Aspiring to a ragged sort of transcendence, Beasts of the Southern Wild is a rare creative gesture, an ambitious slice of magic realism which is spoilt by an overeager desire to manufacture pathos. Set amidst a post-Katrina community in southern Louisiana – ‘the Bathtub’ – the film unfurls from the viewpoint of its diminutive heroine, six-year-old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis), a naïf effect that desperately evokes Days of Heaven but feels more akin to an episode of Kids Say The Funniest Things. The result is an altogether too user-friendly walk on the wild side, a film of surfaces that pretends to emotional and spiritual depths.

As Hushpuppy surveys her fragile web of living with an insatiable curiosity, she converts environmental catastrophe into a wider allegorical struggle for sense of self and place: the harsh beauty of the natural world is forever juxtaposed with the sterile, controlled environment of modern civilisation (“Ain’t that ugly over there?” says Hushpuppy’s father pointing out the power plants on the horizon, lest we miss the point.) By projecting her coming-of-age onto this austere landscape, Behn Zeitlin estranges the personal from the person, which in a film with already scant characterisation is nothing if not off-putting. Less a paradise of self-sufficiency than a haven for unrepentant alcoholics, Hushpuppy becomes the poster child of the Bathtub’s rugged individualism (“brave men stay and watch it happen… they don’t run,” she stubbornly says about an approaching storm, having taken part in a particularly unhelpful neo-Luddite detonation of a neighbouring levee).

Adopting a distinct us-versus-them stance, there is something rather uncomfortable in how Behn Zeitlin revives tired notions about the untutored wisdom and moral superiority of the ‘noble savage’. The film fetishizes poverty to the point at which being broke is roughly equivalent to a state of grace, painting the isolated marshland as an enchanted locale of subalternity where daily activities are abnormally heightened experiences. What is sacred and what is humble in a world where sucking the fresh meat out of sea crabs functions as a quasi-Eucharistic sacrament? It seems as though Zeitlin is yet another indie director who finds it hard to imagine a pudding can ever be over-egged.

The faux-documentary style, shifting between off-centre compositions and restless tracking shots, gives a dynamic agency to such neorealist skits – most successful in the film’s blistering prologue, a bacchanalia replete with carnival races, zydeco-inflected music and sparklers in the night – but it all feels too manifestly and knowingly stage-managed. It’s this conscious shoehorning of cultural insight, toothless criticism and fable status that makes Beasts of the Southern Wild ideal for such lazy critical anointments as ‘The [insert superlative] American film of the year!’

2.5 STARS

I had very high hopes for Miss Julie. The premise of the play seemed interesting, as although the story of a young titled women attempting to escape social constricts is hardly unique, I was excited to see how the love triangle between the main character, Miss Julie, her servant and his paramour, would play out. The posters looked promising and walking into the theatre I saw that the production team had succeeded in creating a stage which immediately sets the scene in a 19th century country estate.

Then the play began. Whilst the first scene, a conversation between two of the main characters, servants Jean (Alex Stutt) and Christine (Tanya Lacey-Solymar), is passable, the actors are drowned out by the background music, which is more thrilling than the action on stage. This is a problem which runs throughout the play, which is not aided by the fact that whilst Stutt and Lacey-Solymar give competent performances, they lack the chemistry needed to make Strindberg’s weighty dialogue exciting. Lacey-Solymar succeeds in making Christine’s submissive personality evident, but as a consequence she lacks any real stage presence. The dramatic entrance of Miss Julie, played by Sophie Ablett, is a welcome break, as she skilfully establishes herself as the haughty and demanding lady of the house. However, the play never really progresses past this. Even as the plot develops into an interesting power struggle between the three characters, a level of genuinely high emotional intensity is never achieved, and so it falls flat. Visually, Miss Julie is perfect.

Each of the characters looks the part, and unfortunately, this is the highest compliment I can give the play. The actors are definitely more settled in the latter parts of the play, and there are glimmers of good performances, especially from Stutt. However, they fall back into portraying their characters are stereotypes, rather than exploring the parameters of the script and really seeing what they can do. Furthermore, their performances become somewhat repetitive as each actor seems to have a go to facial expression which they use whenever the script calls for a dramatic moment What Miss Julie lacks is clear direction, as despite some competent performances, the play never really goes anywhere. Whilst I’m sure that the actors will become more confident in their roles, opening night left a lot to be desired, and was mostly forgettable.

