The word ‘Netsky’ to a computer scientist would mean a computer worm, an unwelcome virus that spreads and infects via email. But the Netsky I was to interview raids our computers in a very different way — via iTunes.

Netsky (a.k.a. Boris Daenen) is one of today’s biggest names in drum and bass and liquid funk. He started teaching himself to produce around the age of 15. “I don’t have the patience for manuals or tutorials,” he told me. “I always loved finding out what different knobs and filters would do.” Boris dropped out of university in Belgium to pursue music, but part of his first album was made while he was still studying. “For some reason you could wearyour headphones in class, so that’s what I did… I feel if you want to follow your dream you should take a year to give yourself a chance to see what you want to do, but it’s important to set a deadline on that.”

I asked Boris if he felt he had reduced his room for improvement by becoming one of the best in the world at what he does (despite being only 25!). He claims the opposite, that each time he improves as an artist there is even more to discover. “There’s so much to learn and so many people I look up to and I think it’ll always be that way… It’s just impossible to be the best in music, there’s so many other producers and cool genres that you could never do. Which is cool, it keeps you focused.”

I ask if his live sets ever begin to feel routine? “I’ve always felt nervous before any kind of appearance,” says Daenen. “I always want to do really well, it’s important to have that feeling and I think the day that will go away is when it becomes a 9-5 job. That’s really not what I’m trying to do with music.”

Classical music, soul and Motown are all genres Boris enjoys listening to, all of which seem to be as different as it gets from drum and bass, “Then again it’s very close to drum and bass as well, it’s not impossible to combine drum and bass with classical music for example. The only thing I can’t listen to is really hard rock, or funk rock. That’s not really my thing.”

He claims it’s “a real disease” to be a producer; it’s difficult to listen to music in a relaxed way. That’s why he enjoys classical. He tells me, “It’s the most honest music, it just shows a melody, and there’s no production to it.”

Some of Netsky’s favourite places to play include Coachella, New Zealand and his hometown of Antwerp, but he is eager to perform for the first time at Red Rocks in Denver. He also sounds excited to return to Oxford in a few weeks with ‘Netsky LIVE!’. “We’ll be bringing some special guests. I’ve got a drummer, a keyboard player, an MC, some guest vocalists, and a whole production show… The drummer plays all the drums live, he’s a machine. He really kills it.”

I was eager to talk about Daenen’s third studio album, of which there are hints of a release early next year. “I really enjoy working on different styles of music now as well. I think it’s really important for producers to step out of their comfort zones, to try and break out of the projection of what people think you are. I think it’s important to surprise people.”

Any hints about the title? “I haven’t really made up my mind yet… People have been telling me I should call it 3 after 2 and Netsky, but I’m not sure — It’s gonna include some really weird collaborations and I’m excited about that!” Netsky and 2 both send shivers down my spine. Boris’ creativity is mind-blowing and his skills in a production studio are to match. His third album is going to have thousands of eyes and ears locked on to it. If you’re a fan, keep your eyes and ears on his autumn tour when it reaches town.

Netsky plays the O2 Academy on November 5th.

I cannot but vividly recall my excitement when I discovered that David Tennant, a sometime idol of mine, was to take the titular role in Gregory Doran’s RSC production of Richard II. It had taken on an almost mythical status in my imagination; I couldn’t miss it.

I was, alas, to be callously tortured, as the tickets evaporated from the RSC website in a matter of seconds. I clicked and typed my way to the re-sale pages with feverish desperation, but the price was already three figures long and climbing before my very eyes and I was doomed to look wistfully on as five-star reviews gush from the pages of the Saturday papers — curse the social elites and journalists with their privileged access! “Go thou and fill another room in hell!”

But lo! What is this Internet advertisement hovering out of the mist of page 33 of your Google search? “RSC live, showing Doran’s Richard II in a cinema near you…” I could hardly believe my hope-starved eyes! I was going to see the production after all, and for the inconceivably reasonable price of £12, with popcorn! 

