It’s the ultimate dilemma for the indecisive: two women,
attractive, intelligent, devoted. One’s your wife, the
other’s your mistress, but really there is little to choose
between them. Adultery is a common theme, but there’s a
peculiar openness about this love-triangle that makes it even
more complicated. Everyone knows about everyone else, and consequently spends
their time trying to convince themselves, and each other, to
change. The women are desperately trying to believe he’ll
leave her, the man that one of them will leave him – or at
least just leave him alone. It’s difficult to care much about the hapless Mickey, who
seems more the pathetic victim of female competition than a
scheming adulterer, while Linda is the most frustrating. As it
becomes obvious that Mickey prefers the feisty Jenine, we really
want to tell her to send him packing, to get a new man and a
haircut. But you can’t help but feel sorry for the woman who
has clearly lost all self-respect, unashamedly begging her
husband not to leave. Yet by the end of the play it still hasn’t happened. The
women are still engaging in bitchy, jealous dialogue, inevitably
reaching stalemate with their apathetic lover who refuses to
express a preference either way. The production carries off the tension and complexity of the
situation quite successfully, and there is some impressive acting
from the lead actors, particularly Hannah Glickstein as the sexy,
tormented Jenine. However, it is an uncomfortable play to sit
through, particularly towards the end, and some of the cast seem
to struggle with Motton’s progressively black humour. One of
the final scenes raises a decidedly queasy smile as the couple
stumble upon the mistress sitting by a lake, literally
‘washing her heart’. AKM’s is an original, if patchy production, which is
funny enough not to fall apart under its own awkwardness.ARCHIVE: 5th week TT 2004 

Twelfth Night
Oriel Gardens Twelve months ago, theatregoers were denied the delights of
Oriel quad’s annual allotment of classic drama when
Marlowe’s Edward II was shelved at the eleventh hour. But,
after a six-year moratorium on the Bard, director James
Methven’s return to Shakespeare more than makes up for last
year’s cancellation with an energetic, sexy and affecting
take on the tale of Illyrian romance. As Methven modestly notes,
“This production will be exuberant and a celebration of love
and reconciliation”. In the opening scene, we see Orsino (the old master Chip Horne
endearingly marking his departure from University drama)
enraptured by lonely passion for Olivia, dissolving into
transports of orgasmic ecstasy, thereby striking the keynote for
the venture’s commitment to sensuality. On hearing the nifty
barbershop rendition of “Singing in the Rain”, we know
we’re in for something slightly unconventional, a notion
reinforced by the appearance of eunuchs, kilts and a shotgun.
Look out too for the director’s own bearded and bedraggled
performance as the sea-captain. A cast that is, by Oxford standards, stellar, has been given
freedom to explore the individual humours of its characters,
happily resulting in a wholesome variegation of jest, not a
mélange of contradictory comic pursuits. The many recognisable
faces operate brilliantly in isolation, better in ensemble. Organic unity is firmly secured by both Ruth Weyman’s
wittily thought-out costuming and the garden setting in which the
wings, stage, actors and audience are all contained throughout.
This externalisation removes all sense of the latent, and, by
extension, the disturbing, licensing the audience to observe this
play’s gaiety and poignancies without being perpetually wary
of killjoy provisos. There is nothing to fear here. The tone is light, but not Shakespeare-lite: no compromise is
made on the speaking of the verse; the application of modern
directorial techniques maximises the potential in every word and
no utterance is left unilluminated. Nao Hudson (Viola) is diminutive and forthright, but moving
where the poetry demands; Elisabeth Gray’s superlative
Olivia is as monumental in mourning as she is later hilariously
enfeebled by desire. A self-righteous, jittery Malvolio, Gethin
Anthony’s is an astonishing piece of sustained
characterisation, blending puritanical stiffness with a pathetic
vulnerability, while Heman Ojha’s clowning is more Kirov
than Krusty, a nimble, harmonica- playing gymnast as Feste. This is broad comedy par excellence, none broader than the
gargantuan Chris Milsom (Sir Toby Belch), whose guffawing ability
would put that arch-bellower, Brian Blessed, to shame. However, a
revel without a cause it is not, and we are constantly and warmly
reminded of the ambition to expose the humane and sincere in both
lovers and loving. Methven’s Twelfth Nightis simply
dazzling.ARCHIVE: 5th week TT 2004 

