Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

If you know what the Transformers are, you know pretty much what to expect from this sequel to 2007's film, Transformers, also based around the wars of the Hasbro action figures. If you know the difference between Autobots and Decepticons, you already know what to expect. If you've seen that 2007 film, you probably have a good idea of what to expect. You'll probably not be surprised by whatever happens in the third Transformers film that this one sets up as a possible sequel.

In fact, if you've ever seen the last ten minutes of an episode of Power Rangers, you've got the basic idea of the Transformers films: big robots knock seven bells out of each other, ideally in the middle of a bustling metropolis. Add in a bit of King Kong or Cloverfield and you've got the American military trying to take down the bad guys.

Like the Power Rangers, Transformers also have a raft of merchandise. Unlike the Power Rangers, the Transformer toy came first, before the films or TV shows. Another difference is the sheer scale of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It is huge. Massive battle scenes play out across deserts, all over cities and through the skies. They even go under water (no rusting!) and into space. There is a plot loosely tacked onto all this, but it's basically a series of opportunities for big robots to smash each other up. If anyone's interested, evil Decepticon leader (with a name like that, you'd know not to trust them, eh?) the Fallen (voiced by Tony Todd) is keen to get hold of the Matrix of Leadership in order to activate his monumentally huge gun that will harvest Earth's sun. He releases stalwart villain Megatron (Hugo Weaving's voice) from the ocean, so Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) – with human Sam (Shia LeBeouf) – must once again save the world. All fairly standard rescue-the-mystical-key-with-a-silly-name-from-an-ancient-tomb-and-stop-the-baddies'-superweapon. It's all a bit Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull meets The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor – with big robots.

But the plot isn't really important; you're watching a Transformers film for the thrill of cars or plans or trucks turning into ten-tonne robots and slapping each other about. You're watching to see which humongous weapon the American military will wheel out next. You're watching for the explosive set-pieces and battle-sequences that hit you time and again. That's what Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen does, and does very well. Don't watch for the plot; it's not the point and you'll only be disappointed (or start asking questions about whether an American military incursion in Jordan to fight the easily-identified Decepticons is easier/better than an incursion into Afghanistan to fight the trickily-identified Taliban, or why the f*ck-off rail gun is only used on Rampage but not on the Fallen or Megatron).

Also, Mark Ryan's decidedly northern – and brilliantly cynical – cranky Jetfire is well worth watching for, along with twins Wheelie and Skids (both Tom Kenny's voice) and their deliciously creepy ice cream van. Shame they get 'upgraded' so early on.

When other audience members respond to reviews

A fellow Blogger known only as The Hessian took offence at my review of Hull Truck's Every Time it Rains, and published a blog slating it. I responded thus:

Well, 'The Hessian', I'm glad you responded to my review and have written your own thoughts out. I hope you don't think my entire blog is offensive (just this review), as some of it is pretty positive. Also, I'm glad you enjoyed Every Time it Rains – it was certainly competently and professionally done, can't fault that, nor the response of the bulk of its audience.

But any review by any critic is entirely subjective, and your opinion will differ from mine. Fair enough.

"This piece, more than any other, celebrates the strength of character displayed
by the people of Hull in the face of great hardship and adversity."

Unfortunately, that's not what I was getting from the piece. Your response is entirely valid, but mine was different. What I was getting from the play was, as you quote, a "torrent of misery". Undeniably, much of the play is far from cheerful.

My review is one where I've tried to make the review feel (as much as I can) like the piece on stage. How well that succeeds is another question. But (and I agree with you here) Creed has injected humour into this play. There are definitely funny moments, and I believe this humour amid misery is a typical human response – and flippancy in the face of tragedy is what is in my review. In a way, that's the point behind what you take to be me commenting "glibly". You've mentioned "they also have better rows", and said that it's not informative or insightful. Perhaps not, but it follows a dash in a sentence, and as such is a little separate from the rest of that sentence ("a much more proactive, materialistic attitude (once the enormity of the situation has sunk in for Gary) – they also have better rows."), it's a casual, throwaway comment, a bit irrelevant and a bit frivolous – like most humour. We tend to use humour as a coping mechanism when life throws something horrible at us (for example, as a child, my response to hearing my nan had died was to laugh; if I laughed, I couldn't cry – though I cried soon after), every funeral I've been to has been full of off-colour jokes and black humour, partly to avoid the grief and the real reason the family has gathered in a graveyard. The humour and flippancy within Every Time it Rains (and, I hope, my review) go some way to demonstrating that point.

