‘Our father who art in heaven, Howard be thy name’: Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train opens to a kneeling and newly incarcerated Angel Cruz, played by Danny Solomon, as he stumbles over his prayer.
We immediately begin to get a taste of the play’s dark wit as about two minutes of profanity ensues between Cruz and two other prisoners over the speakers, mostly consisting of ‘shut the f*ckity f*ck up’, ‘no you shut the f*ckity f*ck up!’ We learn that standoffish, quick-talking Cruz is awaiting trial for, as he puts it, ‘only shooting him in the ass!’
The beginning of the play continues with this sentiment until suddenly it turns dark: the man Cruz ‘only shot in the ass’ has died, and Cruz, after a failed attempt to hang himself, now faces the potential of a life behind bars. Here, facing his future, he meets fellow inmate and serial murderer, Lucius Jenkins.
Director Jake Murray effectively negotiates these sudden changes in pace and the intertwining of comedy, desperation, and reflection. The minimalist staging, with suspended frames of wiring to represent the prisoners caging and a large American flag as the backdrop, never distract from the performances of the actors whilst serving as a constant reminder of the fine line between what it means to be trapped and to be free.
Faz Singhateh gave a brilliant performance as Lucius Jenkins. Each time he was on stage there seemed a palpable energy and his portrayal of the complex character of Lucius was as hilarious as it was provocative. Danny Solomon also gave a great performance, especially in his ability to tackle the emotional layers of the play and the psychological workings of his character.
Credit must all be given to the rest of the cast. Alice Bryony Frankham as lawyer Mary Jane, held her own in playing the only female character in the play, as did Alastair Gillies and Garth Williams in playing very different kinds of prison guards. However, I would say that the majority of the cast could do with working a bit on their American accents.
As a whole, Elysium Theatre Company’s performance of Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train was a provocative, funny, and captivating piece of theatre which tackled issues of faith, freedom and the questioning of our own morality.
Manchester Palestine Action and BDS Manchester have protested the Isreali-Palestinian war by dropping a banner from the roof of the Students’ Union.
Pictures show Campaigns Officer Deej Malik-Johnson attending the protest, but it’s not yet clear whether he was part of the group that scaled the SU building to place the banner.
Speculation has circled that the group climbed the scaffolding at the back of the building — which is currently undergoing renovation.
The banner drop was the crescendo of a protest that started off as a vigil on St. Peter’s Square. The Mancunion understands that the banner was placed on the roof by the BDS campaign, but its leader Huda Ammori would not disclose the identity of the specific student in question.
Campaigns Officer Deej Malik-Johnson told The Mancunion that the “really quite moving” vigil and march was well attended, with even celebrities such as Ken Loach, the filmmaker, showing solidarity with the student organisers.
Deej continued: “Of course, it [also] coincided with the 70th anniversary of the Nakba… and then there was also, because synchronisity [sic] is like this, it was the day the US opened their embassy in Jerusalem.”
Nakba literally means ‘disaster’ or ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic, and is the word used to mark the day there was a mass exodus of Palestinian people at the behest of the Isreali government. The US embassy opening was met with mass protest and sparked a massacre in Gaza, which is what the protest was mostly commemorating, through many means such as reading the names of the 58 people that died in the clash.
Deej went on to say, in regards to the banner drop, that it “was not organised or supported by the students’ union.” However, he said that, if not thinking in his official capacity as an exec member, “as a student activist, it is something that we do.”
Huda Ammori told The Mancunion that overall “it was a hugely successful protest; there was a sit in on Oxford road and loads of students were engaging, listening and were emotionally affected by what they were hearing.”
The battle over compensation for University strikes has taken a new turn as the first of legal proceedings against an institution have begun.
The University of Lancaster is facing the challenge from Cathy Olpin, a first-year student who is studying Natural Sciences at the University of Lancaster.
Law firm Leigh Day, who are handling the case, have indicated that they believe missed contact hours violate their client’s statutory rights, as part of the Consumer Rights Act.
Statutory Rights provide the ability for a refund for goods or services that are not delivered as expected or promised, and it is under this principle that Leigh Day hope to see Ms. Olphin reimbursed for missed contact hours.
Ms. Olphin said that she was “fighting to hold university the authorities to account for their breach of contract with thousands of students. Together we have lost thousands of hours of teaching time that we have paid for.”
One of the central controversies in the dispute has been clarity over exactly what service the payment of tuition fees constitutes.
There have been suggestions that tuition payments do not specify the need for timetabled contact hours, and at a meeting with senior staff last month, Manchester University students were reportedly told that they technically pay for a degree and not an education.
Ms. Olphin’s legal team have used her course guide to prove the necessity of contact hours as a means to an end of passing her degree – the LEC (Lancaster Environment Centre) Handbook states that: “Past experience shows that students that repeatedly miss lectures are likely to fail or gain very low marks.”
This appears to show that the completion of a degree is dependent upon the provision of contact hours, meaning that strikes have led to the violation of student’s statutory rights as consumers of their degrees.
