David McLaughlin on Blue Man, Banksy and Back to the Future

David said: “I was on their World Tour production when Covid hit, which resulted in swift cancellation in February, and since then I’ve started up a small business in the completely unrelated world of jewellery making!

“I run a shop called Darkwood Workshop (www.darkwoodworkshop.com), where we make wooden rings with the majority of the design having some roots in ancient Celtic mythology/ideology. It’s a fun and modern take on some old material, and personally I’m a big fan of wooden rings and things from nature so that’s where the idea came from. It’s been a great project to occupy my time during lockdown, and we’re currently busy making orders for Christmas.”

Q. What is your favourite song/album and why?

A. I have no idea! I listened to Harry Styles newer album the other day, and the 32-year-old man in me was conflicted at how much he liked it... My favorite songs and albums change all the time, and my music taste is all over the shop so this is pretty tricky. Album wise, the ones I keep coming back to are Origin of Symmetry by Muse, OK Computer by Radiohead, and Grace by Jeff Buckley. I think Lilac Wine by Jeff Buckley is up there with my favourite songs. His voice and guitar playing are incredible and the choices he makes with them are so enviable. It’s one of those songs that get the hairs on the back of your neck standing up, which is a real indicator to me of something really special. In the workshop I’m usually listening to Everything Everything, Queens of The Stone Age, Bowie, or Tim Minchin.

Q. What is your favourite film and why?

A. It’s always a toss-up between Back to the Future and Hook. I think Back to the Future has everything you could want from a film as a kid - adventure, sci-fi, time travel, a ridiculous car, a problematic romantic entanglement... Aside from that the characterisations are brilliant - Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover and Thomas F. Wilson particularly as their younger/older selves are incredible.

Hook for many of the same reasons. Dustin Hoffman (I did not realise it was him until much, much later - what a performance), Dante Basco as Rufio - what a character. The imagining of the Lost Boys and Neverland is brilliant, I could talk about it for a long time - and I haven’t even mentioned Robin Williams.

As an adult (which I assure you I am) I definitely have a liking for Sci-Fi so The Matrix and District 9 will also be up there, and I recently watched the anime Akira in a re-run in the cinema, which was a really special experience (for the soundtrack alone). I guess I like all these films for their ‘fish out of water’ theme, and the characters having to re-engage with their curiosity in order to overcome something that was put upon them without their asking. I’m pretty sure we can all relate to that at the moment.

Q. What is your favourite piece of classical music and why?

A. I’ve always been a big fan of composers from the romantic period. What a snob eh? During my A-Levels, through the year out I took, and as I started training as an actor the following year, I had a CD of Rachmaninoff’s adagios featuring sections of a few of his concertos. I think the adagio section from his Piano Concerto no. 2 in C minor will always be one of my favourite pieces of music.

In that time, I somehow graduated from wanting to be a Biomedical Engineer to pursuing acting, and that piece was a bit of a backdrop of that pretty extreme transition. I re-listened to it as I was answering these questions and it reminded me of spending hours on A-level compositions, and times in my really grim first-year uni halls in Manchester. There’s something uplifting and motivational about it; it sort of resonates with the feeling of that time. A close second is Chopin’s Nocturne in E flat Major, but it has turned up in a few too many adverts recently, so it’s lost its shine a bit.

Q. Who is your favourite artist (eg van Gogh) and why?

A. I love drawing - always have since I was a kid - I also have a drawing Instagram just for fun (@mc_draws) so give that a follow if you fancy. Contemporary art wise it’s hard not to like Banksy, he says a lot with very little, and with an edge of humour which is sometimes lacking in the ‘Art’ world. I like his anonymous, anti-hero, anti-establishment vibe.

I also like a bit of abstract expressionism - Gerhardt Richter and Jackson Pollock to name a couple. I used to be pretty dismissive of modern art until I joined Blue Man Group, and through it I really learned to appreciate the drive of people making art which required me to look at it, and engage with it on a level other than ‘oh, what a nice painting’. You just have to look at these guys doing these out-there pieces and wonder why, and what it is that drives them. It’s pretty amazing.

I also love Felicia Chiao - she creates these beautiful watercolor pen drawings with themes surrounding mental health which she talks very articulately about. Check her out on Instagram (@feliciachiao). Also, Thomas Romain (@thomasintokyo) who turns his kid’s sketches into full on anime characters is pretty incredible - his kid’s ideas are nuts and his interpretation of them is brilliant.

