The Arena Spectacular from Ben Hur Live to Isles of Wonder
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The Arena Spectacular from Ben Hur Live to Isles of Wonder: Adaptation, Post-cinema and the Postcivil Richard Whitby PhD Humanities and Cultural Studies London Consortium Birkbeck, University of London The work presented in this thesis is all my own Richard Whitby 1st June 2016 2 Abstract What is an ‘arena spectacular’ and why has this genre of live entertainment gained international popularity in the twenty-first century? This study looks at three arena spectaculars: Ben Hur Live, Batman Live and Walking with Dinosaurs Live – all adapted from film or TV productions and performed in London’s O2 Arena between 2007 and 2012. I contextualise the shows with the work of Cirque du Soleil, the Millennium Dome and the city of Las Vegas. However, I argue that the format reached its fullest expression in Britain with the opening ceremony to the London 2012 Olympics, Danny Boyle’s Isles of Wonder. This study proposes that there are specific affective and economic factors within neoliberal and post-cinematic society that make the spatialised, live and ‘unmediated’ performance of a known image or hypertext into an attractive commodity. The arena spectacular should be understood via post-cinematic image-making and the fluidity with which images move from screen, to site and back will be explored here as a commercial process of ‘remediation’. An aggregate of older devices and media that seems to be defined in heterotopic contradistinction to a digital media regime, this format can be explained through contemporaneous qualities of public space, immaterial labour, government and consumption. This analysis is an attempt at grasping the ‘offer’ of these products – through their advertising, merchandise and the shows themselves. What is their affordance; what experiences do they allow and how does this benefit both consumers and producers? Despite their economic and cultural marginality, perhaps these entertainment productions can be seen in some ways as archetypal products of the early twenty-first century. 3 Contents Prologue 7 Introduction: What is an Arena Spectacular? 16 Chapter 1: Post-cinema 61 i. Ben Hur Live 63 ii. Walking with Dinosaurs Live 90 Chapter 2: The Postcivil Introduction – ‘The Home of Spectacular 122 Cultural Events’ i. The Millennium Dome 133 ii. Batman Live 159 iii. Las Vegas and Cirque du Soleil 189 Chapter 3: Isles of Wonder 220 Conclusion 250 Bibliography 261 4 List of Illustrations NB – illustrations have been mostly removed for copyright reasons Figure 1 Official poster, Ben Hur Live, 2009 18 Figure 2 Ben-Hur DVD case using original film poster from 1959, 19 2009 Figure 3 Crucifixion scene, Ben Hur Live, 2009 20 Figure 4 Chariot Race, Ben Hur Live, 2009 (promotional still) 21 Figure 5 Still from advert for Picturehouse Cinemas 2013 46 Figure 6 Alexander von Wagner The Chariot Race, 1882 65 Figure 7 Poster for 19th century stage version of Ben-Hur 66 Figure 8 Ben Hur Live, 2009 (promotional still) 79 Figure 9 Still from The Great Train Robbery, 1903 80 Figure 10 and 11 Stills from video advert for Batman Live, 2011 86 Figure 12 Ben Hur Live at the O2, London, 2009 87 Figure 13 Walking With Dinosaurs Live programme, 2013 93 Figure 14 Walking With Dinosaurs Live programme, 2013 94 Figure 15 Walking With Dinosaurs Live promotional photograph 95 Figure 16 and 17 Stills from advert for Picturehouse Cinemas 108 Figure 18 Walking With Dinosaurs Live promotional photograph 119 Figure 19 Pre-set ‘home screen’ on Samsung mobile phone on O2 123 network, 2012 Figure 20 Advert promoting Liverpool as a tourist destination, 2014 130 5 Figure 21 Illustration from The Millennium Dome, Wilhilde, 1999 157 Figure 22 Image from Batman Live programme 2011 163 Figure 23 Fight scene, Batman Live 165 Figure 24 MCM Expo, 2011 178 Figure 25 Batman Live programme page on the making of the show 180 Figure 26 Still from video advert for Batman Live, 2011 187 Figure 27 Still from Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away, 2012 194 Figure 28 Still from Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away, 2012 195 Figure 29 Royale de Luxe’s Sea Odyssey in Liverpool, 2012 215 Figure 30 Still from television broadcast of Isles of Wonder, 2012 224 Figure 31 Still from television broadcast of Isles of Wonder, 2012 226 Figure 32 Photograph of 2010 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony 228 Figure 33 Still from television broadcast of Isles of Wonder, 2012 228 Figure 34 Still from Olympia, 1938 230 Figure 35 Still from Olympia, 1938 231 Figure 36 Still from television broadcast of Isles of Wonder, 2012 232 Figure 37 Still from television broadcast of Isles of Wonder, 2012 233 Figures 38 and 39 Stills from television broadcast of Isles of Wonder, 2012 247 Figure 40 How to Train Your Dragon and How to Train Your Dragon 252 Live 6 Prologue