REVIEW - The Dybbuk at the King's Head Theatre

Sickly blue light illuminates a spitting, crying, salivating face in the area behind the audience, before the scene shifts to the conventional stage. The daring opening image of a dybbuk – an indignant dislocated soul, common in Jewish folklore – comes to stand for the excruciating tragedy of impossible love, and for director Eve Leigh’s attempt to pin down its otherworldliness.

S. Ansky’s seminal 1917 play could have been overdone gothic or sci-fi. It takes place, after all, in a world where brides can be possessed by their dead lovers, spirits give evidence in court, and pregnant women have their wombs sliced opened and filled with cats.

But despite incongruous space invader-style sound effects, Leigh uses the intimacy of the north-London theatre to highlight the pain and the poignancy rather than the spectacle of Jewish mythology.

Edward Hogg’s Chonen, a rabbinical scholar who dies of a broken heart, is wired and electrifying. Protruding veins, heavy breathing and wrung hands lend carnal urgency to his fateful devotion to Leah (Hanne Steen). Hogg illustrates the enlightenment notion of sin as God-created and therefore treasured better than the play’s earlier philosophical preamble, when weak supporting actors bandy stilted ideas back and forth.

The contrasting purity of Steen’s Leah accentuates the impossibility of her betrothal to Chonen – arranged in a pact between their fathers, now denied through class difference. When Chonen hears Leah is to marry, he drops dead and returns as a dybbuk to possess her on the eve of the wedding.

The climax is premature but impressive. Surrounded by unconvincingly aghast wedding guests, Leah and her dybbuk writhe together as if joined at the pelvis, while eerie lamplight reflects off her wedding dress. Leigh’s literal interpretation of the Hebrew term dybbuk, or ‘attachment’, uses highly physical theatre to depict the symbiosis of attraction and repulsion. The polished chorus of their chants, shrieks and moans is captivating; the audience too is possessed.

The Prospero-like figure of Rabbi Azriel (David Meyer) brings maturity to a production without a backbone, teetering on the edge of amateurism. The heavily stylised exorcism he conducts to try to sever the pair is one of the few scenes that the inadequacy of the stage set fades away.

The rest of the time, wooden forklift pallets and Torah scrolls scattered around the stage fail to recreate the gemeinschaft familiarity of the Jewish shtetl. A hotchpotch of live music – from keyboard to tribal drums and jazz guitar – is matched only by a ragbag of costumes including traditional snood headscarves, two-piece suits and ripped denim.

The Dybbuk is rough around the edges but the grave task of keeping alive the centuries-old traditions of Judaism so nearly lost during the Holocaust is realised with gripping sensitivity.

Until Feb 24, King’s Head Theatre, 115 Upper Street, Islington, N1, Tuesday to Saturday 7.30pm, Saturday and Sunday 3.30pm. £10 to £20.

Running free - the urban craze of parkour takes off

A few years ago, parkour was an underground training method practised by a handful of teenagers. Now it ia a worldwide phenomenon that features on films and adverts. I went to a class to find out why the sport-cum-art has taken off at such speed.

Seven figures in black hoodies pursue a man across a dark and empty west-London car park. Their eyes are focused and their jaws set. The atmosphere is tense and silent
except for the pounding of their feet and their controlled but heavy breathing.

The group gains on the man as he reaches a five-foot brick wall. He is running out of space but does not slow. “Don’t think, don’t stop”, he calls in a heavily-accented voice before running up the vertical wall – up the vertical wall – briefly placing one hand on the top as a pivot and vaulting over. He hardly pauses to forward-roll before he is sprinting again. This is parkour.

The underground youth culture of parkour is about speed, agility and a focus on body over thought. The aim is to move between two points as quickly and efficiently as possible. No obstacle, whether a dustbin, a wall or a high-rise tower block, is an
object.

