Ruddigore (Hull University G&S Society) Interview

Cowering in a corner whilst being tormented by the ghosts of my ancestors was hardly the way I'd expected to begin an interview with the director of Hull's Gilbert & Sullivan Society (HUGSS). It must just be what happens when you sit in on a rehearsal of this year's G&S show: Ruddigore; or, The Witch's Curse.

It was an experience – being surrounded by men jabbing fingers at me and generally tormenting me – that gave extra weight to what the show's director, Lucy Thomson-Smith, later told me about how keen the Society is on including in their activities anybody who's interested. 'I feel like it's always been quite a welcoming group. You know, if you can't sing, you can't dance, you can't act – we don't care, come and join us! We'll just have fun with it.'

That's not to say that the cast can't sing, dance or act – just that it isn't necessarily a priority of HUGSS. As Thomson-Smith says, 'it's always nice within the chorus that we have this interesting mix of people who are different ages and doing different courses and who have different abilities' and one of the challenges of HUGSS is working with a cast that doesn't necessarily have vast theatrical or musical experience.

The same is true of the show's principal roles. One of the more experienced principals is Rory Oliver, the leader of those men doing the tormenting earlier on. Near the beginning of the second half, he belts out the song that Thomson-Smith regards as the script's 'high point' – he certainly did it justice in the tiny rehearsal space in the Larkin building. 'The Night's High Noon is this fantastic song about the ghosts coming to life and enjoying themselves at night' which is crucial to the plot of Ruddigore.

Oliver plays the leader of the ancestors of the new Baronet of Ruddigore, Ruthven Murgatroyd, whose family line is cursed in such a way that means he has to commit a crime every day or be subject to more of the torments I endured in rehearsal. Understandably, Murgatroyd isn't happy about this family curse and does his best to get around it. This being a Gilbert & Sullivan show, there are several couples running around trying to get married to each other, before changing their minds and wanting to marry someone else. As Thomson-Smith explains the plot to me, I can see what she means when she says that this is 'a parody of Victorian melodrama, and it's Gilbert and Sullivan's opportunity to poke fun at that'.

Unlike previous HUGSS shows Ruddigore is far from the most well-known of G&S works. In a way, that's why Thomson-Smith has chosen to do it. 'A lot of G&S societies' she tells me, 'tend to revolve around the same productions. That's because everybody loves Pirates [HUGSS 2009 and 2005], Iolanthe [HUGSS 2008], HMS Pinafore [HUGSS 2007 and 2003] and The Mikado [HUGSS 2006].' HUGSS last performed Ruddigore in 1997. Far from being daunted, Thomson-Smith is excited because, 'it's got two fantastic songs in it already, and the more I looked into it, I thought 'this has got some really good songs in, it's got some really good creative opportunities to run with''.

Among those opportunities is the style she's chosen for Ruddigore. Following on from the last two HUGSS shows ('very successful, innovative productions [that] decided to do something different and non-traditional'), Thomson-Smith has put her own mark on the show. Believing that 'doing G&S as G&S doesn't work any more; it doesn't pull in an audience', she has exploited the fact that Ruddigore is 'quite gothic, it's got a scary edge but it's a dark comedy' and has taken an appropriate inspiration: Tim Burton.

Burton's work ties in especially well with the show's professional bridesmaids ('corpse bride figures...decaying and falling apart.') and a 'nervous and unassuming' male lead. 'Using a Tim Burton inspiration really, really works well with this and lends a modern edge to a traditional production'.

But above all, for Thomson-Smith 'HUGSS has always been about enthusiasm and the passion; people always want to turn up and want to have fun and they enjoy doing it – and I think that really comes across in the production'.


Ruddigore; or, The Witch's Curse runs in Middleton Hall on the 3rd, 5th and 6th of March at 7:30pm. Tickets are £6 for an adult, with £4 concessions.
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Iron Man

Talk about boy's toys!

That's all anyone really needs to know about Marvel comic-book adaptation Iron Man, brought to the big screen by director Jon Favreau. Look carefully enough, though, and there's a story about technological genius and arms manufacturer Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) getting kidnapped in Afghanistan and building a supercomputer suit to bust his way out, becoming a quasi-superhero in the process. Look carefully, mind.

