I can’t tell if this production is bad, or pretending to be bad. Either way I wasn’t entirely won over by Messiah Man, a new play from Matt Fuller and Adam Lebovits.

It is a play really of two halves. In the first half, the unpredictable, zany humour and lighting gags are genuinely a joy to watch. The narrator, Jack Morgan, has a great rapport with the audience and indeed, audience interaction, in the form, not least, of the handing out of cucumber sandwiches, is a highlight. As we approach the second half however, there is a strange and very noticeable shift from the mad cap not-taking-this-seriously-and-actually-quite-funny section of the play, to the for-some-reason-we-are-trying-to-make-this-play-have-meaning-and-poignancy section. It just doesn’t work. Matt and Adam should sick to one or the other for this type of short, small-scale student production, or at least make it funny all of the way through. 

The cast have oodles of energy and they clearly know what they are doing when it comes to comedy but lines are forgotten, cues not known (whether this is intentional or not I don’t know) and the pace slows right down. At one point the narrator wonders on and off the stage several times, unsure of his time to come on. Then, when he finally decides to stay on, he doesn’t know which light he is supposed to be standing under.  This, I should add is funny the first time, convincing even as a joke, but after several times just becomes embarrassing. The ending, in which we are exposed to the ‘amazing God machine’, is quite frankly the biggest anti climax I have ever had the misfortune to behold, and that is not even a funny anti-climax either. The play, rather than going out with a hilarious bang, just, well, sort of, clunks to a stop.

All in all then, glimmers of hope, but this production needs to go back to the drawing board before it can really be something special.

2 stars

Trinity Players new production is an accomplished and memorable performance of W;t, the story of a fifty-year-old professor of 17^th century poetry, Dr Bearing, and her battle with cancer. It’s hardly the most uplifting of themes, but it’s darkly comic script which intelligently weaves John Donne’s poetry with wise cracks about being a university tutor, will no doubt make its audiences think about the subject, and their professor, in new and profound ways

The piece is stylishly directed: it’s slick, clean and pacy (perhaps even a little too fast; a little more poignancy could be added by really playing up the silences in the piece). Olivia Ouwehand and Rory Platt, really do deserve tremendous credit for the such a polished and well rehearsed piece. 

As a Pulitzer Prize winning script, W;t is smart, edgy and bubbles with thought provoking lines, particularly poignant for me being those regarding powerlessness when being treated in a hospital by those students Dr Bearing used to teach. There is nice circularity to the piece and Edson has crafted a genuinely believable, and of course, witty, Dr Bearing, helped immeasurably by the character’s constant interaction with the audience.  The length is just right – any longer and I think I would have gotten quickly bored of someone slowly dying and repeated references to the same Donne poem. 

The entire cast is strong, and successfully create a nice balance between the humour and pathos. A singular reservation I had with Emily Troup’s portrayal of Dr Bearing was that occasionallyshe relied a little too much on being out of breath and tired.Obviously this is to be expected of someone undergoing cancer treatment, but I would have just liked a little more nuance. This aside, she is nigh on faultless.

All in all, top class.

4 stars

When I went to see an opera called ‘Orpheus in the Underworld’, I was expecting something sombre and melodramatic, and what I got instead was a Jupiter spilling leopard print thongs from his pockets, a Eurydice who can’t wait to get away from her husband’s awful music and a very sexy fly. Needless to say, I was delighted. Offenbach’s witty operetta was done with a real sense of humour, and the whole thing was a joy to watch.

Will Blake’s Orpheus was sweet pitiable delight, pushed around by his mother into rescuing the wife he hates. He was charming, and his singing not bring the strongest fitted well with his character of enthusiastic if not exceptional musician. James Gedit’s Jupiter was suitably a mix of casual incompetence and opportunistic lasciviousness and as a whole the group of gods formed a wonderful ensemble of blending voices and charming interplay. The real outstanding performance was from Julia Sitkovetsky as Eurydice. Along with simply stunning feats of singing she brought a cheeky, slinky spark to the part.

