#TransDayOfVisibility2021

Happy #TransDayOfVisibility! Here I am. I'm a transgender lesbian woman.

Feeling a bit uncomfortable? Don't like my hairline, or my brow, or my nose, or my jaw, or my lips, or my stubble, or shoulders?

Well, tough. This is what testosterone hormones do to a girl's body. Look.

Look at me. Look at what those hormones have done to me, for life. Look. Fuck your feelings. You should be grateful I have pants on.

Where's your valid and reasonable concerns for putting girls through testosterone hormones now, dickheads?

Where was your concern when I attacked my own mother at age 10 for mocking me over wanting to be pretty like the Bond girl in GoldenEye?

Where was it when I was having a screaming, crying meltdown at age 16 because I wasn't allowed to grow my hair? Where were you when I spent my school day fantasising about having long hair like all the other girls?

Where were you when I shut myself in my room from age 11 to 17, spending all my time alone on my computer or playing games because living any other life in any other body was better than mine?  Where were you when I lived in constant fear of becoming a man all those years? 

Where was your concern when I walked around my school grounds alone, talking to myself aged 13, praying out loud to God that my voice wouldn't break because I was terrified, and didn't want to change? 

Where were all your concerns when I was 17, spending all my time daydreaming of another life as a young woman, who had all the confidence and sense of self I had never been allowed to find? 

Where were your concerns for my healthy development when I failed to have a teenage rebellion phase because I had no sense of self to develop? When I had been deprived of so much as the words to even describe what I was, and left with nothing to rebel *with*?

This is pectus carinatum, by the way. Deformed chest cartillage. I can't breathe through my chest properly because of it. I can't exercise properly. I refused surgery at 14, because I wanted  my chest to push out like a woman's. Where are all your long-term health concerns now?

Where was all your concern for my well-being when I was alone in my room in my fresher's year, breaking down and crying because I had no friends, and had never felt so hopelessly alone and helpless in my life? As if I would never find anyone else like me in the world?

Where were you and all your concerns for mental health and autism when I was going absolutely insane with grief, having full-blown psychotic breaks that lasted years, completely detatching from reality and dissociating, whilst every counselor rejected my case as too complex?

Where was your mental health concern when I quit my first job before they could fire me for weeks' worth of unexplained absence aged 25? When I was scribbling like a child on a sickness benefit form that my whole life was a pretend story I made up, and I wanted to kill myself?

Look at me, and answer me, you two-faced, low-life, weaselly, snivelling cowards. Look at what hormones have done to a woman's body, for 20 years. Where are all your reasons and concerns now? Where is your care for my deformities? For my disabilities and my health? Where? 

I for one would be shocked -- SHOCKED -- to hear that you don't care. That you never really had any actual concerns for what forcing a girl through exposure to testosterone would do to her mind or her body. 

This is what it looks like. 

Look at me. Look at what you've done. 

You've robbed me of my childhood. Of my entire adolescence. Of all of my 20s. People don't live long past 30 in your precious natural real world, because we're not actually supposed to. I have so little of that precious youth left now. You took from a child, and you don't care.

I was born over a month premature. Entire teams of doctors and nurses **fought** to keep me alive in an incubator for **six months straight**. They sewed my lungs and heart back up by hand too many times to count just so I could live. There are no other cases like mine. My life is the most precious thing in the world. Wasting even a moment of a life that so many people sacrificed so much to let me keep has got to be a sin against the mercy of God. 

I didn't waste it. You did. You stole and squandered years of a life that was not yours to take. If there is a God, I hope She never forgives a damned one of you for what you did to Her daughter. What you continue to do, willfully, to so many of Her children because you don't really care about what testosterone does to a woman. You never have, you never will. Your interest is in self-righteously crowing about doing harm whilst men grow hips & breasts that drive them mad with grief and pain and do them nothing **but** harm.

You selfishly demand that people you consider women flaunt tits and hips and pop out babies for your pleasure. You complain that actual women don't look or sound or dress like women enough for your perverse satisfaction, and you have the **gall**, the absolute fucking **nerve** to pretend you're feminists.

No. I am a woman, I'm a feminist, and you can take a good, long look at my face and my hair and my body, and fucking deal with it. I am not going back. No amount of abuse, or coercion, or cajolery, or conversion, can make me. You are not taking another second of my life away.