It looks easy as the other seven ‘traceurs’ in the class – one woman and six men – try to imitate the French instructor’s vault in canon. But as horses falter at a fence, 17-year-old Abdul and myself bottle it. Abdul reprimands himself with two pull-ups and we run around the car park wall to catch up with the rest of the group. He has only ever tried his sprint-leap-sprint skills indoors and I am a total
beginner at one of London’s four outdoorparkour schools.

Until the late 90s, parkour was an insular, self-taught underground culture. Young people on council estates would precede or emulate Hollywood legends like James Bond and Jason Bourne, whose directors had borrowed action moves from real-life parkour in the first place.

Now parkour classes are making the growing art form more accessible. The only prerequisites are a hoody, comfortable trainers and a decent level of fitness. Don’t take a handbag as I did – there is nowhere to put it down – and do be on time.

It was 7.03pm when I arrived, already breathless, at Latimer Road tube station. The parkour class I had signed up to online was already a blur at the end of the road. This art is all about discipline.

The following hour was also a blur. Johann, the Parisian who set up a parkour organisation a year ago, explained that this is the way it should be: “Think in advance but don’t think when you’re just about to do a move. Clear your head or you’ll get scared and fail.” So that’s where Abdul and I went wrong.

Jordan, a traceur with muscles that bulge against his tracksuit, assures us it becomes second nature after a few months. “A couple of years ago, I would see a car park barrier and think, that’s just a barrier. But you start seeing parkour possibilities everywhere – walls, posts, slopes,” he says. “At school I was crap at
football. Now I’m fit and I keep up with the best.”

On the other side of the wall – the frightening unknown – appears a quiet road perfect for practising precision jumping. For Abdul and me, this means calming our pulses while jumping on and off a high curb, keeping feet together and concentrating on balance. For Johann and the most advanced traceurs, it means standing three inches from a four-foot wall and leaping directly onto it with perfect poise.

“Keep going, keep warm,” insists Johann when anyone pauses to watch. All his instructions are brief, repetitive and to the point – like the art form that is gripping London’s teenagers.

It seems that in central London you’re never more than 10 feet from a traceur. You see them, nimble and disciplined, doing ‘three-point tic-tac wall runs’ in the recesses of the South Bank arches and feet-first ‘kong vaults’ over walls and railings on Lambeth estates.

So most pedestrians don’t even glance over as we sprint through a children’s playground and past a tube station – we both fit in with the urban landscape and give its bleak homogeny, together with any stern looks, the finger.

Even with my woefully inadequate fitness and total lack of skills, the air of action film escapism is palpable. It doesn’t matter that some of us are more comfortable in our hoodies than others – parkour is fresh, wholesome and bloody difficult for everyone, no matter how easy the pros make it look.

Leaps and bounds
Parkour gained its name – a corruption of the French term for obstacle course – in the Paris banlieues when it started as a counter to the dull slog of jogging in the 80s. Co-founder David Belle said of his ‘vision’: “You just have to look, you just have to think, like children.”
The art, combining this philosophy with gymnastics and martial arts, gathered momentum. More than 19 million YouTube surfers have watched the parkour pro Urban Ninja doing flips, vaults and sprints. Parkour has now spread to America and Europe, with four established schools in London.
But parkour comes with a health warning. Last year, a Hampshire borough councillor said he could “not think of anything more stupid than running along a roof” when a 16-year-old narrowly escaped death after plunging 70 feet from a Woolworths building. Parkour Generations advises beginners to start slow, stay low.

IN MY WORDS - Oxford Union president Luke Tryl

When Oxford Union president Luke Tryl, 20, invited BNP leader Nick Griffin and Holocaust denier David Irving to debate at a free speech forum, he became a pariah of the press and a target for protesters. He recalls a period of stress, threats and self-doubt.

‘I’d like to smash your face in till it bleeds’, said one letter in the run-up to the forum. I wanted to fight extremism but I’m not violent and this was something I had never experienced.