The simple design of the set was creatively used, and the costumes were infused with the same wit and lightness as the rest of the production- Mars comes on wearing army uniform and dark glasses, Cerberus is three chaps all wearing halloween dog masks and best of all Dominic Bowe as Pluto appears in a black suit, red tie and requisite devilish goatee.

My sense of the whole production was one of energy and humour. There was a real shared enjoyment between the singers, the audience and the orchestra. The lacy thong of one of Jupiter’s conquests appeared hung on the conductor’s music stand at the beginning of the second half, and I could see the orchestra smiling along with the jokes. There was a really lovely atmosphere of fun throughout the whole piece.

Unfortunately, this wonderful production was slightly let down by a few clumsy directorial touches. At the beginning, Eurydice sings about picking flowers, but is throwing them out of her basket in a sort of “look here are the flowers” kind of way, and although the whole production was in modern dress, the first time Venus comes on she is holding a fan- in a sort of “we know that fans are to do with wooing” kind of way. This is not to suggest that these things overshadowed or outweighed the liveliness and strength of this really wonderful production, it’s just a shame because with a tiny bit more attention to detail this production could have been perfect.

4 STARS

Of Montreal frontman Kevin Barnes’ penchant for reinvention has seen him strike various poses across the band’s 11-album output. In Paralytic Stalks, we encounter incredibly raw outbursts of painful emotion in the lyrics, making his latest reinvention one of the most personal and uncomfortable yet. The happy-go-lucky lover we met in Satanic Panic in the Attic is long gone. The mood is even bleaker than in False Priest, Barnes’ last album, in which he obviously encountered some heartbreak and wrote songs such as the ultra-depressing ‘Casualty of You’. In Paralytic Stalks, Barnes explores his obviously quite complex relationship with his wife Nina. I say ‘complex’ in the sense that perhaps marriage isn’t for you, Kevin – his lyrics veer wildly between manic outbursts of affection (‘when I die/I want you to die too/Not to try and stay in a dimension without you’) and deep despair (‘I should be happy but/what I feel is corrupted, broken, impotent, insane’).

On the other hand, this is the same Of Montreal who once released a cheerful upbeat 4-minute pop track about necrophilia, so I’m hard pushed to take Kevin literally in his outpourings of grief. This is fine in the first half of the album, where all the lyrical darkness is off-set by Of Montreal’s usual electro-pop-funk. The second half, which does not contain a single track less than 7 minutes long, veers wildly into self-indulgent territory as the music increasingly matches the self-indulgent tone of the lyrics (‘Wintered Stalks’ is the worst offender here).

This isn’t to say the album as a whole is a failure. Tortured soul/drug addict/Rick James-esque troubadour is an interesting new pose for Barnes to adopt – he came dangerously close in Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer, but goes over the edge here. It’s just that the music has seemed to suffer slightly with this dark turn Barnes has taken. Of Montreal have mostly been at their best within the confines of the 4-minute pop song (12 minute tour de force ‘The Past is a Grotesque Animal’ notwithstanding), and while we can see this in the first few tracks (‘Dour Percentage’ is a highlight), the second part has a feeling of going off the rails, and not in a good way. Poor Kevin.

In what must surely be one of the most iconic scenes in Hong Kong cinema ever, Wong Kar-Wai lovingly pans the camera across as Maggie Cheung, wrapped lovingly in a vibrant silk qipao, swings her thermos on the way back from the steam-filled noodle stall she visits every evening, across the grimy alleyways of Hong Kong in the sixties. It is the very essence of arthouse. Then the slow-motion stops, Cheung trudges up the stairs to her lodgings, politely but firmly rejecting her landlady’s kind offer to have dinner with the family, and pulls the shut between the rowdy comfort of the flat and her secluded room within. It’s a lonely life.