I've done something similar with my review of Confessions of a City Supporter, which is mentioned in this review. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's another Hull Truck play based in Hull. In it, the main character claims the play is for non-supporters, which I took to mean dirty non-Hullians like myself (from Wolverhampton, which takes a knock in the play – I was thrilled the place even got a mention outside of the Midlands!)...but it was actually all about the fans. I've no objection to that, but I felt lied to. So, my review has a lie in it, which I reveal at the end, rather like my realisation at the end of Confessions.... These are reviews aiming to convey my reaction to the reader.

You're right to say that the "painfully local...feel" comes from a local writer writing about local people and local events – and if you pick out the main parts of my review (rather than cherry-picking the less positive ones) you can see that I very much admire the work Hull Truck does in producing community-specific pieces of theatre. They excel at that. I've said it before and am happy to say so again:

"[Hull] Truck is very good at this sort of thing. Their shows consistently tap
into the currents of feeling in this community and distil that community onto
the stage. Every Time it Rains has five actors playing a stream of characters,
all in some way affected by The Flood. So it feels like there's a lot of them
onstage, and the almost constant flowing and shifting of characters creates a
real feel of community and of change."

My Confessions... review also has a section highlighting the interaction of Hull Truck's current Programme with the local community - and I hope such interaction continues. But - as an outsider - maybe that's why I struggle with some of their work. Good as it is, it is tailored to the locals, which doesn't include me. That's no one's fault, I just happen to be watching theatre outside of my native city. Big deal. But then, it's not an issue when I see theatre in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Scarborough, Newcastle, Coventry, York or London (which is perhaps a tribute to the Truck's dedication to community work). So, yes, Hull Truck's work does tend to "resonate with with the inhabitants of its surrounding areas", and is often of a "consistently high quality". I'm not denying that. But sometimes you can get a bit sick of hearing about Hull's problems.

Case in point: the audience were asked - at the start of Confessions... – to 'confess' to being City fans, then being told they were 'brave' for doing so. It was hardly brave, in a room full of City fans. Throughout, City fans were shown to be hard done to. Frequently in Every Time it Rains, Hull is shown to be hard done to.
Whatsonstage.com has an interview in which Michael Barnett Snr. says that "It’s the classic thing about Hull thinking of itself as the forgotten city"; Hull on the Hull Truck stage has almost given itself a victim mentality that it doesn't entirely warrant. Barnett then says of Hull, "during the War you couldn’t mention its name because of intelligence.” I suspect that was true of everywhere, not just Hull. I'm afraid they do come across as rather deserving of pity, “poor little Hull folk” as you've quoted me saying.

My comments aren't "dismissive" at all; they're based on much thought on the basis of at least two full-length Hull Truck plays. Also, my review doesn't go so far as to say that the literal people of Hull are actually ""celebrating...self-jubilant victimhood"". What it does stress is that the locals "almost seem to be celebrating it [victimisation], as they sink into self-jubilant victimhood" - not that they have sunk into it, but almost seem to be in the process of doing so. And that's just the onstage Hull, not the literal city.

No, you've a good point: I don't refer to character journeys. But then, for me as an audience member, it wasn't about individual characters. It was about the community in Hull. That's the central thing to this play. Again, "it feels like there's a lot of them [characters] onstage, and the almost constant flowing and shifting of characters creates a real feel of community and of change." As for "the atmospheric lighting, the seamless depiction of the different effects the floods had on the local community, and the gentle use of comedy" – there's only so much I'm willing to fit into a review before I feel it's too long and cumbersome. Especially if I think that something else is more important to a piece's overall effect than the staging, say. Like I've said, it was about the community and The Flood for me. The staging did its job, as did the lighting (though that had its more dubious moments (I concede the saving of the Renault Twingo was inspired)). I've already mentioned the "gentle use of comedy".

Unlike the comedy though, I can't agree that the piano music was gentle. Nor was it especially evocative, for me. It was another occasion where I – as an audience member - felt manipulated, as though I was being told "Now you should feel sad"...as if the untimely death of a young man related by the man who tried to save him wasn't enough. As if a father talking about his son's early death wasn't enough to convey a sense of loss and tragedy to me which - with Martin Barrass playing it – it emphatically was. The piano shouldn't have been needed.

But thank you for expressing what you think. Hopefully, you're less angry than when you posted your critique. I always think that if I'm willing to have my words printed and placed in a public domain, I should be willing to have my name alongside them and be willing to stand by what I've said.
Do let me know when you next see a Hull Truck show – or any show, really – and we can
compare notes, if I've seen it too.

Oh, and "disappointing"?

