There is a definite pattern to Girl Talk’s albums: each one is easier listening than the last. Considering that he started out making noisy, barely listenable collages of glitched-out pop, this is no bad thing. Until All Day, that is. Greg Gillis’ latest release is far from bad, but it is, well, boring. (/p)
Night Ripper and Feed The Animals – Girl Talk’s two previous releases – were manic, overflowing, relentless mash-ups of everything from classic gangsta rap to 70s pop to the latest radio hits. The results were unexpectedly brilliant, and compulsively danceable. Gillis’ newest album is different. All Day is slower, the pace is less frenetic and there are far fewer samples per song. This could be a good thing, but more often than not it means the tired mash-up cliché of a pop backing track plus rap vocals. So the album gets off to a clunky start with a full two minutes of Ludacris yelling over Black Sabbath, and mostly sticks to that formula. (/p)
Much of the appeal of Girl Talk’s earlier albums came from the bizarrely perfect juxtapositions he effected: songs that you would never think of together, but which sound as if they were made for each other. Yet in All Day we often get unhappy matches such as Rihanna singing over Fugazi, and (worst of all) Bun B rapping along to John Lennon’s “Imagine”. (/p)
It isn’t not all bad: there is the occasional moment of genius; take “This Is The Remix”, where Gillis puts together Fabolous, INXS and The Clash. Girl Talk is a skilled mash-up artist, and even though he is not on top form here, there can be no doubt that he is far above his hordes of imitators. The best parts of All Day are not frantic or hyper, but nostalgic and wistful. On the whole then, the album is not a bad listen, and, what is more, it will cost you nothing (it is available for free download on the Illegal Art website). It makes great party music – it’s just a shame it isn’t more than that. (/p)
Review: ‘All Day’ by Girl Talk
A mos(t) amusing man
‘Hello, how are you?’ Amos’ voice crackled down the phone, full of the phatic niceties I had been expecting from the charming man I had seen on TV. I had been flustered, to say the least; my technical inaptitude had left me floundering for ten minutes trying to work out how to use the loudspeaker button and my list of questions lay buried under a scattered stack of revision notes.
‘I’m good, thanks. How are you?’
‘Tour’s going well; people are coming out and enjoying themselves. I can’t complain.’
It’s odd how calming the smooth consonants of RP can be.
Amos is just at the start of a nationwidewide tour. ‘I can’t wait! Nothing beats a live audience. You know, when you can’t stop and rewind, you can’t go again, you can’t pause, you have to live in the moment. And you can’t control what happens in the room in terms of what may happen, what may be discovered, what heckles may come. It’s all there. It’s why watching a comic live has such a good atmosphere.’ He buzzes with excitement, and rightly so. With all his material tried and tested during his annual stint at the Edinburgh festival, fans have been waiting eagerly to see what Amos has in store with this latest show, ‘The Best Medicine’, and it’s all about making people happy. ‘Comedy makes me happy. The people who come to my shows are well-read people, who know the state of the planet, know we’re in a financial crisis, know we’ve got a coalition government. They don’t want to be preached at. I can’t stand in front of a thousand people going on about the economic downturn when a thousand people have spent however much to come and see me. The least I can do is try and make people forget their woes. No-one listens to a comedy show for two hours to hear about their life, but for someone to make them laugh and think about other things.’
Edinburgh is old stomping ground for Amos who debuted his first show there ten years ago. ‘Edinburgh is the place to test out new stuff; it’s where most comics have the opportunity to run their stuff for a whole month before you go on tour. You learn so much from other comics being around and you get judged by the audiences and your peers. It’s probably the best arts festival, particularly for comedy, in the world.’ It was also here in 2006 that Amos did his first show where he spoke publicly about being gay. ‘When I first started out, I didn’t talk about any issues at all. I was just trying to be funny, but then you get to a point in your life, every comedian does, when you find your own voice. I never thought I’d tell an audience about personal things in my life because, a, how arrogant is that, and, b, why the hell would an audience want to know anyway? It takes a while, but when you know what funny is, you can find a way of doing that, and thankfully it’s worked.
‘I’ve heard a lot of bad comedy. It’s the nature of the beast. Because comedy is in such a fruitful and vibrant and healthy state in this country at the moment, lots of people think they can do it. I think they’ve got to learn how to do it. I like to go and see the people who there’s buzz about, not big name comics that we all know and love and whatever, but people you wouldn’t have heard of.’ Amos becomes incredulous for a minute, ‘By the way, did you know you can do courses in stand up comedy? Can you believe that?! I mean, you can learn techniques, but you can’t learn to be funny.’
