s ta g e
+interview: doug stanhope
+Gap year Planning
play editorsgwilym lewis-brooke Jake pace-lawrie Screen editorsaustin raywood
stage editormatt williamson
literature EditorROBERT KIELY ARTS editorTravis Riley
a r ts
+ the forgetting of proper names +alberto burri
+review: safe house +review: carnage
m u si c
+Classical Music +Review: The maccabees
MUSIC EDITORSRICHARD HALL, RINA BUZNEA
FASHION EDITORS FLORENCE CORNISH, KATE VINE TRAVEL EDITOR EMILY RAY
Food Editor Helena Goodrich brand designDanny WIlson
s creen
f a sh io n
+student stylings
l i t er a t u r e +come rhyme with me
f oo d
+wahaca recipes
Doug Stanhope
You may be familiar with Doug Stanhope from Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe or Newswipe or some other cleaning implement. But if that’s as far as it goes, shame on you: you should have pursued it further. He has three standup DVDS, Deadbeat Hero, No Refunds, Oslo: Burning a Bridge to Nowhere, a book of his online baiting of paedophiles (“I never thought to maybe not put the word paedophile in the title because people are very reticent to have that on their credit card”), and has also hosted a Girls Gone Wild. We wanted to know more: RK: You once tried to run for President. Let’s say you get in: what would be the first policy you would put in place? DS: Gosh, I dunno. If you asked me in 2007 I’d probably have had an answer. But I’d let a lot of people outta prison. I’d be handin’ out pardons to any non-violent drug offender. They’d have about 600,000 people back on the streets, doing drugs! We’d know where to score drugs. But yeah. I’d do alotta nothin’, I’d do what I do with my days now, a whole lotta nothin’.
RK: OK, you’ve released them. Now, the head of the CIA crawls towards you snivelling and says you get one free assassination. Who is it? DS: I’d make him kill himself. He’d be coming in to get a pink slip. Most government should be eliminated. (I’m really a big Ron Paul fan. ) RK: You’ve been described as libertarian, but that sounds a bit anarchist… DS: I don’t know the titles. I don’t know what I am. ‘Anarchist’ has alotta baggage with it but I’m sure I fit into that mould more than most. But ‘anarchist’ gives the illusion somehow that I’d be willing to be teargassed in a riot, and that’s just not my style. RK: How do you feel about this whole Occupy-movement? DS: It’s like anything else, it lacks focus. A lot of it feels like wayward angst that doesn’t know why it’s there. I think it needs leadership. When you see that many people that angry, you kinda wanna put ‘em in a direction. “Hey, let’s get something done.” Not just live in a park. I don’t know what that’s accomplishing.
Review: She Stoops to Conquer
All hail the National Theatre's latest comedy sensation. Following the success of last years One Man Two Guv'nors, they’re bringing us a brand new production of She Stoops to Conquer. A return to the stage for Coronation Street's Katherine Kelly as Kate Hardcastle, but it is Sophie Thompson's Mrs.Hardcastle which steals the show. Oliver Goldsmith's 18th Century comedy is one of mistaken identity, where Kate Hardcastle's betrothed (Harry Hadden-Paton) is misdirected by her troublesome brother (David Fynn) and shown to the house under the impression that it is an inn and not the house of his prospective father-in-law. While Mr. Hardcastle (Steve Pemberton) is fuming with rage at his future son-in-law's impudence, Mrs.Hardcastle is chasing him and his London friend around in a frenzy, putting on her best posh voice. Slipping between her thick west-country accent and her preferred received pronunciation, Sophie Thompson is astounding as the bumblingly eager Mrs.
Hardcastle. Smothering and spoiling her son, calling him 'booby' and desperately trying to be less 'rural' and more urban make for a splendid performance - of all her exits, not one was without applause. The disappointment when she left the stage and the eager excitement when she returned was palpable in the room. Katherine Kelly, fresh from the ITV cobbles makes an excellent Kate Hardcastle, encapsulating her charmingly sly and independent demeanour. Although the posters suggest something more aligned with Downton Abbey, it is in fact a raucous, thigh-slapping good fun comedy. Harry Hadden-Paton's Marlowe is an astonishingly versatile mix of trembling mess and rampant lover and provides a comical contrast to the more earthy aspects of his brother-in-law to be. Far from being just slap-stick, She Stoops is a luxuriously funny with play with very generous language and characters. Brilliant performances aside, Mark Thomp-
RK: Is your ideal audience antagonistic or with you on every point? DS: It depends. I don’t mind the antagonism if it’s a crowd I can control. If you’re playing the Apollo Hammersmith, you want them to be with ya. Cos if someone gets pissed off on the balcony… I don’t even know where you are, and you’re yellin’ shit… If it’s a small enough audience, then antagonism is good. I miss the old comedy clubs, where people would wander in, having no idea who they’re there to see. Some of my favourite shows have been absolute chaos. RK: Do you like being given the label of 'controversial' comic? DS: I guess controversial is better than the rest, like ‘Offensive’, or ‘X-rated’ – none of those apply. I’m not trying to offend people. Controversial – nothin’ wrong with that. RK: From your blog, I gather you had to appeal online for free surgery for yourself, and it worked… Mind telling us a bit about that? DS: Yeah, I kinda put that up as a joke. I didn’t expect to have alotta doctors hangin’ around my blog, but it turns out I did. I did it as a goof and I was just amazed got gut surgery from it. I think I said I’d trade a free CD or DVD for hernia surgery, and I got it… and I think I cheated him outta the DVD! RK: Well, you did a charity gig in return. DS: Yeah, we raised about $17,000 for the Humane Society. Which is a little more than what the surgery woulda cost, so I think we’re even. I told them to give ALL the money to one cat. It should have a waterbed and a diamond in its tooth and a three-piece suit. RK: How would you describe your fans? DS: Single, brooding, overweight young men disenfranchised with the whole lot of life. A lot of doughey kids in Misfits T-Shirts. School-shooters who couldn’t find the bullets, I call them. Those are the ones I see a lot. But then again I do have doctors. I forget sometimes. I’ll read a bunch of my facebook comments and think: What a bunch of fucking idiots I have for fans. But you gotta keep in mind that a lot of those fans don’t hang around posting dumb shit on facebook. I have alotta professionals, but mostly schoolshooters. RK: What’s your drink/drug of choice? DS: My drug of choice would be ecstasy if it were any good, but the shit you get now is not any good. I like hallucinogens. We took alotta mushrooms the other night, and it was fucking 12 hours of it, we’re stilling cleaning up the wreckage from it. And not just mental wreckage... So yeah, I like hallucinogens, but I’ve always said they’re the exercise of nar-
st ag e cotics, like a gym membership: “Oh I know I should do mushrooms, it’s good for me, mentally, spiritually… But it’s so much work! Maybe tomorrow.” Drinks: I’m a vodkadrinker at home. On the road I stick with beer, you don’t know how much vodka is in that drink and you have a show to do. RK: What’s your weirdest story from the road? DS: After 21 years on the road… there’s no superlatives. It’s gotten to a point where people will bring up a story that I don’t remember: “Hey, you remember when you were getting blown by that girl who threw up in your lap?” It’s always fun when someone starts telling a story about you, and you’re just as rapt as everyone else at the table because you don’t know how it ends: “Then what did I do?” RK: What’s the worst thing about your job? DS: Alotta times you go on stage you feel like a magician, like a total fraud, because you are saying the same things night after night. There’s nothing worse than the disappointment in someone’s eyes when they stay for the second show because they think it’s all off the top of your head. Last year in London some guy came to the Leicester Square Theatre three nights in a row, front-row centre in the exact same seat. On the second night I thought: it must be me. Third night I asked: “Are you the same guy?” “Yeah.” “What are you coming here for? I can’t just repeat this to your face like you never heard it before. You’re just a shining beacon of fuckin’-disappointed in my face. Go be a beacon of disappointment at Stanhope’s next show in London, April 21st, Hammersmith Apollo. ROB KIELY
son's brilliant set design, with a huge roaring fire as its centrepiece, works as both an aristocratic home and an inn making excellent use of the Olivier's revolve. Much praise should also be aimed at the show's ensemble, whose inter-scenic interludes are a wonder of performance allowing no down time in this quick paced play. Jamie Lloyd has done wonders in bringing out even more comedy from the original text delighting the audience on all levels. In short: theatrical comedy at its best. I defy you not to leave with a smile on your face! She Stoops to Conquer is at The National Theatre until April 14th. It will also be streamed live to cinemas on 29th March as part of NT Live. All tickets are £16.50 for under-18s, £10 student stand-by tickets are also available on the night. LUKE JONES KCL
Photo: Alistair Muir PLAY v32
|
Issue 9 |
2012
Alberto Burri at Estorick A Celebration of Burri’s Relationship with Material
a r ts
Burri’s contribution to modern art has been internationally recognised, but strangely neglected in the UK. This exhibition at the North London Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art is his first solo retrospective since the 1960s. His hugely physical abstract paintings
Alberto Burri (1915 to 1995). Sacking and Red, 1954. Tate, London© Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini, Collezione Burri, Città di Castello, 2012
Born amidst the political and artistic chaos of the First World War, and dying amidst the ‘post- post-modern’ consumerism of Europe in the 1990s, Alberto Burri’s life and art represent complete microcosms of human experience in the twentieth century.