I did go to see Richard II in my local Cineworld and I enjoyed it immensely, but it left me wondering whether there are some fundamental differences between the mediums of film and theatre that could never allow the stage to transfer to the screen with any real impact. The   opportunities for greater accessibility not only for theatre, but opera, ballet, concerts et al are impossible to ignore.

For performances and concerts often made exclusive and unreachable by a finite number of seats or an astronomic price tag, the cinema is ideally positioned to allow prospective audiences the chance to experience what they would have missed. NT Live has broadcast to 550 cinemas in the UK and more than 1,100 venues worldwide, meaning that 3.5 million more people were able, to all intents and purposes, to go to the theatre. Could cinema be the cheap alternative to the perennial problem of expensive (and therefore exclusionary) performances?  But what exactly are we getting access to?

The camera, while undoubtedly an artistic tool in itself, imposes a distance between the audience and the stage, which simply cannot allow for the total sensory experience that productions at the Globe or the National Theatre often are. 

The proximity of your body to the actors’ and to the stage is fundamental in the creation of something real and visceral, something that follows you from your seat as you leave the auditorium. What’s more, a camera’s eye is inevitably selective, whereas yours may roam about the stage and set with abandon. When filmed, little, but delightful details that for part of the stage-play’s charm are missed as the camera swings and switches between the leads. The film cannot but select and deselect on the audience’s behalf: an inevitability that enriches film, but diminishes the theatrical production.

That said, the immediacy is not dissipated between the screen and the eye; it changes. Cameras can zoom in and catch fragments, twitches and beads of sweat that our eyes would miss. We are now, in a perverse way, closer to the actor and yet further from the production, which is no longer delivered as a total and ever-present picture, but as a series of close and intense visions, interspersed with wider glimpses of the stage.

For a particularly choice example of this technique, go to Elliot Levey’s tight-lipped and drawn Don Jon in Digital Theatre’s broadcast of Josie Rourke’s Much Ado About Nothing. I would, therefore, go so far as to say that, while it will never be the same, theatre in the cinema is something else altogether. Cine-theatre, when done well, combines the intensity of a well-held camera angle, with the raw power of a live theatre performance.  

And if cinemas get the chance to broadcast some ‘alternative content’ and more people than ever are able to witness the ineffable greatness of David Tennant, then long may it continue. 

Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem offers an updated idyll of England, presenting a green and pleasant land in which promiscuity, alcoholism and drug addiction have replaced dragon-slaying and damsel-saving as the nation’s preferred pursuits.

The plot centres around Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron, an aging drug addict living in a caravan in the woods next to a sleepy Wiltshire town. Hounded by upstanding citizens, plagued by eviction notices and accompanied by a gaggle of wastrel teenagers, Johnny’s quasi-bucolic life begins to unravel before him, with both hilarious and poignant consequences.

These may not seem like typical themes for Oxford drama, but Jerusalem is also laden with a coarse, naturalistic humour and, with a cast boasting such comedic talent as Will Hislop and Barney Fishwick, Director Will Felton evidently relishes the opportunity to stage the play at Keble’s O’Reilly Theatre in 4th Week.

“It’s a play that has in-built theatricality,” he tells me, when I ask why he chose Jerusalem, “and I love making theatre as live and theatrical as possible. There are scenes, like the opening one, which are pure spectacle and there is also a lot of theatricality in the ensemble scenes as well, with characters performing to each other, not just to the audience.”

The opening scene, a thumping rave sequence in front of Johnny’s caravwan, is described to me in detail. Felton is not wrong; his vision of the sequence is remarkably imaginative and, should it be pulled off as he wishes, will be a genuinely striking spectacle.

This theatricality of the tamer, dialogue-filled scenes is also evident in rehearsals I witness. Johnny, Ginger and Davey, played by Fishwick, Hislop and Tommy Simman respectively, take it in turns to ‘perform’, ruminating aloud on various themes to audible ribbing from other characters, who slouch around the edge of the space and thus create an arena in which these ‘performances’ take place. It is an effectively engaging device.

The play is also imbued with a naturalism that arises partly from Butterworth’s script and partly from an affected style that the cast have
been refining.

“Once everyone’s learnt their lines, that naturalism starts come through,” Simman tells me. “We’ve started to work off each other, ad-libbing insults and trying to react instinctively to the dialogue.

