★★★★☆
Four Stars

Noah and the Whale return with fourth LP Heart of Nowhere and some of the infectious tweed-pop that we’ve come to expect from the Twickenham five-piece. A more straightforward rock approach was shown during Last Night On Earth with highlights including the radio-friendly ‘L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.’ In Heart of Nowhere, however, there is a return to the musical style shown on the second album The First Days of Spring, released in 2009, with the opening ‘Instrumental’ and looser acoustic-feel of tracks such as the closing number ‘Not Too Late’.

Noah have always been a band associated with the summer, and the feel-good vibes associated with this period with infectious melodies a many and complimentary arrangements to suit. The meticulous string parts, in particular, remain an integral part of the band’s make-up, reappearing in the title track and others such as ‘Lifetime’. The impact of the last album with its ‘rocky’ influences can still be felt with tracks such as recent single ‘There Will Come A Time’ and the similarly euphoric ‘All Through The Night’, which will no doubt complement their preexisting set of crowd-shifters during an announced European tour which includes a set at Liverpool’s Soundcity this weekend and a month-long residency at the Palace theatre, London, this May.

With this broad back catalogue of influences, the band’s new album doesn’t so much represent a progression from their previous offerings but a merging and blending of preexisting styles into a sort of poprock-folk hybrid which is entirely unique and associative with the band. There is no doubt that Noah have musically matured but, luckily, they have somehow managed to maintain a sense of rawness and naïvety which made their initial offerings so hummably exciting, and this new one equally so.

Track to download: All Through the Night

In the nineteenth century, figures in art were not expected to directly address the viewer. Manet inverted this convention, establishing eye contact between the subject of the painting and the beholder. Visitors to an exhibition were no longer comfortable in an elevated and secure position in front of a painting. Manet’s paintings teased them. In ‘Olympia’, the female figure’s brazen stare challenges the viewer: they find themselves locked in the gaze of a prostitute.

Olympia, the naked courtesan lying on her canopy, glares fiercely, yet melancholically, out of the painting. She knows that she has to be passive and available, and consciously affects this. When the work was first exhibited in 1865, French audiences were shocked. They felt offended and attacked, calling Olympia ‘vulgar’, ‘a female gorilla’. The painting was even banished to a barely visible place in a corner of the exhibition.

Prostitution was omnipresent but clandestine in nineteenth-century Paris, occupying the so-called chambres séparées: private side-rooms in varietés and café-concerts. And although the activities happening behind closed doors were generally known, nobodywanted them to be put on display – least of all in an oil painting. Manet, however, intended to reveal rather than conceal through his art, and he did so in an eclectic manner: blending influences of pornographic photography with conventions traditional to the medium of painting. He even dared to incorporate compositional allusions to the Old Master Titian’s Venus of Urbino, which would have been obvious to art connoisseurs. Basing the portrait of a courtesan on that of goddess was considered a scandalous affront.

Contemporary critics claimed that Manet’s paintings would ‘knock a hole into the wall’. The paintings not only created a space in convention through which modernism would rush, but also smashed through the fourth wall. The beckoning gaze of the woman in the picture forced the beholder into a direct dialogue. The spectator was no longer allowed the indulgence of being a voyeur; for when one views a Manet, seeing is intrinsically linked with being seen: Olympia looks back at you. The French expression çela me regarde alludes to this thought, meaning both ‘it looks at me’ as well as ‘it concerns me’.

‘Why, if one wants to compare life to anything, one must liken it to being blown through the Tube at fifty miles an hour – landing at the other end without a single hairpin in one’s hair!’ This is how the narrator of Virginia Woolf’s remarkable The Mark on the Wall (1917) characterizes the experience of using London’s Underground network.

This year the Tube is celebrating its 150th anniversary, with a scintillating display of posters to show for it. The current exhibition of material selected from the London Transport Museum’s archive proves Woolf’s narrator to have been justified in her exhilaration; it demonstrates the extraordinary diversity of talent that has been put to work on making urban journeys beautiful.

