Venue 979 by Venue Publishing

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BATH COMEDY FESTIVAL PHIL KAY, ARTHUR SMITH, ROBIN INCE…OTHERS KIDS’ THEATRE A SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR PARENTS

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www.venue.co.uk NO.979 APRIL 2012 FREE

COMMUTING IN BRISTOL TOP TRUMPS SPECIAL BRISTOL’S REFERENDUM DO WE REALLY NEED A MAYOR?

da vinci BIGGER THAN BANKSY?

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Contents

Contact

editor@venue.co.uk @venueeditor

Going out this month? see venue.co.uk - the new home of Venue’s what’s on listings

p.16 Banksy Vs Leonardo It’s Da Vinci’s turn at The City Museum. Will Banksy prove too hard an act to follow?

p.14 Mercurial Wrestler Immersive theatre merchants talk magic and technology

p.20 Bath Comedy Festival The funniest manic depressives in Britain descend on Bath

Features Hello I’m Tom – new editor of Venue. Hello. … I know what you’re thinking: why is a child editing Venue? And why does he look so sleazy? I don’t know – let’s look at the month ahead. We’re back in the shops – and no it’s not an April Fool; we really do think we’re worth a quid. There will still be free copies where you found them last month, but as you know, they go like hotcakes. A quick heads up – we turn 30 in May. Years old. To our knowledge we are the longest running listings magazine outside of London and Edinburgh. Yes: listings. As of next month you’ll find extensive listings info throughout the magazine. Because you said that’s what you wanted. So keep telling us what you want via Twitter, Facebook and my personal favourite – the phone. Happy April. Tom Wainwright Editor VENUEMAGAZINE

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p.10 Eugene Byrne on why you should vote for him for Mayor p.22 Top Trumps: The Great Commute. Mike White braves bus, bike and Bristolians to get to the office. Here are the results p.30 Kids’ theatre: a survival guide for parents p.34 A referendum approaches

Regulars INBOX p.4 Letters, opinion, the mad… I SAW YOU p.7 Did you see me? NEWSHOUND p.38 What happened in Bristol and Bath this month

p.43 FILM The definitive Bobumentary: Marley p.55 MUSIC Gravenhurst and The Lift Men p.67 CLUBS Adam Burrows asks DJ Stryda if he’s ever had a dubkasm p.71 PERFORMANCE Bristol Old Vic’s Pinter/Beckett double bill p.77 COMEDY Funny people p.78 ART Galleries, exhibitions, museums… p.80 BOOKS Q&A with Bloodaxe Books’ Neil Astley p.82 DAYS OUT Caving in Cheddar p.84 SKILLS A new dawn at The Old Fire Station p.89 GAY Cal: a new movie about post-riots Bristol APRIL 2012 // 3

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Inbox

editor@venue.co.uk

Each Letter of the Month receives a £10 voucher to spend in any Waterstone’s store nationwide.

LETTER OF THE MONTH

Mac on the bottom // What a splendid piece of investigative journalism was Mike White’s article on Bristol taggers (The Writing on the Wall, issue 978). Looking forward to his adventures next month with the asbestos fly-tippers: “Well at least we’re not serial killers.” To be followed in May when he joins a group of reckless dog walkers letting their dogs sh*t in a

playground: “That swirly turd looks like art to me”. Otherwise, a fine magazine. Harry Mac, by email Aw, c’mon Harry, painting on walls is nothing like asbestos dumping or errant dog turd, and you know it. The latter two are both dangerous to health and unconnected with aesthetic endeavours of any kind

Threatened by a plume // The Bristol group of South West Against Nuclear (SWAN) have been trying since last summer to get information from Bristol City Council on their evacuation plans for the city in the event of an emergency situation at either of the nuclear power stations nearby. These are at Oldbury, South Glos to the north and at Hinkley Point, Somerset to the south. We feel urgency about the necessity of evacuation plans since there are active plans now to build huge new nuclear reactors at both of these sites, in addition to the existing ones. Finally we hear from them that they have no statutory duty to

Great’s plates // A footnote to Eugene Byrne’s article about Stoke Park (New Lease of Life for Stoke Park, issue 978).Some years ago I researched the history of the park, and was intrigued to learn that the Stoke Park landscape features on a dinner service made for Catherine the Great of Russia, which is now on display in a museum in St Petersburg. Tim Stanley, by email

(swirliness notwithstanding). As Mike White’s feature pointed out, tagging is a pretty innocuous pastime that may, on rare occasion, tap into hitherto unrealised creativity. Still, we like the cut of your jib – please accept this £10 Waterstone’s voucher as an asbestosfree, un-tagged and dogsh*tless token of our appreciation.

prepare off-site plans for any nuclear power station incident, both places being officially deemed to be too far away, Oldbury at over 15 kms and Hinkley at 40 miles. It is scary to think that both the USA and France recommend evacuation plans for such incidents at 50 miles. However we are told, Bristol is entitled to be “warned” in the event of a nuclear incident, and in the envisaged possible worst case scenario of being “threatened by a plume”, people would be advised to shelter, not evacuate. For all our sakes, we need to stop the building of new nuclear Hinkley C. Stop new nuclear in its tracks! Come and find out more at our regular Wednesday meetings, at

7.30pm at Kebele, 14 Robertson Rd, Easton, Bristol, or get in touch via campaign@stopnewnuclear.org.uk www.stopnewnuclear.org.uk, by email

// Your article by Vanessa Berlowitz (That’s Snow Business, issue 977) was very inspiring. Reading it during my lunch break made me want to trek through knee-high snow and hug a bear. People who risk their lives to open up the world to the masses deserve a massive amount of respect. And to the critics who complain about not all of ‘Frozen Planet’ being filmed there and then? Go do it yourself, you grumpy bastards. Nina, Redland

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WWW.JOEBERGER.CO.UK

That’s snow business

VENUE MAGAZINE Bristol Office Bristol News & Media, Temple Way, Bristol, BS99 7HE Tel 0117 942 8491 (12 lines) Fax 0117 934 3566 Bath Office Bath News & Media, Floor 2, Westpoint, James West St, Bath, BA1 1UN Tel 01225 429801

Fax 01225 447602 Email (Editorial): editor@ venue.co.uk / (Advertising): ads@venue.co.uk Website www.venue.co.uk Twitter @venueeditor Publishing Director Dave Higgitt Editor Tom Wainwright

Associate Editor Mike White Studio Manager Cath Evans Design Team Sarah Clark, Sarah Malone Production Charis Munday Sub-Editors Tom Phillips, Jo Renshaw Advertising Manager Becky Davis Bristol Advertising Adam Burrows, Ben

Wright, Bex Baddiley Bath Advertising Ellie Pipe, Nejla Unal Distribution and Subscriptions Simon Butler Publication Coordinators Sam Ulewicz Art Steve Wright Books Tom Wainwright Classical Paul Riley Clubs Adam Burrows Comedy Steve Wright

Days Out Anna Britten Dance Steve Wright Events Mike White Film Robin Askew Jazz Tony Benjamin Lesbian & Gay Darryl Bullock News Eugene Byrne Rock Leah Pritchard Roots Leah Pritchard Skills Anna Britten Sport Simon Fry Theatre Steve Wright

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Bristol’s longest serving comedy venue promoting the best comedians from the Edinburgh Festival and the UK comedy circuit

TOM ALLEN Fri 13 & Sat 14 April

NATHAN CATON Fri 20 & Sat 21 April

CHRIS McCAUSLAND Fri 27 & Sat 28 April

ARDAL O’HANLON Fri 4 & Sat 5 May

ANDREW MAXWELL Fri 25 & Sat 26 May

Full season line-up, video clips and book online:

WWW.THECOMEDYBOX.CO.UK PRE-COMEDY DINING AND BAR UNTIL 1AM

Upstairs at the Hen & Chicken, 210 North Street, Southville, Bristol, BS3 1JF VENUEMAGAZINE

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ISawYou

To submit an I Saw You email isawyou@venue.co.uk web www.venue.co.uk/isawyou

// REACH OUT TO SOMEONE //

I Saw You gorgeous, aburn-haired beauty making me an enourmous Arch House Deli NY sandwich this very lunchtime... thanks for the cheeky lollipop ;-) You made my day x I Saw You Lisa a long time ago in the star. I still want to take you home to Somalia and marry you. I Saw You as the sun came down, sunday gone in front of the Arnolfini. You: tall, mixed race, long black hair, beauty with two female friends. Me: a friend and bikes (chequered shirt). Wish I wasn't so useless in inventing random excuses to chat to strangers. Coffee? x dubeverytime@hotmail.com I Saw You in the Bierkella on Fri 24th/early hours of Sat 25th; your name's Scarlet, mine's Dominic. We chatted for a while and then in my drunken haze I foolishly left. Would be good to hear from you! Dominic2000@gmail.com I Saw You T.R you sexy beaast. everytime I peer at you over my big glasses I feel happy, whenever im near you i pick my spots because you make me nervous, I love you, A.K xx I Saw You - Hi, I saw you pretty, petite blond at cheap booze shop on zetland rd.you buying rum mixer going to timbuk2 to see freind dj on fri 2nd march.liked chating to you. love to meet up.me with eye brow peircing and green jaket I Saw You - Ok fine, I DID see you. I didn't stop because your once warm face is now old and bitter and I no longer have anything to say to you. After what you did can you really blame me? I Saw You beautiful girl in white fur on Picton Street. I told you you

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looked like the Snow Queen and I just wanted to say it again.

I saw you -

I Saw You FWIW, there's someone out there who loves you unconditionally, even after all these years. There's too much water under the bridge for anything to happen, but I still wish you would say hi from time to time. Always ready to listen and tell you how great you are. Of course you wouldn't get in touch, but you're still great. Probably moreso because of that.

for a smoke. Or did I turn away too quickly?! Man! I wish i'd said hello, or something. I was the (silent) girl with dark short bob & fringe, black hoodie & grey jeans. Seems I'm rubbish at starting a chat but I'm good at looking and smiling! Never written one of these before, but, I dunno, I think you were really lovely and I'm still thinking about those eyes, that smile and who you are and wondering if you're doing the same about me? I hope we bump into each other around Stokes Croft again...I'll find some actual words to say and be less shy next time. Or you could always email...mooreplease@ hotmail.com

I Saw You at Lakota on wed 7th March with a group of mates. You were tall, dark hair, black coat and just looked pretty gorgeous. We kept giving each other little smiles, then I thought you were about to say something to me when your mates called you away

I Saw You - I saw you singing the David Bowie night at the Cube on Friday, 9th March. Thank you for singing letter to Hermione so beautifully. I would have loved to have stayed for more of a chat but I had to leave early. I'd really like to hear your poem again!

I Saw You complaining about work and other things in your life that give us all problems from time to time.

I saw you -

I see you on your commute through Chimney Steps, Bristol. The lovely man with floppy, dark hair (late 20's/ early 30's). You make my knees tremble and my heart race! From the Retro Blonde lady x

I Saw You - "Ok fine, I DID see you." It must be someone else. The person I saw wouldn't have a reason to say that. It was oversensitive and daft of me to submit that anyway. I Saw You...in Alpe D'Huez in the French Alps on a skiing holiday having a lengthy hard massage after a hard day on the slopes whilst listening to Marmotte noises fill the air. You love Smurf on the blob from Smithy's, but I have dark horse tastes! The Dirty Green slopes of Wurzel and Mimi will be ours forever. Here's to a meet-up in Bristol soon xx I Saw You walking to your red bmw in clifton the other week and should have said hello how are you Miss R... g.williams@btinternet.com

I lost the letter after I realized the intended recipient did not wish to be found but I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I loved writing it x I Saw You at The Kensington Arms on Thursday 22nd March.I was blond and petite checked blue shirt. You were with three female friends having a meal, you had shoulder length brown hair, looking and smiling at me alot. I Saw You at the Ram on Wednesday 21st - you = hot guy with dark hair and me = girl with long dark hair who couldn't stop looking at you! Wanted to ask for your number but I was a bit too shy so thought I'd give this a go instead :) Emily_squemily@yahoo. com I Saw You 24th "A party in clifton" "rolling in flowers & coffee for 3" "why didn't I get your number how silly of me?" "a garden later and a drunken haze" "your friend stood between us as I couldn't go to his place" "You see auras , I see pictures how come we didnt exchange numbers?" "so Mr B somewhere out there if you read this please contact me" From Miss Z :) I Saw You in La Rocca, near to closing time on Sunday 25th March 2012. Your name is Alice, mine is Martin. We spoke about you being 5'10" - 5'11", I was taller with dark hair, blue eyes, wearing black and white striped shirt. You typed your number into my phone but I didn't save it! myrighthand2008@yahoo.co.uk

For more I saw you's - plus I'm sore at you see: venue.co.uk/ isawyou APRIL 2012 // 7

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BRISTOL & BATH IN PICTURES ‘Don’t Look Down (Westmoreland House)’ – Rory Mizen (right) This one tickled us pink – and made us a bit dizzy : the never-ending conversation between the viewer and the viewed opened up questions none of us had the brains to answer. So we gave Rory Mizen a prize instead. Ffi: mizerphotography.co.uk

‘Clevedon Gutter’ – Darren Shepherd

Are you a photographer? // Pro, semi-pro, amateur… if you have a Bristol or Bath-related pic and want to show if off, email it to editor@venue.co.uk and the top three will get posted up here.

THIS MONT WINNER!H'S

(below)

“Out cycling trying to get some night shots, I was interested in the reflections of the street and traffic lights in wet road. Because not all of the photo has sharp focus it has created a sparkly effect in the reflections. Even gutters can look beautiful.”

‘View over Milsom St, Bath’ – Angela Coniam (below right) // “My husband and I moved to Bath last year. We only had one weekend to find a flat to rent, but luck was definitely on our side.”

This month’s prize (CDs or downloads up to a value of £50) is kindly provided by AudioGO (formerly BBC Audiobooks) who publish thousands of comedy, drama and factual programmes in both CD and downloadable format. Ffi: www.audiogo.co.uk

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PIC: HANNAH DOMAGALA

And another thing... Behold your Boris! Eugene Byrne stands for election.

s this thing switched on? <Tap! Tap!>)

Just think: we could have our own one of these.

Mah fellow Bristolians! As you know, the city is to hold a referendum on whether or not it wants an elected mayor with executive powers or, if you’re an Evening Post reader, a “Bristol Boris”. The people have been calling upon me to stand for mayor. The private care home people, the private education people, the private police people… Lots of people. Reluctant though I am to take up the heavy burden of office, I feel called upon by this great city of ours to make the necessary sacrifices to provide Bristol with the leadership it so desperately needs in these difficult and challenging times. The present tired system is broken, not fit for purpose. We are all tired of the petty point-scoring among the political parties on the council. Bristol needs real leadership, and for that leadership, we need to look to the business community. I mean, for God’s sake, why? What makes business people more capable of running councils than councillors and council officers, or academics, or scientists, say? WTF endows used car salesmen, financial hucksters or grocers with the wisdom of Solomon, the incorruptibility of a Gandhi and the political nous of a Machiavelli? It’s rubbish!! Everyone’s led by the

“A vote for Byrne is a vote for the fine old traditions of our proud and ancient city.” 10 // APRIL 2012

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nose by big business lobbying, media manipulation and lies to think business is wiser, more efficient and capable than anyone else. It’s a lie! The poisonous, idiotic orthodoxy of the times. The dimmest Anglican vicar would run this town better than any businessman or woman I’ve ever met, but hey, let’s go with the flow … As a highly respected member of the business community, I will kick ass down the council house! The business of Bristol is business. Business must be allowed to take care of business, except when business needs to mind its own business. I cannot be any clearer than that!

common sense. For instance, I always take an umbrella if it looks like it’s going to rain and I make sure I get plenty of roughage in my diet. My administration will run Bristol in a similar fashion. Vote for me for sustainability, too. As mayor, I will reject the gas-guzzling limo, but travel in a gilded horse-drawn carriage. My opponents will of course say this is a reckless extravagance, but I shall silence them by having my officials put the horse manure on their rhubarb. In the council house canteen, instead of custard. Oh my aching sides!

Pause for cheering here. A vote for me will also be a vote for valves. You have valves. I have valves. This great city of ours has been built on traditional valves. Oh. Heh! Right! Can’t read the back of this fag packet! My bad. Values. Bristol also has values. Vote for me for values. Not valves. Not that I have anything against the valve community. I am also the candidate of

A vote for Byrne is also a vote for the family. A vote for my family, anyway. Mrs Byrne becomes city treasurer to build up her collection of shoes. The eldest son takes charge of the police, which he’s already told me he wants to re-name “The Elite 19th Brigade”. The other son can be Archbishop of Bristol. My brother gets the rubbish and recycling contract as soon as he’s out of Horfield Nick.

A vote for Byrne is also a vote for the fine old traditions of our proud and ancient city. I’m especially keen on reviving that 18th-century tradition of the 17-course banquet for the mayor and his cronies every day. And the tradition of hiring thugs to beat up your opponents at election time. Finally, my fellow citizens, I will give you your stadium! Done and done! If we get mayoral elections, the turn-out will be so low that anyone promising to build the stadium wins at a stroke, with 30,000 City fans marching zombie-like into the polling booths. And when it turns out that I can’t build the stadium as the elected mayor has no influence over planning decisions, I will blame featherbedded fat cat council officials, Trots and anarchists, the EU, the Tory Con-Dem government and if all else fails, South Gloucestershire council and the Iranians. What? What do you mean this bloody microphone is still switched on?

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April // OUR FAVOURITE

Going out this month? see venue.co.uk - the new home of Venue’s what’s on listings

TEN THINGS THIS MONTH...//

MUSIC The Invisible

// This Mercury-nominated South London threesome have hit the road with Doves, Foals and Hot Chip, which might give some idea of the exploratory and playful scope of their cerebral art-pop. Clever, moving and unexpected by turns.

PIC: LIZ DE HEVENINGHAM

THE INVISIBLE PLAY THE LOUISIANA, BRISTOL ON SUN 1 APR. SEE THELOUISIANA.NET FOR DETAILS.

4. EVENT Vintage Velo: The Need for Tweed

2. ART Ten Drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci // Grotesque profiles, a sectioned skull, a dragon and a deluge are among the ten drawings on tour for Jubilee year from the Royal Collection, reflecting the remarkable range of Leonardo’s artistic endeavours. TEN DRAWINGS BY LEONARDO DA VINCI BRISTOL CITY MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY, SAT 31 MAR-SAT 10 JUN. SEE FEATURE ON P.16 AND WWW.BRISTOL.GOV.UK/NODE/2904 FOR DETAILS.

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3. MUSIC 2:54/Chelsea Wolfe // Star turn are the 2.54, aka sultry shoegaze sisters Collette and Hannah Thurlow, coiling out riffs curdled and comet-tailed by turns; but Chelsea Wolfe’s witchy atmospherics deserve your ears too: artful, powerful stuff that smoulders somewhere between PJ Harvey, Sonic Youth and The Knife. Don’t be late. 2.54 & CHELSEA WOLFE PLAY THEKLA, BRISTOL ON TUE 10 APR. SEE WWW.THEKLABRISTOL.CO.UK FOR DETAILS.

// A trailer and fundraiser for the Bristol Cycle Festival (which returns in September), this is a two-wheeled adventure involving heroic pipe smoking, beautiful bicycles and a glimpse into a utopian future where riding a bike is once again a “stylish pastime that opens a window onto the countryside, rather than a frantic day-glo dash to an office”. The ride wanders out of Bristol and into the great green beyond for a knees-up of music, cream teas and gin. Dust off your finest tweeds, polish up that monocle and get ready to party like it’s 1899. VINTAGE VELO: THE NEED FOR TWEED DEPARTS CLIFTON SUSPENSION BRIDGE ON SUN 29 APR. FFI: VINTAGE-VELO.BLOGSPOT. COM/

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FILM Into the Abyss // Werner Herzog’s latest compelling think-piece focuses on the aftermath of a triple homicide. Yet this death row documentary is a far from humourless film – by exploring the humanity of those affected, it succeeds in building a story that’s rich, surreal and full of life. INTO THE ABYSS IS IN CINEMAS FROM FRI 30 MAR. FLIP TO P.46 FOR THE VENUE VERDICT, AND CHECK WWW.VENUE. CO.UK FOR LOCAL SCREENING DETAILS.

FILM Headhunters

// Properly exciting Norwegian thriller about a charismatic corporate headhunter who moonlights as a highend art thief until one heist too many leaves him way out of his depth. Edge of the seat stuff.

MUSIC Tricky

// Back in the early 90s, troubled Knowle West jailbird Adrian ‘Tricky’ Thaws met a beautiful Clifton College schoolgirl with a double-barrelled surname. They fell in love, made beautiful music together and released the dark, brooding album ‘Maxinquaye’. This gig represents something of a homecoming for that gravelly hip-hop pioneer, as he revisits the scattershot genius of his 1995 debut with erstwhile squeeze Martina Topley-Bird back by his side. A rare chance to witness one of the albums that defined the Bristol sound delivered live by (some of) the people who made it. TRICKY PLAYS 02 ACADEMY, BRISTOL ON THUR 26 APR. WWW.O2ACADEMYBRISTOL.CO.UK FFI.

HEADHUNTERS OPENS AT CINEMAS NATIONWIDE ON FRI 6 APR. FLIP TO P.49 FOR THE VENUE VERDICT, AND CHECK WWW. VENUE.CO.UK FOR LOCAL SCREENING DETAILS.

PERFORMANCE A Kind of Alaska/ Krapp’s Last Tape // An unusual double bill from two of the 20th century’s greatest playwrights. Beckett’s ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’ and Pinter’s ‘A Kind Of Alaska’ both explore time’s inexorable passing, memory and regret with a tender, affecting power. A KIND OF ALASKA/KRAPP’S LAST TAPE BRISTOL OLD VIC STUDIO, THUR 5 APR-SAT 12 MAY. SEE PERFORMANCE FROM P.71 FOR MORE. FFI: WWW.BRISTOLOLDVIC.ORG.UK.

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MUSIC Tinariwen

// As a four-year-old boy, Tinariwen frontman Ibrahim Ag Alhabib watched as his father (a Touareg rebel) was executed during the 1963 uprising in Mali. Rebellion and life amid Africa’s shifting sands have infused the music he’s made ever since. His band: a mysterious, nomadic collective of Touareg-Berber guerrillas who traded in their machine guns for electric guitars when they chanced upon the music of Jimi Hendrix. Their guitar-driven sound fuses ancient West African melodies with electrified Algerian rai, Moroccan, Egyptian and Malian music – and bootlegged Bob Dylan and Led Zep. TINARIWEN PLAY COLSTON HALL, BRISTOL ON SAT 7 APR. SEE WWW. COLSTONHALL.ORG FOR DETAILS.

10. COMEDY Stewart Francis // The laconic Canadian one-liner man – him off of ‘Mock the Week’, ‘Michael McIntyre’s Roadshow’ and ‘Live At The Apollo’ – brings an all-new set of stand-up that’s wry, dry and disarmingly charming. STEWART FRANCIS COLSTON HALL, BRISTOL, FRI 27 APR. SEE WWW. COLSTONHALL.ORG FOR DETAILS. KOMEDIA, BATH ON WED 25 APR.

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Interview Becca Gill & Jay Kerry Immersive theatre mavericks Mercurial Wrestler.

s artists and as humans we are fascinated by interpreting the world around us and cognitively establishing how our experiences create our reality. Through magic we can reveal the everyday fraud of perception so that people become aware of the tension between what is and what seems to be.

Magna Mysteria is the product of research we carried out at the Pervasive Media Studio into the use of pervasive media technologies in recreating magical illusions from the1860s – 1920s. From our research we developed ‘The Magician’s Desk’ that toured as a testing piece for us on how people respond in a sensor-driven environment. The feedback from this piece allowed us to develop the basis for the technological elements of Magna Mysteria.

Our curiosity and natural attraction to ‘the unknown’ and our desire to use our imagination and create associations which go against the law of nature leads to our desire to suspend disbelief - that’s where the magic comes in. It was a desire to place the audience at the centre of the performance and create worlds through which the ‘participants’ can create their own journey that inspired us to set up Mercurial Wrestler.

The ‘Magna’ experience begins with an invitation to a magic show and then unravels around you. Stories emerge from out of nowhere, characters tell conflicting tales, and you, the audience, choose who - or what - to believe. It’s not a game, there’s no right or wrong... but there are many paths, and not everyone will experience Magna Mysteria in the same way. The world of Magna Mysteria is one where Victorian-style magic mixes with digital technology, with ghosts in the machine. Psychics send text messages. Immortals tweet. And a mysterious carnival caravan stands waiting for you outside the theatre. The Magician has been walking the earth for a long, long time, and he’s left many traces. There are those that say he’s a prophet; some are convinced he’s a charlatan. So, who do you trust?

Our latest piece of work is called ‘Magna Mysteria’, and it plays on this desire to be mistaken about how the world works and recheck our standards of reality. If we want to let the rest of the world in on the tricks, we should do well to present the universe as a magical place. What makes our work unique is a desire to engineer an experience that doesn’t just take place once and disappear. It forms part of people’s lives over a long period of time and alters their perception of the world around them for moments, days, weeks maybe even years to come. It allows people to live with in the manufactured fiction as it blurs with everyday reality. Our unique form of immersive audience led performance is inspired by the pervasive nature of the media around us and the ability to make the impossible, possible.

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What made us want to work with the writer Tim X Atack was seeing a piece of his at Bristol Old Vic, back in 2010. We were blown away by his style. He has the ability to create a world for the audience that seems utterly real, yet set off centre. He exploded a moment into fragments and made you feel that you were there, living with him in it. His style and ability to render

the everyday into the impossible meant that he was the only writer we wanted to work with on ‘Magna Mysteria’. This was definitely the right decision. Bristol’s theatre scene has a bubbling feel of exploration and openness to sharing and finding new ways of working with audiences. We have been so supported by Bristol’s art infrastructure and the way that organisations openly work together to make exciting things happen. We feel that Bristol is a brilliant place

to try out new ways of working within an incredible group of peers who are pushing the boundaries of performance. What are our future hopes? To keep pushing the illusionary potential of Magna Mysteria with new audiences all over the world. To always consider what our next trick will be. MAGNA MYSTERIA WILL PREMIERE AT MAYFEST 2012. TO BOOK TICKETS VISIT WWW.MAGNAMYSTERIA.COM

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Leonardo This month, Bristol’s City Museum hosts an exhibition of drawings by the painter, illustrator and Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci. It’s likely to be the museum’s most popular show since 2009’s Banksy residency. So who’s the bigger cheese in the art world? Steve Wright compares and contrasts. ORIGINS The origins of both Banksy and Leonardo da Vinci remain somewhat unclear – deliberately on Banksy’s part, thanks to the accidents of history in Leonardo’s case. Banksy was born in or around Bristol in around 1974, and may or may not have attended Bristol Cathedral School. Leonardo, meanwhile, was born out of wedlock to a lawyer and one of his serving women, probably one Caterina, in 1452 in the town of Vinci near Florence. MULTIMEDIA MEN Banksy’s work spans graffiti, illustration, painting, sculpture, installation, writing and, with the release of 2010’s ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’, film. Leonardo, meanwhile, pursued vigorously his interests in (deep breath) painting, sculpture, architecture, music, science, maths, engineering, anatomy, geology, cartography, botany and military technology. Probably just edges that one, then. POPULARITY Quite a close call. The National Gallery’s recent exhibition ‘Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan’ attracted 324,000 visitors in 12 weeks, while the figures for 2009’s ‘Banksy vs Bristol Museum’ show were strikingly similar: around 310,000 visitors across, again, 12 weeks. A ‘Twitter Tussle’, meanwhile, reveals that Leonardo’s name features in 3.77

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Tweets every minute, Banksy’s in just 0.72. That said, a poll of 18- to 25-year-olds recently placed Banksy third in a list of ‘arts heroes’, one ahead of Leonardo and just behind Walt Disney and, oddly, Peter Kay.

Banksy’s ‘Keep it Spotless’ has been his most expensive work to date, fetching $1.87 million (£1.2 million) in 2008. In 2001, Leonardo’s sketch ‘Horse and Rider’ sold for £8,144,000. SUCCESS Both artists have acquired the trappings of worldly fame during their lifetimes. Leonardo’s patrons included the Medici family and Francois I of France: the latter gave him a chateau where he spent his declining years. Banksy’s 2006 Los Angeles show ‘Barely Legal’, meanwhile, saw Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Christina Aguilera splashing out six-figure sums.