Every Time it Rains @ Hull Truck

There can only be so many water puns a writer (like Rupert Creed, say) can slip into a script without them being noticed. Surely. But in his new play – Every Time it Rains (having its World Premier at Hull Truck right now) – Creed keeps a gentle trickle of them bubbling up from characters' mouths.

The fact that this is a World Premier at Hull Truck shouldn't come as a surprise; it's got so painfully local a feel, I doubt the Truck staff are exactly swimming in offers to tour it elsewhere. It's not just a story about floods – it's a story about Hull's flood in 2007. The one that the media submerged under stories of other floods around the country, a move followed by government recovery efforts which also focussed elsewhere. It forms part (along with the Truck's recent Confessions of a City Supporter) of a wave of victimisation felt by Hull's locals – they almost seem to be celebrating it, as they sink into self-jubilant victimhood.

But the Truck is very good at this sort of thing. Their shows consistently tap into the currents of feeling in this community and distil that community onto the stage. Every Time it Rains has five actors playing a stream of characters, all in some way affected by The Flood. So it feels like there's a lot of them onstage, and the almost constant flowing and shifting of characters creates a real feel of community and of change. There's the bulky copper who tried to rescue Michael Barnett, failed, and now suffers a life awash with guilt and flashbacks. Then Norman, and his wet drip of a wife, Maureen, whose bungalow doesn't stand a chance against the floodwaters – despite his careful preparations. Their neighbours are Gary and Claire, who have a much more proactive, materialistic attitude (once the enormity of the situation has sunk in for Gary) – they also have better rows. What Creed uses these characters – and other minor ones – for, is telling us all that The Flood was traumatic, people suffered, the systems in place couldn't cope, and no one cared about the poor little Hull folk. Essentially, The Flood results in Creed's characters pouring out an unremitting torrent of misery, each struggling to keep their head above the hassle surrounding them.

So, another Truck play to conform to the two unwritten Truck Rules: 1) All plays must play up to their own nature as theatrical performance, usually by having characters addressing the audience. 2) There must be audience manipulation in the last few minutes. 3) If a play has a distinct appeal to Hull folk, it gets the main stage – ideally, plays should also encourage the idea of Hull folk as put-upon and victimised.

The copper claims to be trying to tell a straightforward story, without saturating it with emotion. It seems to be Creed's intention too. Well, all those speeches dripping in sentimental piano music really put a damper on that!

The Homecoming at York Theatre Royal

There's something annoying about men. Or rather, about all-male groups. It can't be restricted to the working-classes of London's West End, although that's where Harold Pinter's domestic play of menace is set.

Blokes have this habit of one-upmanship. They don't like to be wrong. They don't like to be seen as stupid. They don't like to be seen as weak. They like – on the whole – to be top dog. Which is a bit of a problem in a family that has a habit of producing three boys each generation and isn't possessed of many women. In fact, when the family of The Homecoming is first encountered, there are four men and no women at all – not one. So naturally, Max (Paul Shelley) competes with his second son, Lenny, for the Most Violent Award – violence of course being associated with bravery and manliness. Then Max lords it over his own brother, Sam, verbally knocking him down at every given opportunity, before Sam – a delightfully restrained camp chauffeur in the production at York Theatre Royal – drags him back down a few notches with snide insinuations about Max's dead wife. Billy, Max's third son, has been working out at the gym – what could be more macho? - but hasn't the mental prowess to handle himself with these burly brutes of his family. Unsurprisingly, the atmosphere is one of bluster and tension, each man trying to prove himself the strongest, cleverest, bravest, whatever. It's caustic, and family affection seems largely absent.

So palpable is the violence in the language that it's surprising actual violence only breaks out once – though in a way, it's also a relief, because violence is exactly what blokes need to get out of their systems every now and then. When blokes fall out, the simplest solution is often to have a quick scrap and have done with it, not to endlessly talk around a subject and bitch about each other.

The homecoming of the title is provided by Max's eldest, Teddy (Ian Harris), returning from America...with a woman! Shock horror. No longer will Sam have to play mother by making his brother's breakfast and washing up for him. No longer will Max have to mother his two sons by cooking them substandard dinners. Finally, Ruth (Suzy Cooper) provides the house with feminine warmth! Once the four men have got over their terror of this entirely new creature in their midst. Teddy's unexpected arrival they can deal with; he's a bloke, they can insult him and treat him as badly as he treats them, but a woman... Even Max seems to have forgotten that a woman isn't necessarily a tart – his own opinions of his wife veering between idolatry and vehement hatred of 'the slutbitch'.