The media focus started to become intense a week before. There were live TV interviews and all of a sudden I was faced with a camera. It was scary and daunting. There were calls from MPs and members of the House of Lords; some speakers pulled out of the debate.

One thing which really upset me was an attempt to portray me as a public school toff when I’m from quite a working-class background – my grandparents were immigrants and I was the first in my family to go to university. It does upset you, as much as you try and detach yourself personally from it. You just want to say, look, I think the BNP are awful and abhorrent and I want to defeat them just as much as you do. But journalists had a signature of what they wanted me to be and that was what they wrote about. It was just a cheap shot at me. I smoked more, I lost weight.

There were times when I wasn’t sure whether I could carry on. I never thought there was a justification for stopping but at times the pressure was too much. I’m 20 years old.

On the day itself, the calls were just constantly coming in. It was definitely adrenaline that kept me going through the day. I’d be on the phone and there’d be two more calls waiting; some journalists said if you don’t get back to me in 30 minutes we’re going to say you wouldn’t comment. In the end I had to give my phone to someone else.

But the worst bit was when the protesters stormed the chamber. They’d been shouting ‘Kill Tryl’ earlier and I was worried about what they might do. The police were there but I get the feeling they didn’t want the event to happen. I was really disappointed with the protesters. When you effectively start inciting hatred, I don’t think you do the anti-fascist cause any favours.

We had to split the forum in two in the end, and I stayed with David Irving. Irving was just crazy. His arguments about free speech didn’t stand up. It was very weird meeting him and Griffin; they are both deeply unpleasant men.

That night, my friends walked me home, and I collapsed. We had Russell Brand in the next day so I had to be up again immediately. Most presidents spend their time getting drunk. They go to clubs, they have lots of parties. Previous presidents were ringing me up, saying, ‘Why are you doing this? You’re meant to be enjoying yourself.’ But I was constantly dealing with this – the most exciting period of my life, though I never enjoyed it for a moment.

People like attacking Oxford and it is easy to throw around allegations of student naivety. I regret the fact that it did get so out of control but I don’t think it I was naive. The media focus ended up being on the fact that the extremists were speaking rather than on the debate itself, and interesting, intelligent people were overshadowed. But I believe in the principle, I do think that debate is the best way to defeat extremists. Harold Macmillan described the Union as ‘the last bastion of free speech’ so if we can’t debate these people there, where can we debate them?

It was right that I was called to account, to defend the decision, but people said it was a publicity thing, which it was never, ever meant to be. That hurt.

I think this sort of thing can stay with you for life. My dad went to vote in Halifax when I was five; while he was in the polling station, I stood outside telling people to vote for John Major. So I’ve always been politically interested and this hasn’t put me off. In the future, I have to try and do something more meaningful.

Bending the rules - a gay man in a lads' mag world

A doctor and Oxford graduate became the first openly gay columnist for top lads' mag FHM. I talked to him about how it felt to stick out like a sore thumb.

In a room plastered with pictures of naked women, an FHM subeditor passed judgement on behalf of 300,000 straight, male readers. With a few clicks of the mouse, he designed a thumbs-up logo for page 54. It said: “He’s okay... for a gay!”

The Gay, also known as Gareth Chapman, is a student doctor from Scunthorpe who bent the rules by becoming the first openly gay columnist for the UK’s leading lads’ mag. Now, in an Oxford pub, the well-mannered Oxford University postgraduate seems an unlikely candidate.

“The Best Breasts in Britain and nude shots of Abi Titmuss were getting dull. FHM was dumbing down – they needed something a bit different,” says Chapman. The 23-year-old decided that a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy-type feature could work. “In a drunken haze one night, I emailed the features editor. He asked me to give him a ring. I was terrified,” he laughs for the first time since sitting down.

The Q&A column was commissioned. The ‘agony uncle’ would answer straight men’s questions from a gay man’s perspective, tackling issues from tableware to moustaches and from decorating to anal sex, in the magazine’s sardonic house style.