The posters are organized thematically, under titles like ‘Finding your way’ – posters to reassure newcomers and remind passengers of the appropriate etiquette. Under the theme ‘Capital culture’, presenting ‘cultural encoun- ters, be these at the zoo or galleries and museums’, a tiger has been constructed out of segments of the iconic Underground roundel, advertising the zoo at Regent’s Park. The ‘Keeps London going’ posters emphasise reliability and technological advancement. No doubt any Londoner who saw the bold announcement of 1909, ‘NO WAITING’, will wonder, while waiting between stations on the Piccadilly line, whether it was truer then than it is now.

The posters on display embody the sprawling spirit of the city, and exhibit its changing relationship with the Underground: some early posters emphasise the Tube as a democratic space and present carriages populated by people of diverse classes. A 1911 poster in dignified suffragette colours depicts a woman pointing confidently at a sign reading ‘THE WAY FOR ALL’. Posters of the ’20s and ’30s are characterized by a close association with glamour and modernity. Bursting with bold shapes and dynamic lines, these often advertise social and sporting events: the Boat Race, the football, the dogs and innumerable sleek bobs. The war changes the face of posters in the ’40s, the transport authorities requesting the public’s patience as the system undergoes rehabilitation.

A cornerstone of the Tube’s public image is the Johnston typeface, introduced in 1916 and used ever since; although now in a modified form. The development of typographic design can be traced from the posters on display: the very earliest are covered with the ungainly jumble characteristic of Victorian advertising.

The exhibition’s greatest strength is its fantastic range of styles and concerns. The modernism of Moholy-Nagy sits next to the traditionally pastoral green and pleasant meadow in Hampstead. Individual artistic accomplishments of the designers are impressive, but together they create a portrait of London as a city steeped in history and culture. The Tube is an icon of London life, with a formidably strong aesthetic identity, and the current exhibition is a fitting way to celebrate its continuing service and importance to endless streams of travellers through the city.

‘Poster Art 150’ is on at the London Transport Museum from 15 February to 27 October 2013. The museum is wheelchair-accessible.

I arrive for my interview with Peace to the sound of ‘Higher Than The Sun’. The tour manager confirms that the soundcheck has run over, so I have a beer with support act Jaws as they are interviewed by another journo. My OxStu counterpart turns up during this and immediately makes the unfortunate error of mistaking us all for Peace. They don’t seem to mind (I certainly don’t!), and the interview turns into a conversation between the seven of us.

I meet Sam Koisser and Dom Boyce on the roof of the O2. After a few jibes about Oxford we get going. “We’re gonna be quizzed now”, mutters Sam, and neither of them manage to produce an answer when I ask them what year the Peloponnesian War was. With that crucial question out of the way, we can get onto talking about the band. Speaking about the early media attention which Peace received, Dom remembers when the band were NME.com’s Radar Tip of the Day, recalling that “I think we went out and got mussels”. Sam confirms mournfully that they couldn’t afford lobster and that they really only went because “Doug had 20% off at Café Rouge”. I suggest that they can get lobster after their first Wembley gig, and Sam laughs, remarking “We’re climbing the shellfish ladder”. With regard to all that early attention, Sam says he thinks that for “some people it goes to their head a bit too quickly. They act like they’ve made it. We still feel that we’re at the very beginning.”

As we talk musical influences, Dom reveals a passion for Hit, Miss or Maybe, while Sam claims most of his early music taste came from “anything used on the Tony Hawk soundtrack” and goes on to joke that he’d love to work with Slade (“they could teach us how to write a Christmas number 1”). It is then revealed that Dom the drummer didn’t have to play for Peace. He had options. “I’ve always wanted to be a carpenter” he remarks, also saying he’d probably be working in a pub if he wasn’t in a band. Sam reveals business acumen as he points out “you could build your own bench seating”. If only this ‘band’ wasn’t in the way! “I know,” he says. “It’s annoying. I’m trying to get it over and done with” (“Burn bright and fast” remarks Sam).