Luckily, funny isn’t something Amos has ever had to work at. Being one of eight children, he blames a need for constant attention on the development of his comic streak, although a career in comedy never even crossed his mind. ‘I was studying law and then I went travelling and I met a woman in America who was visiting the same friend I was. She told me, ‘You’re really funny, have you ever thought of going into comedy?’ and of course I was like, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ I was the class clown, not a comedian. But I wasn’t a diligent student. I didn’t pay attention, didn’t work. I was just having fun, doing stupid things like you should do if you’re a student: spending too much time joining societies; taking advantage of everything on offer in freshers’ week; really making use of the student union bar. You name it, I did it. Apart from studying. This woman said she was going to open a comedy club and, lo and behold, three months later she phoned me up out of the blue, she’d opened a comedy club and she asked me to do some stuff. I’d never even been to a comedy club before, but by the end of my first year I was doing three gigs a week for her. It’s all down to this one woman; if it wasn’t for her my life would have been on a very different course. My philosophy on life is that if I see something in someone, I’ll say it, because you never know that may be all it takes to change somebody’s life. Of course, my parents thought I was a lunatic. They couldn’t understand why anyone would throw themselves into, what they called, ‘an unlikely career choice’. When I started I was just having fun, I didn’t dream of making a career out of it.
Having been on the circuit for nearly 20 years, it’s surprising that Amos is only just receiving the recognition he deserves. Last year, he finally got his own show on the BBC, a refreshing sign considering one of Amos’ best-known jokes is his jibe at the BBC’s diversity policy that he’ll have to wait for Lenny Henry to die before he gets his own show. ‘Hopefully I’ll get a phone call asking us to do another series. The BBC give you certain guidelines about what time it’s going to get shown so we made a show based on those. It turned out that it went out on Friday night at 10 o’clock; I’d have made a different show if I’d known! But hey, it’s a learning curve.’ Considering the boost his profile has received since various TV appearances on Have I got News for You And Live at the Apollo, does Amos feel TV is the way forward for him? ‘There’s a lot of talk from certain sector of the media who have a go at comics, saying they’re a bit cool, in your face, blah, blah, blah, but with freedom of speech, live stand up comedy is where it’s at. With TV there’s compliance forms and compliance issues, but, as a live stand up comic, you’re your own censor and you can literally do and say what you want. Let the audience be the judge. You sort of have to do TV if you really want recognition, but before I did my series we were going out on the road. If you learn your craft and start doing tours, you don’t necessarily have to. I didn’t have a TV series before my last two tours and people knew who I was because of Edinburgh and the club circuits. If you’re good then you can get through. I mean Ross Noble didn’t do that much TV and he’s got a massive profile on the live circuit, and there are lots more like us. Obviously my career picked up once I was on TV.’
Amos and I reach the end of our interview. Is there any last thing, speak now or forever hold your peace, that he has the burning desire to tell the students of Oxford? ‘Yes! Whatever you’re studying whatever you’re doing, whatever year you’re in, if you’re stressed with exams, come and see the show. I guarantee you’ll leave laughing.’
‘Nice plug.’
‘Thank you’. And our conversation bows out in an effusive wave of good wishes.
Shark Tales Episode 1
Barnaby Fry canvases opinion on a variety of topics outside popular Wednesday night destination Park End (aka Lava Ignite)
Raoul’s Recipes 1: The Cosmopolitan
Jack, from ‘Raoul’s’, Oxford’s only award winning bar, guides us through how to make a classic Cosmopolitan cocktail at home.
Important note: “last week’s episode” referred to during the show was not aired due to technical problems.
Curtains Up: The Zoo Story
Andrew McCormack interviews the cast and director of a new production of Edward Albee’s first play: ‘The Zoo Story’, which is on at the BT Studio in third week.
Review: No Direction Home
Churchill described Russia as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. The same can rightfully be said, without any hint of exaggeration, about Bob Dylan. Nobody has or ever will understand him, and that’s the source of our fascination with him as a songwriter, performer, and era-defining legend. This man was completely elusive before No Direction Home, and by the end of its sprawling, three and a half hour account of his life in the early 60s, we are left only slightly the wiser. All the documentary does is predominantly to increase the intrigue tenfold, by showing us more than we could possibly wish for if we wanted to be anymore in awe of this man than we already were.
