Earthquakes in London - Oxford Playhouse, 1-5 November

Earthquakes in London is unlike any play I have seen before. It’s An Inconvenient Truth, by way of Top of the Pops and Chekov’s Three Sisters, with some apparently naked ukulele playing thrown in for good measure (though don’t just go for the ukulele, the scene’s quite brief). 

We are in the company of three sisters in contemporary London. Eldest sister Sarah, the Environmental Minister for the current coalition government, is trying to block plans for a new runway at Heathrow Airport, while at home her marriage is crumbling. Middle sister Freya is about to have a baby. She has a loving husband, but can’t seem to see past her terror of the future. And youngest sister Jasmine is aimless and angry, struggling to deal with life. 

Their lives develop and intertwine against the timely backdrop of the unsustainable stretching of the world’s resources, with reference being made to the earth’s population reaching seven billion this week. Their estranged father was paid off in the 1960s to talk down the catastrophic impact that increased air travel would cause to the environment (airlines do not come out of the play well at all) and he is now a prophet of doom, emphasising the spectre of apocalypse that haunts the play. 

The politics manages to avoid preachiness, and the relationships are written and performed brilliantly, but after a bleak and powerful first half, the second half crumbles slightly. There are some very moving scenes involving the family, but it seems that in order to stop the play from being incredibly depressing an unconvincing uplifting bit is tacked onto the end. Perhaps this was necessary, but I wish it had felt a little less like an afterthought. 

What saved the play from this fairly major flaw was partly the snappy, frequently funny dialogue, partly the innovative staging (including a well-used though slightly creaky revolving stage and a projected backdrop), and what I can only describe as the sheer bonkersness of the rest of it. Drunken dancing, surreal visions, terrifying yummy mummies on Hampstead Heath tormenting Freya to the backing beats of Goldfrapp, and a truly spectacular rendition of I Am Not a Robot by Marina and the Diamonds bring this play out of the rubble. 

Spectacle is the right word for Earthquakes in London. There is a lot going on, both plot-wise and ideas-wise, and exuberance carries it through. It might not change the world, but it may well leave you feeling differently about it, for a while at least. Until you get in your petrol car to go home to your central heated house, anyway.


Original review here

Sister Act - New Theatre, 18-29 October

(NB trailer does not feature the cast from this production)


90s San Francisco is swapped for 70s Philadelphia as the musical version of the Whoopi Goldberg film Sister Act comes to Oxford. 

I say musical version of the film, but this is perhaps misleading. The story is the same: A lounge singer, Deloris Van Cartier, witnesses her gangster boyfriend kill someone, so the police hide her in a convent to keep her protected until she can testify against him. Whilst there she teaches the nuns how to sing, they teach her about herself, the Pope gets involved, it’s all very uplifting. Add a bit of extra romance, an entirely new set of songs, and enough glitter to fill St. Paul’s Cathedral, and you’ve got the musical.

I was a little dubious when I heard that none of the songs from the film were going to be used in the musical. They were such a huge part of the film, I couldn’t see how any version of the story could work without them. But the shifting of the setting back to the 1970s is a brilliant move on the adaptors' part. As the film played with well-known motown songs, the musical remarkably achieves the same effect with completely original songs. By basing the new songs on the familiar sounds of 70s funk, soul, and disco, it still sounds like old favourites are being transformed into unexpected songs of religious worship.

The melodious jokes were great, but I did feel that quite a lot of the ‘normal’ jokes fell a bit flat. I didn’t really see the point of the comedy henchmen, but then there were many people in the audience who would have loudly disagreed with me, so I guess it’s just a matter of taste. Also character development was not exactly subtle, but with this kind of high energy romp I imagine that believable character arcs aren’t really a priority.

The cast were all excellent but the highest praise must go to Cynthia Erivo as Deloris, whose voice is amazing and who easily fills the habit left by Whoopi Goldberg.

As long as you don’t go expecting the film directly transposed to the stage, you will not be disappointed. With stained glass disco windows and a song involving the line ‘shake it like Mary Magdalene’, it would be a sin not to enjoy yourself.


Original review here

The Lion King 3D *****/*

The Lion King was one of the first films I saw at the cinema.  I loved it then, and I still love it now.  The Lion King 3D was to be the first 3D film I saw at the cinema.  I thought this lent the experience a pleasing unity (only if it had been Hook, my actual first film at the cinema, could it have been more perfect).  I hadn't really heard anything positive about 3D, which is why I hadn't been before, but you can't write something off without trying it first, can you?

So, along I skipped to the cinema.  I got my 3D glasses.  The oracle of the internet, yahoo!answers, had told me that it was fine to wear them over normal glasses.  This was not true - I had to hold them on so they didn't fall off my nose - but I could cope with that for the sake of an exciting enhanced Lion King experience.

