As 2013 and 2014 converge, so do the anniversary celebrations of two major Welsh poets, Dannie Abse and Dylan Thomas. During 2013, Cardiff born doctor and poet Dannie Abse celebrated his 90^th birthday and published his latest collection Speak, Old Parrot, nominated for the TS Eliot Prize. The arrival of 2014 will mark the centenary of the birth of Dylan Thomas, the celebrations for which are being led by Hannah Ellis, his granddaughter and President of the Dylan Thomas Society.

In the grounds of Magdalen College, Hannah and I sit overlooking the Cherwell River within sight of Holywell Ford, a red roofed and vine covered house, where Dylan Thomas lived between 1946 and 1947.  Thomas’ oeuvre spans groundbreaking poetry, largely written in his teenage years, prose such as his autobiography Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, and plays for voices including Under Milk Wood. Although she never met her grandfather, (the child of Dylan’s only daughter Aeronwy, she was born over 25 years after the poet’s early death, in 1953 at the age of 39), Hannah not only looks like him, she is also his official spokesperson, and is balancing life as a public figure, primary school teacher, wife, and mother.

Dylan’s work has provided Hannah with a way of interpreting her own experiences. Her favourite poem is ‘The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower’: “Three and a half years ago my mum died, and my son was born within three weeks of that. I saw clear examples of what the poem is about: life and death.” In the face of her grandfather’s contentious reputation for heavy drinking and womanising, Hannah doesn’t indulge in denial, but calls for “a fair picture, a truer picture … he often would sit with just a pint of beer and watch the locals, and always supported the underdog.”

The centenary is an opportunity to refocus attention from the sensationalism epitomised by the 2008 film about Dylan’s life The Edge of Love, back onto his work: “Everything needs to come out; even the negative must be explored. I think we need a bit more critical analysis to reintroduce people to his work.  She adds: “I think the centenary celebration is in a strange way not about the centenary. It’s an opportunity. For me, it’s the start; the legacy is the important thing.” Hannah’s portrayal of her grandfather is earnestly honest, an attitude I encounter again in Dannie Abse’s house in North London.

The door into Dannie Abse’s tidy, book-lined study creaks loudly.  He laughs: “It’s like me! Old and creaky!” The same humorous honesty pervades the rest of the interview conducted at his large, altar-like desk. Our last meeting was at his 90^th birthday meal at an Indian restaurant in south Wales, in a roomful of attentive Welsh literati as he read from his latest book. Abse writes poetry, plays, and prose, including his early autobiography Ash on a Young Man’s Sleeve and his novel The Presence which won the 2008 Wales Book of the Year award. He has written and edited 16 books of poetry, and was recently awarded a CBE. 

Speak, Old Parrot is a confrontation with old age, the transition from being the youngest of three brothers to being the oldest person in the room. Admitting that “people don’t like to recognise themselves as old” Dannie sees his poems as part of the process and the product of self-recognition; from his armchair, he speaks in almost-poetry: “poetry is not an escape from reality, but a motion into reality.” Dannie seems to share Hannah’s desire for an undeceived prospect of the world, but for a non-religious doctor, the objective reality of old age is often bleak. Dannie is reading the memoirs of his friends; he shows me his bookmarked copy of Walking Wounded: The Life and Poetry of Vernon Scannell, an old friend he met in Soho.  When asked ‘what’s next?’ his humour emerges again in a darker shade: “just stick around for a while, is all.” 

All poetry must confront mortality, whether prematurely as with Thomas, whose work was always haunted by transience, or, as with Abse, after a career which, now in its tenth decade, could hardly have been more illustrious or productive. Young dog or old parrot, long career or short, these two authors exemplify the power of words in the face of the realities of the human condition. In Speak, Old Parrot, the poem ‘Parrotscold’, mourns the loss of a loved one:

“yet though Beatrice is no more and nothing,

Beatrice is, her shadow hidden in the shade.

So this nightfall, with all your debts to her

Unpaid, raise high and higher the full red glass.”

★★★☆☆

Three Stars

A little over a decade ago it became a de facto Christmas holiday requirement to watch the latest Lord of the Rings film on its release in cinemas. After 2003 the franchise bowed out with enormous box office success, a sack full of academy awards and a vast following of fans. A decade later and here we are again; a J. R. R. Tolkien book, adapted for the screen in an epic trilogy, of which The Desolation of Smaug is the second instalment. Peter Jackson is again at the helm as Director. Almost all of the cast from the original trilogy have been brought back to reprise their roles. The stunning panoramic backdrop of New Zealand is laid out before our eyes on screen, just as before. The marketing, posters, even the soundtrack are almost identical to those of the earlier films. Why change what once was a winning formula?

Desolation finds our ensemble of characters (a familiar hobbit named Bilbo Baggins, several dwarfs, and Gandalf, an equally familiar wizard) continuing where they left off from last year’s An Unexpected Journey.That is, embarking on a perilous journey to ‘The Lonely Mountain’ where they intend to slay the mountain’s occupying dragon in order that the gold it jealously guards can be repossessed by said group of dwarfs. Whilst on their journey, they counter giant spiders, an ‘evil’ forest, blood-thirsty orcs, a dragon (named ‘Smaug’ – hence the film’s title) and generally the sort of villainous fodder well accommodated for by Computer Generated Imagery.