We learn some things. Through archive press footage, it becomes clear that after three years of soaking up the pressure of leadership from the folk scene at the age of around twenty, he simply became sick of being asked what the meaning was of things like the rain in ‘A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall.’ He’s constantly asked a question throughout along the lines of whether he should be the leader of ‘singers with a message,’ and the pretentiousness and presumption that he’s interested in all things political ultimately drives him towards senility. Going electric, turning to rock and roll, becoming ‘Judas,’ – however you want to put it – was clearly the ultimate transition from acoustic guitar-twanging tunes about war and peace (however incredible `Blowin’ In The Wind’ was), through the dreamy lyrics of `Mr. Tambourine Man’, to a type of music in which he was free to write and sound however he liked, and the products were Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde – two colossal achievements, which changed music forever and were released in the space of merely one year.
It is quite incredible. A lot of what we see is warfare – not of the Vietnamese sort he sung about for so long, but between himself and British crowds, as he toured England for months on end, playing loud, angry music to disheartened but devoted fans who derided him as a fake and either walked out, or stayed around to boo him off at the end. There is nothing like this which we can nowadays draw parallels to – if musicians are no longer popular, they disappear. To imagine fans buying tickets to concerts merely to voice their dissent is to imagine a world which no longer exists, because we don’t have anyone that achieves levels of audience commitment quite like Dylan did.
What’s left unexplained, probably because it is inherently inexplicable, is what made this incredible mind. Dylan came from a bog-standard tiny town in rural Minnesota, spent his school years listening to the likes of Odetta and Woody Guthrie on the radio, and soon headed to New York’s Greenwich Village where he made a name for himself. From the outside, it’s that simple, and there’s nothing more we can observe. We listen to his first girlfriend – Suze Rotolo, from the Freewheelin’ cover – tell us what he was like, along with dozens of memories and stories retold by the Beatnik poet Allen Ginsberg, fellow folk ‘leader’ Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, producer Bob Johnston and many, many others. Even Dylan himself seems uncharacteristically straightforward in his old age, as he recalls what his younger self, in what might as well be a past life, was like. But ultimately Scorsese can only finish with footage of Dylan telling his band to ‘play it fuckin’ loud,’ leaving us in the knowledge of how much we owe to his man, who made sure music was never the same again.
Review: Control
Control is both a beautiful and phenomenal film. Never would I have expected to be so intrigued by a band and lead singer I knew so little about, and which I had no desire to gain any knowledge of. And yet the life of Ian Curtis, a tormented young Macclesfield soul, proves to be huge, fascinating, fertile material for the man who photographed them in the 70s and now works as an excellent modern director. This is a story of a young man who suffers from epilepsy and struggles to balance a marriage, new love interest and an exploding band going by the name of Joy Division. He is ultimately driven to suicide at age 23.
Corbijn portrays Curtis’ existence here magnificently: the dreadful setting of an industrial city suburb dominated by high-rise flats and terraced houses is never forgotten, but suitably subdued by the black and white cinematography to never be the focus. In fact, most of the scenes here are even somehow stunning, an achievement further reinforced by the perfect performances and excellent balance between the personal and public aspects of Curtis’ life. There’s what I can only presume are nuggets of fan folklore scattered here: we’re shown a record producer joking he’s so committed to signing the Division up that he’d put his blood on the contract – something they had the power to actually demand, and duly received. There’s early scenes of Curtis’ pre-marital, pre-mental days, lying in bed smoking and soaking up the sounds of David Bowie, in awe of where the music could take him. There’s also, most importantly, evidence of what tensions provoked the breakdown, and what induced the final act. But never does it feel like superficial rationalization, nor mindless speculation: he was simply in a situation, in his love-life and in his career, which he could not handle. He hung himself on the eve of his first American tour and the night his wife demanded divorce.
Riley, who here performs as Curtis, is set to play Jack Kerouac later this year, in a highly ambitious attempt at bringing On The Road to the big screen. Nothing here suggests we should doubt his ability to do well. With Control, under Corbijn’s guidance, he has already managed to embody one cryptic, chaotic soul, that only had time to inspire two albums, but whose musical legacy lives on to this day.