TWO AND A HALF STARS

On visiting Liechtenstein, I felt the novelty of being in one of the world’s two doubly landlocked countries quickly fade. As long as the country was taken lightly, what with a Post Stamp Museum as its main tourist attraction in the capital, I could manage, even be amused; but as soon as any serious travel was contemplated – God, was it tedious.

Ben Power’s A Tender Thing presents Romeo and Juliet as rarely seen before; as an elderly, married couple, whose lines are taken from all across Shakespeare’s script in cut-and-paste fashion. This works fine at the outset, as a refreshing bonne bouche that teases your knowledge of the original, and for such playgoers who like quoting along to Shakespeare the evening is ideal: the balcony scene becomes raunchy, wizened banter – think stilettos turned slippers – its beauty, grace and amorous anticipation all slain at one fell swoop, a massacre at which the bard himself would boggle. “That’s so clever!” was the catchphrase of the night. We see a masterpiece on holiday, so we bubble and giggle.

But soon enough, we see that Power means business, when tragedy kicks in and Juliet is wheelchair-ridden. A Tender Thing parades all the known repertoire about illness in old age – the feeding of porridge (coughed out), the washing by linen cloth, the amnesia – to the background of a sentimental sea and John Woolf’s aimless music. My plaint is that it did not take an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet to deliver this hollow shell of a story, nor even a play; both author and director show little understanding of the stage, and a mimicking one of film – the scene-lengths, scene-changes, and flashbacks point only towards an half-empty cinema.

Juliet is avidly played by Kathryn Hunter, whose part – a hodgepodge of personages from the Nurse to Mercutio – denies her coherence, and indeed a truly great performance of which she is surely capable. Richard McCabe gives a kindly, bumbling Romeo one would fancy as a neighbour. His tough physique could have borne him onto smouldering heights of passion, to Oedipan roars of anguish – difficult for earlier, leaner Romeos – but, alas, McCabe kept in character. All in all, I had dry eyes and a heart unmoved throughout, as I did looking onto the unchanging scenery of Liechtenstein.

Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

When did this play about Oxford undergrads turn into a chilling murder mystery? The first act starts off in a college room: two friends are bantering about Formal Hall, Philosophy tutorials, and a pub crawl last Friday night. The conversation, as well as the setting, is painfully familiar. The character’s room is furnished with a shapeless armchair and a gaudy nylon rug; the bed is unmade, and the desk is covered in papers in disarray. It feels like home. Thanks to the intimate space of Burton Taylor Studio, with the audience sitting face to face with the actors, there is no sense of narrative distance. We are here, at Oxford, looking at two girls and a guy created in our image.

Now, all good thrillers start with a sense of the familiar that we want to cling to, but that gets violently disturbed. And the macabre events of Isobel’s plot do come with a blow. But the question is: is our surprise that of the delighted horror fan in awe of the villain’s cunning, or is it a one of disbelief? Starting off by mocking university life, then adopting themes from the detective novels that one of the characters reads, the play is mildly ironic on so many levels that it is unclear how seriously we should take all this. Is it intended to be a dark play about the vanity of spoilt Oxford kids, a moral exploration of the ‘banality of evil’? Or is it a self-referential piece exploring our everyday lives and our high- and pop-culture obsessions? The game of catching cues from Agatha Christie, Stephen King, and The Shining seemed to preclude dwelling on the ethical issues behind a horrible crime.

But the answer, really, is that you could take it either way. Isobel leaves you in a place where you want to laugh, amused by the absurdity of last century’s crime stories coming to life in today’s Oxford. But at the same time, laughter feels uncomfortable; it is mixed with some genuine guilt and unease. The characters’ words seem at times to be borrowed and inauthentic (“I led her to believe that we were both invincible. In fact, it was just me,” Jack says, eager to come off as the antihero). And then at once, Jack is no longer striking a pose. In the monologue in which he remembers a childhood accident, he is not pretending; he is speaking his true heart, and therein lies horror.

The play’s great surprise ending made me forget all scepticism. Walking home from this late-night show, I caught myself looking anxiously back, scared of my own shadow. Then I knew that Isobel had done a great job. A literary game turned deadly serious, the play manages to catch you off-guard and give you the chills. You could take it as just a game, as a joke on the way we Oxonians tend to take ourselves and literature too seriously. Or you could let go of the critical stance and let yourself be very scared.

FOUR STARS

Isobel is showing at the Burton-Taylor studio until Saturday 27th October, 9.30pm. Tickets are £6 

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