have been seen as parallels of Pollock and Rothko in America, but he remains devoutly Italianate, and void of pretension. There is a strong biographical tract to the Estorick’s exhibition, which reinforces the analogous relationship between the artist and the 20th century. Burri took to painting relatively late. Having trained and served as a medic during World War Two, he was taken by the Americans as a prisoner of war, and held in a camp in Texas. It was here that Burri first began painting, and this autodidactic approach is evident in his early paintings, which collectively give the sense of a mind floundering through back-catalogues of modern art. There is a strong expressionist dimension to these early paintings, echoing Van Gogh’s more dream-like compositions or Van Dongen’s melancholia. Gradually his work passes through surrealism – he almost captures the metaphysical quality of de Chirico in Fishing at Fano – and abstraction – small temperaon-card paintings mimic Miro or Kandinsky. That it is so natural to read heavy influence into these eclectic works reveals their unoriginality. It was in the early 1950s that Burri freed himself from the yoke of tradition, as much as that is possible, and began developing the unorthodox abstract expressionism with which he is now associated. He began developing the artistic potential of oil and tar, and later sacking, sheets of metal and plastic. The mortality of the material is emphasised, and the notion of the labouring artist as craftsman is powerful. There is also a strong sense of engagement with the material land, which reflects Burri’s influence upon the Arte Povera movement of the 1980s. Burri’s obscure abstraction demands interpretation and linguistic explanation, and yet at the same times denies any coherence. His subject is primarily the celebration of the act of composition, and the integrity of the materials themselves. “Words are no help to me when I try to speak about painting, they talk around the picture. What I have to express appears in
the picture.” But as a viewer this is simply not enough. We search for more, for an ulterior level. We read landscapes and facial expressions into tears within sacking. Burri’s scarred and stitched collages seem to reflect the fragmented and scarred state of post-war Europe, sustained through its grim, almost desperate semblance of unity. In our interpretive candour, our obsessive erection of a contextual narrative, what we struggle with most of all is the meaningless of the constructive process. What emerges from these paintings is the physicality and mentality of the artistic process, both in its practice and theory. Burri is significant as his mixed media constructions symbolise the beginning of the final ascent to the intellectual pinnacle of modernism, a project instigated by Manet, among others, in the mid-nineteenth century. This project is the unearthing and deconstruction of the creative process. Burri tracks this development to its apogee, and his work retains a complexity and physical force. Yet they also lose the subtlety of the early modernists, forged through the dialectic interplay between traditional convention and the destruction of this artistic orthodoxy. The final room of this exhibition, containing a series of cracked black plaster on canvas, is poignant. There is a stillness and a reflective quality here, but the work feels tired, the canvasses are like creased, weathered skin. In its complete abstraction, the work loses its point of reference with the past. Disconnected from its artistic heritage, and thus temporally incoherent, the ultra-conceptual nature of this late work loses the energy of Burri’s earlier experimental painting. It becomes static. And so the analogy between Burri and the 20th century stays true to the last, and leaving the exhibition there is an unsavoury aroma pressing around the creases of my mind – one of morbid stagnation. NICHOLAS MITHEN At Estorick, until April 7. Nearest tube: Highbury and Islington.
Critical Dictionary: An Interview with the Curator Julia Schell: Is the Critical Dictionary about critical art or critical about art?
Critical Dictionary is an ambitious cornu-
copia of words and images from A-Z, ques-
tioning common perceptions and standard
interpretations of meaning. Part of the art-
work has now been turned into an exciting ex-
hibition at WORK Gallery and puts the playful context into material dimension. Lon-
don Student talked with author and curator
David Evans about the inspiration behind Critical Dictionary and its impact on the viewer/reader.
PLAY v32
|
Issue 9 |
2012
David Evans: Neither. It mainly presents visual material that queries common-sense understandings of familiar words. Take F for Forest. In the book version of Critical Dictionary (Black Dog Publishing, 2011), this entry begins with night photographs by Tim Edgar that brilliantly evoke Romantic notions of the forest as opaque and mysterious. Next there are Bianca Brunner’s images of wooden platforms for viewing forests that suggest, perhaps, a post-Romantic notion of nature now reduced to light entertainment. Finally, there is the Broomberg and Chanarin shot of The Saints Forest, Israel, with a short caption that informs you that a lot of the tree planting in this country was done to cover up traces of Arab villages that were seized and destroyed in 1948. Cumulatively, I hope, the photographs convince you that a forest is more than a large area with a thick growth of trees.
Image Courtesy of WORK gallery and the artists
The Forgetting of Proper Names
Three Polish Artists make their London Debut in Calvert 22
Agnieszka Polska Sensitisation to Colour, 2010 HD video, 5’02'', © the artist, courtesy ŻAK|BRANICKA
The title of Calvert 22’s most recent exhibition is a tilt of the hat to Freud’s suggestion that forgetfulness may not only be a fault of the memory, but a form of false recollection too – an intended psychoanalytic repression.
CCTV cameras in Central London, and informational placards typed in emboldened Lucida Grande. This form of archaeology’s main aim, however, is not to tell us more about the past, but to introduce us, like an introverted What the triplet of Polish debutantes in Lon- nephew, to their life out of the shadow of Comdon (Wojciech Bąkowski, Anna Molska and munism. Their techniques are provocative and Agnieszka Polska) have collectively achieved, mindfully violent. is to apply this concept to world hisAgnieszka Polska submerges us tory. They shine an expository torch Whether an into a world where we are vulon Poland’s marginalised memory. nerable to the unreliability of Like when Gertrude Stein dis- apocalyptic senses. Where for Freud it was turbingly insisted to Hemingway in choir or a few the mind, for these Polish artists, a peeling Parisian cafe during the it was the destructive interests of 1920s: “That is what you are. All of lonely ladies, world powers. Her exhibited you young people who served in the it was deeply work is presented solely in film; war. You are a Lost Generation.” black and white archival footage, Yet what spawns from these works affecting her animations, and arranged is not apathy and nihilism, but an scenes. Polska unravels a haraffirmation of identity, a beautiful assertion of rowing tale of starving students on protest, lived experience. such bleak and inhuman tales being rolled out As postmodernism has informed us, history as if they were dusty carpets. But there is a is very much contingent, how the past is re- shrouding in what she conveys to us, the shaped over time is undoubtedly a central scenes are constructed, and the bodies of stutheme. This exhibition is exactly the manifes- dents are represented by illustratively folded tation of this contemporary interpretation. An clothes. Does she aim to represent these entiunwavering avant-garde approach sees HD ties as soulless, or is she invoking a disembodprojectors found almost as numerously as ied emotion in us for something that was never
JS: Why turn an online magazine first into a book and then into an exhibition?
together the words and pieces in Critical Dictionary?
DE: In the 1980s I saw the Michael Clark DE: There are a number of historic precedents, like the anti-dictionary that Dance Company performing in Brighton, backed by the Sloven- hijacking found Bataille and colleagues included in Documents (Paris, 1929-30), ian band Laibach. Then in 2008 I had the idea of bringing them to- words and im- an experimental journal that was subject of the fairly recent gether again at criticaldicages, and set- the Hayward exhibition Undercover tionary.com. Via Mute Records, I got a contact address for Laibach ting them to Surrealism. Or Brecht’s War Primer (originally published in who allowed me to sample their work in new East Berlin in 1955, with an Engrecent album Volk and supplied lish-language version finally apwatercolour paintings that are contexts. pearing in 1998), mainly photos part of the CD packaging. And I noticed that one of my ex-students, Jake Wal- clipped from newspapers and magazines in ters, was doing production shots for Michael World War II and given alternative captions in Clark. I got in touch and he was pleased to co- the form of four-line verses. And détourneoperate, too. The issue quickly came together, ment – a tactic associated with Guy Debord confirming that the internet is wonderful for and the Situationists that usually involved emmaking national and international contacts bezzling or hijacking found words and images, and for getting things going cheaply. However, and setting them to work in new contexts. it lacks the materiality of the book or exhibiJS: And in what sense can art itself still be tion. critical? JS: What is the common language that binds
real? Polska, it seems, intends to raise questions about authenticity of emotion. A graduate of the celebrated workshop under Grzegorz Kowalski at The Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Anna Molska is the one most concerned with social change. Her primary medium is also film, and influence is derived from Cinéma Vérité, especially in its use of amateur performers. Two moving images are fertile in my mind. The first, of some scruffy workers encamped about a hill, atonally riffing about their lives with the unrelenting flow of a factory tower releasing smoke in the background. The second, of a group of elderly women, who speak of premature parental death in a building made of glass, with frosty windows and snow tumbling. Here, they seamlessly merge into song. Whether an apocalyptic choir or a few lonely ladies, it was deeply affecting. Wojciech Bąkowski’s nuanced approach is much more aligned to the subjectivity of embodied experience. He explores how the intricate encounter of every day life is ritualistic, stemming from a nostalgic glare at childhood to now. Bakowski weaves together sound, images and performance to comprehensively convey his idealist perspective. Captions in-
a r ts clude: “A multitude of pixels. Blackness, Really Black, but my flat is too small. The projection breaks down.” It is easy for the viewer to connect with something so idiosyncratically humanistic. However, with placards both in Polish and English, the intention is also to raise issues of translation. A compelling factor of this exhibition is that they intend it as a starting point for workshops, performance, readings, debates and a book club. The Limited Nature of Translation being one of them; to remove the artists from a pedagogic position and to form a dialogic community to galvanise discussion is very honourable. It reflects on an institution that is sincere about its work, and along with a regular smorgasbord of Poland’s finest artists, the potential future is inspiring.
Peter Yeung
At Calvert 22, until March 18. Nearest tubes: Old Street, Liverpool Street.