Chapman agreed to be photographed dressed as characters from the Village People as long as his identity was disguised. He explains: “I didn’t want people to think I was playing the gay guy just to be the extrovert. I said I would write under a pseudonym too. At Oxford medical school you’re not able to be overtly camp.”

The features show Chapman as a pouting construction worker, Chapman as a policeman, Chapman in leather. Underneath, the introduction to ‘Ask the Bender’ tries to excuse the appearance of a homosexual in this elite, chauvinistic lads’ mag world: “He has the best of both worlds: women love him and let him watch them undress. We’re sure he’s good at other stuff too – ironing, colour-matching, hairstyles and the like – but largely that’s it.”

The editorial input and the ‘He’s okay... for a gay!’ stamp were not Chapman’s ideas. “The logo made me pretty peeved,” he frowns. “And the title annoyed me. The column was a bit of a spoof but it was also meant to point to the fact that someone alternative had managed to get into FHM. They dropped the logo in later issues so maybe they got complaints. The derogatory ‘bender’ in the title stayed though.”

It is hard to marry this sober, sensitive man with his cuttingly coarse articles. One acerbic answer in the column advises Jim, London, to quit beer in favour of ‘designer cocktails’ to “take a leaf out the gay man’s book – that’s right, the pink one with glittery pages”, before coming on to Jim. Chapman sips on tap water as he reads.

“I imagine people think I’m quite dull compared to what I write,” he says. “Writing is my little outlet. Working with very ill people, you have to be professional and serious. It can be restrictive. But a lot of what you do is acting, communicating with people effectively. Medicine is a scientific art.

“People recognise that doctors need external interests, as long as we don’t flaunt those interests at work. I don’t have a different personality when I write, but I do have a different persona.”

Not everyone was impressed by Chapman’s artistic side. LGBT, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community, argued the column would not further their cause. Chapman nods pensively. “I never wanted to really fight for equality and bash down doors but, looking back, I was probably quite naive. The articles were short-lived and won’t have changed anyone’s opinion of gay people, but at least they got in.”

Chapman is now writing to magazines F*@K and Bent, which brand him ‘okay’ because of his sexuality, not in spite of it. And he is focusing on plans to work at an HIV clinic in Malawi, where homosexuality is not only castigated but illegal.

An ideal journalist? Revealing confidential sources

In Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband (1895), the disgraced MP Sir Robert Chiltern tells his friend Lord Arthur Goring:

“Weak? Do you really think, Arthur, that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to. To stake all one’s life on a single moment, to risk everything on one throw, whether the stake be power or pleasure, I care not – there is no weakness in that. There is a horrible, a terrible courage.”

Chiltern has committed a crime. He has broken the law and flouted the moral and ethical code. In striving to be an ideal husband, he has violated the trust of people close to him and jeopardised his illustrious career. But his deliberate decision to commit the crime, combined with its positive outcomes, lead him to insist that he possesses “a horrible, a terrible courage”.

Chiltern’s fictional plight resonates with the very real one of Nick Martin-Clark. The freelance journalist committed what many reporters consider a crime by naming a source whose confidentiality he had guaranteed. The episode left the source imprisoned for at least 24 years, Martin-Clark under witness protection for life, and the media facing a number of ethical questions.

In 1996, Clifford McKeown, a member of Northern Ireland’s Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), shot Catholic taxi driver Martin McCormick in a randomly-chosen but calculated attack in Aghagallon, Co Armagh.

Six years on, McKeown – by now a prime suspect in the murder case and in jail for another offence – swore Martin-Clark to secrecy before admitting to the killing.
Martin-Clark broke his promise and wrote about the confession in the Sunday Times. He then helped police to convict McKeown for murder by submitting tape-recordings and appearing as a prosecution witness at the trial. Martin-Clark was condemned by most reporters in Ireland and expelled from the National Union of Journalists (NUJ).