Here’s Lookin’ at Zoo, kid
Do not sit on a park bench alone. Ever. Edward Albee’s Zoo Story is testament to that old adage, and Will Tyrell’s production is testament to the power of the piece. A poignant study of human beings at both their most frightening and their most vulnerable, Zoo Story is a provocative, engaging piece of theatre, whose concern of alienation in modern society ought to cut painfully close to the bone for our own facebook generation.
A sparse two-hander, the play unfolds on a New York park bench (genuinely imported from Pembroke College); the audience witnesses a conversation between Peter and Jeremy, and experience the wild vacillations between the pathetic fragility and unsettling derangement of the latter. The train of Jeremy’s thought which propels the piece gathers pace at breakneck speed, veering dangerously from dark humour to deeply emotive reflections on the dehumanising aspect of loneliness.
Antti Laine tackles the formidable challenge of playing so complex a character with aplomb; his marvellous performance never over-eggs the pudding, that fan-assisted danger in approaching theatrical schizophrenia, but captures the inwardness of Jeremy’s very outwardly manifest psychological problems with disconcerting clarity. Rob Nixon matches Laine’s captivating engagement with his character’s warped humanity, serving as a wide-eyed, vulnerable and deeply sympathetic foil radiating the warmth of the well-meaning everyman so at variance with his sinister company.
The dialogue plays with zingy, frantic conversation and awkward silence, that constant companion of awkward encounters on a park bench. By the end of this piece, however, the audience will be left longing for an old-fashioned, honest awkward moment’s good intentions, left instead with the consolation of an unforgiving and shocking climax. Zoo Story is interested in extremes; the juxtaposition between Peter and Jeremy reaches out to comment on class division; the isolated, vulnerable individual versus uncaring society; and the powerlessness of the watching audience, whose mounting sense of oppressive foreboding can have no influence over the events unfolding in their gaze.
Certainly no walk in the park, Zoo Story is a bleak, challenging piece which will make you think twice the next time you’re people-watching from Nero’s on the High; watch your step, folks, and look out for one another, too.
The Foxes are on the prowl
It was just over four months ago to the day when Sven-Göran Eriksson was announced to the press as Leicester City’s new manager – their tenth since the departure of the much admired Martin O’Neill in June 2000. For Leicester City supporters, those were indeed heady days.
In his magical five year spell at The Foxes from 1995-2000, O’Neill brought silverware, in the form of two Football League Cups in 1997 and 2000 respectively, and a new found style to the Leicester City side. By fusing together three key ingredients; those of steeliness, total commitment and attractive football, they gained a reputation for being one of the most difficult teams to break down in the league. Despite having relatively limited resources, O’Neill immediately created a clear spine throughout the team. This was realised from captain Matt Elliott’s no-nonsense defending and the commanding central midfield displays of Neil Lennon, through to the wizardry of winger Muzzy Izzet and Emile Heskey’s lethal finishing upfront. Nonetheless, since his departure in 2000, a succession of relegations, promotions and instability both on and off the pitch has blighted the club in their bid to once again return to the Barclays Premier League and relive the glory days of the O’Neill era. Such has been the club’s plight that at the end of the 2007/2008 season they were relegated to the third tier of English football – the first time that had happened in their one hundred and fourteen year history. Yet, after ten managers in the space of three-and-a-half years, the Foxes may well have finally found their successor to O’Neill.
Despite reaching the Championship play-off semi-finals last year, the summer brought with it drastic changes. Manager Nigel Pearson, who led the team to the Npower Football League One title in the 2008/2009 season, was prized away from the club to take up the job at Hull City. His replacement came in the form of the ex-Portuguese international Paulo Sousa, who had enjoyed a successful spell as manager of Swansea City. Admittedly the season did not start off the way Sousa and Leicester City had hoped it would. After nine games the Foxes were languishing at the bottom of the Npower Championship having collected a paltry total of five points – a statistic which signalled Sousa’s departure from the club. Whilst some criticised the club’s decision as premature, others believed that change was needed in order to stem the tide of poor results – a change which was to be signalled by the arrival of everybody’s favourite Swede – “Sven, Sven Sven-Göran Eriksson. He’s a lovely geezer, but don’t forget he’s from Swe-den”. [Re: Sven, Sven, Sven by Bell and Spurling]
From Manchester City to Mexico City to Meadow Lane it is fair to say that Sven’s been around the block in the last few years, isn’t that right Ulrika and Nancy? However, away from the tabloid intrusion into his personal life, run-ins with mystery Sheiks and criticism from some quarters for his style of management and team selection as England manager, there’s no doubt that when it comes to club management he is one of the best in the game. Beginning in his native Sweden with IFK Göteborg, Eriksson’s management career has taken him to Portugal with Benfica, Italy with spells at, most notably, Sampdoria and Lazio, and most recently Africa as he temporarily took charge of the Ivory Coast National Team during the 2010 World Cup. With an aura of composure, Eriksson has consistently shown a prowess for winning trophies whether it be domestic, namely the Coppa Italia or the Primeira Liga, or European titles, namely the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup with Lazio, albeit with the help of significant financial backing. His voyages around the world have not only helped him to establish valuable contacts within the football world but has led him to become one of the most recognised and respected managers at both national and international level. Nevertheless, it is in England where his heart really lies.