Astronomical occurrences have always held a particular
fascination for humanity. One such example is the Transit of
Venus, when the planet can be seen to move across the sun. In
celebration of the first transit to occur in 122 years, which
coincides with opening night, the play seeks to examine the
scientific frenzy caused by the previous transit in 1874 as well
as the way in which it captured the popular imagination. The play itself is an interesting piece of abstract theatre.
It does not have a distinct plot but is created piecemeal from a
variety of first hand accounts about the transit, from newspaper
articles and scientific journals and concluding with a poem taken
from an 1874 issue of Punch. The play shows us the whole gamut of emotions that accompanied
the event, from the initial sense of opportunism and scientific
rivalry to feelings of triumphalism, recrimination and acrimony
afterwards. The production is especially skilled at the stylistic effects
of contrasting these seemingly overwrought accounts with a bare,
mechanical rendering of them on stage. In one scene, the actors
carry out automaton- like movements accompanied by the steady
beat of a metronome effectively bringing out the mechanical
exactitude of the scientific endeavour. Another interesting scene
has the cast repeating phrases from newspapers such as
‘fatal difficulty’, ‘twelve years of error’
in a canon effect, eventually descending into a monotonous
cacophony of voices. As conceptual theatre goes, it is an intriguing and well
thought out production.ARCHIVE: 5th week TT 2004 

The Topsy-Turvy World of Gilbert and Sullivan is a cheerily
nostalgic piece, following the career of the legendary composing
duo through the Nineteenth Century interspersed with songs from
their repertoire. This new script, commissioned by the
university’s Gilbert and Sullivan Society, manages to
capture a Wildean decadence and comical style that gives the
production an authentic late-Victorian air. Musically, the
selection of songs (such as ‘I’m Called Little
Buttercup’) is excellently performed, with soloist Jordan
Bell standing out as a real aural treat. There is, however, a danger of the high quality of the music
overshadowing the script. That is not to condemn the script
itself. It’s a pleasantly light-hearted affair that’s
guaranteed to raise a laugh. The only problem is its occasional disjointed feeling, as its
attempt to tell the story of Gilbert and Sullivan can lapse into
more of a narrated stage documentary than anything else, in which
the music is nothing more than an interesting interlude. This
lack of cohesion can leave the audience feeling unsure of where
exactly they have reached in the plot, which undermines the whole
point of the production telling a biographical story. Nevertheless, this play certainly has its high-quality
moments. The scene in which Arthur Sullivan (Simon Tavener)
attempts to educate a brash American lady (Anna Larkin) on the
nuances of English music and the Aesthetic Movement is
particularly amusing. It’s also a production that is
extremely attractive to look at, with lavish period costumes and
scenery, and a vast array of dancers and chorus singers. The Topsy-Turvy World of Gilbert and Sullivan is certainly a
production that is worth seeing. As a play, it is a good showcase
for frivolous comedy and beautiful settings. As a musical, it
succeeds on the strength of its performers and the undoubted
popularity of the operas that it is derived from.ARCHIVE: 5th week TT 2004 

Roland Emmerich, the director of The Day After Tomorrow,
doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to making a political
statement. The most iconic scene in his earlier hit, Independence
Day, involved the White House and its occupants being obliterated
by a UFO. This time round, he’s devoted an entire movie to
condemning the Bush administration and, in particular, their
laissez-faire attitude to environmental issues. In The Day After Tomorrow’s world, the main culprit is
the US Vice-President who (as well as happening to bear more than
a passing resemblance to a certain Dick Cheney) stubbornly
ignores the warnings of hot-shot climatologist Jack Hall (Dennis
Quaid) that global warming is spiralling out of control and
threatening to trigger a new ice age. As he tells Jack, in words
which couldn’t be more clearly linked to the Kyoto
agreement, “Our economy is every bit as fragile as the
environment”. So, right on cue, the world’s weather begins to go
haywire. Hailstones the size of footballs batter Japan, birds
migrate south in their millions and the oceans everywhere begin
to rise ominously. As an exercise in building suspense, this
first hour is masterful as Emmerich creates a powerful sense of
impending apocalypse. A little later, when catastrophe really
kicks in, it’s dazzlingly done but all too brief. In truly
spectacular scenes, LA is devastated by eerily convincing monster
tornados and a 100ft tsunami drowns New York in seconds. For some unfortunate reason, though, this halfway point marks
the film’s dramatic peak and it settles down into a state of
near inertia once the new ice age descends. The remainder focuses
on Jack’s efforts to trek cross-country through the
blizzards to save his estranged son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal),
who’s trapped in ice-bound Manhattan. The biggest flaw of
all is the casting of Dennis Quaid. Usually fairly watchable, he
here exudes about as much screen charisma as Richard Whitely in
an average episode of Countdown. Gyllenhaal’s presence is
even more inexplicable. Reprising the brooding adolescent angst
that made his name in Donnie Darko, his talent is wasted in
cumbersome dialogue. The Day After Tomorrow does deserve some credit for attempting
to raise awareness to an urgent environmental issue but, for all
its Bush-bashing and anger at US insularity, it doesn’t
quite ring true as a protest. You can’t shake the impression
that it’s just a disaster movie which stumbled across a
politically relevant central theme, since Emmerich’s true
priority clearly lies in his cutting-edge CGI. In the end, for
all its delusions of grandeur, The Day After Tomorrow proves to
be just another forgettable summer blockbuster. The day after you
see it, you wont remember a thing.ARCHIVE: 5th week TT 2004 