This is a movie about loneliness, and human connection lost and found and lost again. In the socially conservative era that constitutes Hong Kong in the 1960s, Mr Chow (played by am impeccably suave Tony Leung, he of the cheap suits and perpetually-furrowed brow) rents a room in an apartment the same day Mrs Su (Maggie Cheung) does. They are each married to absent spouses, never seen onscreen, who work overtime. As a result, Mr Chow and Mrs Su spend much of their time, initially, staying in their respective room, alone, nursing their solitude like fine wine. Eventually, when they discuss the matter, they come to the conclusion that their spouses have been unfaithful, and that they have been seeing each other. In a continuation of the film’s meta-fictional affectations (you did notice that the aforementioned camera panning was too knowing to be entirely in earnest, didn’t you?), they re-enact what they imagine might have happened. Yet the actuality of their relationship remains platonic. “Can a man and a woman ever just be friends?”

As any classicist might tell you, the Platonic (to make a cheap pun), is far from boring. Of course Mr Chow and Mrs Su have feelings for each other that they do not admit. Much of the film is given over to exploring the Foucauldian tension between knowing and confessing; feeling and acknowledging.

In The Mood For Love is not a romantic film. Premised on mutual infidelity, disappointed love, and the jadedness of urban institutions, it is too knowing, too jaded. It questions its own musical effects; it makes metafictional references. Whether that makes its inevitable segue into sincerity jarring or striking, is subject to the personal sensibility of the viewer. I should rather say the latter.

Chris Foster, self-described socialist and porter at Corpus Christi, says his taste is ‘eclectically varied’ and that he likes comedy. We sit down for a coffee, and talk social justice and film. Thanks, Chris!

Q: What was the first film you remember watching as a child?

A: Whistle Down The Wind. I was ten. It’s about three children living in the countryside who find a fugitive on their farm. It’s always stuck with me. I saw it in the cinema. Now that I think about it, it’s particularly striking that it is a film about innocence, since I watched it when I was still young and innocent.

Q: What about when you were a teenager?

A: I must have seen The Graduate when I was 14 — in The Odeon, of course. It was very hard to get into at first, but then I found it very daring. The same year, The Bicycle Thieves was released, which is obviously a very different film in the genre of Italian neo-realism, and about social issues. It made a big impression on me. Social mores were changing then. A big example of that was Woodstock, which I remember seeing also. It was about the festival — one of the best concert movies ever made, really.

Q: What then is your favourite film ever?

A: Oh, I’ve made notes on this [Li: Because I warned him beforehand, Chris has taken extensive notes, which he now refers to. He is the ideal interviewee.] Probably The Third Man, which is classic noir, for its stark cinematography and darkness. It was scored by Anton Karas, as I remember. And my favourite actor of all time, Orson Welles, was in it. It’s a film about disappointment.

Q: Would you say you go in for disappointment in a big way?

A: Haha! Yes, probably. A couple of my other favourite films are about that. All Quiet On The Western Front, for example, is a film about men who slowly lose their idealism and humanity. Heart of the Matter is about a man whose entire life is disappointing. To Kill A Mockingbird isn’t so much about disappointment as it is about injustice. But really, it’s as much about when I saw these things as anything else.

Q: Really? What films do you like that aren’t about disappointment?

A: Oh, Z, which is about a political murder in Greece. That was release in 1969 — I’m showing my age. And Paths of Glory, which was directed by Stanley Kubrick and starred Kirk Douglas. The Winslow Boy. That’s about honour. I’d say I have eclectically varied taste. I like comedy, too.

Q: One last question — what are some recently-released films you enjoyed?

A: The Browning Version has one of the most touching speeches I’ve ever heard on screen. It always makes me cry, and reminds me of the need for more kindness and understanding in all our lives. But that’s not recent. Days of Glory is pretty new. It’s all about films which make a difference.

The Blind Spot is the first play that I wrote.

