The Man of Mode is perhaps not the most well-known play that Oxford has ever seen, but George Etherege’s Restoration comedy is a pleasing two and a half hours of theatre nonetheless, particularly so in the setting of Univ’s Master’s Garden, where a lovely little marquee had been set up to keep the chill from getting to the audience members too much. Even more charming is the change of era from the 17^th century to the 1920s, and the costume department (if there is such a thing for a garden play) must be commended on a delightful array of outfits which fit the bill perfectly.

This is not to say that the production is entirely faultless, however. A bit of jitteriness with the script, and a tendency to overact and read the lines without much mind towards meaning does both cloud comprehension and make attention waver. Some of the “bit parts” are a touch weak, and the transitions between scenes, despite the good use which was made of the many entrances to the marquee, could be a bit clunky.

On a brighter note, the star of the show was without doubt Matthew Robson, playing the dandy Sir Fopling Flutter. His prancing movements and general cavorting (including a spritely jig and a tremendous burst of ham-singing) were a joy, and the scenes were invigorated by his presence. Another brilliant comic turn came in the form of Old Bellair, played by Joseph Prentice, whose obsession with his son’s love interest and sudden attempts to hide it were captured superbly.

The Man of Mode did have a capable and rather large cast, headed by the reprobate ladies’ man Dorimant (Will Yeldham), but another performance which stood out from the rest was Imogen Hamilton-Jones as Harriet Woodville, the young lady who becomes the match for Yeldham’s character in the final scene. Her accent, demeanour and posture were all entirely convincing, and she was perhaps the easiest member of the cast to place in a 1920s setting in terms of engaging with the sense of her lines and pairing them with a well thought out portrayal of character.

All in all, the performance was not without its lukewarm lows, but as the flappers settled after a well-executed and suitably cheering Charleston to close the show, it was with a warm heart, and not just a warm pair of feet, with which the audience left the cosy marquee. It was a successfully amusing evening’s entertainment, and in its role as a light-hearted garden play, The Man of Mode did its job well.

This week the Magdalen Players attempted to rescue Timon of Athens, notoriously regarded as one of Shakespeare’s most difficult works, from its obscurity in an atmospheric late night performance. A collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton, the play is riddled with difficulties from textual tension between the two dramatists, to archetypal, one dimensional characters and digressive subplots. It follows the fortunes of overly generous patron of the arts, Timon, in Ancient Greece as his excess and indulgence leads to misanthropy and debt.

In the programme Gabriel Rolfe outlines his directorial vision, which foregrounds the play’s didacticism to present “a different breed of tragedy in its struggle, and arguably its failure, to achieve ‘life’.” The setting in the shadowy, dark wood panelled Magdalen hall is reminiscent of this “different breed of tragedy” which would have taken place before the birth of theatres in the homes of the aristocracy. He reverses the trend among recent performances, which have shifted the play to modern settings like the City or Wall Street, to evoke the medieval morality play in a “parable-like simplicity”.

The choice to stage the play inside the hall is the most successful aspect of the performance. On entering the candle-lit room each audience member receives a glass of prosecco from the circulating waiters and gradually take their seats around the centrally situated stage. The ambiguously named ‘banquet food’ for which you fork out an extra four-fifty turns out to be a strange mix of after eights, baklava, olives, and pineapples (though perhaps these latter are more for decoration since there is no way to eat them). The players mingle amongst the audience, completely collapsing the fourth wall to breed anticipation for the performance. They wear a eclectic mixture of clothing from velvet cloaks conveying decadent luxury, to 1920s dresses reflecting the Gatsby-ian theme of vacuity in society. When it does begin I miss the first few lines amongst the chattering of the audience and as a result struggle to follow the first scene. However, Dina Tsesarsky gives an interesting performance as the painter conveying an almost manic artistry as she smudges the murky portrait with her hands. 

Rolfe makes full use of the magnificent space, having Timon silhouetted by the projector in a captivating entrance. The players take their positions at the head table in a raucous feast scene which will form a tripartite structure in the play. In the reversal of Timon’s fortunes he invites the same shallow and flattering guests to dine at an empty table after they have refused to help him, and in the closing moments of the play we are given a glimpse of the first scene repeating itself reflecting the last lines to “Make war breed peace, make peace stint war, make each/ Prescribe to other as each other’s leech.” It is an effective and original way to portray the cyclical nature of human folly. 

Alive Rivers playing Timandra is excellent, investing the haughty courtesan with a fragility that takes her beyond being a stock character to show that she is to be pitied for being “a slave to her obsession with money”. In one of the most climactic scenes, Timon has withdrawn from society to live alone in a cave hoarding his gold. Timandra and Alcibiadies visit him and when throws his gold on the ground, she scrabbles desperately on the floor to pick up the pebbles which represent money. Simon Palfrey writes of the character of Timon that he suggests how “Depth is an illusion; inwardness no more than a raging soliloquy”. Tom Dowling, who had given a strong performance up until Timon’s break down, takes “raging” too much to heart. He attempts to portray madness simply by shouting for twenty minutes, and as a result much of his monologues are drowned out. It’s evocative and intense to watch, but ultimately misses something of the play. 

The Magdalen Players give a hit and miss performance of this demanding play. The director had recognised that there is an “uncertainty, or even impossibility, of the play’s own dramatic potential” and despite the experience of the performance being a novel one, there is an “uncertainty” about whether they carry it off. 

★★★★★
Five Stars

A field of corn stands still, as dawn breaks in the first scene of The Wind Rises. Soon, though, the wind picks up, a dream begins, and so does the story. The eleventh of Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki’s career, it tells the tale of a young boy growing up alongside the simple dream of making planes fly, in the shadow of the Japanese militaristic ambition of the 1920s and 30s. 

