Acting is, let’s be honest about it, something of an ego massage. A massage in the form of clapping and whooping and hugs from people you fancy and wise handshakes from people you wish would adopt you. It’s an activity based on being looked at and listened to by a crowd of people. If you’re good at it, lots of people want to look and listen to you, and it will be a large crowd. If you’re really good, they’ll want to do this for an extended period of time. They may even be willing to forgo common first world luxuries such as long, open-mouthed yawns of boredom and inconspicuous genital scratching. The best actors can render a very large crowd silent with awe and provoke most unusual behaviour: phones are switched off to prevent the distraction they are intended to provide; eating is done quietly or not at all; whispering will result in frowning and negative telepathic waves from nearby crowd members; and a laissez-faire policy on toilet breaks is repealed in favour of fascistic bladder discipline. Why? All to create an atmosphere more conducive to watching and listening to a bunch of actors prancing and yelling like their lives depend on it.

It’s nearly the Easter Vacation. I, like all the other actors in Two Gentlemen of Verona, are going through the usual process of poking around with the script, working out why on Earth we’re saying and doing the things that our scripts tell us to say and do. Kate O’Connor is going through the usual motions of a director, caressing everything into the right shape and right consistency, like a potter sketching out the first curves of a new pot. So far, it’s like any other play. It’s Shakespeare so we feel grand and impressive; as though if we say anything with enough conviction it’s bound to make an impression on the audience, who, in their jaw-dropped state of amazement at our fabulous diction and dextrous facial expressions will no doubt be mesmerised by such an inspiring, perhaps even intimidating abundance of talent.

Except this isn’t just like any other play. And if they’re silent something has gone wrong. If they don’t involuntarily wolf-whistle at Amelia Sparling’s Silvia then something is wrong. If they don’t cringe in agony at Ed Seabright’s Proteus then something is wrong. If they don’t palm their foreheads with embarrassment whenever Tim Gibson’s Valentine opens his mouth, snort with laughter every time Stephen Hyde’s Launce steps on stage and audibly roll their eyes every time Speed makes a horrific pun, then something is wrong. No: this will be a proper garden play. And that means the sun will shine (it will), the wind will be light but noticeable, and the grass will be bouncy and comfy for you to roll out your table cloths and unfurl your meticulously packed picnic sets and sip your Pimm’s and scoff your scones. So please, please do whisper to your friends; do laugh and point and spit your drink out in surprise. No it isn’t a pantomime, but it isn’t in a stuffy theatre somewhere either. You aren’t going along with that bizarre game that we all play every time we decide to top up on some culture and become ‘theatre-goers’.

You see, we will be having fun. We’ll be singing Sinatra and skipping around and cycling across stage and climbing trees and then jumping out of them. In fact, take this as a challenge: if you can have more fun than us then I’ll buy you drinks.* We’ll be having fun not just because we’re actors who love strutting about on stage (love that though we do), but because we’ll be playing around with a hilarious script, with a group of hilarious colleagues on a beautiful summer’s day in one of the most beautiful gardens in the country, if not the world.

I guarantee that I’ll be in good company. Hopefully, you too will be with friends who want something nice to do in the sun. Well, Two Gentlemen of Verona will be jolly, jolly nice.

*I probably won’t buy you drinks, but I will make you tea or give you a high-five.

Barney Iley-Williamson is playing ‘Speed’ in Barbarian Productions’ The Two Gentlemen of Verona, to be performed May 1st-5th in Christ Church Cathedral Gardens. Tune in next term for perspectives on memorising lines, finding props, bonding with toy dogs, and the run-up to opening night. For more information about Two Gents visit their website, www.barbarian-productions.com, or follow them on twitter @twogentsox.

Once upon a time, some hapless individual seems to have told writer Alex Mills that he’s really bloody clever, and by God, I wish they hadn’t. Not that they were necessarily wrong – Mills writes with flair and initiative, and might have succeeded in creating a rather interesting and imaginative piece, had he not tumbled over his own ego on the way in.

‘Marketing Manager’ Alex Harris has done well to launch a cohesive and pervasive publicity campaign that harnesses all manner of media, social and otherwise, coupled with memorable posters by Sophie Stephenson-Wright. Before coming to see the play, they looked to me a little like something from the waiting room of one’s local mental health clinic. This is perhaps not totally inaccurate, for a play that was characterised to me by an overwhelming feeling of tiredness, and wanting to be able to leave my seat as quickly as possible.

Out Through The In Door is (quite apart from being an equally underwhelming album by psychedelic-heavy-metal quartet Vanilla Fudge) best described as an ambitious work. A ‘friend of the company’ had previously described it to me as a ‘meant to be a sort of mindfuck parody thing’, which was a helpful thing to have borne in mind.

Parody or no, the play lacks the blistering scorn of true satire, succeeding instead in being rather overwrought – not to mention an absolutely exhausting experience. I found myself at various points bored, disillusioned and entirely drained: while that may or may not be the ‘point’, this ‘bastard child of Pinter, Beckett and McDonagh’ lacks the spark or, dare I say it, soul to be worthy of such emotional malaise. At its best points, the tone is a little smug – at its worst, it’s downright self-satisfied. The laughs are there, on occasion, though many of them feel cheap, or underhand.