INDIVIDUALISM Notwithstanding their worldly success, both artists can/could be withering about those who brought little into the world but their own wealth and privilege. “A small group create, promote, purchase, exhibit and decide the success of Art. When you go to an art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires,” observed Banksy. Compare this with Leonardo’s observation that “They go about puffed up and pompous, dressed and decorated with [the fruits], not of their own labours, but of those of others. They will scorn me as an inventor; but how much more might they – who are not inventors but vaunters and declaimers of the works of others – be blamed.” MARKET VALUES No contest. Banksy’s ‘Keep it Spotless’ – itself a defaced Damien Hirst painting – has been his most expensive work to date, fetching $1.87 million (£1.2

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The head of Leda, c. 1505-6, Leonardo da Vinci

million) at Sotheby’s New York in 2008. His fivepart oil painting ‘Simple Intelligence Testing’ (first exhibited at Severnshed, Bristol in 2000) sold for £636,500 at Sotheby’s London the same year. To date, ten Banksy works have fetched over £200,000. In 2001, meanwhile, Leonardo’s sketch ‘Horse and Rider’ sold at Christie’s, London for £8,144,000. The Codex Leicester, a collection of Leonardo’s scientific writings, is the most expensive book ever sold – purchased in a 1994 auction for $30.8 million (£19.7 million) by Bill Gates. The Mona Lisa, meanwhile, is valued at around $700 million (£447,000,000). TANKS A LOT Military helicopters and tanks both feature prominently in Banksy’s work. And whaddyaknow, the first person to depict both was Leonardo, who sketched an array of prototype war machines including a wooden structure lifted by a rotor (powered by four men), and a tank to be propelled by soldiers powering crankshafts. PROVENANCE Both artists have been much imitated and both have been subject to lengthy debate and confusion around their real and fake works – Leonardo because he is long dead, Banksy through his studied anonymity. A host of works are doubtfully attributed to Leonardo: in 2010

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Christie’s was sued by a collector for selling a reputed Leonardo drawing, which it believed to be a 19th-century German work, for a footling £11,400. Meanwhile, Banksy’s simple, clean stencil style and instant wry humour have been aped by countless street artists, leading to much confusion over whether street pieces are proper-job ‘Banksies’ or imitations. A ‘cut out and keep’ stencil in Clifton was removed when the council decided that it was not by the great man (the paint ran, uncharacteristically, and the signature didn’t look right), leading to some accusations of ‘one rule for Banksy, another for everyone else’. CRITICAL ACCLAIM Unsurprisingly, given his extraordinary polymath energies and awesome craftsmanship, acclaim for Leonardo’s life and work is universal. Banksy, meanwhile, though he enjoys a hero’s status around the globe, has his detractors in artistic and critical circles. The Evening Standard’s famously high-minded art critic Brian Sewell observed that “the two words ‘graffiti’ and ‘art’ should never be put together” and that Banksy himself “should have been put down at birth”. Somewhat more

tempered, the Guardian’s art correspondent Jonathan Jones concluded, “He is talented – for a graffiti artist. That’s a big qualification… Banksy is a comic artist… what comes into his head is a stew of received ideas – nothing really likely to challenge anyone. The easy humour that makes his work superficially likable removes from it any hope of being mad or poetic.” KEY QUOTES “How painting surpasses all human works by reason of the subtle possibilities which it contains.” – Leonardo “Photography has pretty much killed painting but graffiti has remained gloriously unspoilt by progress.” – Banksy TEN DRAWINGS BY LEONARDO DA VINCI: A DIAMOND JUBILEE CELEBRATION IS AT BRISTOL MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY FROM 31 MAR-10 JUNE. FFI: HTTP://BIT.LY/ZZUDRM

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Bath Comedy Festival returns for its fourth instalment this month, promising a furiously eclectic line-up from music and magic to cabaret and comic art. Steve Wright has a funny turn.

he very first instalment, back in 2009, featured a narcissistic, irascible and spoonerising Count, a young fogey off of ‘Balamory’ and the angriest, most articulate and funniest Dutchman we’ve ever seen. The following year, proceedings were marked by a mock Russian submarine that docked at Pulteney Weir on April Fool’s Day and remained there for the rest of the fortnight. And Bath Comedy Festival 2012 is looking no slouch either: this year’s line-up is the fest’s biggest yet, with a bulging sackful of events spanning stand-up, sketch comedy, street theatre, storytelling, character comedy, comic art, cabaret, music, magic, mystery tours, walks, workshops, puppetry and the quite frankly unclassifiable. Widcombe Social Club is this year’s nerve centre, with 15 events over the 11 days, but there’ll be laughs to be had across town too, at venues including the Rondo and Mission theatres, Baroque nightclub, Komedia, St James’ Wine Vaults and many more. Without further ado, then, here’s our BCF Top 10…

BATH COMEDY FESTIVAL 2012 RUNS FROM 30 MAR-9 APR. FFI: WWW. BATHCOMEDY. COM

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c i f f Tra ' n i jamm Is driving slower than walking? After a whistle-stop look the future of local transport, Mike White takes the commuter challenge.

xcessive car use has been a problem in Bristol and Bath for decades. As well as the pollution and the health risks associated with inactivity, it’s no good for our finances. The Bristol Evening Post reported in 2006 that “the amount of time lost by commuters stuck in traffic jams in the Bristol area is costing the local economy a staggering £350 million a year. Workers now spend a quarter of their journey time to and from work waiting in stationary traffic queues.” Bristol and Bath – in common with most British cities – were laid out long before motorised traffic. Cars don’t really fit. Various schemes have attempted to ease the gridlock over the years, with limited success. In 2008, Bristol launched the Cycling City programme with a Department for Transport-enhanced budget of £23m, aiming to double numbers of regular cyclists in Greater Bristol by 2011. The population of Greater Bristol is about 570,000 people. Roughly 45,000 of them make daily car journeys to work of 5km (3.1 miles) or less. That’s a distance that most people could cycle in 15 minutes. Despite this, and the best efforts of the Cycling City team, the programme did not achieve the desired doubling of cyclist numbers within three years. There were many improvements to infrastructure and a good deal of work was done to encourage commuters and school kids to give cycling a go. A tiny amount of money was spent (compared to the BEP’s quoted cost of traffic jams to the local economy), and much

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was achieved. Despite being underfunded and all too brief, Cycling City was A Good Thing. But all good things must come to an end. What’s next for enlightened transport policy round these parts? In September 2010, Norman Baker (Lib Dem MP for Lewes, and Under Secretary of State for Transport) announced a new funding stream – the £560million Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF), to which he added a £15million ‘growth package for cycling and walking’ in February of this year. Norman says sensible things like “we need to do what we can to persuade people out of their cars and onto public transport, without penalising those who have no alternative”. The fund is designed to provide an opportunity for local transport authorities to “build on their plans for taking forward sustainable travel measures, to develop …measures that support economic growth and reduce carbon, help to tackle problems of air quality and deliver improvements in public health and transport safety”. All four local councils are uniting to bid for as much of the LSTF money as they can. The fund allows authorities to bid either for small projects (under £5m) or large projects (up to £50m). For large projects, they can make an initial application for up to £5m to get started (called a ‘key component bid’). The large project being planned for us is (acronym alert) ‘West of England Sustainable Travel (WEST)’ with a key component bid focused on Key Commuter Routes. Last July, the region’s councils successfully bid for £5 million of LSTF cash for these Key Commuter Routes,

promising “an integrated package of measures promoting low-carbon alternatives to single occupancy car-use on six routes capturing 40% of journeys to work across the West of England”. To check how these routes might help you, see tinyurl.com/keycomroutes. There are various other thrusts to WEST, built around three themes: Low-Carbon Commuting – “targeting journeys to work and business travel on key commuter corridors and at major employment locations”; Active and Sustainable Communities – “working with local communities to develop ‘bottom up’ sustainable transport solutions”; and Transitions to a Low-Carbon Lifestyle – “focusing on the choices people make as they move school, university, home, or job”. “It’s about choice,” says Julia Dean of the West of England Office. “Different people need different transport provision; often one person may need different things on different days. We have to take a holistic approach. It’s all very well to say ‘everyone should cycle’, but try putting yourself in everyone’s shoes and you have think a bit more creatively.” The planning will have to think long term as well – although the LSTF money is only available until 2014/15, changing transport behaviour is likely to take several years. The West of England councils’ efforts are being branded ‘Travel+’, so to begin with we’ll see the ‘Travel+’ name and logo appearing on vehicles, in publicity bumf and “wherever work is being done to improve transport options”, including the £78 million Greater Bristol Bus Network project (now completed),

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' the multi-modal Weston Package (in progress), the bus-based Bath Transportation Package (funding now in place) and the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) scheme (coming soon). Improvements to some modes of transport impact on others – thus we have the widespread disgruntlement (tinyurl.com/ GBBNwhiteladies) to changes on Whiteladies Road as part of the GBBN, tantrums from the motoring lobby about 20mph zones and umbrage (from Bristol Cycling Campaign, amongst others) about the likely effects of BRT. In short, local transport is a prickly pear. A recent UWE experiment showed that someone commuting by car in Bristol averaged just 4.68 mph, barely faster than walking. Despite this, a growing number of people still choose to drive, often because they don’t see any workable alternative. Providing that alternative is what Travel+ is all about. “The mind-set has got to change,” says Julian Dean, “but things are already moving in the right direction – at last we’re receiving the help we need to invest in local transport. We’ve just invested £78m in the Greater Bristol Bus Network; the LSTF bid and Bus Rapid Transit plans are going well. Whenever these changes are made, there is upheaval and it can take a long time for the benefits to become apparent. It’s a bit like putting in a new bathroom – there’s dust and mess and inconvenience for a few days, but the upside is you have a bathroom you love for years to come. As we make improvements to the transport system there will be disruption, there will be delays, and some people won’t like it. But it’ll be worth it.”

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Le Challenge In a far from scientific homage to UWE’s recent commuter challenge experiment, Venue tried six different modes of transport at rush-hour on six different days, and compared them, Top Trumps style. Cycling wins hands down, of course. But there were a few surprises – contrary to expectations, driving is in fact faster than walking (though only just), and trains and buses both proved painless and problem-free.

Our friends electric Among those concerned about not being fit enough or arriving at the office sweaty, electric bikes are a popular choice. Although they’re harder to maintain than ordinary bikes and require regular charging, they offer the same benefits as cycling, plus power-assistance up hills or into headwinds. Bath’s Take Charge Bikes are among many local suppliers capitalising on the eBike trend – seek ’em out here: www.takechargebikes.co.uk.

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DAY ONE G RUNNIN

OR, BUT DOOR TO DO INS 43 SECS M 13 N: KE ER) TIME TA SK (INC SHOW DOOR TO DE 26MIN 30SECS PH EED: 7.74M UTE ★★★★★ AVERAGE SP -FREE COMM E : EASY, STRESS THE EPITOM LY RD RAGE FACTOR HA NNING KIT, SO RU : OR CT FA STYLE CHIC ★★ THE DAY, OF URBANE D OUT *** ON : TO GET KITTE OR CT COST FA ★ IMAL KIT ZERO ★★★★ ISSIONS, MIN OR: ZERO EM GREEN FACT ★★★★ NEED IN A REQUIRED ★ YTHING YOU PACKING EVER : OR CT FA ★ FAFF ER AT WORK EDING A SHOW I BEFORE I’VE SL UE BACKPACK, NE M F MY : BURNED OF AR OR CT FA TH RDIOVASCUL HEAL IMPROVED CA IT (200 CALS). T ★★★★★ HO BIT A EVEN EATEN T UG. BU ALERT AND SM GUBBINS. FEEL

Pros Makes you fit, no traffic worries, relatively quick. Cons Makes you sweaty, requires a little packing, need a shower at work. What it was like Hot but fun. Anyone of reasonable fitness ought to be able to jog along for 2 or 3 miles in old trainers, shorts and T-shirt. I packed my work clothes, toiletries and towel in a rucksack, then set off at a steady pace, dodging the dog eggs and cyclists on the cycle path. It was all over in less than 15 minutes - arrived hot and sweaty but far from knackered, then had to toil up to the fifth floor to find the office shower, and spend a further 13 minutes washing, dressing and wishing I could cool down faster. Arrived at desk glowing like I’d just been in a sauna. Tips Keep a pair of work shoes and spare toiletries at work. Start slow until your fitness improves. Factor in cooling-down time. Further reading www.runbristol.com

DAY CYCLTWO ING

TIME TAKEN : 6 MIN DOOR S 40 SE TO DE CS DO SK (INC OR TO AVERA TIME T DOOR GE SP O LOC , 8MIN E E K BIKE D : 16.11 RAGE S ) M FACTO PH R : OCCA ATTEN SIONA TION, L MOT OTHER ORIST STYLE WISE S NOT P FACTO TRESS-F AYING R: JUST REE ★★ GEAR W N ★★ ORMA OULD L CLOT DENT COST H ES (TH STYLIS FACTO OUGH HNESS R: TO RAIN SOME ★★★★ GET A WHAT ★ BIKE ET ) ★★★ C★★★ GREEN ON TH FACTO E DAY, R: ZER ZERO ★★★ O EMIS ★★ SIONS , MINIM FAFF F ACTO A L KIT RE R: NO QUIRE ROUTE FAFF – D WAS M BUT M ORE ST IGHT N HEALT R EED SH ENUO H FAC U OWER S/HILLY TOR: IMPRO IF BLEW ★★★ VED C AWAY ARDIO THE C SLICE O V O A B S WEBS, CULAR F TOAS HEALT T (70 C H, BUR ALS) ★ NED O ★★★ ★ FF A

Pros Quick, free, reliable, no traffic jams, no parking hassle, makes you fit Cons Hills need practice, traffic can seem scary to novice cyclists, have to dress for the weather What it was like All over too soon. I wore normal clothes and headed off at a reasonable pace, not so fast that I got sweaty or out of breath. I’ve always commuted like this, through school, uni and every job I’ve had. Currently my route’s mostly flat and traffic free – one of the deciding factors when buying my house was its proximity to a decent cycle path. But even when my commute was Totterdown to Clifton and back every day (including city centre ‘rush’ hour and going up Park Street), I found cycling the fastest and easiest way of doing it. Using the cycle path does make it quicker than cycling on roads – but then that’s one of the big advantages of riding a bicycle – you can usually take a more direct route than a car. And before you ask, no, I don’t ride on pavements or jump red lights. Near the office, a light went red and another cyclist wove past me and jumped it. I shouted after him as he bum-wiggled away, and he threw me a furious over-the-shoulder stare that you’d normally reserve for someone who’d just sh*t on your dying grandmother. I got a thumbs-up from the white-van-man beside me though; a rare occurrence for a cyclist. Tips Use Google maps or gb.mapometer.com to plan a cycle-friendly route. There’s also helpful stuff here www.betterbybike.info/ trip-planner. Further reading www.betterbybike. info, www.travelplus.org.uk/cycling, www. bristolcyclingcampaign.org.uk, http:// cyclehelmets.org/papers/c2014.pdf

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DAY FOUR CAR

TIME TAKEN: 24.48 MINS DOOR TO DES K (COULDN’T GET DOOR TO DOOR, AS NO PARKING AT OFF ICE) AVERAGE SPEED: 4.54 MPH RAGE FACTOR: LOT S OF MEANINGLESS WAITING AROUND IN TRAFFIC JAMS, SOM E VERY ANGRY DRIVIN G EXHIBITED BY OTHER MOTORISTS WHEN I OBEYED THE 20MPH LIMIT IN FORCE THROUGHOU T EASTON ★★★ STYLE FACTOR: OR DINARY CLOTHES, BUT CHEEKS FLUSHED WITH SHAME AT DR IVING LESS THAN 2 MILES ★★ COST FACTOR: PRI CEY – EVEN WITHO UT FACTORING IN RUNNING COSTS, VED , INSURANCE ETC. £7.5 0 PARKING, MAYBE 50P ON PET ROL ★ GREEN FACTOR: TER RIBLE. STILL, AT LEAST IT’S NOT A RANGE ROVER ★ FAFF FACTOR: ALL THAT UN-PARKING AND THEN RE-PARKING AND WA ITING AROUND IN TRA FFIC JAMS ★★ HEALTH FACTOR: NO EXERCISE WHATSOEV ER, MADE BRISTOL’S AIR EVEN MORE POISONOUS THAN IT WAS ★

DAY THREE WALKING

Pros Warm, comfortable, weather-proof, nice to listen to the radio Cons Slow, expensive, polluting, dangerous, makes you fat

TO DESK .45 MINS DOOR TIME TAKEN: 24 PH D: 4.29M ★★★★★ AVERAGE SPEE THE DALAI LAMA LESS RAGE THAN RAGE FACTOR: ★ ★ ★ ★ YOU ARE : AS STYLISH AS STYLE FACTOR WT ★★★★★ NO , DA NA , ZIP : ★ COST FACTOR CAN GET ★★★★ : GOOD AS YOU GREEN FACTOR AN USUAL, TH ER RLI EA BIT D TO LEAVE A E EAT FAFF FACTOR: HA N DO STUFF LIK EE – PLUS YOU CA FR F FAF ISE RW LK ★★★★ OTHE WA U YO ILE WH E YOUR MUM ★★ TOAST OR PHON EAT EXERCISE ★ : GENTLE, NO-SW OR CT FA TH AL HE

Pros Free, simple, good for you, can have your headphones on Cons Slow (compared to bike), have to dress for the weather What it was like Calming. Twenty-five minutes to myself, listening to some new music. Saw a rat eating Wotsits. Tips Keep your work shoes under your desk, walk in in trainers. Download an audiobook and improve yourself as you walk. Further reading www.livingstreets.org. uk, www.bristol.gov.uk/node/3089, www. travelbristol.org/walk

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Beam me up Dr Avril Narr, an experimental physicist at the University of Bristol, has reported “exciting progress” in her research into the feasibility of a functioning teleportation system. In a PR exercise aimed at improving funding prospects, a demonstration will take place before an audience of the general public on College Green, Bristol. Be there at 11.30am precisely on 1 April and you may see people drifting in and out of existence as the first public trials of Dr Narr’s controversial invention are conducted.

What it was like Bovine. Slightly faster than walking, but feels slower because you’re sat down all the time. Someone had parked really close to the car, so it took a bit of wiggling to get it out. I felt like Austin Powers stuck in that tunnel. Then there followed lots of turning into roads and then waiting for all the cars coming the other way to squeeze through, because there were yet more cars parked along both sides of the road. Once onto Stapleton Road the traffic was mercifully light, bar the usual clog-ups around junctions and traffic lights. Sat watching wistfully as all the cyclists sailed gracefully past and disappeared into the distance. Found a space in a nearby department store car park – £7.50 for the day. Apparently that’s not bad. But still, that’d be £37.50 a week, £150 a month, approaching £1,800 a year. Ouch. Tips See if your boss will allow a bit of flex in working hours, so you can avoid rush hour. Try a car-sharing scheme like https://2carshare.liftshare.com/. Or better still, join a car club – details here: www. travelbristol.org/car-clubs

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Road rage

Has the council declared war on car drivers? asks Eugene Byrne. propose a vote, since we’re living in a democracy. I propose we have a referendum on cycling (even if it is just a local one that results in a bylaw) and we vote to outlaw bicycles for good.” – Reader’s letter, Evening Post, 3 Mar 2012. Motorists are bitter. They have been for decades. Every year they have to pay more, and every year the government or council puts more obstacles in their way. If the letters pages and web forums are any evidence, they are more bitter in Bristol than in almost every other city in the UK, certainly more so than Bath where most folk understand that their built environment is a priceless asset that was never designed for cars. To angry motorists, the council is waging relentless war on them with speed bumps, bus lanes, traffic lights, speed cameras, towaway schemes, any favours at all for cyclists... Those whose job it is to edit the letters pages give daily thanks and praise to the Almighty for motorists. Tim Kent (LD, Whitchurch Park), the Bristol City Councillor in charge of traffic jams, tells Venue: “Those letters are all written by people who would like all bikes and buses banned, and all the traffic lights switched off. They don’t have the faintest idea of the chaos that would ensue if we did that. As I always say, we are not anti-car. We are anti-congestion.”

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Right now, though, the angry motorists are starting to look increasingly irrelevant and out of touch. Bristol’s residents parking schemes are mostly approved of by the locals, while the 20mph zones in south and east Bristol are very popular. They’re now going to be rolled out in residential streets (NOT through routes) across the city. A council poll says 70% of us like this idea. There was also a minor earthquake before Christmas when local business lobby group Business West published its vision for Bristol in 2050. This document explicitly stated that future transport planning should be heavily biased towards public transport and discouraging car use. It even wondered aloud if the Portway should be closed to cars. Council subsidies of the Severn Beach Line as a commuter route have been a great success, and there is now an articulate, compelling and exciting campaign for old or underused rail lines and stations around the area to be brought back into use. For more, see greaterbristolrail.com Back on the roads, the £78m Greater Bristol Bus Network is virtually complete, with its bus lanes, new bus stops with better access, nice new buses, real-time information on when the next one’ll be along. First are reporting small rises in passenger numbers, which is not something you’d normally expect in the present

economic climate. Bus travel is now easier, pleasanter, faster and more reliable than it ever used to be. Not cheaper, mind. With the schemes that have actually been implemented – linking traffic lights with CCTV cameras is the one thing nobody’s noticed – life for the motorist is actually getting easier. Tim Kent (actual title: Executive Member for Transport) cites all the work on the Bath Road which finished last year. “It used to take you anything between 20 and 40 minutes at peak commuter time to get from the Three Lamps junction to Brislington. It is now 10-12 minutes. It has more than halved. Your journey is now more reliable. That is absolutely key. People mind congestion, but what they mind even more is the uncertainty over how long a journey will take. So you set off to collect the kids from school you don’t want to find you’re late, and nor do you want to find you’ve got there 20 minutes too early.” There will always be traffic jams. Just hopefully fewer, thanks to clever traffic management and the new bus network. Tim Kent: “I get frustrated as well sometimes. I was sitting on a bus going along Whiteladies Road, and it was being held up by the road works. I wondered what idiot was causing all this congestion. Then I realised that idiot was me.”

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DAY FIVE BUS

DESK S DOOR TO N: 18.56 MIN TIME TAKE PH THE EED: 5.67M DE ACROSS AVERAGE SP OUGH A RI INIMAL, TH ★ M ★ R: ★ O ★ G CT TRATIN RAGE FA MORE FRUS FA E MIGHT BE UIVALENT O CITY CENTR RTATION EQ O SP AN TR E IPS ★★★ TH CH R: D O CT AN Y LO STYLE FA ES OR A SAVE 0 THE GEE-GE RE THAN £6 FLUTTER ON PRICEY: MO TY ET PR IS .10 AND £3 R, R: CA O A CT G NNIN COST FA PER THAN RU ES IT STILL CHEA VANCE MAK A MONTH. PASS IN AD R EA /Y TH N O M K/ EE W A BUYING RDABLE ★★ GOOD AS MORE AFFO OR NOT AS GREEN FACT R: O CT CAR ★★★ FA A GREEN BETTER THAN ORT CLING, BUT UDE THE SH CL IN U WALKING/CY YO NCE H ★★★ BIT SLOW O UG A O R: EN O SY CT EA FAFF FA T OTHERWISE ER THAN CH END, BU KS ARE BETT WALKS AT EA SHORT WAL O TW OR: CT FA ★ ★ H LT TARY HEA ALLY SEDEN STILL BASIC NONE, BUT

DAY SIX TRAIN

Pros Mostly out of the weather, time to read, better for the environment than driving Cons Expensive. Can be slow. Routes, service providers and bus numbers remain unnecessarily mysterious. Risk of shared flatulence

TIME TAKEN: 21.24 MINS DOOR TO DESK (2.68 MILE ROUTE) AVERAGE SPEED: 7.51MPH

What it was like After fiddling around online to try and ‘plan my route’, I decided to just walk to the nearest bus stop (4 minutes away) and wait. Thirty seconds later a First Bus number 4 toiled into view and the concertina door wheezed open. The cheery driver said he was going my way. I jumped on, coughed up the £3.10 for a return (how much? etc), scooped up a free Metro and settled in for the ride. The bus was hot and half full, everyone studiously ignoring each other. Past bus experiences have always included at least one of the following: a driver who either doesn’t speak English and/or doesn’t know where the bus is going next; a pungent, fidgety nutjob muttering to themself; and someone unleashing a silent but foul arseburp just after I sit down. Today’s journey disappointingly featured none of these. The bus lane led us straight over the ring road where all other motorised traffic was diverted off to a distant roundabout, and gave us free passage up West Street and Old Market – the lights turning green as we approached – making the journey seem surprisingly fluid.

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RAGE FACTOR: UNEXPECTEDLY ZEN-LIKE ★★★★ STYLE FACTOR: TRAINS ARE ALWAYS STYLISH, ASSUMING YOU GET A SEAT ★★★★ COST FACTOR: £2 RETURN. CHEAPER THAN CHIPS (THOUGH THE SAME CAN’T BE SAID FOR MOST TRAINS) ★★★

GREEN FACTOR: AFTER FEET AND BICYCLES, TRAINS ARE

FO GO

GREENEST ★★★★ FAFF FACTOR: MINIMAL, THIS TIME ★★★★ HEALTH FACTOR: AS WITH THE BUS, TWO SHORT WALKS IS BETTER THAN NONE, BUT STILL BASICALLY SEDENTARY ★★

Pros Relatively cheap and quick, time to read/think/work, mostly out of the weather Cons Longer distances expensive, often overcrowded, occasionally unreliable

Tips Make sure you have plenty of small change. Bus drivers will love you for it. Further reading www.travelbristol.org/bus

What it was like Felt a bit European, riding an inner-city train to work. The suburban rail network is a real jewel in Bristol’s transport crown. The train was punctual, clean and not too crowded. A young teenage couple were arguing about whether film censors should allow prosthetic penises in place of real ones. “Even if they were, like, really massive?” Seven minutes later we swished into Temple Meads. I took the back exit out of the station and over a curvy silver bridge to the office. Easy peasy.

FOR AN EXTENDED VERSION OF THIS FEATURE, GO VISIT WWW.VENUE.CO.UK

Tips Call 08457 48 49 50 for train times just before you set out. Get a folding bike to speed up the journey to and from the station. Further reading www.travelbristol.org/rail, www.travelbristol.org/severnbeachline

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Is children’s theatre undergoing a golden age? Anna Britten talks to those taking centre stage.

ar Horse’, ‘The Gruffalo’, ‘Shrek The Musical’: Are we experiencing a Pixar-defying boom in children’s theatre? Depends who you ask. Towards the end of last year, the flowering of crossgenerational theatre was the subject of a debate amongst theatre types. One side celebrated the way West End theatres were reaching out to family audiences and reaping the rewards commercially; the other side argued that large-scale literary adaptations and live versions of picture books, films or TV shows do not compensate for the lack of adventurous new commissions in regional theatres, such as those common in the late 60s-80s. As a painfully artsy-fartsy parent and sometime

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theatre critic, I’ve been dragging my child to ‘suitable’ productions from the age of two. And I say “drag” because the offer has not always been gratefully received. Over the ensuing eight years, other diversions have simply competed more effectively for his time – Match Attax collections, Pixar, Xbox. In fact, only once, in all those years of theatre-going has he ever turned to me halfway through and whispered “This is amazing!” That was Toby Hulse’s ‘Around The World In Eighty Days’, two and a half years ago. Where had this production succeeded where others (the Russian folk tales, the trendy London cabaret group etc) had, in Junior’s view, failed? Yes, it was fast-paced, it was ridiculously funny, it had whizzy (though not flashy) effects – but this held true for many other shows. My hunch is that it’s just very, very difficult to make children’s theatre that seizes all the different types of child sitting in the auditorium – from the alpha-fidget to the fairy-princess. And it’s even harder to secure funding for it. Kate Cross, director of Bath’s children’s theatre The Egg, suggests there is “a problem with the UK funding model and our entrenched attitudes towards children and children’s art”. She points out that of her top four favourite productions ever, only one is by a UK company – and that’s ‘Matilda’ by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The others are ‘Prime’ – a Dutch piece from Theater Artemis (“like a Mike Leigh production for young people… I and my colleagues laughed until we discovered that in fact we were sobbing”); ‘Lava’, a Belgian piece from Studio ORKA 9 (“if you ever see this company in my brochure, come and see them”); and ‘Shadow of Time’, a Danish piece from Carte

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Blanche (“the skill and precision, the profundity and the science, here was a highly sophisticated piece of theatre”). Cross’s advice for any performer thinking about the genre is: “Don’t think you need to act differently because the audience is young. Do apply the same rigour to the theatricality and integrity of your work as you would for any theatre piece.” Even braver than stepping into this challenging arena is to do so with no conventional theatre background at all. Like Bristol musician Kid Carpet (real name Ed Patrick) has just done. Hitherto known for his quirky, lo-fi songs on the nation’s more leftfield record labels, Patrick is currently touring his children’s show ‘Kid Carpet & The Noisy Animals’ around the UK, with sell-out dates in Bristol behind him and a stint at Bath’s The Egg this month. Despite a track record in live performance, including two children’s gigs at Bristol’s Cube, he faced the same spirit-crushing funding hunt as anyone else. Eventually a Theatre Bristol/Tobacco Factory SITE (Space Ideas Time Expertise) residency offered three grand and priceless

support, and Arts Council money enabled the hiring of a professional dramaturg and designer. (He has since, however, been turned down for the sort of grant you’d need to take on the West End.) Fortunately, his whole schtick is cheap lo-fi. Developing the show itself, he says, was an easy next step for a new father who can’t stop goofing around. “The Kid Carpet persona has always been a cheeky p*sstaker,” he points out. “I had a baby, and over the course of the next year and half I found that I didn’t want to go back to doing rock and roll shows. It was untenable to get in at four and not be any use the next day. Whilst looking after our little boy I found I was doing a lot of singing to him, songs about not putting your hand in your nappy and so on. I recorded them on my phone and one day I realised I had 200 demos. I thought: let’s make a theatre show with a bit of story and visuals and

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video presence. Also, Kid Carpet fans started having kids and sending me videos of their kids singing my songs. “The story is that Kid Carpet is a rock star and he’s trying to get to the dance contest to meet his band and play some songs. In the meantime he keeps coming across these plastic animals who want to come along and play games. “A lot of it is harking back to the children’s TV I grew up with in the 70s – ‘Tiswas’, ‘The Clangers’, ‘Rainbow’, ‘Bagpuss’ – that simplicity and naivety with a little bit of ‘let’s go crazy and rock out’.” The tour wraps up this summer at Camp Bestival. Rather than the relatively sensible theatre crowd, this will be open to… possibly drunken revellers. A problem? “This will be Big Top at 11 in the morning – if they are drunk, they’ve been up all night so they shouldn’t be too much trouble. It’ll be either a massive success or a massive weird flop. “I’d like this show to go on tour again, to the rest of the world/country. And my tech guy and I are already looking at it like a set of series of children’s books: ‘Kid Carpet & The Robots’, ‘Kid Carpet & The Haunted House’… Maybe for older audiences too, to see how I can mix it up.” From a parent’s perspective, is it possible to take your kids to a piece of children’s theatre and genuinely enjoy it yourself? “Ultimately, if it’s a truly good play,” says Cross. “All will enjoy it. For many parents, children’s plays provide them with their only legitimate and

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affordable excuse to go to the theatre. Parents have to be moved by the work. Good children’s plays are merely good plays with the politics, sex and swear words taken out. This may sound a bit reductive, but the human condition is something that affects us all. Actually, sometimes the parents appreciate the work more than the children!” “It’s not like I’ve dumbed down for a children’s audience,” insists Patrick of his show. “I’m just making it for everyone, and rather than being billed at midnight it’s at midday.”

