Stuart Young Investigates…

Mad about Alice?

Alice in Wonderland arrives this Friday on a wave of hype, controversy, and marketing. Foremost is the dispute over which cinemas would agree to show the film – Disney intends to release the DVD in a lightning-fast three months which will cut into movie audiences. Then there’s the impressive volume of press coverage, the promising trailer, the big names attached; from every angle, the expectation associated with Alice threatens to overwhelm the film itself.

Based on the children’s books by Lewis Carroll (the rather less snappily titled Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There) this version is directed by Tim Burton, the eccentric filmmaker responsible for The Nightmare Before Christmas, Sweeney Todd and several other classics of the beloved-by-teenage-girls-who-wear-too-much-eyeliner variety. Read More

Reviewed by Ali Quaile. Few bands have been as consistent in the quality of their music as Hot Chip. From their debut album ‘Coming on Strong’ in 2004 they have been giving us their quirky electronic pop which the nation can’t get enough of. Their latest album ‘One Life Stand’ is no exception containing its fair share of blippy synthesizers, drum machines and Alex Taylor’s dulcet falsetto. The epitome of geek chic, Hot Chip manages to combine an array of electronic instruments with heartfelt lyrics giving us their original sound. Read More

Tim B-G lays one down on the new film ‘Youth In Revolt’.

Written by one of comedy’s bright young sparks and featuring a cast of young stand-ups and sketch comedians whose cumulative star rating this festival must be well into the hundreds, Party was always going to be one of those talked-about shows that everyone wanted to see. And as such it benefitted from a very receptive audience, prepared to laugh away at every little joke. Despite my unusually low levels of cynicism (given the levels of hype) on entering the show, I actually found my experience of the play struggling to reach the heady heights of expectation. Read More

3.40 pm, Free, the Argyle

Tommy Holgate, a comedian with a soft heart and a bizarre deamanour, presents highlights from his charity bike ride to Marrakech, with the bizarre intention of disco dancing in the market square. What this amounts to is a lovely afternoon spent with anecdotes and video footage outlining the trails and tribulations of an epic maltloaf fulled journey. Some moments fringe on the frankly bizarre, but all in all the time spent together was a delight – plus its all for Great Ormond Street so you have no reason not to go.

Positioned as somewhere between Tim Burton, Hitchcock and Poe, ‘Ernest and the Pale Moon’ is an incredibly dark play focused on the obsessions and guilt of a deranged individual. Between the audience and the players, a crooked doorway suggests we are entering a dour world at once both victorian and of the present day. Between the four performers, this atmosphere is maintained throughout superbly, and as the plot unwinds gradually, the entire produciton glistens with professionalism and innovation.

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The crux of any performance of ‘Metamorphosis’ is the problem of alienation. The bizarre concept of Kafka’s novella, in which the hardworking Gregor awakens one morning to find he has been turned into a grotesque insect, is one that does not lend itself to audience grabbing theatre. But that is the point – a fine line must be kept between the original intent of the author and making an ‘enjoyable’ piece of accessible drama. Read More