The Mystery of Empty SpaceAshmolean Museumuntil 16 OctoberThe twentieth century has not been kind to traditional Chinese painting. Its place usurped by the revolutionary ideals of the Communist government, as well as the massive influence of western art, Chinese traditional art has had to transform itself to survive. While few of the great traditionalists themselves survived the brutal cultural revolution, the practice continued and is in the throes of painful resurrection. The Ashmolean’s decision to host this exhibition is not just a tribute to the resilience of the art form, but a demonstration of the open door policy, the thawing of Communist Chinese ironhandedness. Choosing to display the concept of empty space prevalent in Chinese art (and alien in western art) seemed at first a risky undertaking. Some may well view the notion of space as an entity to itself as ridiculous and, as one visitor was heard to mutter, proof of a lack eithe of skill or of imagination. To the casual observer this may well ring true, but such a person fails to understand the fundamental principles of emptiness in Chinese art: like silences during music, space is at its most powerful when a void. When the viewer is asked to reach into the space and define it for himself, that is the point when a piece stops becoming art and takes on the divine. It should be of little surprise that Chinese painting is so fused with Daoism, and the belief that space is the beginning of all things and, as such, more important than the solid forms around it. If one takes these principles into consideration, the exhibition shifts from an examination of artistic technique to something far more profound.The ultimate question remains whether you feel you will be able to overcome inherent western preconceptions of space and form, and be able to appreciate the difficulty of conveying information through nothingness. It would be profitable to look around the exhibition at least twice and draw yourself into the emptiness of the pieces. What makes Chinese art so exciting is that it requires interaction to fully appreciate its nuances. Those unwilling to make this effort should probably steer themselves into the familiar territory of the European art on the first floor.The Ashmolean Museum has once again shown its determination in presenting something little known and, in this instance, underappreciated. Unfortunately, traditional Chinese painting is something that will be a source of either enjoyment or irritation. Be prepared to totally embrace the emptiness or simply walk away.ARCHIVE: 1st week MT 2005

Wallace and Gromit: the Curse of the Were-rabbitCreator Nick Park’s lovable duo hop onto the silver screen this week in their first full-length feature, an amusing clay-clad tale of bunnies and bungling pursuits. Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit opens to find our twosome’s little village fraught with anxiety over the upcoming Giant Vegetable Contest. Residents madly cultivate their precious veggies while living in constant fear of   rodent attack. A recent outbreak of greens-seeking rabbits threaten not only the prize-winning produce but the Contest itself. Even Gromit is concerned. He nurtures a big, beautiful marrow squash, each night tucking it tenderly beneath covers before setting a greenhouse intruder alarm.Wallace and Gromit’s humane pest-removal services are soon called in by the twig-framed, frizz-haired Lady Campanula Tottington (voiced with enchantingly scatter-brained, high-pitched timidity by Helena Bonham Carter). The Anti-Pesto, as they are known, go to work ridding Lady Tottington’s property of dozens of rabbits but soon encounter a pest less easily removed: Victor Quartermaine, Tottington’s swaggering suitor, voiced with perfect snootiness by Ralph Fiennes. Quartermaine, who seeks Lady Tottington’s hand in marriage, senses Wallace and Tottington’s mutual romantic interest and sets out to destroy the Anti-Pesto.He is accompanied in this task by his faithful, fanged, gun-toting pooch, Philip (one of the film’s most amusing characters, with a prissy prance to match the firearm he clenches between great white canines). Philip’s snarlingly comic dealings with Gromit provide some of the best moments in the film.  Watching our wide-eyed Gromit look on while Philip struggles daintily with a feminine change-purse aboard an unpiloted plane is quite enough to satisfy an appetite for wordless humour.In the meantime, Wallace has begun self-experimenting with a new invention: a mind-altering machine intended to erase unwanted thoughts. Using the device to link his own brain to those of captured rabbits, Wallace harnesses lunar power to transmit his brain waves to the carrot-loving bunnies, feeding them currents of anti-veg propaganda. Quel surpris, the experiment goes horribly awry, leaving Wallace and a single rabbit comically affected, their minds strangely fused.The once-bubbly village is suddenly frozen by fear.  