★★☆☆☆

For all its media hype, there’s something missing from Steven Spielberg’s latest movie. In reviews in The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The Independent, Bridge of Spies has been lapped up by the critics as the film that will bring heat to the cold war. Spielberg’s spy thriller depicts in detail the role of New York lawyer, James Donovan (Tom Hanks), in the eventual negotiation of a prisoner exchange between the USA, the USSR, and the East Germans in 1962. Reminding the US government to act according to its constitution during the trial of Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), Hanks’ character is set up as a triumphant figure in a narrative promoting American individualism and freedom. Yet, as in many Spielberg films, the audience misses out on one thing critical to most readings of the Cold War- subtlety.

There’s something very Saving Private Ryan about Spielberg’s latest production. Even with script writing assisted by the Coen brothers, Bridge of Spies offers a one dimensional narrative of the good man, Donovan, espousing values of constitutional freedom against the pressures of the cold war. From as soon as he accepts Abel’s case, the film unflinchingly depicts Hanks’ character as the unquestionable voice of what is right. Standing up to the CIA, the East German government, and the USSR, Donovan is depicted as the voice of individualism in the corporate world of the cold war.

Spielberg’s film is riddled with similarly clumsy symbolism that alludes to the present. Represented by the student Frederic Pryor, Donovan’s quest to save America’s future is played off against his need to work in the interests of the state.  Under pressure from his CIA handlers, Donovan refuses to make the US’s deal for the release of American U2 spy-plane pilot, Gary Powers, until he has ensured safety of the student. In Spielberg’s narrative, Donovan fits a motif of the free American strongly standing up to the compromising powers of the state that is just as relevant today as ever before. In our surveillance world of Guantanamo Bay and the NSA, the moral of Spielberg’s film is argued to be just as important as in its sixties setting.

Despite all its impressive cinematography, however, there is something wrong with Bridge of Spies’ depiction of the realities of the cold war. The grey colour scheme creates an atmosphere of tension and suspicion in the movie, but somehow the plot doesn’t live up to it. Instead of a depiction of the grubby realities of compromise, suspicion, and self-doubt that are so masterfully depicted in cold war spy novels by John le Carré, Spielberg allows his audience to relax. Through parallel scenes depicting American courts compared to Russian show-trials, or Russian torture compared to American justice, we are left in no doubt about who is right and who is wrong.

The film is harmful for our historical record of the cold war because it plays up to the binaries of the conflict. The only ‘enemy’ character that Spielberg develops in any positive detail is that of the captured KGB spy, Abel. Even this character, however, is used to hint at the Russian’s perceived inhumanity through what the narrative suggests they will do to him when they get him back.

Individual performances in the film are no doubt strong, and I will be surprised if Mark Rylance’s Hollywood career is not boosted by his sympathetic performance as the spy Abel. Yet, the real problem with Spielberg’s film is that, on the whole, it fails to explain the subtleties of cold war subterfuge. Rather than grand narratives of good versus evil, the individual versus the state, or the constitution versus public opinion, Spielberg should have focussed on the human experiences of the conflict. Tom Hanks’ Donovan is flawed precisely because Spielberg lets him be too perfect.

In the end, I left the cinema underwhelmed because the narrative seemed too good to be true. In a film trumpeted for its criticism of the cold war American state, strangely there remains an unchallenged theme of the glories of Americana. Spielberg establishes Hanks’ character as a symbol of everything that is truly great about American individualism, freedom, and suspicion of the state- anyone looking for a more sophisticated reading of this event in history is left disappointed.

“This is me/ Anonymous water soliloquy.”

‘Dart’ is originally a book-length poem by Alice Oswald, tracking the life and the voices of her native river, the Dart, from its source to its mouth; tracing its wild, reckless journey through the wilderness of Dartmoor down to the sea. Having already read and loved the poem, I was curious as to how it would be adapted for the stage of the BT Theatre. I am happy to say it did not disappoint.