You did this to a woman. To a **vulnerable lesbian girl**, and I will spend the rest of my life making damned sure it is **you** who deals with the consequences. Not me.You violated a woman's body, and now you try to victim-blame her. No.

No, because despite everything you did to my woman's body -- that lifetime of relentless **assault** and **violation** -- I still love it. It took years, **decades**, but I love it now more than I ever have. I love my hair, and my eyes, and my legs; and you can't take that away. 

I'm a beautiful woman. I don't need hormones or surgery to make that true. Take one last good look at what you did to me, and feel fucking ashamed and guilty, like you should. You'll have to, 'cause it won't be me, and it never will be again.

Fuck off, cunts. You're a disgrace. 

#TransWomenareWomen #TransIsBeautiful 

#TransDayOfVisibility

Letter to The Prime Minister, Re: Gender Recognition Act Reform

Dear Prime Minister,

I hope this letter finds you and yours in the best of health. I write to you with much concern about the recent proposals to scrap reforms to the Gender Recognition Act, especially as they relate to the recent Sunday Times' front page article of June 14th, and the highlighted prospective plans to exclude transgender people from single-sex spaces. 

I am particularly concerned that much of this recent action has not given due consideration to many of the unforeseen consequences of such discrimination against the gender non-conforming, particularly the effect such legislation is likely to have against not only non-trans women themselves, but also those that were born women and whom now live and identify as men.

I would urge all those involved in this decision to very carefully consider that as a result of the so-called "trans panic" being experienced around the world, and its accompanying reckless urge to somehow "confirm the gender" of anybody entering women's facilities, many biological lesbian women with unconventional body types, unusual self-presentations, or rare strong facial features, are being subjected to panicked, baseless accusations of being transgender when they are not, by fellow women whom they have every right to share these facilities with.

This is an unconscionable infliction of undue distress and harassment on women for simply going about their lives, which must not be tolerated under any set of circumstances. Indeed, that women should now be expected to have to conform to any sort of feminine standard of appearance simply to get changed or relieve themselves in a public building is manifestly absurd, and must not be encouraged, as I am sure you would hasten to agree.

Furthermore, particularly as this issue relates to female safeguarding and the impact upon transgender men that were born as women, any reduction or removal of legal provisions to enable these men to use the facilities which best affirm their gender identities is very likely to have the unforeseen consequence of forcing people that may now very much aesthetically appear to be male to use women's facilities.

This is certain to subject both vulnerable women and these transgender men to a great deal of entirely unnecessary emotional and psychological distress and difficulty. I am sure you are able to see how this also applies in the inverse case, where those whom now appear aesthetically feminine having been born men, will be forced to use men's facilities, also unduly subjecting them to a significantly elevated risk of distressing encounters and potential male violence. I am sure you will agree that either scenario is clearly ethically unconscionable, and that such outcomes, however unintended, must be strenuously avoided regardless.

Quite apart from any of the real or imagined plight of either transgender or born women, and those that are now transgender men, the Equality Act 2010 has already readily enabled those whom self-identify as their keenly felt gender to freely use their preferred facilities for the past ten years or more. In fact, as you know, the free use of facilities which align with one's preferred gender for at least a year or more is a critical component of full legal gender transition.

This includes both those born men using women's facilities, and those born women using men's, and, with respect, I have simply never heard of any sudden, steep rise in violent, sexually-motivated assaults in bathrooms or changing facilities in all this time, whether that be transgender women abusing those facilities (however unlikely), or (and, I believe, far more likely) transgender women being set upon when surrounded by potentially violent men in an enclosed private space.

This, in and of itself, would seem to rather give the lie to such irrational "trans panic" fears. If such things have not yet been observed to happen in such a vast span of time, it is unlikely that they are ever likely to happen at all, whether now, or in the future. It therefore seems to me quite foolish to hurriedly legislate on the opposite basis.

However, I would also argue that if I am wrong, and transgender women have indeed been the subject of violent assaults by predatory men in their private facilities, surely that is all the more reason to freely enable them to seek the safety, shelter, and solidarity of women's facilities, where they are unlikely to face any such risk of harm? The reverse scenario is, I believe, highly unlikely – if only because a predatory man depends most of all upon the isolation of his intended victim, and it would be extremely foolish of him to attempt any sexual assault upon a woman when completely surrounded by female witnesses, in an enclosed space, in which he would very quickly and easily be trapped and prevented from escaping in far less time than it would take to complain of assault.