The appearance of a monstrous Were-Rabbit has thrown the sacred Contest into true danger.  In the midst of this curfuffle, Wallace and Gromit’s Anti-Pesto are commissioned to capture the beast, but find their humane removal tactics questioned when they fail to rid the village of its vegetable-demolishing fiend. Quartermaine is called in to exterminate the creature and so begins a trigger-happy safari towards  glory and uproarious fun.The adaptation of the Wallace and Gromit stories to full-blown feature-length status remains somewhat strained, as the characters have only previously appeared in film shorts, memorable and wildly imaginative though they were.  At times the action, though playful, feels a bit like a merry-go-round: amusing but repetitive. Certain sequences are significantly tedious, in view of the ninety-four minute running time. Regardless, Wallace and Gromit’s banter is warmly consistent with their previous shorts. Wallace comfortably inhabits his fromage-adoring character, and Gromit does not disappoint those fans wishing to see the Charlie Chaplin-esque silent comic take up his knitting needles in true wifely fashion.On the whole, Park and fellow director Steve Box deliver a light and lively adventure, punctuated by several moments of absolute hilarity.  Puns and parodies bounce throughout the film, tucked away in shop windows and newspaper headings, and emerging out of toothy, smiling clay mouths. Another hidden delight is the innuendo concealed behind the pretext of the vegetable competition. “The beast!” a yokel cries at one point, “he’s ravaged my wife’s giant melons!” The chuckles of the film are to be found in these details: self-conscious, witty, and as yummy as Wallace’s trademark stinking bishop cheese. All this makes Wallace and Gromit as eccentrically English a cinematic experience as you’re likely to encounter for time to come.ARCHIVE: 1st week MT 2005

Kinky BootsFor all the complaints about the semi-ghettoisation of British cinema, it often appears closer to its American mainstream counterparts, using the same emotional tricks and feel-good conventions. Julian Jarrold’s Kinky Boots is no exception, composed of generic set pieces and vaguely emotive pathos; a prime example of both the genre’s strengths and its failings.The premise of the film is vaguely quirky, about a failing shoe factory, transvestites, and a conflict between Northern sensibilities and metrosexual mores. Within this, there are the sketchy vestiges of social commentary, and the film even manages to inject a certain amount of tart humour. With a classical narrative ploy of the returning son, and a voyage of re-discovery both for hero and for community, the feel-good atmosphere that pervades the film is nothing we haven’t seen before. It’s practically made for Channel 4, in spirit if not in practice, and will most likely be more than moderately commercially and critically successful.Yet viewed objectively it looks calculated, a compilation of moribund motifs and touchstones from other movies. Its muted panoramas of a failing industrial Northern community is inferior to works such as 1996’s Brassed Off. Even The Full Monty, to which it must be inevitably compared, bettered its attempts at drawing analogies between masculine insecurity and declines in communities. Ironically, Kinky Boots’s greatest weakness is that when it comes to its central issue, its rather too successful for its own dramatic good. By showing us the complications of being true to oneself in a world which has abandoned its certainties in favour of style and transience, it only shows up the complete lack of core to the movie itself, disguised behind a thin layer of cliché.In its attempts to appear altogether liberal and sensitive in its sensibilities, Kinky Boots inevitably limits both its comic potential and the lucidity of its message. The film proclaims that the problem lies not with the individual, but with the interpretation of the social group, and then glorifies the mildly rebellious aims and effects of gender blurring. One character in especial, Lola/Simon, forms the focus for this discussion of gender, but Jarrold doesn’t have the conviction to address the reasons, save for a faintly charming Billy Elliot style flashback sequence. The film as it is cannot tackle these serious questions while still maintaining a primarily comedic tone; as a result, it fails to do either properly and is torn apart by its own paradoxes.The film also soft-peddles, surprisingly, on issues of sexuality. Lola/Simon might be torn, the film suggests discreetly, between a tensely flirtatious friendship with his boss Joel and a faintly flickering thing for his boss’s Northern