#getinthebackofthevan

[tobacconist]

shrieking like a seagull, important millitary skill

[coda-atributetoledzeppelin-blog]

"I'm sure it all fitted in the van earlier". Luckily we did get it all back I'm, and we will be on our way to play on the main stage at Tribfest tomorrow. #getinthebackofthevan #tribfest2018 https://www.instagram.com/p/BmkmnW0nNZS/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=ppqyi3hylocz

[nothings-alrite-in-our-life]

This scene never gets old 😂 #withnailandi #getinthebackofthevan #richardegrant #brucerobinson #movie #film

[londontheatre]

According to the Collins English Dictionary, the word ‘gobsmacked’ means astounded and astonished. Personally I think this is too simplistic as we all know when we’ve been gobsmacked don’t we? Well, if you’re not too sure what it means then I would suggest you get yourself along to the Soho Theatre to see Lucy McCormick: Triple Threat and roughly an hour after the show starts, you will be 100% certain that you were gobsmacked.

Lucy and her backing team present a show that is, in effect, the New Testament, or at least the story of Jesus. Playing all the major roles herself, Lucy takes the story of the Son of God from conception, through birth, adoration, betrayal, crucifixion and finally to ascension. How she does this, I can’t tell you for two very good reasons. Firstly, Lucy McCormick: Triple Threat is definitely one of those shows that needs to be seen to be believed. Secondly, I’m not sure you would believe me if I actually told you what had happened during the show. To be honest, sitting here, I’m still not entirely sure I believe what I saw. Luckily, I had a companion with me and he and I discussed the show at great length over a pint or two afterwards.

What I can tell you is that the show involves things including underwear, Justin Bieber, coffee, hotpants, mayonnaise, Christina Aguilera, and sausages to name but a few. There is mess and there is irreverence, in fact a lot of irreverence, as Lucy and her scantily clad men skip through the New Testament. There is also some fantastically well-choreographed dancing, often in rather awkward conditions, and there is a lot of love throughout the performance.

If you wanted to search for a deep meaning to the show, then it is there. The first thing being the lack of strong female characters in the Bible. Mary Magdalene obviously is one but she is painted as a prostitute. Those of you that have read Dan Brown know he has a lot to say on this subject, but it is an interesting one. I suppose the other theme that comes out of the show is how pop culture relies on sex and sexiness and whether, in reality, this reliance on sex is necessary in order to get a message over. However, this may all be too deep for a show that is really fun from the start and may, in actual fact, be as shallow or as deep as the audience watching it.

All told, Lucy McCormick: Triple Threat is a surprising show. As a member of the audience, you literally do not know what is going to happen next, and by the time you realise, it’s too late to turn away. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this one to my mother, or if she went to see it, I wouldn’t be there on the same day, but it is definitely one to be experienced and lived. Although I thought a couple of the scenes were slightly overdrawn, I did have a thoroughly good time with Lucy and her boys and left the theatre on a real high, albeit never able to see the New Testament in quite the same way again.

Review by Terry Eastham

Following a smash-hit and sell-out 2016 Edinburgh Festival Fringe run, post-popular prodigy Lucy McCormick and her Girl Squad present a provocative, subversive cabaret retelling of the greatest story of all time.

Casting herself in all the main roles, Lucy attempts to reconnect to her own moral conscience by re-enacting the New Testament via a nu-wave holy trinity of dance, power ballads and absurdist art.

A wild, queer club performance from the GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN co-founder, directed by Ursula Martinez.

Triple Threat was commissioned by hÅb and Contact for Works Ahead, with support from Soho Theatre, Cambridge Junction and the Marlborough and funding from Arts Council England.

