★★☆☆☆
Two Stars

What is The Aleph, and what significance does it hold for the salvation of humankind? This is the ominous question posed by the opening of this new, student-written production, performed within the tense confines of the Burton Taylor.  Sadly, however, the intrigue is short-lived.

We find ourselves in the future, where the titular Aleph – a mysterious device with the power to end an apocalyptic, all-consuming war – has landed in the hands of the enemy. Stealing it back will require a crack team of spies capable of infiltrating their ranks and stealing the Aleph right from beneath their noses. Unfortunately for the world, however, it is instead perplexingly entrusted to a group of clichéd military ‘specialists’, none of whom have ever met and all of whom seem to hate one another for no particular reason.

The Aleph is plagued by a total lack of likeable or relatable characters, and this is largely due to the dialogue. The actors are all fine; they might even be great but get few chances to show it, because their lines fail them at every turn. A notable example is Junks, who seems to have been intended as a loveable rogue but comes off instead as a childish nuisance. More insufferable still is Lawson, who is inexplicably angry all the time and prone to jarring changes of attitude, and whom the script awkwardly tries to make us sympathise with by having him constantly spout off about his two children back home. Comparatively consistent characters like Tom, Captain Evans, and Madison (who comes closest to being likeable but gets used to little purpose) do not manage to make up for these shortfalls, and often get dragged down by clumsy melodrama. Some lines even come off as unintentionally funny – including, unfortunately, the last one.

Ultimately, for this story to work, we needed The Aleph itself to draw us further into the plot. Had there been a building sense of foreboding around the object then we might have felt some sort of tension. Instead it serves as no more than a lazy plot device in a play with little plot – a sci-fi element that is used to no effect save at the end, where we are told in one lengthy and uninspired monologue exactly what it does. The one hope for real tension is rapidly vaporised, and though the acting and the direction manages to hold things together sufficiently, there is never much for us to care about or become invested in.

Even as the first chords of ‘Wolf Song’ echo through the Church of St. John the Evangelist, Patrick’s accompanying violinist and accordionist play along, occasionally glancing at each other with an overt affection which betrays a relationship deeper than that between artist and backing band. Almost immediately the night takes on a mystical quality, enhanced by the high-ceilinged church which is lit only around the stage itself. The church is filled with seats, which unfortunately have all been filled by the time we arrive. Eschewing the few remaining scattered seats, we favour a particularly comfortable area of the floor to one side of the stage which affords us a great view of the back of Patrick’s head as he sits at the piano (“Can you see my pants?” he queries when he notices us).

The set itself is mostly drawn from last year’s release Sundark and Riverlight, an acoustic reinterpretation of some of Patrick’s existing songs.‘London’ is one of the especially successful examples, capturing both the spirit of the original while adding a new depth of emotion. He explains the story behind the song, describing how he never wanted to go back to the place of his birth, but had now found himself back home. This moves nicely into ‘Paris’, a chronicle of the city that took him in after he fled his birthplace which is filled with a startling fragility which is noticeably absent from the original. Patrick continues to explain the stories behind the songs, most notably ‘Damaris’, the tale of the gypsy lover of a vicar’s son, who died after discovering that they could never marry. Rewritten specifically for the tour, the song lingers in the mind with heart-breaking poignance.

Patrick also tells us excitedly that he met Prince Charles earlier and “mostly talked about our hair and our outfits”. His outfit is certainly worthy of discussion: a waistcoat and knee breeches, with a flamboyant bow at his throat and a glitter-covered collar. This is apparently homemade with materials sourced from Poundland and his local market; “there’s a recession on, you know”, he remarks. He spent two days before the meeting locked in a room writing a poem which he reads out to the audience, saying that he might be more nervous because we’re “more important than the monarchy” (small round of applause from the somewhat left-leaning audience). The poem unfortunately leads directly into an extended tuning session, during which Patrick suggests that we take the opportunity to ask him any questions (or go to the toilet). We can easily forgive him this though, as he is taking up his fifth instrument of the night; he’s moved from tenor guitar to piano to harp to viola to baritone ukulele and is proficient in each.