In a daring and imaginative blend of sound, film and instillation put in place by the sound and lighting technician Will Forrest, the performance cleverly brought the poem’s words to life. The intricate lacing of poetry and sound wove the river’s various voices around the audience and seemed to immerse us bodily into the depths of the water as the actors voiced the different stages of the river’s journey. From a solitary, grizzled long distance walker exploring the Dart’s source, to the young, daredevil kayakers that battled the current and swerved around boulders, to the fishermen who plied their trade and spent long hours out fishing in the Dart estuary- all were flawlessly explored and expressed as we were taken on the water’s winding journey through the landscape down to the wide sea.

The strong and imaginative acting was enhanced by the play’s beautiful staging, put together by set designer William Rees- the opening scene contained only two bell jars of river water lit up from behind, creating the eerie effect of river patterns shimmering across the room. And then the stage seemed to suddenly come alive- from plastic sheeting encasing refuse and weeds, to fleeting, shivering film projections onto the back wall, the clever use of the minimalist props let the beauty of the poetry shine through. This was presumably accompanied by a series of very quick costume changes, as each character re-appeared dressed in different clothes, giving the river a multiplicity of voices and personalities that belied the small cast of only five.

There is the worry that the beautiful sparseness of the set may impede the understanding of those who have not read Alice Oswald’s poem- the lack of context and the swift scene changes create the danger of leaving audience members confused and lost in the play’s swift transitions. However, under the wonderful directing of the directors Grace Linden and Alice Troy-Donovan these problems are quickly dealt with, using subtle background projections and the actors expressions of the poem itself, which helps to ground the scene for the audience.

Despite the beauty of the staging and the intelligent and sensitive shaping of the material into a presentable form, it is, however, the beauty of the poetic language of Alice Oswald that really makes this play memorable. Where the wording could appear cryptic and complex, the staging and careful handling of the script gently helps the audience to understand the actions on stage. Oswald’s words create an intimate link between the actors and the audience, and give the performance a strange tinge of magic that stays with you long after the final words have been left hanging in the air. From the mythical to the mundane, the river Dart is brought to life in speech that slips and slides like the water it describes, sweeping the audience downstream in a gentle wash of words. This piece of writing is beautifully handled and imaginatively, lovingly brought to live- it will be hard to look at rivers again without thinking of the stories in the gentle murmurings of the water as it flows down to the sea.

★★★★★

After previewing Proximity, my impression (from a position of total ignorance), was that it was a show about the im/possibility of unity between two proximate bodies. The ‘theory’ was based on the musical idea of contrapuntal fugue, the idea that you can start with two musical strands and then synthesize them into a coherent whole. So far as I understood them, the dances painted in movement on the canvas of space and time. The possibility of synthesis was the suggestion that the dancer’s drawings might coincide at some fundamental point.

Having seen the show, I think Proximity is much more simply and fundamentally an expression of shared subjectivity. Over the course of 10 dances, we see a series of scenarios in which two dancers stand in some sort of relation to each other. The dancers then proceed to work out what their relation will turn out to be. Symmetry and asymmetry, convergence and divergence, continuity and discontinuity; these are the patterns which structure the possible relations between the dancers. With great ingenuity and eloquence, choreographer Emmy Everest Phillips used these structures to consistently engage and command the audience. By the end, I realized that the beauty and the art of her choreographies was not (as in fugual music) in the artifice behind the achievement of structural unity. Rather their beauty lay in what they could express of our relations to others. In short what was being said, was far less black and white than the mere opposition of unity and disunity. 

At this point I have to admit my failings as a reviewer. I was not able to fully comprehend what was being said. It was easier to discern in cases where the dances were comprised of less abstract and more easily recognizable gestures and movements. In one dance for example, what appeared as a couple stood in front of each other, covering each other’s mouths. This almost visual metaphor opened a space for the insertion of all manner of texts, from romantic to political (or both, heaven forbid). They then played out various attempts to consummate the tension between them. On my own reading, it was a playing out of a certain relationship dynamic. Both were forbidding and encouraging each other but ultimately the tension of the paradox was too much and one of them gave up.