His single season stint at Manchester City was to be a season of two halves. Having become City’s first foreign manager, he instigated the first of what were to be many successive waves of big spending by City, in his case, under the ownership of one-season owner Thai businessman Thaksin Shinawatra. He enjoyed success on the field, most notably becoming City’s first manager since the 1969/1970 season to win both league derby games against their fierce Manchester rivals, and he achieved the club’s joint highest points total in the top flight, of fifty five. Yet, constant interventions by Shinawatra, who bemoaned Eriksson for a string of bad results on the field in the Spring of 2008, led to him parting company with the club at the end of the season.
Having endured a dismal spell in charge of the Mexican National Team, Eriksson once again appeared on our television screens in July 2009 but this time in rather unexpected surroundings – at Npower Football League Two club, Notts County. Lured by the attraction of a ‘big project’ at Meadow Lane where large-scale investment in new facilities was promised by the Middle East consortium Munto Finance, Eriksson, in his role as Director of Football, oversaw the purchase of Kasper Schmiechel and infamously of Sol Campbell. Ultimately though, the project was a disaster. Campbell ended up playing just one game for the club who themselves slipped into financial turmoil as figures emerged of their large debts and unpaid bills. Eriksson resigned eight months later and that seemingly sparked the end of the Swede’s association with English football. How wrong we all were.
A mere ninth months later, Eriksson was back in English football, this time as manager of Leicester City. Having taken over the reins from Paulo Sousa with the club struggling, the only way was up. Indeed, that is exactly the way things have gone. Since taking over in October, Eriksson has not only guided the club safely away from the relegation zone but has transformed them into genuine promotion contenders. After their latest victory, Saturday’s 4-2 win over Millwall, the team comfortably lie in tenth place in the Npower Championship – four points off the play-off places and eight points off the automatic promotion places. With just under half of the season to go, Foxes fans are starting to believe that their team could once again appear in the big time of the Barclays Premier League. The question is: how has Eriksson been able to change a side bereft of confidence and ideas into genuine promotion contenders within such a short space of time?
Whether it be at Benfica, Lazio or Manchester City, Eriksson has always been genuinely motivated by challenges. Since beginning his managerial career in 1976, he has only had one year away from the game. For Eriksson, football is a drug and the opportunity to transform the fortunes of Leicester City was one which he simply could not refuse. The club certainly has the fan base, despite it being in constant competition with its other midlands rivals, Derby County and Nottingham Forrest. Add to that a 32,500 capacity stadium which would be fit to stage a Barclays Premier League game and you can understand why he sees Leicester City moving onwards and upwards in the future. However, as earlier stated with his time at Lazio, what Eriksson crucially has at Leicester City, which many other Npower Championship clubs don’t possess, is financial backing, in the form of a Thai Consortium lead by Aiyawatt Raksriaksorn, supported by Iman Arif of Cronus Sports Management, who owns 20% of the club. Their willingness to make funds available to Eriksson has been evident in the early stages of his Leicester City managerial career.