KID CARPET & THE NOISY ANIMALS IS AT THE EGG, BATH FROM TUE 3-WED 4 APRIL. FFI: 01225 823409 OR WWW. THEATREROYAL.ORG.UK/THE-EGG

Now booking Top three monster kids’ shows coming over the hill White Catherine Wheels Theatre Company returns for a second airing of this awardladen, non-verbal, early years work. “It has a beautiful, completely white set on which two funny men look after their eggs and keep everything ship-shape. When coloured eggs start to appear, their discomfort is palpable, and our collective consciences are pricked,” says Cross. At The Egg, Bath, Wed 9-Sun 12 May. Ffi: 01225 823409 or www.theatreroyal.org.uk/the-egg Cloud Man Allie Cohen’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival early years hit. Says Cross: “Allie performs alone on her cloudy set. She is gawky and geeky and very funny, especially as she

is looking for cloud men. What makes this piece enjoyable for me is Allie’s brave performance and its quirky ideas and set.” At The Egg, Bath, Fri 18-Sat 19 May. Ffi: 01225 823409 or www.theatreroyal.org.uk/ the-egg Swamp Juice Fantastic shadow puppetry about life in a swamp by endearing Canadian performer Jeff Achtem. This winner of the Total Theatre Award at the 2011 Edinburgh Festival made audiences of all ages scream the house down (and may be too scary for under-7s). At Bristol Old Vic, Fri 22Sat 23 June. Ffi: 0117 987 7877 or www. bristololdvic.org.ukv

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3/28/2012 2:35:13 PM

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DREAM TICKET or NIGHT MAYOR Bristolians who feel so inclined can vote on 3 May on the issue of whether or not they want the city to be run by an elected mayor. To help you make your mind up, Eugene Byrne answers all the questions you may have about the issue. Plus several you didn’t have. And all in a helpful, informative and not-at-all cynical manner.

Boris

I’ve had a big brochure from the council about this elected mayor thing. What should I do with it? Recycle it. Though you could read it first. It did cost 21 thousand taxpayers’ pounds, after all. Besides, your ancestors risked prison, persecution and death so’s you could have the vote. But I’m an average 21st-century clod who likes to live in an eternal present tense. I’m about to go out and do something hedonistic and shallow. Sum it up for me while I

beautify myself. Bristol is one of 10 “core cities” in England which the government wants to encourage to think about having a directly elected mayor with executive powers. We get to vote yes or no to this idea on 3 May. Eight other cities are voting on this too. Liverpool Council has already decided to have an elected mayor without bothering to ask the voters what they think. So there’s a big debate going on everywhere else?

"The question is whether or not we want to be like London and have an elected mayor who is also chief executive of the city. 'Bristol’s Boris', if you read the Evening Post. " 34 // APRIL 2012

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Many other places voting on 3 May seem quite indifferent. Bristol is having a very lively debate on the issue, as is Birmingham. ‘Course there’s more to play for in Brum, being the second city and everything. Birmingham was historically a place where a distinguished local career could launch a career in national politics. Think of Joseph Chamberlain, for instance. I’m losing interest... Pass my mascara and aftershave. Does my bum look big in this? The question is whether or not we want to be like London and have an elected mayor who is also chief executive of the city. “Bristol’s Boris”, if you read the Evening Post. Heh! That Boris Johnson. He’s a card, isn’t he? But don’t we have a mayor already? Bloke with a gold necklace? Always opening things? That is the Lord Mayor. She or he is chosen

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Ken

from the ranks of the councillors and usually serves a term of one year, attending around 600 engagements annually, opening things, and having his/her picture taken with everything from pieces of machinery to schoolchildren and visiting foreigners. The office is almost wholly ceremonial and s/he is meant to give up politics for the term of office. This means that the councillor you previously knew as a Tory twit, Labour thug or LibDem weirdo turns into an astonishingly nice person who smiles a lot for 12 months. An elected mayor would be voted in for a term of four years and would have lots more powers. And this is different from the present system how? Bristol is currently run by councillors. Each councillor is voted in every four years. The councillors then elect a council leader, and she or he heads a “cabinet” of executive members responsible for various council functions, such as education, transport, museums & libraries, refuse collection, social services and so on. Usually, this leader and cabinet are all drawn from the party with the majority of councillors. In Bristol, the council leader is currently Barbara Janke (LD, Clifton) and all the executive members are also Liberal Democrats. The Lib Dems do not have an outright majority on the council, but they are the largest single party. If the referendum goes in favour of an elected mayor, then we will still have councillors who will represent the interests of the people living in their wards. They will also serve on various council committees, including planning committees and scrutiny committees overseeing various council functions. An elected mayor does not have untrammelled dictatorial powers. S/he could not, for example, overthrow planning decisions and build a stadium, say. What do you think; the green fright wig or the deerstalker? But this elected mayor’s powers. What exactly are they? Good question. The government is plainly keen on this elected mayors thing, but there hasn’t been a thorough, detailed definition of their powers. She or he would make all the major strategic and executive decisions regarding the

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city, and set a budget. Any challenges from the councillors would have to have a two-thirds majority. The mayor would also have a cabinet of around nine members who would be appointed from the ranks of councillors. She or he will also have a lot of influence and “soft power”, especially if they’re elected with a convincing majority. They can make a lot of things happen simply by demanding them. Also, the government are holding out the possibility of giving lots of money and new powers to cities with mayors under their ‘City Deal’ thingummy. It’s like they’re saying, “have

an elected mayor and we might be able to (taps nose) sort you a few favours, knowwhorrimean?” No. If you go and vote on 3 May, your ballot paper will read like this: How would you like Bristol to be run? By a leader who is an elected councillor chosen by a vote of the other elected councillors. This is how the council is run now. By a mayor who is elected by voters. This would be a change from how the council is run now. Bristol has around 317,000 people on the

"An elected mayor does not have untrammelled dictatorial powers. S/he could not, for example, overthrow planning decisions and build a stadium, say." APRIL 2012 // 35

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undemocratic antics. - It could turn local politics into a media and spin-driven circus, edging out serious discussion of the issues. - Uncharismatic individuals will be excluded from the system because they’ll find it harder to get elected, even though they might be the best person for the job. It’s extremely hard to see Bristol Labour leader Peter Hammond or Lib Dem leader Barbara Janke being elected mayor, for instance. Which way will the vote go in the end? The yes campaign are leading the agenda for now. The no campaign has a lot of very convincing arguments and may yet start to get them across. It was very telling that at a big public meeting at the Council House at the end of Feb, they took a straw poll in the room before the debate started, and another at the end of it. Both polls were in favour of an elected mayor, but the majority had shrunk by the end of the debate. My gut instinct is that we will vote yes on a very small turn-out, but lots can change between now and then.

Who?

electoral register and there is no minimum threshold. However low the turn-out, the majority vote decides one way or the other. If, hypothetically, only 100 people voted and 51 voted for a mayor, then that’s what we’ll get. Help me get into these Spanx, will you? So please sum up the arguments in favour of Bristol’s Boris. - It puts a recognisable face on the leadership of the city. We’ll be like London, or those American cities where everyone knows who the mayor is. Not everyone can currently name the leader of Bristol City Council. - It could make local politics more interesting in the local media. A powerful and quite possibly charismatic mayor will be more fun than some colourless political time-server. - The mayor will have a mandate to represent the city to central government and in international arenas. Ken Livingstone, for instance, claims he squeezed loads of money for various projects in London from central

government due to the power and influence of his office. - A mayor who doesn’t have to argue with his/her own political party or council group will be better able to kick arse and get things done. More important, s/he will find it easier to overcome obstructive and unhelpful council officials. - She or he doesn’t have to be a politician. Anyone can stand for election for mayor, though a lot of money and helpers will be useful in getting elected. We might end up with an independent mayor from the business community, or academia or something. And the arguments against? - It’ll probably be more expensive than the existing system. - An individual is more easily bribed, bullied and or blackmailed by central government than a bunch of underpaid bloody-minded councillors. - Conversely, it might give one person too much power, and s/he would get up to all manner of

“Uncharismatic individuals will be excluded from the system because they’ll find it harder to get elected. It’s hard to see Lib Dem leader Barbara Janke being elected mayor, for instance.” 36 // APRIL 2012

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And you tragic local politics trainspotters are having a nice debate about it. Fancy some of these pills? Some folk say it’s all been useful that we’ve been having a serious debate about how Bristol ought to be run. For many, an elected mayor is an irrelevance while Bristol’s boundaries don’t comprise the Greater Bristol area. At the moment, we’re often held to ransom by neighbouring authorities, especially North Somerset and South Glos. Others still say that we’d be fine if the whole council was re-elected every four years instead of the existing system of electing a third of the council every year, with the fourth year off. Where can I find out more? There’s a campaign for a mayor for Bristol. See bristolmayor.org You can also find some discussion and lots of useful links on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ groups/amayorforbristol/ Bristol Festival of Ideas also has some useful articles on its website at www.ideasfestival.co.uk The City Council’s official referendum page is at www.bristol.gov.uk/page/city-bristol-mayoralreferendum At the time of going to press we couldn’t find much of a web presence for any anti- campaign, but try Googling it. Right, that’s it. I’m off out. I plan to spend the entire weekend in futile and empty pursuit of fun, do unfeasible quantities of drink and drugs and have a lot of mindless, joyless sex with complete strangers. Cheers. Cheerio, Councillor Snodgrass. FOR MORE ON THE MAYOR VOTE SEE WWW.VENUE.CO.UK

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Newshound GOING UP

// THE OFFICIAL HISTORY OF LAST MONTH...(and some other stuff) //

It’s a mug’s game

wo Bristol men were jailed last month for a succession of bungled drunken robberies. Until the night in question, they had been complete strangers to one another and when chased by police, they attempted to escape by throwing themselves into the docks, even though one of them couldn’t swim. John Penny, prosecuting, told Bristol Crown Court that Jetenderpal Singh and Jay Pring were strangers to one another when they teamed up late one night for their attempted crime spree. Their first victim handed over his iPod, iPhone, headphones and wallet after Pring said they had a knife and punched him to the head. The pair then approached Andrew Evans, asking him, “What have you got?” Mr Evans them to go away. When Pring said: “I’ve got a pistol.” Mr Evans told him to go away again. The pair then attempted to rob another victim, saying they had a knife.

// FACT BITES //

The Olympic Torch

The Docks: Here Be Mugs

At this point, Mr Evans reappeared and said: “Make up your mind. Was it a knife or a gun?” When police appeared and gave chase, Pring and Singh threw themselves into the harbour, even though Pring could not swim. They were then fished out and arrested. Judge Simon Darwall-Smith jailed Singh, age 30, of Stoke Gifford, for three years and the younger Pring, from

Tue 22 & Wed 23 May The Olympic torch passes through Bath on the 22nd, and arrives in Bristol later that day. There’s a big evening celebration at Millennium Square and Lloyds Amphitheatre on the Tuesday, and it carries on through Bristol and off towards Gloucester next day.

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jumper. Ask your dad for details. Reportedly he’s disappointed not to have been asked to carry the torch in his native Gloucester.

10 miles The torch’s journey takes it within 10 miles of around 95% of the UK population.

8,000

200 yards

Number of tiny holes in the torch, representing the 8,000 “inspirational people” who will carry it on its journey round the UK.

How close the torch will be coming to my house. It might come even nearer to yours. See the exact route at www.london2012.com/ olympic-torch-relay.

Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards

Coca Cola, Lloyds TSB, Samsung...

Failed winter ski

38 // APRIL 2012

Hartcliffe, to 30 months. He commended Mr Evans for his bravery. Martin Lanchester, defending Pring, said his client had been drinking heavily following an argument with his girlfriend, and carried out the muggings even though he had no money worries. Singh’s brief said his client was a welleducated man who may have a “Walter Mitty side” which he had to control before it ruined his life.

Sponsors of the relay, who

get their names or logos on everything – including the press material from your own local council.

BMW Energy & Environmental Test Centre, Munich Where they tested the torch to ensure it stays alight in all British weather. But whether they tested it for a rogue individual with a fire extinguisher who perhaps considers the Olympics a grotesque vanity project and corporate greed circus funded by 10 billion (and counting) quid that should’ve been spent on more deserving causes is unclear.

The fortune of at least one betting shop… Four boys, naturally conceived quads, were born in Bristol on 29 February. Reuben, Zachary, Joshua and Samuel were delivered by Caesarian section at St Michael’s Hospital on the leap day. Bookies William Hill told the E. Post: “The odds of naturally conceived quads being born on a date that only occurs every four years are about three-and-ahalf million to one. I’m only grateful she didn’t ask us for a price before she got pregnant!” Proud mum Emma Robbins, 30, blogs about pregnancy and motherhood at emmasquaddiary. blogspot.co.uk Old-school illegal drugs… A survey for multi-agency partnership Safer Bristol shows new trends in recreational drug use in the city. Results show that while alcohol remains the most commonly used substance, fewer people are using crack and heroin, and there is a big rise in the use of nitrous oxide (laughing gas). A large majority of those using nitrous oxide and substances such as ketamine and mephedrone started using them in the last five years, suggesting a new trend in drug use.

GOING DOWN

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email editor@venue.co.uk web www.venue.co.uk

SAY WHAT? Looking at the house ads? Yes. We should move. I thought you were happy here in our compact and bijou hovel at number 21 Sewage Works Lane. Darling, I will always cherish the memory of this, our first home together, and the way I carried you over the threshold after we married. You can hardly forget it since you now have to wear a truss. So where are we moving to? Well, there’s a nice broom cupboard in Clifton that we could just about afford if we give up holidays, food and wearing clothes. What about this one in Stoke Bishop? It’s a hole in the ground covered by a leaky tarpaulin, and doesn’t have an inside toilet. And we can’t afford it. What about this? “Redland. Charred remains of old garden shed in the middle of a noisy road.” Ah. Nope, that’s out of our price range too.

Opinion. If you like that sort of thing...

OK, how about this one? “Large, fully modernised terraced home in quiet residential street, superb condition throughout. Price reduced to £1 for rapid sale due to owners winning the Euromillions and wanting to bugger off to Spain prontissimo.” We could just about afford the mortgage on that one. No good. It’s in Fishponds. We have to have a house in Bristol West or Bristol North West parliamentary constituencies. We’re doing this for our son. Obviously it would be nice for Ben to live in a nice area, but why the urgency? The houses of parliament library compiled some figures a few weeks back, and they show huge disparities between elite university applications across constituencies. Last year there were 95 applications to Oxford or Cambridge universities from Bristol

West and 80 from Bristol North West. However, the less affluent constituencies of Bristol South and Bristol East only had 10 and 11 Oxbridge applications respectively. Just 0.5% of A Level students from state schools in Bristol made it to Oxbridge, compared with 1.2% of state school pupils in Bath & North East Somerset. I don’t see how moving to a more upmarket area will get our Ben into Oxbridge. Why not? He’s a lively lad, interested in everything. He’s loves his colouring books, and Thomas the Tank Engine and his toy cars. He’s 31 years old. Uh-huh. And he is dimmer than all the Conservative ministers who went to Oxbridge how? Oh. Right. How about this one? “Henleaze. Soggy cardboard box in the middle of a lake. In need of some updating …

//ROUND

THESE PARTS // You probably walk past it every day...

No. 28 Queen Square // Queen Square was named in honour of the forgettable Queen Anne. Work started on it in 1699, but they only decided to name it after the Queen following a royal visit. QS marked the start of social segregation in Bristol. There had always been huge gaps between rich and poor even in medieval times, but they had always lived next to one another. Rich merchants previously built their grand homes next to pauper flop-houses, but Queen Square was to be an exclusive enclave. The wealthy residents soon forced out the smelly local industries, such as rope-making. By the late 1700s, with huge amounts of money coming into the town from slavery and sugar, Bristol’s rich started to move even further from the proles by building themselves

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// SEVERN BORE //

homes up on the hill in Clifton, well away from the noise and smells of the port. It’s also famous as the epicentre of the 1831 riots, because this is where the Mayor and many other city grandees lived. It’s also notable for the statue of William III by the Flemish sculptor Johannes Rysbrack. There’s a local legend that when nobody’s looking, horse and rider come down off the plinth and go for a wander round town late at night. Its bronze would be worth a few quid down the scrapyard, so half-expect a modern take whereby we find one morning that someone’s been at his horse’s legs with a hacksaw. In the 1930s the Council, in their infinite, ran a road through the middle of it, and this wasn’t finally closed until 1992. Since then it’s been very well restored and made bike- and pedestrian-friendly. This might not have happened if some of our Victorian city fathers had had their way; they seriously thought about putting Bristol’s main railway station here.

// Spring is barely sprung, and we already have a near-cert winner for Best Local Thing of 2012 – a plan to install 10 new public drinking fountains in Bath. The long slow death of public drinking fountains has been one of the most baleful developments of modern times. If you wander around any part of any town that’s more than 100 years old, you’ll see the abandoned, often vandalised, remains of fountains which were once elaborate and much-used. Water fountains were a big deal for the Victorians. They provided clean water for all and prevented disease, especially cholera. They also meant that men doing hard physical labour didn’t have to be ripped off by the nearest pub. The Bath project, called Love Tap Water (LTW), is to discourage people from buying plastic bottles of water. LTW is the brainchild of three local women and is backed by Wessex Water and B&NES Council. Part of the funding will come from the sale of stainless steel water bottles designed by Sir James Dyson, with profits also going to water charities working overseas. The first of Bath’s new ‘Water Holes’ should be in place by April. Aside from the environmental impact of all that plastic, bottled water is an utter rip-off. I recently paid £1.80 for a small bottle at Bristol Airport. What sort of mug does that make me? Primary school teacher Ruth Poole, one of the volunteers behind LTW, told the Bath Chron: “Love Tap Water wants Bath to be a beacon for change throughout the country.” Amen to that. Now perhaps Bath can complete the package by installing some public toilets for the water to go afterwards. But Bath’s lack of loos is another story... More at www.lovetapwater.co.uk

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WEB FLUFF GO FOR A WALK walkit.com

Newshound

THE NEWS, DIGESTED

Angry Christians…Meat Thieves…Arrests… DEAD USEFUL BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL INTERACTIVE MAP showing everything from dentists to cctv cameras www.bristol.gov.uk/ explore-bristol

BRISTOL UNI ARCHAEOLOGISTS FIND SLAVE BURIAL GROUND www.bris.ac.uk/ news/2012/8294.html

TIME-LAPSE PICS OF EARTH PASSING BY TAKEN FROM ISS tinyurl.com/7tkujy8

THE INTERNET’S WORST REVIEWERS leasthelpful.com

// THE MISTS OF TIME // Ten years ago, Venue was still handwritten by monks on parchment and then bound in unicorn leather. Nowadays it is produced by the unemployed on compulsory work experience and printed in their own blood. So what was in Venue in 2002, eh? // I saw you at the watershed with your pink bob and eyes like an angel. I was the liceridden hippy with the warty knob. Call me for fun and trainspotting... News: “Avon & Somerset police are trying to

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// Militant Christians organised a petition with almost 5,000 signatures to Bath & North East Somerset Council last month at the removal of a cross from Haycombe Crematorium. Old windows at the building, one bearing an etched cross, are due to be replaced as part of a £140,000 refurbishment. The council is adamant that any new religious symbols should be removable, so that the building can be used by people of all religions, and none at all. Church leaders are to be consulted over the removable Christian symbols.

had ten and 11 Oxbridge applications respectively. Just 0.5% of A Level students from state schools in Bristol made it to Oxbridge, compared with 1.2% of state school pupils in Bath & North East Somerset. Private school pupils fared much better, with almost one Bristol Grammar School A Level student in every ten going to Oxbridge.

// Figures compiled for the Parliamentary Library show huge disparities between elite university applications across the country. Broken down by Parliamentary constituency, the local figures show that last year there were 95 applications to Oxford or Cambridge universities from Bristol West and 80 from Bristol North West. However, the less affluent constituencies of Bristol South and Bristol East only

// A Council/police checkpoint at scrap metal dealers in Avonmouth & St Philips on 7 March found that four out of seven lorries carrying waste had no licence to do so. Four drivers carrying scrap metal without a licence were immediately given £300 fixed-penalty-notices. Two vehicles were seized by police for insurance or traffic offences and checks were made to ensure the metal was honestly acquired. The move was part of a crackdown on metal theft by Bristol City Council and Avon & Somerset police, and further actions are promised in the coming year.

trace the whereabouts of Andrew Burke, who failed to answer bail following an incident in Bristol last May. Burke gained local notoriety some years ago for running SAS, a private security firm which patrolled wealthy Stoke Bishop and which put up posters “naming and shaming” local youths as criminals with no evidence whatever. He was later convicted for running a telephone scam which attempted to defraud pensioners.”... Ten years ago, Her Majesty had another Jubilee. Bath & North East Somerset Council announced that it would waive the £150 fee for closing a street and doing the paperwork for any community groups organising a street party with the word ‘Jubilee’ in the title. A reader from Midsomer Norton wrote in:

“Excellent! I thought we’d have no end of trouble organising our local F*ck the Jubilee bash.”... Sophie Ellis-Bextor was big back then, coming to the Colston Hall, so we asked her to tell us a joke: “Man walks into a pet shop and says, ‘Can I buy a wasp please?’ ‘No, we don’t sell wasps.’ ‘Why have you got two in the window then?’”... An anonymous resident of St Pauls had started a website for residents to post messages about local drug dealers, noting addresses, car registration numbers and physical descriptions. “The people who live in, work in, play in and visit this area are subjected, against their wishes, to a relentless, soul-destroying tyranny by a mere handful of drug dealers.”... Bristol University tissue regeneration

// Plans for a major performance and conference venue on land next to Bristol’s Temple Meads railway station might be revived if Bristol City Council succeeds in gaining government permission to fund the project via a bond issue. Hopes for a 10-15,000-capacity Bristol Arena for major sport and music events on the site have suffered several setbacks because of planning, transport and finance issues. They may now be revived if the Council can raise the money independently. // Shoplifting trends are changing due to the economic downturn, according to Avon & Somerset Police, with people increasingly targeting food items to feed their families. At a meeting last month, chief superintendent Nikki Watson told Yeovil Town councillors: “In previous years people would have stolen razor blades because you can sell them, but at the moment people are stealing groceries to feed their families. “It’s an indication of the current financial climate.” Alcohol and cosmetics remain the two most popular products people like to steal while meat is the third.

expert Dr Brian Fish asked Venue readers to call a goat called Ian, who would be travelling around Bristol on a special bus, to test his thesis that heavy mobile phone use will make men’s penises smaller, particularly when combined with the vibration of a moving train or vehicle. “Never make or receive calls in your car, on a bus or in a train,” advised Dr Fish. “If you absolutely must, make sure you have an erection while doing it.” Readers were being invited to phone Ian the goat on the morning of 1 April.

APRIL 2012 // 41

3/28/2012 2:47:47 PM

Film Marley and Mac Bob Marley’s family may have authorised Kevin Macdonald to make a film about the reggae legend but the fascinating result is anything but hagiography. Robin Askew meets the Oscar-winning director.

magine setting out to make an exhaustive, definitive documentary about a charismatic musician. Trouble is, he’s dead - and so are many of those who knew him. Worse still, there’s virtually no archive material from his formative years. That was the challenge facing Kevin Macdonald (pictured below) director of the Oscar-winning ‘One Day in September’ and BAFTA-winning ‘Touching the Void’, when he took on the long-gestating Bob Marley film to which Martin Scorsese

“I think the surprising thing about Bob in some ways is that he was so ambitious” KEVIN MACDONALD 42 // APRIL 2012

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and Jonathan Demme had both reportedly been attached at different times. “It is frustrating, but you just convince yourself that actually it’s also kind of interesting,” Macdonald smiles. “It says something. It shows you that Bob’s from a different world, not just a different time. He’s from a place where nobody took photos of you as a child. That situates him in a different world - in the Third World. I think people find it hard to understand how Bob is the only Third World superstar. But, of course, the flipside of that is that it’s very difficult to talk about certain things because you don’t have the material to support it. I was particularly frustrated by the whole Studio One era, which was ‘63 to ‘66-’67. There’s a handful of photographs, a handful of record sleeves. No footage. And the buildings don’t even exist any more. I would like to have talked more about that period, but I just couldn’t because it would have become very, very boring. It is the most conventional and TV-ish part of the film, I suppose.” Having had a miserable experience making a TV documentary about Mick Jagger (‘Being Mick’ - a puff piece for Jagger’s forgotten 2001 solo album ‘Goddess in the Doorway’), Macdonald was naturally wary about taking on another authorised project. But the lure was complete access to the Marley archives and a promise from Bob’s son and executive producer, Ziggy, that he would be free to create an honest portrait. The result is certainly that. It’s also a rare documentary that leaves you wanting to know more, despite clocking in at a

Erm, Bob Marley

When Bob Played Bristol Bob Marley played Bristol three times in his short career - twice on the 1973 ‘Catch a Fire’ tour, with what many consider to be the definitive Wailers lineup featuring Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer. The tour was divided equally between rock venues and Jamaican clubs. A four-night run at London’s Speakeasy attracted the curious Beautiful People of the time and was recorded on film included in Kevin Macdonald’s documentary. But the regional shows pulled fewer punters and went virtually unnoticed. The Wailers’ first Bristol gig took place on May 9, 1973, just a week after recordingtheir legendary Old Grey Whistle Test appearance. This was at, ahem, Boobs - the Wednesday rock night at Tiffany’s (now The Spire private hospital on the Downs). If you saw Bob, Peter and Bunny playing amid those famous plastic palm trees, do write in. Two weeks later, on May 26, they returned to play the Bamboo Club in St. Pauls, run by future hapless capsizer and national treasure Tony Bullimore. Finally, Marley played the Colston Hall as part of his ‘Rastaman Vibration’ tour on June 23, 1976.

