins, half-destroyed placards from forgotten demonstrations, a heap of old sweating binbags…

Two stage hands dressed in black bloc gear wheel out the QUEEN’s dressing table. The DOG runs round their legs and tries to bite them / lick them / hump them, depending on his mood. He leaves with them.

AMYL picks a spray can off the floor and adds some new graffiti to one of the walls, which are already covered with militant queer slogans and manifesto fragments.

CRABS gets out of her trolley and finds an old sofa or mattress to recline on where she can continue to look through her magazine.

The music ends.

2.

M...