I usually have to steel myself for watching a Kim Ki-Duk film.
Ki- Duk has made a name in Korea as an uncompromising director:
his films are brutal, and frequently take as their protagonists
criminals and prostitutes, the marginal and the selfharming.
Tracing the education of a young monk from childhood to old age,
each episode illustrated by a different season, Spring, Summer,
Autumn, Winter… and Springmight seem at first glance to be
an anomaly in his oeuvre. But beyond its poetic composition and
references to Buddhist mysticism, it deals with the same
alienated and marginal characters struggling to attain some kind
of peace. The setting is a floating Buddhist monastery in the middle of
a remote lake in present-day Korea. In the film’s first
chapter, an elderly monk educates a small boy, whom he teaches to
treat the natural world with respect. The boy torments a fish, a
frog and a snake by tying heavy stones to them, and the old monk
does the same thing to the child, warning him that he will always
carry such a burden in his heart. When we next see the boy, he is
an adolescent, in love with a sick girl brought to the temple to
be cured. The monk cautions him that lust turns into the desire
to possess which in turn leads to murder. The boy ignores the
advice and goes out into the world. He returns to the monastery
at later points in his life, first in Autumn and the in Winter,
and on each visit we see the elder man’s prophesies borne
out, the inter-rim incidents linking Spring, Summer… to the
themes of Ki-Duk’s earlier works. By the time we return to
the Spring, the man himself is now an old monk, living in the
monastery, raising a child as he himself was raised. The film is characterised by the fine balance between
truncated anecdotes and a nuanced sense of time passing.
Incidents gather resonance between episodes, so that the monks
collect leaves in the first episode for a medicine that we see in
the second. In the small monastery, the painted wood, simple
alter and bird-shaped wind chimes accrue a poignant familiarity
over the decades of the narrative. Although not as gut-wrenching as some of Ki-Duk’s
previous works, the film is certainly as melancholy. The
director’s real divergence from his usual path is in the
hope with which he imbues the film. It’s a very rare thing
indeed to come out of a cinema floating on a cloud of goodwill,
and an ever rarer one to come out of Kim Ki-Duk film in such a
state. But Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Springseems to
be able to transfer some of the calm and inner peace of the
Buddhist faith on which it meditates, even as far as Jericho.ARCHIVE: 5th week TT 2004 