The first arena spectacular that I saw was Ben Hur Live at the O2 Arena in 2009, proposed in its promotional material as: a breathtaking combination of light, sound, water, wind and pyrotechnic effects in a show performed in the round, like an ancient arena […] The production will be accompanied by an emotional symphonic soundtrack, an English speaking narrator, as well as 400 performers and 100 animals. (The O2 website, 2009) A poster for the show, which appeared on a huge billboard over a large roundabout near where I was living in East London, showed a chariot pulled by four horses racing towards the viewer. The poster’s large lettering and graphics were reminiscent of Hollywood film posters from the 1950’s but also nineteenth-century paintings of the classical world. An online video-trailer tantalisingly showed close-ups of charioteers preparing for a race, shot in cinematic high contrast and embellished with dramatic sound effects, who then careered out into a roaring arena, the crowd incongruously bristling with camera flashes. I approached this show with an interest in the adaptation of existing narratives into opera, film, novels and other forms. These narratives include ancient texts such as Greek myths and more recent examples – Lew Wallace’s novel Ben-Hur was first published in 1880. The proposed scale of the production put me in mind of grand opera, as well as the cinematic epic – the category to which the most famous iteration of Ben-Hur, William Wilder’s film version from 1959, belongs. As part of the complex known as The O2, the ‘O2 Arena’ has its own narrative as an adaptation of the Millennium Dome. Perceived as an embarrassing failure after it opened in 2000 (see chapter 2), then bought by American company AEG and refitted by architects Populous, it emerged in 2007 as a popular venue for live music, comedy, sport and various other performances. John Prescott, part of the Labour government responsible for its delivery, has claimed that it is ‘the most popular venue in the world’ (BBC One website, 2009). There had by that time been a flurry of stage adaptations of films such as The Lion King (dirs. Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff, 1994 – stage version first performed in London 1999 [John, 1997]) and 7 The Lord of the Rings (dir. Peter Jackson, 2001 – stage version 2006 [Rahman, 2006]), but these were based on more recent cinema successes and extensions of recognisable brands, as Disneyland is an extension of Disney’s films. Ben Hur Live seemed different. Although the show did appear a neat fifty years on from the Wilder film, there seemed no real reason to resurrect the Ben-Hur story at that particular moment other than the availability of the arena space itself and the continuity that was suggested between it and the ancient Roman arena. The show seemed like an unusual collision between two objects: the famous film and the arena space. As the result, Ben Hur Live, comprises of ‘Ben-Hur’: the film (although the show drops the hyphen from its hero’s name), and ‘Live’: the arena. I went to the show curious about this apparently new form of entertainment; wanting to see how the elements I knew well from the 1959 film would be rendered in a live, in-the-round arena production. A large part of my interest was formal and technical – just how was this going to happen? I paid around £50 for a seat somewhere high up the banks of the arena (‘ring-side’ seats were far more; private boxes more again). Implausibly, the key scenes would have to include a sea battle between pirates and Roman galleys, a high-speed (and for many participants fatal) chariot race, visits to both a leper colony and imperial Rome and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ – these all being vital set pieces in the original narrative. This is what we had been promised but how would these possibly take place in front of our eyes, live? And yet, they did. The particularities will be detailed elsewhere, but it did indeed involve thousands of people in a huge arena, watching a theatrical invocation of the Ben-Hur narrative, with all the formal ingredients promised, including a narrator relaying Latin and Aramaic dialogue in English, live animals and hundreds of performers. In it I found things I recognised from live rock music, cinema, sport, historical re-enactments and more, lashed together into a hybrid spectacle. There were some difficulties in the legibility of the promised and delivered hybrid. The chariot race was inevitably slow looking, compared to the tightly edited film sequence most of us probably knew. The audience seemed not to know what to do when the crucifixion appeared – some cheered. Despite the anachronisms, which had seemed enough of 8 a part of the marketing so as to suggest a certain irony in the show, the whole thing was seemingly carried out with total seriousness and great emphasis on various kinds of authenticity.