Tag Archives: hiroshima

The Power and the Glory by Connor Hirst in south London

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THE NEWPORT STREET Gallery, which is in a side street not far from Lambeth Palace and the Garden Museum, was opened in October 2015. Housed in a building originally built in 1913 as a theatre carpentry and scenery production workshop, these spacious premises are used to display selections from the huge number of works that have been collected over the years by the artist Damien Hirst. The current exhibition, which has been curated by Damien’s son Connor Hirst, is called “The Power and the Glory”, and is showing until 31 August 2025.

The walls of the rooms in the gallery are lined with photographs of atomic and hydrogen bomb test explosions (‘mushroom clouds’ etc.), as well as of the devastation that the former caused in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although many of the photographs are beautiful as works of art, they are grim reminders of the horrific destructive forces unleashed by detonating nuclear bombs. However, as the curator explained, many of the photographs have been composed in such a way that the viewer is unaware of the destruction going on beneath the picturesque clouds.

While the walls of the rooms are lined with photographs, the rooms contain many beautifully shaped (mostly shaped by nature) pieces of rock. They include a selection of so-called ‘scholar’s rocks’. These have been collected in China since the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD), and appreciated for their inherent beauty. Most of them were found either in caves in Guandong province or at Lake Tai or in the Lingbi region. Amongst the collection of scholar rocks, there are some Japanese ‘water stones’, which are often shaped like mountains and waterfalls.

The stones are intrinsically beautiful and provide an interesting contrast to the photographs surrounding them. However, although the rocks and photographs served different functions, when displayed together as they are at the Newport Street Gallery, they cannot help becoming interlinked in the viewers’ minds. I could not help thinking that these rocks could easily have been similar to the fragments of buildings destroyed by the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

A city reborn

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We used to spend a night in Arras in northern France when we made driving holidays to stay in rented houses on central and southern parts of the country.

To casual visitors, such as we were, the centre of Arras looks like a perfectly preserved old baroque city.

Yet, it is not.

During WW1, Arras, close to the front line fighting, was almost totally destroyed. Pictures of the city taken after the “War to End All Wars” resemble pictures of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped on it.

The reconstruction of the old centre of Arras was so successful that if you were ignorant of its history, you would believe that you are seeing the original city.

By the way, Arras is one of the few places in the rather bleak north of France really worth visiting.

Photo taken about 15 years ago.

Seven streams

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Seven

At first, I was daunted at the prospect of watching a seven hour drama at London’s National Theatre. Then, remembering that I had endured an eleven hour bus journey in Gujarat and several long intercontinental flights, I decided that sitting comfortably at the theatre for seven hours including intervals would not be too bad, and I was right.

The play we watched, “The Seven Streams of the River Ota”, by Canadian playwright Robert Lepage (born 1957 in Quebec,), is divided into seven acts or installments. I found five of those installments to be highly enjoyable. The other two were less good in my humble opinion.

The River Ota runs through the Japanese city of Hiroshima, unfortunately famous for being the first civilian target of an atomic bomb in 1945. One of the main characters in the play by Lepage is a woman who was blinded, as a small child, by the atomic bomb blast’s flash. Each of the seven acts of the drama is linked to her or to characters connected with her directly or indirectly. Therefore, although the play’s plot is quite complicated, there is an easily discernible thread that runs through it.

At times the drama is witty and humorous and at others tragic. However, throughout the performance, the subject matter is both sensitive and moving. The ingeniously crafted play touches on all kinds of important historical events that affected Japan and the Japanese between 1945 and the late 1990s when the play was written. It also makes reference to Theresienstadt, one of the Nazi concentration camps. At first, I was not sure of the relevance of this scene set in the camp, but afterwards it dawned on me. It was an important background to one of the characters, who plays a major role in the latter parts of the play.

Another of the play’s myriad of topics reflects the playwright’s origin, Quebec. There are some very entertaining scenes in which the characters speak in Canadian French (with its particular accent) such as would be heard in Quebec. At times, Lepage makes use of the play to poke fun at cultural rivalry between the Canadian French and the French in France. He also makes reference to Canada’s objection to French nuclear tests that were being carried out in the Pacific between 1966 and 1996. And, nuclear tests relate directly to the main theme of the play, the atomic bomb exploded at Hiroshima.

Without going into detail about the very complicated plot, let me say that this play was highly fascinating, well acted by members of Lepage’s theatre ensemble Ex Machina, and the sets were superb. Sadly, this long play is only being given a short run at the National Theatre. Its final performance, viral microbes permitting, will be on the 22nd March 2020.

As for my initial fears about sitting for seven hours in the theatre, these were unrealised. The time shot past, so intriguing was the play. Lepage’s play was for me as exciting as at least two other epic length dramas I have enjoyed: “Angels in America” by Tony Kushner, and “The Coast of Utopia” by Tom Stoppard.