Peace are heading back to Birmingham right after the gig, Sam tells me mournfully. “We usually like to go out after playing.” He tells me the band were keen to visit Hi Lo on Cowley Road. During the gig itself, Peace are their usual energetic and charming selves. Lead singer Harry Koisser, Sam’s brother, seems overwhelmed at times, blowing a kiss to the audience during ‘Float Forever’. As they begin ‘California Daze’ at the start of the encore, he announces “if you’re gonna make out with someone, now’s the time to do it”. Sadly, the bouncer hasn’t let in my plus one, the charming Oliver Davies, so I’m unable to do so. Despite this major disappointment, it was a fantastic night.

On Tuesday of 3rd week, an adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial comes to the BT. The cen­tral character, Josef K, is a man caught up in a bureaucratic nightmare: he has been ac­cused of a crime, but no one will tell him what it is. He is sure of his innocence, but finds himself increasingly trapped in legal jargon and unan­swered questions. The play follows his case, from his accusation to its disturbing finish.

Directed by Sam Ward and with a cast of six who will all be on stage most of the time, the play aims to recreate the claustrophobia experi­enced by Josef K in the dark space of the Burton Taylor. The play blurs the line between what is actually happening and what is just in K’s head: I saw one scene where K meets a painter, Titorelli, and is made to feel like an ac­cessory to his erratic performance. The two are surrounded by the rest of the cast, who become animated portraits which speak and interact with K and the painter.

The novel was adapted by Steven Berkoff, who says that the sparse staging and props mean the scene can change ‘quicker than the story’: the audience’s imagination maximises the space of a theatre without long scene changes. “A set should be able to melt in an instant and never represent a real heavy piece of pseudo-reality” – in Ward’s production, each member of the cast has a host of tiny characters to play in order to ‘furnish’ the stage. This is a departure from the true-to-life staging which Berkoff describes as “lumbering pieces of dead weight”.

Berkoff is involved with ‘total-theatre’, a style of physical theatre described by one critic as “in-yer-face theatre” – music, visuals, movement and text are all given equal importance. The au­dio component of Ward’s production is original: there are various sound effects that the group have put together themselves.

Each sound effect is less of a representation of real life and more of an idea, inserted into the audience’s mind through sound. The ‘rumble’ is, as the name suggests, a deep grinding that starts imperceptibly at a very low volume. The audience will hear it and register it subconsciously until it becomes loud enough for them to consciously wonder what it is. It doesn’t come from anything onstage but instead represents K’s private doubts of his own innocence, doubts that he will not express to any of the other characters or even to him­self. The ‘sexscape’ is a perverse combination of screams and moans, some from pain and some from pleasure.

The idea of contrast is key to The Trial – Josef K is played by Alex Shavick, who is the straight ac­tor to the rest of the cast’s hysterics. He gets used, abused and seduced throughout – but says that the development of his character makes him inter­esting to act. K’s passivity becomes frustration as his quest goes on, so he goes from being a pawn to someone who is at least partially a master of his own fate.

There is also a section where K is a director, organising actors to tell a story to another char­acter, hauling the chorus into a piece of metadra­ma. The adaptation is meant to make you think but primarily entertain: there are plenty of com­ic touches and, in the cast’s own words, this dystopia also has “a lot of straddling”.

There is nothing different about this new performance of the Tennessee Williams classic, The Glass Menagerie, set in 1930s America. Four actors act out the four characters, there is an attempt to employ American accents; the characters are played as you would expect. Yet, I didn’t find this boring. It wasn’t a tiresome performance – it didn’t feel overdone or generic. Looked at from an objective standpoint, there is nothing particularly special about this perfor­mance. And yet it all worked.