In another metaphor heavy piece, one of the dancers performed in front of a white sheet on which we could see the silhouette of an opposing figure. At first the two figures mirrored each other, but before long their movements started to fall out of sync until eventually, having diverged completely, it became clear that it was the silhouette that was dictating the movements. The image of the silhouette as a controlling and controllable fragment of the dancer, can be a place holder for any number of things. But what fascinated me was the resolution to the alternating symmetry and asymmetry og two figures– the dancer in front of us kicked the shadow and at once the rear light behind which created the silhouette turned of. Ultimately, the point of contact between two proximate bodies was too much, the possible unity was too much. I think this is a fascinating and very thought provoking resolution.

Aside from the ingenuity of the choreographies, praise needs to be given to the music and lighting. The music was extremely well chosen, being at once interesting enough to give the dancers moments and variations to work with, but not so intrusive as to detract from the dances themselves. The lighting likewise, provided a very subtle and effective embellishment to certain moments. For example, a change in color in correspondence with a change in music and tone, was used to great effect in accentuating the flow and atmosphere of the piece as whole.

The overriding element of this production however, (over and above all this over intellectualizing) was the sensation of joy. The last ten minutes were an ecstatic and thrilling celebration of the captivation of dance. Set to a throbbing remix of what I think was Tick of the Clock by The Chromatics, these last few scenes were a fantastically primal and joyous exaltation of… well I don’t know what exactly- jois de vivre perhaps? It was the feeling of joy and invigoration from these precious closing moments that will stay in my memory for a while to come. 

★★★★☆

Like the ‘dynamic duo’ that is Georgia Bruce and Jack Chisnall’s presidency of the revue, this review is written by a friend and myself (so bear in mind that the friend mentioned just now might have written this bit – or not). A postmodern answer to a postmodern show.

After an evening discussing the evils of postmodernity, my associate and I found ourselves unable to find the door to the theatre. We concluded that we had become the victims of some sort of devilish Derridean subversion of entrance and exit. Ironically (of course), an hour and a half later, we had in fact been the victims of such a trick. Nevertheless we had been tricked in a slightly different way to what we had thought, for rather than there being no entrance, it was rather the (metaphorical) building that was missing.The show was professionally executed and imaginatively conceived – but to continue the metaphor (or was the door story true…)– we were left with a lot of entrances and exits and sometimes not much in-between.  

The English comic tradition thrives on two kinds of humour: the humour of awkwardness, or absence, and the pitch-black humour of the macabre. The Revue’s OXMAS party employed mainly a version of the former to great bathetic effect: throughout, jokes were instantly devalued, or simply not issued. Despite some very strong sketches, our ultimate feeling was that there was something missing.

The show opened with some short sketches by the presidents which warmed the crowd before Lizzy Mansfield came on for the first of a series of stand up sets. Her humor worked on two levels. On one level she told quirky banal stories with very family friendly punch lines. On the other, she revealed an incredibly dark and intelligent wit, which would periodically drop into her routine, subverting the family friendly in a perversely funny way. For me/us this worked very well, for Mansfield’s skill lies in finding ways of making the dark humor cohere perfectly with the innocent story worlds she conjures. This well constructed combination of morbidity and story telling kept us guessing and made her dark wit all the more guiltily amusing.                                                                                                

The other highlight of the stand ups was George McGoldrick who rather innovatively blended live DJ-ing with his routine. As we were sitting at the rear of the stage we could see him coordinating different sound effects while performing his readings of made up texts. His humor again worked with the logic of disavowal. He doesn’t so much tell jokes but open a space for where there would be a joke. He did this by creating a disjunction between music and speech and in this awkward and inappropriate juxtaposition, the laughter followed. More than anything we have to credit his bravery, on the one hand because of the technical balance of spinning two plates at once but also because as a performer he must manage the risk that the humour won’t come off. It’s a humor that doesn’t have an obvious substantive content, rather it creates the conditions for laughter. Fortunately, it worked on the night.

