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Month: January 2016

Review: Inkheart

Written by Hannah Foy on . Posted in Theatre.

HOME presents its first Christmas production with the opening of Inkheart. The production is a transformation of Cornelia Funke’s novel. Family friendly, full of humour and all the imagination of a child, this is a show to catch this festive season as an alternative to the pantomime.

The tale follows Meggie and her father Mo as the ink of the words of the books they’ve loved and looked after appear to have bled into the real world. Capricorn, known as the ‘baddest of bad guys’ is on the hunt for every remaining copy of Inkheart to ensure that he does not have to return to his world. Yet, there’s a further twist, as Meggie’s mother appears to have been transported and trapped inside Inheart’s book world. With a range of characters stuck in a world that they don’t belong in, it’s only Mo—the famous ‘Silvertongue’—who can attempt to put the world back in order. Following Mo, Meggie and her Aunt Elinor jump from England, to France and then Italy. The three embark on their mission to save Inkheart, and beat the bad guys.

It’s clearly a child-directed performance, but I did enjoy being taken back to my world of imagination of bad versus good and a quest of a story. The tale was cleverly self aware, with intertextuality twisted through the story’s narrative and re-emerging onto stage. The school group at the front of the theatre greatly enjoyed the interaction of the cast as they helped direct them to Capricorn. Mo himself appeared on my row in search of Fenoglio, the author of Inkheart, bringing the stage closer to the audience and carrying us into the story.

The stage transformed fittingly to each new narrative of the performance; a tremendous pile of books one moment, to a beach the next, before hiding Capricorn’s evil liar beneath it. Katherine Carlton, who played Meggie, was passionate, determined and brilliant in her portrayal, holding the stage and delivering the tale. The cast were eager, believable and amusing, capturing many laughs from the audience while portraying a range of traits, lives and passions.

Album: David Bowie – Blackstar

Written by Jacob Bernard-Banton on . Posted in Music.

8/10

There’s a reason why David Bowie failed to appear on Five Years, the 2013 BBC documentary chronicling his remarkable career. The 69-year-old is, as the NME recently claimed, “positively allergic to the idea of heritage rock.” He simply isn’t a man to look back down memory lane. Well, sort of. His 2013 album The Next Day was touted as a comeback, boasting cover art inspired by the famous sleeve for 1977’s Heroes with a white square obscuring Bowie’s visage.

Another sly reference to his past pops up on his newest album Blackstar, his twenty-fifth record. ‘Girl Loves Me’ features lyrics clotted with Polari gay slang and the Nadsat parlance of the droogs of Anthony Burgess’ dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange, forever a preoccupation of Bowie’s; it seemingly recycles the cut-up lyric technique he used for much of his mid-70s material.

But, by and large, that’s Blackstar’s only neat reference to the past. The rest of the album is a stunning, serpentine lunge towards the future. Sombre saxophone wheezes and wafts around the spellbinding title track, Bowie’s quivering, vulnerable vocals delivering a bleak doomsday portent: “On the day of execution, only women kneel and smile.”

The narcotic shifts in mood and texture within the song perfectly reflect Blackstar’s superbly ambiguous nature. Observant Bowie fans might detect some traces of the wired mania of 1976’s Station to Station in the sudden attack of guitar and shrieking electronics on ‘Lazarus’, albeit slowed down to a crawl as warm purling keys and mellow sax come in like a quiet breeze. But still it sounds like nothing else, a tune you want to totally immerse yourself in. Bowie’s tremulous vocals commanding a beguiling storm of hushed jazz-rock. It’s all so beautifully somnolent, you barely notice Bowie’s striking lyrics: “I was living like a king, then I used up all my money,” he sighs, “I was looking for your ass.”

At its most thrilling, Blackstar confirms that Bowie is the master of reinvention, even when it concerns the task of reinventing his own songs—the spectacular re-recorded versions of 2014’s ‘‘Tis a Pity She Was a Whore’ and ‘Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)’.