Take a cast of two, a boy and a girl. Put them together on a stage and make them sing sweet nothings and bitter remonstrations at each other for eighty minutes, without an interval. The result – a romance so sickly my eyeballs almost melted into syrup.

The Last Five Years is a series of vignettes showing the extended relationship between successful writer Jamie Wellerstein (James Leveson) and struggling actress Cathy Hiatt (Alice Gimblett), a pair of New Yorkers.

The story is about as interesting as a sub-standard Sex and the City plot, only without the sex. The gimmick is that her story begins at the end of their relationship, and his begins on the day they met.

Eventually the pair reverse roles, the stories intersecting on their wedding day half way through. Frustratingly this is the only duet in the show and highlights the plot’s dramatic thinness.

For a show supposedly about love, there isn’t much to feel good about, or to watch. When Cathy sings ‘I want you, and you, and nothing but you’ it’s difficult to appreciate why as her husband stands there mugging inanely and shuffling along. The Sondheim-esque piano-led songs range from jaunty to downbeat but are distinctly unmemorable.

James Leveson has a good voice, and grew more audible as the play progressed, but slurred an American accent he clearly isn’t confident with. Some direction that matched blocking to lyrics might have helped: why he sang ‘I wouldn’t be standing here now’ while marching directly away from his beloved I couldn’t fathom.

Alice Gimblett is the show’s saving grace, her rich and textured soprano emotionally resonant with a tender sweetness. With ‘I can do better than that’ she really came into her role, a vivid excitement about their future plans supplementing some beautiful voice ornamentation.

But Gimblett’s burgeoning talent alone may not be quite enough to justify the ticket price, considering the play’s dull story and lack of dramatic direction.

Two stars

I must say, All Roads Lead To Rome is an appropriate title. If, that is, Rome has recently become a synonym for bed.

Erotically charged from start to finish, this combination of Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra is an interesting take on Shakespeare’s classic romances. Fused together into one piece, All Roads Lead To Rome focuses upon the intricacies of the relationships at the heart of each play.

The potential of the concept was revealed at the end of the preview, when we were subject to an intense realisation of the last day in the lives of the two pairs of lovers. The simultaneously occuring images of Cleopatra tenderly dressing Antony for battle and Juliet’s pleading speech – ‘It was the nightingale and not the lark’ – was exceptionally beautiful and built to a conclusion laden with pathos.

Such effective use of montage was undermined, however, by the lack of chemistry between Alex Bowles’ Antony and Ellen Buddle’s Cleopatra.

Supposed to be a passionate love affair reflective of the towering stature of both leaders, Buddle’s Cleopatra was less a powerful feminist queen than a nervous housewife, whilst the relationship seemed insipid and forced. Bowles was visibly uncomfortable touching Buddle’s body, his hips hovering several centrimetres away from hers.

Quite the opposite approach was taken by Matt Maltby and Charlotte Norris’ Romeo and Juliet, whose performances were effective renditions that oozed with sexual tension. Romeo’s infamous line – ‘Wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?’ – is suddenly more understandable when we have witnessed the passionate panting which seems to be Norris’ definitive character motif.

The balcony scene, that endearing moment of innocent young love, has become, in the directorial grasp of Will Maynard, practically soft porn. Indeed, his ‘vision‘ was decidedly nebulous, the only consistent aim being, it seemed, to fill the room with as many pheromones as was humanly possible.

I am, however, being pedantic. On reflection, the play was pleasing, innovative and enagaging. Despite having been rehearsing for only a week and a half whilst suffering from Fresher’s Flu, the cast were tight on lines, metre, and expression.

Special mention must undoubtedly go to Bowles, who gave a passionate and truly mesmerising performance as the leader torn apart by the inadvertent sacrifice of his own men.

I struggled with deciding what rating to give this show. Pushing the boundaries can be exhilarating, but injecting this most adored of romances with a good dose of eroticism is something of a risk. With a little more thought and lot more Lemsip, though, it could prove to be one which pays off.

3 stars

It only takes five minutes of navigating the tangled, unsettlingly invasive world of MySpace to see that musicians have a problem with categorization. For evidence of this, one quick search reveals a number of bands that have carefully defined themselves as ‘other/other/other’ a genre which I can only assume involves no instruments, no vocals, and a creative selection of farmyard noises and Windows 95 samples.