While an ideal husband should never lie, an ideal journalist should never reveal the identity of a confidential source – so goes one argument. After the 2003 Hutton Inquiry highlighted the consequences of exposing sources, for example, Tim Crook claimed that the ‘never name a source’ maxim constitutes a deontological duty, an absolute.

But journalists do not report on or in an ideal world. And when each pillar upholding a journalist’s faith in media maxims is demolished, the journalist finds it increasingly difficult to justify the rule for its own sake, under the weight of his personal conscience and ethics. This is what happened to Martin-Clark.

In McKeown’s case, many of the justifications for protecting a source could be dismissed. McKeown was a reliable primary source with direct, criminal responsibility for the information he supplied. He was likely to be the only individual able to supply the compelling forensic evidence needed to help solve McGoldrick’s murder. He had stopped cooperating with Martin-Clark’s investigation into alleged collusion during The Troubles and was unlikely to be needed as a source in future.

Martin-Clark contended that many of the key justifications for remaining silent had been eliminated. He said: “McKeown was a boastful murderer whose protection would have served no public interest after he had broken an understanding that he would provide me with further information about collusion and the LVF. There was a clear public interest in solving a murder.”

His Sunday Times colleague Liam Clarke agreed and said that Martin-Clark “considered that his duty as a citizen and his duty as a human being outweighed his duty of confidentiality.”

Clarke and Martin-Clark suggest that protecting and pandering to the requests of a brutal murderer can be professionally desirable but, in this case, goes against moral and intuitive reason.

The NUJ deemed Martin-Clarke “not a fit and proper person” to continue his membership. The union was right to oust him for revealing a source and so breaching clause seven of their Code of Conduct, but their grounds for doing so missed the mark. In fact, Martin-Clark’s sense of injustice and his empathy for McGoldrick’s widow and children, one of whom was still unborn when he died, demonstrate that the reporter’s character was not to blame.

Martin-Clark’s actions were wrong and if I was to find myself in the same position, I would not repeat them. He tarnished the credibility of journalists around the world and endangered the lives of colleagues who had earned the trust of violent, suspicious informants while working in the political instability of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. One – Martin O’Hagan – became the first reporter killed in the troubles when he was murdered in 2001 by the same LVF that killed McGoldrick.

But what Martin-Clark did was not weak. It did not show weakness of character or make him an unfit or improper person. It took “a horrible, a terrible courage” to go against the advice and feeling of the mainstream, and in so doing his actions served a purpose.

Martin-Clark’s professionalism was compromised in this case and for that he is paying with the trauma of living under a witness protection programme. But the display of his fallibility did the world of journalism a favour by conveying an important statement: that journalism is not absolute and should not deal in absolutes.

We must always be wary of absolutist stances. As Walter Lippman said, whenever you hold your positions to be “perfect examples of some eternal principle or other, you are not talking, you are fighting.” Using Lippman’s terminology, journalism involves ‘talking’, or flexible exchange, rather than rigid maxims. Journalists continually ask questions of themselves and others, making decisions that depend on the individual case and the broader, changing arena.

The relationship between reporters and sources is an exchange – a ‘talk’, not a ‘fight’ – that must remain balanced, so that sources do not possess disproportionate power over reporters. For this reason, silence should not be the default setting for reporters. Philip Meyer observed: “To many people, the silence itself is the virtue [...]. What was once rational protection of sources has become a law of journalistic omerta.” The silence of non-disclosure can convey an impression of inertia or apathy that, if taken for granted, could allow sources to taunt journalists with confidential or deceptive information that cannot be questioned in a transparent public forum due to the Mafia-like code of silence that Meyer identifies.

Of course, reporters should not possess disproportionate power over sources either, which is why Martin-Clark was in the wrong. But he did achieve, perhaps inadvertently, a demonstration of the very freedom of speech that sources enjoy and that journalism itself promotes.

