On The Plays...(continued)

Paradise Street ELIZABETH Men make these distinctions, Jude: it's their territorial instincts misplaced. They divide existence as they do land. Life here, death there, and a border between. They guard it with the Church, with science...only poets defy the divide, and even they can be sentimental about it. It's taken us four hundred years to realise that if the Golden World is to be won, and kept, it must be won with ambiguities. There is no certain thing on earth worth knowing. Now, men are not subtle enough to grasp this simple idea. They have a fear of ambiguity. They think it's weakness, they think it's senility, a sign of death. They box it up and bury it; they tell us we should be certain or be slaves. "Paradise Street was neither a great failure nor a notable success. Amongst the critics in London - and later at the Edinburgh Festival - it had its supporters, if memory serves, but I fear of all the pieces the Dog Company mounted it suffered most from our absence of funds." Laughter, Love and Chocolate: An Introduction by Clive Barker, Los Angeles, 1996 "Paradise Street imagines what it would be like if, in the depths of that season [winter], magic were to transform the city, replacing the grey with green blossom, and lending the people trapped in its streets a new perspective and a new purpose...This is a play that deals, despite its metaphysical chat, with things tangible and viable: Bonner's body in a sack, the potency of a grenade, the health of Glorianna's ovaries." Production Notes by Clive Barker, Los Angeles, 1996 [re. marginal characters] "These characters, not quite centre-stage, with access to dangerous knowledge [including the tramp in 'Hellraiser '] …maybe even Mulrooney from 'Paradise Street' - though I consciously split him up into two characters; Gluck and Mooney in 'Weaveworld' are both from Mulrooney - I even give Mooney his poems; the poems he speaks as the Earl of Essex. " A Dog's Tale By Peter Atkins, Clive Barker's Shadows in Eden A Clowns' Sodom A bull-fight develops, and Herlequin's swiftness seems to make him the certain victor. He dances around the Patriarch easily, and though he has one or two narrow escapes when the Patriarch has him against the wall, he is able to wound the great Bull easily. Thus, after a few minutes, the Patriarch becomes an even more pathetic figure, shambling and half blind with pain, but still very terrible. Then, after a particularly agile manoeuvre, Herlequin turns to bow to Pierrot, and the Bull takes his opportunity. He charges and Herlequin turns, just in time to receive the horns in his stomach. The Bull shakes himself free and Herlequin staggers back, scarcely believing that he has been hit. His fingers dig into his stomach, creating the horrible illusion of a gaping wound. The great Bull reels back, his face suddenly expressionless again. Herlequin too reels back, and falls to the floor, where he lies still. The Bull wanders round and round in ever decreasing circles, no longer fearsome. The spectators are absolutely still for a moment. Then Pierrot steps down from behind the wall and enters through the door. Columbine tries to stop him, but he ignores her. He approaches the Bull slowly, taking from the wall a large knife. He stops the Bull. It gazes ahead, unblinking. He takes it by the back of the neck and slits its throat. It jerks. It falls to its knees. It collapses and dies twitching on the floor. Pierrot looks at the blood on his hands and is no longer afraid of it. He wipes it off on his trousers. He embraces Columbine, weeping. She calms him. They kiss and exit. The surgeon examines Herlequin and shakes his head. He is dead. The surgeon exits. Pulcinella enters, with his lobster. He looks at the bodies and shakes his head. He picks up the baby and begins to rock it gently. He sits on the corpse of the Patriarch, and rocks the child. Herlequin opens his eyes. Pulcinella looks at the corpse. Did it move? Herlequin opens his eyes again. He gets up, slowly. Pulcinella is terrified. Herlequin reassures him. Pulcinella pulls at the offal that seemed to have burst from Herlequin's stomach. It comes away, and Herlequin is intact. Another trick. Pulcinella laughs, while Herlequin claims the baby. Pulcinella takes off the butcher's apron and spreads it over the Patriarch's corpse. He takes his lobster, puts on his jacket, picks up his bucket and exits. Herlequin kisses his child, and exits to the joyous barking of dogs. The End ...other comments Doug Bradley : "[Clive] was a pretty flamboyant character. I had gone to see a play 'what he had wrote' and directed and starred in. He had hand-drawn posters that tantalisingly appeared on the walls of the corridors and down the school. This was called 'Voodoo' or 'Inferno'. He did both of them, and I only saw one of them. I can't remember which one it was. So, I went off to see this and was further intrigued by it all. I got to know him really well and became a friend of his by working on two school