This strategy of contraposition and disavowal characterized much of the humor throughout. One of the most symptomatic moments of this was the sketch troupe Giants.  They opened by raising their hands and saying ‘giants’ in a halfhearted way. The joke is that they came on, failed to deliver a joke and then acted as if they had just delivered a joke. The joke is, therefore, that we are being expected to laugh, with no cause to laugh – and therefore paradoxically we laugh. It seemed to work and the audience responded well. It also illustrates how many of the routines were structured around the build up to or the failed end of a joke. In short the jokes are jokes about jokes. Having said that they were also responsible for the most outright hilarious moment of the evening during a sketch where the two of them took it in turns to do impressions, with the proviso they wouldn’t try pervy catholic priest… 

The Revue themselves flirted with this disavowed humour, but the best moments were always the ones with a definitive sense of a punch line. One of the best sketches was the one set in a car in which a couple having gone on their first date start listening to Adele’s ‘Hello’. The guy (Jack Chisnall) nonchalantly trying to be cool says its shit. His date (Georgia Bruce) looking pained tries to agree, all the while suppressing the urge to sing a long. The building tension between them finds a definite consummation when driven to desperation Bruce tells a nearby car to stop playing the song. It’s a very well structured sketch that is also very rich in social observation. The excessive agreement with what you are trying to hide in a bid to please someone else has a certain poignancy. It testifies to the awkward tension between people who want to like each other and want to please each other, but fundamentally perhaps aren’t for each other. 

Whether this humor of disavowing a joke works is debatable, certainly we both agreed we didn’t laugh as much we have on other revue shows. But equally it is undeniable the crowd loved it, and this is after all the true test. If you get the chance, try and see the revue next term and see what you think of this new direction.  

(Note from the Stage Editors) As Brutus himself says: ‘No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself, But by reflection, by some other things.” What follows are two ‘other things’. We hope to experiment further with this dual reviewer format to give more diversity of opinion on theatre at Oxford. 

Rose Taylor

★★★☆☆

With carefully choreographed scenes, a cast-cum-crew crossover and a new score, Gruffdog Theatre’s production of an abridged Julius Caesar was an innovative, if slightly muddled, take on one of the most renowned plays in English literature.

Ben van Leeuwen’s score is a diverse mixture of electric guitar riffs, untuned percussion and Gregorian chanting. The guitar was especially prominent during transitions and quicker scenes, providing low, repetitive, dirge-like melodies which contributed to the sense of foreboding. However, while the cast were confident in their singing, the undeniably atmospheric chanting nevertheless posed a bit of an issue: why the Dies Irae and the Agnus Dei? Although the funereal connotations were comprehensible enough, the inextricable Christianity of the text felt jarring in what is, whatever period the production is set in, undoubtedly a play about pagans.

The visual aesthetic was clearly defined and consistent. The use of light was interesting and an effective way of focusing attention, but as the cast point beams at other members this became an issue with actors tripping up over the bulky lights left in their path. Again, a real shame, as this was very effective without the untidiness of a stumbling cast. Notably, the puppetry was very good and the movement of Caesar’s ghost was brilliantly eerie. Despite its short appearance it left a real impression. The use of the ladder (the only real piece of set) was interesting and imaginative, as well as symbolic of the scrabbling competitiveness of Roman ambition. However, scenes without it seemed lacking, as there was little focal focus on stage. This was most noticeable during Caesar’s funeral, which was completely still and surprisingly conventional. The lack of the ladder, or in fact any of the previously-employed physical movement or music, broke the tension these aspects had built. It’s natural that the focus in this scene, of all scenes, should be on the extraordinary language (although with a few strange omissions – where was ‘the unkindest cut of all’?), but having been so playful hitherto, what should have been the crux-moment of the play felt just a little anti-climactic.

