Max Payne, a New York City cop whose life is torn by tragedy, plunging him into a world of vengeance and reckless bravado. Beginning life as a shoot ‘em up action game in 2001, this gritty story of corruption and vendetta is the latest of its kind to undergo transition to the silver screen. While these may sound like promising beginnings for the development of an action thriller, the end result does not necessarily live up to the hype.

One of the inherent problems with the development from game to cinema is that the production team must often begin with either an absurdly convoluted or a completely absent plot structure. The adaptation of Doom, for example, as most viewers quickly realised, struggled to extract even ten minutes of narrative from the original game, which was specifically designed as a monster-smashing shooter. Similarly, Tomb Raider failed to really achieve any integrity as a stand-alone cinematic creation. Cynics might argue that what success Tomb Raider achieved was carried largely on the chest of Angelina Jolie.

In the case of Max Payne, however, there are unusually rich pickings to be made from the original in constructing a narrative for the cinema format. Clearly the total content of the original would have proven too unwieldy to transfer into a cinema adaptation. Nevertheless, there are some worthy attempts made to re-organise the plot and introduce new explanatory devices – perhaps most notably the demonic visions associated with use of the drug Valkyr. Drawing on the style of films like Sin City, Moore recreates much of the brooding atmosphere of the original. Even so, its visual appeal is not complemented by any rich character development, hence robbing the film of the edgy tension it might otherwise have achieved.

Devotees of the original game may appreciate the numerous references to familiar characters and locations that John Moore places throughout the film, perhaps being able to retain greater interest in the story’s development. Nevertheless, the fact remains that Max the movie is altogether more disjointed than its game noir counterpart. There is perhaps not enough attempt made to string together the narrative chunks extracted from the original material, and while some parts may understood by the knowledgeable viewer, the plot may at times seem too much like an ill-fitting jigsaw for the uninitiated to follow.

These flaws aside, the film should have had enough basic grit and style to succeed as a reasonable blockbuster, if only it had been blessed with a compelling lead player. All of the game’s original appeal lay in the dark character of anti-hero himself, Max Payne. Wahlberg produces a fairly steady, but altogether too flat performance, never really conveying the desperate deterioration of the central character’s state. Rather than reaching a cathartic crescendo, the film simply peters out, with the viewer left wondering whether they ever really cared about the protagonist’s fate. This criticism reflects the wider problems of the film, which largely squandered the great potential to be found in the original.

Two stars

‘The audience wear masks?’ I was assured this was correct by the producer as she smiled knowingly to herself. This was the first of many surprises. The next came when I had put on said mask and was exchanging sheepish glances with other, similarly masked, figures in the semi-darkness of the antechamber; unsure whether we were about to witness a play or embark on some strange rite of initiation. From behind us came the sound of raised voices and before I could grab my notebook I found myself shunted, rather unceremoniously, through a door by a surly Lord Montague. One glance at his enraged face convinced me it was probably best to cut my losses and leave pen and paper behind- along with many of my assumptions about what constitutes theatre.

The rest of that strange, wonderful, intoxicating performance is a little hazy. On reflection I feel like Alice returned from her tumble down the rabbit hole into the daylight of the everyday world. Those of you familiar with Shakespeare’s original, compulsory if you’re going to enjoy this production, will have already noticed that my coverage does not begin with those immortal lines, ‘Two households both alike in dignity’. This is not because of editorial cutting but instead a process that can best be described as a brutal savaging, in the most positive sense, of the canonical text. The aftermath of Tybalt’s death is presented before the fatal duel, the masque where Romeo and Juliet first cross paths degenerates into the rowdy fight between the two households on the streets of Verona. Narrative time and space are subverted into a whirling ballet that enthrals and bewilders the audience in equal measure. The overwhelming sense is one of a chaotic dance between the borders of brilliance and madness, literally as well as figuratively when I saw a fellow audience member seized and forced to join in with the dancers at the Capulet ball.

However the well known lines give the listener something to hang on to and prevent the performance drifting into incoherence. This is something worth stressing. The production will not be an evening of light entertainment; you should come prepared to have to work to get something out of it and also prepared to participate. Most of the time there are at least two scenes being acted out simultaneously in different parts of the room; it is the exception rather than the rule for the audience’s attention to be focused on one point.

This usually occurs during particularly climactic scenes and lead to some excellent exploitation of light and colour to emphasise the shift of focus. The masks grant members of the audience a feeling of anonymity which is reinforced by the constant interaction with the cast who will frequently look quizzically at you or speak their lines over your head. The actual role we were meant to be playing seemed ambiguous: sometimes stage props, other times shadowy apparitions visible to one character and not to others. Personally I was quite pleased with my performance. I managed to hold the steely gaze of Tybalt for a few seconds and smile encouragingly at Benvolio who winked back during one of the comic scenes. But to move on to the real actors all of the cast put in a solid performance with special mention going to Brian McMahon who produced a dark yet comic take on Mercutio and Lindsay Dukes for her poignant and compelling Juliet. I would strongly recommend this experience to anyone who is looking for something different in the Oxford Drama scene.