I began to write it just after I finished school, at the start of my gap year. It was the first time in a while that I’d had enough time to sit down and focus on something that I wanted to write about for a while: three years playing poker, online and in school, often for five to six hours every day. 

It was an addiction, and a very profitable one. My parents didn’t give me an allowance for two years since I supplied the money from poker. In this sense, they approved – I was winning regularly and it gave them one less thing to worry about. My fifteen year old ego skyrocketed as I paid my own way and managed to talk my way into a casino membership and an online poker account.

The comeuppance was quick around the corner. Our game broke up, since the player who effectively funded it lost too much and girls arrived at school. Priorities shifted, power relationships were inverted and poker lost its spark.

A few years on, I wanted to explore the colder sides of my personality, and of my friends, that the long evenings spent locked in boarding school rooms gambling our parents’ money had exposed.

I stuck to poker as the dramatic form for writing about it. It is, as many writers have discovered, inherently theatrical. Conflict springs off the back of every card, character traits are ruthlessly exploited by the winners and money, power and status hang perpetually in the balance.

The result is a play that reveals as much about the nature of the players as it does the cocooned public school world they inhabit. 

The Blind Spot is on in 5^th week in the Moser Theatre, Wadham. Tickets are £5 from www.wegottickets.com

The year 2000 saw the dawn of a new age for television with the launch of the Big Brother franchise – unscripted, ‘real’ people being constantly filmed and put out on air for our viewing pleasure – spurring a spate of new observational ‘reality’ shows: Survivor, Fear Factor, America’s Next Top Model, and, now, entire channels dedicated entirely to them. In 2001, the genre even gained its own Emmy category.

But, last year the sun rose on something new on television, something with the same name but yet tangibly different: something shinier, more tanned and with smooth storylines, narratives which might, almost, maybe, have been written? From The Only Way is Essex to the newest (and punniest) addition, Desperate Scousewives, we are left wondering how much of what we’re seeing is spontaneous dialogue and interaction between characters and how much is managed by ‘story producers’ such as Daran Little (of TOWIE AND MIC), who by some insane and probably totally unrelated coincidence is an award-winning script-writer for Coronation Street.

This new genre goes by many names: reality soap/docu-soap/reality-drama/structured reality with the thin pretence of being a kind of anthropological study of a certain social group (the K-Rahs/the Essex Girls/the Scouse Elite). But, with the obvious content of, in the words of Charlie Brooker, ‘a glossy-looking soap opera performed by non-actors half-improvising a non-script’. Have we actually just been lulled into watching some sort of really painfully budget soap opera? A soap opera with untrained and unskilled actors? And even more predictable plotlines?

Whatever this enigmatic genre is, it’s everywhere and there’s a terrifying number of us glued to our screens screaming inane things like ‘Oh My God – she’s SO stupid!’ in the full knowledge that the fabulously false-eyelashed, fake-tanned and dentally-veneered figure on our screens whom you’ve inexplicably found yourself shouting at, has almost definitely been told to say exactly that spectacularly stupid thing, to elicit the exact reaction you just gave. We’re all following the invisible script, both behind the screen and in front of it.

The end of the last decade witnessed Big Brother’s retreat into the broadcasting purgatory of satellite-only channels. So what happened to TV reality? ‘There’s a new kind of reality, and it’s scripted’ says Sam Wollaston, but why do even our ‘reality’ shows now need to be scripted and airbrushed into a self-consciously perfect reality? Why does nobody on our screen look like the people in the street unless it’s a news item or a mugshot? Can we no longer handle the truth about how people actually look and how they really behave?

In a time when even David Attenborough is ‘structuring’ his footage of polar bears, we’ve got to face the facts (if we can remember what they look like). Reality on screen is over. Our dalliance with reality entertainment was great, it really was, but it’s over. It’s not the genre, it’s us. We just don’t feel the same way any more. We’re out of love with reality.