Lass love interest, but it all ends in typical romance, with Lola left bullish but alone on stage, replete with heels and no hang-ups. Like another character, Chiwetel, when faced with real neurosis the film prefers to stave it off through glitzy set pieces and hollow music numbers.Kinky Boots proudly acknowledges its “based on a true story” origins. This doesn‘t, however, preclude its use of several horribly “quirky” stock-types, such as the eccentric but curiously unshock-able old  landlady. The acting is solid all-round, from both principals and supporting cast, and the cinematography is competent but uninspiring. In the end, though, there is nothing to set this film apart from the chain of look-alikes that have preceeded it in the British film industry.Our nation as it portrayed in its movies seems to be no more than a stockpile of stereotypes and platitudes. From the floppy-haired foppishness of Hugh Grant, to the feisty Northern strippers of The Full Monty, and now with more clichéd Brits to add to the list in Kinky Boots, we cannot seem to muster the courage to make a mainstream film that breaks free from these tired comic motifs. What we need in Britain is not a stiff upper lip, but a film industry with real imagination.ARCHIVE: 1st week MT 2005

Theatre criticism, unsurprisingly, offends pretty much everyone involved. The journalist who dares hint at any form of negative opinion is condemned for being narrow-minded and unjust, and the threat of appearing biased looms like a doom-laden thundercloud over any poor university student who fancies themselves as a bit of a Sheridan Morley. If your best friend has a sister at Durham whose tutor’s niece got into Balliol and is playing Ophelia in the Hamlet you’ve reviewed, you cannot commend her performance. Similarly, if it’s common knowledge that you and your college dad don’t get on, you cannot point out that his Oedipus had an unfortunate stutter without the danger of being vilified for a lack of objectivity.It is still worse if you yourself have drunk from the cup of ‘thesp’. In this situation, you may blithely agree to review an upcoming production only to find, upon arrival at the press preview, that it’s being put on by a director you’ve previously worked with, and features a cast of friends, all of whom see you every evening in the thesps’ gathering ground, the Far from the Madding Crowd pub. What if you don’t like it? Will you ever get a good role in Oxford drama again, if you say that these people couldn’t act their way out of a gold-sequinned ethno-rah handbag with a copy of Stanislavski ostentatiously poking out of it?The answer seems clear: don’t review plays. It’s universally acknowledged to be a complete waste of both the performers’ and the journalists’ time. No half-hour press preview can give you a proper sense of what the finished production will be, when it is put on in an uninspiringly bare lecture room in Oriel by a stressed cast who are clad, not in their costumes (which the RSC wardrobe department won’t lend out until show week), but completely in black. Not only will you offend everyone from the director to the marketing manager with your lukewarm critique of their efforts, you won’t even have got it right, since the whole play will have exploded in the final week of rehearsals with the arrival of the set, costumes, sound and lighting, into a bearable and even enjoyable show. But someone has to write these reviews, otherwise no student theatre-goer will know whether the week’s dramatic offerings are worth seeing or not, right?The problem that arises from the reviewing concept is that both the reviewers themselves and the productions they review really seem to believe in the power of theatre criticism to make or break a show. Thesps who have been critically savaged in the student press are treated almost as war-victims by their thesp colleagues. Not to mention the critics who have been ostracised for being too critical of student drama, or for showing bias towards productions with which they have a personal connection.Reviews, though, mean very little, if we’re being honest. Of course, if an aspiring Emma Thompson receives glowing praise from Cherwell, it will be a quote they exploit on their theatrical CVs for years to come. But who really takes any notice of what we reviewers actually say? We might as well tell people to deep fry their own grandmother, for all the influence we have upon our readers’ decisions. So, student directors, turn to the example of Chekhov for comfort when your play has been torn apart by an Oxford English student with an attitude: his 1895 production of The Seagull was so badly received that he left the auditorium halfway through in shame. And I believe he survived the temporary setback.ARCHIVE: 1st week MT 2005