This is a very difficult tale for audiences to emotionally invest in. Its centrepiece is a group of greedy, mistrusting, selfish and rather vain dwarves convinced they were unjustly ejected from their homeland by an equally greedy dragon. They are willing to sacrifice everything – including their allies, and even each other – in their quest to repossess that homeland. Their prime motivation in recapturing it is not any particular affinity for the place, but rather a lust for the vast treasure of gold and jewels that dwell within. We also learn that one among their cohort (‘Thorin’) is the direct heir to a Monarchical dwarf ruler that presided as ‘King under the Mountain’ before being ejected, along with his kin, by the aforementioned Smaug.

These dwarves are presented on screen with an absurd degree of moral authority and legitimacy, and we as an audience are in essence asked to endorse the pursuits of an acquisitive hereditary dynasty seeking to recapture its familial wealth through the use of force, whilst ignoring their cynical manipulation of the naïve hobbit accompanying them and their eliciting cooperation from those they encounter by promising a share of the gold they anticipate recapturing.This stands in marked contrast to the self-sacrificial efforts to destroy the ring of power – a source of corrupting, absolutist authority – which made The Lord of the Rings and its heroes easy to invest in and enjoy. Reading his correspondence with friends suggests that Tolkein was fully conscious of the moral ambiguity of what the dwarves in The Hobbit were seeking to undertake, but on screen this ambiguity seems to have eluded Peter Jackson.

What saves Desolation from the status of An Unexpected Journey (which was dreadful) is a series of highly engaging action sequences and equally engaging lead performances. Although it runs to some two hours and forty minutes, the film does not feel unduly long, nor the plot in any way ‘stretched’ to meet the running time (both traits being present in the first film). There is also the welcome distraction of Bilbo’s developing relationship with the ‘Ring of Power’ he has come to possess, and the lengths he goes to in order to protect and conceal that relationship from his peers, all played with surprising panache by Martin Freeman. Yet the inescapable conclusion is that The Hobbit trilogy so far is simply no match for that of the Rings, and Desolation is at best a pleasant cinematic distraction for a lazy Christmas weekend, rather than a cinematic tour de force.

5. Rebecca Black

The internet went into meltdown when teen star Rebecca Black, who rose to fame in 2011 with famously awful music video ‘Friday’, released a follow up; ‘Saturday’. Maybe it’s a bit mean calling her a music baddy. It was, like, really bad, but amusing in a oh-dear-what-has-teenage-society-come-to sort of way. The song and video, produced with YouTube musician Dave Days, saw Miss Black recover from her Friday night partying and eat cereal, before hitting the beach and heading to a wild party with a Miley Cyrus look-a-like (there’s no escape!). Well at least it was entertaining.

4. James Arthur

Poor James. Like most of the X Factor winners, I sort of feel bad for him. A year after winning, who even is he? Someone who makes ill-advised homophobic insults, clearly. “You f***ing queer,” said Arthur in his “diss rap” to MC Micky Worthless, triggering an on-air apology when he made a repeat appearance on the X Factor earlier this month. As a result of the slur, he tweeted “#LOVE to my fans but I’m coming off twitter. HQ will be doing all my tweets from now on. PEACE!” Probably for the best.

3. Justin Bieber

When will this torment end? The hair may be shorter, but the crotches have got lower, he’s started assaulting photographers, and the all purple has been replaced by all white (eughhhh). If that wasn’t offensive enough, he showed up three hours late to his London show, disappointing hundreds of little girls, and he has punished twitter and instagram with topless snapback selfies and poor grammar. To make matters worse, he recently decided to release a new song every Monday. Lucky us.

2. Miley Cyrus

2013 was the year of the Miley takeover. The tongue brandishing songstress dominated and disturbed our TV screens, radios, and newsfeeds. She was even the butt of the winning gag in a Christmas cracker joke competition. It was all pretty repulsive, but Cyrus’ twerking and mockery of African American culture was probably the most disturbing. That and the foam finger thing, which was a bit weird.

1. Robin Thicke

The misogynist of the year award goes to the creepy Simon Cowell lookalike Robin Thicke, and his big… ego. The video for ‘Blurred Lines’ had lots of lady bums and boobs, whilst the three male stars were nicely covered up. Funny that. As the terrible singer stumbled his way through the repeated line “I know you want it,” feminists balked in disgust. It was so bad in fact, that several Oxford JCRs banned it from bops and areas around college, following a trend set by Edinburgh University. Intelligent and respectful students of Oxford, I implore you: next time ‘Blurred Lines’ comes on in a club, instead of tearing up that sticky dance floor shouting every sexist lyric, stand still and silent in protest. If not because of its horrible sentiment, because it’s an utterly rubbish song.