Keble O’Reilly
Tuesday – Saturday 6th Week

4 Stars

For a book that weighs in at around 500, 000 words, Norman has little new material to add to the already over-blown legend of John Lennon (or should that be the tragedy of John Lennon?).
The juiciest revelation is that of Lennon’s supposedly Oedipal fantasies. According to a tape recording made not long before his death, Lennon recalls his mother as being the object of his hormonally charged teenage frustration.

“He recalls,” writes Norman, “his 14-year-old self, lying beside Julia on her bed as she took a siesta.” When accidentally touching her breast, Lennon “wonders if he should have tried to go further and whether Julia would have allowed it.”

Rather than elucidating the life-long emotional torture of his subject, a man who suffered abandonment and domestic upheaval, Norman’s cod psychology only serves to entangle and compound the many tabloid myths surrounding one of the most overanalyzed figures of the last century.

Norman seems to forget that Lennon was nothing if not a joker and a self-consciously pretentious one at that. It is impossible to read Norman’s account of this walking Freudian nightmare without recalling the opening of Mother – “Mother / You had me / But I never had you”. Cynics will undoubtedly come to the conclusion that Lennon had delusions of artistic genius and the psychological hang-ups that come with it.

Yet Lennon was more than aware of the sensationalist possibilities of his own myth. Maybe he believed it. Or maybe he wanted to toy with his biographers, branding his band of followers as the idol worshippers they are. Twenty eight years after his death, Lennon is still having the last laugh.

Yoko Ono makes a token contribution to Lennon’s relentless mythmaking. Apparently her husband had a thing for Brian Epstein, Stuart Sutcliffe and Paul McCartney. The latter is based on a claim that the staff at Apple would sometimes refer to McCartney as “John’s Princess”. Lennon also got into a fight with a Cavern club DJ who made fun out of the mysterious Spanish holiday Lennon enjoyed with Beatle’s manager Brian Epstein. He even worshipped his college friend Sutcliffe with a quasi-sexual intensity.

Again, these ‘revelations’ are nothing new, even to casual Lennon fans. It is no secret that Lennon enjoyed “playing it a bit faggy”. Even Norman admits that Lennon’s “gay tendency” was purely aesthetic and based upon the hippy-drippy assumption “that bohemians should try everything”. Lennon applied this naïve doctrine to everything from music and drugs to trepanning and primal scream therapy. These biographical details are more illuminating than Norman’s tabloid conjecture surrounding something as irrelevant as his subject’s sexuality.
The first third of Norman’s book is the most exciting, the early period of Lennon’s life before he turned into a self-pitying bisexual bore. Lennon was a bit of a hot-head apparently. At an art college bop, he once punched a student who asked Cynthia to dance. On another occasion, when Cynthia paired up with Stuart Sutcliffe at a ball, Lennon “hit her across the face so hard that her head struck a heating pipe on the wall, then walked off without a word”.

Norman’s accusations continue. As a student, Lennon would not only steal art supplies from college but would pocket money which he collected for charity.

Norman’s greatest failing is his inability to explain the series of events which lead to Lennon’s decline: from an angry young hedonist who sang A Hard Day’s Night to the soft-headed artiste who preached the immortal words Happy Xmas (War is Over), the most miserable Christmas song ever.

Perhaps the book’s shortcoming has something to do with Norman’s reticence to recognize the importance of Paul McCartney in the most fruitful period of Lennon’s life. Any one with ears will tell you that it is no secret the Beatles never managed to recreate their success as solo artists. This is where such an ambitious biography falls flat on its face. The personal life of Lennon makes no sense without that of McCartney.

Instead, Norman has managed to more than fulfill his original objective, to write a biography not of “a pop person, but of a major, towering presence in his century”. In other words: to write the biography of the icon rather than the pop star. The tentative cooperation of McCartney and Ono (who deemed the book “too mean” to Lennon’s memory) has helped to cement the tragic legend of Lennon in the collective consciousness for a little while longer.

Norman set out to map the origins of a myth, not the man. He has triumphed resoundingly.

24 Hours is the sound of beardy sixty-eight year-old love god Tom Jones attempting to ride the wave of mannered, self-consciously retro blue-eyed-soul that has recently taken Duffy to the top of the charts and Amy Winehouse to the brink of extinction. Moreover, it is unashamedly an attempted call for a critical rehabilitation and elevation of the ever-uncool Jones, in the fashion of Rick Rubin’s resuscitations of the careers of Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond, and practically begs to be described in such terms as ‘dignified statement’ and ‘back to his roots’.