Former Washington Post editor Leonard Dowie warned that journalists should never be seen as “an arm of the law”. But neither must they be seen as an arm of their sources – as spokesmen or safe houses for criminals and the corrupt. They must never become faceless machines sticking unthinkingly to a code of conduct, without compassion or subjectivity, “morally disengaged and politically inactive”.

The professional shame and real-world danger brought about by Martin-Clark should not be repeated. He defied expectations and dissented, creating uncertainty and unpredictability. But as a one-off, revealing a source served to promote debate and humanise reporting, highlighting its complexity and its dilemmas. It reminded sources not to take journalists for granted, as a decision on whether or not to reveal a source is not made in weakness, but takes a “terrible courage”.

The End of the Reporter?

David Leigh, Guardian assistant editor, gave the Anthony Sampson Chair in Reporting Inaugural Lecture on this subject tonight.

The lecture was nostalgic - the Scotsman newsroom, Leigh's first workplace, is now a tartan hotel room while the new premises consist only of two men and a dog - and pessimistic.

Or rather it would have been pessimistic had I been one of the target audience. But Leigh's list of techno gadgets, from 'podcasts' to 'blogs' (the inverted commas were almost palpable), placed him and his audience firmly in an older generation. Like Greenslade, he is acutely aware of the influx of mediums and amateur reporters. In this 'new' world, reporting is no longer an elite activity. Yes, they want to embrace the internet, but the awareness has become a hang-up that stands in their way.

I've only been in this world 23 years: it's not new. Modern technology does not seem modern. The End of Reporting debate is not shocking. I was aware of falling papers sales before I started this course. I knew that many people distrust and dislike journalists. I know I will write for a smaller audience than would be ideal. But because I haven't experienced the decline first-hand, I'm interested, not worried.


Leigh's lecture finished too soon. He touched on the idea of 'slow journalism' - in-depth, accurate and revelatory investigative research - and then we moved on to canapes. But the unsatisfactory conclusion was fitting precisely because it left me and others unsated.

Backward-looking and hold-a-mirror-up-to-society ideas have been written and debated to death. Now we need to work on forward-looking innovation and the challenge of creating stories and respected bylines that people want to read.

Women Writing War

The Women Writing War debate at the Guardian Newsroom last night got off to a bad start.

Anne Sebba, biographer and former Reuters foreign correspondent, started with a question about the challenges facing women reporters on the front line. The BBC's Middle East correspondent Caroline Hawley responded, saying that she does not feel like a 'woman reporter' when working in conflict zones such as Baghdad because there is essentially no real difference between male and female journalists out there.

The subject of discussion trampled on, I had doubts about the hour ahead of me. But what actually came out of the debate - which included Caroline Hawley, editorial director of Guardianfilms Maggie O'Kane and features writer Ann McFerran - was incredibly thought-provoking.

The most striking concept came from Maggie O'Kane, to the sound of gasps and sighs of disappointment rippling around the room. We are entering a new phase, she said. The era of the white European war reporter is over.

Instead of working through interpreters - putting them at risk, translating meaning, translating culture - we should train those interpreters and other talented, dedicated local people to cover events themselves. Locals have the cultural understanding, the language, and often better access than outsiders.

I agree. But only as long as reporters maintain their objectivity and professionalism. Outside perspectives, especially comment, can throw invaluable light on stories. But we have got to move away from the 'West is best' syndrome and give people in conflict zones the tools to tell the world what is happening themselves.

The other thing that hit home during the debate was the humanity. The women on the panel are self-confessed 'hardened' professionals. But all three had tears in their eyes relating the atrocities they had seen in Jordan, Sarajevo, Iraq, Darfur. That is not because they are women, but because they do their job and then, as Ann and Maggie described, start the 'cathartic' task of writing and feel the weight of trying to do justice to what they have experienced.