It is made up of the same components that have come to be expected from the father and founder of Studio Ghibli, Japan’s world-famous animation studio. Beautiful scenes follow on from each other, as sorrow and humour is drawn out from images in ways that should seemingly be only be possible from live action. Unlike Miyazaki’s previous work, The Wind Rises flows slow, imbued with a sort of languid, pensive beauty that lies in contrast to the rapid action of films such as Spirited Away, or Howl’s Moving Castle. This works though; it is the goals and relationships of the characters that keeps this film going, rather than sequential events. It feels as though Miyazaki has finally, with his last work, been given the space to slow down the pace. 

The subject matter, in which warplanes are designed and made in anticipation of the Second World War, has drawn criticism from audiences both in Japan and abroad. However, it seems as though those accusing Miyazaki of failing to properly condemn the actions of those involved have found focus in the wrong place. The film is not a commentary, but a story – a story about a young man who finds passion in the power of flight.

The narrative demonstrates the amazing ability of the human mind to validate its actions, no matter what the consequences. Provocatively, perhaps, during one dream sequence the hero, Jiro is asked by his mentor Marconi, ‘‘Which would you rather choose, a world with pyramids, or without?’’ This chance to engage with the repercussions of his actions however is passed over by Jiro. He replies simply, ‘‘I want to build beautiful airplanes.’’

The film’s dream sequences see Jiro recognise the disastrous results of the flights taken by the machines he has made. Time after time, planes fall to the ground, becoming grey, lifeless wreckage. The colours and shapes used to represent this destruction bring the mind back to the fallen civilisations seen in Miyazaki’s previous work Castle in the Sky, or Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, where advanced societies are brought low by their quest for power through technology. Here, though a statement is not made on the problems of society, it is made on the overpowering and amazing ability of Jiro, and his colleagues, to reach for a dream no matter the consequences. 

The film is an incredible and powerful way for Miyazaki to finish his career. Beyond the context in which it is placed, it is a touching love story about relationships in the face of overwhelming creative passion. And, although it is stationed in an adult realism that may come as a surprise following works such as My Neighbour Totoro, or Ponyo, it is, simply, about the power of dreams. As one character proclaims, standing on the tip of an airplane wing, soaring over fields of green, ‘‘Yes, this is a dream. The world’s a dream.’’

★★★☆☆
Three Stars

It is difficult to stifle the childish enthusiasm that grows inside over a film like Godzilla. There is something gloriously gratifying about seeing an enormous lizard surge dramatically from the ocean and lay waste to all before him. Sadly, in this big-budget American remake, made 60 years after Godzilla first rampaged onto the screen in 1954, a giant monster toppling skyscrapers and roaring gratuitously at every opportunity is the film’s only commendable facet.

Bryan Cranston (of Breaking Bad fame) plays Joe Brody, an engineer-turned-conspiracy-nut, whose wife (Juliette Binoche) was killed in a nuclear disaster apparently brought on by an earthquake at Janjira Nuclear Plant in Japan. When he and his despairing son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), an explosives expert in the US Navy, discover an active facility inside the deserted zone, they realise that (surprise, surprise) Brody was right all along, and the Japanese government are in a film that forgoes the process of inadvertently awakening a MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) that has lain dormant for millennia. 

But this is not Godzilla; it is an enormous winged spider-like creature, that subsequently flies off to awaken its female counterpart in Nevada and, you guessed it, provokes the anger of Godzilla, who has been hiding in the Pacific for decades. The subsequent three-way monster battle rages from Japan to Honolulu to Las Vegas to San Francisco, with us puny humans desperately trying to nuke anything that poses a threat.  

The cast is woefully undistinguished, with Cranston supplying the film’s only memorable performance. His endearingly passionate Brody is utterly compelling and the brief scenes in which he and his wife interact are charmingly believable, which only serves to heighten the gut-wrenching sadness of her death. Taylor-Johnson is regrettably miscast as Ford; he seems much more suited to comedy, given his sterling performances in both Kick-Ass films. Ken Wantanabe is underemployed as expert scientist Ichiro Serizawa and Elizabeth Olsen is forgettable as Ford’s anxious wife Elle.

Godzilla is the unquestionable star. He is strikingly impressive, as are his alien-looking MUTO adversaries. The film’s slow build-up to the first MUTO’s appearance is masterfully done, helped by Cranston’s excellence and Alexandre Desplat’s thunderously ominous score. There are shades of Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim about the various monster battles throughout, and although their lack of imagination occasionally crystallises into repetitiveness, they are undeniably exhilarating nonetheless. 

Disappointingly, the 2014 Godzilla lacks any of the political relevance of its Japanese original. 1954 Godzilla was a pertinent metaphor for the atomic bombs that had devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki just 9 years earlier; the destruction Godzilla caused was a reflection of the devastation of August 1945 and the film sounded a cautionary note about the development of nuclear power.

This version, despite the opening sequence’s ill-disguised similarities to the Fukushima incident in March 2011, is comparatively lacking in moral observations. Nuclear power is just the MUTOs’ food source and atomic bombs are just another weapon to be used against them. In truth, humanity itself is entirely missing after the MUTOs appear; humans are relegated to a supporting role, resulting in an unshakable shallowness, and all the audience is left with is some well-realised, if uninspired CGI set-pieces.

Ultimately, director Gareth Edwards has produced a film that forgoes emotional content in its predilection for CGI action. One could argue that the two are incompatible with a big-budget summer blockbuster such as this, in which all-out monster carnage is the primary selling point. However, a host of successful ‘disaster’ movies prove otherwise: Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day, Steven Spielberg’s 2005 remake of War of the Worlds, and even the first two Jurassic Park films. Commendable as it is for its impressive CGI, Godzilla’s lack of humanity renders it disappointingly mediocre.