The success of an acting performance in film, theatre, and television is, more often than not, measured by its authenticity. To use an obvious example, we know that Anne Hathaway is Anne Hathaway, but in Les Miserables she works to suspend our disbelief and invite an emotional investment in the character Fantine. Her Oscar nomination is a testament to the critical acclaim she received for making us believe – admittedly by also losing a drastic amount of weight – that she was a dying prostitute.

The relationships contained within such fictional narratives require a similar verisimilitude, and in exploring the depiction of these most critics will muse upon whether such platonic or romantic ties are indeed believable. Rarely, however, will the actor’s own romantic attachments come into a consideration of the latter. With the exception of, say, the extra-marital affair which may or may not have occurred in Mr & Mrs Smith, an actor’s attraction (or lack thereof) to their on-screen partner is irrelevant to any critical analysis; no self-respecting journalist would comment on overcoming the hurdles of an ugly co-star or a real-life husband/wife in order to portray a convincing romantic duo. 

When the gender and sexual orientation of actors enters the discussion, however, a double-standard quickly emerges. All on-screen or on-stage relationships are acted, and thus founded upon performativity and pretence, yet extra praise is reserved for those who can break the boundaries of their heterosexuality and feign a love for someone of the same sex. Oscars and Golden Globes are showered upon those who can not only convince us of a fictional relationship, but a homosexual one. Some have even gone as far to point out that Mickey Rourke’s lead role in the upcoming biopic of Welsh rugby star Gareth Thomas may earn him the Academy Award he narrowly missed out on for The Wrestler. What information about the film is available to inform this prediction? Nothing. It hasn’t even begun shooting yet. Critics can (sadly enough, quite accurately) base this upon the mere fact that Thomas is gay and Rourke is not.

It’s a disappointing state of affairs when sexuality – and its disparity between acted and lived experience – is the factor to which writers constantly return to either commend or undermine a performance. Those who, however benevolently, point out such differences do so only to reinforce the notion that they could potentially impact an actor’s ability to do their job.

When Alexander Woolley (Cherwell Stage Editor) congratulates the cast of Angels In America on how they don’t ‘ham it up and descend into pantomimic camp to portray homosexuality, even though every male character is homosexual and every actor heterosexual’ or Associate Artist Jessica Campbell (OUDS Treasurer) writes about cast members ‘test[ing] their heterosexual nerves’ in the ‘gay scenes’, LGBTQ actors are reminded that their private lives will invariably affect their critical reception.

It’s no coincidence that Jodie Foster waited until announcing her retirement in her Golden Globes acceptance speech to also come out, that Rupert Everett recently advised gay actors to stay in the closet and that Bret Easton Ellis went on a twitter rant about how Matt Bomer ‘isn’t right’ for the lead role in a Fifty Shades of Grey adaptation ‘because he is openly gay’. It also recently transpired that Bomer’s audition for Superman early in his career was deliberately sabotaged by someone on the production team. How? They revealed his sexuality to the casting director.

While the examples above may be small, they are far from insignificant. Angels In America is a spectacular, powerful and groundbreaking play. Its subject matter is still pertinent today, when the latest figures for 2011 saw the highest rates of HIV transmission amongst gay and bisexual men in the UK since records began. Let’s keep the discussion about the production itself, not the actors’ private lives.

★★☆☆☆
Two Stars

Sat here, with the Conservative Whips’ office staring back at me, a clutter of old school ties, fast food wastage and a copy of a Latin Dictionary (the Oxford Edition naturally), I feel somewhat bewildered. This is due to the fact that, to my disappointment as well as befuddlement, I am not laughing. And I cannot understand why.

Whipping It Up, Steve Thompson’s new political comedy, does indeed, as programme sells it, ‘put the government Whips to the sword’. And, watching it, I clearly see that it is a comedy; at many moments the script is a veritably fine one. It falls, sometimes quite jarringly but on the whole oddly smoothly, between the subtlety of Yes, Minister and the outright bolshiness of The Thick of It. Yet, I am still not laughing.