Such is why I am also compelled to draw to attention the fact that in circumstances like this, it is most often, perhaps counterintuitively, transgender people whom, rather than posing a threat to women’s rights as is so often incorrectly claimed, are instead the first line of defence against any danger posed to women’s freedoms and legal entitlements. Most recently, Women’s Place UK, the so-called “gender critical” lobby group, took umbrage with women’s access to abortion and medical care being restricted as a consequence of the U.S. Government’s recent rollback of access to medical care for transgender people. This of course had an immediate material impact upon the right of transgender men whom were born as woman, and are still able to become pregnant, to access abortion and medical care services, which poses a serious systemic risk of damage to these freedoms for all women as a class.

Women’s Place were unquestionably correct in their justifiably indignant response that access to medical care and abortion services is an inalienable right for all women – on that, we will always unfailingly agree - and yet have failed to notice or understand the crucial fact that women have been opened up to political attack precisely because trans people have been attacked in the first place, and that it is once again transgender men born as women that are the overlooked victims of such “trans panic” which harms all women as a class.

Furthermore, I also recall a period in which, soon after the current U.S. Government successfully banned transgender people from military service, an unprecedented political assault upon abortion rights was soon launched on the heels of this anti-trans legislation. I do not believe either of these instances to be isolated, coincidental happenstance, but a predictable and preventable outcome of the fact that transgender women and men are most often the first line of defence against the worst forms of misogyny that all women experience. Particularly in light of the ways I have detailed in which women and transgender men are likely to be targeted – however inadvertently – by scrapping these reform changes, I would argue in the strongest possible terms that it is in fact, contrary to apparent opinion, in every woman’s best interests to stand in solidarity rather than opposition with the transgender community. To do otherwise seems, on such immediately available evidence, an act of manifest social and political self-harm.  

Much has also been made, in this so-called "debate" about the "ease" of abusing Gender Recognition Reforms to allow those born men whom have no intention of transitioning to falsely access women's facilities in order to assault or abuse them. I am afraid this is quite simply a fabrication intended to inflict distress and thereby unduly influence policy by appeals to emotion. As you are no doubt aware, all that the Gender Recognition Act changes propose to do - indeed, are only capable of doing in their current state - is to enable the gender recorded on one's birth certificate to be changed so as to be more in-keeping with other legal gender-affirming documentation such as passports and photo IDs. Birth certificates in and of themselves are not acceptable legal identification.

Such baseless appeals to emotion therefore seriously propose that it is possible for a man intending to assault women in their private facilities to use his altered birth certificate as proof of ID, when this is simply not legally possible. Any such person would instead be obligated to present a passport or photo ID, which would completely contradict his birth certificate and thereby expose his malicious schemes and foil him. Surely it is self-evident how absurd and ridiculous and self-defeating this scaremongering scenario is?

Moreover, my genuine concern is again for the transgender men born as women that will find themselves inadvertently hoist on this petard. Are they now to be expected to present a female birth certificate which contradicts their male passports and IDs, and to be denied access to men's facilities, forcing them back into women's facilities and ensuring the difficulty of risking emotional distress to themselves and women? Are we to also force transgender women into men's facilities because of contradictory birth certificates, exposing them to the likelihood of aggressively territorial violence and the harms of men?

Indeed, if neither birth certificates nor legal IDs are acceptable in this scenario, lest they invariably contradict each other, we do perhaps risk the distressing absurdity and harm of somehow informally mandating genital inspections as proof of claim. Indeed, even I may be expected to present my male genitals at the door of men’s toilets to confirm I am not a convincingly transitioned woman if such an imbroglio came to pass in future.

All are morally and ethically unconscionable outcomes which inexcusably infringe upon the rights and dignity of all people whether transgender or not. They must be avoided, and are thankfully entirely avoidable. These proposed GRA reforms merely enable some administrative housekeeping for the transgender population which only makes accessing facilities easier by the kind of passive proxy I have described, if at all. Transgender people are still very much obliged to undergo the long and difficult process of living as their gender for a set period of time as part of their acquisition of legally protected gender reassignment status under the Equality Act 2010. I am sure you will agree that any change which can alleviate some of the stress, even by simply making legal paperwork easier to file for both transgender women and transgender men, is to be welcomed.   