Hammer and Tongue, 4 October, The Zodiac: Eddie Izzard told me I should do stand-up”, says Steve Larkin, an Oxford-based performance poet and the first act at the monthly poetry slam held at The Zodiac. Larkin is the first to acknowledge strong links between his brand of spoken word poetry and stand-up: starting his set with what he announces as “a pan-dimensional apocalyptic love-at-first-sight poem”, which relates the efforts of a Greenpeace fundraiser to simultaneously sign up and seduce a woman on the street. By the end of the poem the woman’s rejection of the poet has been comically magnified into a wholesale rejection of ethical concerns in general.The tone of Larkin’s pieces modulates between acerbic and wry. Though his first piece ends with a rueful smile and a tone of ironic self-mockery, often the punch is not pulled. As his set continues, Steve’s acid wit goes to work on subjects ranging from political activism to the contemporary media, building to a frenzied climax as he lambastes women’s magazines: “It’s all about the fat, and sex; and fat, and sex; the fat sex, the fat sex,” he raps, voice sharp with disgust.The Oxford scene has a strong sense of political and social identity and has become something of a centre for performance poetry. Hammer and Tongue was originally set up by two Green activists, The B52 Two, and though the constituted aims of the night are emphatically all-inclusive, with its intention to provide a platform regardless of age, gender, sex, political or religious belief (“I wonder if that’s illegal now?” Steve muses), there is a strongly left wing, anti-capitalist feel to much of the poetry performed there. This is part of its appeal, Steve claims. “It’s not just throwaway pop art,” he remarks. “People go away from the event having been educated or enlightened, having been annoyed by something, challenged by somebody’s views, or inspired.”As Steve warms up, his gestures become increasingly emphatic. Words are manipulated deftly, stretching and twisting, speeding and slowing to create a powerful and absorbing rhythm which engages the audience physically as well as intellectually. Its musical appeal and easy accessibility, the closeness to hip-hop and rap, is part of the power of performance poetry. In contrast to the more staid delivery you might find elsewhere in Oxford, performances, and especially slams, are interactive on a level not even theatre has approached since the agit-prop performances of the 1970s. At a slam, “when you’re listening, you’re actively listening”, Steve comments. “When you’re a judge…or you’re next to a judge, or you’re encouraged by the compere to heckle and tell the judge exactly what you think of the score they’ve given, you’re more alert.”Communication is what poetry is about, after all. Though slam poetry may not be able to support the same level of complexity as page poetry, the percussive force of the spoken word affects its listeners powerfully. All this is nothing new. Poetry has a strong tradition of being not only political but potent: you find it everywhere, Steve says. Only last week he was performing at an event in which his own performance pieces were mixed in with traditional poetry such as Coleridge’s Eolian Harp. “I’m sure that if Coleridge and Shelley and Byron were alive today they’d be going to Hammer & Tongue”, Steve affirms.It’s a scary business nonetheless. Though Steve seems at home moving among the crowd, the pressure is on to deliver. With the normal barriers broken down the poet must be entertaining and relevant all at once, winning the audience over with his words alone. With no dramatic ‘persona’ to hide behind it can get intensely personal: hence perhaps the need for a healthy dose of comedy to lighten the load.Performance poetry is still a fledgling artform here, but its rise is gaining momentum: the first BBC slam was broadcast last October. Steve himself has grand plans to expand north, so catch him while he’s still in town.ARCHIVE: 1st week MT 2005

Sexual Perversity in Chicago, 18 to 22 October, Burton Theatre: Mamet doesn’t do unusual. This is normality sped up, with young people loathing each other, needing each other, fucking each other. The only really perverse aspect of this show is its understated quality, a too rare demonstration that student drama can excite, not simply depress. This isn’t perfect stuff, but it is tight. It also contains great sunglasses. Bernie (Michael Lesslie) and Dannie (Nick Bishop) are ordinary guys who like to talk about girls and sex. Sometimes they meet girls, and occasionally they have sex. It is a study of territoriality on the smallest of patches. Dannie’s affair with Deborah (Charlotte Cox) lends him a quiet authority that soon undercuts the brashness of his buddy’s bragging. A surprising world of human empathy is briefly uncovered, along with the superficiality