Andy Laithwaite introduces the play as Tom, the narrator, and, after getting off to a shaky start, he smoked his fake cigarette with confi­dence and style and introduced the audience to a seemingly normal American family. After a few lines, once the actors had warmed up and, in Miles Lawrence’s case, actually used their Ameri­can accents, all four of them were exciting to watch and easy to engage with.

Katie McGunagle was particularly thrilling, with her monologues oozing passion and despair as she realised that her daughter had secretly left business school, and Miles Lawrence’s depiction of Jim was patronising and condescending, just how Williams would have imagined him.

What works really well in The Glass Menagerie is the relationships between the actors. They are playing a family who love and care about each other but also dislike and fight with one another and this idea was thoroughly explored and un­derstood is the raw portrayal of emotion shared between McGunagie and Claire Bowman. The relationship too, between Lawrence and Bow­man was awkward, with the audience instantly sympathising with the character of Laura. The audience can immediately sense the chemistry between them – a friendly atmosphere reigns and one suspects that they are all the closest of chums (at least off stage). I can only imagine that this will become even more apparent by 3rd week when they have practised and perfected the scenes to a higher degree.

Of course, there were some elements of the play that, this being a preview, I did not get to en­joy. The director informed me of the “deliciously large stage” at Corpus Christi where the play is to be staged, but the the little room we were in did not compare to that. With all the set and costumes in place, I can imagine this play being both intense and exciting.

The relationships between both the char­acters and actors are intriguing and I highly recommend this show. Whilst there’s nothing obviously new about it, it’s a faithful and raw production of a classic, and this reviewer can rec­ommend it without hesitation.

Ashurbanipal, to be staged at LMH in 4th week, is a dramatisation of the decay of the ancient civilization of Assyria, under the king Ashurbanipal. Selena Wisnom, a DPhil student in Cuneiform Studies, is an expert in the Assyrian civilization and is incorporating ancient texts into the play for the highest pos­sible historical accuracy. The lyrical dialogues replicate classical tragedies, and the play’s structure follows the classical rules. This pro­duction, however, takes the classical tragedy elements and overlays them with modern sur­realism, making it a unique venture onto the Oxford drama scene. Selena is the first person since Kaiser Wilhelm II to attempt a dramatic representation of the period.

 Ashurbanipal is accentuated by very eye-catching choreography. In one scene the king’s sister, while counseling the king, eats grapes from a plate, with a regular, angular and styl­ized arm gesture picking up grapes one by one as she talks. The actors’ every movement across the stage is stilted and mechanic. Tom Stell, the director, tells me the inspiration for the actors’ mechanized gestures comes from ancient As­syrian friezes depicting people’s movements, in two dimensions – the aim for Ashurbanipal is to reenact these friezes on stage, producing the effect for the audience of watching shadow puppets on stage.

The actors’ heavy black and white makeup will accentuate the silhouette vision, and their monochrome costumes, including gloves so that no inch of skin is visible, add to the sur­realism and the distance felt between the au­dience and the statuesque characters on stage. The soundtrack to the production is perhaps the most surprising element: the lyrical script and stylized movement are overlaid with bursts of student-composed heavy metal. The heavy metal ties into Tom’s vision of a “height­ened grotesque, dark and a bit camp. Heavy metal is so out that it doesn’t take itself seri­ously”.

 Tom aims to put different things together to “make Ashurbanipal its own world”. He points out the attachment, in the Oxford dra­ma scene, of having plays in a specific time pe­riod and setting. The aim with Ashurbanipal is to break with this; Selena agrees with him that a play “doesn’t have to be relevant to be inter­esting. Stuff should be fun, it doesn’t have to be useful.”

The obscurity of Ashurbanipal’s subject mat­ter shouldn’t discourage you from going to watch it. With its unique mix of surrealism, lyrical poetry and a classical tragic storyline-punctuated by crashes of heavy metal- Ashur­banipal is sure to surprise and entertain.