It's not just the massive amount of guns, rockets, jeeps and automated armour suits that make this film such an enthusiastic endorsement of boys and their toys. Tony Stark – though an adult and CEO of the company founded by his equally brilliant father – has barely grown up beyond the age of fifteen. He's a hyperactive little rich boy who has been allowed to carry on playing (and spending) without ever really having to worry. His assistant, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), is one of only two female characters of note, the other being compulsory 'almost-unpatriotic-but-cute-journalist-asking-difficult-yet-ignored-questions'. When he tells Potts that he doesn't have anyone else to trust, it's painfully true – this man can't form relationships with other people, let alone with women; he's too busy talking to the AI robots in his workshop. I say 'workshop'...it's more of a playground.

His real workshop – the place he does actual work – turns out to be a cave in Afghanistan where he's held captive with his freedom promised in exchange for building one of his new missiles. The one rather insensitively named the Jericho (it's basically a line of clusterbombs).

It isn't exactly surprising that Stark realises he's part of an industry with no moral standpoint, that exploits the world and causes untold damage and death. While it may be ironic that his injuries are caused by one of his own weapons, it should be no surprise that the Afghan insurgents that use them – and capture him – own such devices. What is surprising is that it takes Stark so very long to realise that an arms manufacturing company will happily sell weapons to both sides in a conflict; they are probably the only businessmen not to agree that national boundaries are bad for business. Normally, arms dealers don't consider the issues Stark raises at his first press conference as a free man. Things like the impact their work has on civilians and perpetuating conflict. They avoid these because otherwise they'll get caught up in questioning their morals and won't function any more. Arms manufacturers have to be amoral and unscrupulous – Stark begins to challenge that and that's where the film really gets going.

Though it's disappointing, in a way, because up until then Stark had been refusing to conform to a stereotype; he wasn't brashly militaristic, nor delighting in local wars. He recognised soldiers and warfare as necessary evils in a world that isn't perfect, while quoting his dad's saying that peace means having a bigger stick than the other guy. A pragmatic world-view.

But Stark is actually staggeringly naïve, somehow not realising that his company is just as happy to sell to militia and extremists as they are to the US military. It's an opportunism and a business attitude personified in his partner, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) – who is the true study of the pragmatic underbelly of American business (not to mention shady business and military deals globally). Bridges' path to villain status is smooth and subtle, understated with just the right amount of friendliness.

But the film's focus is always Downey and that suit, regardless of qualms about his ideas being used to develop weaponry (which is what his ideas have always been about – why does it only now strike him as wrong? because he's seen that non-Americans ('bad' people) use them too?).

The suit – changed from gold (a bit 'ostentatious') to hot-rod red – is one big boy's toy to go alongside the sportscars and super intelligent computers Stark already has, to say nothing of the hi-tech computer and Malibu villa-cum-housing-complex. In fact, he only builds the thing when he's frozen out of the Board of Directors at Stark Industries and his responsibilities are relaxed. Mid-life crisis of the superhero? Even his boyish grin when admitting his identity to a room full of reporters smacks of a certain roguish immaturity.

But that's Downey's charm; he's playing a naïve, irresponsible arms dealer, yet still makes him innately likeable. Many scenes are played with rapid, almost over-lapping dialogue that feel like there was never a script, instead we're listening to actual conversation. It's just something about Downey's laid-back intensity (yep, I know) that draws the viewer in and makes it all seem fairly plausible. Although making the first suit from inside a cave still seems pretty unlikely.

While not descending to the depths of, say, Transformers 2, Iron Man is still a bit of an excuse for big metal men to blow things up and punch holes in things. Not necessarily a bad thing, but almost certainly one for the boy's toys market.

Hotel Rwanda

Africa as a continent hasn't had it easy for some time now. Rwanda has been suffering ethnic turmoil and violence dating back even beyond its days as a Belgian colony – it's not something that flared up once and went away.

Released ten years after the events it depicts, Hotel Rwanda is based on the real-life experience of hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) during what has become known as 'the Rwandan genocide'.

As that implies, it's no film for the faint-hearted. It's a tense two-and-a-bit hours during which Cheadle's honest and good-natured Rusesabagina defends around a thousand people from the marauding militia. He has them holed up in the luxury hotel he manages for a Belgian company, pressed together in a relative oasis of calm inside the maelstrom outside. The situation becomes a demonstration of common humanity and decency in the face of human hatred – not for nothing does Rusesabagina insist on doing up his shirt and tie properly before seeing hotel guests.