Yet if this really is the sound of Carlton Banks’ hero going back to his roots, it only confirms that those roots are planted firmly in an enormous block of cheese. Glittery cheese, upon which willing young ladies writhe seductively. There’s a track here called ‘The Road’ which is a sober apology for a life of infidelity and an affirmation of love for a long-suffering wife. This all sounds lovely, ennobling and redeeming, until, on the very next track, Tom’s found perving over the ‘girls by the pool’. It all seems rather disingenuous.

Jones fails because he’s trying to show that he’s both in touch with his past and still ‘with it’; in trying to reach a pair of conflicting goals, he falls embarrassingly short of both. Every upbeat track wants to be uncompromising rhythm and blues but ends up being spangly, unwieldy disco; every slow number aims for heartfelt torch song territory only to come across as a power ballad sung by a human foghorn. Cash and Diamond needed Rubin to help them ditch their excesses and rediscover their essence; Tony Christie has just been revealed to be not a cruise ship crooner but an artist of depth and significance by Richard Hawley. Even Jones himself has been at his recent best with collaborative efforts. On 24 Hours he tries to show the world that he can still perform unaided, only to find, embarrassingly, that he can’t. Get this man some musical Viagra.

2 Stars

The Oxford University Gilbert and Sullivan Society, who stage one of the Savoy Operas every term, will, for Michaelmas, be performing the well known and loved The Pirates of Penzance.

The comic opera tells the love story of Mabel, daughter of a General Stanley, and Frederic, a mistakenly apprenticed pirate who, upon his twenty-first birthday is released from service and is thus free to pursue his relationship with Mabel. Unfortunately, however, due to an unfortunate (yet admittedly comical) twist, Frederic finds out that he was actually born in the leap year on 29th February, meaning he is actually only five, and must return to piracy until 1940. Its absurd, but great fun.

The duet where Frederic breaks the bad news pays testament to the brilliant operatic voices of both leads, Anna Sideris and Thomas Wade, whose voices harmonize nicely in a scene which is moving yet suitably light-hearted for such a play.

The cast – as is tradition for the society’s Michaelmas production – is made up entirely of freshers with the exception of three, and although the performance was as yet unperfected in preview, what was not lacking was enthusiasm.
The singing was good, the atmosphere entertaining and the lead performances, most notably the Major General, played by Robert Hazle, promise to amuse.

It may not be the most professional performance of this classic ever staged, but with a full cast in costume and the talented pianists Samuel Swinnerton and Jonathan Swinard providing the music, this production promises to be good fun for any who are particularly partial to the theatrical inventions of Gilbert and Sullivan or who simply enjoy a light hearted musical in opera!

Magdalen Auditorium
Thursday – Saturday 6th Week

3 Stars

A wonderfully evil and truly convincing portrayal of Richard by Jack Chedburn, who, through his brilliant physicality and garish facial expressions, struck an excellent balance between humour and malice. With a clear and measured deliverance of all his lines, Chedburn did not merely speak the lines of Richard III, but became the character.

Unfortunately, he was somewhat let down by the rest of the cast and performance, which felt at times less a convincing re-enactment of Shakespeare’s play, than an over-consciously acted recitation of the text which was lacking in any sustained emotional intensity or tragic atmosphere.

On the whole, rather than being a believable flow of emotion, the characters seemed to leap from extreme to extreme as if they had been told in which specific line to ‘do’ angry and when to ‘do’ otherwise, without fully submersing themselves in the body of the play. As Flossie Draper spoke the lines of Elizabeth following the death of her sons, “Ah, my young princes! ah, my tender babes!… hear your mother’s lamentation!”, she seemed to be almost challenging the audience to “hear” this “lamentation” in a performance that seemed strangely devoid of any such emotion.

The play did, however, make good use of the space available at the OFS, surrounding the audience with action, and providing an interesting way in which characters could be subtly present in scenes. Having the characters speaking from the wings during Richard’s dream was also very effective; the tormenting and overpowering voices affecting both Richard and the audience. However, the supernatural element of the play, introduced by Alice Hamilton, whilst adding an intriguing psychological dimension, was more of a distraction as she talked over the lines of other characters.

There were definite moments of strong acting from the supporting cast, notably Charlotte Bayley who gave a convincingly tragic portrayal of Anne, and Ed Boulle who played a slimy and wicked Buckingham. The two murderers also gave a memorable and comic performance. It was a good attempt at a difficult play, however the cast was not united, and there was no real atmosphere maintained. Thus, as is often the case with Shakespeare, in this production, it was the play that played the characters and not the other way around.

For many, the words ‘’Brazilian carnival’ equal scenes of outrageously-clad voluptuous bodies gyrating through the streets of Rio to the universally understood rhythms of samba. Well, they’d be right. What they’d be ignoring however is the sheer vastness of Brazil and the simple fact that with different carnivals come different branches of music.