But I did not get an exciting enhanced Lion King experience.  As the film opened on the scenes of the Serenghetti, accompanied by the glorious strains of Circle of Life, as the small children around me gasped with delight, I could only look around in confusion, peer over my multiple glasses to see the blurry screen, and realise with crushing disappointment that I am one of the 2-12% of the population who can't see 3D.

Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote:

If the golden-crested wren
Were a nightingale---why, then,
Something seen and heard of men
Might be half as sweet as when
Laughs a child of seven. 


Well Algernon that is all well and good, but when the child of seven is laughing and you can't see what they're pleased about it's not sweet.  It's just depressing, to be honest.  Stupid children.

I had to keep the ridiculous glasses on because otherwise I was just watching a blurry screen half the time.  So basically I watching a film in the dark whilst wearing sunglasses.  Only for a film as wonderful as The Lion King could I have stayed for the whole thing.

So I don't think I'll be going to see any more 3D films.  And I'll just have to hope that 3D isn't the future, and that it instead goes the way of those magic eye pictures that were so popular in the 90s that I couldn't see either.  What do you mean, look through the image?  Stupid magic eye seers.

I still love The Lion King though, and it was rather special to see it on the big screen again.  And yes I did still cry when Mufasa's big liony face appeared in the sky, even though his nose wasn't sticking out at me and I had too many pairs of glasses on.  Hakuna matata.

Melancholia ***

With Melancholia as a title, and Lars Von Trier as a director, it’s pretty clear that this isn’t going to be a light-hearted romp of a film. It’s an examination of depression and anxiety; it questions the existence of God, and whether there is any good in the world. And it also happens to be a disaster movie in which a massive planet called Melancholia is on its way to destroy the Earth. It is a relief that Bruce Willis isn’t in it really, otherwise would anyone even be able to tell the difference between this and Armageddon? 

The film is split into two parts, one for Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and the other for Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). In part one, Justine sabotages her own wedding reception at the beautiful home of Claire and her husband (an excellent, and rather different from Jack Bauer, Kiefer Sutherland) in a self-destructive spiral into depression. The feeling of foreboding as the family bickers and we watch everything gradually unravel is superbly managed. In the second part, we see the sisters’ reactions to the looming disaster, as the planet Melancholia comes ever closer. Justine, whose own melancholia has already overcome her, accepts her fate calmly. Claire is terrified.

The strange thing was that I felt the tension of impending doom much more strongly in the ruined wedding day part than in the destruction of the earth part. By the end I just wanted the planet to hurry up and send everyone on their miserable way. The performances were all remarkable, but the difficulty with watching a film populated by emotionally detached people is that I became emotionally detached myself.

Artistically it is a beautiful film. The slow motion opening sequence is stunning, as Justine and Claire feature in a set of images illustrating their melancholia to come – Claire tries to walk but sinks into the ground; Justine floats down a river in her wedding dress; the planet Melancholia slowly travels towards Earth, all to Wagnerian accompaniment. These scenes were moving. However, two and a bit hours later I, like Justine, was looking forward to the release of eternal blackness. Though in my case it was the credits, rather than death, that I was yearning for.


Original review here

Mark Haddon: Swimming and Flying - Oxford Playhouse, 23 September

Mark Haddon was at the Oxford Playhouse on Friday performing a talk/essay especially written for the occasion, in support of the Playhouse‘s fundraising appeal. Haddon was alone on a stage set up for another play to be shown later that evening, there to deliver what was ostensibly an autobiographical talk, but what turned out to be a very intricately written, extremely engaging, and ultimately quite moving, work of poetry.

He ranged from school days, playing darts badly in the common room, to the moon landing, to strange fan mail after the success of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, via recitations of Henry David Thoreau and Louis MacNeice, with a bit of his own poetry seamlessly woven in.

As well as being an author, Mark Haddon also teaches students how to write, and he explained how he tells them that specific details are what brings writing to life, but that the gaps that the writer creates for the reader to fill are just as important. He subtly illustrated his own point by flowing undetectably from his own poem, Great White, about a terror of sharks, to a story about how he loves to swim in the Thames. This story wove in and out of another story about how he tried to combat his fear of flying by learning to fly himself. He would keep returning to these stories, and to a particular image of a single drop of rain on a floating feather, teasing poignancy out of the seemingly mundane.

Haddon managed to create a sense of wonder in tiny details, and clearly never wanted to lose his own sense of wonder at the universe. In writing, and in his approach to life, he said that it is not so much the answers that matter, but understanding the enormity of the questions. If said questions are being asked by Mark Haddon then I certainly want to listen.


Original review here

Warrior ***'

Warrior.  Grr.  It's manly.  It's tough.  It features a Tom Hardy so beefy his shoulders have shoulders.  But how will it fare in the ring against what is widely regarded (by me) as the best sports film ever made: Cool Runnings?  GO TO WAR!