While it's a bit tricky to believe completely in Cheadle's heart of gold, it's a fascinating study in human nature to see how far he's willing to go in order to save the people who believe in him – equally interesting as trying to understand the motives of the soldiers and militia.

In 1994, that militia – made up of men of the Hutu tribe – reacted to the assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana by going out and massacring members of Rwanda's other major tribe, the Tutsis. They killed around 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Rwanda's population was 80% Hutu, and Hutu dominance of the radio and army is clear in the film and evident from their utter destruction of order in Rwanda. The country is upended as the gangs roam free, killing as they go, and the (largely white) UN peace-keeper forces watch helplessly.

It's easy to read a post-colonial discourse into this, especially as the hotel's white residents are evacuated along with the European soldiers who arrive for that very mission. There's a definite sense of 'us', as it were, leaving the natives to get on with it and sort the conflict out amongst themselves. We even seem to have left them our religion and weather, as the camera shows trucks pulling away from Rwandan nuns sheltering from driving rain.

Of course, Rwanda's history of violence (and Africa's, for that matter) is partly the fault of the European colonial powers (Belgium, in this case). The artificial borders drawn without regard for traditional tribal territory or local input threw together different (rival) tribes and cut them apart from their fellow tribespeople. The fact that imperialists then used divide-and-rule tactics – governing Rwanda through the minority Tutsi tribe – makes it hardly surprising that Rwanda has become a tense place.

There's more to it than that though. The Hutus are reacting against the centuries in which Tutsis ruled them, which isn't justification or a defence, but goes some way to explaining the genocide. Not unlike Hitler's Germany, Hutu propaganda created an image of Tutsis as 'cockroaches', 'traitors' and 'invaders', dehumanising them to the point where it becomes acceptable – even encouraged – to destroy a whole people. Not even orphans under Red Cross care are safe.

Ultimately, Rusesabagina's instruction that the guests must shame the international community into helping the innocent is the strongest thing to take away. The lack of intervention by foreign powers is telling, and a constant complaint of those left behind in the bloodshed. But unasked is the question of what exactly intervention (coming in the year after America's disastrous intervention in Somalia cf. Black Hawk Down) would achieve (see also: Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea etc).

Joaquin Phoenix's cameraman sums it up perfectly when he says that the world's reaction to his horrific footage of murders will be '“Oh my god, that's horrible” and carry on eating their dinner'. The lack of knowledge about this subject is astounding, but the fact that events like this continue happen with little reaction should shame the West.

http://hrrfoundation.org/reports/

'Mankind' at Hull Uni

As an audience, we kind of knew where Hull Drama Department's Mankind was going once the first character started speaking.

As Emily Napier paced onstage, hands clasped in prayer, rosary beads knocking against the robes marking her out as a Dominican friar, the feeling grew that a message was coming to our souls. Then, she ascended the pulpit – the only notable thing on the stage, apart from the two paintings, depicting Heaven and Hell – and announced her name and intention. Okay, so to describe Napier's character as a character is a bit misleading. She's playing Mercy, and that's not her name; it's what she is.

See, Mankind is a Medieval Morality play, and they were never big on individual characters and plot lines. Instead, the Morality play depicts personifications of broader concepts usually involved in some cosmic struggle for the soul of, well, mankind. It's where the idea of an Everyman comes from. In this case, Mankind is a character – played with a curiously brazen naivete by Felicity Rankin, until her final scene when the full weight of her wrong doing is evident in every sob and shake of her shoulders – over whom Jen Clarke's leery, crooked jester Mischief fights with Mercy.

As is standard Morality practice, Mankind faces temptation to leave his work and abandon his prayers, and thus his duty to God. That God is – though never seen – present throughout, the Dominican friars' motto 'Veritas', Latin for 'truth', being emblazoned across the back of a largely bare stage. It's a bareness that really focuses attention on the battle that is essentially happening within the soul or mind of each of us: the battle between toiling for the common good and indulging in personal enjoyment. That temptation takes the form of three representatives of worldly pleasure: Andrew Fowler's Newguise, who threatens to steal the show, Harriet Entwhistle's deceptively charming Nowadays and Ami Dawson's Nought, who relishes every chance to speak filth on stage.