Age Recommendation: Strictly 18+ Running Time: 70 mins http://ift.tt/GDd1na

http://ift.tt/2mTxc0p LondonTheatre1.com

[synonymsforchurlish]

Fair warning. This is going to be my least disciplined blog post in ages. It’s borne out of two weeks’ worth of notes that I’ve hastily tapped into my phone while drunk or knackered or emotional, plus a general feeling of exhaustion at everything there is in life and all the shit we have to pull to hold ourselves together. Don’t worry though. It’s not a cry for help or anything. I watched Beethoven’s 2nd on ITV2 yesterday afternoon and it led me through a significant journey of self-reflection and re-discovery so I’m back on top now, but the last couple of weeks have been tough, and I want to acknowledge that here, briefly, before we get onto some ART. Four days ago I made a list of everything that had made me angry in one 24 hour period. - Caitlin Moran's ‘having fun’ face in Time Out. - Lauren Laverne and her from Red magazine doing a website "aimed at women" - the press release mainly talks about the bespoke ad partnership packages available to A-list brands. - Giles Coren. Still. - Fucking Tidal. - Jack White, who apparently doesn't do digital music until there’s a whiff of cash on the table. - Madonna's fucking leg. - Work. Because I can't afford not to do it. - The concept of ‘professionalism’. - The thought that, even though it’s gone now, that blue chicken was up on the fourth plinth for 18 months and some people actually really liked it. Some people called it subversive. (Subversive!) - (And various other things that I’d love to share with you but apparently it’s not the done thing or whatever.) Looking back at this list now, with the great maturity and perspective I have gained since Wednesday, this list tells me some important things about myself. I note recurring themes: neoliberal economics, sub-standard personality journalists, access routes to art. The more observant amongst you might notice that the bits of this list that involve actual real people who I have actual real relationships with in my actual real life appear somewhat lower down than the fact that Madonna lifted her leg onto a table last Tuesday and it really fucking irritated me. There’s definitely an argument here that says I need to chill the fuck out, but now, on Easter Sunday (with that maturity and perspective that I mentioned earlier), I’m also interested in the psychology of this list. What’s behind this list, I wonder. Was Caitlin Moran’s stupid fucking gurning “I’m crazy me” face enough to make me whip my phone out and start frantically typing her name because the sheer vacuity of that Time Out article made my fists clench? Was that the thing? The list-initiator? Or was it actually all the redacted real-life stuff? Was the seed of this list actually sewn in my legitimate IRL friendships? Were Caitlin Moran, Jack White, Madonna’s fucking leg, all just catalysts for my own emotional journey? Like a 12 Step programme for coming to terms with evolving relationships? Step 1: Get angry about contemporary media. Step 2: Get angry about your own economic futility. Step 3: Remember a piece of art that you hated that doesn’t even exist anymore. ... ... ... Step 11: Apologise. Step 12: Hug it out. Who knows. Not me. Anyway. Shall we talk about some art now? Yup. Good. Where to begin... Oh, that’s right. I KNOW. LET’S START WITH THIS IS HOW WE DIE. -------- I was talking to someone in a theatre foyer last week, explaining that I was going to go and see This Is How We Die for the fourth time over at Royal Holloway uni, and he was suddenly all like “Hur hur Chris Brett Bailey, eh? Hur hur you love him”, all nudges and winks and, like, 25% wiggling eyebrow. Like this dude was suddenly channelling a Carry On film. At the time I kinda just went with it, because sometimes it’s easier to roll with innuendo than it is to challenge society’s preconceptions of your own alleged nymphomania. But I’m just putting it out there now: Chris Brett Bailey is not my type, and, actually, is it not enough that I think he’s made the greatest work of performance of my entire lifetime? Can I not just get excited because his theatre makes me feel like I’ve taken drugs? Is it impossible for a woman to champion a male performer without having to contend with the groupie question? I probably should’ve put patriarchy on the angry list but that’s exactly the kind of thing Caitlin Moran would do. So. This Is How We Die. For the fourth time. Last Friday night, the second night of its tour, at Royal Holloway Uni. I took my friend Duşka along, the first of several people being forcibly dragged to see this show with me before the end of the summer. In a proper joyful piece of programming, it was closing both nights of a two-day festival of work by graduating students who had been working with Forest Fringe, meaning we got to watch it in an audience of students who had basically just finished the scariest bit of their entire degrees just a couple of hours earlier. They were relentlessly excited, a bit pissed on the free wine (no-one tell Gove where HE budgets are really going), basically all loving life and each other and being young and carefree and frivolous and the like, but also with this sense that, if they weren’t 100% entertained within the first fifteen seconds, something visceral was going to come unhinged and plunge the whole auditorium into full Hieronymus Bosch mode. I was nervous because I wanted Chris to be a hit with these kids, these walking, chattering vessels-of-future, and also a hit with Duşka, so she’d think I was really cool with incredible taste and top quality art patter etc, but I was