plays." Flaying the Cenobites By Nick Vince, Pandemonium, 1991 Peter Atkins : "I miss the drive and confidence and ambition that you can only have at that age. It was a blind faith and complete commitment to what we were all doing. I miss the sense of a very fruitful artistic collaboration with a peer group that you loved, admired, and respected. It's not just the artistic side, it's also the fun of just doing it. It was like when I formed a rock band after I left the company. It was the same thing, just a 'six of us against the world' feeling. We had no money whatsoever. We would stage these ambitious plays on non-existent budgets. We would all sit up late at night making the costumes and the props, printing the tickets. It was hell, but it was great as well. What I miss is the togetherness in the face of adversity kind of thing. "Clive was absolutely artistic director without a doubt but it was very much workshop theatre. Clive would produce a text and then we would collectively mutate it for the next six months as we rehearsed, and rehearsed, and rehearsed. Although I don't think that any of us actually put pen to paper, it was an avant guard and experimental theatre in which we all contributed and worked and changed things." From The Dog Days To Bloodlines By [Stephen Dressler and Cheryl Bentzen], Lost Souls, Issue 3, 1996 Doug Bradley : "Coming to work with Clive on the first film...I suddenly realised we [had] developed this unconscious shorthand. I would know what Clive was driving at before he had spoken to me. As soon as he said certain key things to me I knew exactly what he was driving at. There were similarities between the sense of humour and the language that the Devil has and Pinhead has and I picked that up straight away as soon as I read the screenplay." Dread Goes to Hell with Doug Bradley By [Michael Brown], Dread, Issue 4, 1992 Peter Atkins : "Doug played Jokanaan [in Salome] with a papiermache head... Dougie was already hiding his face from the public - he has a history actually of that sort of stuff, because in our circle one of his most famous interpretations, in a play we did called Dog, was Louis Erasmus Sugarman, who was fatter than Orson Welles, a huge, monstrous patriarchal figure. Dougie, as you know, is very slim, and every night he would put this massive body suit on - it was made I think by Lynne and Julie - and he came out as this hideous Orson Welles-to-the-power-of-'n' thing." Hellwriter By John Martin, Samhain, Number 10, August/September 1988 Doug Bradley: "Clive is wonderful at giving you elliptical acting notes. Once when we were working in the theatre [on a musical - Hunters in the Snow] he said, 'Doug, I want this line delivered like the north wind is blowing through your eyes.' Yes, Clive, I can remember the last time that happened to me." The Pride of Pinhead By Philip Nutman, Fangoria, No 82, May 1989 Anne Billson : "'Cartoons', although not quite horrific, nevertheless exploits the sense that the world isn't quite the way you thought it was...The principles of breaking concrete reality apart pertain as much to Barker's plays as to his horror writing. That is to say: "Here's the status quo. Let's see what we can do if we put a few cracks in it." Hell Hound By Anne Billson, Time Out, 15-22 October 1986 Donald J. McLeod : "A presentation of the words and visions of William Blake is an adventurous undertaking, and one fraught with the danger of excess...Clive Barker's presentation leads through Blake's strong death vision and finally to his death. It is an accomplished dramatic performance, which manages to convey something of the visionary powers of a man rightly called a genius." Festival Fringe Review: Dangerous World By Donald J. McLeod, The Scotsman, 31st August 1981 Oliver Parker : "I was 19 when I joined The Dog Company. I guess you could say it cost me my education. I had just begun attending Cambridge and was working in the theatre at night. It got to be too much... That was what was so exciting about those times. We all had this youthful enthusiasm and earnestness. That and of course Clive's writing had a lot to do with the success of these plays. "We played [Frankenstein In Love] for three weeks at The Cockpit in London. Next we played the Edinburgh Festival, where we had a successful run of The History of the Devil a year earlier. After that we performed in Belgium and Holland. I think that we played it in Edinburgh with Dangerous World. "El Coco's not the lumbering, grunting Frankenstein monster that the audience is expecting. He's witty, sophisticated, and romantic. He's a bit of an Everyman really... That gave me permission to break free of any restraints my image of the monster may have had on me." An Interview With El Coco By Russell Blackwood, Thrill Peddlers, [date]. Plays Index | Incarnations bibliography | Forms Of Heaven bibliography | Home page This page has been created for information and entertainment purposes only. All quotes remain the copyright of the original owners.