Lastly, I must also protest in the strongest possible terms the reported decision to disregard the results of the recent public consultation on Gender Recognition Reform, which returned a 70% positive result of support for these reforms, and was then accused of being somehow unduly influenced by a phantom “trans lobby” before being discarded. I cannot lately recall any such lobbying myself, and would be most grateful to have it pointed out to me those instances where trans organisations have unduly influenced politicians or swayed public opinion by way of expensive newspaper advertisement or radio or television broadcast platforming, whether in the UK or elsewhere in the world.

To the best of my knowledge, this reform consultation had to be manually filled out, and could not simply rely on any copied and pasted response, requiring individualised, detailed input from all whom took the time to complete it. This consultation was designed to drastically reduce any such outcome in the first place, and is therefore unlikely to have ever succumbed to it.

Furthermore, the consultation itself specifically asked for the input of transgender people and those that represent their interests. Why their input would therefore be discarded immediately afterwards defies comprehension, and would doubtless create a significant sampling bias against the very transgender people the survey asked for the input of rather than the other way around, as is being claimed by the Sunday Times. If anything, it seems that this in and of itself provides an urgent ethical reason to disregard spurious claims of “trans lobby” influence and to instead take full account of the input of transgender people on the consultation they themselves were asked to participate in by the government. Anything else risks an abject failure of good faith engagement with the data.

I hope you will give due and fair consideration to my concerns and those of many others which are shared by the transgender community and their allies, all of whom are acutely distressed and worried about the consequences of such continued misrepresentation of their political interests and everyday lives.

In closing, I urge you to reconsider discarding the results of the Gender Recognition Act consultation, and to pursue an alternative which respects the consultation’s result, as we are rightfully doing in other present circumstances.  

Yours sincerely,

Christopher O'Dea-Giordano

Beckenham, Kent

OPINION - Up With The Black Curtain

Part of why I have written so much about how I've benefitted from white supremacy lately (and invited black voices to help themselves to that writing if it is something they find useful or time-saving on other social media) is because I believe that there is a line between letting people of colour do all the talking, and letting them do all the work of explaining racism to white people, or of addressing the issue. 

Reading educational books is great, and necessary (buy them from black-owned bookshops!!) - but they are always read in a fraction of the time it took to write them. It is the least amount of labour involved. At some point, we must also be the ones labouring to write to educate and inform others like us. Our friends and colleagues cannot do this alone, and they shouldn't have to try to. We must be amongst the first to challenge our own institutions for their lapses. 

With that in mind, questions must be asked of the culture of my own mainstay theatre: 

Why are we packed with white talent, yet I can count the prominent black talent on maybe one hand? 

Why is this talent pool so small that some are even related, either to one-another, or to white performers? 

Why are these few actors only brought out for "black" roles exclusively focused on little more than black experience? 

Why are their audiences often packed with white people? Black audiences must be able to see black actors, or it defeats the point. 

As a white, male-bodied disabled actor, I have been fortunate to receive many non-disabled roles that have allowed me to perform, and to be, more than just my disabilities (although the dearth of disabled roles is another conversation for another time), and this must not remain a white male actor’s privilege. A greater variety of roles for under-utilised talent is essential for the future. 

We know – or ought to know – that black people have higher rates of disability than whites. It is impossible that none of them want to be successful actors, and yet, in nearly 7 years of fringe acting in London, I met the only disabled black woman in theatre I have ever met on my first ever production, in which she was AD, not a performer. 

Disabled black performers are not non-existent. They need only be made comfortable enough to show up, and when they do show up, to be cast instead of overlooked – and allowed to be cast as more than just disabled characters, just as I am (although they should, and must, be the ones playing disabled roles, just as I should be). 

As thrilling as it was to once see the foyer packed with happy black faces from the audience of a hugely successful production, it is wrong that I have since seen so few of any of those faces again, if any at all. We must ask why they have not chosen to come back, and why subsequent audiences for later black-centred productions were (at least in my experience) so overwhelmingly white. I include myself in this, particularly as an in-house theatre critic. Theatre criticism itself is dominated by white, male perspective like mine. We must ask why black voices are not more readily on-hand to critique black productions, either in-house, or more broadly, on the staff of our go-to review services. 

Whilst a point has been made to highlight broader black experiences with a subsequent production, it was in my experience the one with a majority white audience, versus the majority-black audience turning out for a play which especially risks suggesting racism is an exclusively American issue. We must beware of the unintended consequences of this, and appeal more broadly with a wider range of material which represents the full diversity of international black experience, including ordinary, everyday experience beyond paradigms of race – it bears repeating that black actors must also be given more opportunities than strictly black characters, particularly if material stresses black suffering – whether historical or current – in its text. We must avoid that sort of typecasting situation as much as possible. Particularly when coupled with majority-white audiences, the result can be an unsettling sort of voyeurism we must avoid. 