Universities have been criticised for ‘shooting themselves in the foot’ by not attempting to organise replacement tuition hours through means such as widening the size of tutorial groups or extending lengths of lectures that took place post-strikes. Such measures could have been seen as replacement tuition and may have meant universities did not technically break the Consumer Rights Act.
Even though Ms. Olphin’s case may be legally viable, the issue remains over how compensation would be calculated. There is no set breakdown for yearly fees into weeks or even certain lectures.
Furthermore, in many cases, strikes did not last the whole semester and were often not continuous from start to end. Some students also had only certain modules affected.
Due to this complication, many universities have offered to prevent profiting from the disruption through investing in projects to benefit students.
There is still dissatisfaction at this resolution, with the University of Manchester’s offering of waiving the gown hire fee for third years at graduation ridiculed.
Universities up and down the country will surely be worried by this commencement of legal action, however, and will likely wait anxiously to see the compensation Lancaster shall be forced to provide if Miss Olphin is successful.
Her case could come to be the first of many in what could turn out to be one of the largest statutory rights payouts in UK History.
Fresh from the sweet success of second album Cool Like You, Blossoms strutted out onto the O2 Apollo stage, brimming with a new-found swagger and a redesigned brand identity, ready to do some serious uplifting. “‘Ello Manchester, we are Blossoms from Stockport”, introduced Tom Ogden, as if we didn’t already know.
Clad in a kind of Ghostbusters boiler suit and rocking some mega-cool curtains, Ogden’s confidence had come a long way since the early days promoting their debut record. There was a smugness to the originality of their most recent tracks and their synthy 80s groove which dominated the show.
It was very ABBA, and the lights were reminiscent of some 70s discotheque, primary coloured and smokey. Cool Like You track ‘There’s A Reason Why’ opened the affair, kicking us off without delay into what was to be a seamless set of feel-good tunes. They managed to create a distinctively Stranger Things atmosphere, as they rocked the flares and synth combo like they’d been in the business for decades.
Certainly, Cool Like You is more uplifting than that first record. Tracks ‘Unfaithful’ and ‘Cool Like You’ reached levels of infectious energy previously untouched by the band. Album closer ‘Love Talk’ was a particular highlight, inciting a ripple of heartbreaks as Ogden launched into “You’re just a flight away…”.
Old classics were as well received as ever, sonically revived slightly to fit the tone of their 80s direction. ‘My Favourite Room’ was once again Ogden’s limelight moment, as he crooned the recognisable, if slightly overdone now, “Because you’re gorgeous…” followed by a touching rendition of Oasis’ ‘Half The World Away’. Maybe the band need to give up the ‘Last Christmas’ cover though…
‘At Most A Kiss’ and ‘Getaway’ provided the perfect encore tracks, reminding the fans that though the band may enjoy a Grease cover every now and then, they are still the boys we know and love. The obvious closing track ‘Charlemagne’ (will they ever shake it?) induced the expected mosh pits and chanting, as Ogden chose Dua Lipa’s ‘New Rules’ for his classic ad-lib.
Blossoms have done themselves a favour with this second album. We were satisfied with their status as quirky indie band from Stockport, but now we’re faced with ABBA.2, and isn’t it wonderful?
The past year or so has not been the best that the games industry has seen: following debacles around huge ‘AAA’ titles like Destiny 2, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, and Star Wars: Battlefront II, consumer distrust rose to an all time high, climaxing in an ongoing investigation from a number of international agencies into the legality of loot boxes.
This distrust has leaked into the way gamers have reacted to press releases. Increasingly, adverts for games from the likes of EA, Activision, and Bethesda have been met with increasing derision, and industry-wide, the hype machine is becoming less and less effective after the aggressive marketing and poor reception of games like No Man’s Sky and the aforementioned Star Wars: Battlefront II.
No Man’s Sky has become a cautionary tale about buying into hype. photo: BagoGames@Flickr
With conventional advertising streams facing such issues, it is perhaps unsurprising that we have seen a sharp rise in ‘guerrilla marketing.’
Guerrilla marketing, simply put, is when companies adopt riskier marketing strategies to promote their products in places we might not expect, thus bypassing that bit of our psyche that has become so adept at ignoring adverts, or, in the case of games, feeling distrustful of them.
Three recent examples spring to mind, and all take the form of the industry’s new preferred guerrilla marketing strategy: the retail leak.
First, EA’s Skate series put itself back on the radar after being listed for sale by Swedish retailer Webhallen. Although the cover art looked dubiously low quality and the source was admittedly obscure for a company of EA’s size, potential motives for this move were clear.
photo:Webhallen.com
EA were, at the time, caught in one of the most vicious cycles of consumer backlash I’ve ever seen: every tweet and Facebook post they put out was met with mass dismissal, with consumers lining up to throw insults about EA’s highly criticised microtransaction model, or make a joke about EA’s infamous, “a sense of pride and accomplishment” line.