“It’s easier in the one-on-one scenes,” Fishwick interjects, “but with the ensemble scenes it is a lot harder. You have to stay awake and alert to react instinctively.”

A great deal of the play’s humour lies in this naturalism, in these unscripted asides and raucous exclamations, particularly as they are all spoken in a heavy West Country accent.

Central to the play is Fishwick’s Johnny, the forest-dwelling ‘English eccentric’ who is besieged on every side by conformists. He is a compellingly complex character who the audience is paradoxically able to sympathise with.

“I think the audience likes him because he is that classic release of the anti establishment figure we all secretly crave to be.” Fishwick continues, informing me, “That said, there is a brutal reality behind the endearing façade that becomes more obvious as the play goes on.

“He is a lonely middle-aged man who supplies teenagers with drink and drugs to preserve their company. He is the perfect hero of a modern-day fairytale where instead of slaying dragons, everyone just gets pissed and takes drugs.”

★★★☆☆
Three Stars

They said The Pillowman would be dark — they weren’t kidding. The outlook of the play is almost unremittingly bleak. The humour, of which there is either loads, or slim to none, depending entirely upon how ghoulish an individual you are, counters this only a little. Then again, with a play about child murders in a totalitarian state you can’t really expect much — or anything — in the way of sweetness and light.

The casting of the play is apt and effective. Claire Bowman gives an impressive performance as the flawed central character, retaining the audience’s interest even when Katurian does not have their sympathy. Dominic Applewhite and Jonathan Purkiss give nuanced performances as police officers Tupolski and Ariel, bookending the intensity of the play’s central scenes with comedy that remains dark enough not to jar with the overall tone. Featured prominently in the advertising of the play is its use of gender-blind casting. What was surprising about its implementation is how little (after a while) it seemed to matter that female actors were being addressed with male names and pronouns. The ease with which Bowman and D’Arcy’s excellent performances as “The Writer and his Brother” were accepted makes me wish wholeheartedly for more casting in this vein.

The realistic set of the interrogation room peels back fluidly to reveal a dark, wooded environment, a cutaway room jutting precariously into the dreamscape. There’s an appropriate element of ‘twisted fairy tale’ in this stage design — something unsettling that is difficult to pin down or explain without robbing it of its creepy charm. Staging steps up another notch with a cross formed of LED lights and also an ambitious and extremely effective take on one of Katurian’s characters.

Despite the high calibre of acting, and incredibly adept direction and conceptualisation of staging, there are some uncomfortable moments. There’s something that makes me squirm in my seat about listening to an audience of Oxonians sniggering at the way social and emotional norms are transgressed by Katurian’s brother, who has learning difficulties. Emma D’Arcy’s depiction of Michal’s learning difficulties is extremely impressive, but it’s hard to be certain to what extent the audience laugh simply because the lines are funny, or rather because Michal’s disability somehow causes the humour. The play’s toying with the trope of the despicable disabled individual is hardly cleverer or more nuanced than the equally overused endowment of similarly abled characters with near sainthood.

Disability as equivalent to evil is hardly new or original (Richard III anyone?) and this element of McDonagh’s play makes me more uncomfortable than I can adequately express. The Pillowman causes strong emotional responses in its audience, and I’m sure many of mine are highly subjective.

As the plot twists, turns, and doubles back on itself, so do responses to the characters, and even to the play itself. The act break is in a dangerous position plot-wise — I almost considered sneaking off in the interval to escape the darkness and disturbia. It’s not a feel good play.

For reasons I can’t fully explain without spoiling the plot (and possibly can’t explain full stop) I’m extremely glad I did stick around. This is not only because the standard of the production is incredible, but also because the play manages to pull off a feat I thought near impossible. It gestures towards some sort of meaning or purpose in the evitable sufferings of existence it depicts so vividly.

If you’ve got vast resources of emotional stamina, or a thirst for the macabre and gruesome, you’re bound to enjoy The Pillowman, and for anyone without these prerequisites — if you stick with it, I don’t think you’ll regret the experience.