Getting along famously!

LITERATURE
by hollieastman

Before Harry, Herminie, and Ron were the coolest kids in literary town the Famous Five were the only children everyone wanted to invite round for fish fingers. The Famous Five series, written by Enid Blyton, totalled twenty-one stories, a big achievement considering the Harry Potter series didn’t achieve even half as many.

Today we live in an age filled with toddlers with Facebook pages and tweenagers with I-phones it is often question whether or not the innocence traditionally associated with childhood still exists. The Famous Five go to Treasure Island was first released in nineteen forty-two, sure society has changed a great deal in the past sixty odd years. Nevertheless, the tales of youthful adventures are as enjoyable today as ever.

Every school holiday siblings Julian, Dick, and Anne were shipped off to moody, tomboy cousin George’s house on the coast, and throughout the next two-hundred pages a plethora of adventures who ensue. Golly, spiffing, and absolutely wizard, the books have been described as only appealing to those seeking a middle class dream. But they are more than that. No matter the trouble, all the drama was easily dealt with using common sense, raw pluck, and of course lashings of ginger beer.

Recently the stories topped the poll of most loved children’s book by adults, beating both Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia to the number one spot; in spite of being rendered hopelessly out of date and out of touch by the majority of the literary world in the nineteen seventies.

Critics have accused the characters of being trapped in a pre-pubescent time warp of seemingly endless summers. Blyton has frequently been charged of sexism in her writings. The character of Anne is continually subservient to her elder brothers. George the other female character, dons boys clothing and a brutish stubborn attitude to match is portrayed as being on a level par with the two boys. Surely by displaying a polarity of female characters Blyton was illuminating the different roles the genders could adopt.

Today the stories have to be read with a different mindset. The language and values held by society have changed. The character of Aunt Fanny, unfortunately having cruel enough parents to name her after female genitalia, definitely lacks the street credentials to make it in today’s literary world.

Perhaps as testament to the stories timeless appeal the Famous Five has recently been bastardised for the modern age into a cartoon series. The smugglers and the afternoons spent scoffing Chelsea buns are gone, in their place tracking DVD bootleggers and jamming on their I-pods. By lifting the stories into the twenty-second century are the creators responding to a demand or merely adding to the younger generation becoming increasingly imaginatively vacant.

Nevertheless my childhood was spent with the four children; and of course Timmy the dog. I went with them to Mystery Moor, and fought smugglers with them at Kirren Cove. Many evenings I argued with my mum to let me sleep on the tiny patch of heather in our front garden, suburban Andover may have been a world, and several decades, away from theirs, but I embraced it all the same.
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Alessi's Ark - Over the Hill

MUSIC



The video for Over the Hill sees Alessi hosting a tea party for an invisible friend and I think it captures her whimsical style wonderfully.

For more information about her upcoming live shows and album you can visit her Myspace page.

Read my review of her support slot for Mumford and Sons at the ICA after the jump.

Alessi’s Ark, acts as a vessel for like-minded souls to share their talents alongside singer-songwriter Alessi Laurent-Marke, whose unique intonation and resonant voice adds depth to her imaginative tales of kite-flying, robots and moonlight.

While Alessi’s previous live performances as a solo artist have been hushed and gentle, the full band which now accompanies her on her ark ensured greater complexity to the songs, while never overwhelming the charming observations of her lyrics. The tinkling keyboards turned the chorus of new single Over the Hill, comprised of those three simple words ‘I love you’, into a complex confession, while the male vocals accompanying The Horse ensured that the song told a much more intriguing story than if it were sung by a lone voice. However, for Woman all of the added extras were stripped away, the poignant song requiring nothing more than the harmonics of Alessi’s guitar and voice, which were in perfect and simple accord, as they were on the heart-felt new song Dancing Feet, which proves her sophistication as a songwriter.

Alessi is always playful with her voice, using it to create new sounds and inflections which ensure each performance of every song is unique. Freed from the pressure that inevitably comes from being entirely alone on stage, there was a sense that the band’s layers of instrumentation provided her with even more freedom to experiment, which is a refreshing thing to see in a fledgling musician whose creativity, like her imagination, is limitless.
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Roses are dead

IDENTITY

by hollieastman

I am post-Valentines Day.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti love/relationships but, just like a puppy at Christmas, they should be for life, not for a day. The day is supposedly about showing your love, with all couples totally absolutely involved in the whole I love you ordeal. If you really love someone should you really wait to be compelled by the greeting card companies to show your feelings? Wouldn’t it be better, dare I say more romantic even, if you did all the things that you are compelled to do on February 14th when you felt the volition to do so? No? Just a thought.