Perhaps the problem lies in the fact, in many instances, I feel enlightened instead of amused. The play does at times feel as if I were watching the stage adaptation of a journalistic scoop, the exposé that the scheming Maggie – played in all her seductive capacity by Siawan Clark – so desperately craves. The characters here may only be morally so-so at best, but in a perfectly believable (if not depressingly realistic) way.

There is an element of sinister intent about the show also, which adds to my problem. Not in the script, for that is certainly not the worst lambast I have seen of politicians and their ways – it is no match for Question Time for example, but what is?

No, this sinister feeling arises only in part due to the Machiavellian content. More often a far too serious nature of the characters creeps in, even despite the best efforts of the Christian Kinnersley’s Chief Whip and his crass, but certainly entertaining, mentionings of genitalia and the like. There is a generally stifling atmosphere to much of the play. Admittedly, and wonderfully, this is lifted by the vivacity of the two female performances.  Delia, the generic female ‘bitch’ of parliament, for example, is well played by Emily Troup and is a great lesson in how to be both horrible yet likable.

The play is certainly not bad, and it delivers on the satire, but if you attend a showing you must expect to see a satire of the school of Juvenal – critical, savage at times, and, unfortunately, without that many laughs.

Cherwell’s Verdict: A Creative Bolt from the Blue

The inspirational framework behind the performance’s title, the 17th-century French folk tale by Charles Perrault, provides both fantastical and sinister undertones to this thoroughly modern one-act play from writers Douglas Grant and Howard Coase.

The audience becomes the lost wife of Perrault’s classic, wandering through the many-doored castle of dementia patient Claire (newly recasted Becky Banatvala)’s mind, with new light hed on her past and present through the script’s stitching together of present and past, memories and dreams, reality and illusion. Equally pertinent is the strong dynamic between Claire’s children, David (Michael Roderick) and Emily (Carla Kingham), who simultaneously embody two polar attitudes to the treatment of dementia patients whilst
dissolving into roles around Claire as she revisits her past and the recesses of her own broken imagination. A linear, chronological plot is done away with through fragmented visions of a hedonistic, continental, sexually liberated past picked from between the wastes of an enslaved present as Claire is gradually shackled by marriage, age and degenerative mental illness.

An intricately layered piece, the players’ intimate use of space creates a strong spatial contrast between the “bloody suffocating” domestic chaos of the nursing home that surrounds Claire and the dream-like Paris of her youth. Simple props and even single words are unwittingly triggered by Claire’s bickering children like chronological landmines, turbulently casting both her and the audience into an unworldly set of intermingled mental experiences, though in places the dialogue seems too fast-paced for some of the more lilting, esoteric moments. Yet whilst it is pitiable to watch Claire’s slowly-slipping grip on reality, the scenes also display a rebellious escapism optimistically shining through in lines like “You’re the only one keeping yourself anywhere!”

Though energetic, the lightning-quick, sporadic changes between reality and Claire’s memories and delusions sometimes wear thin in emotional depth, with emphasis on comically jocular accents and snappy bitchery threatening to eclipse the overarching pathos of the piece, and the staging is at times a little clunky. Nonetheless, nuances of character displayed by the cast and the blocking used reflect an ultimately loving family portrait strained by practical, financial and emotional pressures, and if the lighting of the Burton-Taylor can be fully mastered, the play’s surreal, explorative nature will stir any audience.

Bluebeard displays significant potential. This well-scripted modern family tragicomedy raises questions about the practicality and ultimate securing of mental wellbeing of individuals with dementia. It asks whether happiness if based in ignorance is happiness at all, and dissects the suffering caused to the relatives of those enduring the brutally bleak quotidian existence of their loved ones when the mind turns against itself. Together the three-strong cast present a production which by third week promises to amuse and engage.