Anna Molska The Weavers, 2009 Video, 12’, sound Courtesy Foksal Gallery Foundation
DE: Since the 1970s, German artist Klaus Staeck has sought to directly service political campaigns and organizations with postcards, posters, and, increasingly, electronic equivalents. Across the same timespan, his contemporary Hans Haacke has also tried to raise political awareness about a range of issues, but mainly operating in galleries and museums. Haacke told me a few years ago that he appreciates what his friend Staeck is doing, but he thinks that the media debates initiated by his own work can have more influence. At this moment, direct action across the world appears to be as significant as events in 1989 and 1968, and there is an obvious demand for rapid documentation and agit-prop graphics. Nevertheless, there is also a role for more reflective visual work. So: Staeck and Haacke and beyond. JS: How important are words or theoretical concepts for visual arts – can you enjoy the Critical Dictionary without being an ‘insider’?
or photograph is accompanied by the label Untitled, for example, then a complex of theoretical issues are raised about the borderline between art and non-art. Such issues are continuously raised by Critical Dictionary, but in an accessible manner, I hope. Like Orwell, it addresses itself to the average sixth-former. JS: What limits may art test and which borders should it respect, if any? DE: Critical Dictionary seeks to un-define, to de-classify, but rejects cynical relativism.
Julia Schell
David Evans is a Senior Lecturer at Arts University College, Bournemouth, UK. He is Secretary of the online art magazine criticaldictionary.com. Critical Dictionary at WORK Until February 25 Nearest Tube: Kings Cross
DE: I take it for granted that art is not an exclusively visual medium. As soon as a painting
PLAY v32
|
Issue 9 |
2012
Review: Safe House Dir. Daniel Espinosa / February 17th
s creen
No one is safe. Well, that’s certainly the case if you mess with Denzel Washington in Safe House, an action-thriller which stars Washington as Tobin Frost - a former CIA agent gone rogue. Tobin Frost is hardly the toughest sounding name, but he is unquestionably a formidable character in the film; mere minutes after first appearing, he has already broken the neck of a would-be assassin. Frost is in Cape Town, South Africa, to collect a microchip containing something very top-secret which the CIA would like to get back. Indeed, in the classic MacGuffin plot device it is not so important what is on the microchip, but rather the lengths to which people will go to try to retrieve it from Frost. When Frost realises he is being relentlessly pursued by mercenaries, he hands himself in to the US embassy. He is detained and taken to the local CIA safe house, where Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds, Green Lantern) works as the facility’s house-sitter. The local team from the CIA swiftly set to torturing Frost by water-boarding him, while Weston questions “Is this legal?” Following events closely from the CIA headquarters in Langley are frosty official Catherine Linklater (Vera Farmiga, Source Code) and Weston’s boss David Barlow (Brendan Gleeson, The Guard). Frost, naturally, holds up quite well to the attempts at extracting information. However, the interrogation is interrupted when the safe house is attacked by mercenaries after him. Upon both escaping, Weston is left solely responsible for taking Frost to another secure location. So what’s going happen when law-abiding Weston and maverick Frost are forced to team up? Pretty much what you would expect to happen, Weston is forced to question his orders and break the rules in working with Frost. Therefore, the pivotal flaw with Safe House is that the whole film is far too predictable; the big twist as to who is really the villain after Frost can easily be seen coming. Given the
That’s not Ethan Hawke!
Courtesy: Universal Pictures
Thankfully, it has Washington. His engaging performance as the sociopathic Frost, emitting both a cunning charm and menace, saves the film from complete mediocrity. Described by an acquaintance (in the film’s best line) as a “black Dorian Grey” he dominates the film, every moment without Washington the film drags more. It is certainly a physical role for Washington, with the actor performing his own stunts in a narrative heavy with car crashes and gun battles. An impressive feat of dedication from Washington considering he’s 57 years old. Meanwhile, Reynolds delivers a decent performance as Weston, upstaged as he may be by Washington. Although Weston cannot but come across as slightly dull and humourless compared to Frost, Reynolds none the less impresses in the physicality of his performance. Weston takes a fair few beatings in the film, rapidly losing his youthful looks as the narrative progresses. A particular highlight involves Weston in a brutal fist fight containing a ridiculous amount of broken glass. However, Weston also comes with his rather boring girlfriend (Nora Arnezeder, Paris 36); an underdeveloped character who never contributes anything of worth to the film. For a brief moment it appears she may be of relevance, when the narrative seemingly sets her up as a potential kidnap victim. But this is quickly dropped as soon as it is brought up, disrupting an already uneven narrative. Instead, the only apparent reason for Weston’s girlfriend existing in Safe House is for him to take a shower with her in the opening credits. Further wasted potential in Safe House comes from the South African setting. The film was shot on location and action sequences take in various Cape Town settings: gleaming new football stadium, chaotic shanty town and bleak savannah. But these are superfluous settings. The only outward reason for the film being set in Cape Town is that it’s a long way from Langley; it never matters that Frost is specifically in South Africa. In fact the film was originally going to be set in Buenos Aries, and for all intents and purposes it might as well have been, as far as the plot is concerned. Shorter plane ride for the CIA as well. But at least Safe House is suitably violent; enough so to earn the film a 15 rating. Therefore we get to see some entertainingly over-the- top action sequences as Frost ruthlessly dispatches one person after another. While the film proves a substandard mystery, it at least delivers as an action picture.
Requisite CIA Security Desk
Courtesy: Universal Pictures
promising opening and talent involved, it is frustrating when the plot of the film turns out to have about as much mystery as the average episode of Scooby-Doo.
PLAY v32
|
Issue 9 |
2012
If it were not for Washington, there is very little to recommend in Safe House. It is a passable, but wholly uninspired experience. Still, it could be worse. Zac Efron was considered for the role of Weston at one point. JOHN MARTIN
Review: Carnage Dir. Roman Polanski / In Release
s c r e en
Chemical Brothers Don’t Think Courtesy: Ge tty Images
Guess Which Couple Votes Republican?
“I believe in the god incarnate, the god of carnage.” So says Christoph Waltz in his role as a yuppie pharmaceutical executive Brooklyn-based father whose adolescent son has gotten into a scuffle with another Brooklyn couple’s (John C. Reilly and Jodie Foster) son. His wife (Kate Winslet) and he have come to the other family’s apartment in order to discuss what should be done in terms of their children. And then things take a decidedly dark turn... Now, dark material has been a common focus in most of Polanski’s films. From Knife in the Water to Rosemary’s Baby to Chinatown to The Pianist, not once has he filmed something joyful or sweet. Always in his films do things take a turn for the worse, usually quite early on as well. While Carnage certainly doesn’t shy away from such material, it does however take on a new approach to human self-destruction, masochism, and arrogance. Though, this questioning of humanity and human nature is something embedded into his films, for instance the actions of John Cassavettes in Rosemary’s Baby. But, rather than having a series of external forces threatening the characters (whether it’s the devil, a wealthy developer, or the SS) this time the only threat to the characters is themselves. All have placed themselves far above their peers and partners and believe themselves to be, said-or-unsaid, intellectuals placed among children. Based on the award-winning West-End and Broadway play God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, the play explores the levels of ridiculousness amongst the upper middle class. While both the play and the film could be extended out to describe middle classes across the western world, the use of New York adds a special significance to the story. Each character has their own flaws, each representing a different oft-cited subset of New York neuroses. Waltz is absolutely brilliant as a pompous, arrogant, and rude politically-conservative executive often answering his phone mid-conversation. Winslet is equally top-notch as his demure and resentful wife. As good as the conservative couple may be they’re no match for the powerhouse performances from the liberally-minded couple. John C. Reilly gives arguably the best performance of his career as a passive aggressive father. His wife, Jodie Foster is on fire and often steals the best lines as an arrogant and busy bodying ultra-politically correct journalist writing a book about...wait for it...Darfur. Go figure. Choice line: “I UNDERSTAND AFRICA!” Well...okay. While the meeting was supposed to be a brief discussion about the actions of their children, it ends up getting drawn out into an afternoon of arguing about the natural order of things and each character’s inflamed neuroses. It’s much like the dinner party in La Dolce Vita repurposed to apply to the modern world. The cracks in both marriages begin to quickly appear to the point where the positions change from couples to political allegiances to finally, gender. Once Reilly and Waltz start opening a bottle of scotch and lighting cigars, you know you’re in for the long haul. But it’s a superbly written and crafted haul that provides much in the way of absurdist comedy. Needless to say, this was all supposedly over a pair of 10 yearolds who got into a single fistfight. Well that’s simply not good enough, for these people, there has to be someone or something to blame. And they will search long and far until for that someone or something, just to justify their own insanity. Best of luck to them... AUSTIN RAYWOOD
Don’t Think is an attempt from Adam Smith to capture the unique collision of the audio and visual elements that combine to form a Chemical Brother’s Show. It was filmed with over 20 cameras and is all done at one performance, the 2011 Fujirock festival in Japan. He mixes a documentary style, to capture the show and audience unawares, while also implementing a narrative element to give the film a dream like, or rather psychedelic, feel. The film captures the ambiance and feel of the show, offering a subjective look at it as seen from the eyes of the audience and, as Smith says, captures their “emotion”. Adam Smith has been collaborating with the Chemical Brothers since their early days playing gigs in 1994. Because of this, the visuals have always been an extremely important if not inseparable part of their shows. Indeed they work very much dependently. Rather than the visuals merely aiding as an accompaniment to the music, the two have a symbiotic relationship. Many of the visuals standing alone are pieces of avant-garde art. These include masks of light flying across the screens, scary profiles of clowns, people shaped cut-outs dancing symmetrically and flashing sirens. All these images build with the music rising to a crescendo on the drop that is met with the thousands of hands shown waving in unison, completing the congruous triumvirate. The shots of the crowd are as impressive as the screened visuals in many ways. The many small cameras allow an intimate access into the audience. The high definition and bright lighting allows a clear view of the audience’s reactions and we can follow their thoughts through a number of emotions ranging from joy to expectancy, fear, and complete ecstasy. One of the crowd members that the film repeatedly cuts to serves a narrative role. The camera follows her as she leaves the concert and roams the festival in a stumbled confusion of blurred backgrounds and flashing lights. The visuals we have previously seen on screen jump off it and become part of her world. The white cockroaches scuttle along the floor and the marching robot wanders in the outside world. This is where the film goes beyond merely documenting the concert performance but attempts a psychological insight into the minds of those in attendance.