VENUEMAGAZINE

3/28/2012 9:36:00 AM

For film listings and more reviews visit venue.co.uk/film Bob's daughter: Cedella

Ziggy Marley

bum-punishing two-and-a-half hours. Macdonald works to a broad canvas, taking in the personal, musical and political/ spiritual aspects of the Jamaican reggae icon’s life. “You’ve got to explain quite a lot of stuff to people,” he points out. “That was the tension, really - explaining the progress and history of Jamaican music, plus explaining what Rastafarai is, plus doing the biographical things as well. That is difficult. I felt like, for instance with Rastafari, I didn’t have the time in the film to really go into it. We cover it in a short way, but I think people are still a bit puzzled: is this a film about Rasta or is this a film about Bob? But I became fascinated by the difference between what Rasta has become and what Rasta was in the ‘50s and ‘60s - and what it was that attracted Bob. “I think on one simple, psychological level it’s about searching for an identity, being mixed-race, not being accepted by either community - and he’s reaching out for something, a place where he can belong. But there’s also this hugely political element to Rasta at that time, which was trying to teach people a different way of perceiving their own identity historically.” There’s also some terrific newsreel of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie’s visit to Jamaica in 1966, when “this lickle man” (Bob’s wife Rita’s words) was mobbed by Rastafarians proclaiming him to be the messiah. Shame the film didn’t have room to point out that, perhaps uniquely in the history of religion, Selassie was eager to deny his divinity. “It’s absolutely amazing, isn’t it?” marvels Macdonald of the footage. “I don’t know if he said ‘I’m not the messiah’ when he came to Jamaica. He certainly said it later. The reason he came to Jamaica was because he was so curious. He’d heard about these

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people. And you just need to look at the Rastas who are waiting at the airport - those amazing close-ups in that archive footage. They’re not like Rastas as we know them today. They really were people who lived in the wilds, who stuck to rigorous rituals and laws and were total outcasts from society.” What may come as a surprise to some is how calculated Marley’s music was. Shy and retiring Island Records boss Chris Blackwell, who gives a rare interview for the film and is another executive producer, set out intentionally to market Bob Marley and the Wailers to a white rock audience. He even overdubbed rock guitar and keyboards on their 1973 album, ‘Catch a Fire’, in London, using US session guitarist Wayne Perkins and Free’s keyboard player John Bundrick. This did not go down well with Marley’s purist bandmates Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh (who died in 1987 and refers to Blackwell scathingly as ‘Chris Whitewell’ in an archive interview used in the film). But would Marley ever have achieved such enormous international success without Blackwell’s guiding hand? “No, I don’t think he would have. I think the surprising thing about Bob in some ways is that he was so ambitious. He’s somebody who would say, ‘OK, Blackwell’s given me a shit contract to begin with, but it’s better than no contract. I’m going to take it.’ Whereas Bunny and Peter would be like, ‘That’s an insult. He’s not paying us enough.’ So that determination is very interesting. I think Blackwell believed in him. People say, ‘Oh, Blackwell softened up the music. It’s not as pure as the early music’. I don’t think that’s true. I think Blackwell showed him a way to do something and Bob embraced it. He showed him a way to get to a wider audience. Bob was always doing that. “Later in his career, he was

trying to break into black America, so he made ‘Could You be Loved’ disco-y for that reason. My sense is that what he was always trying to do was ensnare an audience and then say to them, ‘OK, look at this whole range of music that I’ve done. Listen to the rest of this stuff. You thought I was all disco, but actually I’m not.’ I think there was a huge integrity to him.” Another aspect of Marley’s personality that the film confronts head-on is his open and relentless philandering. Rita even describes turfing young women out of her literally shagged-out husband’s boudoir so he could get a bit of kip. But is she really quite as stoical and self-sacrificing as she likes to make out? Wasn’t she hurt by this behaviour? “I think so, yes. I think when she says, ‘I didn’t get upset because this was more than just a fun trip. It was an evangelical mission’, that is somewhat true in that that’s how Bob saw himself. One thing it’s hard to grasp is that he didn’t see himself as: ‘I’m a pop star. I’m going to get rich and famous and sleep with lots of girls’. I think he did genuinely believe that he had a message. But with visual interviews, you get to judge for yourself whether somebody’s telling the truth or whether they’re in denial. So I look at her when she says that and I think, you’re putting a brave face on this. And good on you. But we can’t help but feel that it’s affected you more strongly than you’re making out.”

‘MARLEY’ OPENS ON FRI 20 APRIL. SEE REVIEW ON PAGE 44 AND WWW.VENUE.CO.UK FOR SCREENING DETAILS. THOSE WHO FANCY DIGGING OUT THEIR SKANKING SHOES MAY ALSO WISH TO NOTE THAT THE WATERSHED HAS A ONE LOVE PARTY WITH A VINTAGE JAMAICAN SOUND SYSTEM AFTER THE 8.30PM SCREENING ON SAT 21 APRIL.

See ‘Marley’ First in Haile Selassie’s Favourite Cinema! As local history buffs will not need reminding, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie was evacuated to Bath during WWII. He regularly attended the Little Theatre to watch newsreels. Even today, Rastafarians visit the cinema to pay homage to him. So it’s appropriate that the regional premiere of ‘Marley’ should take place at the Little. Director Kevin Macdonald and producer Charles Steel will be joined by poet and writer Benjamin Zephaniah to discuss the film, reggae and Rastafarianism after the screening. This takes place on Sun 15 April at 5pm. Tickets cost £12.50/£11.50/£10.50 and all proceeds go to Ethiopiaid.

APRIL 2012 // 43

3/28/2012 9:37:36 AM

to . m

Film // THE MONTH AHEAD //

y ss

Titanic 3D (12A) // (Dir: James Cameron, 195 mins) Despite the film industry’s brave face, the wheels are certainly coming off the 3D bus. The format’s share of overall ticket sales has now fallen to 20% as audiences conclude, just like their ‘50s counterparts, that it’s simply a passing fad. That said, the recent 3D reissue of ‘Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace’ added £5m to its total tally, which is more than many new releases achieve. And if anybody’s going to give those annoying, image-darkening specs a last hurrah, it’s Mr 3D himself: James Cameron. Back in 1998, ‘Titanic’ became the highest grossing film of all time. It’s long since been eclipsed, not least by Cameron’s own ‘Avatar’. But now he’s retro-fitted his historical romance’n’drowning epic in 3D, so audiences can enjoy galumphing Kate and freshfaced Leo exploding from the screen at them - as well as that all-important shipwreck.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (12A)

TITANIC 3D IS OUT ON APRIL 6

SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN IS OUT ON APRIL 20

// (Dir: Lasse Hallstrom, 107 mins) Amazing, isn’t it, how each time a film pulls over-50s back into cinemas, broadsheet hacks dust down and tweak their old articles about how this is certain to trigger a major sea change in how Hollywood views its audience? Cue: heaps of idiot 3D comicbook flicks for ADD teens until the next oldster-friendly flick shuffles along. That’s right: ‘Salmon Fishing in the Yemen’ is the new ‘Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’. Adapted by Simon (‘Slumdog Millionaire’) Beaufoy from Paul Torday’s novel, it stars Ewan McGregor as a shy fisheries expert employed by a sheikh to bring fly-fishing to the desert. Emily Blunt supplies romantic interest. With veteran treaclemeister Lasse (‘The Cider House Rules’, ‘Chocolat’, ‘The Shipping News’) Hallstrom at the helm, it’s safe to assume this will be long, stodgy and middlebrow with nothing to trouble maiden aunts.

Iron Sky (TBA)

// (Dir: Timo Vuorensola) What’s not to love about Moon Nazis? As Germany faces defeat in 1945, a bunch of Nazi officers flee to the dark side of the Moon, where they establish a base and construct a giant battleship with which new Fuehrer Udo Kier plans to conquer the Earth in 2018. The real story here is about the marketing of this low-budget Finnish science fiction comedy. After a clever and funny trailer ‘went viral’, as our nerdy friends say, the producers maintained a steady drip-feed of hype. (Not for nothing, one suspects, do they employ a Head of Social Media.) Little wonder ‘Iron Sky’ became the hot ticket at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. Of course, all the clever PR in the world can’t polish a turd. Time will tell whether this is a cult classic or - oh dear - the new ‘Snakes on a Plane’.

IRON SKY IS OUT ON APRIL 20

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Battleship (TBA) // (Dir: Peter Berg) There’s no doubt that this is going to be very silly indeed. The question is whether it will also be entertaining. The good news is that it’s directed by Peter Berg, who gave us ‘Very Bad Things’ and ‘Hancock’. The bad news is that it’s based on a game by toymakers Hasbro, who provided Michael Bay with the “inspiration” for his noisy, soulless ‘Transformers’ franchise. Essentially, this seems to be ‘Skyline’/’Battle Los Angeles’ at sea, as hunk-of-the-moment Taylor Kitsch finds a mysterious alien vessel in the Pacific during a naval drill. For reasons too daft to go into here, only Taylor can save the world as aquatic ET gets Biblical on mankind’s ass. Meanwhile, our hero’s growly prospective father-in-law (Liam Neeson, for it is he) strides around in his admiral’s uniform, possibly wondering whether he’s now beaten Nic Cage’s record for appearing in the largest number of consecutive preposterous films. BATTLESHIP IS OUT ON APRIL 13

VENUEMAGAZINE

3/28/2012 1:36:28 PM

Fancy a film this month? see venue.co.uk - the home of Venue’s what’s on listings

MARCH 30 // Bonsai (15) See review on page 47. // Into the Abyss (12A) See review on page 46. // This Is Not a Film (U) See review on page 48. // Tiny Furniture (15) See review on page 47. // Streetdance 2 3D (PG) (Dir: Max Giwa & Dania Pasquini, 85 mins) It’s a fact: every single teen dance movie ever made has exactly the same plot - rival hoofers prepare for a big climactic dance-off, this generally being padded out with some sub-Romeo’n’Juliet-style romance involving a hot lady and a cheeky chappie in a baseball cap. The only distinguishing feature of the Streetdance franchise is that it’s British. That said, the target audience certainly hasn’t tired of the formula. The first ‘Streetdance 3D’ flick took £11m at the UK box office back in 2010. Hence the sequel. // Wrath of the Titans 3D (12A) (Dir: Jonathan Liebesman, 99 mins) It’s the sequel nobody asked for! If 2010’s ‘Clash of the Titans’ is remembered for anything, it’ll be for marking the moment when audiences first realised they were being conned into shelling out for a 3D film that was shot in 2D and then shoddily converted to haul in extra cash. In ‘Wrath’, Perseus

// STILL

SHOWING //

// Act of Valour (15) (Dir: Mike McCoy & Scott Waugh, 109 mins) Gung-ho US Navy SEALs star in their own self-aggrandising action movie. // The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (12A) (Dir: John Madden, 123 mins) Codgerly Brits seeks cut-price retirement in India in a gentle, mildly patronising sleeper hit comedy starring every British thesp over 60. HHHHH // Contraband (15) (Dir: Baltasar Kormakur, 110 mins) Former smuggler Mark Wahlberg returns for - stop me if you’ve heard this

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// The Cabin in the Woods 3D (15) (Dir: Drew Goddard, 95 mins) A quintet of teen stereotypes decide to take a trip to a remote cabin in the woods, which is never a good idea. The USP here is that the film is written by Buffy/Firefly

// Breathing (15) See review on page 50. // The Divide (18) (Dir: Xavier Gens, 108 mins) This month’s post-apocalypse thriller comes from Xavier Gens, director of ‘Hitman’. After the nukes hit New York, a bunch of folks hide out in the basement of their apartment block, which the janitor has conveniently converted into bomb shelter. Then supplies start to run out and scary outsiders break in. “…what ‘The Divide’ finally offers audiences is the not-terriblyedifying, stagnant experience of being locked in a basement with a pack of assholes,” reckoned one US reviewer. // Gone (TBA) (Dir: Heitor Dhalia) Amanda Seyfried - she of the

freakishly enormous eyes - stars in an abduction thriller from the writer of ‘Underworld: Awakening’. Don’t all rush at once. // Lockout (TBA) (Dir: James Mather & Stephen St. Leger) Potentially a riot of big dumb fun, this latest thriller from the pen of Luc Besson casts Guy Pearce as a wise-cracking, falsely convicted former government agent who’s offered a suicidal mission in return for his freedom. The inmates have taken over a giant space prison where future wrong ‘uns are incarcerated. Our Guy’s mission is to break in and rescue the US president’s daughter, who just happened to be making a goodwill visit. // Marley (15) See feature on pages 42-43 and review on page 46. // Elfie Hopkins (TBA) (Dir: Ryan Andrews) Together at last! Father and daughter Ray and Jaime Winstone star in a low-budget Welsh horror flick. She plays the eponymous young detective who uncovers something ‘orrible going on in her own village. He plays a character named Butcher Bryn. We’re guessing he’s not the local purveyor of sausages.

before - one last job in a remake of a hit Icelandic thriller. HHHHH // The Devil Inside (15) (Dir: William Brent Bell, 83 mins) Feeble wobblecam exorcism flick with a genuinely diabolical ending. HHHHH // The Hunger Games (12A) (Dir: Gary Ross, 143 mins) Hyped-up launch of a post-Twilight/Potter kidlit franchise, adapted from the post-apocalypse ‘Young Adult’ novels by Suzanne Collins. // John Carter (12A) (Dir: Andrew Stanton, 132 mins) Oh dear - Disney does Edgar Rice Burroughs and winds up with one of the biggest flops of all time. // The Kid with a Bike (12A) See review on page 47. // The Muppets (U) (Dir: James

Bobin, 110 mins) Our felt friends from yesteryear make a comeback that’s even more entertaining than we dared hope. HHHHH // The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (U) (Dir: Peter Lord, 88 mins) Funny, richly detailed (see if you can spot the Golf Sale man) and refreshingly bereft of cheesy morals and lazy pop culture references, Aardman’s claymation masterpiece is the best film on release. HHHHH // This Means War (12A) (Dir: McG, 98 mins) Rival CIA agents Tom Hardy and Chris Pine blow stuff up to win the heart of Reese Witherspoon. // 21 Jump Street (15) (Dir: Phil Lord & Chris Miller, 109 mins) Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill

make a surprisingly effective buddy comedy double-act as idiot cops working undercover in a high school. // We Bought a Zoo (PG) (Dir: Cameron Crowe, 124 mins) Treacly family movie guff from Cameron Crowe with Matt Damon as a bereaved dad who buys a zoo that comes equipped with its own hottie (Scarlet Johansson). HHHHH // The Woman in Black (12A) (Dir: James Watkins, 95 mins) Hogwarts graduate Daniel Radcliffe applies for membership of the Guild of Grown-Up Actors in Hammer’s new version of the Susan Hill ghostie story. Astonishingly, this now ranks as the most commercially successful horror movie of all time at the UK box office.

(Sam Worthington) returns to whup Hades’s (Ralph Fiennes, coming over all Voldemorty again) ass and rescue his dad Zeus (Liam ‘No Role Too Silly’ Neeson) from the underworld. That’s Greek mythology, dude!

APRIL 6 // Mirror Mirror (PG) See review on page 48. // A Cat in Paris (PG) See review on page 49. // The Cold Light of Day (12A) (Dir: Mabrouk El Mechri, 93 mins) Naughty old Bruce Willis has neglected to inform his family that he secretly works for the CIA. So when his entire family apart from son Will (Henry Cavill, soon to be seen as the latest screen Superman) are kidnapped while on holiday in Spain, the big lunk has some explaining to do. // Headhunters (15) See review on page 49. // Le Havre (PG) See review on page 48.

APRIL 13

creator Joss Whedon, who promises a radical new twist on the familiar formula. To find out what this is, you’ll have to (a) go and see it, or (b) look on the internet, where gleeful geeks are giving everything away. // Delicacy (12A) See review on page 50. // Mozart’s Sister (12A) See review on page 49. // Hadewijch (12A) See review on page 50.

APRIL 20

APRIL 2012 // 45

3/28/2012 2:36:52 PM

Film // REVIEWS //

“No, seriously - I never dunnit!”

REVIEW Into the Abyss (12A) Germany/Canada 2011 107 mins Dir: Werner Herzog // Fun-loving German director Werner Herzog has spent most of his career peering into one abyss after another. This time he ventures into ‘In Cold Blood’ territory in idiosyncratic style to explore US capital punishment through the prism of one rather squalid case. The result is engrossing, painfully sad and occasionally very funny. Herzog makes no bones about his own opinion from the outset: he thinks state execution is barbaric. But thereafter, he lets his interviewees (the convicted killers, their relatives and those of the victims, a Death House chaplain

and a traumatised former Death Row officer who now opposes the death penalty) speak for themselves. Of course, true crime documentaries are ten-a-penny on cable TV. But Herzog has a keen eye for telling detail. And while his patient, empathetic interview technique occasionally seems a little basic, it often yields extraordinary results. When the initially composed Rev. Richard Lopez is invited to “describe an encounter with a squirrel”, for example, this prompts a surprising emotional outburst delivered through floods of tears. Herzog makes extensive use of police crime scene footage to illustrate the triple homicide that took place back in 2002. Dimwit

Rita took the news of Bob’s 376th mistress stoically.

REVIEW Marley (15)) USA/UK 2012 145 mins Dir: Kevin Macdonald // “There’s nothing Jamaicans like more than a man who’s survived a shooting,” chuckles the late Bob Marley’s lawyer of the reggae superstar’s triumphant return to the stage in Jamaica following a botched assassination attempt. (Was it a professional hit? “As professional

46 // APRIL 2012

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as Jamaicans get.”) Yes, the first surprise about Kevin Macdonald’s exhaustive, exemplary documentary is how funny it is. The second is that despite being authorised, this is no hagiography. In exploring the man behind the icon, Macdonald uncovers many a fact that could discomfort dedicated fans. And if the resulting portrait is somewhat contradictory, maybe that’s just a fair

redneck teens Michael Perry and Jason Burkett coveted a red Camaro, shooting and killing three people to make off with it for a joyride that climaxed in a shootout with police. Their misfortune was to do so in backwoods Conroe, Texas - a state with a seemingly inexhaustible appetite for putting miscreants to death. As Herzog begins filming in 2010, cocky Perry is protesting his innocence on Death Row with eight days to go before execution by lethal injection. The illiterate Burkett is serving a 40-year sentence in a jail not far from the one where his remorseful old man is banged up. As you might expect, Herzog is more interested in who these

people are than in nailing the truth of what happened. This being America, Almighty Gawd looms large. When the Rev. Lopez is asked why god allows capital punishment, he can offer no answer. But Perry has convinced himself he’s going to a better place. Just as mysteriously devout is Lisa, daughter of one of the victims, whose life has been such an unimaginable catalogue of tragedy (even the family dog was hit by a train) that she’s unplugged the phone to stem the torrent of bad news. (Robin Askew) HHHHH

reflection of Marley. Here’s a moral and spiritual Rastafarian poster boy who was nonetheless content to cheat on his wife so energetically that he lied about being married and fathered 11 children by seven women; a champion of freedom who played in Gabon under Omar Bongo’s dictatorship in 1980; and a reggae pioneer who had no problem - unlike bandmates Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer - with compromising his music to achieve success with white rock audiences in Europe and the USA. One of the more peculiar criticisms levelled at ‘Marley’ is that it’s too conventionally structured. But who needs narrative trickery when you’ve got such a fascinating story and colourful selection of elderly, mostly Rastafarian interviewees, many of them eccentrically attired? (You really wouldn’t want to take on Bunny Wailer and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry in a fancy dress contest.) Macdonald identifies Marley’s mixed-race heritage as the key to the outsider status that gave rise to his unifying ‘One Love’ philosophy. There’s just

one known photograph of his ageing white father, who apparently had something of an eye for young black girls and a habit of scarpering swiftly upon impregnation. In tracing Marley’s journey from Trenchtown to Kingston and beyond, Macdonald juggles the musical, personal and political/spiritual elements of his life with considerable skill. We learn, for example, how reggae’s signature guitar sound was created by accident with a delay device that no one knew how to operate. Marley’s white cousin is interviewed for the first time, apparently because no one thought of talking to him until now. And among the remarkable archive footage is newsreel of Haile Sellasie’s 1966 visit to Jamaica, when the alleged messiah shot back into his plane upon being mobbed by Rastafarians. It’s impossible to watch this without thinking of Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’. (Robin Askew) HHHHH

Website www.ifcfilms.com/films/ into-the-abyss Opens: March 30

Website www.magpictures.com/ marley/ Opens: April 20

VENUEMAGAZINE

3/28/2012 10:57:56 AM

“…but if you’ve lost the will to live, imagine what it’s like for the audience!”

Film

For film listings and more reviews visit venue.co.uk/film

REVIEW Tiny Furniture (15) USA 2010 98 mins Dir: Lena Dunham Starring: Lena Dunham, Grace Dunham, Jemima Kirke, Laurie Simmons // You don’t have to look far on the internet to find parodies of US indieflicks, amusingly nailing all that cooler-than-thou narcissism, tedious introspection, forced quirkiness and insipid music in five toe-curling minutes. Lena Dunham’s second feature as writer/director/star feels like an unnecessary 98-minute expansion of such a send-up. Except that we’re apparently

intended to take this seriously as an “existential comedy” about groan - Generation Y (their navelgazing predecessors, Generation X, now presumably married, bitter and working in insurance). The sole point of interest here is that Ms. Dunham shot the whole thing for just $50,000 on a Canon 7D hybrid still/video camera. Never before have the tools to make a feature been so cheap and readily available. Sadly, the required talent seems to be in shorter supply. From the opening scenes, we’re in the familiar territory of overwrit-

REVIEW Bonsai (15) Chile/Argentina/Portugal/France 2011 96 mins Subtitles Dir: Cristian Jiminez Starring: Nathalia Galgani, Diego Norguera, Trinidad Gonzalez, Hugo Medina // At the end of this film, Emilia dies and Julio remains alone. That’s a hell of a spoiler, but in my defence these are also the narrator’s opening words. Adapted from Chilean poet Alejandro Zambra’s prize-winning debut novel, this meditation on first love, memory and lies avoids much of the cloying tweeness attaching to most American indie treatments of the subject. In its place, however, is a grand meta-literary conceit that rather audaciously co-opts Proust’s

‘A la recherche du temps perdu’. You may be forgiven for finding this a tad pretentious - assuming you’re not distracted by all the naturalistic sex and unselfconscious nudity, which will do ‘Bonsai’ no harm at all at the arthouse box office. Two parallel stories unfold eight years apart. Beardy adult Julio (Norguera) is engaged in a fairly listless relationship with his translator neighbour Blanca (Gonzalez), whom he impresses with his employment as typist for great novelist Gazmuri (Medina). When he’s fired, Julio carries on as if nothing has happened, passing off his own amateurish work as Gazmuri’s. For inspiration,

ten dialogue recited woodenly by people who can’t act. The worst offenders here are Dunham, her sister Grace and mother Laurie Simmons - each struggling to play versions of themselves. Dunham casts herself as dumpy, tattooed, sad-sack 22-year-old graduate Aura, who’s returned home to arty-farty mom’s trendy Tribeca loft from university in Ohio with a useless film theory degree, having been dumped by her boyfriend. She mopes a bit, tussles with her teen sister, reconnects with spoiled ‘wild child’ pal Charlotte (Kirke

- daughter of Bad Company drummer Simon Kirke, and the only person in this sorry charade who can act) and attempts to bed two blokes - a surly sous chef and a twerp named Jed, who’s “a little bit famous in an internet kinda way” as the rocking horseriding ‘Nietzschean Cowboy’ on YouTube. Yes, this really is every bit as awful, shoddy and insufferably self-indulgent as it sounds. (Robin Askew) HHHHH Website www.tinyfurniture.com/ Opens: March 30

He’d been waiting three years to grow enough stubble to shave.

he draws on his first romance at college. In flashback, the dorky young Julio is caught in a lie about having read Proust and cops off with punky Emilia (Galgani) at a party. They subsequently lounge around reading Flaubert to one another in a steaming post-coital heap, as you do. Anyone who enjoyed the likes of ‘Norwegian Wood’ will feel right at home here. There’s a tolerable level of whimsy, some

laboured bonsai references (stunted relationships, y’see) and even a couple of Proust gags to make you feel clever. The performances are excellent, particularly in the more lively college flashbacks, though Julio is a bit of a plonker in both strands. (Robin Askew) HHHHH Website www.networkreleasing. com/microsite/bonsai Opens: March 30

REVIEW The Kid with a Bike (12A) Belgium/France/Italy 2011 87 mins Subtitles Dir: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne Starring: Thomas Doret, Cecile De France, Jeremie Renier // Belgian Brothers Grim JeanPierre and Luc Dardenne aren’t exactly renowned for going easy on their very select audience with such wobblecam verite downer The kid had a reputation as a bit of a stirrer.

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dramas as ‘The Silence of Lorna’ and ‘The Child’. While it would be an exaggeration to say that ‘The Kid with a Bike’ sees them lightening up, it’s certainly more accessible than the siblings’ previous films. Superficially, this is yet another entry in the ‘working class nippers in peril’ genre they’ve made their own. But this time, the Dardennes have come up with an affecting film about childhood that stands tall alongside - and carries echoes of - ‘Kes’, ‘This is England’ and even ‘Bicycle Thieves’. In a hugely impressive performance by young Thomas Doret, Cyril is a sullen, damaged

12-year-old brat. Refusing to believe he’s been dumped, he single-mindedly devotes himself to escape from his children’s home, determined to return home and be reunited with his dad (Renier) and beloved bicycle. On a whim, kindly, somewhat naive thirtysomething hairdresser Samantha (France) volunteers to foster the lad at weekends. But she realises she’s bitten off rather more than she can chew after Thomas is led astray by the manipulative leader of a local street gang. Much less ascetic and more involving than the Dardennes’ earlier work (there’s even some

music and fewer trademark boring lengthy shots of the backs of peoples’ heads), this is nonetheless equally truthful and naturalistic, with great performances all round right down to Jeremie Renier’s small but important role as the father who simply cannot cope with his son any more. There are also some heart-stopping plot developments in the third act, and the whole thing benefits considerably from a little sunlight amid the bleakness. (Robin Askew) HHHHH Website www.legaminauvelo-lefilm. com/ Out now

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REVIEW This Is Not a Film (U) Jafar was so concerned with his predicament that he failed to notice the infestation.

Iran 2010 75 mins Subtitles Dir: Mojtaba Mirtahmasb & Jafar Panahi

// There was much nose-thumbing from Iran after divorce drama ‘A Separation’ beat Israel’s shortlisted ‘Footnote’ to win this year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar. “American judgment bowed before the Iranian culture and Oscar voters showed a different reaction to the Zionist lobby, which is escalating war,” crowed one official quoted in the Tehran Times. But for one prominent new wave Iranian film-maker, life has been rather less rosy. Back in December 2010, Jafar Panahi was prosecuted for “propaganda against the Islamic Republic”. For this, he was handed a six-year prison sentence and a

REVIEW Mirror Mirror (PG) USA 2012 106 mins Dir: Tarsem Singh Starring: Julia Roberts, Sean Bean, Lily Collins, Armie Hammer, Nathan Lane // “You’re messing with tried-andtested storytelling,” Prince Alcott (Hammer) warns Snow White (Lily Collins) as she prepares to come over all feisty and fairytale feminist. “It’s been focus-grouped and it works!” That’s the sound of Tarsem Singh anticipating his critics as he gives the venerable Grimm tale a modern PC/positive thinking makeover so as not to offend or stifle the ambitions of anyone who isn’t actively evil. Needless to say, in today’s more-

bang-for-your-buck Hollywood, a magic mirror simply won’t do, either; it has to be an elaborate portal. Grimm enthusiasts may also be alarmed to find the poisoned apple reduced to an afterthought, while struggling to remember where the snarling CGI monster fits into the story. But lest you fear this is another - shudder! - ‘Red Riding Hood’ or ‘Beastly’, be reassured that the first of 2012’s two (count ‘em!) cinematic bashes at Snow White has plenty going for it. Singh may have struggled to match the impossibly high standard he set himself with ‘The Fall’, but his films are always

20-year ban on making films, giving interviews and leaving the country. Legal appeals and an international campaign against his sentence have thus far proven fruitless, though Panahi has not yet been jailed. The provocatively titled ‘This Is Not a Film’ popped up at Cannes last year, having allegedly been smuggled out of Iran on a USB stick hidden inside a cake. Shot mostly by his chum Mojtaba Mirtahmasb inside Jafar’s classy Tehran apartment, this rough and ready documentary charts a single day in the director’s life. He speaks to his lawyer, watches the Japanese tsunami on telly, whacks on DVDs of his films ‘The

Circle’ and ‘Crimson Gold’ to talk about acting and, erm, feeds his pet iguana. He also begins to read out the script of the film he had been intending to make, using masking tape to delineate walls and doors in ‘Dogville’ stylee. Trouble is that, for the most part, this is all pretty boring stuff, with a ‘climax’ comprising a lengthy and rather inconsequential conversation with the bloke who comes to take out his rubbish. It’s a brave and defiant act of protest, but not necessarily one you’d want to sit through. (Robin Askew) HHHHH Website www.thisisnotafilm.net/ Opens: March 30

Snowy’s speed-dating evening got off to an uncertain start.

a feast for the eyes. The sets and costume design here are absolutely ravishing. And while Lily (daughter of Phil) Collins makes a rather bland Snowy, despite possessing the most luxuriant eyebrows this side of Salma Hayek in ‘Frida’, Julia Roberts camps it up magnificently as a contemporary, cougar-esque Evil Queen, paranoid about her fading looks and desperate to snare a wealthy prince to solve her financial

problems. Singh also adds some clever touches, such as the dwarves disguising themselves as giants to appear more fearsome. Don’t be surprised if the Queen’s revolting rejuvenation regime (bird poo, maggots, bee stings, etc) becomes available at the most exclusive New Agey beauty salons very shortly. (Robin Askew) HHHHH

Elderly, former bohemian shoe-shiner Marcel Marx (Wilms), who lives with doting-yet-ailing spouse Arletty (Outinen) and adorable dog Laika (yet another Kaurismaki trademark), takes pity on young Idrissa (Miguel), who’s being pursued by the immigration authorities. It isn’t long before all the big-hearted smalltowners - the baker, the greengrocer, even a kindly local police inspector - are pulling together to keep the lad safe from nasty bureaucratic officialdom and facilitate his onward journey to London, as though they’re all cast in some kind of weird Gallic Ealing comedy. Moments of pure absurdity, such as Marcel pretending to be

the albino brother of Idrissa’s grandfather (the only bit where race is mentioned), at least provide a few laughs prior to the preposterously uplifting fairytale ending. (Robin Askew) HHHHH

Website www.mirrormirrorfilm.com/ Opens: April 6

REVIEW Le Havre (PG) Finland/France/Germany 2011 93 mins Subtitles Dir: Aki Kaurismaki Starring: Andre Wilms, Kati Outinen, Jean-Pierre Darrousin, Blondin Miguel // At first glance, formerly wacky Finn Aki Kaurismaki seems to be following his Loser Trilogy (‘Drifting Clouds’, The Man Without a Past’, ‘Lights in the Dusk’) with a hard-edged detour into politicallycharged Ken Loach territory. Set in and around the French northern port city against the backdrop of the closure of the Sangatte refugee camp near Calais, ‘Le Havre’ follows an African boy who flees a container packed with illegal

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immigrants, eventually finding sanctuary with one of Kaurismaki’s trademark downtrodden ordinary working stiffs. All the usual gang are here, including several Kaurismaki cast regulars and brilliant cinematographer Timo Salminen, giving this the feel of a comfy and, perhaps, rather lazy retread. But his familiar brand of deadpan sentimentality seems out of place in this context, coming across as excruciatingly dishonest. Had any American film-maker attempted to pull this off, one suspects the critics heaping praise on Kaurismaki would instead be dumping on the perpetrator from a great height.