From day one, the need to strengthen was apparent. Using his contacts in the football world, meticulous player research, and Swedish charm, he has been able to convince players from as far afield as Turkey to join the club. In defence, he has recruited the athletic former Hibernian defender Sol Bamba who made an immediate impact on his debut by scoring in the first leg of their Third Round FA Cup tie against Manchester City. Furthermore, he has added pace to his defence with the shrewd acquisition of the young and promising full-back Kyle Naughton on loan from Tottenham Hostpur. In midfield, he has both experience, in the form of club captain Matt Oakley and Japanese international Yuki Abe, and creativity, in Welsh international Andy King, currently the club’s leading goalscorer this season with ten goals, and the instrumental Richie Wellens. Yet, it is upfront where Eriksson has made the greatest difference. Every promotion chasing team has a striker who they can rely on whether it be Jay Bothroyd at Cardiff City, Scott Sinclair at Swansea City or Luciano Becchio at Leeds United. Leicester City’s answer is Paul Gallagher. This season he has already chipped in with seven goals and flanked either side by Darius Vassell and the Yak – Yakubu Aiyegbeni – recently acquired on loan from Everton, Leicester City boast one of the most fearsome attacks in the Npower Championship. Whilst some will point to the money spent by Eriksson as a big factor in The Foxes rejuvenation, crucially, unlike others in the league, he has spent extremely wisely. Eriksson has moulded a team which exhibits an impressive blend of youth and experience, composure and creativity.
In recent seasons the race for promotion from the Npower Championship has been exceptionally tight and this year is proving no different. However Leicester City go about achieving promotion, they will face tough competition along the way. Leader Queens Park Rangers, with similar financial backing to that of The Foxes, boast a strong squad, spearheaded by their gifted Moroccan midfielder, Adel Tarrabt, and in Neil Warnock, the Rs have a manger who possesses a great wealth of lower league experience. Similarly Dave Jones has, in recent years, turned Cardiff City into consistent promotion contenders and with in demand Jay Bothroyd, Craig Bellamy and most recently the addition of Aaron Ramsey on loan from Arsenal for the month, they can cause trouble for any team. As for the rest of the pack, well, Leeds and Norwich have been the surprises so far. The Whites like the Canaries not only have two of the most promising managers in the league, in Simon Grayson and Paul Lambert, but they have made rapid strides since their promotion to the Npower Championship. With a brand of football based on fast-flowing, entertaining football, there’s no reason why both sides cannot maintain their challenge till the end of the season. Other teams to watch out for are Brendan Rodgers’s Swansea City who continue to exceed expectations despite having little money to spend, the ever-improving Nottingham Forrest under Billy Davies, Brian McDermott’s Reading and Burnley, who recently appointed ex-Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe to take over at Turf Moor.
Nonetheless, with Eriksson at the helm, financial support from the club’s owners, an experienced backroom staff and a new found confidence within the team, there is a genuine belief that something special is happening at the Walkers Stadium. Whilst the Leicester City bandwagon may have been initially been slow off the line, since then the engine has been oiled, the tyres re-fitted and now it is well and truly going up through the gears, gathering momentum and seemingly showing no sign of stopping any time soon.
Life is a Cabaret
It is never going to be cool to like musicals, however much Lady Gaga and Amy Winehouse they try to ram into Glee. But whilst this and High School Musical might have enough smiling and scat in them to make you want to do something drastic, like switch off and actually make a start on that essay, it would be a massive shame for us to dismiss all musicals as saccharine exhibitionism.
A common complaint is that it is just not realistic to suddenly burst into song. But why do we insist upon ‘realism’ in the cinema? Naturalist playwrights in the 19th century claimed to be portraying a true slice of life in their work but theatre audiences were soon forced to accept that there is always going to be a limit to ‘realism’ in a work of art or piece of entertainment. For example, presenting a story convincingly and engagingly in real time is near impossible. ‘Realism’ is just one of many possible styles of theatre but also of cinema, and ‘realist’ works are just as illusory and artificial as the most outlandish and over-stylised pieces.
If musicals are unrealistic, at least they are unabashedly so. The importance of all-singing, all-dancing escapism is too easily overlooked. As the film industry becomes increasingly earnest and worthy in its output (read: grim), with acclaimed ‘gritty’ films Biutiful and Blue Valentine playing in cinemas this month, it is hard not to look back with a certain longing to the sheer entertainment value of High Society or The Sound of Music. Even Cabaret, one of the least whimsical musicals to date, winks at its audience and refuses to take itself too seriously.
If you do not like the songs which the characters suddenly burst into, then that is of course your prerogative. But do not switch off simply because they have burst into song. After all, what could be more ‘real’ than the black humour in ‘Officer Krupke’ (West Side Story) or the poignant stoicism in ‘It’s a Fine Life’ (Oliver!)?