and hypersensitivity of macho bravado. There are times in this production when Mamet’s notoriously rhythmical dialogue sings. Lesslie, in particular, has an ear for Mamet-speak: he coaxes his lines, but coaxes at pace, and wrenches you open with the simplest of words. Upon introduction, Deborah asks Bernie what compliments Dannie has paid her. “All the usual things,” comes the reply. This is not a production afraid to extrapolate complexity. Lesslie exploits Bernie’s language, aggressively deploying jargon and trivia in everyday conversation to assert authority over his pal. Director Sarah Branthwaite has emphasised human frailty and jealousy: friendship is clung to at the expense of friend, and mutual understanding is rare. Bernie and Joan (Charlie Covell) undermine their friends’ relationship, an affair finally reduced to a barrage of anatomical expletives. Things could have been pushed further: perhaps they will, by second week. The Bernie/Dannie relationship seems occasionally oversimplified. The early scenes offer no answer as to why Dannie tolerates his friend’s bravado; hanging onto Bernie’s every word while the latter holds forth about his latest conquest. In fairness, that episode is possibly the greatest depiction of kinky sex and pyromania ever written, but nonetheless there does not seem to be much shared history, or at least much mutuality in their friendship. This is a shame, as the studied development of the relationship later in the play is one of this production’s highlights. Deborah’s presence, whether physical or actual, provokes anxiety and suspicion in both men as they renegotiate their friendship. Their spiritual reunion in the closing scene, babe-spotting at the beach, presents male bonding at its embarrassing finest. Mamet has been criticised as a writer of men only, and the play does sometimes feel like a two-hander with women added on. Nevertheless both Cox and Covell are strong and find substance in possibly tricky material. In bed, Deborah and Dannie discover an intimacy that makes the later disintegration of their relationship bathetic and awful. It also provides an informative contrast to Joan and Bernie’s mutual incomprehension during the latter’s slack, violent attempt at a pick-up. This is undoubtedly a play that places the pithy one-liner above narrative complexity, but this company has squeezed Mamet for almost everything he has got. Productions like this show what the BT is capable of: not just freshers taking part in a first and wobbly theatrical outing, but also plays that move and enthuse, and remind us of why we go to the theatre.ARCHIVE: 1st week MT 2005

Boston Marriage, 18 to 22 October, Burton Taylor: As a playwright noted for his modern masculine writing, Edward Mamet changes direction in Boston Marriage with a tale of a turn of the century lesbian relationship from across the pond. Don’t expect countless explicit scenes of woman-on-woman passion though, because apart from a final steamy clinch, this is almost strictly an affair of sharp-tongued dialogue characterized by tense and witty interactions.Anna and Claire are two women living together, whose connection is put under pressure during a number of revealing exchanges, exposing the complicated nature of an undefined and ambiguous relationship. Both clearly have different expectations of their domestic arrangement, which means that when Claire discloses an association with a younger girl, the balance is tipped, as each grapples to regain control over the situation.Set solely in the front room of their house, the claustrophobic space contrasts dramatically with the openness with which the two women talk, as a mixture of thoughtful and utterly brutal discussion provides an honest commentary to their state of affairs. The waves of tension are evident, and though they are something which is recognizable in many relationships, here the setting gives them a different resonance. Director Tom Littler has deliberately manipulated and stylised the rhythms within the play, lending the piece a rather unnatural overall feeling, and while this can be momentarily distracting, it pleasingly mirrors the contrived nature of the scene itself. It actually comes a relief when the maid (Lily Sykes) provides some instances of obvious humour, during which the audience can relax before returning to the friction of the bickering couple.  Mamet’s script is undeniably compelling. The speech is generally old-fashioned, but it is punctuated with unanticipated modern interjections which break up the rapid and unabating conversation. Caroline Dyott and Victoria Ross both put in fine performances, capturing the essence of a relationship in crisis. Although he has few obstacles to overcome, given the script and the performances, Littler has acquitted himself well.ARCHIVE: 1st week MT 2005