★★★★☆
Four Stars

Angels in America is a three hour epic. Sitting in the auditorium before the performance began I wondered whether I would make it through. The front of the stage is empty, bar a simple coffin, which remains onstage for the entire first half. An effective symbol of the ever imposing spectre of death and the fate that Prior Walter (Ed Barr-Sim) faces. The red curtain hides all else from view. Opening the play is a challenge which falls wholly on the shoulders of Natasha Heliotis, who rises to it well. Alone on stage she is Rabbi Ibsidor, eulogising at a funeral, a eulogy addressed to us. The audience is the congregation. It is demanded that we suspend our disbelief and engage with the show.

This is a demand which continues throughout the entire performance. The rest of the set is similarly sparse but superbly designed. The stage is on two levels. The black space is dominated by steps and the somewhat gothic double bed they lead to. Other locations are created using only the bear essentials. These are brought on and off as required. Unfortunately this entailed scene changes by stage hands, which became tedious and sometimes interrupted the flow of the piece. The only saving grace of the scene changes were in their drawing attention to the brilliant soundtrack. However, the overall approach certainly proved that less is more. As an audience we are given the appropriate cues but must work to fill out the picture. We invest in the actors and trust in them to create the drama. The result is an audience that is captivated. In suspending our disbelief the script’s surrealism becomes believable and can be accepted and appreciated without the need for dodgy effects.

The actors deal with the surreal admirably. They appear from trapdoors and jumping off the back of the stage, they disappear with grace and a certain magic. Selali Fiamanya excels as Mr. Lies of the International Order of Travel Agents – a figment of Harper Pitt’s (Amelia Sparling) valium-fueled delusions. Sparling’s performance is also solid, if occasionally a little self-conscious.

The overall standard of acting in Angels is very high. Special mention should go to Barney White who is spectacular as Roy Cohn. He is utterly convincing and his American drawl never wavers. Ed Barr-Sim also convinces as Prior, who he plays with confidence and sensitivity. Arty Froushan successfully asks us to empathise with Louis Ironson, a man who leaves his dying lover. The conversation he shares with Fiamanya’s Belize is a highlight (despite the empty coffee cups, which are sipped on with great frequency). Dugie Young, as Joe Pitt was wooden at times – this was perhaps caused by the fact that his performance was too often directed to the wall – though he did warm up as the play ran on. Georgina Hellier switches between her four roles with expert differentiation and skill. The two Priors-from-the-past embody the humour than pervades the play.

At the play’s worst you will look at your watch in hope of the interval and ponder why the doctor is wearing Crocs when the play is set in the 1980s. At its best you will laugh, cry, revel in tension and reflect on the challenging themes of Tony Kushner’s script. Overall, much credit should be given to Jack Sain, who has dealt very well with a challenging piece.

★★★★★
Five Stars

When it comes to albums, critics like to fall back on phrases like ‘difficult sophomore effort’ or ‘tricky third release’, or even ‘challenging fourth album.’ Yo La Tengo’s thirteenth release should, if nothing else, be a bit of a handful. Which it is, in that there’s a lot to take on, but none of it can be said to be challenging, tricky, or even especially handsy. Fade does not represent much of a departure from previous incarnations of Yo La Tengo. For the uninitiated, this is a play on shoegaze-meets-dream-pop, done by a couple who have been married for longer than even seems possible. It sounds, as it should, like music made by people who know one another inside and out, and to be let in, even for only eleven tracks, is a particularly special treat. In the tenth track, they phrase it best: ‘it’s only us.’ It doesn’t sound as though it could be anyone else.

The album glides through genres – starting loud, becoming melodic, introspective, and a bit jazzy by turns – and careers through all sorts of different instrumentals. Strings, saxophone, the odd snare, deep tingling bass notes. It starts strong, and gets better, reaching a quiet but powerful climax that lingers through the final six tracks. At gentler turns, it sounds like the most extraordinary secret. Yo La Tengo strike the comfortable balance of being dreamy without allowing themselves to be unfocussed. It makes for a pleasing wooziness that thrums through the middle tracks. It’s delightful. The whole album is delightful. Since 1984, Yo La Tengo’s track record has consisted of fervid reviews that fail to translate into mass success or sales. If there is to be a game-changer, Fade might just be it. This is because it is exceptional.

It’s probably too early in 2013 to start making these sorts of claims but, damn it, I’m going to throw caution to the wind and do just that: this could be the best thing you hear all year. More than ever, Yo La Tengo probably do. Have it, that is.

The success of an acting performance in film, theatre, and television is, more often than not, measured by its authenticity. To use an obvious example, we know that Anne Hathaway is Anne Hathaway, but in Les Miserables she works to suspend our disbelief and invite an emotional investment in the character Fantine. Her Oscar nomination is a testament to the critical acclaim she received for making us believe – admittedly by also losing a drastic amount of weight – that she was a dying prostitute.