If surrealism is concerned with the logic of dreams, then Don’t Think seems to offer up the logic of a psychedelic trip either by narcotic substances or perhaps the similar feeling that is created by the Chemical Brother’s intoxicating music accompanied with Adam Smith’s imagery. What is so interesting about the reality that Smith and the Brothers have tried to create with this film resides in the way that they have chosen to distribute it. Considering the height of technology that the Chemical Brothers utilise in their production and shows, and the futuristic visuals that Smith creates, it is interesting that they have chosen to release it in such an old fashioned medium as the cinema. Why not release it for internet stream or download via Youtube or iTunes or other such media outlets? But this is why the film can be so effective. Because it would surely be impossible to feel as if one were at a festival while enjoying the experience alone. But in the confines of the cinema the experience is a group one, admittedly very different from the group interaction at a festival, but one is a part of a group nonetheless. Furthermore, the film was released “for one night only”, to play at over 100 cinemas around the UK at 10pm on 3rd February. This not only increases the numbers that will be viewing the show simultaneously, bringing it up to a festival sized audience, but recreates the feeling of exclusivity experienced at a festival: you were either there on the night or you were not. It would be hard to argue that a festival can be recreated through sitting in the dark and watching a 2 dimensional screen. However, Chemical Brothers fans can delight in the fact that the film is in fact the first to be made in 7.1 Dolby Surround Sound meaning that the quality should be as good as, if not better than, many live performances. This means that you can experience their sound as loud and equalised as they were originally intended as opposed to quiet, distorted, and with too much treble, as many people nowadays enjoy music from laptop speakers that play it off Youtube. Go to repeat viewings or buy the DVD. Gwilym Lewis-Brooke
PLAY v32
|
Issue 9 |
2012
l i t er a t u r e
COME RHYME WITH ME
Come Rhyme With Me is a monthly performance poetry event at Cottons Caribbean Restaurant on Exmouth Market. Working across the disciplines of cookery and poetry, the hosts Dean Atta and Deanna Rodger offer up a tantalising evening of spoken word slots, arranged into the bite size courses of a meal. An open-mic gets the tastebuds going, opening the stage to any attending poet to serve up one short poem. A stirring starter poet, a heavier main poet and a lighter dessert poet then take to the stage, placing before the audience a verbal banquet of verse, which can be anything from political, touching, empowering, and dark, to comic, playful, and lustful. Yet, the genius of the evening’s structure doesn’t just lend well to terrible punning. The material and accolade of each poet fits perfectly to their course of the meal. And there’s Caribbean food. And there’s cheap drinks. Actually, I was half expecting Carol Ann Duffy to arrive with a troupe of roller skating models with beer-flavoured nipples… It didn’t happen. Instead I met with Dean and he gave me a few details. The conceptual masterpiece that is the CRWM structure is the brainchild of Dean and Deanna, who curate the evening together. Dean is a huge performance poet who began his extremely successful career after reading at the Poetry Café in Covent Garden, after which he was immediately asked to read on BBC Radio 4 programme ‘Bespoken’. He has since been a part of the Roundhouse Rubix Poetry Collective, has been named “the iPhone poet”, and has won awards, commissions, feature slots, and done readings just about everywhere in London. He is also probably one of the most wonderfully welcoming people I have ever met. From our brief meeting, I could tell that where he goes in poetry, we should probably all follow. Deanna Rodger is equally as exciting and is leading poetry in innovative directions. Having won the UK SLAM! Championships at her first attempt in 2007 at the age of 18, she has since partaken in the World Cup of Slam, hosted the Lyric Lounge, and was a finalist in the BBC Radio 4 Poetry Slam Competition. Both Deanna and Dean are accomplished spoken word poets, and they have such a great stage dynamic that CRWM would be well worth the £5 entry even if they were the only features. On the night I attended, our starter was Anna Le, performing her stirring poem, ‘Tightrope Dream’. This extended piece was beautiful and captivating, using the imagined storyline of a woman leaving a job in the City to realise her dream of becoming a tightrope walker in the circus. Le wove the scenery of the circus into the air before our eyes. She held an audience using the vividness of her words, through drawing a complex and affecting parallel to the spoken word event we were all a part of and the circus setting. I found out after the event that Anna Le actually left a job as a lawyer to become a spoken words artist, which brought a really personal edge to her
PLAY v32
|
Issue 9 |
2012
words. Coming from a similar background was Mims, a rap artist who works for a corporate firm in the City. The sprung rhythms and patterns of slanted rhymes that ran through her lyrics told of her frustration with her job, and her passion for writing. She performed without music, informing me afterwards that she was stripping back her music in order to focus more closely on what her words really meant. Paradox was the main. He has a similar story, having packed in a £70,000 a year job in sales and marketing to take up spoken word. His first poem was a masterful polyvocal piece ‘Bruise News’, switching between various imaginary scenarios reporting on the human
Deanna Rodgers
condition. His range of vocal ability and his mass of knowledge led the audience into a suspended state of philosophical challenges, pushing everyone in the room to assess their own approach to the human condition. His poetry needed no conclusion, and was hung on the closing refrain: “The condition is human… What are you going to do?” The evening ended with the lighthearted love (and lust) poetry of Lionheart, whose carnal verse brought the meal to a saucy close. By far the most surprising moment of the evening was seeing Lionheart step down from the stage and ask members of the audience ‘if it was okay’. In this moment of humility, it felt as if the words of Paradox had touched us all. I left with an aftertaste of gratitude; thanking Dean and Deanna for realising their dream of hosting an evening that would be to anyone’s tastes. PENNY NEWELL
Come Rhyme With Me takes place at Cottons Carribean Restaurant on Exmouth Market, on the last Friday of every month, £5 entry, £10 with food
A NOTE ON JOYCE’S COPYRIGHT
Joyce’s work has finally been freed this year from the tyrannous clutches of the Joyce Estate, and can suddenly be printed by anybody, anytime, anywhere. There has been much celebration, but not enough free copies of Ulysses, though Dubliners has been done. I would suggest, and have done so repeatedly at talks in our Occupy-London camp, that the Occupy-movementers organize a mass-leaflet drop of copies of Ulysses, along with their own copyright-free (for copyright IS capitalism at its basest) line-by-line commentaries and annotations, thereby spreading the ennobling effects and critical thinking that the revolution necessitates. This may bring the revolution forward by a summer or two. Such mass-production may also jump-start the economy, in much the same way as Banksy flits about spontaneously generating immense wealth for shop-owners by spraypainting their walls. But undoubtedly, given the technological advances, we may look forward to free nanotechnological copies of Ulysses being injected directly into our mindbrains by then, and thereafter we may enjoy forever more the wonders of this text, having absorbed it into our very biology. Perhaps then we can all relax. Let copies of Ulysses rain from above, denting cars and injuring pedestrians.