I don’t get it. How did a day originating from the martyrdom of two guys called Valentine which just happened to occur around the Roman fertility festivals snowball into the card buying frenzy that we now find ourselves thrust into? Feb 14th the Greeting cards companies second biggest earner after Christmas. Christmas I understand, there’s food, presents and a fat guy with a beard, but with Valentines all you get is an obese incontinent infant with wings firing arrows at unsuspecting victims and some semi dead over priced foliage if you’re lucky.

Today one may view Valentines days sole purpose in the universe is to make all single people feel depressed and all couples feel psychotically obliged to spend obscene amounts of money on oversized internal organs made out of chocolate, ill fitting indecent lingerie, and vomit inducing cards filled with sentiments more suited to a Fifty cent song than a Shakespearian sonnet. The original Valentines were beautiful verses scribed by Chaucer, but now they’re verbal diarrhoea “I well luv you darlinn” really moves me to tears, but only because of the appalling grammar.
I can’t comprehend the whole anonymity thing. On any other day of they year if you received dozen roses or a card from some supposed stranger declaring their undying love, you’d think you had fallen victim to a stalker, call the police, close all your curtains, set your facebook to private and expect to find a horse’s head in your bed. Yet when it happens on Vday it’s not considered psycho but romantic? Also there’s always the embarrassment of over riding doubt that the card isn’t actually from Mr or Mrs Right but your Mum.

I suggest the anti-valentines day. In Korea they have a Black Day, where all the guys who didn’t get anything for Vday meet up and eat black Jajangmyun noodles. But why stop with black food? This Vday make a stand, where all black, embrace your inner year 9, dye your hair black, paint your nails, you get the idea. Morn for the old pure days of Love when Clintons didn’t dictate how people felt, love was spelt correctly and “fittie” was not used as a redundant substitute for a compliment. Alternatively, focus on the whole anonymous gift giving idea and start sending birthday, anniversary, congratulations and sympathy cards to random addresses incognito. You’re bound to gain some new friendships, even if it is with the local police in the form of a restraining order.

And just think only 365 days till the next one… can’t wait!!

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A Midsummer Night's Dream, Royal Shakespeare Company

THEATRE
by loisjeary

This is a fairy's world. Do not be fooled by the haughty authority of the King and his fiercely poised Queen-to-be, nor by the red-faced bullying tactics of a father over his daughter. No: they are but playthings, puppets manipulated for the entertainment of beings from an altogether different dimension, for it is the fairies who really hold the strings in this eerie dream.

The RSC's Dream takes place in a disjointed world, where pretty twinkling bulbs illuminate mutilated dolls and fairies dressed in fishnet gimp masks. With their backcombed mohicans and ripped black tutus, the misfit fairies look like a gaggle of teenagers who have just rebelliously splurged all their pocket money at Camden Market for the very first time. These mischievous spirits are certainly the 'shadows' Puck refers to in his conclusion to the play: they are the presence you just cannot see when you turn around, convinced that you are being followed; they are the dark shapes in the night which by daylight look suspiciously like boring old furniture: they are who have hidden your keys when you are sure you left them somewhere sensible.

Woven amongst the weirdness of these fairies are moments of theatrical beauty. The changeling boy, whom Peter de Jersey's commanding Oberon is desperate to steal from Titania, is all too often ignored when it comes to staging this play. In this production the child is present on stage in the form of a wide-eyed, naked puppet, tended to by the fairies and as lifelike as any young mortal boy. As the fairies move around him, this small child creates a sense of stillness and peace in an otherwise disrupted world. It is a powerful contrast, which serves to highlight the chaos which the changeling boy himself has caused.

On the bare mirrored stage it is the fairies which create the 'forest' which four Athenian lovers stumble into, by waving underwear on wire coat hangers in their faces to create bothersome branches which they must fight their way through. Kathryn Drysdale's Hermia is the embodiment of butter-wouldn't-melt charm, laced with a deadly manipulative streak. She skilfully exercises her feminine wiles over drippy Lysander, who for his part has seduced her with his hippy, poetic turns of phrase. Meanwhile, Edward Bennett's Demetrius is fawned over by an apparently 'plain' Helena. It is a pervasive idea that putting a beautiful woman in prescription specs, clumpy shoes and a cardigan will make her look 'ugly', and I am ashamed that the RSC should have resorted to such a repellent convention. Appearances aside, Natalie Walter's Helena starts off rather weak and feeble, but in the depths of confusion following an enchantment which makes both men fall in love with her, displays an admirable strength of both character and voice as she howls and rages at their perceived taunts.

