Freshers Week 2010 announced

The Students’ Union has announced a fun packed week for 2010 Freshers including Seafront Festivals, Welcome Weekend Parties, Live Music, Parties on the Pier, Club Nights, Headline Acts, Barn Dances and much much more… making sure there is something for everyone to get involved in this Freshers.

The Students’ Union has also launched the Freshers Week gold ticket – a wristband that will get you into all the main Freshers events for only Read more

West Side Story gets SMuTy

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Gradual Decline

The Badger talks to Sussex comedy group Casual Violence! about black comedy, kitchen-sink dramas and urination

Hannah: Okay so I’m here to talk to you about  the Gradual decline of…

James: The Gradual decline of a previously tight family unit in the face of economic hardship: A comedy.

Hannah:  I’ve read that it’s a spin on a ‘gritty kitchen sink drama’.

Adam: Yes,  really strange irony, my old school is putting on a play  at the same time called ‘Love on the Dole’ with exactly the same story, but it’s serious. Properly going for the heart strings stuff, whereas this is, going for the mole strings.

Hannah:  Can you give a brief synopsis of what happens?

Adam:  It’s based around a family living in Manchester or Newcastle.

James: an unspecified northern place.

Adam:  You’ve got Barry, the big man of the house who loses his job, and the son Mark played by Alex here, whose got no arms or legs and lives in a box.  Probably the most controversial part is  the daughter whose parents are labouring under the misapprehension that she’s got Downs syndrome and are repressing her because of it.  It’s showing each family member’s struggle, but presented in a ridiculous and comic way.

James: With the daughter, it’s looking at  people’s attitudes to that sort of thing (Downs Syndrome).

Adam:  A lot of the comedy that I do is looking at stupidity and ignorance.   The two characters in this play who are disabled or considered disabled are actually  the strongest in the play  and by the end we are invited to  have judgements about the mother and the father.

Hannah: Your comedy  does push limits, it’s quite black but it does have a point.

Alex: It’s not  ‘haha Down’s Syndrome’, it’s portraying attitudes towards it.

Adam:  There isn’t a single joke made at the expense of disabled people.

Hannah: Obviously there’s a fine line, and you should consider how complicit the audience is.

James:  Oh  definitely, it’s all quite dark  and grotesque but we don’t do offensive comedy.

Adam:  But then there’s certain subjects that when people hear, they press the alarm button in their head and go ‘ah, that’s offensive’.

Hannah:  There’s a  delightful quote in an interview that you said about pissing on people’s boundaries.

James: (laughing) no, I said I don’t like to piss on people’s boundaries!

Adam:  That’s a good point.  We don’t like pissing on people, we do like pissing on their boundaries.

James:  I said I don’t like pissing on people’s boundaries!

Alex:  Pissing near people but not actually on them.  Sometimes we splash them.

Hannah:  Nothing actually on your clothes.

James:  When I got interviewed for the first time by the badger about Porn for the Blind  I said I didn’t want to step on people’s boundaries but we’re aware we might be toeing the line, the second for the monologues in October  we said that we won’t completely piss on people’s boundaries and now we’ve said that we’ll piss everywhere and some people might get splashed.

Alex:  Bring an umbrella.

James:  There’s always people  who like to hit the red button though.

Hannah:  A little Daily Mail reader in the corner of the room.

Adam:  It’s the kind of mentality that almost deliberately misses the point.

Adam:  The comedy is dark but it takes a position of ignorance and makes it. look ridiculous.   I actually  once got attacked for mocking stupidity.  I was doing stand-up and some guy got up and  asked me to define stupidity.   What a stupid question.

James:  It kind of proves the point.  You feel vindicated when people have that sort of reaction.  Sometimes when I’ve done sketches  that have been close to the bone, and people pick up on one aspect, you kind of mentally tick them off next to the idiot box.  Comedy is the format where you can play with these sorts of things.

Hannah:  It’s the space on stage where you can articulate certain issues safely.

Alex:  And if you laugh at it, it takes away its power.

Adam:  It’s got to be in a context where that’s obvious though.

Hannah:  I was thinking about Harry Potter, when you get the scary  things in the cupboard.

Adam:  A boggart.

Hannah:  And you’re supposed to laugh at them and they’ll go away.

Alex:  We are the boggart.

James:  Yeah laugh at us and we’ll go away.

Alex:  We’ll hide in your cupboards.