I also note with much concern that there is a broader trend across theatre culture when discussing uniquely black-centred productions to stress that the work is “not about blackness, but about all humanity”, or some variation thereupon. This is something I noted even our own black talent has felt compelled to state when summating their work to our overwhelmingly white audiences. This, quite simply, is an ugly sort of respectability politics which suggests blackness and humanity are somehow separate categories. It reads, and is heard, certainly to me, as a compelled apology for being black, addressed to white audiences. This must not continue, either amongst ourselves, or in London theatre more broadly. We must recognise, and stress, that a work’s blackness is in and of itself a work’s humanity. 

Good work has been done, particularly with stressing the broader inclusion of women as of late, but more can always be done. Fighting one form of oppression in the arts whilst ignoring or overlooking others undermines our own noble cause. We cannot merely cut at the branches. The tree itself must be felled. It is not enough to focus on disability when ableism is derived from a form of sexism, and it is not enough to uplift white women when much paternalistic sexism has to do with the racism of pernicious anti-black myths in our history. 

We must commit to shared unity in the struggle against our mutual dehumanisation and institutionalised mistreatment by those which prize an able (male) body and typical mind in their construct of whiteness. A renewed commitment to active anti-racism must be at the root of all this action in our theatre, and in theatres throughout London – and it is not, nor should it be, the sole responsibility of black actors to make the case for this. We must actively make it ourselves.

Education, Education, Education: An Anecdote #BlackLivesMatter

This is another Twitter thread I composed today about my experience of the unearned benefit of structural racism. Archiving it here.

It is not the responsibility of black people to make the case for structural racism. Here is just one of the (many) ways I have benefitted from it in my life in the UK. 

In Year 4 (or 4th Grade to my non-UK friends), a black boy - the only black boy in my school - picked on me, for the same reason any child bullies or picks on another: he was hurting, and didn't know what else to do. 

One day, that boy left very suddenly - taking all the blackness I had ever known with him - and our teacher sat the class down to explain that he lived 4 hours away from our school. This poor, poor, exhausted black boy - Dominic - had to rise at 4 or 5AM every morning, just so his poor, exhausted mother could do the school run, because no school in his area would take a black boy. 

Some context for his dislike of me: I was not a bad student, but I was an autistic boy in a mainstream school. Sometimes lessons would move too quickly, and I would hide and make a show of working to avoid getting told off for not doing my work. 

Already, I had learned that boys don't ask for help. I lived 20 minutes away. Of course my school would take a disabled white boy with no issue. I got a good breakfast and a full night's sleep every day, and could be ready to learn - even if it was not in my style. 

Poor Dominic was too exhausted and hungry to notice. He looked at me, and he saw a white boy that got to sleep in, who got a good sleep, who had his breakfast -- and then couldn't even be bothered to do his work. He hated me for that. He got angry, because he was so tired. 

He took how upset and frustrated he was out on me. Of course bullying must never be tolerated - but punitive deprivation never works as punishment. We must use rehabilitation and reparation. We must understand why the bully does this, and address why. 

We were both 9 years old. 9 years old, and already this boy suffered the horrors of structural racism that ruined his education, whilst I coasted by, happily oblivious, always welcome at my local school, that was always willing to understand my problems, but never his. 

I have always been able to access local education. I have never had those opportunities denied. Yes, some of these places have had an ableism issue - but they have always had a far greater race issue. 

White Privilege - any privilege - describes the advantage of compound interest on social capital. It's not a cudgel. We only have to understand that this accrues - as it did for me - from 9 years old. Certainly even earlier than that. Across an entire life. 

Did Dominic target me, partly for the unique advantages of my race and disability? Perhaps. I'm almost certain. Yes, he is accountable for the harm he did me - and he is also owed accountability from the racist system that picked on him in the first place. 

His anger and frustration at his circumstances was not wrong. His crime was a targeting error. Nobody can be accurate when they're so young and so tired and so hungry. Two disadvantaged people resenting each other didn't result by mistake. It is the system working as intended. 

We are all held back by this pretended hierachy of oppression. We are all, in our own ways, the victims of capitalistic white supremacy, even when we are, like me, beneficiaries of it. We must not succumb to the ploy of pitting the disadvantaged against each other. 