It is not just the lovers whose worlds are turned upside down by the fairies – elsewhere in the forest the mechanicals rehearse for their play and are terrorised by Puck's shenanigans. Joe Dixon's Bottom is the ultimate in hamming it up - as the lady sat next to me herself remarked, I don't know why they always give stupid people Birmingham accents, nor why it should sound so comical, but his performance proved that there is simply nothing funnier than a donkey with a Brummie accent moonwalking across the stage and beatboxing to himself.

It can be difficult to bring innovation to the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, as much of the humour and stage directions is already written in to the language of the script. Yet this is a funny and fresh interpretation, with Ricky Champ's 'Wall' standing legs spread in red Y-fronts, the lovers knelt at his feet, unable to locate his 'chink' and coming into all manner of trouble when trying to kiss his 'hole'. It is perfectly amateurish and raucously rude, providing a welcome contrast to the mystical darkness of the fairy world.

The perfect dream transports you to an intriguing and exciting new place, but will always be full of oddities, confusion and the feeling that things are not quite as they seem. When you wake up, you will be sad that the experience has ended. This Dream is no exception.
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The British!

IDENTITY
by paulasvaton

The British certainly are a unique species. Their days of glory may be long gone; however one cannot help but delight in the peculiarities that come to define this island of sarcastic tea-drinkers. Yet there is a paradox to the British breed.

The British are without doubt bestowed with a great many intrinsic worths: world-class humour, one of the few nations that have the ability to poke fun at themselves, a command of the English language which is significantly more refined than their friends across the Atlantic, Brits such as Hugh Grant who has indeed convinced females the world over of that old English gentleman charm, top-class journalism, just to name a select few. Yet amidst this there lurks a peculiar social awkwardness: if you want clarification on this just place a Brit next to an Italian and the ineptness becomes startlingly clear. Given these virtues of the British I find it rather perplexing how a grand nation such as Britain is so reserved. It's not that the British are shy in any way.

Rather what it stems from is the deeply entrenched cultural trait of overt politeness. This in itself can be argued to be a good quality, but not when it starts to play havoc during social situations. Compare meeting your continental European friend where you're propelled into a ceremonious kissing session: the British greeting in comparison consists of a handshake in the form of a wet sloppy fish. Not forgetting the British allergy of eye contact, I must say the British really are superbly placed at social gatherings. The British are too polite for their own good. Their civility prevents them from conveying in public any dissatisfaction. Do you notice how they always express the utmost delight at their meal in a restaurant? As we all know it's not because the food is actually good, far from it: complaining could potentially turn into an embarrassing affair. All well then in having a super positive nation. But the fact is moaning does indeed prevail. Although the Brits are by no means the worst offenders for moaning I have no tolerance with British moaning because if they never complain in the first place, how can they expect things to get better?

An underlying dilemma to the British social awkwardness is also the British preoccupation with private space. This is actually linked to their politeness because courteousness entails respect for other people. For the British this means choosing activities in which they will not be asserting themselves onto others. The British have a great love affair with their homes. Fending one's garden or house always takes precedence over socialising with one's neighbours. This privacy of space of courses manifests itself onto their bodies. Physical contact is regarded as the height of rudeness. Since when have British people been regarded as sexy? Their hideous sense of dress doesn't exactly add to their lack of sex appeal. Though I don't blame them for this; having had to endure school uniform throughout their lives, stepping out into the baffling world of fashion is a risky manoeuvre, especially in a country where designers seem only to be able to produce clothes in various shades of black.

Have you ever tried approaching a stranger in Britain? After body contact this is probably the most impertinent intrusion of private space. It's a shame that the British are so reserved because with their highly acclaimed wit they are the perfect candidates to strike up a random conversation with. But it's not that the British don't like to talk, they just prefer to talk about other's business. They are after all a nation of gossipers, be it about close friends or celebrities. So for all the mishaps this nation must bear at least the gossip-magazine industry has a safeguard future. It really is unfortunate that two seemingly amiable qualities, politeness and private space have had such disastrous effects on the British character.

To add further insult, according to hoteliers Brits are the least-liked tourists. This revelation says something very interesting though. It challenges the assumed qualities of politeness and private space. Abroad Brits shake off these traits. Nevertheless I cannot give them any more credit abroad than at home; as further proof of their social mortification it seems that without these traits they turn into obnoxious, rude and deeply embarrassing creatures. So perhaps, after all, politeness and private space are necessary coping mechanisms for the British character. At least in that way they stay civilised. Well, sometimes.
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