Don't be fooled by the idea of the Morality play being nice and clean – it's a lesson to us sinners about what we should avoid. So the three worldly pleasures get to party for most of their stage time, and even bring in Jessica Duffield's imposing Titivillus (the Devil, to you and me). That lesson makes the church's presence painfully clear. Mankind isn't quite propaganda, though it's probably a good example of the Catholic church using art to persuade people that worship (in a church, not on your own terms) is a Very Good Thing. Mischief's greatest victory seems to be in persuading Mankind not to attend morning prayers – even though an omnipotent God would surely hear a prayer wherever it was said...

In the end, that may be Mankind's failing as a modern piece of theatre. It's far from subtle, and the word 'preachy' seems dying to attach itself to every moment of the stage time – not only during Mercy's sermons. Don't get me wrong, Napier delivers some very heartfelt moments without ever being patronising, but ultimately this is a piece of theatre designed to remind the masses what they owe to their overlords in the Catholic church, who very kindly mediate between them and their God.

When Napier enters, hundreds of years of theatrical history are wiped away, and we've been taken back to the didactic, characterless drama that went out of fashion around Shakespeare's time. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but this does function as a bit of a museum piece. It's interesting as a means of looking back at where later drama came from – for example English drama's move toward representative characters in increasingly realistic settings, before making the characters increasingly realistic too. Also – crushingly, for this performance – the power of the Catholic church and an audience's fear of God aren't what they were, which takes away much of this play's sting. Pity, really.

Up in the Air

Here's a film that – despite the solitary isolation of its main character – is all about human relationships and intimacy. No, really.

Even though Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) spends most of his time zipping across America in American Airlines jets, expenses paid, this is a film that finally emphasises the need for human contact. Bingham's life is obsessed with jumping queues and staying in Hilton rooms paid for by his boss (not for nothing does his love interest (Vera Farmiga's Alex) say that they are two people 'turned on by elite status'. It's a pretty soulless life, a fact almost mourned by the film's final shots – taken in flight – when the music underscoring Clooney's final monologue cuts out as he finishes. We are left with just the distant hum of the jet engines and the clouds, rolling away endlessly below. It's an empty, empty world.

Even in the opening credit sequence, Up in the Air manages to present America as an ugly, soulless place – using snapshot after snapshot of uniform, bland cities and open, uninteresting fields to show Clooney's vast national travelling. He's a man working his way up to the landmark ten million air miles, so naturally there's a lot of flying involved.

His job? He fires people for a living, working in one of the few industries whose workers clap their hands with glee at the first sign of a financial crisis. The global recession is their payday. Company directors that have been forced to downsize hire men like Clooney's Bingham to lay off the workforce they themselves daren't face. Again and again, as he fires another hapless worker, Bingham is asked how he can sleep at night, what should the newly-unemployed tell the people at home that rely on their pay cheque? Bingham is a smooth operator, well-rehearsed in dodging such questions and avoiding all forms of human connection with these people. Instead, he hands them a load of paperwork to help them fulfil their dreams and live up to their true potential, a way of looking at their redundancy as a positive, life-enhancing experience.

But for all Bingham's 'philosophy' of cutting lose from interpersonal connections and being a lone individual, life just keeps forcing relationships onto him. From his sister's upcoming wedding to the rookie (Natalie – Anna Kendrick) assigned to shadow him at work (in planes and offices around America) and learn the ropes, through to the woman he hooks up with when their flying schedules allow, Bingham just can't get away from human relationships. It's perhaps ironic that his dream – that air miles milestone – involves as a prize a meeting and conversation with the human face of American Airlines, chief pilot Maynard Finch (Sam Elliott). But where it really hits him hard is when he's the one asked to talk to his sister's intended (Danny McBride), who gets cold feet on the day of the wedding. Suddenly, he has to argue in favour of relationships and family and children – all of which he argues against in his motivational speeches for the touring speakers' circuit.

Crucially, the comedy lies in the personal touches. Natalie's scene or so of personal revelation after being dumped by text, for example – ironic, as she's the one keen to introduce to Bingham's company firing by videophone, thus removing what he values as a personal touch (again, a life with little interpersonal interaction) – or the easy, early flirting between Bingham and Alex.

But what Clooney's boyishly charming Bingham finally realises – and should have known all along – is that he actually quite wants to settle and that maybe, for some people at least, companionship is no bad thing. Therein lies the heart of the matter.