Website janusfilms.com/lehavre/ Opens: April 6 No question about it: this was a highly suspicious pineapple.

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Film

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REVIEW A Cat in Paris (PG) REVIEW

Headhunters (15) Norway/Germany 2011 100 mins Subtitles Dir: Morten Tyldum Starring: Aksel Hennie, Synnove Macody Lund, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Julie R. Olgaard, Eivind Sander

for a world leader in nanotechnology may give you a clue as to where this is leading. Adapted from Norwegian author Jo Nesbo’s bestseller, with a grimly inevitable US remake already in the works, ‘Headhunters’ isn’t just an obvious bid to fill the postMillennium Trilogy void - it even lifts a couple of aerial shots from ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’. Fortunately, this is no opportunistic knock-off but a hugely enjoyable thriller that turns into a relentless chase with plenty of imaginative twists and turns. Particularly pleasing are the multiple indignities heaped upon its pintsized protagonist, who gets mauled by a giant hound, hurled off a cliff and - in one of the year’s most queasy sequences - finds himself literally in the shit. Pedants may have plausibility issues as events unfold, but everyone else will be egging Roger on to further misery, misfortune and injury. (Robin Askew) HHHHH

France 2010 62 mins Dir: Jean-Loup Through a distant window, Tiddles spotted a perfect item of antique clawFelicioli & Alain Gagnol Starring sharpening furniture. (voices): Sara Vertongen, Mark Irons, Jerry Killick, Jasmine Avlonitis-Perrin // Ever wondered what Tiddles gets up to during his nocturnal perambulations? This charming French animation offers a somewhat alarming possibility. Rendered in fluid, old-skool 2D with a stylish expressionist twist, it’s a surprisingly dark and noirish yarn whose raw meditation on grief is leavened with entertaining feline antics. ‘Happy Feet 27’ this ain’t, so tots should be carried elsewhere. Older, brighter children and their parents will, however, lap it up like a bowl of warm milk. Struck mute with trauma following the death of her detective father, young Zoe (Avlonitis-Perrin) is neglected by her workaholic Parisian police superintendent mother Jeanne (Vertongen). Her best friend is her cat Dino, who trots off each night to join agile cat burglar Nico (Irons) as he skips across the city’s rooftops in search of swag. Jeanne, meanwhile, remains obsessed with apprehending local crime kingpin Victor Costa (Killick) - the man who shot her husband dead. It all leads to a suitably Hitchcockian climax atop the Notre Dame. ‘A Cat in Paris’ was justly rewarded with an Oscar

// Meet Roger Brown (Hennie). He’s a complete bastard. A smug, philandering corporate headhunter, shortarse Roger resides in a vast house he can’t afford with a towering blonde trophy wife (Lund) whose yearning for a child he cruelly ignores. So how does rotten runty Roger manage to live beyond his means? Simple - he has a sideline as an art thief with his sleazy, whore-loving security consultant pal, Ove (Sander). Having extracted sufficient info from his clients about their domestic arrangements, Roger makes off with their expensive artworks. Time for a comeuppance? You betcha. Enter tall, suave, handsome Clas Greve (Coster-Waldau) - a Dutchman who’d be just perfect for a vacant executive position at GPS corporation Pathfinder. Better yet, he owns a hugely valuable Rubens. That Clas is an athlete and former military tracker who used to work

Website www.magpictures.com/ headhunters/ Opens: April 6

“If I’m not allowed to play, I’m bloody well going to be good at something else!”

REVIEW Mozart’s Sister (12A)

France 2010 120 mins Subtitles Dir: Rene Feret Starring: Marie Feret, Marc Barbe, Delphine Chuillot, David Moreau, Clovis Fouin, Lisa Feret

// Life on the road sure is tough for musical artistes, what with arduous journeys, unappreciative audiences and pushy managers. Worse still, a broken axle on your horse-drawn carriage could force you to seek emergency accommodation at a remote convent overseen by a stern abbess. Yep, this is the epic Grand Tour of Europe’s toffs undertaken by the Mozart family from 1763. Rene Feret’s fictionalised account posits Leopold Mozart (Barbe) as a kind of glory-hungry period stage dad, eager to kickstart the career of bratty prodigy Wolfgang (Moreau). But as the title suggests, the focus here is on the pint-sized Amadeus’s

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pubescent sibling Nannerl (Marie Feret), whose own musical talents are stifled by rotten period sexism. It’s a message that’s delivered with all the subtlety of an ape attempting to play Chopsticks. Denied the opportunity to study composition and reduced to the role of her brother’s accompanist, resentful Nannerl befriends one of Louis XV’s daughters (Lisa Feret) and dresses as a boy to get close to the troubled, recently widowed young Dauphin (Fouin), who’s tormented by the fear that he might turn out like his debauched old man. Marie Feret’s chief qualification for the title role seems to be that

nomination in the Best Animated Film category this year alongside ‘Chico and Rita’ - with which it shares a commitment to vibrantly coloured 2D and a strong sense of place. It’s been re-voiced in what can only be described as an odd mix of accents for the UK market, which means kiddies don’t have to worry about subtitles. Those who are more concerned with feeling the width rather than the quality may balk at the fact that this brisk yarn is only an hour long, including the stylish Saul Bass-esque credits, but there’s no trimmable fat on the lean storytelling. (Robin Askew) HHHHH Website www.uneviedechat-lefilm.fr/ Opens: April 6

she’s the director’s daughter, and her somewhat stilted performance tends to drag things down. Much better is Marc Barbe’s Leopold - a loving yet strict taskmaster bound by the mores of the time. Period drama enthusiasts will enjoy all the lavish costumes and sets (including plenty of location filming in Versailles), but the film plods along inertly and is never quite as engaging as it ought to be. Occasional welcome moments of light relief include the Mozart siblings’ glee on trying out a new-fangled toilet. (Robin Askew) HHHHH Website www.mozartssister.com/ Opens: April 13

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REVIEW Hadewijch (12A) France 2009 105 mins Subtitles Dir: Bruno Dumont Starring: Julie Sokolowski, Karl Sarafidis, Yassine Salime, David Dewaele // Yay! The unprolific king of austere, Bressonian rural miserablism is back. It’s been six years since Bruno Dumont’s ‘Flanders’, but ‘Hadewijch’ has been awaiting a UK distributor since 2009. A film named after a 13th century Dutch mystic poet is not the easiest of sells, after all. This time, Dumont threatens to say something interesting about religious fanaticism. But whatever it is becomes lost in self-consciously oblique storytelling, leading to a head-scratching coda

“Oh, no - not another dead fatty!”

Austria 2011 94 mins Subtitles Dir: Karl Markovics Starring: Thomas Schubert, Karin Lishka, Gerhard Liebmann // Is Austria the new, er, whatever the last hip film-making place was? Hard on the heels of Markus Schleinzer’s impressive ‘Michael’ comes this confident directorial debut by actor Karl Markovics (best known here as

that many will find tiresome rather than provocative. Once again, Dumont chooses to work with a non-professional cast. Fortunately, he gets an impressive performance out of Julie Sokolowski as Celine - a novice nun who shuffles about, prays continuously and engages in (off-screen) selfmortification. This is all too much for the Mother Superior, who chucks her out of the convent for being holierthan-thou. So Celine returns home to her wealthy parents’ palatial Parisian abode. No clue is given as to why she turned out all god-bothery, but after a hard day’s praying she runs into a bunch of Muslim kids

“I hear you’ve been getting into bad habits.”

from the projects and naively agrees to go with them. Yassine (Salime) seems rather put out when she reveals that she’s married to god and doesn’t intend to have sex with anyone. And after a bit of preaching from his fundamentalist brother Nassir (Sarafidis), she promptly switches allegiance to militant Islam. Intertwined with all this is an ex-con (Dewaele) working at the convent, but how the two stories are

related is anyone’s guess. What’s it all about then? Dumont ain’t saying, but those of us who take the view that religious belief is a mental illness will find nothing to contradict that here. Or, as Yassine tells Celine less politely: “I think you’re nuts”. (Robin Askew) HHHHH Website www.tadrart.com/tessalit/ hadewijch/ Opens: April 13

REVIEW Breathing (15) star of ‘The Counterfeiters’). The two films have much in common, being equally cool, controlled and observational while pushing the taboo envelope, though Markovics betrays a less obvious debt to Michael Haneke. He also proves exceedingly fortunate with his choice of non-professional lead, as Thomas Schubert carries the burden of appearing in virtually every scene with remarkable naturalism. Schubert plays 19-year-old Roman Kogler, who’s been banged up in a grim juvenile detention centre on the outskirts of Vienna ever since he killed another kid in a brawl five years earlier. Something of a loner

who seems to be bursting with barely suppressed rage, he’s shepherded from job to job on day release by long-suffering parole officer Walter (Liebmann). Eventually, Roman alights on something that he wants to do. Much to Walter’s astonishment, he signs up with a mortuary team responsible for ferrying cadavers across the city. When he encounters a stiff with the same surname as his own, he’s prompted to track down the mother who abandoned him as a child. There’s no shortage of real corpses on display here, and Kogler’s changing attitudes towards them, from initial revulsion and fear to

eventual delicate hand-washing and dressing of a deceased biddy, mirrors his own belated emotional development. Schubert’s perfectly pitched performance is matched by the subtlety and truthfulness of Markovics’s dialogue-lite script, which addresses mortality unflinchingly and avoids obvious plot developments. Even the light relief of Kogler’s encounter with a flirty girl on a train doesn’t pan out the way you might expect. (Robin Askew) HHHHH Website www.vivaverve.com/product. php/137/0/breathing Opens: April 20

REVIEW Delicacy (12A) France 2011 109 mins Subtitles Dir: David & Stephane Foenkinos Starring: Audrey Tautou, Francois Damiens, Bruno Todeschini, Pio Marmai //Nobody ever lost money making an art movie about a beautiful woman who defies the natural order of the universe by falling for a sensitive, unprepossessing geek rather than a hunky, virile jock. When that male wish-fulfilment fantasy stars everybody’s favourite Gallic pixie, Audrey Tautou, opposite a diffident, beardy, balding, nondescript bloke with a goofy grin and a wardrobe full of embarrassing cardigans (that’s

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Paul Giamatti for the US remake, then), you can almost hear the ringing of cash registers. Adapted by siblings David and Stephane Foenkinos from the former’s bestselling novel, ‘Delicacy’ gets the job done with considerable efficiency, though the rather downbeat result is less frothy and funny than you might anticipate given its romcom premise. The meetcute, fairytale romance and marriage are all dispatched within the first 15 minutes, whereupon we bid farewell One at a time please, ladies.

to stubbly dreamboat Francois (Marmai) as he perishes in a jogging accident. Tautou’s Nathalie does grief for the next ten minutes or so, before we skip forward three years to find her as a workaholic team leader in the Paris office of a Swedish firm. After rejecting the advances of many suitors, including slimy married boss Charles (Todeschini), she impulsively snogs the astonished Markus (Damiens), commencing an initially chaste relationship that astonishes all who know her.

Tautou isn’t exactly venturing outside her comfort zone here, and is now on the cusp of being too old for these gamine roles. But Belgian comedian Francois Damiens, last seen here in ‘Heartbreaker’, is nicely cast. Versatile Bruno Todeschini also gives great envious, philistine scumbag. Why, he demands, would anyone endure the theatre unless they’re expecting to be rewarded with sex? Don’t expect too much, but it’s worth a punt if you enjoyed ‘Romantics Anonymous’ (Robin Askew) HHHHH website www.studiocanal.co.uk/ Opens: April 13

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Film // DVDS //

CINECISMS Classic Titanic at the Curzon … Cycling at Watershed … Cube makes a splash … Gooseberry Tuesday!

ho needs Julian Fellowes’s ‘Downton Titanic’ or James Cameron’s 3D makeover of ‘Titanic’ when you can have 1958’s A Night to Remember (pictured)? Arguably the best Titanic flick, this documentary-style account of the sinking is back on screen, appropriately enough, at the Clevedon’s Curzon as part of the cinema’s centenary celebrations. That’s right: this historic cinema opened its doors just after the White Star liner went down. See www. curzon.org.uk for full details of all Curzon centenary celebrations over the weekend of April 21-22 … Down

BUMS ON SEATS // No surprises as dystopian ‘young adult’ flick The Hunger Games (pictured) grabs the top spot. But it’s in no danger of breaking records here, as it did in the US - probably because of the unseasonably sunny weather, which depressed overall weekend box office takings to below £10m. That said, 21 Jump Street and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel are both holding up strongly. But rubbish exorcism flick The Devil Inside took a big tumble, having unexpectedly opened at number one last week. Don’t these punters read the reviews? An even bigger fall was recorded by John Carter, possibly because nobody wants to pay to see one of the all-time flops. The most successful film on release remains The Woman in Black, now powering towards £21m. Compare and contrast with Bel Ami, starring Daniel Radcliffe’s big-haired former Potter pal Robert (‘Twilight’) Pattinson, which disappeared without trace.

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at the Watershed this month, Mark Cousins introduces and discusses a bottom-friendly 70 minute cut of his 15-hour TV documentary series The Story of Film (April 22) … The ‘shed hosts the DVD launch of Bristol fixed gear cycling doc Boikzmoind on April 9, with a screening and Q&A session featuring director Gavin Strange … That Carl Theodor Dreyer Sunday brunch season you’ve been craving also hits the ‘shed from April 1 (no kidding), and is accompanied by a week-long run of the digital restoration of Ordet (starting April 13). Jean Renoir’s 1937 pacifist classic La Grande Illusion is back on screen for a week too (starting April 6) … The Cube gets sploshy with a short season of

swimming pool-set films including La Piscine (April 22-23) and the recently restored cult classic Deep End (April 24-25) … Warbly opera stuff heading to upmarket fleapits includes Manon (April 7) and La Traviata (April 14) from the Met Opera and Rigoletto (April 17) from the Royal Opera House … Finally, know any spinsters or lonely guys? Fancy dragging them away from their cats, ready meals for one and box sets of Inspector Morse for a much-needed airing? Bath’s Little Theatre has just the offer for you with its sensitively titled Gooseberry Tuesdays promotion. You get three tickets for the price of two if you turn up with a loner on any Tuesday evening.

BOX OFFICE Takings for the weekend of March 23-25

The Hunger Games

21 Jump Street

£4,900,177 (new release)

£1,184,044 (£3,947,933, 2 weeks)

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Contraband

£315,666 (£1,485,985, 2 weeks)

John Carter

£297,762 (£4,504,680, 3 weeks)

Act of Valour

£262,935 (new release)

£747,122 (£15,674,349, 5 weeks)

The Devil Inside

We Bought a Zoo

£643,036 (£3,523,729, 2 weeks)

£408,821 (£1,625,015, 2 weeks)

The Woman in Black

£214,401 (£20,932,300, 7 weeks)

The Muppets

£168,381 (£16,061,283, 7 weeks)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (18) // There was absolutely no reason for this to exist, other than for those who are incapable of reading subtitles. But to be fair to David Fincher, he did succeed in pulling off the best possible US remake of the Swedish thriller based on Stieg Larsson’s novel. It’s certainly more cinematic, and boasts a very creditable performance by Rooney Mara. Out: April 23 HHHHH

ALSO RELEASED // Hugo (PG) HHHHH Scorsese’s enjoyable, kid-oriented love letter to the early days of silent cinema, which actually got more Oscar nominations than ‘The Artist’. But who’s going to remember that, eh? Out: April 2 … Into the Abyss (12) HHHHH Swift DVD release for Herzog’s excellent Death Row doc. See review on page 46. Out: April 16 … Black Pond (15) HHHHH Chris Langham gives a terrific central performance in this eccentric, imaginative low-budget Britflick about a middle-class family vilified after a man dies at their dinner table. Out: April 16 … Puss in Boots (U) HHHHH Shrek spin-off for Antonio Banderas’s swordfighting tomcat, which gets the job done entertainingly enough despite feeling rather bolted together. Out now … Another Earth (12) HHHHH Woozy, low-budget parallel planet drama, which is more interested in standardissue Sundance grief and guilt fare than in exploring its intriguing paradoxes. Out: April 2 … We Have a Pope (PG) HHHHH Nanni Moretti’s occasionally funny but mostly rather toothless satire about a newly-elected Pope who fears he’s not up to the job. Out: April 2 … Wuthering Heights (15) HHHHH Andrea Arnold’s earthy bash at Bronte, from which posh costume drama enthusiasts stayed away in droves. Out now … The Deep Blue Sea (12) HHHHH Terence Davis’s stiff, dated, boring and inevitably over-praised adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s ‘50s-set play about a self-indulgent drama queen who decides to top herself because her bloke spends too long in the pub. Out: April 2.

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Sound : Lighting : Staging Hire : Sales : Installations : Repairs Parties • Festivals • Weddings • Corporate tel 0845 224 5967 || 07812 111 646 web www.bes-systems.co.uk email info@b-e-s.co.uk

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Music

For more news, reviews and extra pics, see venue.co.uk/music

‘Ghost’ and the Machine For a long while, Nick Talbot feared that the music industry’s demand for promotional tours to accompany new albums meant Gravenhurst was finished, he tells Julian Owen.

drifted for quite a long time, constantly saying to people ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able to make another record’.” Today, Nick Talbot stands on the eve of releasing the fifth Gravenhurst long player, ‘The Ghost In Daylight’. He reckons it’s the best thing he’s done. He should. So, where did it all go right? Before answering that, we need to contextualise. To accentuate the negative. To understand why someone signed to the mighty Warp, who’d just released universally lauded fourth album ‘The Western Lands’ was ready to turn his back. As he says, “You never want to whinge about it, because you’re doing what so many people would lose a limb to do: be a musician for a living.” In short order: the relationship he’d been in before and throughout the Warp years was over; touring ‘The Western Lands’ had been a trial, gruelling even before throat infection and lost voice led to guiltinducing cancellations; post-tour, post-marriage, he moved into “an empty flat which I hadn’t had time to sort out. I isolated myself at the worst possible time”; even the songwriting reserve was depleted, half-finished ideas dating back to the 90s and previous band, Assembly. “After ‘The Western Lands’ they were all used up. I was

“It was really great fun, just dancing to pop music.” NICK TALBOT VENUEMAGAZINE

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writing from scratch completely, and had run out of ideas.” Thus, the future horizon that had looked so bright was now suddenly fading in the rear-view mirror. He watched a lot of films, read a lot – Gordon Burn, David Peace, Iain Sinclair – “to restock the pond of ideas”. But Warp wouldn’t countenance planning another album without accompanying tour. Shouting over increasingly loud records had done for the voice last time around, and there was the social side, too. Backing musicians The Allender Band were good friends but, “being a band in themselves, they kind of had their own in-jokes. I felt very, very lonely.” With no spur to prick the ambition, the drift continued. Things stirred. He was Pinched awake as Rob Ellis brought dubstep to Bristol. Dance music was no longer stale and, newly inspired, Talbot started making his own variant as Ex.1. “I was really influenced by Burial. He has something ‘Gravenhurst’ in his production style – the cobwebby hiss and noise and everything.” Also came the latest in a series of contributions to Guy Bartell’s Bronnt Industries Kapital and then, in 2010, the real catalyst. Something “brilliant – the most positive touring experience I’ve had.” Label mate and Maximo Park frontman Paul Smith asked Talbot to support his solo tour. The pair, and his backing band, got on famously. “When I’m on tour if I get bored I get depressed, and all it takes to stop that is decent conversation.” Or drunken dancefloor nights. The tour bus arrived in Milan two days before a gig and, both nights, the venue owners offered up free entry and free cocktails. “It was really great

fun, just dancing to pop music. When I got back I realised ‘OK, so I can tour, but it’s like any job – you’ve got to find the right people to work with’.” Sunlight on the horizon again. Smith challenged him to finish the album by Christmas. “I didn’t, but I finished writing it by Christmas. I didn’t finish it for another year!” There were things to consider first. “I thought to myself ‘How did I do this before I was even on Warp, before any of this pressure – the money pressure – how did I do it?’” The answer was that he picked apart the work of guitarists like Bert Jansch and Richard Thompson, to see what ensued. “[Second album] ‘Flashlight Seasons’ came out of that open-endedness where you don’t know what’s going to happen, that playfulness where you’re doing it for itself. I wanted to get that back, and be able to play solo and be independent, and be able to sing and not lose my voice.”

Thus, the minimalist, oft-acoustic stylings of ‘The Ghost...’ But it’s no ‘FS’ retread – the palette is broader than ever, with occasional big guitars, some strings and lots of warm pop ’n’ crackle electrical noise. Career-best songwriting is, in places, poetry: “Start a fire in the back room/Burn the chair where your father sat and stared/At the television drones...” Elsewhere, brilliant metaphor entwines London’s lost rivers and the Battle of Cable Street to rail against “leftists who think it’s more important to wear a Che Guevara T-shirt than read George Orwell”. Blimey, we’ve missed this kind of thing. After five years, morning has broken. GRAVENHURST PLAYS IRSD 2012 AT RISE RECORDS, BRISTOL ON SAT 21 APR AND THE GRAIN BARGE, BRISTOL ON FRI 27 APR. ‘THE GHOST IN DAYLIGHT’ IS RELEASED ON MON 30 APR ON WARP. HTTP:// GRAVENHURSTMUSIC.COM/

Nick Talbot: we've missed him

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Music // THE MONTH AHEAD // ROCK Flipper

CLASSICAL Welsh National Opera

// Highly influential California punk band. You might recognise the name from Kurt Cobain’s homemade T-shirt worn during Nirvana’s first SNL performance in 1992, or from the ‘Come As You Are’ video. Their most recent studio album, released in 2009, was their first in 16 years and was recorded with Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic on bass.

// A revival of Elijah Moshinsky’s affectionate production of Berlioz’s ‘Beatrice et Benedict’ aside, WNO is playing safe (ahead of the audacities incoming boss David Pountney has in store for the next three years). David McVicar’s true-to-period ‘Traviata’ stars Joyce El-Khoury as Violetta, while Anthony Negus conducts Luis Pasqual’s update of ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ to 1930s Spain.

FLIPPER THE CROFT, BRISTOL, THUR 5 APR.

WNO IS AT BRISTOL HIPPODROME FROM TUE 10-SAT 14 APR.

JAZZ Josh Arcoleo // When this prodigious tenor saxophonist launched his debut CD ‘Beginnings’ at London’s Vortex Club last month the place was rammed, so Bath jazz lovers should get in early for his visit to the Vaults. The lucky ones will hear the sure-toned maturity and measured playing that mark Josh Arcoleo out for great things. JOSH ARCOLEO ST JAMES’ WINE VAULTS, BATH, THUR 19 APR.

ROCK Class Actress

// Having put out records on Terrible Records (run by Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor) and Carpark (home of the first two Beach House albums), it’s no surprise the Brooklyn synthpop trio have a pretty dreamy aesthetic, though musically and melodically they take more influence from Madonna (specifically ‘Vogue’) than any of their contemporaries. CLASS ACTRESS START THE BUS, BRISTOL, WED 4 APR.

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ROOTS Michael Hurley, Rozi Plain & Dean McPhee // Though it’s often dubbed ‘Outsider Folk’, Hurley’s work has been lauded by performers such as Vic Chesnutt, Calexico and Cat Power (the latter covered Hurley’s ‘Werewolf’ for her album ‘You Are Free’). He’s released over 20 albums since 1965, but this is his first proper European tour in over 10 years. Completing the line-up are Rozi Plain and Dean McPhee. MICHAEL HURLEY, ROZI PLAIN & DEAN MCPHEE THE CUBE, BRISTOL, SUN 8 APR.

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For more news, reviews and extra pics, see venue.co.uk/music

JAZZ Neil Cowley Trio

ROCK Helmet

// His new album ‘The Face of Mount Molehill’ showed sturm & drang pianist Neil Cowley exploring new textures, with ambient ballads and even a string section underscoring a more reflective side to his composition. It’s all good stuff, yet happily it still leaves room for the trademark wit and infuriatingly catchy tunes that his fans know and love.

// After a six-year hiatus in which Page Hamilton did everything from playing guitar for David Bowie to working on the score for Michael Mann’s ‘Heat’, Helmet’s only constant member reformed the band (albeit with a new line-up) in 2004 to release what would be their last album on Interscope. They return to Bristol to celebrate 20 years since ‘Meantime’, their first album on the label, with support from Fighting With Wire.

NEIL COWLEY TRIO ST GEORGE’S BRISTOL, THUR 26 APR.

HELMET THE FLEECE, BRISTOL, FRI 6 APR.

ROOTS Laura Gibson // The Pacific North West singer-songwriter has just released ‘La Grande’, her most stylistically ambitious record yet, featuring elements of jazz, bossa nova and gospel, and members of The Decemberists, The Dodos and Calexico. LAURA GIBSON THE LOUISIANA, BRISTOL, SAT 14 APR.

9. CLASSICAL Doric Quartet // The Dorics might have recently made their Vienna Konzerthaus debut (and embarked on another Stateside tour), but they’re not forgetting something closer to home: the 10th anniversary of their residency at WMC. They’re pulling out all the stops. After youthful Haydn and sensuous Chausson, Alasdair Beatson ups the testosterone with Brahms’s protean F minor Piano Quintet. THE DORIC QUARTET IS AT WILTSHIRE MUSIC CENTRE, BRADFORD ON AVON, SAT 21 APR.

10.

ROOTS Trembling Bells/Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy // Trembling Bells and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy release ‘The Marble Downs’ on 9 April, a collaborative album of poignant male/female vocal duets, following their limited Christmas 7”. The subsequent UK tour, with shows in both Bristol and Bath, will be the first time these songs have been played live, alongside covers and traditionals. The South West portion of the tour is also especially timed to take place around the May Day celebrations of ‘Obby ‘Oss. TREMBLING BELLS/BONNIE ‘PRINCE’ BILLY CHAPEL ARTS CENTRE, BATH, SUN 29 APR & TRINITY CENTRE, BRISTOL, THUR 3 MAY.

