Henry Rollins

Went to see Henry Rollins’ spoken word show at the IndigO₂ tonight. Interesting to see him, having known about him for years and having heard some of his music. Stamina was impressive. He spoke for almost three hours without a break. The first half was good — in parts angry, funny, informative. It seemed to flag in the second half and he lost the audience a bit. Without getting into the rights and wrongs of the war in Iraq, the section about it came across as over–simplistic and over–blown. From what little I know about the Iraq situation, it is not fair to characterise it as a straightforward invasion, which all of the invaded are of course going to resist to their last breath, analogous to Belgium invading the United States.

The last hour or so was talking about a documentary that he has been travelling around the world making, the production of which has obviously been a big part of his life for the last few months. However, I thought he talked about this documentary for too long and that this section didn’t have the energy or focus of the first half. The discussion of the interviews that he did about the troubles in Northern Ireland seemed a bit pointless. He was (rightly) anxious to avoid adopting any position on the underlying issues, but as a result all we were really left with absent actually seeing the interviews was that the grey–haired former paramilitary killers to whom he spoke were “fucking hardcore”. The (lengthy) discussion in the final segment of Hurricane Katrina, FEMA and the rebuilding of New Orleans seemed a lot more in depth, but was a bit lost on the London crowd, who I also think were getting knackered and in need of a break.

The venue wasn’t bad (Rollins remarking that it was a bit sterile and new, which was a fair comment), but the crowd were pretty passive, which I got the impression wasn’t what Rollins would have preferred.

Labels: diary, theatre

Comments:

Given that you wrote this up at close to 1am on the night of the show I'm assuming the six cans of Red Bull you drank to get you through the show hadn't worn off on the journey home?

# posted by  nickyg : 6:31 PM

 

One thing I will say is that despite the fact that he is "hurtling towards 50", Mr Rollins is still built like the proverbial and I am slightly nervous that he will stumble across this less than 100% positive review, hunt me down like a dog and beat the crap out of me!

# posted by  tucola : 8:57 AM

 

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