CHICKEN
Annie Potts, Chicken Published 16th January 2012
This is the latest title in Reaktion’s Animal series, a fine example of what I’d like to dub “Ctrl-F scholarship”. Other titles include Fly, Vulture, Ant, Eel, and Whale – you can see that it’s an ambitious series. They’re fascinating books, moving from their biology to the cultural use of the animals to depictions of them, and beyond. As the blurb states, no other creature has been subject to such extremes of reverence and exploitation. Billions of chickens are consumed worldwide every year, and the average omnivore rarely sees the horrific conditions these broiler-meat-chicks are kept in. They live for six weeks, never experiencing sunlight or grass, and often cannot function properly, having been genetically engineered to grow fat abnormally fast. Potts begins by tracing the natural history of gallus gallus, their domestication, and their farming. Cockfighting was popular in Roman times, and unfortunately continues to this day. Potts takes us through the nineteenth century “hen craze”, and the various breeds of chicken. She celebrates and informs us of their intelligence, capacity for facial recognition, their chicken-language consisting of 32 calls, and discusses the emotional attachments chickens develop in their natural environment. But all does not remain well. Potts eventually has to tackle the move to industrialized factory farming, which she man-
Battery hens. Flickr: nanIt
ages to write about quite objectively, without railing against animal cruelty. The facts simply speak for themselves as she details the life of an average battery hen and a broiler chick. She suggests that we have “de-animalized” them, and rightly so; they are treated as objects. They are mechanically raised and suffer deformities regularly. For example, battery hens are exposed to artificial daylight to make them lay more, and because of this many hens end up prolapsed and infected, since they are mired in their own faeces. Shocking stuff. Less KFC, more free-range, reading, and education, I say. Get Potts’ Chicken at all good bookstores. SÉUMAS FITZ
Auslander’s Hope: A Tragedy
Shalom Auslander, Hope: A Tragedy, trans. Natasha Wimmer Published 16th February 2012
Solomon Kugel has a dying mother, a sick child, a broken marriage, and an unaffordable mortgage. The shadow of the Holocaust hangs over the household like the bad smell in the vents that he can’t get to the bottom of: hilarious, right? Shalom Auslander’s new literary treat, Hope: A Tragedy, certainly is hilarious, but it is also an angry, bitter testimony of a Jewish man’s inability to find meaning in his broken life. Kugel’s whole life has been overshadowed by the Holocaust: his mother converts her own life’s failures into the fake sop-story of her Holocaust survival. Reminiscences of being abandoned by her husband in post-war New York bring on memories of imaginary uncles and grand-parents, who reappear as bars of soap, as lampshades: victims of imaginary Nazi reupholstering. The novel is mostly set in a suburb of New York City, to which the Kugel family escapes to build a new, healthier life in the countryside. Not a bad plan, in theory; however, the great American suburban novels, such as Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road and more recently Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and Tom Perrotta’s Little Children, teach us one thing: wherever you go, you take your misery with you. In Kugel’s case, misery is an outrageous understatement: he is pathologically negative, to the extent that he sees a therapist to cure him of any vestiges of optimism he may still harbour. He spends the first half of the novel trying to coin his last words, to ensure they are witty enough to guarantee his posterity, and show bravado in the face of death to confirm the meaninglessness of it all. Unsurprisingly, the move to an anonymous suburbia exacerbates the conflicts which lie at the heart of Kugel’s aggressive pessimism. The family buys an old farm house, and Kugel, un-
able to ignore the persistent tapping noises and foul smells coming from the attic vents, climbs up only to find the dishevelled, grotesque figure of Anne Frank typing away at her magnum opus in his attic. Unlike the cheerful-looking girl who adorns the 30 million copies of her best-selling diary, this Anne Frank is a monstrous hag: foul-mouthed, incontinent, selfish, and cruel. Increasingly anxious due to the unwelcome ‘extra’, Kugel contemplates forcing her to leave by playing Wagner and getting a German shepherd. But Anne isn’t going anywhere, and Kugel, edging closer to the brink of a nervous breakdown, asks himself: “he kills six million, but this one gets away?” Obsessing about Anne Frank alienates Kugel from his family, from the inhabitants of the town and eventually costs him his life. But the woeful moan of tragedy is nowhere to be heard; instead the angry peal of laughter rings out in the face of the abyss. Kugel comments, “No poetry after Auschwitz, said Theodor Adorno. How about laughing though, Ted?” Anne Frank surviving the Holocaust and living on in a suburban American attic is a happy ending of sorts, but it also makes it much harder to empathise with the obnoxious living Anne at the expense of the jolly girl who everyone thought had died tragically at Auschwitz, or rather Bergen-Belsen. Yet this isn’t the point: what matters is that people need tragic myths to make sense of their own problems. Kugel’s mother pretends that she survived the Holocaust, when in fact neither she nor any of her family were in Europe during the 20th century. Auslander does not allow us to wallow, but turns our desperation to be victims into a source of hilarity. This book seethes with anger, but somehow you can’t turn a page without howling with laughter. ALEXANDRA HILLS
The Route in Full:
Left Newcastle for Manchester Airport at 05:30 - Manchester Airport to Atlanta, GA - Atlanta, GA to Jacksonville, FL - Arrived back to house (St. Augustine, FL) around 20:15
October 27: - Took Beckham to the vet to get a Third Country Veterinary Certificate and tapeworm/tick medicine for a 09:00 appointment - Drove to Gainesville to get Third Country Veterinary Certificate endorsed by USDA vet - Left Gainesville at about 12:30 and drove back to St. Augustine - Left house at 15:15 for Orlando, FL - Arrived at Orlando International Airport at 17:30 for 20:20 flight to Paris October 28: - Arrived in Paris at 11:15 - Met by Jason (Deanna’s fiancé) at the airport and drove three hours to Calais - Took the ferry over to Dover - Arrived in Dover at approximately 17:00 - Drove from Dover to Newcastle, arriving home at about 01:00 due to traffic.
For Love of a Pup
As of January 1 2012, all pet lovers could breathe a sigh of relief. The dreary 6-month quarantine procedure has been chewed up and spat out. Now, the new relaxed measures allow pets to freely enter and reenter the UK from EU and approved non-EU countries following scientific improvements. But at the end of the day, bringing an animal into another country will never be a seamless undertaking. The catalogue worth of preparatory action still apply: vaccinations, blood tests, microchips and the pet passport are all needed to travel.
Before the new regulations were implemented the question was always: “How far would you go for your beloved pets to travel across the world in one piece?” For many, the decision to cross national borders is based on the feasibility of bringing pets over safe and sound. I would know, having a dog of 14 years, my family refuses to cut the strings on their expatriate life and move back to their home soil. Opportunities came and went for them to pick up their bags and set up a life elsewhere, but the dog’s life was the main cause for concern. How will she stomach the nauseating flight and the unthinkable 6-month quarantine? If the well-known saying that a dog mirrors its owner is anything to go by, then our dog is a bag of nerves with no prospect of coming out alive at the other end. Our terrier is like a toddler – constantly needing love and attention. More than an hour out of sight, and she worries she’ll never see us again. That’s where we’re at fault though, had we brought her up to be a bit more streetwise and not so sheltered she wouldn’t be as terrified. Make no mistake, she possesses her natural fight or flight (we don’t mentioned the ‘f’ word in front of her) instincts but without her human family she cannot cope.
We’ve all seen a crying pooch at one airport or another, getting ready to part with their owner and face the cold abyss of cargo; and no amount of on-board movies can calm the nerves of the owner sat knotted with tension. I have since found out that it was once possible to circumvent the former 6-month quarantine procedure, Florida native Deanna Dawkins can testify. Having had a yearlong stint in London on a study abroad from 2009 to 2010, Deanna once again made the transatlantic move from Florida to Newcastle to undergo her master’s degree. With the intention of staying permanently with her fiancé, Jason Platten, she had the task of hauling over her entire life, pup included. Bringing herself over in August 2011, little Beckham was left basking in the Floridian flare for just a few months longer, until Deanna was due to fly him over in late October of last year. Just two months shy of the new regulations, Deanna went to hell and back to ensure Beckham arrived on UK turf sans quarantine through the ‘Pet Scheme’. Going through the routine process, Beckham had a blood test for rabies, and was microchipped. From the day blood was drawn, Beckham was allowed to travel six months later. For Deanna, this meant putting her co-ordination skills to use for the travel arrangements. After the 6-month lapse, Beckham was allowed to enter the UK without quarantine if he arrived no less than 24 hours and no more than 48 hours after being administered with tapeworm pills. However, he was only entitled to travel on board as hand luggage on routes approved by DEFRA (The Department of Food and Rural Affairs). Having probed the possible routes, Deanna had settled for an Air France flight to Paris from Orlando, then a ferry from Calais to Dover for the final leg of her journey up to Newcastle. The journey was one that sent my own blood pressure soaring let alone Deanna’s, for any potential mishap could have blown the
Gap Year Planning
I’m drawing to the end of my university career and am counting down until May 18 when my dissertation will be handed in and I am free of essays. But then what? A master’s degree? Internships? A real job? As exciting as these sound I think I’d rather go away. Far away. For a while.
It’s not that I want to escape London, or even England. But I never took a gap-year, so now seems like the ideal time to go somewhere spectacular. But I have no idea where I want to go. So many people I have met over the last few years have told me of the time they had on their gap-year: partying in Thailand, working in Australia, have their passport stolen in India, drinking with the locals on the beaches of the Cook Islands… The list is endless. But the one constant through everyone’s stories is the look in their eyes that appears as soon as the memories come flooding back. I want that. I want to experience the world before it disappears!
The hardest part for me is choosing where I’d like to go. I mean, the world is huge! State the obvious I know, but attempting to pick one part, a handful of cultures is very difficult. Gap-years can range from InterRailing around Europe to flying to the other side of the world, and trying to pick one over another is hard. For instance, I want to go to Peru to see the Incan ruins, but I also want to visit Eastern Europe before its natural beauty is replaced by hotels and industrial estates, as well as wanting to unwind on the Caribbean beaches after my pesky dissertation is handed in. As much as I’d like to do all of the above in the next 12 months I think I’m getting a little ahead of myself as, finically speaking (like most final year students), I’m a little tiny bit in debt!
So, while I’m meant to be studying hard, reading books about classical receptions, I’m going to continually refresh skyscanner.com, statravel.co.uk and various other travel websites in the hunt for bargain flights and accommodation. I am determined to enjoy
carefully constructed itinerary to pieces. Deanna best describes it as a “high stakes poker game” with everything to gain but also to lose, as “one toe out of line, and the whole process is invalidated”. She journeyed from Newcastle all the way to Jacksonville and back on an unconventionally packed route. (see right) Aside from a minor misunderstanding with the French customs at the ferry port, which was quickly resolved, the blood, sweat and tears were worth it. All this was done in the name of Beckham, whose severe case of ‘separation anxiety’ meant that he could not fly solo. Quite frankly, had Deanna not done all the hoop jumping she says she “would have had a dead dog on the other side”. And in true Beckham form, he took up residence in his new home like a true alpha male, marking his territories at every corner and taking command of his owners. He’s even adapted to the Geordie climes. Now that Beckham is quite the cosmopolitan pup, and the new rules stipulate casual travel, maybe next time he’ll qualify for doggy miles? GEORGIE BRADLEY
Right: Beckham with his owner, Deanna
myself as much as I can before I get a real job.