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Music

For more news, reviews and extra pics, see venue.co.uk/music

Going up? After 10 years spent making craftily uneasy art pop, is it finally time for Bristol’s The Liftmen to get wider recognition? Leah Pritchard thinks it is.

think 10 years ago, when we first started, the music was really weird and not acceptable. Sorry, accessible. But I think people have changed. There’s more bands like us now.” Ten years ago, The Liftmen were earning studio time by carrying sandbags in the lift of Jim Barr’s new studio for soundproofing… hence the name. Cut to present day and the band is hardly known outside Bristol. More so within, “But even then, it’s minimal...” They put their lack of (inter)national success down to never getting shows outside the city. Though they recently played Brixton’s Windmill supporting This Is the Kit (headed by the sort of Bristolbased Kate Stables, signed to New York’s Brassland Records), two members of The Liftmen are in This Is the Kit, so they hardly see it as much of a triumph. Speaking of other bands, guitarist Neil Smith thinks he can just about count his current projects out on two hands, though some only gig once or twice a year. For followers of The Liftmen, this may not sound too different from the band itself,

“I’ve just made myself some time to explore songwriting a bit more.” RASHA SHAHEEN VENUEMAGAZINE

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"The music was really weird and not acceptable."

which at times ceases to exist for months at a time. It’s mainly down to singer/bassist Rasha Shaheen, who does more jobs now than would figure in most people’s entire career histories. When she’s not tour managing Omar Souleyman or playing with Anika, she’s teaching at BIMM, doing community work for Remix at Colston Hall or studying for a master’s degree in songwriting. Why study something she’s been doing for over a decade? “I see it as an art project, like when people study art. They might tell you about the normal standard and they talk about pop songs, but it’s not about that. As an artist, I’ve just made myself some time to explore songwriting a bit more. I don’t think it changes my approach. It’s just making me aware of the nitty gritty of how individual things affect someone else in a song. It’s just making

you understand what you’re doing a bit more.” The four-year gap between albums wasn’t down to Shaheen’s colour-coded diary this time though, rather the riot-induced fires that destroyed the Sony/ PIAS warehouse in Enfield in August last year. “Doug [Shipton, Finders Keepers Records boss] called each person individually,” says Shaheen of the fire which saw the first pressing of latest long-player ‘Luftwaffe Pond’ completely destroyed. “It was like a death in the family.” Smith found it “completely devastating,” saying they didn’t know whether it would be made again. “It was just that frustration, like, ‘We can’t get gigs. We can’t get our album out. What’s the point?’” Things are looking up now, with an upcoming show (31 May) at The Cube with Papa M (solo project of Slint’s Dave Pajo)

and, more importantly, a BBC 6 Music session booked with Marc Riley, which will perhaps finally give them the leg-up they need to get some national recognition and out-of-town shows. This information comes through by email two weeks after the interview, showing just how quickly things can turn around. With any luck, they’ll get a taste of the success enjoyed by bands like Cardiff’s Islet or, looking further afield, the likes of Liars or Deerhoof – fellow performers of rough and angular experimental rock – that have, at least in the case of the latter two, reached a point where certain groups could plausibly call them mainstream. Fingers crossed. THE LIFTMEN PLAY THE CUBE, BRISTOL ON THUR 31 MAY. ‘LUFTWAFFE POND’ IS RELEASED ON MON 2 APR ON TWISTED NERVE. FFI: WWW.LIFTMEN.ORG.UK

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Reviews // ALBUMS, SINGLES, EPs, DOWNLOADS// HELLO LAZARUS

‘Hello Lazarus’ (EP, Scylla Records)

// If there's a theme for this EP, it's that it implies heart-wrenching without ever really working up a sweat. Hello Lazarus play the kind of faux-motional emo rock that will incite a foot-tapping army of a very specific age group, whose nostalgia for that time is fresh enough to still be struggling with the Blu-Tack stains from their Jimmy Eat World and At the Drive-in posters. For all it achieves in execution, it fails to acknowledge the 15 years that have since passed; a release worthy of appreciation and perhaps some mosh-induced festival sweats, but not much more. (Leah Pritchard) HHHHH

TERMITES

LADY NADE & THE SILHOUETTES

CAROLINE MARTIN

‘All I Am’ (EP, unsigned)

‘For All That I Do Not Know’ (LP, Smalldog)

// Lady Nade’s deep-hued voice adds archaic credibility to whatever she sings but a selfpenned EP needs words and music that hold their own, too. This taster shows Nade The Artist in a strong place, with smart tight arrangements graced with Sophie Stockham’s eloquently understated sax, while her painfully honest songs explore Nade The Woman’s vulnerabilities. “Could love be the reason we can’t set each other free?” she muses in the darkly jaunty title track, while the paradoxical desperation of ‘Stay’, with its rolling optimistic pay-out, captures her contradictions. ‘All I Am’ is another promising milestone in the development of a considerable talent. (Tony Benjamin) HHHHH www.ladynade.co.uk

// Second album ‘proper’, and still like being taken to a confession box deep in dark and unmapped woods. The pace is still propelled by slowly circling guitar, still telling tales largely populated by wronged women and bad men (“A guy is a guy wherever he may be”), all still sung in a voice of sensual despair. That’s a lot of ‘stills’. Indeed, almost any track sounds like it could be an outtake from one of the four Peel Sessions. With a voice this strong, writing this vividly imagistic, the work could take truly thrilling flight if introduced to new players in full, new landscapes. In the meantime, most importantly: this is still a must-listen if you’re unacquainted. (Julian Owen) HHHHH www.carolinemartin.net

SPLIT PROPHETS

THE DAGGER BROTHERS

‘Termites’ (LP, Sink & Stove)

‘Scribbled Thoughts’ (Album, self-released)

‘Hot Dr.’ (Album, Void of Ovals)

// Oh, YES! It fizzes, bucks, weaves, bounces, is whipcrack clever and big-chorus dumb, as many ideas flowing in each song as streams from the rose of a watering can, and just as fertile. Light and swift on its feet as a tumbling gymnast, it’s hookedfirst-time sing-along pop and multi-listen art, crashing genres into each other like a musical Hadron collider, just to see what happens. Hugely English, a kind of Bonzo Dog Blur Marr Band, with Supergrass urgency, early Roxy playfulness and the songwriting sass of Ray Davies. Summarise this in 100 words? Like Kevin Rowland said, you must be f*cking joking. So here’s just one: astonishing. (Julian Owen) HHHHH http://termitesmusic.co.uk

// Braggadocio is central to hip-hop’s lexicon, but endless boasting soon gets boring. Thankfully, Split Prophets step things up. Though they're not shy of a balls-out brag, this punchy 11-tracker pushes deeper: ‘Part of Life’ explores life after death over sweet-bended bass; the Tom Waitssampling ‘Drop of Poison’ bristles at societal inequality; ‘Situations’ is a catalogue of injustice and selfdestruction. As anyone who caught ’em supporting GZA will testify, these boys got beats. From the floor wobbling bounce of ‘Stuck In The Stratagy’ (sic) to the brassy skank of closer ‘Ode to Dub’, Split Prophets put the boom back into Bristol’s hip hop canon. (Mike White) HHHHH splitprophets.bandcamp.com

// ‘I got an erection in English, oh yeah’… straight-faced but very silly, ‘Hot Dr’s nostalgic, oiled-up muscle pop takes in classroom misdemeanours of a sexual nature, Jenga, and babies riding dogs. They even discuss the meat rotting in your colon. With faux pan-pipes, shimmering Krypton Factor synth, gravelly voice-over-man vocals and a tongue firmly in its cheek, The Dagger Brothers experience is best enjoyed in the flesh, in the smallest and sweatiest venue you can find. But as a primer for the uninitiated or a moving trip down memory lane for those who’ve already sucked upon the forbidden Daggerfruit, ‘Hot Dr.’ is a galloping success. Buy it. Buy it now. (Mike White) HHHHH tinyurl. com/daggerbros

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Music

Got a gig to list? Upload it to us at venue.co.uk/ submit-a-listing

// DON'T MISS // Exultate Singers

// CLASSICAL In medieval St James’ Priory, (and with Frank Martin’s sublime Mass for Double Choir at its heart), Exultate’s programme weaves solo cello into a potent seasonal salute. EXULTATE WED 4 APR, ST JAMES’ PRIORY, BRISTOL

Tinariwen

THE BIG GIG

Meshuggah/Au The Big Gig goes bifurcated: Mike White splits himself awkwardly between devilish Scando metal and delicious Portland art-pop. // It’s good to try new things. So this month we’re splicing not one but two gigs into this slim preview; two nights offering completely different interpretations of what music is, and what it’s for. First up, metal titans Meshuggah. Keep reading – it really doesn’t matter if you like metal or not. Meshuggah is about music as a physical experience, about giving yourself up to a more powerful force. No, not Satan, bless his hooves ’n’ horns. Just the dark, sonic energy that only a band like Meshuggah can invoke. For more than two decades, these angry-faced Swedes have carved their malevolent niche in metal’s hall of fame by evolving a taut, experimental sound full of polyrhythms and breakneck key changes, usually wrangled from custom-made eight-string guitars. Despite regular forays into the Billboard Top 200, main stage action at Ozzfest and Rolling Stone deeming them “one of the 10 most important hard and heavy bands”, they’ve evaded the mainstream radar – meaning you can catch ’em live and local for a snippy 15 quid. New album ‘Koloss’ will be their seventh, promising “organic brutality, viscera and groove all crammed into a 54-minute metalicious treat”, according to drummer Tomas Haake. Tomas is also responsible for most of Meshuggah’s lyrics. Although he’s the wrong side of 40 and speaks English like a naturalised Yank, he writes verses like a deranged teen going through a dictionary and stringing together all the evil-sounding

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words he can find. So ignore the lyrics, get down the front and let yourself be pulverised. Think of it as deep-tissue massage for the soul. Experimentation is not the only link between Meshuggah and band number two, Portlandbased Au (pronounced “ay-you”) – drummer Dana Valatka cut his tempo-shifting teeth in metal bands as a teenager. Nowadays he tessellates fleet-footed rhythms alongside Au mainman Luke Wyland, a multi-instrumentalist with a boyish, candy-coated voice and a knack for weaving exuberant sound mess into freewheeling pop jams that manage to be both clever and fun. Though currently a duo, the Au line-up in days gone by has numbered 20+, sometimes with a full choir behind, and the sense of loose affiliation and free association pervades the sound they make. They’re often fudged in next to Brian Eno (for compositional skill), Grizzly Bear (that voice) and Animal Collective (the aural collaging) but, like Meshuggah, have somehow always ducked the mainstream spotlight. Their effervescent live shows reel between rhapsodic lyrical episodes, timid intimations and gleeful wall-of-sound confusion. Again, it’s music to feel as much as hear, music to give in to, to get lost in. MESHUGGAH PLAY 02 ACADEMY, BRISTOL, THUR 12 APR, AU PLAY THE LOUISIANA, BRISTOL ON MON 23 APR. SEE WWW.O2ACADEMYBRISTOL.CO.UK AND HTTP://THELOUISIANA.NET FOR DETAILS

// WORLD The original Malian desert blues band still rocking out the competition with a new acoustic-leaning sound that won them this year’s World Music Grammy. TINARIWEN SAT 7 APR, COLSTON HALL, BRISTOL

Chuck Prophet and The Mission Express

// ROOTS Prophet’s latest album (his 12th!) is a love letter to San Francisco, a collection of wry, witty, country-tinged guitar pop which recalls The Replacements’ poignant punk. CHUCK PROPHET AND THE MISSION EXPRESS MON 16 APR, THE TUNNELS, BRISTOL

David Ford

// ROCK Former singer for Easyworld, Kent native Ford has supported Suzanna Vega, Elvis Costello and Richard Ashcroft. He’s two parts Rice, one part Blunt, yet far more likable than both. DAVID FORD TUE 17 APR, CHAPEL ARTS CENTRE, BATH

Graham Coxon

// ROCK For Coxon’s latest tour, the Blur guitarist is giving fans the rare chance to curate (to a degree) the show’s line-up. Visit his website to vote for the local band you think most deserves to support. GRAHAM COXON SAT 28 APR, TRINITY, BRISTOL

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LIVE REVIEW

All Tomorrow’s Parties (curated by Jeff Mangum) Butlins, Minehead (Fri 9-Sun 11 Mar)

// It’s a different line-up almost every time they play, but today, opening the festival, Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise feature members of Neutral Milk Hotel, Elf Power, The Gerbils and The Olivia Tremor Control, to name but a few (on average, there are 11 members on stage at any one time). They play songs by their own bands and others, including Royal Trux’s ‘Yellow Kid’, and during their last, Sun Ra’s ‘Enlightenment’, the 16-strong troupe meander through the audience repeating the refrain “Hereby/Our invitation/We do invite you/Be of our space world”, before descending the stairs and continuing the performance for a further 10 minutes whilst they travel 150 or so metres outside. E6HS are a difficult act to follow (literally, they went a long way), but from the opening notes of ‘’81’, Joanna Newsom (playing solo) has the full, stationary attention of the previously oscillating crowd. It’s not a note-perfect performance, nor is Saturday night’s when she plays a completely different set, but every lyrical misstep or harp fumble is followed by a charming “Oh boy!” and it only adds to the allure.

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Boredoms are first on Centre Stage on Saturday afternoon and have somehow expanded since playing Matt Groening’s ATP in 2010, now featuring five drummers and 14 guitar players. It looks gimmicky on paper, but somehow it’s not all that chaotic, even as frontman Eye wails skyward and strikes a wall-of-guitars structure with a large stick. His screams and yelps initiate bouts of tremolopicked guitar noise or a sort of percussive relay where each drummer takes their turn playing the same phrase in quick succession around the circle. It’s the loudest set Venue sees all weekend – even with our backs against the wall, more than 30 metres from the stage, the volume of the noisy tribal krautrock causes a drug-like dizziness. The cruelty of The Magnetic Fields, one of the last acts of the weekend, is that their performance is not loud or visceral enough to get lost in (songwriter Stephin Merritt has hearing gain in his left ear, meaning the band play acoustically and at low volume). Instead, you’re processing every poignant lyric in real time, from the “No one will ever love you”s to the “There’ll be time enough for rocking when we’re old”s. There are levels of wistfulness in

the audience that threaten the composure of all but the couples necking in the back rows, and it only dissipates, albeit temporarily, when the room erupts in laughter after one of Merritt’s signature wry quips: “So stick him in a dress and he’s the only boy I’d shag/The only boy I’d anything is Andrew in drag.” The majority of the laughs come from the mockingly deprecating inter-song banter between pianist Claudia Gonson and Merritt though, who react to each other as only friends of 30 years can. Or just Claudia alone, who introduces ‘69 Love Songs’ favourite ‘The Book of Love’ by asking how many audience members got married to the song: “Two, three, four, five, six… only six!?” Jokes aside, they cast the kind of magic that makes every one of their 200ish songs feel like an essential part of some comprehensive songbook – not the American songbook of which Merritt’s work is often credited as being a fundamental constituent, but, forgive the cliché, one that tells of every joy and sadness and possible loss one could experience. It’s a chicken/egg situation but after an hour of cardiac torture, you’ll agree with anything Merritt says. (Leah Pritchard)

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LIVE REVIEW Earth/Mount Eerie/Ô Paon Arnolfini, Bristol (Sat 3Mar) // Ô Paon opens with a set of slow burners; her clumsily played guitar loops are built gradually with vocal oohs and aahs and the awkwardness of the minimal compositions is ruptured by only comparably complex climaxes, mostly soaring vocal lines or a quick addition of multiple parts. Her lips cup swiftly at the end of every phrase as if to harness her voice’s sustain; whatever energy is harvested keeps a Saturday night crowd silent, which is no mean feat. Following is Phil Elverum, aka Mount Eerie, playing new material from ‘Clear Moon’ and ‘Ocean Roar’ (due out May and September respectively). It’s Mount Eerie 2.0 – less talk of rivers and mountains, this time more of “Mountains and

websites” – though his lyrics have always been too meta for mockery. The guitar is somehow roaring yet sparkly, cutting yet emitting sustain for days, and creates a middle-ground between bleak black metal and melancholy acoustic singersongwriting that’s one part claaawww the skyyyy, two parts weep in your bedroom. Earth are best when you imagine the landscape of the Pacific North West and it’s not difficult to, given that every act tonight mentions the origins of the triple bill. As always, the tempo rarely breaches that of a resting heartbeat, meaning every note or drone is left exposed – lucky, then, that every sound is perfectly executed. (Leah Pritchard)

Thekla, Bristol (Mon 12 Mar)

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Arnolfini, Bristol (Thur 15 Mar) // Like their seething soup-pond visual backdrop, there’s a lot going on in The Liftmen’s hidden depths. The unhurried, meandering songs, lo-fi drums, eloquent bass and rockjangling guitar have an easiness that seduces you in. Listen more closely, however, and you find their surreal popsiness is made from murky messages and a history of supersmart art music. Pops Parker, by contrast, is stripped down to the point. “We’re just building up a dearth of affection,” he intones over light and folky guitar strums in his paean to suburban anomie ’15 Gold Spleens’, yet there’s no hard feelings. It’s all a suitably bewildering appetiser for the main business and that’s big business indeed. Get The Blessing slam into new album

‘OCDC’ with trademark vigour, Jim Barr’s resonant crisp bass tone as defining as the smartarse bickerings of Pete Judge’s trumpet and Jake McMurchie’s sax. Regular drummer Clive Deamer’s not here (off with Radiohead?) but Blockheaded jazz drummer Dylan Howe guests perfectly. The tunes’ shrink-wrapped freshness is soon wrestled out of shape in the delivery, McMurchie’s howling derangement of ‘Between Fear and Sex’ made more so by Judge’s patient trumpet and the underboiling drums, the upbeat insistence of ‘Pentopia’ a celebration of liberating minimalism. There’s cake, of course, but it’s the aftertaste of the music (and the sense of a project still revealing its potential) that’s sweetest. (Tony Benjamin)

LIVE REVIEW The Cardinall’s Musick

LIVE REVIEW Gabrielle Aplin // On Leap Day, elfin pretty Gabrielle Aplin signed to Parlophone. Thus, you can take tonight’s celebratory atmosphere as read. “Please don’t say you love me, cuz I might not say it back,” she sings in a halting, breathy voice, eyes closed. “It doesn’t mean my heart’s not skipping when you look at me like that,” she continues, voice more faltering still, eyes now halfopen. If you think that sounds coy, just wait until we mention a) the incorporation of ceaseless vibrato, and b) that when Alfie HudsonTaylor appears to duet ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe’ they start trading lines in the third verse and get into some kind of halting delivery-off. Nobody wins. And the amount of reverb on the vocal means the gig is likely to run here for another week. All told, then, Aplin has got

LIVE REVIEW Get The Blessing/Pops Parker/ The Liftmen

every heartstring-tugging shortcut, every emotional cue of the Miley generation down pat. However. And make that a big, fat, shutupoldmanwhatthehellwouldyouknowanyway? however. Because none of those cuts and cues would be worth a hill of ‘friend’-flattering Facebook updates if she didn’t know her way around the dynamics of a song build or how to nail a fleet of single-listen, memory-triggering melodies. That’s no mean skill in itself. Indeed, Brill Building teams like Boyce and Hart, or Leiber and Stoller, built universally critically acclaimed careers on nothing more. Aplin would clearly be a gifted songwriter and arranger in any age - happily for her, she also happens to have the key to how perform in the modern idiom in her back pocket. (Julian Owen)

St George’s Bristol (Sat 24 Mar) // When not directing The Cardinall’s Musick, the Renaissance-focused vocal ensemble he established in 1989, Andrew Carwood’s day job is heading up the music at St Paul’s Cathedral, and after a lifetime’s experience of music in chapels and “places where they sing”, the church music of Byrd is wired into his DNA. Little wonder that everything in this inaugural concert of a UK tour exploring the Latin settings was shaped with such effortless fluency and instinctive acuity. A couple of motets aside, the most well-known work was the four-part Mass, whose architecture was delineated with a sure touch without neglecting to home in thrillingly on such illustrative highlights as the

Credo’s “et ascendit” – a glorious earful, the more so because Carwood scrupulously avoided encouraging a gratuitously emotive delivery as standard. Mustering a few crowd choruses to spike a chanted narrative with interpolated direct ‘speech’ from the gallery, Byrd’s St John Passion proved an austere discovery, with more Latin words to be traversed than a Vatican translation of ‘War and Peace’, but, after the interval, polyphonic penitential weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth billowed rewardingly. With just eight voices, The Cardinall’s Musick’s intimate St George’s Byrd is worth two in St Paul’s capacious acoustical ‘bush’ any day. (Paul Riley).

VENUEMAGAZINE

3/28/2012 1:29:07 PM

Clubs

For more news, reviews and extra pics, see venue.co.uk/clubs

Could you be dubbed? Adam Burrows catches up with Atlantic-hopping dubsters DJs Stryda and Digistep.

f you’ve dipped a toe in Bristol’s reggae waters in recent years, you’ll almost certainly have come across DJ Stryda. Those with longer memories may recall his late-90s sessions for Ragga FM, when he was barely out of school. More recently, he’s been a fixture on Passion Radio for well over a decade. Stryda – Sam Howard in civvies – is a familiar face in clubland too, whether as promoter and selector at Teachings in Dub, or supplying a rootsy contrast to the future shock at Subloaded. Then there’s Dubkasm – the production handle he shares with childhood friend Ben Glass (aka Digistep), whose sax, melodica, guitar, percussion and keyboard parts are such a distinctive part of the duo’s sumptuous sound. “Ben’s the musician/producer and I’m the executive producer,” Sam explains, “although our roles very often overlap.” Growing up in Bristol, they discovered dub “through listening to pirate radio, then at 15, we attended our first Jah Shaka session at the Malcolm X Centre.” Forming Dubkasm in 1994, their journey was fuelled by Sam’s career as a musician and Ben’s broadcasting. “Interviewing people for the radio show led us to meet Jah Shaka and Aba Shanti-I,”

says Sam, and before long the soundsystem giants were picking up their tracks. “The reaction was overwhelming, seeing the crowd rocking to Aba flinging down a Dubkasm plate at Notting Hill Carnival encouraged us to release our debut 12-inch” (2003’s ‘Hornsman Trod’/‘Strictly Ital’). If that sounds like a textbook apprenticeship, what happened next is one of those sideways lurches that are crucial to truly original music. “Dubkasm became a transatlantic operation,” explains Sam, “which is when ‘Transform I’ started to be created.” Ben, who has Brazilian roots himself, assembled the album’s nuts and bolts in Rio, drawing on local sounds that deliciously complemented Dubkasm’s reggae foundations. “Cuica, berimbau, cavaquinho, zabumba… many of these instruments were brought to Brazil by Bantu slaves,” Sam says. “So when you mix nyahbinghi rhythms with samba, you can feel the same African roots, the heartbeat.” Meanwhile, Sam was shuttling up and down the M4 recording vocalists like Dub Judah, Afrikan Simba and Levi Roots on a portable digital audio workstation. “We could record a lead vocal in Levi Roots’s frontroom, or traditional Brazilian instruments in a tropical bungalow.” The album title reflects the duo’s Stryda and Digistep: Fantastic eyesight

“I’m very proud of Bristol’s soundsystem history.” DJ STRYDA, TEACHINGS IN DUB VENUEMAGAZINE

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blend of influences, juxtaposing “transformai” – a Portuguese word “used to urge someone to transform their mentality” – with “I and I”, the Rasta concept of oneness. The album was an underground success and made specialist dub critic Steve Barker’s top 10 of the year in muso bible The Wire. It was followed in 2010 by Stryda and Digi’s own dub version, ‘Transformed In Dub’, and the less traditional ‘Transform I Remixed’ – a radical but respectful makeover by dubstep producers including Pinch, Appleblim, Headhunter and Peverelist. The remix project “came about through my friendship with Pinch and our promoting Subloaded and Teachings in Dub at Clockwork,” says Sam. “There was a whole host of dubstep producers living in Bristol so it was quite a natural process.” Since then, Ben has returned to Bristol and the pair have been busy turning “a simple patch of earth into a fully functioning studio. We built it from scratch, brick by brick.” They’ve installed a 48-channel console “built like a tank”, and their prized collection of “tape echoes, spring reverbs and homemade oddities”. It seems to have given them a new burst of energy. Their current

single ‘Emotion’/‘Are You Ready’ features the contrasting vocal styles of Rudey Lee and Solo Banton, and its video is creating a buzz online. Other projects nearing completion include a collaboration “with virtuoso musicians in Sao Paulo that picks up where ‘Transform I’ left off”, and a new album compiled from the restoration of early Dubkasm master tapes and mixed by “a UK dub legend” – out later this year. “Another project we are really excited about is our collaboration with Gorgon Sound. Kahn and Neek handed over their track ‘Find Jah Way’ which we remixed.” The first release on the new Peng Sound label, it’s being launched at the Take Five Café on 7 Apr. “Our releases slowed down during the studio build so it’s nice to be back on course”, says Sam. If that wasn’t enough to be getting on with, there are the regular Teachings In Dub sessions at the Trinity Centre to organise. “April’s instalment will be a landmark session,” says Sam. “London-based Jah Tubbys are meeting Bristol’s very own Jah Lokko. The last time these two sounds met was during the 1980s so it’s been a long time coming!” As a venue, Trinity is important to Sam: “It was there that Digi and I experienced our first reggae gig back in 1992, plus my grandparents actually got married there. I’m very proud of Bristol’s soundsystem history. It’s great to help keep this tradition alive.” DUBKASM AND GORGON SOUND PLAY THE TAKE FIVE CAFE ON SAT 7 APR. TEACHINGS IN DUB IS AT TRINITY CENTRE ON FRIDAY 27 APR. WATCH THE ‘EMOTION’/‘ARE YOU READY’ VIDEO AT WWW.DUBKASM. COM.

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PIC: BENJAMIN BIEL

Clubs // THE MONTH AHEAD // SHAPES Behling & Simpson

HOSPITALITY High Contrast and more

// Behling & Simpson have described their blunted, midtempo house sound as “DJ Sneak on codeine”, and their EP for Futureboogie was one of the most striking releases to come out of Bristol last year. That B&S are alter egos of breakbeat and dubstep destroyers Baobinga & ID tells you everything you need to know about the cross pollination going on in the city at the moment. Shapes is arguably the hottest newcomer on Bristol’s 4/4 scene, and this Easter special also boasts fast rising disconauts Pardon My French, an action-packed undercard and party bags for all. SHAPES BLUE MOUNTAIN, BRISTOL, THUR 5 APR. FFI: WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/SHAPESBRISTOL

SUBLOADED Deleted Scenes

LAKOTA Daedalus Archimedes

// The Californian has released 12 albums since 2001 on labels like Ninja Tune, Brainfeeder and Mush Records and worked with everyone from MF Doom to Flying Lotus. His sound contains elements of techno, house and wonky hip-hop, shot through with shards of everything from latin jazz to grandma’s favourite showtunes, and he’s in town this month with a groundbreaking new AV show based around a mechanised wall of mirrors. Support comes from Japanese electronicaimprov artist Anchorsong. DAEDALUS ARCHIMEDES LAKOTA, BRISTOL, THUR 12 APR. FFI: WWW.LAKOTA.CO.UK

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// The drum & bass leviathans return with another big line-up headed by High Contrast, appearing here alongside vocalists Sellah Corbin and Dynamite MC. Also in the main room are London Elektricity, Logistics, Nu:Tone, SPY and The Prototypes, while the tunnel offers dubstep, beat freakery and eclectic daftness from Nadastrom, Sukh Knight and Mensah. Meanwhile, there’s a showcase from Hospital’s sister label Med School in the cave. HOSPITALITY MOTION, BRISTOL, SAT 7 APR. FFI: HTTP://WWW.MOTIONBRISTOL.COM

// Pinch and Distance are two of dubstep’s greatest producers, and versatile ones at that. Their collaborative project Deleted Scenes is worth getting a little excited about, then, and the savage, stuttering halfstep of current 12 inch ‘Hysteria’/‘Reasons’ suggests they won’t be taking any prisoners. Also on this typically unmissable line-up are righteous Deep Medi signing Tunnidge, local legends Addison Groove, Appleblim and Guido, and Neek from men-of-the-moment Gorgon Sound. SUBLOADED THE BLACK SWAN, BRISTOL, FRI 13 APR. FFI: WWW.SUBLOADED.CO.UK

IST DAS Dave Clarke

// A year on from his triumphant last visit to TB2, the man they call The Baron returns to demonstrate why he’s still a revered figure after two decades in the business. Incorporating breakbeat and electro, his music flies in the face of purism while remaining true to the blueprint laid down by techno’s Detroit pioneers. Where other veterans get complacent, Clarke also remains a tireless champion of new and underground music, both in his excellent ‘White Noise’ podcast and his epic club sets. IST DAS TB2, BRISTOL, FRI 13 APR. FFI: HTTP:// WWW.TB2.CO.UK

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// NEWS // Simple Things… Retrotrax… Love Saves The Day…

MUSIC BOX & ISLAND FEVER St Pauls Carnival Fundraiser // With this year’s Carnival scheduled to be drastically pared back due to a severe budget shortfall, fundraising events like this are more important than ever. That said, at a mere fiver on the door, this is well worth your attention for the music alone. Smith & Mighty legends Ray Mighty and Peter D Rose lead the charge, while back-up including Andy Scholes (2 Kings), Flora, Bunjy, Blackout JA, Alpha Omega, Skylion and The Dutty Girl DJs makes for an impressive show of strength from Bristol’s unique and enduring soundsystem culture. MUSIC BOX & ISLAND FEVER THE BLUE MOUNTAIN, BRISTOL, FRI 20 APR.

THE BLAST Major Lazer, Toddla T and more…

8. EMPATHY Darren Emerson // House and techno mainstays Empathy pull off a bit of a coup as Darren Emerson swings into town for their 11th birthday session. He joined the band Underworld aged 18 and was the catalyst for their creative and commercial peak that bore 90s dance classics like ‘Rez’, ‘Dirty Epic’ and ‘Born Slippy’. Since leaving them in 2000, he’s remained a successful producer and remixer as well as one of Ibiza’s most respected DJs. The residents are Jim Rivers, Stuart Wilkinson and Dave Kirik. EMPATHY DOJO, BRISTOL, SAT 21 APR. FFI: WWW. DARRENEMERSON.COM

// A wide-ranging session with a dancehall flavour, as Major Lazer (aka MIA collaborators Diplo and Switch) fuse Jamaican vocals with a magpie approach to global dance beats. Toddla T’s music is similarly eclectic, stitching elements of hip-hop, house and dancehall together with a big dose of humour. Toddla will be joined by top-flight vocalists Shola Ama, Serocee and DRS. Support comes from inspired Scouser Melé with his unique blend of innovative grimey beats, ravey synths and attention deficit hyperactive take on the DJ’s art. THE BLAST MOTION, BRISTOL, SAT 21 APR. FFI: WWW.MOTIONBRISTOL.COM

ABSTRACTIONS Kryptic Minds

// Dubstep means different things to different people, but those who love the eyes-down, dread-filled halfstep that defined the genre in the mid-noughties need look no further than Kryptic Minds. Initially a drum & bass act, the duo dropped their tempo in 2009 with arresting results. Their no-frills approach and awesome sound design has seen them championed by the likes of Youngsta and Loefah, and new album ‘Can’t Sleep’ drops this month on Black Box. The remainder of the bill is solidly drum & bass orientated, with hotly tipped trio DBR UK and 90s survivor Loxy.