Q. What is your favourite play and why?

A. I would say ‘Birdland’ by Simon Stephens. His plays are often pretty miserable and are full of very relatable, and often quite unlikeable, characters. I like him because the writing is very realistic, gritty, and heart wrenching at times, but always has a ton of humour in it. ‘Birdland is the story of Paul, the lead singer of a band who has had a quick ascent to fame and is now living the high life on the end of a very successful tour. It’s about our obsession with fame and the famous, and how the pursuit of those things isn’t always in line with our own happiness and fulfilment.

Watching it, it struck me how isolating and dissociative it must be to have that level of notoriety. There’s a scene where he comes back to see his dad on a break in the tour, and it’s made so apparent that the success, the fame, and the money has done nothing to ease his unhappiness, or to heal the fractured relationships he has maintained. It’s heavy stuff, but very very good.

Andrew Scott played the main role when I saw it back in 2014. He was mid-Sherlock then, and gaining a lot of following from that, so it was really interesting to watch all the Sherlock fans flock to the stage door afterwards to get a signature off him after spending 90 minutes seeing his character get absolutely dragged through it at the height of his fame. I also love Martin McDonagh’s writing (can I add In Bruges to my films please?), and Enda Walsh is fantastic.

Q. What is your favourite musical and why?

A. I’m going to say Matilda. I used to work as an usher at The Cambridge Theatre in London when it opened there back in 2011. I ended up watching it 183 times, so maybe I’ve been brainwashed and can’t think of any other musicals. I’ve mentioned Tim Minchin once already - his ability to write lyrics that are not only insanely clever, but also hilarious and very moving at times is second to none. The kids in it are also in another league.

And then of, course, Trunchbull is a stroke of genius. Having Dennis Kelly write the book really helps bring out some of the dark undertones that Roald Dahl was so famous for. It is a great story about standing up to oppression and how sometimes we have to push boundaries if we want things to change. It’s very good, go watch it for the school gate scene alone.

Q. What is your most special moment in the arts and why?

A. It has to be working as a Blue Man for Blue Man Group for the past several years. I was lucky enough to travel to some interesting places I would never have gone to (and some I’ll never go back to). There were so many unforgettable experiences and I met so many incredible and stupidly talented people. But mainly it’s the experience of playing that character every night. On an average night it is fun - it brings joy to people; it lifts them out of themselves and their hardships and entertains them.

But on a really good night - when the show is really working - it makes people ask the bigger questions about what art is, and what the things are that connect us, who we are and what we value. And all that from slapping on some blue grease paint, banging some drums and not saying a word. I feel like art is about being seen and understood, and connecting to others through an experience or an object, and that show really embodies that idea in a really joyful, celebratory way. It’s really special to be able to bring that to people and it’s an idea I try to work into designing rings for Darkwood.

Q. What ‘classic’ just doesn’t do it for you?

A. Les Misérables. I think the story is great and I like some of the music - I just don’t think that one needs the other. I like serious themes and I like epic storytelling, but I find I disconnect when something is sung-through in the way that it is. I think you lose the subtlety in what the characters are feeling when it’s all out there in lyrical verse. For me it’s the things that aren’t said that are sometimes the most powerful.

Q. What have you been reading/watching/listening to/revisiting during the Coronavirus period?

A. Books - I’ve been reading Yuval Noah Harai’s Sapiens and will soon be reading the follow up Homo Deus - great books on the development of humanity and society from our origins. Eye opening and so, so interesting. I’m also mid Waking up White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debbie Irving, on her awakening to racial inequality, and her own privilege and part within that. A great book, well worth a read.

Podcasts - 99% Invisible. Probably my favourite podcast on unlikely or unnoticed aspects of design. It’s great to jump into a random episode and learn about some crazy piece of design history. I also recently started listening to Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place, which I had reservations about, but turns out it’s pretty good! Albums - Villians by Queens of the Stone Age, RE-ANIMATOR by Everything Everything, Burn the Maps by The Frames and Fine Line by Harry Styles.

Watching - Just finished The Queen’s Gambit, which I enjoyed more than I thought . I’ve gotten a little more into Anime in the past few months. I recently watched Evangelion; Neon Genesis - a giant robot/existential crisis which my tiny brain was not ready for, and Death Note which is like a supernatural Japanese Breaking Bad. I also watched New Girl to lighten things up and am re-watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.