Theatre
Notebook - Rosie Millard is shell shocked
Published 01 December 2003
Shell's Storm is about convincing people that wind power is beautiful, arty and fun. It's artistic, but it ain't art
There's a very exciting thing that sometimes happens in live theatre. Call it Brechtian displacement, if you like. Most people would simply call it an accident. It's when a disaster happens on stage. The audience holds its breath, the performers hold their breath, and everyone concentrates very hard. There is one such moment right at the start of Tom Stoppard's dazzling Jumpers, which transferred to the the West End on 14 November. A glamorous woman comes on stage; she prepares to sing, the orchestra plays her in; she dries. She starts again; again she falters. Eventually, she runs off stage.
I don't think I'm spoiling too much to say it's deliberate; but there is, for one moment, the heady scent of that dramatic singularity, the on-stage cock-up. They are rare, particularly in the glossy West End. One such moment happened at the inception of Shell's artistic extravaganza on London's South Bank, the Shell Electric Storm. The £500,000 production, which is as firmly pegged to corporate advertising as its distant relation, Tate Modern's Weather Project, is not, was opened by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry inside the Shell Building.
After some corny remarks relating to switching on Christmas lights, the hilarity of seeing a minister of state performing just such a function, the horrid "cynicism" of the press about wind power and so on, Patricia Hewitt got on with the task of pressing the switch. We all looked at a giant video screen. Ten cameras were trained on the event, which was to be beamed back to the Shell Building. And so, we were expecting to see clouds. We were expecting noise. We were expecting rain. We saw nothing. Well, we saw an illuminated brick wall. Was it possible that the mighty Shell had sunk half a million into not a storm, but a squib? The audience stood tensely. No one spoke. Wow.
Without warning, a man in a white hoodie arrived on top of the wall. He ran off, and was joined by another, then a third. At which point, the event unfolded, led by these three performers from London Jump, who were doing their famous urban jumping thing across the benches, stairs and walls of the South Bank while music, wind and rain from the Shell Electric Storm raged around them. From the stairwells of the Hayward Gallery, across the concourse of the Festival Hall, leaping over bins, tumbling down by the skate park, the three Jumpers led a whirling dance alongside choreographed fireworks and startled passers-by. As a piece of urban theatre, it knocked Regent Street's grim festive illuminations into a cocked hat.
Naturally, there's no such thing as free theatrical brilliance in the corporate world. "It's about changing hearts and minds," acknowledged Nick Gordon from Fortis Bank, which finances wind energy projects. The Storm, which is powered by a vast turbine next to the London Eye and uses the (subsidised) canvas of the South Bank Centre for its message, is about convincing people that wind power is beautiful, arty and fun. Shell's next production, I am told, is two offshore windfarms with 300 turbines apiece. And no, I'm not a cynical hack. It's just important to understand that, as the press pack states, Shell's "groundbreaking show" is a demonstration of the "possibilities for the future world of renewable energy". It's artistic, but it ain't art.
Rosie Millard is the BBC's arts correspondent
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