Culture Wars: Articles2009-07-03T14:33:07ZCopyright (c) 2009 Culture WarsExpressionEnginetag:culturewars.org.uk,2009:07:03Selling Medeatag:culturewars.org.uk,2009:index.php/article/2.19712009-07-03T13:18:53Z2009-07-03T13:40:54ZHow do you turn Medea into a desirable, advertisable product? And how do you make people want every little piece of her? First of all, you turn her into a victim. The sheer violence, masqueraded as care, with which the four women of the marketing company abuse Medea physically and emotionally, making her into a savage, tangling her hair and smearing her face with dirt, is perhaps the strongest point of the production.
]]>A fake budgie in a new cagetag:culturewars.org.uk,2009:index.php/article/2.19702009-07-01T13:40:35Z2009-07-01T13:43:36ZIf only it could have stayed like this – all eerie restraint, insinuation and confusion. But the show can’t stay still forever and the director and his new directions start to take over. Tighe opens up his box of tricks and scatters them everywhere – we get elaborate vignettes, prolonged silences, miming, moaning, birdsong, babies crying, manic laughter, the constant ping of a microwave.
]]>A war on two frontstag:culturewars.org.uk,2009:index.php/article/2.19692009-07-01T13:18:03Z2009-07-01T13:32:04ZAgainst Michael Taylor’s ever-changing sky, John Dove’s production is too reliant on the inherent nobility and tragic waste of the man in uniform. Rather than truly making us bleed for the characters presented, it tugs at our sadness of the abstract idea. These soldiers are too often manikins stilly representing a generation.
]]>Accidentally empathetictag:culturewars.org.uk,2009:index.php/article/2.19682009-07-01T13:09:44Z2009-07-01T13:32:45ZWhat Chris Goode has achieved is a story with so much to say that you needn’t notice quite how spectacularly well he’s saying it. With such gentle efficiency, heartfelt charm and modest deference, Goode could has all the makings of a ‘freelance social interventionist’ himself.
]]>Policing the Brighton publictag:culturewars.org.uk,2009:index.php/article/2.19672009-06-29T17:32:14Z2009-06-29T17:47:15ZAfter discussing many aspects of the booze ban in Brighton last week, it struck me that many of us were thinking about how this law might be fought in a legal way. I think that bringing it out into the open and forcing the council to defend it, politically, has a much better chance of reversing the DPPO sooner than any challenge in the courts.
]]>CW editorial note - 26 June 2009tag:culturewars.org.uk,2009:index.php/article/2.19662009-06-26T12:53:05Z2009-07-03T14:33:07ZColumbine shootings, Fanny and Alexander, As you like it and Novel about my wife.
]]>They’re kids! They tell people!tag:culturewars.org.uk,2009:index.php/article/2.19542009-06-26T12:35:42Z2009-06-29T17:48:43ZAn interview with Dave Cullen, author of a definitive new account of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, exploring what really happened, the role of the media in perpetuating myths, and the peculiar truth about psychopathy, terrorism and self-aggrandizing violence.
]]>Theatre, Life, Death, God, Love and Faith - yet an un-Bergmanesque Bergmantag:culturewars.org.uk,2009:index.php/article/2.19652009-06-26T12:29:39Z2009-06-26T15:41:40ZAs with many Bergman characters, Helen’s profession as an actor is her life. Among the deleted scenes are several soliloquies where she says that her life is a masquerade, putting a shocking spin on what is seen in the film version.
]]>Kak kak kaktag:culturewars.org.uk,2009:index.php/article/2.19642009-06-26T12:02:24Z2009-06-26T13:36:26ZIt is striking how tenaciously he clings to the ideas instilled in him, refusing to believe the horrors that are reported about the actions of Mugabe’s party.
]]>Woman inside man describes womantag:culturewars.org.uk,2009:index.php/article/2.19632009-06-26T11:58:55Z2009-06-26T13:36:56ZPerkins inhabits the male mindset utterly convincingly, drawing her male narrator with total commitment.
]]>Ukranian in New Yorktag:culturewars.org.uk,2009:index.php/article/2.19622009-06-26T11:54:14Z2009-07-02T13:13:15ZKrasikov’s women do not quite fit into their new surroundings; they stay within their communities, regarding the Americans they encounter with a certain mild derision.
]]>Gulped down gratefullytag:culturewars.org.uk,2009:index.php/article/2.19572009-06-26T01:45:57Z2009-06-26T13:37:58ZWe are swept along by a carnival of lust, action, poetry and music: entertained by two sparring lovers, entranced by a shepherd’s philosophising and unexpectedly stopped in our tracks by a painful and delicate song.
]]>A zest for knowledgetag:culturewars.org.uk,2009:index.php/article/2.19552009-06-26T01:13:18Z2009-06-26T13:39:19ZOne leaves the show reeling - the brain buzzing even if the heart isn’t quite soaring – determined to question everything we once held true, to examine life anew and revel in all its certain uncertainties.
]]>Singing isn’t enoughtag:culturewars.org.uk,2009:index.php/article/2.19562009-06-26T01:00:50Z2009-06-26T13:39:51ZWalker has talent but it was never going to be unearthed in this type of show. The actors have charm but they belong in straight musicals and not this musical play. And although The Young Vic’s programming shows guts, it needs to make sure its shows have the goods to back these gutsy choices.
]]>CW editorial note - 19 June 2009tag:culturewars.org.uk,2009:index.php/article/2.19512009-06-19T15:12:57Z2009-06-26T15:59:58ZHuman rights, twenty-somethings and the recession, and Kursk
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