We must move forward in a spirit of solidarity, and work together. By dismantling racism and its institutions, no more Dominics need to resent white boys for being able to sleep and eat before they come to school ever again. We all benefit. 

I hope Dominic is thriving today, in spite of everything. I hope he is enjoying a good life, and managed to get a good education - and I hope things can only get better for him, and others like him. Let us work together, brother. #BlackLivesMatter

My Fellow Disabled White Dudes: A Thread #BlackLivesMatter

The following is a Twitter thread I composed four days ago which I'm archiving here: 

I want to take a hot minute to call in my fellow disabled white guys. Look, I know it stings to be told we have white male privilege right now. I understand the urge to get defensive. I know a lot of poorly-worded viral tweets and hashtags have felt like punching down. 

I understand the unintentional pain that caused. Assholes trying to radicalise you to the Right will try to abuse it to tell you that the Left hates you, that they'll abandon you, abuse you. They'll try to tap into your fears as a vulnerable person. I know this because they used the same tactic to (almost) successfully radicalise me in the Ancient BeforeTimes of post-election 2016. I was scared. I was vulnerable. I was a prime target, and they knew it, and I bought in just to feel safe and wanted. 

The Right, and the MRA and anti-Feminist and MAGA cults all want you to believe that acknowledging our privilege means self-flagellating, self-hating, and self-abuse. Maintaining that ignorance suits them down to the ground. The way out is knowledge, compassion and self-love. 

So let me break this down: My fellow disabled dudes, nobody has ever wanted us to blame ourselves, or feel bad about advantages we happen to have in life that we didn't ask for. If anyone did, they're an asshole. Every movement has bad actors. Nature of the game. Fuck them. 

Remember that one history class where we all learned that women got the vote because men cried about how bad they felt for being mean, or MLK won civil rights because white people felt bad enough? No. Come on, that's never been helpful. No one useful wants that. 

BUT (I like BIG BUTS, and I cannot lie) it is helpful, and useful, and necessary to acknowledge the advantages our privilege affords us. That's something we all need to be doing. It stings, yeah: but the fact is, being white and male helps a lot, regardless. Take me, for instance: is it my fault Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger just happened to pick out exclusively white boys when they were developing the concept of autism/Asperger's, and our idea of who could/couldn't have autism in the 1940s? No. Should I feel bad? Also no. 

BIG BUT (ha :P ), it would be foolish of me to fail to recognise and understand that that original white-boy-centric view gives me a huge advantage today, even after 80 years. When we think "autism", we think "white boy" whether we want to or not. It's just a fact. That tendency means that, today, being a 7-year-old white boy is everything when it comes to getting the right diagnosis. 

It's meant that in my life, I:

1) Got a correct diagnosis immediately, with no backtalk or gaslighting from the medical establishment.

2) I got immediate access to help and resources and support from a very early age, including speech therapy which helped a working class kid sound MIDDLE-CLASS. Huge personal and professional bonus benefit; and,

3) It has got to be acknowledged, I've seen a hell of a lot more leniency in the face of "challenging behaviour" with autism from authority figures that I honestly don't believe any woman or girl or person of colour could even dream of seeing. 

Women and girls with autism face entrenched medical sexism that misdiagnoses them with personality disorders which blame them for their own condition, and people of colour both struggle to access support and have their difficult autistic behaviour blamed on their race. 

Moreover, white autistic men and boys are just accepted. Nobody tells them outright that they can't be autistic, because we all think we know that it's a white boys' club, no girls allowed. 

I say again: nobody is blaming us for this. Nobody wants us to feel bad about this. None of us asked to get a head start in life, especially if we're already further back from the starting line than non-disabled people; but if we're serious about not wanting to be treated badly for being disabled, the litmus test for that is to not want other disabled people who don't look like us to be treated even worse than we are. 