Most musical genres are entirely a creation of journalists, record labels and occasionally artists who want to feel original – The Klaxons and the short-lived ‘nu-rave’ being a good example. This phenomenon is never more obvious the case than in the case of ‘Intelligent Dance Music’.

IDM was invented as a label by the creators of an online mailing list to describe the 90’s output of the pioneering Warp and other record labels who shared the same view that dance and electronic music could be as ‘at home in the living room as on the dancefloor’. With this ethos in mind, artists such as Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher and Boards of Canada produced experimental electronic music that veered from laidback ambient techno to drum ‘n’ bass whilst slaloming effortlessly through musique concrète, obscure synthesised sounds and slavish attention to detail.

Unfortunately, it quickly became clear what a divisive term IDM would prove to be. While the IDM community was certainly influential, stretching its tendrils out into the mainstream in the form of Radiohead’s Kid A and Aphex’s Windowlicker, even at Warp’s primitive beginnings in Sheffield many found the idea of relative ‘intelligence’ between bands unpalatable.

Aphex Twin, having to an extent started the whole movement, also became one of the first to publicly disown the term IDM, denouncing its implication that other dance music was somehow ‘stupid’. Soon the term became taboo as record companies and artists alike scrambled their musical thesauruses to find another, inoffensive, way of describing their music.

Many suggestions followed, more amusing examples being ‘electronic body music’, or naturally ‘EBM’, and ‘armchair techno’, which seemed to suggest that one should listen to Squarepusher by a toasty fire with a purring cat on your lap. Of course, this would be impossible without strangling the cat and burning it in crazed ritual sacrifice, such is the intensity of Tom Jenkinson’s progressive jazz-infused brand of drum ‘n’ bass.

As it turned out, however, none of the artists ever really escaped the label and it remains a fitting way of describing the experimental attitude of many within the electronic music community. While IDM is without doubt a crude and offensive genre label, the bands it describes all have a healthy dose of this supposed ‘musical intelligence’, and it will allow them to remain relevant even as they are ostracized by the rest of the dance community and explore areas the mainstream will not dare to.

Ask someone to name an Oxford band and who would they come up with?

Your respectable music snob type will immediately proffer Radiohead with a tone of detached superiority. Your asymmetrically fringed, cellulose-thin jeans-wearing type will say Foals (because it’s not the Foals, it’s just Foals, yeah…?) with a petulant sneer.

However, ask your finger-on-the-pulse-of-great-new-music type and they may just say Jonquil. Everyone’s favourite quality musical publication, NME, says the local six-piece’s songs sound like ‘beautiful Beirut-gone-English folk’.

‘We are not a folk band’, says horn-player Sam Scott indignantly. ‘I guess we’re in the same bracket as those Beirut and Arcade Fire style bands, but I don’t feel like we’re ripping them off at all, none of us listen to that stuff that much.’

Keyboardist, accordionist and frontman Hugo Manuel adds that ‘without sounding too lame, we maybe rock out a bit more…It’s not so rooted in the folky stuff; as much as people like to think we’re a folky band, it’s just not us.’

Their sound is actually harder to pin down than one would expect. On record, and on stage, the instruments involved include a heady mix of guitar, violin, drums, flugelhorn, bouzouki, double bass, melodica, glockenspiels and yet more whistles and bells making a sonic impression all of their own.

‘We all listen to really different things’, Hugo tells me, ‘At the moment we all like certain artists like Yeasayer and Fleet Foxes but there’s loads of other tastes within the band.’

Violinist Ben Rimmer is also keen to point out, ‘Three of us run this hip-hop label as well, it was spawned when we lived together and all we listened to was American hip-hop like Aesop Rock. That’s why we have such a mix of sounds; why we have an MPC drum machine and the horns go through pedals and outside of the band Kit [Monteith – percussion] even does some MCing.’

This clearly diverse palette defines the songs that Jonquil make, and when I first saw them perform, supporting Spoon, I was constantly surprised as each new song brought different, shifting harmonies and textures.

Holding their own as a support to an established and respected band must have been encouraging. ‘It was the biggest show we’d done and it was amazing. It’s fun supporting because you know most people don’t know you and you have to win them over’, Hugo explains.

