PHILIP WOMACK left Oriel last summer. He is now doing a law conversion course in London. Who would have thought that lawyers could be such fun. “The EU was set up to prevent Europeans killing each other. Now they bore each other to death over interminable treaties,” is the first line of my first presentation. The mother of three dutifully writes down the sentence then bursts into antipodean guffaws. My tutor gets up to congratulate me and reveals that he is a scout for the toppest of top city firms and wants me to start tomorrow on a salary of £80,0000. I know that none of them are listening. I have not been listening to those that came before me to read out what they had copied out from the manual. In fact, I have to admit to finishing the crossword during a particularly dull speech from a girl in my group, which isn’t very group-bondy at all, which is what this rather silly exercise has been trying to achieve. The exercise being: read pp 1-2 of your manuals and do a presentation on them. Not difficult, you would have thought. But we have to do this IN A GROUP. So we can get all bondy and exchange intimate childhood memories and talk about that funny time when you were drunk and did that funny thing with the trolley and gosh didn’t you laugh when the policeman told you off for being slightly too loud outside an old people’s home. My group of four bonded like this: “Which paragraph do you want to do?” “The first one.” “OK.” “See you tomorrow.” If they want us to bond they must give us drink, damn them. Anyway, the result is we all leave the tute despondent, and no one has even noticed that I made lots of very funny jokes about Latvians not being able to join the EU because of hygiene reasons. “Let’s go to Starbucks,” says someone. “Huh,” say I. “There’s a perfectly decent pub down the road.” We troop down in that way that freshers do, where you’re trying to sort out who you actually want to be friends with without leaving out the boring ones at the back. Two drinks later the silly story competition starts. People did notice my joke about the Irish blocking treaties because they couldn’t remember having signed them because they were drunk, and we are bonding. I take it back. Lawyers are fun.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

Edinburgh Festival Review Very few other cities outside London can claim, as Oxford can, to have had eleven shows at Edinburgh this year. But more impressive than the actual number was the incredible diversity and novelty of the shows – only three of the productions worked from a bought script. The remainder included a literary adaptation, a devised fairy tale for children, a comedy sketch show and three completely new plays. The standard of production and acting was as varied as the pieces themselves. Lolita at C venues, featuring Katherine Flaherty in a poignant portrayal of the title role, was undoubtedly the most commercial offering. Flaherty managed to look no older than twelve and successfully captured the gentleness that is Lolita. The production’s fatal flaw was that the protagonist paedophile Humbert (Thom Glover) was no longer the monstrously middle-aged corrupter, with whom we unwillingly empathise, but a boy whose talent for acting could not negate the fact that he is merely nineteen, and looked it. By omitting huge chunks of the book we were relunctantly subjected to The Reduced Lolita, which collapsed spectacularly under the last few scenes of intense emotional crisis. Suddenly the audience was left watching a bunch of students performing a cheap copy of a masterpiece. In contrast James Copp, Hannah Madsen and their cast produced a very sweet version of the fairytale, The White Slipper. A hugely fun and imaginative show, it clearly appealed as much to kids as to their parents. Unfortunately such generosity cannot be extended to The Fine Art of Falling to Pieces, a thoroughly affected and formless piece of theatre. The semi-autobiographical script about dull student selfobsession totally shot itself in the foot by committing the very crime it set out to examine. And yet there remains some hope for student new writing. The Problem with the Seventh Year at the Underbelly was by far the best of the 30-odd shows I saw at this year’s Fringe. The writer, Nicholas Pierpan, tells the story of a boxer also training to be a medical student. Themes of sensitive but violent masculinity prevail, mixed with a raw edge reminiscent of Scorcese. Watch out for Pierpan, he promises great things. Suffering from serious obscurity is the Oxford Revue, who have spent the last year in the hands of the bizarre James Harris. The Edinburgh show was no funnier than the Oxford Playhouse production in May, where members of the audience were seen sneaking out every time the lights dimmed. Difficult ideas were poorly executed by a troupe of unfunny performers. This year’s Revue have now failed at four different venues, and nobody is laughing. We are in dire need of a new bunch to stop the damage being done to the Revue’s long-earned reputation. Broadway tastes were also catered for. A Chorus Line had to contend with some inferior acting and dodgy ensemble singing, but did succeed in producing an enjoyable show. Both Sarah Rajaswaran and Kari Moffatt are two to follow – their voices both divine. Frankly, Kept, was a test of endurance. A ridiculous set and shaky cast prevented this strange production from being anything but a disaster. Bouncers, which did well in Oxford earlier this year was funny, but by no means outstanding. And finally, Attempts on Her Life at the Underbelly was a superb piece by a group consisting mainly of recent Oxford graduates. It was an extraordinarily fresh, talented and visceral performance tackling issues of psychosis that represented a pinnacle to which all student drama should aspire.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