Fellow DWD's: Let's take this time to recognise that a high tide raises all ships. We will all benefit by acknowledging our privilege (not beating ourselves up over it, just admitting that it's there) and moving forward together in a spirit of solidarity. #BlackLivesMatter

National Theatre Live: Frankenstein - Retrospective

Photography by Catherine Ashmore

The by-now memetic mansplaining refrain of “Actually, it’s Frankenstein’s Monster” unwittingly tells its own meta-fictional tragic tale of how much true understanding of the original novel by Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter has been lost to the schlock of late-50s Hammer Horror with the passing of years, and how, with it, the voice of Mary Shelley has been stifled, subsumed by a one-note masculine narrative of a mere objectified killer monster on the loose which must be violently destroyed by its male hero creator. There exists a whole host of social and cultural problems with this active sabotage of a woman’s art by what was, and remains, a vastly male industry that has, in essence, stripped her work for parts to profit themselves at market with endless, evermore ridiculous Hollywood sequels getting further and further away from the crucial points being made.

Fortunately, director Danny Boyle’s spectacularly good adaptation of the classic Gothic novel does much to reclaim the work, to restart its deep-probing ethical and moral search, and to begin to restore its feminist foundations, even if its own narrative leaves much still deeply flawed in that way. Dispensing with Victor Frankenstein’s deeply biased male perspective, and telling its story solely as the chronicle of the pitiable, extraordinarily human creature which he selfishly forced into life, the stage show is remarkable for taking great care to properly emphasise the original work’s crucial lessons in morality and ethics, and to put renewed stress on Shelley’s dire warning of the pitfalls of science for its own sake, doing so in a gripping, beautifully-realised, poetic fashion that manages a fabulous trick of simultaneously loosely adapting the novel whilst leveraging the ensuing destructive male saviour narratives of Hammer Horror in its own ingenious, vitally interrogative way. Quite besides that, it is ever-increasingly impossible to ignore the play’s roundabout implication of the terrible, destructive social consequences of birthing an unwanted child one is ill-prepared to raise, which herein fall, for once in history, on a man.

Lee-Miller as the Creature with Cumberbatch as Frankenstein. Photography by Catherine Ashmore.

Indeed, there is much that can be read into playwright Nick Dear’s masterful, multi-faceted, beautiful scriptwriting, almost a guided tour of the most vital English literary and poetic history which is itself often movingly poetic, and which soars to lyrical, literary heights of insight into the human condition as all the best of the Victorian novels did. It charts a course straight back to the heart of Mary Shelley’s writing and ever more close to home, demanding to know who is it that gets to define what is ‘other’ and why, and what makes a monster, or a human being, and what lies in the ill-defined spaces between them.

The line between monster and man is, as is the particular USP of this production, blurred further still by the main roles of Frankenstein and the Creature being swapped nightly between leads Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee-Miller, whom each deliver their own unique takes on the respective roles. Cumberbatch gives an outstanding physical performance in his turn as The Creature, perfectly capturing the hyperactive, unfettered wonder and energy of a newborn child, and growing into a heartbreakingly embittered and damaged man who can never quite be fully formed. Johnny Lee-Miller makes a fine Frankenstein alongside him, his incarnation seemingly marked by a deep need for the illusion of his own superiority which motivates him to invest a great deal of intelligence in ignorance of the consequences of his actions. Indeed, it follows that there is much appalling ignorance poorly masked by his brilliant intelligence, and a lack of the most basic humanity disguised by so-called civility, very well performed by Lee-Miller in his turn.

Cumberbatch as the Creature with Lee-Miller as Frankenstein. Photography by Catherine Ashmore.

By contrast, Lee-Miller feels somewhat derivative and ill-fitting as the Creature. His incarnation, based on his own very young (at the time) son, is closer to a child than Cumberbatch, who, by stark contrast, approaches it as a disabled adult tasked with rediscovering movement, and ultimately humanity, rather than finding it for the first time. Which one proves the favourite will be a matter of per-person preference, but to me, Cumberbatch’s vision feels more authentic to the creature, with its adult body in which movement would be rediscovered and rebuilt rather than formed from scratch.

Lee-Miller seems one-dimensional by comparison, too much like a newborn toddler than a reconstituted man rediscovering himself. It feels oddly inauthentic, as though it suffers for making an arguable pro-choice subtext into text, speaking down to an older audience rather than meeting them on their level. He also introduces vocals to the creature too early, losing some of the tragi-dramatic impact of the creature’s first words being vulgar dismissives in the process, and he seems apart from that almost to too much drag it all out, squandering time, and slowing down the production. Indeed, Lee-Miller seems given over to slightly overplayed melodrama, and even to underplaying moments in both roles, with Cumberbatch more grounded.

Faustian bargaining. Photography by Catherine Ashmore.