Overall the cast were strong and delivered dialogue confidently with few slip ups. There was not a weak character among them and they supported each other very well and maintained their unique mannerisms – Brutus’ stony self-sacrificing, Cassius’ prickly conniving, the languid moroseness of Casca. However, some played their characters in a more grand-theatrical style while others took a more naturalistic approach, leaving some scenes and interactions imbalanced. Many of them also suffered from occasional lapses into ‘Shakespeare voice’ – an arbitrarily-paced, meticulously enunciated mode of delivery (à la Laurence Olivier), which sounds more learned than understood and risks crushing the individuality of characters and actors’ interpretations. Of the cast here only Casca was completely immune to this, and this clearly helped him win over the audience; the others, despite their generally strong performances and distinctive physical portrayals, did have a few lapses with their delivery.

As for the abridged script, it was well cut despite missing a few big lines. In particular, intercutting Calpurnia and Portia’s scenes with Brutus and Caesar respectively was a great way to draw attention to the similarities between the two women and their marital influence (as well their helplessness in a man’s word). More editing could have been used as there were some discrepancies between action directed in dialogue and what was actually carried out on stage, but it had a good balance of being concise while maintaining the grandness of the original script.

Julius Caesar had the potential for a unique and engaging show, but felt untidy in places. However, with so strong a cast and such interesting direction it remains a passionate, inventive and well-played rendition of Shakespeare.

Matt Roberts

★★★★☆

I escaped a bitingly cold November night this week into the newly renovated Michael Pilch studio to see Gruffdog Theatre’s production of ‘Julius Caesar’ directed by Pete Sayer. A cast dressed in a rag-tag assortment of militaristic garb stood around a ladder, recalling the crucial speech of Brutus, who speaks of “young ambition’s ladder, / Whereto the climber-upward turns his face” in finally choosing duty to Rome over loyalty to Caesar. My initial reaction to this ladder was wariness – it felt too heavy handed – an unnecessarily vigorous nod towards ‘what the play’s about’, and more importantly left the actors quite constricted in the tight, thrust stage of the oddly claustrophobic Pilch studio. My fears were not immediately allayed when a contorted mass of the cast bore an intricate model sailing boat up the ladder – representing… the tempestuous atmosphere of the city? Caesar’s triumphant return? It felt out of place in a production that otherwise prioritised performance and

Once the play got into its stride, all of my prior qualms gave way in their entirety. This was primarily thanks to the absolutely stellar performances that carried me utterly into the world of the conspirators and the politics of the Eternal City. The ferociously camp-cum-perfidious Harry Lukakis gave us an apple-chomping schemer in Cassius who was an absolute pleasure to watch, chewing on what little scenery there was available in the best possible way. The ladder (which I’d feared would be a passive gimmick pointing us towards a theme) took an active role in this production, being used variously as battlement, litter, doorway, and portico – under which the conspirators sheltered from the storm portending the assassination.

Another standout performance was Calum Jacobs’ Casca, whose effortless comic timing had the audience in fits of giggles at the tension of the sumptuous vagaries of the politicking and scheming. The production was carried by Fred Wienand’s Brutus, in a particularly hubristic characterisation of a man who believes himself to be the true arbiter of justice, and is convincingly destroyed in his defeat and the death of Alethea Redfern’s superb Portia. My one criticism of Brutus’ journey was that his complete u-turn from loyal friend of Caesar to revolutionary assassin effectively happened over the course of one speech, but such issues are almost impossible to avoid when cutting Shakespeare to 100 minutes without an interval.