mainly nervous in case I’d mis-remembered the whole show and the first three times were just weird brain hiccups and actually This Is How We Die isn’t much better than your average open mic poetry night. I relax at his first sip of water. Boy can he sip a glass of water. That water gets motherfucking SIPPED, believe. I challenge you to find me a performer who can sip a glass of water as well as Chris Brett Bailey sips a glass of water. *looks up* *suddenly realises why everyone thinks I fancy him* -------- If a show is a house, and all those standard, known premises and formats (farce and panto and noir and even the supposedly alt.theatre performance lecture thing that we've got so used to) are like building a pre-fab off the back of a truck, or turning up at a row of identikit Wimpy homes - same floorplan, different curtains - then This Is How We Die is like standing stock still while a house builds itself around you. First it's one thing, then another, the rooms and staircases morphing and re-forming, all Hogwarts and shit, like a film set, repeatedly redecorated. Now it's a dining room and now it’s a tube platform and now it’s your flat with your record collection right there. Now it’s a Cadillac and now it's a gas station and oh shit now it's suddenly all gone again and it's actually just you and a desert and this guy's decapitated fucking head on a cactus. And then: something else. Duşka said that those final, delicious, moments of noise gave her a key to the whole show which, fair dos, she'd been struggling to engage with until that point. When the lights begin to glow, extending those massive stretchy twinkles across your vision, it's like slowly falling down a massive hole that you didn’t even know was there. Like that bit in The Truman Show where he’s sailing off towards the horizon, then bumps against the edge of his whole reality, but HOLY SHIT THERE’S A FUCKING DOOR. It’s like that house that's been building and re-building itself around you for the past hour reveals itself to be the film set, or not even that – CGI or something, all along. This blue pill universe, the shadows on the cave wall. And now an axe has smashed open the sky. -------- I wrote that on the tube home from Waterloo, not long after the show. *rolls eyes at self* “And now an axe has smashed open the sky.” CRINGE. -------- Let’s move on now. To a collection of works-in-progress/work-in-progresses. I wouldn’t normally spend time talking about unfinished stuff because any kind of preliminary judgment, especially one as ‘on-record’ as this, feels a bit shitty. But, as the days get longer and the Edfringe programme deadline approaches, so too does the work-in-progress season bear fruit. Remember last August when everyone in Edinburgh was going on about the Chris Trilogy? The Chrises In Crisis? Chris Thorpe and Confirmation; Chris Goode and Men In The Cities; Chris Brett Bailey and (*clouds part, shaft of sunlight hits keyboard*) This Is How We Die; even The Christeene Machine, which I still haven’t seen but sounds like a gloriously fucking batshit night out. There was talk at the time about these shows all loosely addressing a “crisis in masculinity”, which is potentially a bit of a stretch, but contains within it the idea that being a grown-up is actually quite difficult and confusing and frustrating, and whereas fifty years ago your average man would just be guided gently and inconspicuously through life by the women around him, stepping up only occasionally to open a jar of gherkins or club a seal to death or something, now they are being expected to make their own decisions, presumably because all the women are off burning their bras or YouTubing make-up tutorials or frigging themselves senseless in the work bogs or whatever it is that women fucking do all day long. That was a digression, obviously. What I’m getting to is the fact that all that talk of masculinity and gender roles and internal conflict and modern living and the knife-edge of happiness that’s perpetually and unavoidably slicing into everyone’s feet seems to be making its way out into a new batch of shows being worked-in-progress/work-in-progressed at the moment. Number 1: The Sand Dog Cometh by Mary Pearson feels like a series of kinda off-kilter skits, characters built out of familiar imagery and then washed over with weird: the brash American dragging an empty water cooler tank like it was a dog, the woman with the hair that crawls out of the TV in that horror film, the Scouse girls with their painted eyebrows and lash extensions, twirling a beach towel featuring a picture of a wolf. There are sections of film: dancing in a kitchen, self-tanning in a garden, a whole load of building sites. And then the bit where she sings showtunes to us while shaving her legs in the middle of the audience. If it isn’t about gender as performance then, for real, your guess is as good as mine. Number 2: Language is Emma Frankland’s show about her experience as a transgender woman, how we talk about one another, treat one another. There’s a lovely connection with the famous trashing of the Blue Peter garden in 1983, a live guitar score of distorted pop songs, and a final message of “kindness and respect” wallpapered up in a go-large-or-go-home visual gesture. I think that central question of what constitutes vandalism, who has ownership of a body, of a person in a public space, is pretty fucking vitally important. If anything, I hope Language gets angrier throughout its development, but then I clearly have a bit of a problem with anger atm... Number 3: And the last show in this new criticism-by-numbers trilogy I’ve plucked out my arse is Ira Brand’s Break