Round 1: The Sport.  Bobsleigh vs Mixed Martial Arts (MMA)
Cool Runnings and Warrior are both about sport.  As sports films go, this is a good start.  But, even better, they are both about slightly obscure sport.  I don't care about football, or boxing, or baseball (apart from that one with Madonna.  And Field of Dreams, of course).  But bobsleigh - that's exciting.  It's a bit exotic and glamorous, in a lycra-clad sort of way.  And mixed martial arts?  That's even more exciting and mysterious.  Who's heard of mixed martial arts?  Oh, except for the fact that it is also known as cage fighting.  (I searched for cage fighting on wikipedia and got redirected to the MMA page, so it must be true).  And cage fighting makes me think of Alex Reid, ex-husband of Jordan, and it therefore rapidly loses its mysterious charm.

Round 1 to Cool Runnings.

Round 2: The Coach.  John Candy vs Nick Nolte
Every sports film worth its stripes needs a down and out coach who is offered a second chance at glory.  Cool Runnings has Irv Blitzer (John Candy), a disgraced former bobsledding gold medallist (this thought alone has to be worth extra points) who gets approached by the Jamaican bobsleigh team to coach them to victory at the Olympics.

Warrior has Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte), a disgraced former fighting coach who is approached by his estranged son, beefy Tom Hardy, to train him up for Sparta, the big MMA competition.  He's also an alcoholic.  He's also also the father of the other fighter we care about as well.  Ooh, juicy.

I just can't call it between them.  Round 2 has to be a draw.

Round 3: We're Gonna Need a Montage

All present and correct in both films.

Round 3 is a draw.

Round 4: Unlikely success of the underdog
Cool Runnings has the Jamaican bobsleigh team.  I think that's all we need to know.

Warrior has beefy Tom Hardy's brother, Brendan.  He's a school teacher.  He doesn't belong here.  He's just in it for the money so his family don't lose their home.  How can he possibly make it through round 1?  Trouble is, we know from the trailer that he gets to the final, so that he and his brother can sort out all their family problems by punching each other to near-unconsciousness.  So when Brendan meets Russian man mountain Koba, who we are told he can't possibly beat, it's not that much of a surprise when he does.

And Cool Runnings has the Jamaican bobsleigh team.  Round 4 to Cool Runnings

Round 5: The Pep Talk


Cool Runnings: "I see pride.  I see power.  I see a bad ass mother who won't take no crap off nobody."

YES.  Inspirational.  I try to use it as my own personal mantra when I'm not so overwhelmed by doubt that I forget how to form words.

Warrior: "You can do this"

Oh.  Um.  Quiet determination has its place as well I suppose...

ROUND 5, AND VICTORY, TO COOL RUNNINGS (because an MMA title fight has five rounds, and we want to do this authentically don't we?  Otherwise what is the point of this slightly laboured fight metaphor?)

But a quick pep talk in the corner for Warrior, while it catches its breath and has some water and an orange segment.  In most sports films, we follow one competitor, root for them all the way, and hope that they will win in the final.  But in Warrior our sympathies are pretty evenly split between the two finalists, and it is much more interesting than the average sports film for it.  Yes, it's been bashed about a bit by Cool Runnings, but come on, it's held its own.  There's no shame in coming second to perfection.

Beautiful Lies (De vrais mensonges ) ***

If you’re looking for a bit of mindless escape for a couple of hours, you can do much worse than Beautiful Lies. You can probably do quite a lot better too, but in terms of undemanding, frothy rom-coms, this one doesn’t fare too badly.

Audrey Tautou plays Emilie, a salon owner, who receives an anonymous love letter. In order to cheer up her mother, who is still struggling to get over the breakdown of her marriage a couple of years ago, Emilie secretly forwards the letter on to her. The audience know, but Emilie does not, that the letter is from Jean, the salon handyman. Wacky circumstances result in Emilie eventually paying Jean to take out the mother, and love triangle ‘hilarity’ ensues.

Regarding said love triangle hilarity, I did have some issues with a mother and daughter being romantically involved with the same man, and at times the light hearted tone sat strangely with the manipulative actions of Emilie, but maybe this is just my uptight Englishness ruining the French fun.

There are plenty of laughs to be had, despite the reservations, and Audrey Tautou manages to bring charm to a pretty unsympathetic character. Saying that, I could probably watch her watch paint dry and find her delightful.

Go expecting Amelie and you will be sorely disappointed. This doesn’t have a fraction of the warmth and heart of that film. But if you seek amusing, beautiful-looking distraction, and perhaps inspiration for a holiday on the Cote d'Azur, then this will do the job. Don’t expect to remember it ten minutes after the end of the credits though.


Original review here