The most impressive part of this production was Ben Van Leeuwen’s sound design which created the feeling of the world of Rome outside of the tight square of the stage – a combination of humming, Latin chanting, air horns and dustbin drumming, usually emanating from behind the audience itself, lent a weight to the threat of the mob that whimsically switched from demagogue to demagogue. In one particular scene, the dulcet tones of Tom Fawcett’s Mark Antony swayed the crowd yet again in a manner reminiscent of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Producing the sinister paradox of the infantile alterity of the violent mob as they impressionistically fought and danced their way through the production. The biggest victim of the cuts to this play was John Lynbeck’s Caesar – who, despite his best efforts, was left without enough stage-time to build that arrogant tyrant into a more complex portrayal. Equally, the assassination of Caesar felt a little bit clumsy – particularly when Lynbeck was unable to pronounce the most infamous line of the play as “Brute” cut him off with a dagger. Overall, this was an admirable production that was unafraid of testing new waters and was (primarily) successful in walking the tightrope between innovation and gimmick. 

★★★★☆

Onlife, the new play by Leo Mercer, is a one-man show following Felix (Felix von Stumm) as he deals with the aftermath of a breakup on the eve of pitching his new technological invention, ‘Onlife’, to potential funders. Exploring Felix’s concerns about the demise of human interaction, the play centres, ironically, on technological means of communication, video chats, emails, blog posts, only allowing Felix’s isolated responses to be heard.

Felix interacts with another human only once. Unfortunately for the impartiality of this review that human happened to be this reviewer. Therefore, as much as I would have liked to talk of Felix’s characterisation blooming, I cannot judge this interaction objectively. However, the fact that I was at ease and forgetful of the audience probably means he was convincing up close, but I must hold up my hands and skip past this really quite pivotal part of the play.

Onlife does not have a thrilling narrative, the pace fairly steady throughout with little by way of climax. Instead the focus remains on characterisation rather than plot, something that may have caused more of an issue if it weren’t for von Stumm. Excluding the scene mentioned above, the dialogue consists entirely of one-sided conversations, Felix’s answers, so his physical and vocal reaction to unwritten and unspoken responses is relied on to carry the discourse through. This is a big responsibility, but von Stumm held the performance together, swinging dramatically between a genial, eccentric manner and quite sudden and aggressive outbursts. Despite Felix ultimately being a big, operatic character, von Stumm made him a convincing one. He pulls off the lofty metaphors and philosophical contemplations (that sound perhaps just a little too poetic), as well as occasionally blunt thematic statements; something a weaker performance might not be able to achieve.

Other than these blips, Mercer generally writes in a consistently hyperactive voice which remains naturalistic, with the exception of moments where the dialogue ‘loops’, creating a vocal-glitch effect that mimics the more surreal moments of repetitive action. Under the direction of Will Stevens, this repetition is unnervingly mechanical. It is a physically demanding role and it is a feat that von Stumm manages to maintain so much energy throughout. In particular, the aggression Felix displays when typing shows frustration when dealing with insensitive technology through physical theatre. Rather than beating his (invisible) keyboard, Felix begins to beat himself. While the absence of a physical laptop seemed an odd choice, it was actually quite effective. It exaggerated the strangeness of speaking into nothing, and the oddity of typing – the jerky, unnatural hunched position we adopt. It also shows how emotions can be glimpsed not just in what we say online, but how we punch the keys with our fingers. It is perhaps more discomforting that even without a keyboard Felix’s aggressive backspacing is recognisable. Although this physical violence works well, ending the play with a contrasting gesture – Felix’s typing gently turning into wing-like flapping arms – didn’t work. Despite the clear symbolic intention, it was perhaps a step too far in the direction of kookiness, and risked abandoning the end to silliness.

Stevens makes good use of a small space: not only did the fixed set (Felix’s room) puddle out with a mess of clothes that seemed to suit Felix’s muddled character absolutely, but allowing movement around the BT Studio – facing the audience, lurching, spinning and wandering around – made the most of the intimate space. It is admirable that it felt like von Stumm was infiltrating the audience’s space, not the other way around, and it is this quality, and his performance, which really elevates the production.