Yourself. This was great. Partly because I think it actually stands alone as a 40-minute piece, so my selfish needs were met with something that felt like it could already be a ‘whole’ even if there’s clearly an intention to extend it further, and partly because hello, BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN. Ira’s show is the closest cousin to the Chrises-in-crisis, as she drags-up as a bloke called Ollie who started his own business in his mid-twenties, is “good with people”, and feels better about his awkward shitty life by lip-syncing to Dancing In The Dark and imagining he works in a factory. There’s also this other bit about fucking a guy who’s so self-assured he doesn’t even need to look at his phone when he’s in the pub on his own (I know, for real) and it’s details like that that make me think this is gonna be really really good. -------- I’ve got another couple of shows to tell you about but I’m going to pause that because all this intensive critical insight has reminded me that ‘dramaturgical normcore’ is a thing now, so I have to take a time out in order to run around the flat doing my best Gene Simmons face until the rush subsides. -------- Dramaturgical normcore. I won’t bore you with too many details but, basically, David Cote from Time Out New York noticed that a trend for formal experimentation had started to creep into productions that, quite honestly, one would ordinarily expect to BE NORMAL (ie: NOT WEIRD). So he rolled a massive doob and, later that evening, squinted at the internet and said: “It’s like... it’s like... dramaturgical normcore or something, man... yeah...” Then Isaac Butler at American Theatre Magazine looked out across the city, taped a big X in his window, and he said: “It’s like, on the outside, they’re normal shows about normal people... but beneath the surface... they are DIFFERENT.” At which point the Time Out NY subs legit crashed David Cote’s chill and made him write a whole other op-ed about how, actually, he’d been a fan of dramaturgical normcore since way before anyone else because this guy he met at a Sabbath gig gave him one of their demos back in 1978 so there. Then the rest of us fell about laughing. -------- Let’s say it together: “Dramaturgical normcore”. DRAMATURGICAL NORMCORE. It’s funny because it initially found me in this context-void. Just started appearing on twitter like “Dramaturgical normcore WTF LOL”. Normcore is a term I had last enjoyed when I saw it used to describe stonewashed jeans during Fashion Week. A term that appeared to have been specifically coined to describe the very opposite of sexing-up (‘Sexing down’? Nope – that sounds even ruder) was suddenly being heralded by arts sub-editors as an exciting new theatrical movement. When was the last time that theatre had any kind of rock’n’roll term to get excited about? Angry Young Men and In Yer Face are a bit embarrassing really. The kind of thing your uncle’s thinking of calling his covers band. Dramaturgical normcore on the other hand! I mean, who can even THINK that phrase without doing Bill & Ted guitar fingers? NOT ME, THAT’S FOR CERTAIN. Admittedly, I resisted reading the opinion-tennis that kicked it off for a whole day, because I was enjoying myself too much just imagining what they could possibly fucking mean. In my head it was a bit like the uncanny, like people wearing rubber masks of their own faces, morris dancers moving in slow-motion, maybe Putin launching a missile strike then relaxing with some tai chi, that kind of shit. Then, when I’d done my research, and burst whatever bubble of excitement still remained, I kinda wished I could go back in time to rethink my position on one or two shows from the recent past. Our Town, for example, named in that initial Cote-Butler LOLfest; Little Light at the Orange Tree; the work of Alecky Blythe. When I saw Blythe’s Little Revolution back in the autumn, I got increasingly pissed off with the lack of danger, or grit, or single fucking note of realism in a play that meticulously and conscientiously failed to represent the voices at its very heart, but now that we have dramaturgical normcore, I realise that shows about middle class people being middle class can actually be waaaaaay subversive. -------- Hmmm. Seven months on and it seems Little Revolution can still make me instantly furious. I swear I’ve mostly been laughing about the dramaturgical normcore thing. It only got political for me about ten minutes ago. And, for the record, I actually really liked Little Light, as you can hear (SELF-PROMOTION ALERT) on the new Exeunt podcast which Tim and Annegret have made. I’m not just saying it because I’m on the first one either – they’ve made a really great thing and I hope it continues. There we go. For the rest of this mammoth post, every time I get wound up I’m going to say something nice about somebody who is nice. -------- Speaking of nice, the best show I’ve seen in ages (apart from This Is How We Die obviously, let’s not get carried away) was I Heart Catherine Pistachio at the Soho this week. I saw it first on Wednesday and then went back on Friday night because I wasn’t entirely convinced I hadn’t dreamt it. It’s like when you go for a biopsy and they tell you to bring someone with you to ask questions. I needed to sleep on it, and then get a second opinion, but ultimately the results came through positive; I Heart Catherine Pistachio is definitely brilliant. There is so much fetid, rotten brilliance in it: paedophilia, disability, pro-suicide websites, impetigo, animal cruelty, child abuse, and worse – it seems to be set in the non-specific north of England. (The horror.) It’s like the League