// Festival season draws ever closer, but in the meantime there are a handful of ambitious weekend events happening closer to home. First out of the gate is Simple Things, returning to Bristol on Sun 6 May after an incredibly successful debut last year. If anything, this year’s looks even more impressive, with electronica giant Squarepusher headlining a dizzying, genre transcending, multi-venue blow-out that also includes sets from Caribou, Death In Vegas, Ghostpoet, Hudson Mohawke, Rustie, Grimes and Factory Floor. We’ll be going in to more detail next issue but if you want to be sure of getting in, get yourself to www.simplethingsfestival.co.uk and book your tickets now. Meanwhile, Bath racecourse is gearing up for Retrotrax Festival, billed as “the world’s first ever outdoor weekend camping festival dedicated to 100% old skool classics”. In other words, it’s an enormous nostalgia rave featuring a panoply of huge names from the 80s and 90s, including The Orb, Marshall Jefferson, Ce Ce Rogers, Kenny Ken, Slipmatt, 2 Bad Mice, Dave Angel and CJ Bolland. Retrotrax takes place on Sat 12 and Sun 13 May, and you can get acquainted with the full, five arena line-up at www. retrotraxfestival.co.uk. Looking a little further ahead, dancefloor heaven of a more contemporary kind is coming to Bristol’s Castle Park on Sun 3 June. Love Saves The Day is a one-day dance music festival from the fertile minds behind In:Motion and See No Evil, and names like Annie Mac, Ben UFO, Bonobo, Maya Jane Coles, Joker, Mr Scruff, Roots Manuva and Pearson Sound Vs Joy Orbison are just the tip of the iceberg. Again, there’ll be more detail on this in future issues but it’s safe to say that it’s going to be a Jubilee weekend to remember. Full details, tickets and hype at http://lovesavestheday.org. Squarepusher: headlining Simple Things

ABSTRACTION ARC BAR, BRISTOL, FRI 27 APR. FFI: SOUNDCLOUD.COM/ABSTRACTIONS-BRISTOL

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VENUEMAGAZINE 10/24/2011 7:53:49 PM

3/28/2012 4:01:21 PM

THEATRE / DANCE / LIVE ART

Reeling in the years Steve Wright talks to Simon Godwin about directing his big-hitting double bill at Bristol Old Vic.

ith ‘Faith Healer’, we discovered that the Studio is like a resonating chamber of emotion, and I wanted to try and take that even further. We wanted plays that lent themselves to a small space but a big emotional impact.” Simon Godwin’s last directing date at Bristol Old Vic Studio, just over a year ago, was a compelling version of Brian Friel’s gripping memory play ‘Faith Healer’. And now, after a year spent directing two lauded new works at the Royal Court and taking ‘Faith Healer’ to Hong Kong’s International Festival, Godwin is back for more – directing a pair of short plays by two of the 20th century’s most brilliant and distinctive playwrights, both exploring memory, healing and the sensation of time. We begin with Harold Pinter’s 1982 play ‘A Kind of Alaska’, whose heroine wakes after 29 comatose years to a reality she

“Each of us has memories that we enjoy returning to, memories that are addictive, to which we return like a furtive cigarette.” SIMON GODWIN

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cannot accept, relationships she does not remember and a body she no longer knows. In this brief awakening, she begins to understand that she has spent the prime of her life trapped within a waking sleep. Pinter’s play was inspired by ‘Awakenings’, the 1973 memoir by British neurologist Oliver Sacks, who treated victims of the 1920s outbreak of sleeping sickness. During the late 1960s, as Sacks’s memoir recalls, dopamine was administered to these patients with often striking effects. Having fallen into her coma at 16, Pinter’s heroine Deborah [played by Marion Bailey, a collaborator with the great Mike Leigh] awakes in her mid 40s and it is down to her sister Pauline and doctor Hornby to decide how to reacquaint her with her reality. “We follow Deborah’s mix of bewilderment, shock, horror and joy at experiencing life again,” Simon explains. “She feels this extraordinary sense of estrangement, and tries to grapple with how much time has passed – although to her it feels like a heartbeat. I hope that, although her experience is an extraordinary one, audiences can empathise with Deborah – we all recognise what it’s like to be confused about time, and to have to figure out what is true, our memories or what others are telling us.” Then there are the difficult choices faced by Pauline and Hornby. “Pauline says to Hornby, ‘Should I tell her truth or lies?’ And he says, ‘Both’. Which is something we do in life: we tell people a mix of truth and lies according to what they can deal with.” And does it end all hopefully? “Mmm… you’ll have to come and see it.” The eponymous hero of Samuel Beckett’s ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’,

meanwhile, is a solitary 69-yearold (played by Richard Bremmer, star of that extraordinary ‘Faith Healer’) who each birthday digs out his old tape recorder and listens to a recording made on a previous birthday, as well as making a new recording on which he comments on the last year. After a life of failure, withdrawal and physical decline, the youthful idealism that confronts Krapp now makes the passing of time even more acute. Simon, though, sees further than the play’s apparent bleakness. “I want to bring out a sense of humour and, as with ‘Alaska’, of universality. Like Krapp, each of us has memories that we enjoy returning to, memories that are addictive, to which we return like a furtive cigarette. We may realise they don’t do us a huge amount of good, but they bring us solace and comfort.” In fact, he says, the challenge is to take away any sentimentality or any of that vaudevillian performance style [the “dark clown”] with which Beckett is so often associated. “For me the play’s humour and pain lies more in the sufferings and experiences of an

individual not far removed from all of us. Yes, Krapp exists in a kind of twilight world – but not one we should feel alienated from. There is a catharsis from watching him, a dark light at the centre of the play.” Loaded with emotional content as they are, both plays contain relatively little actual physical event. Hard plays to make dramatic, then? “Not a great deal physically happens – but a lot happens emotionally,” says Simon, whose triumphant ‘Faith Healer’ was, after all, a collection of reminiscing monologues. “And the central visual metaphors of the hospital bed and the tape recorder are both very potent. We have mined those for their theatricality.” And an overarching theme for the two plays? “Memory, and the past, is both a blessing and a curse. And their other chief theme is desire. Memory takes us back, desire takes us forward: but where do the two meet?” A KIND OF ALASKA/KRAPP’S LAST TAPE IS AT BRISTOL OLD VIC STUDIO FROM THUR 5 APR-SAT 12 MAY. FFI: WWW.BRISTOLOLDVIC. ORG.UK

The actors share a joke

PIC: MARK DOUET

PICS: CHRIS LEADER

Performance

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Performance

THEATRE / DANCE / LIVE ART

// THE MONTH AHEAD // DANCE Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker!

MATTHEW BOURNE’S NUTCRACKER! IS AT BRISTOL HIPPODROME FROM TUE 17-SAT 21 APR. FFI: WWW.BRISTOLHIPPODROME.ORG.UK

PROMENADE PERFORMANCE Beyond

PIC: SIMON ANNAND

// 20th anniversary tour of the technicolour, swashbuckling and frankly magical ‘Nutcracker’ choreographed by Bourne, the UK’s most adventurous dance-theatre choreographer who took many of his formative steps right here in Bristol, as an Arnolfini artistin-residence in the early 90s. ‘Nutcracker!’ follows young Clara’s bittersweet journey from a hilariously bleak Christmas Eve at Dr Dross’s Orphanage, through a shimmering, ice-skating winter wonderland to the scrumptious candy kingdom of Sweetieland.

MUSICAL COMEDY Spamalot // Second coming for Eric Idle’s musical “lovingly ripping off” the Pythons’ first film ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’. Once again, comic Marcus Brigstocke and erstwhile East Ender Todd Carty play the well-meaning but hapless King Arthur and his shambolic but faithful batman Patsy. “Wisely tinkers very little with the original film,” we opined first time around. “A comedy gem in itself, ‘… Grail gains quite a lot in the translation from screen to stage.”

PIC: BARRY LEWIS

SPAMALOT IS AT BRISTOL HIPPODROME FROM MON 23-SAT 28 APR. FFI: WWW. BRISTOLHIPPODROME.ORG.UK

5. 4.

DESERT CROSSINGS IS AT CIRCOMEDIA, BRISTOL FROM FRI 27-SAT 28 APR. FFI: WWW.CIRCOMEDIA.COM

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// Karla Shacklock – choreographer, director and researcher into “performance consciousness” – takes up residence at The Looking Glass, the new arts space housed in the former Rummer Inn, to present this promenade performance leading audiences “into a ghosted space”. With its cutting-edge design and live sound, the show, Karla tells us, “explores what happens when you push yourself beyond what you thought physically, vocally and emotionally possible”. BEYOND IS AT THE LOOKING GLASS, BRISTOL FROM 23-29 APR. FFI: WWW.KARLASHACKLOCK.COM

WALKABOUT PERFORMANCE The Holly King // Roving performance troupe Whispering Woods return to Leigh Woods for their third instalment of seasonal, Mother Nature-inspired fireside tales, aerial artistry, music and dance. All ages welcome – bring a torch.

DANCE Desert Crossings // Surely the first time Dorset’s Jurassic Coast has starred in a dance piece… Taunton-based producers State of Emergency team up with South African choreographer Gregory Maqoma for this five-strong dance piece that draws parallels between the Wessex coastline and Namibia’s Skeleton Coast, exploring their differences and (as erstwhile neighbours on the 250-million-yearold supercontinent Pangaea) their common, um, ground. Explains Maqoma: “Desert Crossings is a landscape where the physical and the metaphysical, the corporeal and the spiritual, the celestial and terrestrial all merge.”

THE HOLLY KING WILL BE PERFORMED IN LEIGH WOODS (MEET NORTH ROAD ENTRANCE) ON FRI 27 APR (8PM) & SAT 28 APR (6PM AND 8PM). FFI: WWW.WHISPERING-WOOD-FOLK.CO.UK

THEATRE Like A Virgin // Rondo regulars and (comic realists par excellence) Reform Theatre return with Gordon Steel’s tunefuelled romp through adolescence. Madonna wannabes Angela and Maxine truant from school, form a band, and dream of pop stardom – but home life for Angela is about to test her in very different ways. Cue an emotional rollercoaster of hope, sex, ambition, despair and love. LIKE A VIRGIN IS AT THE RONDO THEATRE, BATH ON TUE 24 APR. FFI: WWW.RONDOTHEATRE.CO.UK VENUEMAGAZINE

3/28/2012 10:26:56 AM

Going out this month? see venue.co.uk the home of Venue’s what’s on listings

7. THEATRE Madhampton.co.uk // Bristol’s – nay, the UK’s – leading mental health theatre group Stepping Out return with this big-cast, madcap comedy. The eponymous website is a “slightly scary online therapeutic community”: a virtual English village with an array of larger-than-life characters. It appears to offer sanctuary for troubled minds – but when they meet for real, the various Madhamptonians get much more than they bargained for. Expect, in true SO vein, bucketfuls of comedy, pathos, music and dance. MADHAMPTON.CO.UK IS AT THE BREWERY, BRISTOL FROM TUE 3-THUR 5 AND TUE 10-SAT 14 APR. FFI: WWW.TOBACCOFACTORYTHEATRE.COM

8. DANCE THEATRE Lost Dog // The award-winning dance theatre troupe Lost Dog present an evening of darkly comic and highly physical work. The prize-winning ‘It Needs Horses’ tells the tale of two downat-heel performers and their increasingly desperate attempts to entertain the crowds, while ‘The Overhead Project’ scrutinises a ballerina’s debilitating fear of performing. LOST DOG ARE AT ARNOLFINI ON FRI 13 APR. FFI: WWW.ARNOLFINI.ORG.UK

THEATRE Gutter Mouth

// Little Axe Theatre return to the Wardrobe with this one-man slice of physical theatre that will leave you wondering, “Just how many things can you do in a wheelie bin?” Seen through the eyes of, well, a gutter, the action follows the hours before an infamous free party, in the company of stick-thin clubbers, coke-snorting bruisers and the like. GUTTER MOUTH IS AT THE WARDROBE THEATRE, BRISTOL FROM MON 2-FRI 6 APR. FFI: WWW.THEWARDROBETHEATRE.COM

12.

11.

10. THEATRE The Dumb Waiter/ The Lover

THEATRE Barefoot in the Park

SCRATCH PERFORMANCE ITCH

// Kent theatre company European Arts, master stagers of literary classics from ‘The Pickwick Papers’ to ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ (last year’s brilliant ‘Chekhov’s Shorts’, pictured) return with this Pinter oneact double bill, pairing the brilliantly absurd ‘Dumb Waiter’ with ‘The Lover’, which gradually yields up its secrets and “contrasts bourgeois domesticity with sexual yearning”.

// Maureen Lipman directs and stars in Neil Simon’s 1963 romantic comedy, which follows two newlyweds as they adjust to married life in a tiny New York apartment. Paul is a straightlaced lawyer, whilst Corrie is a free spirit who won’t let anything disturb her romantic bliss. But will love survive in the face of bad plumbing, a leaky skylight, five flights of stairs, an eccentric neighbour and a well-meaning but batty motherin-law? Over to you, Maureen…

// Another four nights of scratch performances/work-in-progress by local writers, performers and companies, at the intimate and everadventurous Wardrobe. This month’s highlights include Project Moon, a clowning and movement-fuelled lunar voyage, and a new improvised sitcom by the Wardrobe’s soap-opera troupe Closer Each Day.

THE DUMB WAITER AND THE LOVER ARE AT THE RONDO THEATRE, BATH FROM FRI 13-SAT 14 APR. FFI: WWW.RONDOTHEATRE.CO.UK

BAREFOOT IN THE PARK IS AT THEATRE ROYAL BATH FROM MON 16-SAT 21 APR. FFI: WWW.THEATREROYAL. ORG.UK

ITCH IS AT THE WARDROBE, BRISTOL FROM MON 16-FRI 20 APR. FFI: WWW. THEWARDROBETHEATRE.COM

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Performance

THEATRE / DANCE / LIVE ART

PREVIEW

The Six Wives of Henry VIII THEATRE // Venue saw a scratch version of this show during BOV’s artist development strand Ferment last year, and had to be restrained from laughing its internal organs out. It even learned a thing or two about the Tudors… So hopes are high for this full-length version, in which ace Bristol actors Howard Coggins and Stu McLoughlin play, respectively, the rotund and despotic Tudor king and all six of his lady wives. “The whole thing was conceived when I went to Hever Castle [ancestral home of the Boleyn family],” Stu explains. “I saw a very famous picture of Henry VIII, with his hands on his hips, looking iconic and kingly, and it reminded me of someone I couldn’t quite place… then I realised. It was Howard. I called him while stood in front of the picture and said, ‘Has anyone ever told you you look like Henry VIII?’ Then followed a bolt of inspiration… ‘There’s a show in that,’ I said. ‘You play King Henry and I’ll play all six wives.’ Then Howard went really quiet. He said, ‘That’s a really good idea’, and I said ‘No, I was just joking’. Then we started to write the script….” And the rest is, er, history. “When I started writing, I

PREVIEW In a Garden

THEATRE // The Ustinov’s American season, begun last month with Adam Rapp’s tense, erotic three-hander ‘Red Light Winter’ (pictured), continues with Howard Korder’s compelling story of ambition and deception played out between the US and a fictitious Middle Eastern state. Back in 1989, an ambitious young American architect is mysteriously summoned to the troubled country of Aqaat. Here the Minister of Culture commissions him to build a

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didn’t ever think it would be put on anywhere,” Stu continues. “I was just writing material to make Howard laugh. In fact, each read-through, we’d both end up on the floor laughing.” When Stu was at the theatre performing ‘Swallows and Amazons’, the two thought they could road-test their idea at Ferment. “I had never written before so I was expecting a few notes or pointers of where to go. Sharon Clark [Ferment producer] just told me, ‘It’s a yes to your show’. And I thought, ‘Bloody hell, we’ve actually got to do it now.”

Though Howard and Stu play Henry and his various significant others, they also, says Stu, play “grotesque versions of ourselves – with all foibles magnified. Howard is desperately trying to be taken seriously, his career’s on the line, it’s crisis point – whereas I’m just having a laugh and larking around in a dress.” “It starts like a ‘bromance’ and ends like a divorce,” notes Howard succinctly. “Which is appropriate.” The duo have taken, Stu explains, “a hell of a lot of liberties” with history. “The

actual history is hidden behind ridiculous things that we’ve made up. But I’ve tried to be factually accurate with the six wives, or at least true to their feelings. For instance, where Henry first met Anne of Cleves when she arrived in England for the marriage, we’ve enacted their meeting in the style of a blind date panel show. There are plenty of liberties – but the truth is in there.”

garden summerhouse to honour the memory of the Minister’s father, and to recreate memories from his own idyllic childhood. This dream job, though, rapidly becomes a nightmare as months turn to years, and the architect’s attempts to fulfil the brief are constantly rejected. In this veiled and dangerous world in which neither side is capable of understanding the other, the only outcome appears to be catastrophe. Korder’s 1988 play ‘Boy’s Life’ won him a Pulitzer Prize nomination: more recently he’s been on the writing team of the multi-award-winning HBO series ‘Boardwalk Empire’, directed by Martin Scorsese. The play’s being

directed by Richard Beecham, who also took charge for ‘Red Light Winter’, and stars prolific film/TV actor Hassani Shapi and ‘RLW’’s star Keir Charles.

IN A GARDEN IS AT THE USTINOV STUDIO, BATH FROM WED 4 APR-SAT 5 MAY. FFI: WWW.THEATREROYAL.ORG.UK/ USTINOV

THE SIX WIVES OF HENRY VIII IS AT BRISTOL OLD VIC STUDIO FROM WED 18 APR-SAT 12 MAY. FFI: WWW. BRISTOLOLDVIC.ORG.UK

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Performance

THEATRE / DANCE / LIVE ART

PREVIEW

// Don't miss... //

Moby Dick

THEATRE // Their last outing was a retelling of Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ at Windmill Hill City Farm: and now Bristol’s everambitious Darkstuff Productions are back in site-specific mode, with an adaptation of one of western literature’s most richly atmospheric masterpieces inside a dark, many-warrened Bristol venue. Yes, Darkstuff have condensed Herman Melville’s enormous, gothic whaling epic into an evening’s theatre, which they present at the suitably cavernous and subterranean Bierkeller Theatre. “We wanted to do something ambitious,” says Darkstuff cofounder and ‘Moby Dick’ co-adapter Simon Harvey-Williams, “and the Bierkeller seemed the perfect location – it’s got lots of interesting nooks and crannies, perfectly suiting the book’s gothic feel.” Like the book, Darkstuff’s re-telling is set primarily on the Pequod, the whaling ship skippered by the obsessive Captain Ahab, who makes it his doomed quest to hunt down and kill the gigantic and legendary sperm whale Moby Dick. Simon: “The space has lots of levels as well as being windowless, so we’re hoping it feels to audiences like stepping aboard a 19thcentury whaling ship.”

PREVIEW Our Glass House

THEATRE // This powerful piece, devised by Bristol’s Common Wealth Theatre (they of 2004’s inspirational walkabout show ‘The Juniper Tree’), tackles the emotive issue of domestic violence, and does so in a typical Bristol suburban home. “The audience will rove around the entire house, choosing which of the six protagonists to follow,” explains director Evie Manning. “We wanted each audience member to take a different journey, as there is no one story

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Melville’s vast novel follows Ahab’s quest to kill Moby Dick in revenge for an earlier tussle in which he lost his leg – but, says Simon, the company have found much more in the book than one man’s obsession. “It’s a dense read with lots of weighty themes – death, religion, race. We’ve tried to adapt it in a way that tells a good story without trivializing the deeper issues Melville tackles.” “At the crux of the book is a gripping story about obsession, religion and the human condition,” adds director Anna Girvan. “The characters are incredibly vivid and the suspense and mystery built around Ahab and Moby Dick [neither of whom we meet until some way into the book] keeps you gripped.” Rehearsals have evolved organically. “The first week we just played,” Anna recalls. “I brought in nets, sticks and other maritime bits, stuck on some music and let the cast explore of domestic violence: it is such a complex issue.” The set will, she adds, be full of detail encouraging the audience to explore. “It’s full of surprises and the audience’s active involvement is key.” Common Wealth have collaborated, for the production, with some 15 Bristol-based artists, puppeteers, illustrators and designers who have worked previously with the likes of the Invisible Circus and the Tobacco Factory. “We want to raise awareness and break stereotypes that people may hold about domestic abuse and who experiences it,” Evie explains of the show’s genesis. That said, Common Wealth have steered away from making an overly dark or heavy evening’s theatre. “We made the decision early on not to feature

different ways of creating our boats and whale. They have come up with some lovely images. Music and sound is important, too, and we’ve created some interesting rhythmic soundscapes.” The novel is, needless to say, a very male world: but Darkstuff have found some female roles, swung by the skill and versatility of some of the actresses who auditioned. “Females bring a different dynamic to the piece – we haven’t changed the sex of characters neither are we forcing the actresses to grow beards,” explains co-adaptor Phil John. “For me the story we are telling is important and the actors, both male and female, tell it – judge it on its telling.” MOBY DICK IS AT THE BIERKELLER THEATRE, BRISTOL FROM TUE 3-THUR 5, SUN 8-THUR 12 & SUN 15-THUR 19 APR. FFI: WWW. BIERKELLERTHEATRE.COM

violence or perpetrators in the play. We interviewed lots of survivors of domestic abuse and were always struck by their courage – and the play reflects that. We are very grateful to all the women and men who have informed the making of the piece: some of their experiences are surreal, unimaginable

// Unsinkable Little Black Box Theatre, Bristol, Sat 14 & Tue 17-Sat 21 Apr. Ffi: the-littleblack-box.co.uk • LBB residents Fragile stage their new play commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster. ‘Unsinkable’ follows the tragic events through the eyes of two radio operators struggling to summon help; a second officer dragged from his bed as the ship hits the iceberg; and a second-class passenger clinging to the ship’s rail and to the myth of its unsinkability. // A Curious Evening of Trance and Rap with The Ogden Sisters Tue 17-Sat 28 Apr, The Brewery, Bristol • Cornish production company Trifle Gathering presents this new piece that takes a trip into the world of Victorian mediums. // Abigail’s Party Mon 23-Sat 28 Apr, Theatre Royal Bath • TRB Productions and the Menier Chocolate Factory tour Mike Leigh’s career-launching 1977 black comedy, in which a gut-wrenchingly awkward dinner party is hosted (and detonated) by the brash, crass and flirtatious Beverley.

even – and it’s so much more powerful for audiences to know that the play is based on real-life experiences.” OUR GLASS HOUSE IS AT 90 HUDD’S VALE, ST GEORGE, BRISTOL FROM WED 18-SUN 29 APR (WEDSUN, VARIOUS TIMES). FFI: WWW. COMMONWEALTHTHEATRE.CO.UK

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www.millendmitcheldean.co.uk

D N A R B PRINT WEB PUB- G LISHIN PHOTO Y H P A R G 76 // APRIL 2012

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contact us venue publishing, 4th floor, bristol news & media, bristol bs99 7hd tel 0117 942 8491 email d.higgitt@venue.co.uk / bang@venue.co.uk web www.bangstudio.co.uk

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PIC: ALEX BRENNER

Comedy

w w w. t he c o me dy b ox .c o.u k

// THE MONTH AHEAD // BRISTOL HIPPODROME Doug Stanhope

// More dyspeptic dispatches from this US comic in the Lenny Bruce/ Bill Hicks vein, with a penchant for close-to-the-knuckle comedy. We saw him in Bath a coupla years back: “An impatient cyclone, devouring tea-time small-talk favourites including domestic violence, Darfur, sexual abuse, paedophilia, religion, torture… it’s frenetic, virulent and lucid at times, shuffling and inconsequential at others. But beneath the liberal-baiting, apparent shock tactics lies a gem of a mind, swift to point out the inane contradictions choking the world we inhabit.”

TOBACCO FACTORY 2. Richard Herring

DOUG STANHOPE PLAYS BRISTOL HIPPODROME ON SUN 8 APR. FFI: WWW. BRISTOLHIPPODROME.ORG.UK

SPRING GARDEN TAVERN Cookers Comedy // Following a sell-out debut back in December, this occasional comedy night championing both new and established acts returns to Hotwells’ Spring Garden Tavern. Tonight’s headliner is Mark Felgate, a comiccum-ventriloquist who mixes a huge vocal range with a healthy dose of straightforward, High Street stand-up. MARK FELGATE PLAYS COOKERS COMEDY AT THE SPRING GARDEN TAVERN, BRISTOL ON THUR 19 APR. FFI: WWW. BRISTOLTICKETSHOP.CO.UK/

5. COMEDY BOX Chris McCausland

CHRIS MCCAUSLAND IS AT THE COMEDY BOX, BRISTOL FROM FRI 27-SUN 28 APR. FFI: WWW. THECOMEDYBOX.CO.UK

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RICHARD HERRING IS AT THE TOBACCO FACTORY, BRISTOL ON SUN 15 APR. FFI: WWW.TOBACCOFACTORYTHEATRE.COM

RONDO THEATRE James Acaster // Bright, quirky and articulate rising comic with a keen sense of the absurd, who’s impressed on previous visits to these parts. The Edinburgh Evening News got Acaster about right, for our money, in labelling his material “a mix of storytelling and philosophising that hasn’t been perfected so well since Daniel Kitson”.

4. // Likeable, self-effacing Scouser Chris McCausland is by some distance the UK’s best-known blind comic, and his star continues to rise. We were impressed with what he had to say at last year’s Bristol BrouHaha comedy fest: “McCausland’s comedy leaves no stone unturned in the absurd landscape of the everyday… his incisive humour and his disarmingly unaffected stage-presence make him a joy to watch.”