Patrick’s eventual departure from the stage prompts deafening applause, followed by his reappearance in an indescribable cape for an encore which, though manufactured, nonetheless leaves the concert on a high note with natural show-stopper ‘The City’. The night ends with a particular significance for us as, on the way to the toilets, we run into Patrick who exclaims “you were sat behind me! …Sorry.” No need to apologize, Patrick. No need at all.

“Tell me about Audrey.” This isn’t an enquiry about an elderly relative, but rather the Oxford Revue’s New Big Thing. Audrey is a fortnightly event being held above the Wheatsheaf this term, which aims to widen participation and establish a decent and popular comedy scene in Oxford. It’s a kind of auditioned open-mic night, where prospective participants try out during the preceding week in front of the Oxford Revue, and can test their various ideas out in front of a large friendly audience. I spoke to Will True­fitt (President) and Barney Iley (Director) about this attempt to kick-start student comedy.

“It provides a platform for those who oth­erwise wouldn’t be able to try things out,” ex­plains Truefitt, “even if it’s a bit rough around the edges. It’s a service to performers. Histori­cally in Oxford, comedy has been cordoned off into specific groups. This is a way of liberating it from that.”

The concept is essentially mimicking the successful formula used in Cambridge. It’s a way of encouraging new writing, and creating an atmosphere in which it’s the norm to take the first step and give comedy a go. “If you go to Cambridge,” says Iley, “there’s a culture that you will write comedy if you want to, and you will perform it if you want to. Here, one of the biggest challenges is saying ‘go on, do it!’”

But whereas in Cambridge the Footlights act as an umbrella organisation for the comedy scene (similar to the way OUDS operates in re­lation to Oxford drama) the Revue are keeping themselves distinct and separate from Audrey performances. “One of the great strengths of the Revue,” says Iley, “is that we can operate as a closely knit group, a comedy troupe. We just make sure Audrey happens; Revue members are just in the pot with everyone else. It’s not a Revue show.”

The first show was popular – with an audi­ence of around 120 – and many of the perform­ers were doing stand-up routines for the first time ever. To succeed, though, the events will need to keep up their momentum. “Hopefully there were people in the audience who came and saw that it wasn’t a hyper-critical environ­ment; people are there to have fun and it’s very relaxed.” says Trufitt.

It’s surprising that nothing has been done to try to kickstart student comedy before now. Oxford has no comedy culture; what is pro­duced seems to be almost solely for the per­formers and their close group of friends, and there’s nothing like the scale of involvement or interest as there is in Cambridge, where the Cult of the Footlights reigns supreme. The Imps are fine before the novelty wears off by the end of Michaelmas of first year, and after that they become just another irrelevance wheeled out for college balls. And the general student con­sensus towards the Revue is negative; Oxford’s most recent and widely-known comedy suc­cess, the sketch group Rory and Tim, left the Revue in a state of disillusionment.

This all seems at odds with the plethora of successful comedic alumni: Rowan Atkinson, Michael Palin, Armando Iannucci and Patrick Marber all started their careers here. And al­though their Cambridge counterparts are famous for their Footlights involvement, the Oxonians seem to exist as independent enti­ties. This must be down to the fundamental structural difference in the way in which the comedy scenes are set up. Truefitt defends the Oxford model: “We have a set group of reper­tory writer/performers, who work together on each show, and they take that to Edinburgh. It can create something that is altogether dif­ferent from a Footlights show. Theirs is often much more disparate, despite their high yield.”

So if the structure’s going to remain the same, then something quite drastic is going to have to change in order for Oxford’s comedy culture to undergo a resurrection. The Revue puts on two shows each term. Of this I had no idea. Whereas plays are heavily marketed through posters, trailers, interviews and re­views, until this year the Revue has done very little to promote itself.

“Hopefully the Audreys will establish a com­edy scene, like ramming a flag in the ground and saying ‘comedy is here!’” says Iley. The question remains, however, as to where exactly that flag needs to be rammed. One of the prin­ciple difficulties Oxford comedians face is not having an established performance space, a hub around which a culture might congregate. The Revue, Iley says, “has to be nomadic”; their next show is at the Old Fire Station, which is lovely but seldom frequented by students. Over the year they’ll pop into the Burton Taylor Stu­dio, show up at a couple of comedy debates at the Union, do a one-night-only Playhouse show, and then whisk themselves off to the Fringe. It’s quite easy to miss.