of Gentlemen with dancing: two blokes in Lucian Malfoy wigs playing all the characters in a suburban nightmare. Parents hosting swinging parties in badger masks, nightclub acid attacks, the slow starvation of a pet dog. I think they gave 15+ as the age guidance, but I’m 31 and I’m not entirely sure I handled it all. But here’s the thing. Here are the several things: the writing is sharp as fuck. Not a word wasted. It rattles along so quickly that you’ve barely had a chance to digest the bit about female ejaculation before they’ve killed a Shetland pony by stringing it up in a tree as a piñata. And these two guys performing it. Fucking excellent. One of them dances Catherine’s frequent epileptic fits like he’s not even a human being, and there’s a bit near the end where the pair of them do a Bert and Ernie skit that is just... Trying to describe it to you here is a reminder of why I had wanted a second opinion. On paper it sounds like a wilfully shocking headline-generator that just wants to fly through Edinburgh and another quick autumn run at the Soho by virtue of being really really silly and offensive. (The marketing copy on the Soho’s site was doing it a major disservice for starters. It’s like it’s been written for an entirely different show.) I’d watched it through once on Wednesday, snapping between laughter and gasps of disbelief about once every four seconds, came out of it like OMG AMAZING I LOVE IT, and then spent most of Thursday thinking that maybe it was just stupid and I had been duped. That maybe it was just the arty version of a Frankie Boyle DVD. That maybe I’ve spent so much time looking at pictures of German theatre on the internet that you can put blonde wigs on any old guys doing funny voices and I’ll think it’s fucking profound. But no. Soz. Friday sealed it. I was right. I Heart Catherine Pistachio is outrageous and it is deplorable but it is also a fucking sickening tragedy performed as if a sinkhole is about to bury us all. Watching it is how I imagine being in Fight Club feels. Fucking great. -------- I have one more thing to write about now and I’m not entirely convinced I want to. I try to keep this blog pretty positive on the whole, and only attack stuff that I think is big and powerful enough to take it (Little Revolution, Caitlin Moran). But it’s recently been brought to my attention that, regardless of what you think about the choice of subject being a critical act in itself blah blah, sometimes you have to challenge yourself to write about bad shows. And by that I mean: sometimes you have to challenge yourself to think about why a show is bad. And by that I mean: sometimes you have to challenge yourself to think about why you think a show is bad. Have I qualified that enough now? Then let’s begin. I didn’t like No 1 The Plaza by GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN for the same reason that I didn’t like that blue chicken that they’ve finally taken down from the fourth plinth. It’s a joke, and it’s ammunition for all the people for whom live art, performance, experimental theatre, whatever, is all a big joke. I mean, it’s basically trolling. I refused to refer to the chicken as “the b-- b--- c---” because that’s what they want me to do, and now this is forcing me to go all Daily fucking Mail too. No 1 The Plaza is an audience with Lucy and Jen from GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN, a “performance company” who apparently make “live art” and “installations”. I’m not entirely sure which of those this is but one thing I can say for certain is that I was more than a little bemused by their onstage antics last night. The pair, wearing provocative dresses, emerged at the start of the show smeared in what appeared to be human faeces, already drinking from the well-stocked minibar despite there being no man onstage to chaperone them. They then sung us a few half-hearted musical numbers (including a complete butchery of Tell Me It’s Not True from poor Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers!), told some stream-of-consciousness “anecdotes”, followed each other around in circles for what felt like a week, then got their naked front-bottoms out and frolicked! All of this, I kid you not, subsidised by the taxes of hard-working Britons like you and me. The bastards are making me the Quentin Letts here. Fuck them if they think they can Quentin Letts me. Nobody Quentin Lettses me. -------- HRRRRRNK!!! EMERGENCY SOMETHING NICE: My Mum and Dad are ace. This week they sent me some chocolate for Easter and a card and a twenty pound note. Thanks Mum and Dad! -------- Okay. I’m chill. I’ve promised to think about this rationally and think about it rationally I will. If we try to take No 1 The Plaza on its own terms, and not the terms of some fictionalised bogeyman, it seems to be about friendship and collaboration; exploring the gristly bits of a close relationship and exposing the expectations of that relationship that may or may not be present in their audience. And it’s frequently entertaining. They have excellent comic timing. But I still don’t really know why they bothered. Does their specific relationship warrant this show? Does a more general question of what it is to be creative with somebody warrant it? Even if the answer is “honestly Meg, no, there isn’t a story here demanding to be told at all” then maybe the form is the thing. Maybe it’s not what they say but about the way they say it. And then suddenly we’re back to watching a couple of women get drunk and throw fake shit around. And I’m being Quentin fucking Letts again, gritting my teeth and adding decommissioned fourth plinth artworks to my angry list.

