It’s a hard life being a director. Yes, there’s the shining glory and the sense of intellectual accomplishment; the applause and the adulatory praise; the proud face of your adoring mother. However, on the other hand, there’s rehearsals. The hell of trying to synchronize the movements of ten filthy actors, so self-obsessed they think they’re doing you a favour just by turning up, is only just offset by the looming thought of the crippling embarrassment when, on the night, it all goes hideously, hideously wrong. In all honesty, however, the majority of rehearsals are probably a waste of time. Let’s face it, the cast are not going to know their lines for at least the first two-thirds of them. And true thespianism cannot be achieved with a script in one hand, a coke in the other and the incessant, jarring chant of “Sorry, where am I supposed to be?” And after all that, the actors get more attention than you anyway.
The job is not without its perks, however; there’s a certain creepy allure to all that power. Not only do you have the actors’ lithe, agile bodies at your directorial disposal, you also – assuming you’ve got any degree of talent – have the audience’s hearts and minds in the palm of your hand. Equally, you have the whole canon of English theatrical literature to choose from, in your attempt to toy with the public’s feeble minds. Then there’s the scores of attractive young nymphs desperate to sleep their way to the top… and that’s just the boys. Such a path surely only appeals to those unable to eek out a decent living as a smalltime dictator?
Nevertheless, everybody knows that writing is where the real action’s at. Only when one has dabbled in the manipulation of the immortal word can one truly call oneself a master. However, just to make all us laymen feel really inadequate, some go so far as to combine all three aspects of the beautiful game, in making a name for themselves as both actor, director and playwright. It can be done successfully, and indeed, it has been by such legends as Harold Pinter, Shakespeare, and of course, George Clooney. In contrast to the average Oxford director, they’ve got it all: the lithe bodies, the absolute power, the train of exquisite muses and on top of all that, the tumultuous love lives only associated with true genius. So if you’re an unfulfilled director, desperately trying to sell more tickets for your latest show, do yourself a favour: join them, write your own magnum opus and play the leading lady yourself.

The court’s full of sycophants. The heir to the throne’s meeting a friend returning from abroad. The queen’s in an uncomfortable position. Schiller’s play isn’t exactly subtle in its influences as it ransacks the plot of Hamlet to launch into an attack on church and court. And given that the set is mostly black and the heavily photoshopped posters show our self-obsessed hero brooding, it’s clear that producer Krishna Omkar hasn’t exactly been subtle in targeting this at the emo market either.

Worrying signs, you’ll agree. Despite this, is there any chance that it could actually be good? It’s hard to fault director William Maynard’s adventurous choice of play, but can he pull it off; in a play about stifled individuality, can he make his actors’ presence felt?

The answer to both is, surprisingly, yes. His secret weapon is the superb choice of translation: Mike Poulton goes for a surging, passionate rendering, which fits the spirit of the play perfectly: it feels grand and architectural in a Shakespearean way without feeling so archaic in its language as to be an anachronism, with wry jabs of intertextuality (such as Don Carlos imagining applying for the role of himself) which for once don’t feel like gimmicks. He also goes for the theatricality of it, alternating public life with glimpses beneath the masks: characters stand apart in public, grab and cling to each other in private.

In the lead role, Matt Maltby goes for a rugged, no-nonsense and somewhat unsubtle rendition of self-obsessesion, idealism and anguish at loving his hated father’s new wife and: the passion is perfect and his story of not seeing his father until he was six genuinely heart-breaking, and though he misses a little of his character’s wit at the start (like in a line about first meeting his father signing death-warrants) he warms up to give a very good performance. But Ed Chalk, as the king, is in a different league altogether. I’ve seen Derek Jacobi in this role in an acclaimed performance in London and Chalk is actually better still: dry, ironic, frequently fluty of voice, but also angry: this performance really gives the sense of the his almost, but not quite, unerring self-belief, as the only man in Spain allowed to be himself, signing the death warrants of anyone who seeks to challenge authority and be an individual like him. The other actors can never match him, and several slightly overdo the sinister side of their roles (to be fair, this reviewer wasn’t able to stay for the whole rehearsal and missed out on some of the juicier lines and scenes). Never mind: this play is a strong cocktail of ideas and passion, and the central performance is flawless. Oxford’s emos are in for a treat.