With a different director, cast and production team, I can say with absolute certainty that I would have got up and left. To Mills’ credit, though, he appears to have directed Pacitti and Lyons with skill and sensibility, making excellent use of the space available to him such that, visually, the piece is consistently interesting. The lighting works well too: in one especially stunning moment, Pacitti stands in the dark, outlined by a rather glorious yellow spotlight. The effect is terrific.

Pacitti and Lyons, though both extremely capable actors in their own right, are a less than ideal couple: Pacitti possesses a natural charm that makes his sudden lurches into rage feel a little insubstantial, while Lyons, even at his most wheedling and ‘affable’, never quite manages to shake off a sense of immanent misanthropy. On balance, though, they are both to be commended for excellent performances within the constraints of an extremely demanding script.

In short, then – before I am lambasted for being too harsh, this play has a number of redeeming features, though most of them lay outside of the script. I believe Mills to be an intelligent and witty writer, though one likely to improve with a few years in the cellar. Two thirds of the way through, Pacitti asks Lyons whether it’s over yet, and I found myself hoping for a response in the affirmative. Don’t take my word for it, though – if nothing else, Mills’ production provides genuine fodder for thought, and very nice lighting.

TWO STARS

Twee? What? Think an active interest in chunky knitwear and Facebook albums of lots of cute blonde hipster girls entitled ‘We Are Having A Hootenanny!!’

Pardon? Sorry, this is very unhelpful. Right. Tweepop has its roots in Orange Juice, the Smiths and, more recently, Belle and Sebastian. In general: jangling guitars, whimsical lyrics and a heavy 60s influence.

So far, so standard. Why Scandinavian? Because, for whatever reason, those Nordics just do this style of singer-songwriter music so damn well.

What’s good about it? It’s absolutely adorable. And you can feel like a bit of a scenester by virtue of the fact that they’re, like, Norwegian.

Sounds pretty edgy. Indeed.

Check out our selection of five bona fide bangers:

‘I’d Rather Dance With You’ – Kings of Convenience

‘He Knows the Sun’ – The Legends

‘Big in Japan’ – Britta Persson

‘Heaven’s on Fire’ – Radio Dept.

‘This Heart is a Stone’ – Acid House Kings

Take a listen to the rest of the playlist here: A Bluffers’ Guide to: Scandipop (Twee)

AKB48 are literally the biggest pop group in the world, and you’ve probably never heard of them. I say biggest not necessarily in terms of celebrity hype, nor album sales (though they have a pretty solid standing for both of these), but rather because there are, at last count, about 70 of them. An initial total of 40 was whittled down from application numbers approaching 8,000 – this is manufactured pop, but on a bigger scale than even supergroups of yore like the Spice Girls or Girls Aloud.

A bit of context, then: the name AKB48 derives from Akihabara, a district in Tokyo, in which the group has their own theatre, fittingly located on the 8th floor of retail giant Don Quijote. Forty singers might seem like rather a lot for one stage but producer and corporate mastermind Akimoto Yasushi organises the girls in four teams of ten, such that at any given moment, there is, with some certainty, probably a show planned for later that day. Despite that, obtaining tickets is rather harder than you might imagine: the impossibly high demand means that tickets are now distributed entirely via a lottery. The Japanese government, noting rising levels of suicide throughout the group, has harnessed their popularity and influence to launch a controversial anti-suicide advertisement campaign, with the official statement reading, ‘We’ve decided to ask cooperation from AKB, which can reach out to people in a broad range of generations.’

This wide reach has staggering financial repercussions. Yasushi is capitalising on a culture of idolatry, going so far as to deem the concept of the group ‘idols you can meet.’ Fans have an unusually high level of autonomy in deciding the future of the band, with general elections held in order to determine the member line-up for the next single.

To actually meet and greet these idols, however, is rife with far more difficulties than initially meets the eye. Aimi Eguchi, one of the members of the group, received tremendous amounts of publicity throughout 2011 due to an uncanny resemblance to other members of the group. Eguchi’s internet presence is palpable: a sixteen year old girl from Saitama, north of Tokyo, she has her own profile online, while a quick Google search reaps magazine features, complete with exclusive photos and biodata. Perhaps you can see where this is going: Eguchi exemplifies the best of AKB48, by virtue of being a composite CGI character. Fellow chanteuse Tomomi Itano’s button nose jostles for space with Mariko Shinoda’s mouth, while Mayu Watanabe’s eyebrows frame Minami Takahashi’s face. The product is slightly asymmetrical, but not totally unconvincing. In some respects, this suggests the ultimate expression of idol-worship: a completely artificial persona and character generated by a complex algorithm of the traits and features best liked by a vast network of fans.

As for the music – well, it’s not quite like anything I’ve heard before. Think lots of energy, slightly incongruous subtitles for non-Japanese speakers (‘I came to find the meaning of life through the miracle of meeting you,’ accompanied by swathes of sexy young women in retro clothing playing with buckets) and a jazzy chorus, usually with a line in English. Regardless of my own personal feelings for the genre, it certainly sells. I confess, I find something a little terrifying about AKB48. It might be the smiles, it might be the lyrics, it might be that there are just so many of them – at any rate, from a cultural perspective, they are absolutely fascinating. And, with success far beyond the borders of Japan, their influence grows ever more prominent. With all references to androids entirely borne in mind, then, be prepared. They are coming.