Pinter seems to be quite happy to set up a situation in which this woman radically alters the men's lives (after the interval, they've dressed up in suits and are generally far more agreeable), by functioning as – among other things – mother to these Lost Boys. But each Lost Boy also regards her as though he were Peter Pan: she is both mother and wife. Pinter seems less happy about suggesting why Teddy allows this to happen to his wife, happily sliding off back to their three sons in America by the play's end.

The Homecoming serves as a brutal rendition of male prowess and will to dominate women, but also as a demonstration of how one woman can dominate a group of men used to all-male company.

The power of sex, concentrated in one location.

Occupation on BBC One

With the recent announcement of another inquiry into the build-up, waging, and fall-out of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the BBC's drama Occupation is very timely.

From the off, it shows a modern, highly-trained and professional army disastrously misused against a military force that looks civilian and co-exists alongside civilians. The potential for mishaps is huge, as a gang of British squaddies soon discovers. James Nesbitt's Sgt. Mike Swift is the one labelled a hero, dashing through the streets carrying a young, injured girl. But he's also the first to learn just how limited is the British capacity to help the local populace. He almost looks like he expects to be taking her to a modern, state-of-the-art British (private) hospital...his face falls as he learns the girl's operation will never happen, because Basra's hospital has neither the equipment nor the surgeons.

Luckily for him, he does get to meet pretty Dr. Aliyah (Lubna Azabal), who – somehow – manages to come over to Britain with the headline-grabbing girl and get her fixed up in a plush-looking hospital. She also gets a rather nice apartment, which is apparently not a permanent arrangement, but looks it. She is Swift's eye in the storm that is Iraq. In fact, she becomes rather more than that, briefly, and Mrs. Swift (Monica Dolan) is understandably not impressed (though how she finds out about the brief snog is anyone's guess). Clearly, like a sailor, Swift has a woman in both ports – a foreign lover and a domestic wife, different types of women for different settings.

That different setting is highlighted again and again in Occupation. Britain is cool, safe (even the London bombings feel remote), secure and exists in greys, blues and whites. Iraq is hot, rife with danger, almost lawless and exists in red, browns, beige and the black of the military contractors. Our squaddies (Nesbitt, among others) seem bored in their home lives, Stephen Graham's Danny being the most keen for more action. Seeing the way his dementia-afflicted mum mistakes a hulking black man for her short, stocky white son, it's hardly surprising. He's soon off with ex-Marine Lester (Nonso Anozie, a suave fridge-shaped bulk of towering Size – with the capital 'S') running a private security firm in Basra.

They've recruited fellow ex-squaddie Lee Hibbs, played brilliantly by Warren Brown. Personally, I've always been a fan of Nesbitt, but on this occasion, Brown may have pipped him to my Favourite Actor slot. Once his medical record sees him discharged from the Army, Hibbs tries a bit of Bouncing, before joining Danny and Lester in Basra, but flips when his local mate is – a bit predictably – killed by Shi'ia militiamen within the Iraqi police. Men Hibbs himself trained in his squaddie days. It's on his return to the country that Brown gets to run through the other half of human emotion he hasn't yet covered (having already shown euphoria, joy, anger, anguish and chirpy ladish cheerfullness back home) when he finds his mate's family and then gets kidnapped.

If you only know Warren Brown as the barman in Grownups, taking his top off at every (invented) opportunity, you have to watch Occupation. Brown deserves not to be underestimated as a first-class actor.

Amateur Girl at Hull Truck: in 150 words

A one-woman show about a nurse who supplements her income with home-made photos and videos for a distinctly male market? I had my doubts.

But Amanda Whittington's Amateur Girl is better than that summary implies – there's the quiet desperation of a woman treading the poverty line and doing what she can to avoid it...she may be brazen, but not always proud of how she does that.

Julie Riley achieves a generous balance between humour and pathos in her sympathetic and self-assured performance of the nurse unable to find a man who loves her for more than sex (in fairy tales, you've wicked step-mothers: in reality, wicked step-fathers). When she's told that her life is no longer about who she is, but who she wants to be, the inescapable conclusion is that it's actually about what she is, ie. a focus of male sexual desire.

Ashes to Ashes II Episode Eight on BBC One

An explosive, gun-toting, shoot-'em-up of a finale to the second Season of Ashes to Ashes. It was all rather violent, really. So that was nice.

Finally, the mysterious Operation Rose is revealed – and seems much more low-key than expected. So much for the corruption running all the way up to the top of the Met, and the deep-rooted rot that needed purging. So much for the Masons, as well. Where were they after Episode Two? Aside from Ray's (Dean Andrews) throwaway suggestion this week, they've gone. No doubt the Operation is bad for the Met, but hardly seems worth all the fuss there's been up until now.