Lolita Tuesday – Saturday OFS After a turbulent run at this summer’s Edinburgh Fringe, Aidan Elliott will attempt to reincarnate his fiery stage adaptation of Nabokov’s novel in the Old Fire Station. Many of the Edinburgh cast are replaced for the Oxford shows, including Thom Glover as Lolita’s older man, Humbert. Significantly, however, Katherine Flaherty remains in the title role. Her performance alone justifies this rerun. From the moment she minces on to the stage, she grabs the audience’s attention with a gentle, playful caress. She is perfectly cast; slim, tiny, but most of all, child-like. Her mannerisms are painstakingly observed, sometimes so realistic that she demands attention to an embarrassing degree. Yet the dynamic between her and Humbert can be somewhat lacking; their relationship at times too crude, too comical to seem genuine. Nevertheless, the script based on Nabokov’s 1961 screenplay is measured and elusive. Despite the notoriety of the plot, Elliott still manages to make the consummation of Lolita and Humbert’s love a surprise. The coupling scene is treated with subtle poise; the darkened stage dulls the jarring impropriety of the nymphet astride the middleaged man, lending it a sensitivity that was missing in other scenes. Whilst the loss of Glover can be overcome, it will be a shame not to see again Basher Savage as the enigmatically devious Quilty. His difficult monologues were brilliantly handled; his timing of the unspoken replies eked out the sense from the silence. The Edinburgh critics applauded Elliott’s adherence to Nabokov’s narrative technique, placing the audience under the auspices of Humbert’s psychologist. Yet as the play’s sordid reality is unravelled, the production begins to lose its credo; Humbert’s mind is obviously deranged, but so is earlier the balance in the script. Once the fall has begun, the lasciviousness of Humbert and Quilty is too graphic. Elliot is wrong to find it necessary to follow Kubrick’s cinematics here; intimation would have been more effective than the brightly lit full frontal orgy. But despite its shortcomings and inalienable tendency to shock, this production is still an amiable vehicle for the voracious talent of Flaherty in the title role.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

Kiss of the Spiderwoman; OFS, 7th Week Another term, another eight weeks of student drama taking over the theatres of Oxford with productions ranging through the compelling, the innovative, and the embarrassing. Perhaps something to do with the weather, Michaelmas Term at the OFS is characterised by dark and depressing plays – from the Kiss of the Spiderwoman (7th Week), dealing with sex and revolution in Argentina, to Agnes of God (4th Week), in which a nun is found unconscious with her child killed. The Burton Taylor’s season is much more mixed, the highlight being this year’s Cuppers festival, wisely pushed back to 7th Week. Whether the extra two weeks rehearsal time will improve the quality of the freshers’ first foray into Oxford Drama remains to be seen, but there will certainly be some memorably bad performances that are unmissible. At the other end of the spectrum many veteran Oxford thesps are on stage again. On this front, the Playhouse’s student slots always deliver. This term, the production of David Greig’s Europeis set to be no exception, directed by ex-OUDS President Ilan Goodman. The play is a gripping study of the two-edged sword of globalisation and modernisation, which should impress and provoke thought. In total contrast, the comedy musical Return to the Forbidden Planet is the other student Playhouse production. One half of the current OUDS presidential team, Chip Horne, appears in Ibsen’s Ghosts (OFS, 5th Week) amongst a talented cast and crew, Another pyschological mouthful is served up a week later. James McInnes returns to Oxford to direct Equus (OFS, 6th Week), having completed a run of One in the Street, the Other in the Bed at the Greenwich Playhouse, as producer/assistant director. Away from the main venues, the Keble O’Reilly Theatre stages The Night Before Christmas in 4th Week. The show brings back the team behind Not the Oxford Revue, hopefully with another welcome anecdote to desperately awful student “comedy”. Following their production of The Zoo Story last term, St. Peter’s drama society migrate to the Wadham Moser Theatre to stage The Rising Generation(4th Week). Experimental drama at Oxford can be of mixed quality, but either way it promises to entertain. The Moser also hosts one musical, Pippin by Steven Schwartz. Home-grown writing talent is well represented this term, with two pieces of new-writing being staged; Alex Pappas’ Memory Play (BT, 6th Week) and Shakespeare’s Philoctetes, by Elizabeth Belcher, in which Sophocles’ tragedy meets The Tempest. It opens the BT’s Michaelmas season in 2nd Week We can’t wait to review it…ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