Leaking the news through Webhallen, if EA were indeed the people behind it, circumvented much of this, and refocused the issue on the legitimacy of the source rather than issues surrounding microtransactions. There is some credence in this argument: it seems intuitive, and EA do have ties in Sweden through DICE, who are based there.
Next, a listing for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Remastered appeared through Amazon Italy, sending fans into a fever pitch of excitement. Investigations by various Reddit and Twitter users seemed to verify this information, although claiming the remaster would not feature multiplayer from ‘charlieINTEL’ dampened excitement.
photo:Mancunion
Again motives for this are evident: Activision have a habit of releasing massively unpopular trailers and news that attract all the wrong kinds of press, and leaking this information through Amazon and charlieINTEL would allow them to gauge reaction without having to formalise any plans.
Most recently, a leak from Walmart teased a whole host of titles, including a new Splinter Cell, a new Assassin’s Creed, a new Destiny DLC, as well as Just Cause 4, Forza Horizon 5, Borderlands 3, RAGE 2, Gears of War 5 and Dragon Quest 2. Oh, and a new DC Lego game.
photo:Walmart
Given the array of developers and publishers behind these games, finding a clear motive for such a leak is almost impossible, but, with E3 just a month away, the leak would certainly have the effect of creating precursory tremors for the internationally anticipated expo.
Of course, it remains possible that this form of guerrilla marketing doesn’t go further than the retailers, who may themselves be trying to increase traffic onto their sites, grab some headlines, and create conversation and a buzz around them.
Unfortunately, this increased tendency towards guerrilla marketing — if, indeed, it is coming from games publishers and is not just immaterial gossip or retailer generated rumours — comes with a major caveat.
This is that these kind of leaks need to remain unreliable. In order for guerilla marketing to remain guerilla and not become transparent, the leaks always need to be in doubt.
This, in effect, means that false rumours need to be planted, misinformation has to be rife, and uncertainty must continue to reign above all. This has the twin consequence of not only meaning that the validity of the information rather than the content remains the primary focus, but allows publishers to remain above reproach when such leaks come to light.
E3 will be the place where pretty much all of these rumours will be confirmed or disproved. Rather uncontroversially, all we can do for now is wait for the companies in question to show their hand – I just wouldn’t expect to get the full house we’ve been teased.
There is always the problem, when re-staging an American classic, of the text being so revered, so well studied and highly regarded by theatre students and critics alike, that any said revival, almost by default, faces an uphill battle. Within that canon of the American classic lies Eugene O’Neill’s weighty tome Long Day’s Journey Into Night, a play that lives up to such a title with its well documented run time upwards of three hours.
Fitting with the HOME aesthetic that draws upon the neo-European blackbox style of theatre, a style that attempts to strip back the elements of a play and focus on some nebulous form of “raw-ness” — suffice to say a style that I often baulk at —, the concept that drives Dominic Hill’s production is one that should work. Reducing the production to the quality of the written text is, in this case, a good idea.
This is seen immediately with designer Tom Piper’s praiseworthy bare-bones set design of wooden beams and transparent plastic sheets making the Tyrone house look like an architect’s blueprint, signposting the lack of warmth within the household. However, the stripping down concept also requires a cast capable of pulling it off.
Regrettably, this attempt falls wide of the mark, though not for a lack of trying. George Costigan and Lorn MacDonald earn a mention for their portrayals of the miserly James Tyrone and his nihilistic son Edmund respectively, with their drawn-out scene together to start the fourth act an undoubtable high point of the production.
The scene is played with emotional depth and subtlety, though sadly was one of scant few moments of such variety throughout. Bridni Neachtain’s performance of Mary, possibly one of the meatiest and refined female characters within the American canon, was frankly annoying, reducing the wily Tyrone matriarch to a shrill old cad, squeaking and squawking her way to a drug-addled doom. There are more subtle ways to convey rheumatism, with some of Mary’s episodes bordering on the comic.
One does have to wonder whether the blame of these problems should fall at the feet of the actors, as with stronger direction, these performances could have been somewhat noteworthy. There were moments of what could — and should — have been real emotional power from all of the principal cast.
From the start, there were no stakes for one to invest in, as everyone was shouting and screaming at the first sign of conflict. Three hours later and everyone still is bellowing, everyone still hates each other, and nothing has changed from the thirty-minute mark to the three-hour mark, though everyone has gotten drunker. A director more attuned to the play’s peaks and troughs would certainly have been able to steel these performances and refine them into interesting and nuanced character studies.
With that all said, I did not resent the night and I certainly found myself engaged throughout. The play does meander in energy, though admittedly there is often something worthy of attention. The problems lie more in the performers’ inability to ever truly make the most of the interesting set, lighting and rich play text gifted to them.
This, unfortunately, meant that the personal highlight of proceedings was realising that I recognised Sam Phillips, the actor playing James Tyrone Jr, from playing Jamie in CBBC’s Hotel Trubble. For such a big statement production from HOME, better is expected, however, for the price of a £10 concession ticket, this production is definitely worth a punt.