Marketing and location aside, it all comes down to quality. If the Audrey events can widen participation, give people the space to practise, and forge good working relationships, then we can hope to see not just more comedy, but bet­ter comedy.

★★★★★

Five Stars

Any film that is ‘based on true events’ or labelled as a ‘historical drama’, creates an altered viewing experience. The plot is tautological, we often know the outcome, and the film instead becomes about detail, nuance and interpretation. At least, that is what a good film should do.

Zero Dark Thirty, a highly controversial work from director Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), is no exception to this. In a blur of documentation and dramatization, the film details the decade long hunt for America’s Public Enemy No.1, Osama Bin Laden, culminating in his grisly assassination. From that description alone, I had my misgivings, furthered by the inevitable backlash from all corners regarding Bigelow’s extremely uncomfortable depiction of torture. This film could have so easily become a vehicle for patriotism, propaganda, and large men dressed as Navy SEALS chanting ‘USA’ in front of a rippling star spangled banner. However, Bigelow’s intense, pared down filming combined with Mark Boal’s unforgiving and unsentimental script  creates a brilliant take on what is vast becoming its own genre; the ‘War on Terror’.

The secret lies in the film’s main motive. This is not a film about torture, or politics, or America. It is barely a film about Bin Laden. Much like The Hurt Locker, it is a film about obsession. CIA agent Maya (Jessica Chastain) is almost fanatical in her search for OBL (the film is thick with jargon); to the extent that the emotional core of the piece is the search itself.

Characters come and go, torture is used and dismissed almost ambivalently, and leads are found futile, until the only thing left is Chastain’s fragile, exhausting, and utterly compelling performance. She, like the majority of the characters, is without past or future, and figured only within the context of the mission.

This centrality allows Bigelow to depict the political undercurrents and relationships without letting them become the chief objective. In this creative environment, co-stars Jason Clarke, Mark Strong and Joel Edgerton give excellent performances with little material to work from. Bigelow did deviate a little from her nameless character trope by casting John Barrowman as a White House suit, however. Go back to Wales, Captain Jack.

Though the tracking progress takes centre stage in Zero Dark Thirty, the film’s climax is of course the success of the mission. After hurtling through years of work, with some slightly clumsy examples of terrorists attacks (including the London bombings), we finally reach the night Maya has waited for. And Bigelow makes us wait as much as her heroine has to. The pacing is steady, but the suspense is relentless, drawing out every detail of the raid until the task is complete and the audience’s energy is utterly spent. Here Bigelow is at her filmmaking best.

Unexpectedly moved to tears during the last part of the film, I am made to face the most uncomfortable reality yet. Though a ‘historical drama’, unlike Lincoln or some others of this year’s Oscar contenders, the politics of Zero Dark Thirty is on-going. However, it is not the political element that inspired the strongest reaction, but a single shot of Chastain’s face when her task is finally complete. The film may have its controversies and its flaws, but it remains a fantastic piece of cinema and for that, I give it full marks and any Oscar it wants. 

There is a faraway land that independent filmmakers dream of. It is a land of untold (six-figure) riches. It is a land of ice palaces and pleasantly guffawing Hollywood bigwigs. It is a land where the manicpixiedreamgirl roams free. It is Utah. Welcome to the Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance is the uncontested champion of independent film competitions. Founded by Robert Redford (the original Sundance Kid, hence the iconic name), the festival takes place in Park City, Utah every winter. The festival was originally called the Utah Film Festival and took place in the height of summer, when Utah is about as interesting as the Book of Mormon, but was rebranded and moved to winter on the advice of the late Sydney Pollock, who sagely noticed that the movers and shakers of Hollywood would be more interested in the film festival if they could use it as an excuse for a skiing holiday.

