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.

With the annual arrival of fresh-faced first-years, eager to try everything they can find, sign up to every society, go to every lecture, it’s no surprise that the various cuppers competitions across the university use Michaelmas to get them while they’re keen. Drama Cuppers is no different, and so next week we’ll see a multitude of mini-plays descend on the Burton Taylor studio as some talented, and not-so talented, freshers attempt to impress with their grasp of the stage.

For those not actually involved, Cuppers is great fun. Turn up at the BT practically anytime and there’ll be something to see for the minimal fee of one pound. Whether you pick something randomly or support your college and your friends, it’s a great way to spend half an hour (Cuppers plays will be disqualified if they pass the time restriction), and it’s always fun to watch the reactions of the poor old woman who just happens to have spontaneously decided to see a play without realising that she’s chosen a piece of experimental theatre about nipples.

If you’re lucky, you’ll get comedy gold or a dramatic masterpiece. If you’re unlucky, you’ll have to practice your very best fake smile for when you meet your poor, untalented friend after the show. With plays which tackle traditional theatre battling with the inevitable mix ofnew writing and experimental work, the variety always leaves something for everyone.

For the wannabe-thesps, however, Cuppers can be a little less fun. Granted, you can meet nice people, get introduced to the Oxford drama scene, put on your first play; it’s certainly worth a go. Sometimes, though, it doesn’t all go to plan. Perhaps a behind-the-scenes rivalry between the girl playing Juliet and the one who thought she had the part in the bag (she played her at school. Mummy made her a lovely costume and Daddy paid for the auditorium). Maybe a break-up between the director and his lead after a drunken incident at Kukui (let’s just say it involved KY jelly, but no naked wrestling).

Whatever happens, the odd line-stumble or on-stage catfight (it’s never happened before, but this could be the year) only add to the fun of it all. It’s not supposed to win any Oliviers, but you never know what you’re going to see, and with bad plays as much fun as good ones, you can’t go wrong.

Details are always a bit sketchy at this point, with late drop-outs due to other commitments not uncommon, but there are a few offerings already getting us excited. Here are our suggestions of what to keep an eye out for:

Hamlet – Lincoln
Drama Cuppers just isn’t the same without a Shakespeare adaptation. Some may gawp at the sheer courage of a group of youngsters tackling the bard in half an hour, but it’s always been a recipe for success in the past. One of this year’s entries give the Great Dane himself a go, and it’s definitely worth a look. Perhaps we’ll see a sensitive and effective portrayal of one of Shakespeare’s most complex and volatile characters. Perhaps it will be just awful. Either way, Hamlet is a great way to spend a pound.

A brief Brief Encounter – Exeter
WIth the time constraints, cutting a classic doesn’t always work. Students at Exeter College, however, gets kudos for managing to get the editing process into the title. Choosing the iconic Noel Coward play about repressed English love, the text’s simplicity and contained story lends itself well to being condensed. With an enthusiastic and diligent cast and the gem that is Coward’s play, overlooked in recent years but back in the forefront with the cinematic release of Easy Virtue last week, this may be a recipe for success.

The Condensed Harry Potter
Speaking of classics, this year the seven Rowling novels will be summarised into half an hour. Granted, it’s been done before, but with potential for speedy costume changes, hammy acting, and the chance to save hours of catch-up reading before the next film, this is a must for any fan.

To be frank, in the competitive world of Oxford drama, most Cuppers competitors may never again be seen on the stage, which may or may not be a good thing. Each year, however, unearths a couple of diamonds in the rough who have gone on to success in the university’s drama scene. Here are just a couple of the Cuppers success stories:

Tor Lupton

Having just finished a massively successful run of A Few Good Men in a performance described as ‘exceptional’ in our five star review, Tor of Wadham is the actress of the moment in Oxford’s drama scene. Starting with directing J.D. Salinger’s Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut in Cuppers, she moved quickly on to a couple of musicals (she is also an accomplished soprano as well as a pianist and cellist) and the lead role in last year’s Alice in Wonderland. If she’s ever had a bad review, then I’ve never read it. Definitely one to watch.

Jen Chutz

Jen Chutz is the stage name of collaborative Exeter students Joe Schutz and Ken Cheung. Merging one’s names usually isn’t a great sign of either wit or intelligence, but this duo have both. Coming together to write TheiaeDoggue, pronounced The Dog, their mix of random humour and well-crafted comedic performances made them the toast of 2006, as they left with the prize for Experimental Theatre.

With a life-sized cardboard camel Clive, a South African with pigtails and a sombrero, and impromptu cameos from members of the audience, the play truly split opinion. In their follow-up Dolores Wears the Stares, described by one Daily Info review as ‘either terribly brilliant or brilliantly terrible’, Jen Chutz returned to experimental theatre and the Burton Taylor, to great and small acclaim in equal measure. They hope to release their signature fragrance, Jen for Men, in time for Christmas.

Anna Popplewell

The closest thing we have to a celebrity here at Oxford (just look at the fan-made Lego for God’s sake!), Popplewell of Magdalen College gave Cuppers a go in 2007. Obviously she was already the gentle queen of a fictional land, but that can’t be the only reason behind her success since then, can it?

As Lady Macbeth last year she proved to us all that she wasn’t just a gorgeous pair of lips, and despite the occasional mid-term Hollywood press junket, has made the successful transition from star to student. Rather annoyingly, however, she is the only one who can never return to Narnia (if the final film ever gets made) as Aslan stops liking Susan when she starts wearing make-up and liking boys. It’s probably the massively inappropriate Price Caspian love affair which started it.