Speaking of operations, the Alex (Keeley Hawes) in 2008 is now fighting off an infection with the aid of 'superantibiotics', more than 50ml of which will apparently be enough to finish her off completely. Is there really such a thing as a 'superantibiotic'? I know we've superbugs now, but 'superantibiotic' sounds a bit far.

Not as far as the rescue (and redemption) of Episode Seven's traitor in Fenchurch East CID, DC Chris Skelton (Marshall Lancaster). The minor plot snags leading to his redemption and readmission into the fold can probably be overlooked as necessary to the story – both that of the episode and of the CID team. But the moment when he's rescued from almost certain death at the hands of a bent copper...? It's a beautiful moment, but beautifully silly in the way it's reached.

What it helps lead to is the sincerely beautiful, almost angelic final time we see the CID team, while a bleeding Alex lies on the ground (victim of a remarkably stray bullet – remarkable because the gun in question was clearly pointing far above her head). They fade away into white light, staring on as they recede back into the subconscious, or wherever it is they're from.

Or, perhaps, they're fading to where Alex is from. Who knows? Who can tell any more? With Summers (Adrian Dunbar) dead, the only link between the eighties and 2008 has gone, and suddenly, when you might be forgiven for expecting a Sam Tyler-style revival, boredom, and eventual decision to return to the 'coma'...the whole thing gets flipped around...again! Life on Mars was happy to toy with the idea that Tyler (John Simm) was actually from 1973 and had imagined the future – suddenly, it looks like something similar might be true of Alex Drake. Unless she's just deeply unwilling to let go of Gene Hunt.

Then of course, there's Gene Hunt. Philip Glenister. The lynchpin around which the series revolves, and the keystone around which the entire spin-off has been constructed. Interesting as Alex is – and brilliantly as Hawes plays her, especially this week – Glenister's Hunt is what Ashes to Ashes is about. It's his world; he's the constant. His policing, unconventional by today's standards, is old-fashioned and hardy, and effective. He is cantankerous, bigoted, alcohol-addicted, crass and insensitive, with a craggy face. Oh, and he does Jackanory.

That climax may be violent and noisy, but once again, this season finale allows the silences of Hawes and (especially) Glenister to speak volumes and shout out their characters. Season Three? Yes, please.

Romeo and Juliet at Shakespeare's Globe

There comes a moment in any play on Shakespeare's own stage at the Globe when everyone has to have a song and dance. Even if it's only the bows. This Summer's Romeo and Juliet is no exception. But, at the heart of the dancers, centre stage, there's a problem. Look at Romeo (Adetomiwa Edun), in the middle of the capering, clapping cast. His hand brushes Juliet's, their arms cross each other's shoulders, his young eyes fixed dead ahead, slightly above the heads of his audience. He stamps, he claps, he jumps (not quite so high as the comparatively tiny Juliet (Ellie Kendrick)), he twirls. His limbs are stiff, his expression fixed. Our young lover is just going through the motions of the dance.

Alas, that's true of the youthful courtship throughout most of this production of Shakespeare's most famous love tragedy. While in the first half, Edun and Kendrick capture a tender, quivering adolescent shyness with each other in their first kiss, their post-coital moments is distinctly lacking in physical contact, and they still seem a tad nervous about touching each other –it's a bit late for nerviness by then... Their youthful passions just don't light the stage, and lack the sort of all-consuming fire and desire that's needed for the eventual suicides.

Real grief makes itself known only when the supposedly dead Juliet is carried through the groundlings, and parts of the crowd have to shift to allow her to pass. Suddenly, the groundlings are a part of the sorrow of Verona, having to accommodate the loss of a family so far only watched from a distance. As Penny Laydon's Nurse's red face creases up with tears, a community mourns...despite most of us knowing that Juliet's not dead at all.

Our prior knowledge of some events feels a bit of a hindrance here, as a couple of speeches relate to other characters what we've just seen. Unfortunately, they aren't dramatic enough to make it worth repeating everything we've just seen. The other problem Shakespeare seems to have lumped this cast with is an obsession with the metre of the poetry. While much of this sounds beautiful, there are times when the company needs to allow the text (and themselves!) time to breath, and not rush out all the words as soon as think of them. The dying speech of Mercutio (Philip Cumbus) is especially in need of a little slowing down and consideration; much of its comedy is lost, as in most of his serious-minded performance.

While it's an encouraging – if easy – start to the Globe's Young Hearts Season (what Shakespeare could be a better example of young love?), Romeo and Juliet leaves space for the rest of the season to set the proverbial bar considerably higher.