Avril Lavigne
Under My Skin
Out Now Avril Lavigne is a strikingly attractive woman. Her huge dark
eyes, lank hair and ripped jeans make her the perfect
‘alternative’ preteen crush. She is so attractive, in
fact, that she is positively diverting. Which is more than can be
said of her music. For those with extremely short memories, Radio 2 picked up her
debut single ‘Complicated’ back in 2002 and unwittingly
created a phenomenon. Fourteen million copies of her first album
Let’s Go later, and she returns with her sophomore effort,
Under My Skin. Lavigne is now at the same crossroads faced by
artists like Alanis Morissette, who sold a similarly staggering
number of her debut Jagged Little Pill. Her follow-up Supposedly
Former Infatuation Junkie took a risk in exploring a less
commercial sound. Lavigne has taken no such a gamble. Under My Skin feels distinctly like a retread of Let’s
Go. There is the merest hint of a heavier direction thanks to the
crunching guitars on ‘I Always Get What I Want’ and
‘Freak Out’. Production duo ‘The Matrix’ have
been replaced after a wrangle over song-crediting by Chantal
Kreviazuk, most recognizable for songs featured on Dawson’s
Creek. Whilst the guitar amps have been turned up, lyrically Lavigne
is back in the same safe territory – the traumas of being a
teenager. First single and album highlight ‘Don’t Tell
Me’ describes the perils of an oversexed boyfriend and is
probably a reference to Lavigne’s vow of chastity.
‘Forgotten’ describes the end of a messy relationship,
and ‘Fall to Pieces’ tells of becoming emotionally
dependent on someone else. It’s as generic and as universal
as any record label executive could want. Lavigne has a writing credit on every song, but this is no
guarantee of quality. ‘Slipped Away’, dedicated to her
dead grandfather, does her no favours, (“I miss you/I miss
you so bad/I don’t forget you/Oh it’s so sad”).
Poetry it ain’t. Lavigne is a talented singer , but the
overall impression is of a pretty face acting as a front for the
boardroom, targeting a specific demographic. There is nothing
that suggests Under My Skin won’t shift another few million
CDs to a misunderstood youth. The irony is that the record
companies understand them enough to produce albums perfectly
targeted to prise away their pocket money.ARCHIVE: 5th week TT 2004 

Contrary to understandable but misguided popular belief, PJ
Harvey does not belong in the waify indie chick-rocker
department. Her second of two sold-out shows at the Zodiac
demonstrated that she is straight-ahead hardcore. Unlike other alternative female acts that are gaining fans and
press attention, PJ Harvey doesn’t do onstage mind games or
hysteria; with her it’s all professionalism and power.
Thursday’s performance was an elegant example of lo-fi
purity. The band, as revealingly minimal yet unyieldingly tight as
Harvey’s yellow tube-tee dress, maximized the Zodiac’s
primitive overkill sound system with forceful, stripped,
percussion- driven renditions of old favorites, along with newer
songs. Harvey’s unique vocals ran their gamut from the
controlled schizophrenia of ‘Taut’ to the lovely,
lyrical energy of ‘Good Fortune’. If this show is any indication, Harvey’s sixth studio
release, Uh Huh Her, will be more of a return to her earlier work
than the lush production of Stories. ‘Who The Fuck’ and
‘Uh Huh Her’ showcase Harvey’s selfdeprecating
angry freak-outs; ‘Shame’ and ‘You Come
Through’ (played during the second encore) recall the dark
lo-fi mastery of earlier albums while achieving the accessibility
of Stories. The two encores may have been the highlights of the show. The
building persistence of the percussion on ‘A Perfect Day
Elise’ and ‘To Bring You My Love’ empowered two of
Harvey’s most ethereal and wrenching songs, respectively, to
new, hardhitting heights of catharsis. And, we got to see the
dress again.ARCHIVE: 5th week TT 2004 

Nothing beats the good old days of 1977. How the 17-year-olds
managed to come up with classic, catchy rock is anyone’s
guess. Pity they blew it. Ash’s follow-up to their pop album
Free All Angels is certainly truer to their old rock roots.
Classic, scandalously repetitive lyrics remain, with catchy,
cheap rhyming choruses in full sway. Tim’s voice is still as recognisable as ever, and having
enjoyed the American pure rock influences they experienced on
their ‘Free All Angels Tour’, they teamed up with the
former Foo Fighters producer to create this heavier album. Opening with the Metallica-esque ‘Meltdown’, they
move seamlessly into ‘Orpheus’, the recent single, this
was exactly the rock vibe Ash needed to perform. Feisty drumming,
catchy melodies and the strong bass that runs through into
‘Evil Eye’ reveal Ash’s new, but nostalgic,
direction. They have also, re-discovered their ability to mix
rock with pure unashamed beauty. ‘Starcrossed’ is a
classic Ash track with a strong chorus reminiscent of Free All
Angels, with the youthful exuberance of 1977. This leads onto the
darker ‘Renegrade Cavalcade’ and ends with the mournful
tone of ‘Vampire Love’. Ash have learnt from their starry pre-“Nu-Clear
Sounds” sound. 1977 was pivotal, whilst Free All
Angels’ classic pop showed Ash selling their souls, in order
to have something worth fighting for. Meltdown sees another
change. They have created their own battle trying not to blow it.
Ash have returned to their rock roots, but not as far back as
their 1977days – maybe only 1987?ARCHIVE: 5th week TT 2004