What five ingredients do you think every student should have in their kitchen cupboard? Salt, olive oil, lemons, a herb box with thyme, rosemary, basil, sage, mint and oregano, and last, but not least, garlic. When was the last time someone cooked for you and was it any good? Gordon Ramsay and it was great. I had white bean soup and loads of truffle dishes. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever eaten and where? Cod semen and sushimi of squid in Japan. What are your favourite vices? Rude and dirty jokes and swearing. If you weren’t a chef, what would you be doing? Definitely something with my hands; maybe I’d be a carpenter. What benefits do you think fame has brought you? The ability to do good things in the world. I’ve been able to set up Fifteen and work with kids, and next year I’m hitting school canteens in deprived wanker areas and showing them to improve their food. It should be a great project. Fame obviously means you can afford to set things up and live the dream, but it’s not as important as you imagine. Why do you think the students at Fifteenhave thrived under your guidance when they clearly struggled in formal education? A lot of love, not in a cheesy way, but in a supportive, fun atmosphere. Without exception I don’t want my students to be anything other than better then me and I believe with guidance and hard work they will be. Getting into television so early on in my life has meant that I can’t do a lot of things, like pack a bag and go travelling, but through them I can relive the excitement as they fulfil their dreams. I love it. Where do you see the charity in ten years time? The bigger picture is really exciting. Hopefully there will be restaurants in three different countries: London, New York and Melbourne. By then 3000 people will have gone through the course and have become qualified chefs. But most importantly, they will be mature chefs cooking in their own kitchens and as Fifteen is nonprofit I hope to be able to give them money towards setting up places of their own. And lastly, Jamie Oliver never leaves the house without… My credit card, mobile phone and leather man.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

Bright Young Things Odeon George Street Friday 10-Thursday 16 October Stephen Fry’s Bright Young Things spend a lot of time at parties. In fact, they don’t really have much else to do. And going to lots of parties is really rather dreadful you know, and one gets awfully tired of it, and one feels rather like a media whore when one is always on the front page. The main problem facing this film is that lots of people would quite like to spend their time going to parties. Unless, that is, you’re Stephen Fry, who finds it all a bit trying, or Evelyn Waugh whose novel, Vile Bodies, this film is based on. The fact that you emerge from the cinema sympathising with the harsh reality of being young, bright, but really not rich enough to keep yourself in cocaine from week to week is one of the main achievements of this film. In the opening sequence, the camera pans through the kind of red-lit debauchery you really wish you found more of at Oxford before homing in on Emily Mortimer’s Nina: “I’ve never been more bored in my life”. It’s an effective technique; the social whirlwind of the society scenes contrast starkly with moments when the perky jazz music fades. Particularly poignant is when we are left alone in the distinctly unaristocratic apartment of the short-lived Lord Simon Balcairn. The music is replaced by a vitriolic condemnation of the people who sustained and then excluded him as the camera whirls faster and faster over the jiving masses. The party scenes serve as a structure for the earlier part of the film, each bathed in a different light. Indeed the film as a whole is rather beautiful, cleverly using the light of flashbulbs and candles to set scene. Its motifs may not be the most subtle – angels puking onto the hero Adam Symes’ novel and later singing about Jesus as we watch the party hostess snorting coke – but they are visually striking nonetheless. The Bright Young Things are “all to pieces” as the Hon Agatha Runcible points out, but they’re witty enough for enjoyable viewing and are surrounded by a cast of famous British actors. Richard E Grant, Jim Broadbent and Simon Callow all do their best to put on their silliest accents, which is always rather jolly. The main plot concerns Symes’ attempts to marry Nina, an event which is hampered by the continual disappearance of Broadbent’s drunken Major with the cheque that will make his fortune. The moral is that spending your time at parties doesn’t pay and money doesn’t make the world go round, but the film steps back from Waugh’s pessimistic satire towards a soft focus happy ending. Not quite what Evelyn Waugh intended, but if you can’t afford to throw a decent party you could do worse than going to watch Bright Young Things.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