★★★★★
Five Stars

After their debut album Becoming a Jackal was nominated for the Mercury Prize, Villagers have a lot to live up to with their new album, {Awayland}. Frontman Conor O’Brien describes the new work as “diverse. It takes you on a trip through a musical landscape, as a tribute to your sense of wonder. It travels through space and time and leaves you back for dinner.” Piling on the expectation. Before listening, I was a little incredulous as to how this album could live up to what sounds like a blurb to a 90s Sci-Fi film, but I gave it a go.

The album is though, I quickly realise, incredible. It is particularly clever music, using rapidly variant keys and a myriad of instruments to create a sound that really does live up to the word ‘diverse’.  Villagers use this vast diversity of sounds brilliantly, bringing in, for example, unnerving noises like a computer disk drive rebooting and a jumping CD to enhance the meaning behind the beautiful lyrics that could otherwise go unnoticed. The second track, ‘Earthly Pleasure’, uses these sounds, typically associated with malfunction, to express the doubt and confusion of the subject of the song.

Villagers manage to tell a story with their music, conjuring the image of this ‘Awayland’, this place of fantasy and discovery. It’s the kind of album that is best appreciated lying on your bed with headphones in and eyes shut to properly follow the journey that it is taking you on, and is definitely not background music, often using discordant, almost scraping sounds to pull you back in. At times it has the vague feel of a love-child of Mumford and Sons and Bright Eyes, but honestly, Villagers have achieved what is often difficult in indie music these days: a completely individual feel.

The album seems to be an experiment that has paid off extremely well. As Conor describes, he wanted to “stretch his imagination as far as it could go”. Well, congratulations Conor. It’s unlike anything we’ve heard before; it’s fresh, experimental and lives up to the tall order of your debut reputation.

★★★★☆
Four Stars

If anyone came to this show hoping for a gritty update of Thomas More’s 1516 opus depicting a perfect society, they will be sorely disappointed. I can only imagine the furious letters Channel 4 must have received from the Renaissance scholars who actually know what Channel 4 is. This program happens to be a slick and stylish thriller – though not the type that you might imagine from those critically overused adjectives. Utopia is clever and well-paced, but brutal, grubby and coarse at the same time. While the show may have a strong sense of style, it’s not fast cars and sharp suits that dominate, but wide-open spaces, bright filters and a kind of Brito-European aesthetic that actually serves to somehow make the UK look cool.

Utopia is a new drama from Channel 4, boasting a fairly complex plot that revolves around a graphic novel written by a dead mental patient which apparently predicts the future. This then falls into the clutches of a group of internet misfits  who then find themselves embroiled in a huge conspiracy. Said conspiracy seems to involve Russian Flu medication, two oddly dressed assassins the Department of Health, a man-made degenerative disease and a mysterious absent figure called Jessica Hyde. However, the intrigue remains at street level with the aforementioned internet chatroom users and a blackmailed civil servant (Jamie from the Thick of it, playing a very different sort of government worker). While this might sound alternately clichéd and self-consciously quirky, it doesn’t come off that way at all, instead becoming a subtle and intricate piece of drama.

Of course there are inevitable comparisons to be made with Misfits, another Channel 4 (ish) show that deals with mysterious and possibly supernatural threats in an aesthetic urban environment. The two shows even share a cast member in Nathan Stewart-Jarret. However, the similarities end there. This is a decidedly classier affair, with its own distinct style of cinematography and tone; the stakes are higher than that of the more blasé Misfits.

Funny and well-written, Utopia is definitely worth a watch, but a word of warning – it’s pretty brutal. At the lighter end of it there’s an awful lot of poverty and many a depressing backstory, and on the other there’s the casual murder of children and extremely unpleasant torture scenes. The genius of Utopia is to throw all of these eggs (and more) into one basket for the very first episode, moving at a breakneck pace to cover more ground than some shows would in half a series (cough Heroes cough). Hopefully they can keep up the pace over the next few weeks, as this is looking like something very special that could set a great new precedent for homemade UK thrillers.