4 stars

Jonah Goldberg’s new book Liberal Facism sounds like it ought to be an interesting, though not entirely revolutionary, proposition: the charting of fascism throughout the twentieth century to demonstrate that it is in fact a left-wing, rather than right-wing phenomena. He is honest enough to admit in his introduction that his purpose is a partisan one, yet manages at this point in the proceedings to suppress his Republican allegiances to at least a tolerable level.
It all starts promisingly enough with a chapter on Mussolini and Italian fascism full of facts and occasional humour, perfect for the lay-historian.(Did you know that Mussolini was the editor of a socialist newspaper before he became a dictator? Or that Churchill had dubbed him the ‘world’s greatest lawgiver’?)
One even feels one can forgive him his slightly tangential rants. His rather irrelevant comparison at one point between Mussolini’s style and that of Yasser Arafat-‘though Arafat was undoubtedly far more murderous’-comes as a bit of a surprise.
Sadly this all-too-brief spurt of vaguely intelligent writing begins to unravel as soon as one reaches Chapter two: Hitler. Goldberg makes a half-decent attempt at showing that the Nazi Party, as a ‘popular movement’, held similar aims and values as those of communism: the provision of health care, the nationalisation of industry, etc. He even makes the very important point that anti-Semitism, or even racism, is not a fascist ideal, but rather the result of a paranoid dictator. Yet despite all this, his contentious references to similarities between the Left and National Socialism all too often come across as childish mud-slinging rather than reasoned argument. The absolute classic example comes during his discussion of the green policies pursued by the Nazis contrasted with those pursued by those on the Left today-again, does this prove that environmentalists are all closet Nazis?
By the time we reach American politics, the true focus of Goldberg, the whole thing has reduced to a rambling account of spurious similarities between the administrations of left-leaning American administrations and fascism. (Was the Wilson administration the first truly fascist state?)
Yet even were this the case the question ‘so what?’ is the blindingly obvious response which he never addresses. Having begun his introduction de-contaminating fascism as an ideological idea he now labels every administration he disagrees with as ‘fascist’, the implication being that this makes it automatically wrong.
Overall then this pseudo-intellectual ‘history’, though at times entertaining, ends up sounding like the tired, regurgitated rants one all too often associates with American conservatism. Regardless of which side of the political playing field you find yourself on, the sheer cringe-worthiness of this book, coupled with its utterly flawed logic and ultimate pointlessness, makes this an awful and simultaneously depressing read.
He mounts up fact upon fact without laying any foundations, with the result that the book ends up going nowhere. At 400+ pages this reviewer would rather just go and argue with some animal rights activists instead: its cheaper, quicker, and just as much of a waste of time.

Paul Freestone’s tender and humorous photographs find beauty in the mundane and subtly blur the boundaries between the human and the natural, the grotesque and the lovely, ‘flotsam and jetsam’ and ‘all that glitters’. The images capture the thought process of the artist in those few seconds when he looks, sees and shoots; they embody an act of observation by a sharp, droll mind, and, by lifting that observation out of the way of everyday life, allow the viewer to see things anew. Before our eyes a crushed cigarette packet takes on new aesthetic possibilities, and death is framed as something which is neither horrendous nor a calamity, but simply part of what might be an unexpectedly beautiful world.
Of particular interest are the artist’s depictions of the relationship between man and dog, a relationship that Paul believes long ago transcended the boundaries of the functional and embedded itself deep within the human psyche. Shot “old school” on black and white film which was later developed by the artist, there is an intense compassion to them which allows their characters to transcend assumptions or judgements, and offers them up for reconsideration, when we might usually pass them by. Looking at them, I cannot help but be reminded of Philip Pullman’s representation of the human soul as an animalistic creature tied to the person by an unbreakable bond of co-dependence and desperate love; these dogs are intrinsic parts of their owners and vice versa, and the bright black eyes reflect who these people are, where they have been, and where they place themselves in this world. Paul holds up the relationship of the homeless man and his dog, sleeping in a doorway, against that of the Crufts pair, preened and smiling, and if anything finds the later wanting.
There is nothing pretentious or spectacular about these photographs, and they might be passed by as easily as the things they depict; they simply offer details up for our consideration, giving us the chance, just for a moment, to review our perspective on the world. Paul mentions Elliott Erwitt and Bill Brandt amongst his influences, but although his images approach theirs in their grimy black and white and their quality of social commentary, they are somehow more candid in their un-staged symmetry – frank and unassuming. The exhibition continues until the 13th of February at the North Wall Arts Centre (Mon-Sat, 11am-4pm); go and see it. Take your dog.