As I talk to the band, punters are already pouring into the Oxford Academy, some to see the dubious delights of Mike Skinner’s cod-poetry of the streets, the rest wisely choosing to bask in the blissful experience of Jonquil’s homecoming gig following the biggest tour the band have done to date.

Hugo tells me ‘When we come back and play a headline show in Oxford it’s a different kettle of fish’. ‘More people know the words’, says Sam before self-effacingly continuing, ‘Because it’s our friends; we know probably 60% of the audience’. ‘We do know most of Oxford,’ jokes Hugo, and he’s not far off.

All six members grew up in and around the city and met though playing in different bands in the area. ‘We’re a product of the scene’, Hugo tells me, ‘We saw Sam in his old band Youthmovies, Jody [Prewett – guitar] played in a couple bands’. ‘And we’re still in contact and involved with all these other groups’, Ben explains.

After forming properly the band continued as a bedroom project, with Hugo writing the bare bones of songs, while the rest of the band chipped in their own multi-layered parts, and then refining the tunes by playing them live, many of the shows in venues around Oxford such as Port Mahon, the Cellar and, of course, the Academy.

The band have been ending their gigs for the last two years with the beautiful ‘Lions’ and when I ask, in a considered tone, whether the message I’m getting from the lyrics about break down in society is accurate I’m met with a smirk.

‘The lyrics?’, Sam smiles, ‘Absolute nonsense. It’s quite funny to us that it’s become this signature tune; it’s not even a song- it’s just an accordion line’. Regardless, it represents Jonquil’s sound perfectly – beautifully simple melody, rich instrumentation and powerful group singing.

When I enquire what’s next for the guys they tell me of the delights of better girls, beds, and audience reaction awaiting them in their first tour to Spain and Portugal. With all this constant travelling they suggest their next album should be entitled Abandon Your Friends.

They may have been joking, but once Jonquil’s beautiful music has you hooked, you may well be willing to uproot and forget all those close to you, just to hear it again.

Double albums are usually a bad idea. For every Physical Graffiti or Exile on Main St. there are countless bloated, self-indulgent protuberances on the musical landscape, causing many respectable musicians to suppress the urge to go long.

This, seemingly, was the mindset of Texan folk-rockers Okkervil River with their last LP The Stage Names, originally intended to be disc one to this release’s disc two.

A cursory glance to the track-list would suggest that Will Sheff and his colleagues made the right decision with three of the eleven tracks being, devoted to minute long musical interludes. Much as these add a sense of ambience, almost that of an orchestra warming up before a rousing performance, but they would have added little but track numbers to a double-LP.

However, the majority of the songs on offer here would’ve been more than mere filler. ‘Singer Songwriter’ bounds about like an eager puppy, Sheff’s cutting lyrics wrapped around a playful guitar line and accompanied by propulsive percussion. The song’s theme of cynicism directed at the foibles of the musical scene is revisited throughout.

From band-on-the-road opener ‘Lost Coastlines’ through to ‘Pop Lie”s examination of how fans’ idolisation of artists is often misguided, there is the strong suggestion the band have some real issues with the business they’re earning their keep from.

Ultimately, shorn of a few of the less arresting numbers (‘On Tour With Zyklos’ and ‘Blue Tulip’) and the aforementioned instrumentals, this could have made an excellent EP, but as a standalone, full-length offering feels oddly lacking, despite some career-best songwriting.

In avoiding the pitfalls of the double album they’ve unwittingly ended up with something just as unsatisfactory.

Three stars

Dark Habits (1983)
Pedro Almodovar

It is in imperfect creatures that God finds His greatness. Jesus didn’t die for the salvation of saints, but for the redemption of sinners,” reflects the Mother Superior, preparing to shoot up a line of coke with her very intense crush Yolanda Bell, a trashy yet fabulous nightclub singer and junkie.

This is definitely one of the film’s best scenes, a perfect representation of Dark Habits in all senses of the phrase. Almodovar got his moralising spot on – it is scandalous, but absolutely fine, in the end, because Jesus loves you. And what are the nuns doing wrong anyway?

Acid, heroin, erotic novels, sadomasochism, blackmail, lesbianism – it’s all in this film alongside a confessional, regular mass and a healthy dose of self-mortification and humiliation.