// Another visit from Cheddar’s funniest man, Stewart Lee’s former co-conspirator and a fine, intelligent and often nakedly confessional comic in his own right. Herring’s back touring recent Edinburgh hit ‘What Is Love, Anyway?’ in which, with typical naked honesty and black-hearted observation, he dissects that most longed-for and wept-over human emotion. “Stimulating and exhilarating…. utterly hilarious,” swooned the normally measured industry site chortle.co.uk

JAMES ACASTER IS AT THE RONDO THEATRE, BATH ON WED 25 APR. FFI: WWW.RONDOTHEATRE.CO.UK

KRATER COMEDY The Noise Next Door // The pick of this month’s Friday and Saturday Krater Comedy nights at Komedia features sketch troupe TNTD, one of our picks of last year’s Bath Comedy Festival with their breathlessly inventive, multi-character sketches. The Noisies are joined tonight by Tom Allen, whose exacting observations on the vagaries of modern life and brilliantly particular language and diction are well worth beholding. KRATER COMEDY FEAT. THE NOISE NEXT DOOR AND OTHERS KOMEDIA, BATH, SAT 28 APR. FFI: WWW.KOMEDIA.CO.UK/BATH/KRATER/

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Art

GALLERIES, MUSEUMS AND MORE

// THE MONTH AHEAD //

// Bath Society of Artists’ exhaustive annual exhibition features around 350 works of a typically high standard, mixing pieces by BSA members (pictured: Oliver Bedeman, ‘Blue Million Miles’, oil on canvas) alongside an open-submission section. BSA formed in 1904, and past members have included messrs Sickert, Heron and Hodgkin. Today’s society numbers some 120 artists from Bath and its environs, including Peter Brown, David Cobley, Mary Fedden and Venue/RWA Emerging Artist Award winners Vincent Brown and Ben Hughes. All works in the show are for sale, and you’ll also find a programme of free Saturday talks listed on the website. BATH SOCIETY OF ARTISTS’ 107TH ANNUAL EXHIBITION IS AT THE VICTORIA ART GALLERY, BATH FROM 31 MAR-19 MAY. FFI: WWW. VICTORIAGAL.ORG.UK

EXPRESSIVE 3. SCREENPRINTS Lionel Friedland // New screenprints by Bristol-based artist LF, who started out as an architect in his native South Africa before perfecting his own brand of pareddown illustration (‘Josephine Baker’, pictured). Friedland’s technique is to start with small detailed sketches which he then breaks down, isolating important lines within the drawing. The simplified image is then drawn on a larger scale using the three natural arcs of his arm to create smooth, sweeping lines. Finally, Friedland intuitively selects a colour before transferring the image to a screen for printing. The results? Striking, as you’ll see… LIONEL FRIEDLAND IS AT THE WHITE ROOM GALLERY, BATH FROM 29 MAR-27 APR. FFI: WWW.THEWHITEROOMGALLERY.COM

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PIC: MARK SIMMONS

GROUP SHOW Bath Society of Artists

DOCUMENTARY 2. EXHIBITION Living Memory, Future World // The splendidly named Bristol collective Old Women for World Change present this documentarycum-consciousness-raising exhibition, which uses testimonials and photos (by the brilliant Mark Simmons) to explore the future Bristol’s children may face if we don’t check our rapacious consumption of fossil fuels. “We chose people who were old enough to have lived a lower-technology lifestyle less dependent on fossil fuels, and people from countries that didn’t have the resources to be so wasteful,” OWfWC tell us. “We asked them what it was like living a lower carbon lifestyle, and we think their words show how neighbourhood action can make a better future for Bristol.” LIVING MEMORY, FUTURE WORLD IS AT CREATE, BRISTOL FROM 7 APR-19 MAY. FFI: WWW.CREATEBRISTOL.ORG

SUBAQUATIC SNAPS Swan Song // Stunning underwater photography from renowned fashion photographer Zena Holloway, who’s previously snapped for the likes of Dazed & Confused, Tatler, Sony and Kylie. Holloway’s latest series follows a woman in a whirling metamorphosis that makes her a cloud, then a white petal and, finally, a drop of milk lost in a deep ocean. “The idea was to show a figure floating serenely in an alien world of weightless calm,” Holloway explains of the series. “She is in a place where sight and hearing are lost; where the senses slow and the body does not breathe... she is without fear and filled with peace.” SWAN SONG IS AT BO.LEE GALLERY, BATH FROM 27 MAR-28 APR. FFI: WWW.BO-LEE.CO.UK

OFFBEAT ILLUSTRATION Strange Brew

// Here Gallery teams up two of the most distinctive illustrators/artists working in the UK today, pairing Adam Higton’s detailed figurative work with Marcus Walters’s simple, graphic landscapes across media including illustration, collage and screen printing. Higton’s pièce de résistance is the Yule Bringer Saga (www. yulebringer.com), an ever-growing collection of characters that inhabit a psychedelic festive village and surrounding forest. STRANGE BREW IS AT HERE GALLERY, BRISTOL FROM 6-28 APR. FFI: WWW.THINGSFROMHERE.CO.UK

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Got an event to list? Submit it to us at venue.co.uk/ submit-a-listing

6. SURREALIST DAUBINGS Everly Dark // Solo show for this Bristol painter whose otherworldly dreamscapes feature girls with third eyes, semiliquefied animals and trees that entwine together with Surrealist abandon. EVERLY DARK EXHIBITS AT THE GREEN ROOM, TOBACCO FACTORY, BRISTOL FROM 3-28 APR. FFI: WWW.DRAWNINBRISTOL. CO.UK

POSTCARD PLAYFULNESS The Artists’ Postcard Show // Compendious inventory of how, over the past halfcentury, artists have reacted to the small but expressive medium of the holiday postcard. Some 200 works, many seen for the first time, show how artists have used the postcard as a distinctive medium, grafting onto it collaged monuments, iconic surveys of rough seas, overlaid fictional landscapes and, of course, their own unique school of postcard humour. The roll call includes Joseph Beuys, Ruth Claxton, Gilbert & George and (pictured) Anna Banana and the Dada Brothers. THE ARTISTS’ POSTCARD SHOW IS AT SPIKE ISLAND, BRISTOL FROM 6 APR-17 JUNE. FFI: WWW.SPIKEISLAND.ORG.UK

PHOTOGRAPHY St Pauls Darkroom // Group show featuring work by photographers using this purpose-built photography facility, which teaches some of the oldest photographic techniques still available, from archaic ‘chemical’ processes to the (currently reviving) world of analogue photography. This show will feature work by members and users plus guest artists including Helen James, whose images document disappearing livelihoods (coal and sandstone extracting, sheep farming and more) in the Forest of Dean. ST PAULS DARKROOM EXHIBITION FOLK HOUSE CAFÉ, BRISTOL, 30 MAR-3 MAY. FFI: WWW.BRISTOLFOLKHOUSE.CO.UK

LIMPID LANDSCAPES Spring Exhibition

COLOURFUL 9. ABSTRACTS Close to the Edge // New paintings and carborundum prints by Celia Cook, promising “colourful and dynamic experiences with colour, geometric shape and the painted surface”. CELIA COOK: CLOSE TO THE EDGE IS AT THE ADAM GALLERY, BATH FROM 29 MAR-17 APR. FFI: WWW.ADAMGALLERY.COM

10.

// Bath’s brilliant portraitist and mixed-media painter Ben Hughes celebrates the opening of his new Studio Gallery with an exhibition of new work. Dominant themes are the artist’s love of water, with its movement and myriad reflections. Hughes is one of our region’s most captivating and beautiful painters: make time for this show. SPRING EXHIBITION TO 22 APR, BEN HUGHES FINE ART, BATH. FFI: WWW.BENHUGHESART.CO.UK

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Books

// TOP TEN // Fresh as a daisy

Rhyme and reason

Sprightly springtime reads chosen by the verdant folk at Foyles, Bristol. The Food of Spain: A Celebration – Claudia Roden (Penguin, £25) COOKERY Celebrate the start of spring in the kitchen by trying out some scrumptious new recipes. Claudia Roden’s exquisitely designed new book could be the perfect inspiration.

You’re doing two events at Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution on 14 Apr. What’s happening in the morning workshop? I talk about the nittygritty aspects of publishing: while you can be optimistic you have to be realistic. Every poet is different, and every magazine or publisher is different, so it’s all about targeting your work to the right places, at the right level and at the right time. You have to put in time nurturing your own talent before you start thinking of how to take your work out into the world. What’s the most important piece of advice you’d give to a poet looking to get their work published? Research the field fully and try magazines first. Before you even think about putting a book together, you should be submitting poems to magazines, and then to pamphlet presses. Such a “track record” is not used by book publishers as a guarantee of quality, but as an indication that the writer has spent time building up a publishable collection. Don’t try to run before you can walk. You’re also presenting ‘Being Human’ - the third in the trilogy which began with ‘Staying Alive’. How did you go about putting this new volume together? The range of poetry in ‘Being Human’ complements that of the first two anthologies, presenting another 500 thoughtful and passionate poems about living in the modern world. It has more great poems from the 20th century as well as many more recent poems of rare imaginative power,

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with an even greater emphasis on world poetry, showing what it means to be human in different cultures. Talismanic poems were a popular feature of ‘Staying Alive’ and ‘Being Alive’. These are the kinds of poems that people keep in their wallets, on fridges and noticeboards; poems copied to friends and read on special occasions. Such has been the appeal of ‘Staying Alive’ and ‘Being Alive’ that many readers have written not only to express their appreciation of these books, but also to share poems which have been important in their own lives. ‘Being Human’ draws on this highly unusual publisher’s mailbag, including many talismanic personal survival poems suggested by readers from all walks of life, along with others named by writers at readings and in newspaper articles and blogs. What have been your favourite ‘discoveries’ in putting ‘Being Human’ together? The kinds of poems which manage to contain almost the whole of human life within them, most notably ‘Table’ by the Turkish poet Edip Cansever, which I came across in an Irish literary magazine which printed translations of several of his poems, mostly from the 1950s. Also a lot of poems by writers from Africa, Australia, Eastern Europe and the Middle and Near East, and new work published since the first two anthologies by major poets from America in particular. NEIL ASTLEY HOSTS GETTING YOUR POETRY PUBLISHED (10.30AM) & PRESENTS ‘BEING ALIVE’ (7.30PM) AT BATH ROYAL LITERARY & SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTION ON SAT 14 APR. FFI: WWW. BRLSI.ORG

THANKS ONCE AGAIN, TO THE FABULOUS FOYLES, 6 QUAKERS FRIARS, CABOT CIRCUS, BRISTOL, BS1 3BU, 0117 376 3975, WWW.FOYLES.CO.UK

Leading poetry publisher Neil Astley of Bloodaxe Books is coming to Bath to talk about getting published and to launch new anthology ‘Being Human’. Interview: Tom Phillips.

Silver: Return to Treasure Island – Andrew Motion (Vintage, £12.99) FICTION How very dare he! Andrew Motion has taken a real gamble by writing a sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic swashbuckler ‘Treasure Island’. Thank goodness he’s pulled it off! ‘Silver’ is an absolutely cracking springtime read. The Bee-Kind Garden – David Squire (Green Books, £9.95) GARDENING If you’re an aspiring bee-keeper or just a fan of the busy bee, this is a superb guide to beekeeping and gardening with bees in mind, full of information about the honeybee. The Balcony Gardener – Isabelle Palmer (Cico Books, £14.99) GARDENING Isabelle Palmer is a passionate balcony gardener. For years she has grown many beautiful plants on her north London balcony. This beautiful guide shows how you can create a little haven, with easy-to-follow guides and lovely photography. Weeds: The Story of Outlaw Plants – Richard Mabey (Profile Books, £8.99) GARDENING Yes, at long last, here is a book about the history of weeds and our relationship with these “outlaw plants”. Mabey is a fabulous writer, drawing on myth, literature and global case studies to examine the “endless game of chemical poker” we’ve played with weeds.

A Yorkshire Sketchbook – David Hockney (Thames & Hudson, £14.95) ART Anyone planning to venture out into the countryside this spring would find it worthwhile to have their eyes refreshed by taking a look at this wonderful book. Hockney’s joyous vision may inspire you to see the landscape from a different point of view. Hammershoi and Europe – Kasper Monrad (Prestel, £35) ART With the current fashion for all things Nordic, it is worth investigating this Danish artist’s work. His paintings usually depict light-filled interiors, and the very surface of his beautiful canvases is infused with an air of restraint and melancholy. The Complete Brambly Hedge – Jill Barklem (HarperCollins Publishers, £14.99) CHILDREN Jill Barklem has created a truly magical world with her Brambly Hedge tales. Not only are the stories charming and wonderful, but each illustration is a delight. Barklem represents the beautiful English countryside perfectly. A Fraction of the Whole – Steve Toltz (Penguin, £8.99) FICTION This ambitious first novel from Australia is that rare thing, a 700+ page tome which doesn’t outstay its welcome. High in concept, yet always relatable in execution, Toltz’s writing is thick with ideas but never loses its narrative momentum. Here is a new writer worth watching. Someone Like You – Roald Dahl (Penguin, £8.99) FICTION If you’ve never experienced Dahl’s adult fiction you’re in for a treat. The same twisted imagination that came up with ‘The Twits’ and ‘The Witches’ is present in each of these short stories, as well as an often macabre sense of humour.

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To reach 72,000 families in your area... advertise in the next issue of Primary Times Contact Caroline tel 0117 934 3737 email c.stretton@bepp.co.uk or Ruth tel 0117 934 3730 email r.morris@venue.co.uk

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DaysOut

FAMILY FUN AND TRIPS AWAY

Say Cheese Her first trip to Cheddar Caves in 30 years has Anna Britten wondering what she’d been waiting for.

heddar Gorge is stunning. As in truly, jawdroppingly, is-thisreally-Somerset? stunning. Approaching through the Mendips, this rocky cleft with its sheer limestone cliffs (140 metres above the road in places), reminds you of a cowboy film, or those Caspar David Friedrich paintings featuring a pathetic little fop gazing up in awe at dramatic landscapes. I remembered little of this from my last visit. Understandable – I was in single figures, and as any kid growing up in the verdant West Country will tell you, the exhortation to “look at the view” grows rapidly tiring through repetition. If your children/nieces/ nephews are of a similarly gift-shop-and-ice-creamobsessed bent, don’t worry. There’s plenty to do at Cheddar that doesn’t involve craning the neck and sighing “Yeah, I’m looking.” So buy them a bag of fudge (bottom car park), splash out on an access-allareas family ticket and dive in. You can even take the dog. All things considered, it’s one of the easiest days out you will ever find. Sound of the underground Most visitors start at the large Gough’s Cave, which is a good idea (not least because there’s a Costa next to it where you can settle your stomach after the twisty drive). This was discovered in 1890s by retired sea captain and adventurer

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A claustrophobic's nightmare

Richard Gough, who narrates your heavily info-packed audioguide. ‘Lord Of The Rings’ fans will be excited to learn that these spectacular caves were the inspiration for the “jewelled caves” behind Tolkien’s Helm’s Deep – take away the Health & Safety-observant handrails and cement walkways and you can see why. Stalagmites (in traditional, ahem, ‘pointy’ and cascade form), stalactites, pillars, grottoes, tunnels, mirror-like pools and even a prehistoric mammoth carving (although you have to squint quite hard to make it out).

On the way out, little people will also love looking at the Playmobil replica of the Gorge and its visitors. Down the road a bit, you’ll find the smaller Cox’s Cave, which was discovered in 1837 and where the stalactite formations can be examined at closer range. It only opens every half hour so you might have time for a quick pie and chips in one of the nearby cafes first. On entering, most visitors, however, rush through to The Crystal Quest – this fantasy adventure display is modelled on Tolkien’s masterpiece and features Wraith-type figures,

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More subterranean spectacles...

cave painting and the odd phallic baton (trust us, you’ll want to rush the kids past these). There’s Britain’s oldest skeleton, too – 9,000 years old and counting. It all gets a bit philosophical at the end, with the help of Dolly Parton. You’ll see. Natural high Give your quads a work-out next with a climb up the 274-step Jacob’s Ladder leading to the top of the Gorge. Up here you’ll find a lookout tower providing stunning views of the Mendips, Somerset Moors and, in fine weather, the Quantocks, Exmoor and the Bristol Channel. From here you can take in a ramble on the hill slopes including the three-mile round-trip Clifftop Gorge Walk (clearly signposted). If it’s a sunny day, you might fancy rounding the day off with an opentop bus trip through the Gorge.

knights and so on, plus flashing lights, doom-laden narrator and loud sound effects. The very small (or easily frightened) can bypass it via an optional exit. It should – for the purposes of the reader – be admitted here that I actually screamed at one point. But let’s not dwell on that… Cannibals and phallic batons Grab a cream tea first by all means, but do not miss The Museum of Prehistory. There is some fantastically gruesome stuff in here, and I defy any bloodthirsty little

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tyke not to be impressed. Yes, there are flint arrowheads and all that malarkey, but Cheddar is Britain’s earliest authenticated cannibal site and this place tells you everything you’ve ever wanted to know about our eyeball-scoffing ancestors but were afraid to ask. In addition, there’s a real-life Mesolithic hunter-gatherer (or a drama school graduate, possibly) making fire in his outside hut; a massive, stuff-ofnightmares half-decayed rotating skull; a cool optical illusion that turns a caveman into a skeleton before your very eyes; hands-on

Thrill seekers If you’re wondering what the filthy- but happy-looking people in boiler suits who are walking around the village have been up to, they’ve been on a guided Adventure Caving expedition. Helmet, lamps, boots and boilersuits are provided and, in groups of 10, you’ll explore four chambers beyond the normal tourist boundaries. To take part you need to be at least 11 years old and four-foot-eight, and book in advance. We’ve pencilled it in for next year. CHEDDAR CAVES CHEDDAR, SOMERSET BS27 3QF. OPEN DAILY 10AM5PM (5.30PM DURING SCHOOL HOLS AND JULY/AUG), EXPLORER TICKET FOR ALL ATTRACTIONS £18.50 ADULT/£12 AGES 5-15/UNDER 5S FREE (FAMILY TICKETS AND DISCOUNTS WHEN YOU BOOK ONLINE). FFI: 01934 742343, WWW.CHEDDARCAVES.COM

CLEARWELL CAVES Nr Coleford, Forest of Dean, Glos GL16 8JR. Ffi: 01594 832535, www. clearwellcaves.com • Doctor Who was here! Yes, parts of the 2005 Christmas special were filmed in this amazing place, voted Family Attraction of the Year for Gloucestershire 2003 by the Good Britain Guide. Set in the middle of some lovely Forest of Dean countryside, there’s the atmospheric nine caverns, a blacksmith’s workshop, tea room, shop (where you can buy crystals, minerals and ochres) and picnic area. Iron ore was mined here from before the time of Christ until the middle of the 20th century (small-scale mining for paint pigment still goes on here). CLIFTON OBSERVATORY & CAVES Clifton Downs, nr Suspension Bridge, Bristol BS8 3LT. Ffi: 0117 974 1242 • Great idea after a picnic on the Downs, but not for the vertigo-inclined… Funny-looking towered building overlooking the Avon Gorge from which you can descend into St Vincent’s Cave – sometimes also known as the Giant’s Cave – and onto a viewing platform in the side of the Avon Gorge, 250 feet above the valley floor. There’s also a camera obscura which, if you’ve never seen one before, is guaranteed to produce a few impressed oohs and aaahs as you “spy” on people for miles around. WOOKEY HOLE CAVES & PAPER MILL Wookey, nr Wells, Somerset BA5 1BB. Ffi: 01749 672243, www.wookey.co.uk • Terrific fun for kids, with dramatic (and a teeny bit camp) guides turning the whole thing into a subterranean panto, with a whizzy Light and Sound Experience and tall tales galore. The caves are breathtaking, and on-site papermill unexpectedly interesting. There’s also a museum about the caves, the Fairy Garden and the Dinosaur Valley (complete with life-size dinosaurs and a 25-foot King Kong), a teddy-bear collection, a magical hall of mirrors and a wonderful old Penny Arcade. Circus-themed Big Top Restaurant. Suitable for all ages.

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Skills

COURSES, WORKSHOPS, JOBS AND STUFF

ActionStation Young people of Bristol will soon have a £5.75million new hub to call their own. Anna Britten gets the lowdown.

PIC:S: CAMILLA ADAMS

he press loathes them. Their community centres, sports grounds and EMAs have been hoovered up by the public spending cuts. But young people in Bristol have a champion in the form of The Creative Youth Network (formerly The Kingswood Foundation), whose new project The Station, opening this October, is a state-of-the-art, £5.75million youth ‘hub’ just for them. Boasting radio and music studios, a range of workshops, a large performance space and hanging out area, it aims to seek out and encourage young people’s hidden skills and improve their futures. Plan B would definitely approve. “The sheer size and scale of our activities here will be inspiring,” says Creative Youth Network director Sandy Hore-Ruthven. “The Station has the potential to be a bright beacon, promoting the imagination, determination and achievements of young people at a time when the media is too often focused on presenting negative stereotypes. We are determined that The Station will play a vital role in changing perceptions of young people. This is so important at a time when 76% of media coverage of young people is negative. Creative Youth Network uses creative art forms to unlock the potential of young people and get them believing in themselves.” In such tough economic

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times, however, it was always going to take more than the CYN’s “compelling vision” to win over hard-nosed investors. “The Station is built on a sound, sustainable business model,” explains Hore-Ruthven. “It will be self-funding. Hiring out the space for activities and projects will generate significant funds. We are also attracting significant corporate funding as well as local authority and trust funding. I believe that investors recognised the remarkable potential that the scale of this place presents in promoting a positive image of young people.” Taking shape this summer on the site of the

1920s-built, listed Old Fire Station on the edge of Broadmead, the hub certainly occupies the perfect city-centre location, neither too edgily intimidating nor too leafily bland. Hore-Ruthven says he also loves the quirkiness of the space, pointing out it has the longest fireman’s pole in the country (although sadly this will be encased as part of the design and not useable). “This is a neutral space. It isn’t owned by the local authority or a commercial business – this is important in attracting young people.

Architecturally, it has an ‘art deco’ feel and a rich history. When we were discussing the design with our team of young people, the Station Drivers, they decided it was important to recognise the history of the building. The interior has been designed to reflect this – we’re using flame colours to provide highlights. We’ve got some old pictures and artefacts from the building’s fire station days. We’ve also heard lots of stories from people who worked here in the 1950s and 60s. This building has seen a lot. “On completion, we’ll have

VENUEMAGAZINE

3/28/2012 2:54:06 PM

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Voluntary work in Albania...

And from the inside...

a performance space able to seat 250 people, several dance and fitness studios and a media editing suite, as well as space for one-to-one counselling and sexual health screening. Most importantly though, the space of The Station will be flexible and receptive to the mark our young people will make on the place.” The Station is described as being for young people with “the most challenging backgrounds and bleak futures” – but Hore-Ruthven insists it is a universal service and that every young person in Bristol is welcome. “But, we will offer specific projects and counselling for young people battling with drugs, abuse and mental health issues. Social services, schools and youth workers refer these young people to our services. We’ll also run outreach programmes in the city centre to make people aware of the comprehensive support we’re offering.” It spells good news for CVs, too, running a diverse range of courses through which young people will be able to gain qualifications and get experience. As well as Levels

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// Skills news //

Got an event to list? Submit it to us at venue.co.uk/ submit-a-listing

1 and 2 in music, which are equivalent to a GCSE, they will offer short courses in various art-forms as well as in marketing, building management, numeracy, literacy, IT, as well as music and dance workshops. By being involved in the running of The Station, and working closely with a core professional team, young people are also well-placed to gain valuable experience and career advice. In terms of attendance, it’s flexible and up to the young people themselves. Opening hours are hoped to be 9am to 10pm (though this is fundingdependent). “In terms of how often young people will attend,” says Hore-Ruthven." “It’s up to them really. They can come every day if they want to, some might come a few times a week to hang out with their friends or to attend a dance class. Some might just come once a month to a gig we’re holding – it’s flexible and dependent on what they want. “We’ll use Facebook and Twitter to advertise the activities we’re putting on at The Station. We’re aiming to make these fun, varied and

engaging so that they appeal to most young people. We’re positioning it as a relaxed, chilled-out place where young people can meet their friends, come to gigs and just hang out.” The Station are running an online competition hosted at www.mqusic.com where young people can make a two-minute video about what they want to see at The Station (closing date Sun 29 April). The entry with the most votes will win £75. “We need to spread the word,” says Sandy. “To make young people aware of The Station and what we’re offering them. We want them to get involved. We’d also like to encourage people to visit The Station’s Facebook page where they can post ideas, express opinions, ask questions etc. “We’re listening to young people. If they tell us what they want from The Station, we’ll try and provide it.”

// Fancy a fortnight running language/arts workshops, helping with building projects or organising mountain treks and generally enjoying a fortnight in one of the most beautiful parts of Europe? The Balkans Peace Park Project (balkanspeacepark. org) runs a six-week summer programme of voluntary work in northern Albania. You can teach English, help out in workshops or organise extra-curricular activities. You’ll have to put together/raise your own funding, but you can contribute in whichever way uses your talents best – and you’ll get to stay in places that backpackers would give their eye teeth to visit. Venue’s Albanophile sub-editor’s already signed up for a fortnight in early August. B3P (as it’s known) has been working for 10 years to promote sustainable tourism in the border regions of Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo in the name of fostering economic development without damaging a unique natural environment and of encouraging co-operation in an area which was in the frontline during the 1999 Kosovo crisis. The full programme runs from Mon 2 July to Fri 10 Aug in the villages of Thethi and Vermosh, and you’ve got until 30 Apr to apply. See the B3P website for details and an application form. “Hi there, I’m looking for Kensington High st.”

FFI: WWW. CREATIVEYOUTHNETWORK.ORG. UK/OUR-PLACES/THE-STATIONBRISTOL.HTML FACEBOOK: CREATIVE YOUTH NETWORK

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“Come and enjoy the company of Bristol’s Members on our 3rd Birthday!”

Held at Goldbrick House on Wednesday 25th April 2012. Members Bristol has joined forces with MANtastic, the first men only aesthetic surgery provider who will joining us for the evening. The evening starts at 7.30 and is located in the Loft at Goldbrick House, 69 Park Street, Bristol – why not book for dinner before hand in Goldbrick Houses restaurant the next floor down. The event is FREE to celebrate Members Bristol’s 3rd Birthday!

A social networking group for gay men in Bristol. Monthly drinks events held in the comfort and privacy of Goldbrick House on Park street, Bristol. www.members-bristol.co.uk: enquiries: info@members-bristol.co.uk

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enquiries: info@mantastic.com 3/28/2012 3:29:03 PM

Cal of the wild Darryl W Bullock talks to Bristolbased director Christian Martin about his latest film.

rinciple shooting recently finished on ‘Cal’, the new movie from Bristolbased Bonne Idée Productions, makers of the award-winning ‘Shank’, ‘Release’ and ‘Buffering’ – three of the most successful British gay movies of recent years. A follow-up of sorts to ‘Shank’, Cal sees the eponymous hero (played by Wayne Virgo) return to a city broken and battered by demonstrations and violent dissent, rising youth unemployment and a country in the grip of austere public service cuts. “It’s more of a stand-alone film than a sequel,” says writer, director and Lib Dem councillor Christian Martin. “Cal’s grown up, he’s travelled and he can’t believe what he’s come back to. We’re fleshing out the character, but you don’t need to have seen ‘Shank’ to follow the story.” Shot in 54 different locations across the city, filming was almost abandoned before it started when Christian and members of his camera crew were arrested after police received reports that guns and Molotov cocktails were being handled in the director’s back garden. A police helicopter was scrambled and about 20 officers, including an armed response unit, were dispatched.

Luckily, police soon realised that these were props for the movie. Utilising previously unseen footage taken during last summer’s riots, the film also stars Daniel Brocklebank (‘Shakespeare in Love’, ‘Merlin’) as Ivan, a drug-dealing pimp; Emily Corcoran as Cal’s nymphomaniac, alcoholic Auntie Jane; Lucy Russell (‘Tristan and Isolde’) as his terminally sick mother; and Bernie Hodges (‘Release’, ‘Buffering’) as an egomaniacal reporter. “We flyered all of the coffee shops around Montpelier and Stokes Croft in the hope of finding footage of the riots,” Christian tells me. “What we’ve found is great, with some really scary, quite brutal stuff. We’re being very select about the footage we’re using. A lot of film students went down with professional cameras; we’re paying them a licence to use their footage and they’ll get a credit in the film.” The raid on his home handily supplied him with footage of a police helicopter which he intends to utilise in the movie. “We should finish editing by the end of April,” Christian adds. “The hope is that it will be out at the end of summer. In this film it’s basically incidental that the lead characters are gay. It’s definitely my most mature piece: all of my lefty politics come out in it, but we’re quite sympathetic to the police. After all, we’re all victims.”

EVENTS NOT TO MISS IN APRIL Apr 4 // CycleOut Bristol Meet by King William Statue, Queen Sq, Bristol, 6pm. Ffi: http:// tiny.cc/cycleoutbristol • The first Wednesday evening ride of the 2012 season. These are short rides, exploring urban cycle routes in and around Bristol, designed for people who are new or returning to cycling and for cyclists who want to get to know Bristol by bike. The group will always stop to help with any mechanical failures, but please remember to bring along spare inner tubes and a puncture repair kit.

Apr 7 // Come to Daddy Cavern Club (under the Crown Pub), 10 All Saints Lane, St Nicholas Market, Bristol, BS1 1JH, 10pm3am, £5/£4 before 11pm. Ffi: www.cometodaddyclub.co.uk • The men-only club night returns with a fantastic new venue, superb atmosphere and a great soundtrack. Dancing, cruising and more for bears, cubs and their admirers. Apr 7 // Easter Party Bath Tap, 19 St James’s Parade, Bath, BA1 1UL, 9pm-1.30am. Ffi: thebathtap@hotmail.co.uk or Facebook: New Bath Tap • Lots of fun and games, including an Easter egg hunt.

Apr 8 // Living Springs Metropolitan Community Church United Reformed Church Halls, Grove St, Bath, BA2 6PJ, 6pm. Ffi: www. mccbath.org.uk • Gay church, open to all. Recognition and blessing of relationships

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offered. Tonight’s special service is an Easter Sunday celebration. Apr 14 // Rainbow Cafe St Michael’s Centre, next to Little Theatre Cinema, off Westgate St, Bath, BA1 1SG. 10.30am-12.30pm. Ffi: 0870 811 1990 • Organised by Gay West, each Saturday the café offers a safe, affordable space for gay and bisexual men and women to enjoy a cuppa, some conversation and the opportunity to meet others. Apr 15 // West Walking Women Ffi: 07804 469991 • Friendly walking group for lesbians meets the second Sunday of the month. Walks are led by different leaders in different areas ranging from The Wye Valley to Glastonbury. The walks are varied, set at a medium pace and last for around three hours (plus a lunch stop). Well-behaved dogs welcome. Apr 18 // Gay Men’s Book Group Ffi: bristolbookclub@hotmail.co.uk • Monthly meet up to discuss books written by, or about, gay men. This month’s book is ‘The Book of Salt’ by Monique Truong. Apr 21 // Adilads Unit 35, Bristol, BS1, £10 entry – members only (membership available from website). Ffi: www. bristolfetishcrew.com • A new monthly night from the Bristol Fetish Crew for guys into sports kit, trackies and trainers. Strict dress code: see website. Full venue address will only be made available to members. Apr 28 // Liberty Toto’s Bar, 125 Redcliffe St, Bristol, BS1 6HU, 9pm-2am, £6 otd/£5 before 11pm or from liberty.bristol@ live.co.uk Ffi: libertybristol. co.uk • Bristol’s only regular women-only club night, with all-female bar staff, performers and promoters. Tonight with DJ Sazzle behind the decks.

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HUNGRY FOR MORE? Flip the page for Venue & Folio’s food & drink mini-mag, Eating Out West

Lesbian&Gay

// THE MONTH AHEAD //

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