As I set foot on the carnival circuit of Salvador de Bahía, I underwent a similar rude awakening. The samba spectacle of Rio was nowhere to be found. Instead, the lifeline of the party was the procession of 60-foot long trucks, or ‘trio eletricos’, charged with enough kilowatts of sound equipment to destroy a small planet, each crowned by a different live band of the Bahían musical phenomenon that is Axé.

An Afro-Brazilian synthesis of samba reggae, calypso and frevo, Axé is the soundtrack to the largest street party on Earth, with more than two million people jumping inexhaustibly to the infectious blend of relentless beats.

Being a part of the ‘bloco’ – call it a ten-thousand-strong-mosh pit – of a particular Axé band that surrounds each truck, was a bit like being caught in the midst of an American election rally, though without the propaganda circus and obviously, infinitely more fun. The atmosphere is electric, and roaming around outside the ‘blocos’ or watching them from the stalls above is a fantastic way to get a better understanding of the different incarnations of Axé.

Thunderous pounding worthy of an elephant migration saw the arrival of Timbalada known for its use of the ‘timbal’ drum and racks of three bass drums that can be played by a single person. With a lead singer and chorus chanting songs over the deafening beats, Timbalada is one of the most powerful and spiritual Axé bands, with socially motivated lyrics dedicated to the people of Bahía.

Believe it or not however, mainstream Axé does exist, in the form of such institutions as Ivete Sangalo, Claudia Leitte and Chiclete com banana. The latter’s decades old formula of upbeat electric guitar, reggae rock rhythms and booming percussion has secured their position as the most popular Axé band to date, despite still smacking of dodgy crooners from the eighties.

So, bad news for the culture-vultures so intent on that perfect Kodak moment of the samba queens of Rio; Axé is the sound of Brazilian carnival to end all others. Listen to it live. Or simply if you have itchy feet.

Martha Wainwright is fascinating to behold. She fills the stage with her normal physique, shrouded by her plain clothes, topped off by her straw-like bleach-blonde hair.

She is not beautiful. She does not care. Legs well apart, she gyrates rhythmically against her guitar, giving the impression that she sings as much from her pelvic floor region, as from her other lips. Swooning and soaring, her voice dives to unexpected places, gaining speed with quick repetition and simultaneous buttock-wobbling, before belting out a single line, holding the note and tautening her leg muscles, to the climax – ‘but it’s plain to see that the problem is, is, is in me’.

The Wainwright dynasty is well known for the great music it has engendered out of a long-standing chip on the shoulder. Its pater familias, Loudon Wainwright III, enjoyed early comparisons to Bob Dylan, but chose a more distinctive course, one which frequently involved parodying himself.

Walking a lyrical tightrope between the humorous and the absurd, Wainwright set the trend of writing familial discord into country & folk. His children, with the right mix of rehab and neuroses, have followed suit.

Written during his son Rufus’ early years, ‘Rufus Is A Tit Man’, exhibited a certain ironic prescience, and in relation to daughter Martha, the less jovial ‘Hitting You’, recalled a moment of parental discipline gone awry.

Freudian analysis would find it unremarkable, then, that his preferred method of communicating what might be better left unsung, should result in his offspring realising a musical career along similar lines.

Martha Wainwright shot to coffee shop fame in a duet with Snow Patrol, casting a sheer luminosity onto Gary Lightbody’s popular drawl. The fragility of her voice in ‘Set the Fire to the Third Bar’ is entirely unlike of her music today, and would have you believe that she pitches in somewhere between Mazzy Star and Chan Marshall. Her earliest release, a four-song EP entitled Factory was suggestive of those two, her recent album I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too has testified to her being more of a Daddy’s girl.

Frank disclosure qualifies both her stage persona and many of her lyrics, as Wainwright combines a dulcet country twang with coarse language and revealing witticisms, ‘These are not my people, tomorrow should never have come here / The chick with a dick and the gift for the gab’.

Written in her twenties, these songs arose from the pathos that coloured her personal life and invaded performances. However the 32 year old standing before us now is clearly happy, and as such the angst-ridden numbers resonate less.

Unfortunately every silver lining has its cloud, and as Wainwright relentlessly drones ‘You cheated me and I can’t believe it/I’ve been calling since four o’clock last night,’ with her husband strumming away in the background, what could be ironic just becomes tedious.

Martha Wainwright doesn’t give a fuck. Not in the affected way that one might expect from someone who wrote an ode to their father entitled ‘Bloody Mother-Fucking Asshole’. She is so comfortable on stage that the consummate ease with which she commands proceedings makes the audience almost superfluous. She would be doing everything in exactly the same way if this were only a rehearsal, but that is not to say she is slipshod. Actually she is flawless. In amongst all her imperfect features and her stable life, so incongruous with the genre she best fits, is an indefatigable voice.