Sundance has cemented its position as one of the most important film festivals in the world: whilst Cannes, Venice, Toronto and Berlin are still the go-to prestige events, Sundance is a showcase for films financed outside of the studio system. Filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, David O. Russell, Paul Thomas Anderson and Darren Aronofsky all got their big breaks at the festival and, as a result, the queues of independent filmmakers lining up to follow suit are miles long. In 2012 there were in excess of 10,000 feature films submitted, with only 200 films programmed, which works out as a one in 50 shot at getting in. Apparently that slim chance is worth the $100 entry fee.

But whilst the festival is something of a gladiatorial arena for indie filmmakers, for the discerning cinephile it’s a veritable bordello of unheard treasures. Last year’s top winners in the Documentary and Dramatic awards, The House I Live In and Beasts of the Southern Wild, have both been nominated for Oscars. Other recent hits at the festival include Lee Daniels’s slightly nauseating social chore Precious; the greatest hillbilly Western of all time, Winter’s Bone; and 2012’s unnerving but electric Martha Marcy May Marlene. Not a bad selection of films to get to see, especially given the fact that the distributors will all be in the audiences in Park City, like circling sharks waiting to snap up a commercially viable indie hit, so these films won’t be in cinemas for another year or so.

The 2013 Sundance promises to be every bit as intriguing. Given that Redford’s experimental Sundance London project at the 02 has been a massive critical and commercial failure, you probably won’t be bothering to watch these films for a while (unless you’re planning to hotfoot it to Utah and bail on 3rd week). Matthew McConaughey’s Mud is being pushed for acting prizes already, whilst Before Midnight (the sequel to Before Sunrise and Before Sunset) is hot property and currently without a distributor. I think Park Chan-Wook’s Stoker looks dynamite, whilst there’s also some good buzz surrounding The East, starring Brit Marling and Ellen Page. And, if worse comes to worst, you can always fix your attention on Kill Your Darlings, which stars Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg (looking strangely like Dan from Gossip Girl).

Sundance is a film festival that holds enormous power in the industry and, therefore, gets a huge number of column inches devoted to it. But it deserves every one of them, because it’s the single biggest platform for indie films and manages to level the playing field somewhat. So, Sundance, have a few more inches, courtesy of Cherwell.

★★★☆☆
Three Stars

Gags left me feeling cautiously confident about Oxford’s comedic future.

This was a performance that was in many ways akin to having a deep, unctuous full body massage: initially rather painful and awkward, but surprisingly enjoyable and refined at the end (if leaving you slightly conflicted).

Comprised of a series of small sketch pieces, Gags highlighted contemporary obsessions with the minutiae of social mores, from the Attenborough-eqsue “mating ritual” in a seedy Sainsbury’s to politics of Power Rangers clothing. The ensuing chuckles certainly held a mirror up to the great British obsession with social mores, whether concerning those who sniff the scented air of society’s upper rafters or those you find lurking in the smoking area at Camera at 2am. A sketch about a man in his car frantically trying to reach his child bearing wife only to be obstructed by a ticket machine left me cackling quietly away to myself, although this could only be because I’ve witnessed this problem several times at Heathrow Airport.

The first half was definitely the weaker of the two, but was marginally redeemed by its emphasis on physical comedy rather than witticisms; perhaps that’s why some of the writing in the first half stood out to me as weaker than the second. Thankfuly this was raised by strong performances from Rachel Watkeys Dowlie and George Mather, the latter of which has one of those semi-innate senses of comic timing. Funniest of all though, was a performance from Joseph Morpurgo, giving us a quick succession of stereotypes with sharp improv and a nice bit of audience interaction thrown into the mix. Whether or not this was purely down to him, the humour in the second half seemed to be sharper and the writing tighter, particularly the slightly metafictional doctors sketch about a dying joke- or to paraphrase, “penises are always funny”.

Gags is not a bad show. More to the point, it is not an unfunny show, and it’s laughs come by cleverly either confirming or subverting our preconceptions-particularly in the latter half. But as I left I left the Old Fire Station, I couldn’t help but feel that the humour was a bit, well… safe. The darkest it got was a few puns about a professional assassination service. Next time, less Armstrong and Miller, and more Frankie Boyle please guys.