The relationships contained within such fictional narratives require a similar verisimilitude, and in exploring the depiction of these most critics will muse upon whether such platonic or romantic ties are indeed believable. Rarely, however, will the actor’s own romantic attachments come into a consideration of the latter. With the exception of, say, the extra-marital affair which may or may not have occurred in Mr & Mrs Smith, an actor’s attraction (or lack thereof) to their on-screen partner is irrelevant to any critical analysis; no self-respecting journalist would comment on overcoming the hurdles of an ugly co-star or a real-life husband/wife in order to portray a convincing romantic duo. 

When the gender and sexual orientation of actors enters the discussion, however, a double-standard quickly emerges. All on-screen or on-stage relationships are acted, and thus founded upon performativity and pretence, yet extra praise is reserved for those who can break the boundaries of their heterosexuality and feign a love for someone of the same sex. Oscars and Golden Globes are showered upon those who can not only convince us of a fictional relationship, but a homosexual one. Some have even gone as far to point out that Mickey Rourke’s lead role in the upcoming biopic of Welsh rugby star Gareth Thomas may earn him the Academy Award he narrowly missed out on for The Wrestler. What information about the film is available to inform this prediction? Nothing. It hasn’t even begun shooting yet. Critics can (sadly enough, quite accurately) base this upon the mere fact that Thomas is gay and Rourke is not.

It’s a disappointing state of affairs when sexuality – and its disparity between acted and lived experience – is the factor to which writers constantly return to either commend or undermine a performance. Those who, however benevolently, point out such differences do so only to reinforce the notion that they could potentially impact an actor’s ability to do their job.

When Alexander Woolley (Cherwell Stage Editor) congratulates the cast of Angels In America on how they don’t ‘ham it up and descend into pantomimic camp to portray homosexuality, even though every male character is homosexual and every actor heterosexual’ or Associate Artist Jessica Campbell (OUDS Treasurer) writes about cast members ‘test[ing] their heterosexual nerves’ in the ‘gay scenes’, LGBTQ actors are reminded that their private lives will invariably affect their critical reception.

It’s no coincidence that Jodie Foster waited until announcing her retirement in her Golden Globes acceptance speech to also come out, that Rupert Everett recently advised gay actors to stay in the closet and that Bret Easton Ellis went on a twitter rant about how Matt Bomer ‘isn’t right’ for the lead role in a Fifty Shades of Grey adaptation ‘because he is openly gay’. It also recently transpired that Bomer’s audition for Superman early in his career was deliberately sabotaged by someone on the production team. How? They revealed his sexuality to the casting director.

While the examples above may be small, they are far from insignificant. Angels In America is a spectacular, powerful and groundbreaking play. Its subject matter is still pertinent today, when the latest figures for 2011 saw the highest rates of HIV transmission amongst gay and bisexual men in the UK since records began. Let’s keep the discussion about the production itself, not the actors’ private lives.

★★☆☆☆
Two Stars

Sat here, with the Conservative Whips’ office staring back at me, a clutter of old school ties, fast food wastage and a copy of a Latin Dictionary (the Oxford Edition naturally), I feel somewhat bewildered. This is due to the fact that, to my disappointment as well as befuddlement, I am not laughing. And I cannot understand why.

Whipping It Up, Steve Thompson’s new political comedy, does indeed, as programme sells it, ‘put the government Whips to the sword’. And, watching it, I clearly see that it is a comedy; at many moments the script is a veritably fine one. It falls, sometimes quite jarringly but on the whole oddly smoothly, between the subtlety of Yes, Minister and the outright bolshiness of The Thick of It. Yet, I am still not laughing.

Perhaps the problem lies in the fact, in many instances, I feel enlightened instead of amused. The play does at times feel as if I were watching the stage adaptation of a journalistic scoop, the exposé that the scheming Maggie – played in all her seductive capacity by Siawan Clark – so desperately craves. The characters here may only be morally so-so at best, but in a perfectly believable (if not depressingly realistic) way.

There is an element of sinister intent about the show also, which adds to my problem. Not in the script, for that is certainly not the worst lambast I have seen of politicians and their ways – it is no match for Question Time for example, but what is?

No, this sinister feeling arises only in part due to the Machiavellian content. More often a far too serious nature of the characters creeps in, even despite the best efforts of the Christian Kinnersley’s Chief Whip and his crass, but certainly entertaining, mentionings of genitalia and the like. There is a generally stifling atmosphere to much of the play. Admittedly, and wonderfully, this is lifted by the vivacity of the two female performances.  Delia, the generic female ‘bitch’ of parliament, for example, is well played by Emily Troup and is a great lesson in how to be both horrible yet likable.

The play is certainly not bad, and it delivers on the satire, but if you attend a showing you must expect to see a satire of the school of Juvenal – critical, savage at times, and, unfortunately, without that many laughs.