Young Adam Phoenix Friday 10-Thursday 16 October The discovery by Ewan McGregor’s Joe, of a young woman’s corpse in a Glaswegian canal sparks off a self-appraisal and insight into his seemingly directionless life. What’s there is darker than the coal he ferries around in Ella and Les’s barge. A story of failure, adultery, dirt and lies, all presented with lashings of sex. Based on Alexandre Trocchi’s cult novel, the film manages to convey all the nihilistic themes characteristic of 1950s beat writing. Departing from the moment the corpse is discovered, the narrative slowly takes us forwards and backwards to reveal how Joe’s attitude to life affects all those around him. The viewer is left wondering, until the very end, about this strange man’s motivations and the repercussions of his actions. All the actors shine against Mackenzie’s grey and desolate Scottish background, and in McGregor’s case this can only be a very welcome rescue from the talent-less vortex known as Star Wars. Every scene buzzes with intensity, from the metaphoric slow shots of the canal bed to the perverse homemade custard sex sequence. It’s all about real people flowing along familiarly absurd courses; surely these are the only young bright things worth watching.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

The Italian Job Odeon Friday 10-Thursday 16 October Approaching the Italian job unprejudiced by memories of the seminal 60s original, the remake starring Mark Wahlberg comes across as another passably enjoyable action film. The car chases are slick, the Minis shiny and the assembled cast consists of decent actors who haven’t quite reached leading man status. Edward Norton’s villain, Steve, has absolutely no charisma at all, which undermines the main plotline slightly. Stealing gold bullion from a baby with a bum-fluff beard can’t be that hard after all. Charlize Theron looks good and adds the requisite romantic interest, but although she gets to drive as fast as the boys you still feel she’s been drafted in merely to help sell more Minis. Although the opening heist takes place in Venice, the filmmakers have made every attempt to take the original blueprint and make it their own, transplanting the subsequent action sequences to the LA rush hour. The problem is that everyone (apart from me) remembers the original Italian Job for the cars and the characters and although the cars perform their stunts admirably, the actors in the remake just aren’t memorable. It’s strange, the Italian Job is a decent film, but you can’t help feeling like you’ve seen it all before. Even if you haven’t.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

Bad Boys Two Odeon Friday 10-Thursday 16 October What you have to remember about this sequel is that is was inevitably going to be made , since the first film earned (to employ the language of Will Smith’s character, the irrepressible Mike Lowrey) “a huge fucking pile of dough” for Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer, and all others involved. So after this long wait of eight years, what are we left with? A dazzling cinematic display, with some skilful camera direction by director Michael Bay, including a jaw-dropping car chase to rival anything from The Matrix Reloaded, as well as an original continuous circling sequence of Smith and Lawrence in a shootout with some Jamaican yardies, plus a pretty sketchy plot involving a crazed cuban drug lord, the Miami PD, the DEA, FBI, CIA (anybody beginning to notice a Bruckheimer theme?) and about $150 million dollars of Dutch Ecstasy. The two leads bicker incessantly, and while at times the wisecracks are witty, the constant “getchur black ass outta my face nigger” becomes tiresome. An improbable chase out to the Caribbean, total destruction of Miami city centre, and the littering of the streets with morgue corpses is a tad too much even for the Bad Boys and after two and a half hours the ugly morality and misogyny of this film becomes tedious.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003 

The Chemical Brothers are clever men. Despite the history degrees. They’ve been waving glow-sticks long enough to warrant this ten-year retrospective, holding the limelight as their more artful cohorts drifted back into the dance Underworld. The secret of their continued success: celebrity mates. By borrowing the recognition factor of rock vocalists, the Chemicals extend their reach outside the dance aisle of HMV. ‘Setting Sun’, still their best track, relies more upon Noel Gallagher’s voice and lyrics than on the horde of air-raid sirens that he is trying to mend. Similarly, the new single, ‘The Golden Path’, would be nothing special without Wayne Coyne’s hippyfied rewrite of the lyrics to Tenacious D’s ‘Tribute’. On ‘Out of Control’, Bernard Sumner slips easily back into his flat-voiced role, whilst his hosts pay homage to New Order so openly that, were Sumner not involved, someone’d end up in court. ‘Let Forever Be’ is similarly derivative, sounding like the Beatles, sitting in a curry house, watching Ringo have an epileptic fit behind a drum kit. Not to say this is bad; just that it occasionally feels like the dancing-up of guitar records you already own. Still, ‘The Private Psychedelic Reel’ proves that the Brothers can do hard dance without breaking a sweat. The only real problem is the apparent lack of development in the music; why haven’t the Brothers taken more advantage of advances in shiny new guitar technology? Expect another album like this in 2013. Vocals aside, it’ll probably sound the same, but that’s no bad thing.ARCHIVE: 0th Week MT2003