Bent nuns are definitely the way to go. This is black comedy for sure, yet it is simultaneously raw and emotive, and not without meaning.

On the surface, Dark Habits is just plain offensive and slightly crass, but in fact the film’s extreme depiction of religious corruption was Almodovar’s own way of inviting us to question blind faith and our preconceptions of morality. He examines, tongue firmly in cheek, whether we really should be moderate in our actions and take everything with a pinch of acid. If not, simply live to the extreme and absolve yourself at mass once in a while.

It can make us angry; it can certainly offend us. But Almodovar’s searching humour represents a positive side of faith in films. ‘Cinema became my real education, better than the one I received from my priest,’ Almodovar has said.

Four stars

The Ten Commandments (1956)
Cecil B. DeMille

I’ve heard the story of Moses and the commandments about four thousand times – blame it on my Sunday school, Presbyterian Church and Catholic Comprehensive teaching. Sadly, Cecil B. DeMille’s final film shows no such awareness of Moses’ story, one of the most moving and interesting stories in the Old Testament.

In this truly bizarre adaptation of Exodus, several characters are introduced for no apparent reason, and strains of narrative are either omitted completely or created out of thin air in a miraculous trick worthy of God Himself.

Admittedly, part of the problem is the simple issue of its age. The film is more than fifty years old, and boy does it show. The shots of ancient Egypt are laughable, and when Moses walks into the river and turns into ‘blood’, the water adopts a strange hue of, well, a kind of orange. It’s as if they’ve shovelled a tonne of terracotta into the Nile and hoped for the best.

I really shouldn’t judge a film so dated for its lack of technological power. A lack of acting power, however, is free game.

The late Charlton Heston plays Moses. I say ‘plays’, when really the extent of his acting is the ridiculous hairstyle. Otherwise, this could be any other wooden Heston performance, complete with a highly inappropriate American accent .

In a film about Moses, it is his enemy who truly steals the show. The great Yul Brynner oozes arrogance and stubborness as Rameses, perfectly capturing the essence of a man whose very belief system is being challenged by a man he once called brother.

Of course, there’s quite a way to go between the crossing of the Red Sea (more of a bog really) and the actual collection of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. Hours, actually. Cue a boring slog through the wilderness and you’ve arrived at an anti-climactic and ever so melodramatic celebration of God’s covenant with humanity.

This film may stand for something, but fails to truly capture the wonder of the story.

Two stars

The Passion of the Christ (2003)
Mel Gibson

There is certainly a lot of passion. A lot of sweat, blood and dirt also.

Mel Gibson’s blockbuster The Passion of the Christ attempts to bring to life one of the most influential events in history, sweeping aside the polite idealism which has oversimplified images of the story since Raphael, and returning to the core message of terrible suffering, and pregnant hope. Unfortunately, to a certain extent the film becomes more obsessed with the pain and brutality than the story.

It is a wonderful and visceral film, which uses only the languages of the time (lots of good stuff for Latin and Aramaic fans here). The characters are treated as humans, which elegantly brings to life figures which are part of the Christian cultural landscape, but who are often elevated to the point that they become inaccessible.

We can believe, I think, in a Christ who visibly bleeds, who is clearly as much a man as he is God. This very humanity of Christ before the crucifixiion is a great part of his enigma. He is so very weak, so very fragile, that we can scarcely believe him divine. Yet this pain is the mark of the sacrifice and compassion which can lead us ultimately to accept faith.

Yet this is precisely what the emphasis on all the blood threatens to do with this film. The Passion is indeed a portrait of suffering, and almost becomes such for the audience too, succeeding in conveying to the audience Christ’s pain and message (‘Pick up your cross and walk with me’), but obscuring the later and transcendental hope.

Three stars

The Silence (1963)
Ingmar Bergman

The last of Bergman’s Faith Trilogy, this film deals with the arrival of two sisters along with the son of one of the pair in a foreign city. The threat of war is present from the beginning, with the specters of tanks looming from the start.

The film relies heavily on the visual, with very little speech throughout. The name obviously suggests this, but the silence of the title comes through in many different ways.