But why take a gap-year? I’m applying for master’s courses for 2012/13 and while I’ve told everyone that I’m not bothered if I get in or not, I’d love another year of studying books, and I’m actually quite excited about getting a job and my own place. Yet I want the year-off release from deadlines. A gap-year, if you look at it literally, is a long summer holiday between one educational institute of stress and the next or, a last extended period of self-indulgent freedom before serving ‘The Man’ and paying taxes. It's an announcement of the fact that you're only young once, so glory in it. I mean, why not? Why not have fun? To help me (and possibly you) I’ve devised a list of the five places I’d most like to visit:
Tibet to the hustle and bustle of Shàngh i, from the volcanic dishes of Sìchuān to beer by the bag in seaside Qīngd o. China has amazing food, an amazing history and an amazing culture. I want to see everything: the Terracotta Army, the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. Canada This might seem a bit odd; but the reason it’s on the list is that from the north of the country you can see the northern lights 350 days of the year – much more of a chance than in Iceland. As well as this, Canada has some phenomenal countryside. You can go skiing, snowboarding or road trip and see wild bears, moose, polar bears, whales and wolves. New Zealand New Zealand presents the world with outlandish scenery, fantastic festivals, impressive food and wine, and phenomenal outdoor experiences. You can be stood on a beach one moment, and on a glacier the next. EMILY MCDONNELL
China From the wide open and empty panoramas of
PLAY v32
|
Issue 9 |
2012
m us i c
CLASSICAL MUSIC: A GUIDE While it is impossible to cover everything noteworthy in a few hundred words, hopefully this short article will offer a small insight into the world of classical music, as well as providing a few tips to help you navigate your way around what is an enormous but endlessly fascinating and energising genre. Classical music divides nicely into historical periods, similar to the way people group popular music into the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s… It is categorised using similar periods to those that divide art and architecture, theatre and literature, into manageable chunks: Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic and 20th/21st Century. As with all the arts, music has intrinsic and inseparable ties to Western politics, social development and decline, religion, economics and sex. For a classic love duet from 17th
century Italy, check out ‘Pur Ti Miro’ from Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea. A stunning performance that quivers with sexual tension is available on YouTube - French countertenor Jaroussky and Spanish soprano Rial do an amazing job. In stark contrast is Shostakovich’s 7th (or Leningrad) Symphony. Written in the early 1940s and dedicated to the city of Leningrad, the symphony is highly politically charged. A symbol of rebellion against Nazi totalitarianism and a dedication to the 25 million Soviet citizens who lost their lives in WWII, the piece will always remain iconic in the symphonic repertoire. The ‘Invasion Theme’ that characterises much of the first movement is as chilling as it is unforgettable. Finally, a short piece of irrefutable beauty – Morgen! Written at the end of the nineteenth century by Richard Strauss, the song is full of optimism and delicacy,
definitely well worth a listen at the end of a stressful day! Living in London, we’re surrounded by some of world’s greatest artists, ensembles and venues. Even so, attending a concert isn’t always as hard on the wallet as people assume. If you’re feeling inspired to spend a free evening sampling the world-class music the capital has to offer, a venue to check out is the Barbican Centre. Fully geared up for students, the Barbican is a really exciting venue for young people, offering a diverse programme of events to cater for all tastes. FreeB, for instance, is an excellent scheme that offers its student members free tickets to the best events! The Royal Opera House and the English National Opera are infamously expensive, but as a student, you can pick up an on-the-day ticket online for a tenner! It’s also worth keeping an ear to the ground for dress rehearsals, which are often
By Richard Hall
native playing technically impeccable, but the musicality that galvanises this recording is enriched by an academically informed authority. Recorded on the uniquely beautiful organ of The Queen’s College, Oxford, the fine musicianship of Quinney is met by an equally remarkable instrument and acoustic space; the two meet to create a wonderful aural record of this historic collection of musical masterpieces. Perhaps amongst the greatest pieces of music ever written for the organ, the six trios are notoriously hard and demand a solid and self-assured technique. Robert certainly rises to the challenge, taking faster
movements, such as the final ‘Allegro’ of Sonata I in Eb, at startling daring speeds; still, he finds time to embellish the music with delightfully charismatic ornaments. This is mirrored by a beautiful sensitivity and awareness of line in the slower movements. I highly recommend this disc to anyone with a passion for classical music and world-class musicianship.
Album Review: Robert Quinney, Trio Sonatas For Organ
Robert Quinney boasts one of the twenty-first century’s most distinguished musical careers of classical music. He currently holds the position of Assistant Organist at Westminster Abbey, and his playing was heard around the world when he performed at the Royal Wedding in 2011. Released at the end of last year through record label Coro, Quinney’s recording of J.S. Bach’s Six Trio Sonatas for Organ has already developed a reputation as a landmark disc. Not only is the highly imagi-
4
PLAY v32
|
Issue 9 |
2012
Out Now
open to students at vastly reduced prices. For an ensemble buzzing with energy and completely free of musical stuffiness, don’t miss the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Based at the Southbank Centre, the OAE hosts a series of student events called the Night Shift. The concerts begin at 11.30pm in venues ranging from the Underground Village (Shoreditch) to the Queen Elizabeth Rooms (Southbank Centre), taking the form of lecture recitals. These offer an informative yet chilled out commentary on the music being performed. Again, prices are student-friendly and the relaxed atmosphere, cheap drinks and amazing musicianship make them extremely popular. Get out there and see/hear what classical music is all about. You may just love it! By Richard Hall
Introducing Grand Forever By Neelam Nijjar
Playing live, these four Belfast to Bethnal Green-based boys represent youth and enthusiasm. Their distinctive blend of instrumental tracks underscored by pinging, synthesised beats is just the ticket for a “Grand” party. Allow me to introduce you to the band. Neil is the taut and nimble drummer, while Tim is the occasionally semi-naked guitarist, Luke reins over the synth and Ian drives the melody via the bass. Together, they compose Grand Forever. With three EPs to their name (Ace It, Kappillan and Don’t Go Easy On Me), Grand Forever aren’t new to the music scene. However, they haven’t yet garnered the attention they deserve. For now at least, they’re an exceptionally well-kept secret. Their melodies draw
upon various styles: instrumental disco, hazy electronica, post-punk and alternative rock ‘n’ roll. These distinct genres are ingeniously blendedtogether, while remaining faithful to the original textures. Grand Forever’s dexterity produces tracks that are crisp, tranquilising, disco-tech yet grungy. ‘Wild Man’ is an example of their clever music-merging and ‘Half A Hundred Kicks’ is a dreamlike tune. Performing live, the band immerse themselves in the vivid soundscapes they produce. When a track calls for slinkiness, the boys bend into rippling curves. When it demands toughness, they adopt a “hardass”, fierce posture. Although the waves of synthesised sounds and guitar riffs might call to mind French electro-rockers M83, or even Joy Division and Sonic Youth, Grand Forever’s “sound equation” stands alone and speaks for itself.
Live Review: Explosions In The Sky January 27 @ Brixton Academy By Marta Owczarek
Explosions In The Sky are one of those bands who, despite their mass appeal, are still genuinely, touchingly, humble. Before they start to play, the Texan post-rockers relate how they never thought that music like theirs would fill rooms this big. Tonight, Brixton Academy could not be any fuller. The band open with ‘Postcard From 1952’, which is met by a rapturous response. Hundreds of heads turn to tell their nearest friend that this is their favourite off the new album, Take Care, Take Care, Take Care. ‘Catastrophe’, ‘The Cure’ and ‘The Only Moment We Were Alone’ are similarly well-received. The intensity of the crowd’s energy, high from the start, is definitely on the up. Every single song is a hit, in its wordless, multi-climaxed, eight-minute glory. After half an hour, we’re only four
songs in. The Academy is cast in darkness during the band’s long and noisy outros; these seamlessly morph into assaults of firefly lights in the atmospheric, slower moments, before the tracks descend into noise again under brooding, red light. I lost track of titles, and even beginnings and ends of songs - as did the entire internet, judging by the number of corrections, edits and arguments regarding this gig’s setlist. Explosions In The Sky altered mood and tempo suddenly yet tenderly, balancing themselves between intense noise, drawn-out “almost-silence” and melody, surfacing somewhere in between. ‘The Moon Is Down’ sends the audience into total euphoria, throwing their hands up as one. Throughout this sustained, awe-inspiring spectacle, all four band members remain highly focused, coordinating their guitars and heads to go up and down in unison as they finish with a sweet ‘Take Care Of Yourselves’.
mu s ic London Student had a quick-fire chat with Tim from the band: What are the 4 things people should know about Grand Forever? Tim: Luke, Ian, Tim, Neil What's the best thing about being in a “boy band”? Tim: The pussy. And all the attention from Louis Walsh (can be considered one and the same). What's “Grand” about your hometown in Ireland? Tim: You can't leave Dromore without going up a hill; it's literally a hole Which key sounds have influenced your style? Tim: Instrumental sex wave, streets of rage. How would you make a “Grand” (as in £££) Forever? Tim: Scratchcard. Don't live a little, live a lotto.
Album Review: The Maccabees, Given To The Wild By Harun Musho’d
Things are not well in Indie-world in 2012. NME journalists, not being able to agree on one or two indie successes, landed us with “100 Bands You Have To Hear” - an instruction that is destined not be heeded by anyone except the most hardcore fifteen year-old music geek with a generous monthly internet download allowance. Although the BBC’s ‘Sound of 2012’ restricted its picks of the genre to just two bands, the selections were Dry The River and Spector – arguably the least original parts of the NME list. Indie, it would seem, is running out of ideas... With the lack of new competition, established acts should make a killing. Even
so, The Maccabees are taking no chances, releasing Given To The Wild during the fallow post-New Year period for maximum attention. The album opens with its title-track - a prog-rock-influenced tune that is largely instrumental, bar some chanting from lead singer Orlando Weeks. A slow synth start segues into the proggy guitar opening of the second track, ‘Child’. ‘Child’ illustrates two features that permeate the rest of the album: the musical influence of Coldplay, particularly in relation to Weeks’ vocal style, the tendency to build songs to a crescendo, and the lyrical repetitiveness from the Scouting for Girls school of songwriting. A notable exception to this trend is the lead single, ‘Pelican,’ where Weeks sounds more like a fragile
Out Now
Robert Plant. The repetition is still there, but it is made to work as part of the rhythm of the song; in a welcome interlude halfway through, it all slows down before building up to the next crescendo. ‘Unknown’ suffers from both the characteristic of the album, but manages to soar above them to create a truly entrancing piece of music. Even so, the overall effect of the album is only to make you shout out in frustration, “Do something different!” Regrettably, The Maccabees’ Given To The Wild is not the answer to the indie disease of 2012.
