Originally posted in 2005
In 2005 I posted the following blog post...
I’ve been looking through some of the reviews and found this on the Scotsman’s website…
“Our reviewer Claire Smith has been telling everyone she meets about her bizarre experience at C on Monday evening, when Marika Klambatsea, star of the bizarre Calamity Jane: Letters To Her Daughter refused point blank to leave the stage.
Eventually the technical staff said, ‘Would everybody please leave, there’s another show coming in’, and everyone ran for their lives, leaving her shouting, ‘Nobody tells me to stop my show!’ ” Calamity Jane features fake orgasms, close-ups of old ladies’ eyes and a song called My Darling Horse. At the point when the show was stopped, Klambatsea was reading out a muffin recipe.”
Claire has discovered a problem: “Everybody I’ve told about this is now desperate to see it.” Would you be surprised if we told you this happens to our reviewers quite a lot?” The one-line version of the review on the Scotsman’s official website was: “IT IS possible there is a worse show on the Fringe but it is hard to picture it.”
My moment of fame - I was the one of those technical staff - But seriously, she was overrunning 20 minutes having been warned about this several times and repeatedly telling us that “20 mins is nothing” and “you must respect the performer” and “I’ve been performing for 20 years….” etc… give it a break.
It’s people like that that give performers a bad name! She later sat in the foyer of the venue telling customers who had bought tickets for other shows how bad the venue were and how she’d been treated etc etc… quite amusing
She was also so proud of winning a Greek National award, she has now got another title (from the Scotsman) as one of the “Worst of The Festival 2005″ shows.
In response to this her publicist / director posted random comments all over my blog - the most interesting one of which was as follows;
The Fox and the Grapes
"One hot summer’s day a Fox was strolling through an orchard
till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which
had been trained over a lofty branch. “Just the thing to quench
my thirst,” quoth he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and
a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a
One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again
and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to
give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: “I
am sure they are sour.”
It is easy to despise what you cannot get.
Marika Klambatsea is a real diva of OUR time. Just you have to have the power to understand her.
Zainea Liviu- Inventor
My reply was was follows;
Yes, but unlike the fox which didn’t get the grapes, we had to suffer it on multiple occasions THEN chose to despise it (along with multiple other people rather clearly including some well respected reviewers)
I’m sorry but I have no time for someone who manages to reduce VOLUNTEER STAFF MEMBERS to tears, makes unreasonable demands, says that overrunning by 20 mins “is nothing” and has no respect for other audience members and companies.
Oh and I never said she wasn’t a “diva of our time”, but I would have meant “diva” in it’s more commonly used slightly derogatory application.
Ross McKillop - Someone who doesnt feel the need to add silly titles like “Inventor” to his name.
This, I thought would be the end of the matter.. nope.
No sooner had I posted my own rebuttal to their random and irrelevant quotation of one of Aesop’s Fabels (and subsequently closed comments on that article as it was getting out of hand) do I get a comment in both two other threads which I consider to be nothing less than spam, the first line of which is “You are too young to argue with me, especially in the sound field you say you like” and they honestly expect me to leave that there?…
Now disregarding the "sound field" comment, which frankly makes no sense, I dispute that I am too young to argue with anyone, I know 12 year olds that can argue with most people too … it’s not exactly an age-dependant skill is it?! … all they’ve successfully done is shown how backwards some cultures (or at least people) can be when it comes to age discrimination.
My reply was as follows;
Please do not continue to post comments in unrelated sections of my blog. I have closed comments to the original post because I do not see any reason to continue this debate.
Your opinion is noted but your arrogance based on age is not something I am willing to tolerate. Furthermore the 5 star review she received this year is from an independent on edfringe.com.
None of the respected journalists reviewed the show. I could just as easily post my own one star review on that site without even seeing the show.
Always keen to have the last word, I received the following in reply;
serious young man ?
tolerate ? I’m 53 and Marika is 52. What do you expect then ?
you are speaking over your head or you forgot something about respect, hierarchical aspects, not to speak more. you are right that this ”comments” must be ended, so a nice movement will be to delete all of them. You cannot understand that the Marika’s art is above your knowledge and generally of British opinions around this kind of art because the very classic is still in power there [ and not only there in order to not let you upset patriotically].
If you are in business, don’t tell me about respected journalist. The artist is the bread for them, thy produce nothing but word, nice or less.
Be wise and let’s finish this here.
Now where do I start, can anyone decipher this?! “serious young man? tolerate? I’m 53 and Marika is 52. What do you expect then? ” … how about a sentence for starters? and a few less question marks when the first two groups of words aren’t a question?
Next up “you are speaking over your head or you forgot something about respect, hierachial aspects, not to speak more”… now I’m not an expert linguist by any means but all I can read from this is that they seem to think that age == respect or something to do with hierarchy…
Then we get to the attempts at censorship, “so a nice movement will be to delete all of them” (not would, will… that’s arrogant if ever i saw it :P) not to mention a nice movement to me refers to a piece of dance :P
“You cannot understand that the Marika’s art is above your knowledge” - Nope, I just agree with ThreeWeeks and The Scotsman that it’s not that good and certainly not to my tastes. Irrespective of this the only reason I ever criticised her in the first place is because of her actions towards techs and the public, not her art.
The rest of that paragraph doesn’t make enough sense for me to bother trying to interpret… “If you are in business don’t tell me about respected journalist. The artist is the bread for them, thy produce nothing but word, nice or less” … Now, lets drop the bit about being in business, it’s irrelevant and meaningless. And of course reviewers produce words, there wouldn’t be much point if they produced art would there? people would have to review and interpret the review? how would that work ? ;)
p.s. yes, i’m being sarcastic, but I do hope this marks the end of this pointless chain of events. I agree with the reviewers that don’t like Marika’s work, but that’s irrelevant. It wasn’t her work I was criticising… I just liked the fact that we made The Scotsman :)
I'll say one thing for Marika Klambatsea... she makes an impression... I still remember this incident perfectly 7 years on .... and from looking at http://www.theshadowbox.net/forum/index.php?topic=4960.0 and http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!category-topic/youtube/how-to-use-youtube-features/WOVFV7Q0zp8 she still doesn't seem to get it ;)