The Great Game at the Tricycle

Afghanistan is one of those places in the world that really knows about the funny way history has of repeating itself. Very early on in the Tricycle's series of Afghan plays, The Great Game, Stephen Jeffreys gives us a bunch of British soldiers worrying about what they're doing in that rocky, inhospitable country when money is so stretched at home, and neither the British nor Afghan people really want them there. What's so interesting is that these soldiers are speaking not in 2009, but in 1842.

Jeffreys' Bugles at the Gates of Jalalabad is the first of a series of plays at the Tricycle, all of which can be seen in one endurance test of a day, or broken up over several days. It's an impressive feat of theatre, featuring a cast of fifteen who juggle dozens of roles scattered across history. What's especially noteworthy – and perhaps to be expected of the Tricycle – is that many of these plays get across information about the history and traditions of this place without sounding like a lecture.

That said, a copy of the programme is an invaluable resource before going in. It's packed with background information about significant events and people, without which it would be easy to get very lost amid the swirling robes and procession of upright though potentially dubious Westerners traipsing through Afghanistan.

That seems to have been the thing with Afghanistan over the years: foreign intervention/interference (depending on your viewpoint). Foreign powers – ie. Britain, Russia/USSR, America – just can't leave her alone. Sandwiched as she was between the British Raj in India and the might of Czarist Russia, Afghanistan has been faced with the choice of the hug of the bear or the claws of the lion (as Paul Battacharjee's Amir Abdur Rahman explains in Ron Hutchinson's Durand's Line) for generations. While the Russian threat from the north has remained, Pakistan's role as a key US ally in the War on Terror – as well as the Cold War and the Pakistani secret service's continued interest in the country – means that the threat from the south has merely changed from British to American and American-funded Pakistani.

Of course, the question remains of whether the foreign presence is interference or intervention. Often, it seems that foreigners are helping Afghans to advance their society to Western levels, but the Afghans don't want to Westernisation that goes along with that. Alternatively, they've also been offered the chance to advance along Soviet Communist lines, and the locals rejected that too. Afghanistan comes across as a country keen to retain it sown identity in the middle of countries vying for control there, or at least ensuring no one else can control it.

One audience member complained that The Great Game lacks balance, asking where the voice of the Taliban was. Colin Teevan's The Lion of Kabul provides that voice, as a chilling counterpoint to JT Rogers' earlier Blood and Gifts, in which a Rick Warden's shadowy CIA operative funds and arms Vincent's Ebrahim's mujahideen fighters against the Soviets. The later play shows the victorious Taliban administering justice according to their own warped version of Islam – but a way that's pretty much consistent with what they preach throughout The Great Game. By the end (Simon Stephens' Canopy of Stars), it's clear why Tom McKay's northern British Army Sergeant wants to return there to defend the people from fundamentalists who spray acid in girls' eyes to stop them going to school.

Obviously, with so much scope, some parts of this festival of Afghan study are going to be stronger than others. While Ron Hutchinson's Durand's Line is a tightly-packed, poetic masterpiece centred on the artificial division of land between Afghanistan and what was north-west India, David Grieg's Miniskirts of Kabul has an exciting premise somehow let down by its dream quality. A British woman – Jemima Rooper, who is surprisingly stronger as Afghan women than British ones – is interviewing former Afghan Communist President Najibullah (Ramon Tikaram), while he hides in an underground UN safehouse below Taliban shelling of Kabul in 1996. It is the day before the Taliban found him and tortured him to death. So, how is the woman there? She 'imagined' herself into his compound. She is later able to 'imagine' him a bottle of whisky, and produces – from her imagination – a TV showing the Spice Girls so that the so-called Ox of Kabul can boogie to his favourite music. Hit and miss.

Thankfully, The Great Game is absolutely more hit than miss, with some fine ensemble acting (especially from Rick Warden, Vincent Ebrahim, Ramon Tikaram and Jemima Rooper) and strong, balanced writing throughout. It's a shame there aren't any Afghan writers – in fact, they all seem to be at least partly British – as this blunts the feeling of authenticity when there are Afghans onstage. The depiction of the Twin Towers attack following a suicide bombing assassination is beautiful, and you don't often say that about September the 11th.

I think the Tricycle may have just became my favourite theatre.

A Dream Play at Hull Truck

Hull College's staging of Caryl Churchill's adaptation of Strindberg's A Dream Play asks the question: Where is Paradise? It's certainly not in a Churchill play. And definitely not this one.