PLAY v32
|
Issue 9 |
2012
Girl Meets Boys...
f a sh i on Men’s fashion is a fascinating world. Those who admit to being interested in it are labelled as arrogant, vain or worse, an aficionado of JLS. Then there are those who clearly show no intrigue into it at all, who are quite happy to still wear Bolts jeans and a Leavers hoodie who are then for the most part seen as being out of date. Where should the line be drawn? It seems to me that today, men are in a state of flux about their fashion. They see that it is important not only to attract the opposite sex but also to demonstrate the fact that they have not been living under a rock since the days that Blink 182 ruled the charts and 10 Things I Hate About You was the high grossing box office movie. So why does an interest in fashion still carry such a stigma for men? And why is it that despite everything, admitting to being interested in style and clothing still stands as one of the greatest taboos in today’s culture? Play went to talk to three male students to see how they saw their own sense of style, and whether or not they felt the paradox surrounding a topic that appears so easy for women to discuss. FLORENCE CORNISH
If you want to look at some great men’s fashion blogs, check out these... www.thesartorialist.com www.thedandyproject.com www.esquire.com/blogs/mens-fashion PLAY v32
|
Issue 9 |
2012
Oliver Hall
Alex Rogansky
Jasiek Gajda
Studying BA History and English Literature at Bath Spa University
Studying BA Catalan, Spanish and Russian at Durham University
Would you say that you have a style? Yeah, I would definitely say that I have a style. I mean, I don’t always think of it in that way but I definitely dress according to a trend. I would describe it as a smart, indie look if anything, but it’s not like I wouldn’t consider any other way of dressing, it’s just that that’s what I like at the moment.
Would you say that you have a style? I don’t know really. I’d say that I don’t really like labelling myself so I don’t try and follow any fashion tribe like preppy or hipster or something like that. If I was to say anything it would probably just be that I like to wear simple clothes without any logos or labels showing.
Graduated from BA Advertising at London College of Communications Would you say that you have a style? Yeah I guess I have a style. I wouldn’t describe it as anything in particular but I just buy things that I like and put them together and hope they turn out OK. I guess I’m saying that I wouldn’t personally label myself as belonging to any particular group.
Are you influenced by any particular era? Yeah, I love the ‘50s. And the ‘80s. I guess a weird mix of the two is the main influencing factor.
Are you influenced by any particular era? Yeah of course, I always look towards music for fashion ideas. So I really like anything that is ‘60s Mod style. Like when I wear a suit, I always try to see how they wore them in the ‘60s to get an idea of what works best. I like the tailoring of suits a lot as well. The way The Kinks dressed is usually how I aim to dress too.
Are you influenced by any particular era? I think so. I look at ‘80s clothing and styling a lot and I really like that. I really hate shopping vintage though so I try to get vintage looking clothing from high street shops. I hate vintage shopping because I hate browsing; I like to be in and out quickly and have someone help show me what’s in store. Looking at 100 t-shirts on a rail is my own personal nightmare.
Do you think men see clothes in the same way as women do? I do think men see clothes in the same way as women, maybe most of them won’t admit it but they do. Girls dress in a certain way to either attract guys or some don’t really care and I think it’s the same with guys. Some guys are happy to just where sports trackies and a hoodie just like some girls are happy going around in leggings and a top. Guys know how important clothes are but its hard for them to say so sometimes. Do you dress by any particular rule? Yes. I only ever wear skinny jeans. The last time I wore baggy jeans I think I was about 13. And I always buy shirts and brogues. I’d say that I definitely dress more smart than casual, just because I think it looks nicer that way. I wouldn’t say that it’s that way all the time but for the most part, I like to dress in a formal way.
Do you think men see clothes in the same way as women do? I think men probably put emphasis on clothes in a much less explicit way. I mean, there is no doubt that most men think about their clothes a lot more than they would be willing to say in a magazine! But peacocking, for example, shows that men definitely think about their clothes and how they come across to girls. Have you ever “peacocked”? I have been known to peacock occasionally… Do you dress by any particular rule? I avoid all logos – that’s my rule. I can’t think of a single piece of clothing in my wardrobe that has a really explicit logo on it actually.
How much money to you spend on clothes per month? Umm, I’d say about £40 per month. But it varies depending on what I’m buying, like shoes for instance cost so much more than a pair of jeans.
How much money to you spend on clothes per month? Umm, not very much. I tend to shop in splurges rather than little by little. I’d say maybe £40 a month. Not much.
If you could describe your style in three words, what would it be? Jack Peñate Wannabe.
If you could describe your style in three words, what would it be? Mod Muji Man.
Do you think men see clothes in the same way as women do? I think a lot of men see clothes in the same way as women do. I do want to look attractive in general but not always only for the benefit of women. I wouldn’t say that I never wear something purposefully for the attention of a girl, but if it does that anyway then that’s always good! Do you dress by any particular rule? I only go shopping in the sales. I save throughout the year and then I spend in a large go in the sales. I like the idea of shopping but I hate doing it too often. I only really go maybe once or twice a year. Otherwise, I would spend way too much. How much money to you spend on clothes per month? I’d say I spend maybe £25 a month on clothes roughly. But I have a lot of trainers and so if I buy them then the amount I spend increases to maybe £40 or £50 a month. So not too much I guess. If you could describe your style in three words, what would it be? Post-Communist Disco.
Show me your *student* wardrobe
It’s official - our fixation with reality has moved from the television to the style section. Street style blogs, high street trends and vintage stores have taken over designer labels and crazy prices - and students are at the forefront of this fashion revolution. Two queens of the budget buy show London Student their wardrobes. Meet Chloë Hamilton. A third year at KCL, Chloe is a religious studies student who enjoys vintage as much as she does Versace. ‘My friend came up with the nickname ‘Mad Auntie Violet’ for when I’m wearing something that is particularly out there!’ she says, ‘But I’dprobably describe my style as vintage, colourful and bohemian.’ Chloë names the prophet of all fashion icons, Carrie Bradshaw, as her inspiration, whilst alsolooking to modern fashionistas like Mary-Kate Olsen and Carey Mulligan for style tips. Her favourite stores are vintage chain Rokit, as well as Urban outfitters, and she doesn’t let the student budget hold her back. ‘I tend to shop in the sales a lot. In fact, all the clothes in my outfits came from sales, I didn’t pay full price for anything!’ she laughs, ‘Since being a student I’ve developed a knack for hunting out bargains.’ She certainly has an eye for the quirky: ‘My boyfriend tells me that I look like a Swiss folk musician in this dress! [outfit 1]’ she says, ‘ I’m not a massive Disney fan but when I saw this t-shirt I had to have it. I think it makes me look like an 80’s TV presenter[outfit 3].’ Her go-to items for a stylish look include leggings, clutch bags and her favourite LBD [outfit 2]. ‘I think oversized clutches look great with a casual outfit and I wear leggings almost every day!’ she says, ‘I bought thisblack dress two and a half years ago it’s still my go to dress for nights out.’Overall, she thinks that student life is great for your style. ‘I live with Goldsmiths students so I think my style has been influenced by such an arty college. I like to stand out from the crowd and I think I use clothes to express my individuality.’
5
1
2
7 6
fa s h i o n
3
4
8 Second up is Maria Mihes, a masters student also from KCL. A former model, Maria embraces the effortless style of the catwalk elite. ‘I think my style is a mixture of rock, retro and sporty elements,’ she says. Maria also champions the spirit of real life fashion, taking inspiration from everywhere rather than just the best dressed lists. ‘I draw inspiration from everywhere. I follow a few fashion blogs, but I can see a random person on the street and appreciate her ideas,’ she explains, ‘But I do like Agyness Deyn, Kate Moss and Vanessa Paradis and if I had to choose one person as the ultimate style icon it would definitely be Audrey Hepburn.’ Maria tries to incorporate the elegance of Audrey into her own student lifestyle. ‘I find it difficult to incorporate the “glamour” of the old days in a very active lifestyle, so I choose certain elements which I then mix up with more modern pieces.’ It’s this juxtaposition of retro and modern, hard and soft, that gives her look that extra edge. ‘I like how the very delicate silk blouse complements the aggressive sequin pants [outfit 8],’ she says, ‘And I enjoy mixing Converses up with just about anything!’ She claims her student lifestyle has impacted her personal style, though not in a bad way. Her favourite stores are high street favourites Zara and Topshop, and her student budget ‘affects my choice of shops and the items I can afford to buy. However, being on a limited budget does not necessarily mean you can’t have the clothes you want,’ she asserts, ‘I find it’s a good idea to look up cheap items that are similar to the ones you like in more expensive stores.’ Maria manages her wardrobe through one simple rule. ‘I believe the most important rule for any outfit is to dress for the occasion.’
PLAY v32
|
Issue 9 |
2012
ness…..), this dish is well loved for its cheapbut-tasty flavours. What Wahaca say: This is a delicious brunch that will cure any hangover, restore good moods and pep you up for the weekend. It’s so versatile too, so feel free to add to it like we have with the chorizo and feta versions you’ll see on the menu. If you’re after a perfect accompaniment, search for the frijoles recipe on blog.wahaca.co.uk.
food
If all else fails and walkabout has rendered you unable to face cooking, grab your oyster card and get on down to one of their branches in Covent Garden -the setting for last issue’s London Loves, Soho, Canary Wharf, White City, Bluewater or Stratford.
Wahaca Recipe for Huevos Rancheros!