The incomprehension of mother, sister and child in a city whose language they don’t know; the wordless suffering of one sister, slowly dying; the failure of the other sister to properly acknowledge this; the silent, passionate sex in which she attempts to escape the necessity of her sister’s suffering and her child’s needs; the all-encompassing, dreadful silence of God in the face of all this pain.

It has been well observed that the two sisters act essentially as two halves of the same character. As one sister dies, concentrating only on exercises of the mind, the other walks the streets of the city, watching and engaging in carnal acts.

And, just as the body of the sister whose intellect is all she can rely upon withers, so the soul of the other seems to be dying. Her compassion is eaten away, not only cruel and desensitized to the suffering of her sister, but also to her son.

He, a boy of maybe twelve, is left to roam the halls of the hotel. Clearly incomprehending, clearly damaged, his love for his mother is met, of course, with silence. He is required to wash her naked body in the bath, the only act through which he can gain access to his mother’s attentions being physical.

Shot in black and white, it is a tense, perfectly wrought masterpiece, which questions not only the divine, but also the humane, and dissects, with sincere compassion, the nature of suffering and salvation.

Five stars

He’s a great character, God. Reliable, if a bit formulaic. And he has pulling power. Put his name on the poster, and you’re bound to generate interest, and perhaps the odd death- threat. He also has the benefit of being ineffable, so he takes up little screen space, and omnipresent, so you can always tip a nod in his direction.

Few characters have captured the attention of so many filmmakers, whether positively or negatively, nor appeared in so diverse settings, as God. Nailed to the cross with flagellation and an awful lot of blood (The Passion of the Christ), teaching benign lessons in second-rate comedies (Bruce Almighty), or simply handing down holy writ (The Ten Commandments), he is so varied a character, and so evocative, it is no wonder film studios cannot keep away.

As a general rule, his screen appearances are few, and weak. While Morgan Freeman does a great God (who else can be accused of being typecast as the divine?), Bruce Almighty was a pretty terrible concept, badly handled.

God doesn’t really lend Himself to comedy. Except dark comedy. Which is odd, because you’d think a little bit of guilt would go a long way towards creating comedic situations.

His better roles portray Him as more of a present absence (or absent presence. Is there a difference?) There are films which, while making very little of the connection, rely very heavily on the conceit of the divine, such as the Exorcist.

You can’t really have demons without God, certainly not those who revile crucifixes. But the Exorcist never makes much of an ever-merciful God, using him as a necessary, but hardly terribly interesting foil for a good bit of terror, blood and darkness.

The Lord also shines in films which give Him only a nod, or involve Him only as an allegory. The Narnia Chronicles are a great example of this; they involve a world which is pointedly removed from our own, a fantasy, yet every moment the divine lurks in the background, adding colour and vitality, adding, essentially, a moral tone.

This can be true also of more high- brow films (arthouse fans, notebooks ready please). Ingmar Bergman’s Faith Trilogy, for example, debates not so much the way that man transacts with God, but the way man transacts with man in a world in which the divine can be felt only through morality, or perhaps merely a terrible weight. Like much great art, these films (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence), deal in questions rather than answers, and, with a wrenching beauty, find God not in joy, but in despair.

Other works can involve God not to mock Him, nor to praise Him, but simply to attack Him. The best of these are often somewhat more subtle. As with Bergman’s Faith Trilogy, Pedro Almodóvar’s Dark Habits attacks the foibles and weaknesses of men, gently and wittily poking fun at religion.

That faith can be seen as ridiculous is a commonplace view, and probably less damaging than the faithful often imagine. Lightened by humour, and strengthened by mature introspection, attacks, or merely inquiries into faith in films can be most healthy for the religious community.

It is, I am sure, this lack of maturity that has resulted in some cases of actual danger from the more extreme elements of the faithful. With directors actually being murdered for challenging extreme Islam, a proper, measured debate on the role of faith in films is needed.

To a certain extent the most hopeful sign is that even the best secular films are permeated by religious concepts. The Shawshank Redemption relies heavily on ideas of difficulty, resolution, hope and redemption, which are fundamentally Christian, as does the recent masterpiece The Lives of Others.

That God has been so successful in films is unsurprising, given the extent to which he is entwined with Western culture, and references to him even in such outwardly secular films confirm this.

Read our reviews of classic God-themed films here