[degenezijde]

Withnail & I - Everything You Ever Wanted to Know but Were Too Drunk to Ask - Cars

[pailculture]

Polish Artists in London is about much more than putting on shows - they are throwing the doors open onto their exploration of ways to find a vocabulary for bi-lingual performance well beyond surtitles, with admirable honesty. PAiL's first show was slick, concentrated and economical - affirming their clear and focused mission. Margot's vision for Polish Artists in London is razor sharp and rightfully ambitious.

Hester Chillingworth - Artistic Director, GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN

http://www.getinthebackofthevan.com/

[synonymsforchurlish]

Couple of things

Firstly, if you fancy reading some of my more grown-up thoughts about yesterday's Dialogue session run by Jake and Maddy at BAC, there's a long post taking in a bit of Immanuel Kant over at my new clever uni blog. I'll keep things nice and lowbrow over here though, and let you know how I felt about (spoiler!) ALL THE VAGINA in Big Hits by Getinthebackofthevan.

I'm not sure how I feel about Big Hits. I feel a bit guilty for laughing so much. I'm in proper middle class anxiety territory. I swear it was REALLY FUNNY when the guy repeatedly punched the woman in the face while she was on her knees but when I write that down now it doesn't feel quite so hilarious. Basically, the whole thing starts off pretty daft. One woman sings Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen over and over while another woman dressed as a rabbit does interpretative actions. We're told it's helping us, as a very real and present audience, "lift ourselves up". To be honest, it reminded me of some of my early twenties parties where you get all hyperactive with new exciting drugs and try to make yourself a dress out of your mate's sister's Argos wendy house. Lots of taking the piss and play-acting. Competing to be the most outrageous. It gets darker and darker though. As the singer, Lucy, goes to greater lengths to bring out her 'best' performance, she beats herself up, then gets beaten, rolls a mechanical disco ball over her crotch, pretends her nipple is a doorbell, begs to be spanked, and finally gets on all fours to give us a pretty anatomical view of her fanny. And it was HONESTLY much funnier than that sounds. I left feeling a bit vacant to be honest. A bit ashamed perhaps. While I howled with laughter at the time, as soon as it was all over I kinda just wanted to say to her that she didn't need to do all that on our account. That the first time she sang that song it was perfectly good enough. That there was no need for all the abuse just so she could perform better. It was weird the way I switched from having a ball to feeling a bit apologetic. Like a weird post-sex feeling when you've just shagged someone a bit ropey. Like, "Aaah, this is... embarrassing. Do you want me to call you a taxi?" If that's the way they wanted us to feel, it really was a very clever show.