Recipe: Feeds 4 Cooking time: 50 minutes For the tomato sauce
Think Mexican. Think perfect hangover cure. Think WahacanHuevos Rancheros. You may have noticed the fairly recent surge of Mexican food chains whilst wandering about the city – it seems like Burritos are the new burgers and there’s a good reason for the development! One of the best among these chains, Wahaca, have kindly shared with us lucky London students their very own Huevos Rancheros recipe. A traditional Mexican breakfast meal, this popular dish will help you to leave your hangover in bed and start a new day tequilafree. Traditional in Mexico and popular across America (the south in particular is blooming with Mexican culinary good-
1 large onion, finely chopped 1–2 red chillies, finely chopped 3 cloves of garlic, chopped 2 tins plums tomatoes 5–6 tablespoons lard or dripping sea salt and black pepper 1 teaspoon piloncillo or demerara sugar a generous few splashes of Worcestershire sauce a small handful of chopped tarragon 4 corn tortillas, chapattis or other flat breads 4 eggs 60g Lancashire cheese First, get the tomato sauce cooking. Heat 2 tablespoons of the lard in a wide saucepan and add the onion and chilli. Let them sweat over a low heat for 10 minutes until the onion is translucent. Add the garlic, cook for a few minutes more, and then add the tomatoes. Season the sauce well with salt, pepper, sugar and Worcestershire sauce,
breaking up the tomatoes with a wooden spoon to make a roughly textured sauce. Leave the tomatoes to gently cook over a low heat for half an hour, adding a little water if they get too dry. When you are ready to eat, melt 1 to 2 tablespoons of the lard in a frying pan and gently turn the flat breads in the fat. Put them in a low oven, wrapped in foil, to keep warm, along with four plates. Add the tarragon to the sauce and stir. Melt the rest of the lard in the frying pan and turn the heat right up until the fat is sizzling. Fry the eggs, two at a time, spooning the lard over the top of them so that they turn a golden colour at the edges and absorb some of the flavour. Season the eggs well with salt and pepper. Put a flat bread on each plate and top with the tomato sauce. Put a fried egg on top and scatter with the grated Lancashire cheese. For this recipe and many more, check out Thomasina’s book Mexican Food Made Simple. JESSICA BROADBENT
Review of Stew House Pop-Up Experiential Dining Experience:
Experiential dining has become quite a trend in London over the past year, from secret supper clubs such as, ‘Fluid State’ to the Swedish ‘Hel Yeah!’ pop-up restaurant. Spectacle meets dress-up, combined with a three-course menu that ranges from £15 to £50 in price. This concept is very appealing to the culturally inclined. I heard about the ‘Stew House’ over Christmas but, sadly, was not able to get tickets. Luckily, due to overwhelming public demand, it came back for January and my friend and I booked seats swiftly. The ‘Stew House’ was presented by a littleknown bar in Hackney called ‘The Dead
PLAY v32
|
Issue 9 |
2012
Dolls Club’. They created a seasonal menu with hearty and comforting food, principally made up of stew dishes, using fresh and locally sourced ingredients. On offer was a starter choice between either a caramelised onion and goat’s cheese tart or ham hock terrine; a main choice out of many delicious stews, including a venison stew that I went for, with hunks of brown seeded bread; for dessert, there was the good ol’ English favourite of apple crumble. The food was very good for £20 and came reasonably quickly. The drinks menu changed each evening and was rather pricey, the drinks annoyingly not being included with the meal, although I did indulge in one of the specially created elderflower cocktails. The experiential side, however, was rather lacking. Our surroundings were created by Katy Gray, who is also the designer for a vintage clothing outlet called ‘Tinker Tailor’, and an artist named Dan Hillier. While it looked appropriately vintage and there was a nice mural on the wall, the theme for the evening was not defined clearly. With regard to the dress code, we took direction from the website and were shown a sort of postmodern mix of Victorian, countryside and steampunk styles, each of which was accompanied by a hat. This did not quite match the stew meal that has been the staple cuisine for thousands of years, from the era of the Romans to the Vikings, and the Tudor style décor of the dining room further confused the sense of “period costume”. As a result, much of the crowd made no effort to dress appropriately and a few, evidently confused, guests were decked out in twenties’ garb. We were sat on a 70-seat banquet table dressed with pheasant feathers, while a mixture of songs from the 1980s, 1930s and 1970s played. The set up of the tables didn’t encourage the camaraderie one would expect from the event, with people keeping to turning around awkwardly to their companions sat next to them on the long bench, rather than mingling. The lack of performances accompanying the event meant that you left as soon as you had eaten, which led the tables to look a little depleted by 10pm. I will not be put off experiential dining as I still love it, but the ‘Stew House’ isn’t quite right for the purposes of such an experience. I would, however, recommend the evening if you are looking for a good and hearty meal. The Stew House will be returning soon, so see their website for more information: http://www.thedeaddollsclub.com/The_Dea d_Dolls_Club MAYA KORN
The Secret Ingredient No. 2 Capers and Caperberries
Capers can liven up many a dull pasta or salad dish without breaking the bank. Below is my recipe for Spaghetti alla Puttanesca, a perfect and quick store-cupboard-dinner, something salty and saucy to slurp away these icy evenings.
food
5.Add the capers, olives and anchovies to the sauce.
7. Add the chilli powder and black pepper, give it a good stir, taste and see what it needs more of. It shouldn’t really need salt as the capers and anchovies have a high salt content but you may wish to add some if you think it needs more! If you’d like your dish to have a bit more tang, then you could also add a splash of balsamic vinegar or lemon juice.
This issue, I have decided to take capers and caper berries as my secret ingredients, for I have had far too many discussions where people have mistaken them for fish and I would like to set the record straight once and for all. These are types of plant and their tang sits wonderfully alongside salty seafood, but capers themselves are not fish.
Whilst this little gem is no bigger than a pea, its relative, the caper berry, is the size of a large grape, or a “lilliputian watermelon”, as Alan Davidson prefers to call it. Caper berries are more like okra in texture and are eaten in a similar fashion to olives, most popularly in Spain.
4. Add the tomatoes and, if they’re not already chopped, mash them up a bit.
6.By this point, your water should be boiling, so put in the spaghetti.
‘something salty and saucy to slurp away these icy evenings.’
The Capparis spinosa grows most abundantly in a Mediterranean climate and, when in season, grows so fast that it has to be picked daily, as once the bud has opened it is no longer suitable for pickling. During the pickling process, it produces capric acid that gives an extra twist to the vinegar in which it is normally stored. The colloquial Turkish for the caper plant is “cat’s claw” due to its spiny nature but, thankfully, it is only the bud of the plant that we consume.
3. Heat the oil in a relatively small saucepan and fry the garlic on medium heat for 2 minutes, being really careful not to let it brown or it will taste bitter.
8. Chop your herbs and, when the spaghetti is one minute away from being done, add them to the sauce. 9. Drain the spaghetti when cooked and put it back in the pan. 10. Add the sauce to the spaghetti and give everything a good toss.
Spaghetti alla Puttanesca (“Whore’s Spaghetti”) Ingredients Serves 2 : 200g of spaghetti 1 large garlic clove 1 tbspn of olive oil ½ a tin of anchovies 1 heaped tbspn of capers 1 small tin of pitted black olives 1 tin of tomatoes ½ tspn of chilli powder Fresh ground black pepper Fresh basil Fresh parsley Grated Parmesan cheese Method 1. Put a large pan of cold water on to boil. 2. Finely chop the garlic and roughly chop the anchovies and olives.
11. Serve in warm bowls with a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese and garnish with some ground black pepper, basil and parsley as appropriate. Be careful not to wear a white shirt. Enjoy! EVE HEMINGWAY
A Lover’s Guide to Food:
No. 3 The Parisian Effect
‘The Parisians create intimacy through dining and this is achieved simply by the interaction of preparing food for loved ones’
Paris: the Eiffel Tower; the Louvre museum; the Paris Fashion Week; macaroons; Louis Vuitton; the Notre Dame Cathedral; the Champs-Élysées avenue; the Palais Garnier opera house; delicious food; but, most of all, Paris = LOVE. We all know the saying that “Paris is the city of love”, and anyone who has been
there will agree that the streets ooze with passion, whether that be due to the stunning architecture, the chic restaurants or the beautiful people. Whatever the reason, there is definitely something in the air in Paris. So, how do the French get it so right? Well, after a recent visit and having talked to lots of Parisians, I found out that, when the French talk of love, they also talk of food. Food is imperative for love. Every meal you have in Paris is an occasion: a time to talk and share good food with family, friends and lovers. It's this simple act of preparing a meal with a loved one, sitting at a table and eating together whilst talking about your day is what I like to call the “Parisian effect”. This is something we lack so badly in London. The “Parisian effect” is that electrifying feeling you get when you’re enjoying some foie gras, toasted bread, salad and a few glasses of Champagne with your friend's family. It's the overwhelming happiness your friends get as they taste your home made quiche lorraine at your house party. It's the heart-pounding excitement of trying your boyfriend's cooking for the first time. However, most tantalising of all is its intangible quality, which cannot be measured or described: all you know is that it involves the people and food you adore. There is definitely something to be learnt from this French food philosophy, especially when dating. Food plays such an important part in our lives and is as important as love in our lives. Hence, knowing your lover's food habits is key to a successful relationship or date. Taking the time to enjoy the food you eat is one of the most exquisite experiences in life, particularly when you’re dating or in a relationship. It doesn't have to be over the top or cost you a lot because that's not the French way. The Parisians create intimacy through dining and this is achieved simply by the interaction of preparing food for loved ones, taking the time to taste your food and having real conversations whilst eating. London may not be the city of love but that doesn't mean we don't know how to love. We just need a bit of the Parisian effect in our lives and to put a little love into our food. SAPNA SIAN
PLAY v32
|
Issue 9 |
2012