In her defence – and it's not often I defend Caryl Churchill – it's not all her fault. The original material is from one August Strindberg, a Swedish playwright (with a fragile grip on reality at the best of times) who was leaving behind his Naturalism phase and heading into his Expressionist phase (via a near-death experience) when he wrote it – basing it around the patterns of, you guessed it, a dream (clue's in the name). That explains rather a lot about A Dream Play. Once you put it through the filter of Churchill – who has an apparent objection to giving her characters anything resembling a context, and here rejects character continuity – and hand it to a young company in a studio space...well, the poor play didn't stand a chance.

This production has failed in overcoming the problems with staging this script – in which (apparently) Agnes the Angel comes down to Earth to find out what it's like being a human (see also: The Bible (Feminist version)) – because they try to make it naturalistic. In the black box, the scenes that they play so straightly all appear in the same place, and there's no sense of movement or of change. But change is crucial to Agnes journey through the nature of humanity; the very essence of (what I shall optimistically call) the story is that she goes from a state of ignorance to knowing all about being human...poor girl.

A poor girl she is, indeed. Agnes' various discoveries – shown in hodgepodge of scenes which are difficult to link together in the mind – lead her to despair of all human life. Considering what she sees, that's no surprise. But if what she sees were somehow to be shown differently... Strindberg wrote the original as a piece of Expressionism, while he was turning his back on all he'd done before, ie. Naturalism. With Churchill thrown into the mix as well, it'd be no bad thing to throw any attempt at Naturalistic staging out of the window and give full vent to any Expressionist – even Absurdist – ideas. It's a script that lends itself to playing with images and concepts, not words and characters.

The main message of Churchill's script – one oft repeated – seems to be: Life is pretty dire, and everyone has problems. Thanks for that pearl, Caryl, thanks...

'Confessions of a City Supporter' at Hull Truck

Alan Plater's play Confessions of a City Supporter is centred around the story of one man's life like the core that an apple grows around.


As the title implies, Confessions... plays in the city of Hull, chosen as the home of Hull Truck Theatre Company in 1972 because it seemed the least likely place in the Universe to base an experimental theatre company. Also because it was cheap. The Company toured for a few years – not having a permanent venue – until settling in a blue shed on Spring Street, their iconic venue opposite the city's morgue. It was the same year that John Godber joined the Company.


All that moving around between 1972-83 probably gave the Company a good feel for the community there were working in, as – presumably – will the large number of locals that they employ. Nowhere is that community spirit felt more than in Hull Truck's current brochure. A quick flick through it reveals the rather large number of local influences in the first season at the shiny new venue on Ferensway. First Hull Trains, Hull CVS and Hull City Council each get their logos plastered onto advertising for a show. Coming up on the Main Stage are the Youth Theatre's Our Day Out, and a play about Hull's recent flooding, while local Hull College students perform (A Dream Play) this week in the Studio, and both the Humber Mouth Literature Festival and Hull Jazz Festival will have events hosted at the Truck in Summer. The Education/Outreach Department has been renamed Inter@ct (see what they did there?) and there's a whole page on conference options in the theatre.


Then, there's Confessions... itself, which is sponsored by Premiership side Hull City AFC, and is swamped in the community it takes such pains to play to. Audience members turn up to this Help Group show in football strips of varying ages, while one fan tells them about his family's experiences of supporting City (well, the male line's experiences; the women just seem to sit around and give birth every once in a while). It's a play very much at home in its Hull setting, with plenty of opportunity for digs at Grimsby, Leeds or Doncaster (even one at the frankly wonderful Wolverhampton), and isn't ashamed to 'wallow in failure', as one character has it. In fact, failure is almost a communal activity in this case, after all, audience members confess to being City supporters, and are then reassured that there's no shame in that. You see, City have always been cheated – we're told, with ever such faint echoes of other put-upon peoples, like the ever-suffering Irish or the wandering Jews – through the century or so on display here. In fact, the one big victory is celebrated in an overly long bit of singing – they have to make a song-and-dance of what they've got, bless them.


But, alas, there's a lie at the heart of Confessions..., a terrible, self-deceiving lie. It's not for the neglected partners at all. We're told that, at the start – they say there's no point talking to the fans, because they already understand the heartache...no, the play is for the partners who've been neglected down the ages. Thing is, if that were the case, surely those partners would get more stage time than the fans? Not so. This is all about the fans, and about the (male) community in Hull getting behind their team. Not necessarily a bad thing, but a lie, all the same.


Oh, and it doesn't grow out of the story of one man's life. The core is a line of four fathers in the same family.

A Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

One of the main reasons the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell apart in 1918 was that is was made up of several very different groups of people who just didn't get on. But, before 1914, the Empire had been considered useful as a means of balancing power in Europe between more powerful nations.