There’s only one thing on at the Oxford Playhouse main stage between Friday 29 November – Sunday 12 January: the pantomime of Robin Hood. As any student will tell you, three week run in Oxford is a long time – most other plays at the theatre are given a week at most. Take, as a comparison, the OP’s exclusive showing of Alan Ayckbourne’s trio of new plays – in spite of being a household name, the playwright has been allotted a measly six days in February.

Clearly they’re expecting a surge in ticket sales for Robin Hood, in spite of the hefty increase in prices to as mich as £24.50. January’s theatre “staple” of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which contains just as much cross dressing and sly jokes as any decent pantomime, makes a nod to students with more friendly £11 tickets. Of course, lots of Oxford students won’t be in residence over Christmas – perhaps the annual pantomime is a sign that the OP is abandoning all us “urban arts eclectics” (as the British Arts Council so delightfully calls one small segment of the arts-engaged population), and turning its attentions to a wider audience.

Pantomime is often praised for bringing in audiences who might not go to the theatre at other times of the year.  Celebrity appearances are heavily advertied to pull in the festive troops. David Hasselhoff performs in Cinderella at the Bristol Hippodrome; Jo Brand is a genie in Aladdin at the New Wimbolden Theatre; Ray Quinn of X Factor and Dancing on Ice fame will appear as Peter Pan in the Liverpool Empire Theatre (perhaps an overly optimistic perception of his percieved popularity, given the venue seats 2,350 people.)

The other joy of pantomimes, often over-egged by the single enthusiastic family member responsible for whole rows of audiences, is that every show can be enjoyed “by all the family”. Combining traditional plots, two-dimensional characters and some magic-wand-based innuendos means there’s something for everyone – you’ll have an audience as well-mixed and beautifully rounded as a Christmas pudding.

Let’s not pretend that’s always the case, however. If you’re going to be shelling out more than £60 for four people of an evening, which you would have to to see, for example, Cinderella at the New Vic this year, you might be rather more tempted to ditch the theatre and have night in with the brandy butter. But price aside, the point of pantomime is accessiblity and, like Classic FM, gets some stick for this. It’s not “proper” theatre, if “proper” theatre disseminates some deep and meaningful Universal Message. Nobody dies in pantomime. Nobody soliloquises. Instead, in a long tradition of farce and stock characters which came from Italian travelling companies via Victorian theatre to be embedded in our most nostalgic and rose-tinted associations of childhood Christmases, people play around and have a good time. Generally they marry. Sometimes they throw sweets. It’s hardly a subtle critique of Stanislavski and the fourth wall, but it keeps the kiddies happy.

So if inclusivity is the one great thing about pantomimes, the reason it sweeps disproportionately through theatres in December and sends “urban arts electics” running for the hills, let us at least demonstrate some real levelling skills and bring the prices crashing down with the curtain. Then we might at last have some truly universal theatre.

Beyond El Dorado: Power and Gold in Ancient Columbia – British Museum

The latest exhibition at the British Museum explores and explains the rich culture of the Columbians before the Spanish invasion in the sixteenth century. In Columbia, gold was not used for money; instead it had great symbolic meaning, and was thought to facilitate all kinds of social and spiritual transformations. The artworks are highly wrought as making such beautiful objects required vast amounts of skill. In my humble opinion, gold was the best gift the Three Kings gave Jesus. Frankincense and myrrh smell weird and are seriously overrated. If you have a similar love for the shiny stuff, this one is for you.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman

It may not be our most optimistic offering but there’s something Christmassy in its mix of childlike fantasy and adult fear. This is a 21st century fairytale. Gaiman’s delicate prose is told from the view point of a child but sinister dread and darkness undercut the whole novel and mean that this is a book for adults and children alike; perfect for all of us who like to think of ourselves as both.

Art Turning Left – Tate Liverpool

If you feel like a bit more education, head to Liverpool. I like it when exhibitions aren’t just about the paintings in front of you, and when you get to find out how other aspects of culture influenced the production of art. This exhibition is a fantastic example of how it can be done successfully. It examines how left-wing values have informed the production of art since 1789. This is a thematic exhibition which spans a vast amount of history from art in the French Revolution through William Morris and the Guerrilla Girls to Goldin and Senneby. Don’t be put off by the similarity to an Oxford term, but you will learn a lot in a very short space of time.

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P – Adelle Waldman

Waldman regales the love affairs of a young idealistic writer living in Brooklyn. Nathaniel spends many lonely years as a struggling artist with little romantic success. But when he finds himself with a lucrative book deal and a swathe of females giving him attention, what is he to do with them all? Treat them awfully, it appears. Waldman exposes the wonders and weaknesses in psyche of the intellectual male. For Oxford students, it hits close to home. Girls – it teaches you a lot. Boys – it reveals all your secrets.

 The Luminaries – Eleanor Catton

There is one word for this book: big. There’s no doubt about it, it’s a lengthy monster and one which is currently sitting unopened on my bedside table. But it won this year’s Man Booker prize and everyone who has read it says it’s a masterpiece. It is the must-read of the season and will definitely fill up any spare hours you have to while away in front of the fire. Once I’ve spent the whole vacation reading it, you’ll get a review.