Cumberbatch plays Frankenstein as a man hugely taken aback and horrified by what he has accomplished, by the reality of an experiment gone horribly right, and his is a more sympathetic incarnation, if only for not being as given to repulsive lechery as Lee-Miller with the Bride. Regardless, both bring their own unique and compelling takes to the parts, and are worth seeing in each one, though Cumberbatch, being more versatile as a performer, seems to romp home in both leads by virtue of that.

In both versions, amongst the rest of the principle cast, there is a particularly touching and memorable performance from Karl Johnson as the old man De Lacey. George Harris entertains as the Frankenstein family patriarch, bringing a suitably statesmanlike gravitas to his part. Naomie Harris endears as Elizabeth Lavenza, Victor Frankenstein’s wife-to-be, successfully further highlighting the dramatic ironies of the contrast between the Creature and his creator; and John Stahl and Mark Armstrong prove an unexpected highlight as a pair of the mad scientists’ press-ganged assistants, Euan and Raab.

Cumberbatch as a pensive Frankenstein. Photography by Catherine Ashmore

Technically, both versions of the production are a marvel of ingenious staging (customary for the National Theatre’s extraordinarily dynamic space) and artful lighting and set design. A gorgeous Victorian Steampunk aesthetic helps to lend an air of low fantasy, which sharpens rather than softens the hard edge of rage against the myriad evils of men’s unchecked arrogance and vanity which is shot through the reimagined text. The creature’s wretched, tragic existence takes form as a series of tableaus realised in in a succession of literal highlights and lowlights which are consistently enthralling to behold.

One notes that the production has been markedly improved in one the few ways it can be by cutting out its crass, voyeuristic scene of brutal sexual assault. This was never something which needed to be seen, and the production is better for it. Indeed, the play’s female characters do tend to rather get short-shrift here, merely decorating the setting, and motivating the principal men to do their various evil deeds. Others have suggested that it would perhaps have been interesting to see Naomie Harris and Andreea Padurariu swap between brides, if only to give them each more to do, and to reinforce notions of the blur between human and monster, but the thought seems to have gone that it would distract from the mens’ stories, which is a whole other tragedy unto itself.

The duality of man. Photograph by Catherine Ashmore.

Overall, though, it is clear to see why this is one of the National’s most requested productions for on-demand streaming. Beautiful, poetic, wonderfully performed, and boasting a fantastic cast, especially its two endlessly watchable leads. There is, it has been said, something Beckettian about them. Two intertwined lives defined by a vicious, unending cycle of human misery and failure, with no option but to fail and fail again. To fail better, until the world ends.

National Theatre Live: Treasure Island

Photography from The National Theatre

In amongst the stellar selection of lockdown entertainment offerings from the National Theatre’s YouTube channel thus far was Bryony Lavery’s adaptation of Treasure Island in a 2014 production from director Polly Findlay.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s *other* hugely influential classic novel is a piratical high adventure, which sees the brave Jim Hawkins caught up in buccaneer hijinks as they face off against the dread pirate Long John Silver in search of buried treasure.

This is a truly spectacular production, full of charm, whimsy and rollicking spirit, which is hardly ever short of breath-taking sights on its two-hour travels. Lizzie Clachan’s outstanding set design alongside Bruno Poet’s lighting, and music and songs from Dan Jones and John Tams manages to conjure up maritime atmosphere in treasure-digging spades. Gorgeously detailed and vivid backdrops abound, with much ingenious mechanical wizardry on display which keeps the production moving along at a pacey and pleasingly fluid clip.

Photography from The National Theatre

Patsy Ferran leads a strong cast as Jim Hawkins, with a refreshingly modern, even prescient, take on this so-called “boys’-own” adventurer, stubbornly refusing to be whittled down to boy or girl, and full of vim and vigour. Alongside her is Doctor Who alumni Arthur Darvill, hugely enjoyable as the dastardly, two-faced Long John Silver, with both performers having a grand old time of it, and sharing good chemistry onstage, along with some surprisingly endearing shared moments. There are no slouches amongst the rest of the principal cast either, with Gillian Hanna convincing as the crotchety Grandma, Alexandra Maher taking a good-natured pop-culture ribbing as The Doctor (complete with swishy, dandy long coat) in her stride, and many highlights present and accounted for on the good ship Hispaniola’s manifest of misfits.

Confidently and skillfully directed by Findlay, this is a lively, hugely enjoyable production perfect for all the family which captures the spirit of high adventure near-perfectly, and looks ship-shape doing it.