If you think that's an incredibly simplified, even reductive, view of history, then you understand what A Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian feels like. It throws in one or two fairly well-known facts about historical figures and events, and paints its characters with broad brushstrokes to avoid getting bogged down in any complicated meaning. But, in its defence, it pleases its target audience with delightfully bad baddies and gloriously good goodies.

Just look at those baddies...a megalomaniac Egyptian Pharaoh (always good for the old 'resurrect a dead army and take over the world' idea – sound familiar?), Ivan the Terrible (who is here far too much of a pushover – literally), Napoleon Bonaparte (played with some French stereotyping in mind – he's also too tall, surely?) and Al Capone (who amusingly appears in monochrome, even in the real world). What a line-up of evil.

Against them is Amelia Earheart (sounding like a good twenties British gel but played by an American – how odd), General Custer (a dubious choice of military leader at the best of times), Octavius Caesar (Augustus, to later historians, and here easily confused with foster-father Julius), the Lincoln Memorial given life (don't get me started on the whole 'giant statue of Lincoln stomping about saving the day and uttering quasi-philosophical statements in a meaningful, deep voice) and Ben Stiller's Night Guard from the previous film in which museum exhibits come to life. Oh, and Owen Wilson's odd little cowboy, who mercifully spends most of the film trapped inside an hourglass. There's even a potential sweet romantic ending, when Stiller meets a real woman who just happens to be the spitting image of Earheart...seriously?

What appeals about this film is the idea of people from different periods of history fighting it out, with various bits of modern technology, or just things they shouldn't really be able to get hold of. Ancient Egyptian troops with tommy guns, say. But it never really works. As an idea, it's been done before – at least once – an episode of Star Trek being the occasion that springs to mind, and it didn't work terribly well in the sixties either (they also brought back Abe Lincoln, and a later episode of Star Trek: Voyager even brought back Amelia Earheart). The biggest problem is the idea that a man like Napoleon or Ivan the Terrible would go along with a long-dead Pharoah's plans for world-domination, and not set up some plan of their own.

Then there's the issue of historical reportage. I think I can just about cope with Lincoln miraculously saving the day...even though his main reason seems to be that he's a whopping huge chunk of marble, and who's going to argue with that? I can also cope with the presentation of Custer as a 'do first, think later' coward of a General with an inflated sense of his own importance. What I'm not so sure about is that Lincoln here seems to be the best possible thing for America, and the best America has ever had, while Custer is persuaded that the Battle of Little Bighorn (his famous Last Stand that cost 208 American lives (including his own) for the sake of Custer's vanity and pride) is all in the past, and that actually, he's a good man to have in a fight. I'd worry about his military shrewdness, and am definitely unsure about Lincoln's negative traits being glossed over.

Though the colour and cheap jokes seem to satisfy the younger target audience, you've got to wonder what A Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is teaching them.

Ashes to Ashes II Episode Seven on BBC One

Ignore this week's drug story. Ignore Dorian Lough's building site foreman with the greasy hair. Ignore the Polish man in the pit of concrete. Don't, whatever you do, don't ignore the close of this Ashes to Ashes episode.

You can ignore the criminal goings-on outside of CID this week, because what they provide this week is an examination of Gene Hunt's (Philip Glenister) team itself. Their racism and their bigotry, perhaps most of all their humanity. What Lough's Lafferty does help to reveal is the mole within the team – the person that has been leaking information out of Fenchurch CID for some time. The atmosphere of distrust spreads outward from the Manc Lion himself, and infects each of the team. The final – distressing – revelation is the episode's second chance to leave a character standing in tearful shock as the world slowly rearranges around them, former events and possible future ones reorganizing into a whole new pattern. Disconcerting.

The first time that happens is on the return of Martin Summers (Adrian Dunbar) – Mr. 'I Can Help You, Alex'. Having brought the exact nature of Alex's (Keeley Hawes) eighties' world into question, he blows a new hole in any theory yet developed about it – not to mention into his younger self's head. Poor Gwilym Lee (the second man in the pit of concrete), his uncanny resemblance to Dunbar doesn't save his character from itself. Alex is also left reeling, but at least she's still standing.

As of now, Gene Hunt is Judge, Jury and Executioner for his team. Anyone steps out of line: he's the solution. Anyone has a problem: he's the solution. Anything at all: he's the solution. His sentence on the team's mole is eye-wateringly good – to say nothing of said mole's reaction (Hunt clearly knows the shame – and his own disappointment – is the worst punishment possible here). While in Life on Mars, Hunt excelled at pithy one-liners and put-downs, this episode demonstrates his silences are infinitely more powerful – layered and complex, as you see the emotional currents under the frozen lake of his face.