James:  With one play,  Dead as a Dodo, this guy comes to sit next to me and was asking about the comedy group.  There was a flyer for Dead as a Dodo on the table and I showed it to him and he told me that he was from the island where all the dodos were massacred by English and Portuguese soldiers and so found the title quite offensive.  Apparently he hadn’t heard of the saying ‘dead as a dodo’ and later on I caught him downstairs ripping up posters and flyers.  He said that he didn’t understand, why didn’t we call it ‘dead as a doughnut’?  He compared the slaughter of the dodos to the  Nazis killing the Jews in the Holocaust.  The play was actually about the destructive impulses of mankind and how this resulted in the death of the dodo and as soon as I explained this he apologised.

Hannah: Do you have any comedy influences that you use?.

Adam:  Christopher Morris from Brass Eye.  I think TV comedy is dying.  Brass Eye came out eight years ago and that was the last really solid comedy programme. Now you have to look to the internet.  A lot of web animators don’t have the same constraints as they would in TV, and  that’s where the future of comedy is.

‘The Gradual Decline of a Previously Tight Family Unit in the Face of Economic Hardship’

Marlborough Little Theatre, 29th/30th Jan, 8pm, £5

Everything’s gonna be all white…

A general election on the horizon, wars, famine and swine flu sweeping the globe, and the continuation of Sussex’s ever-steady tumble towards financial oblivion…So what’s everybody talking about? Snow. Well, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

In all fairness, it’s not difficult to see why even the gentlest sprinkling of snowflakes (let alone the nation’s recent obliteration by blizzard) instantly becomes the indisputable champion of conversation topics. Snow is the rarity of all rarities for the British public, the stuff of Hollywood Christmas fodder (in which, be it A Christmas Carol or Bridget Jones’ Diary, English yuletide scenes are unanimously – and ironically – knee deep in picture perfect flurries), an utter transformation of the cityscapes and countryside we know so well, a force reducing young and old alike to snowball-wielding 5 year-olds and, best of all, the God-given Hoover Dam of watertight excuses to pull a sickie.

Considering the usual seasonal offering – intervals of watery sleet and the occasional bout of ‘real’ snow which, almost before the premature cries of ‘it’s settling!’, is lining curbs and gutters as slush, that ever-appealing staple of the British winter – it’s hardly surprising that a proper blizzard gets us all a bit overexcited.

But it isn’t all fun and games. Local shops providing groceries to those unable to go further afield and television broadcasters experiencing huge ratings boosts are benefitting, but they are very much in the minority. Though we haven’t had a winter this chilly since 1962, recent years have shown the national infrastructure fundamentally incapable of dealing with a cold snap – and this one has, unsurprisingly, been no exception. With a major surge in gas usage threatening a potential shortage, an end to grit supplies constantly imminent, a predicted 40,000 excess cold-related deaths this winter and chaos on the roads and rails after every snowfall, the country has proved, yet again, that past white-outs have taught us very little when it comes to being prepared.

Indeed, it seems Brighton has dealt with this winter’s adverse weather with even less capability and competence than most. After the first heavy snowfall in mid-December, the Brighton & Hove city council found themselves under fire following their decision to focus gritting efforts on Lewes Road, omitting pretty much everywhere else. This is perhaps unfair, as we are reliably informed such a decision was owing to a shortage of gritters – nevertheless, they paid the price with the numbers admitted to the local A&E department rocketing five-fold, not to mention their share in the estimated £14.5bn cost to the economy due to snowed-in workers and disruptions to transport.

But is Britain really so incredibly hopeless when it comes to dealing with snowfall? Yes, responses could be a little faster. Yes, reserves could be a little better. Yes, resources could be a little more plentiful. The truth, however, is that the British public, for all the pride we take in our stiff upper lips, really do love a bit of drama – and the snow, with its unpredictability and sheer domination, is just that. Even Midwest and Northeastern America had a spot of bother dealing with their familiar snow storms this winter, with road and rail alike suffering in a manner not radically dissimilar to ours and, when you take a good look, our responses were almost on a par.

Secretly, for all the hassle it provides, all the plans it changes, all the power shortages and chaos it bestows, we love the sense of camaraderie that suddenly emerges when we’re all schlepping through blizzards to get home, or trapped indoors watching tomorrow’s weather report with bated breath. Snow is one of the few remaining occurrences which unites us – in our eternal grumbling if nothing else – and, if only for a little while, breaks the tedium of our everyday. If nothing else, it really does look rather pretty.

The Twilight Sad: a look into the night ahead

It’s surprising: for a band whose roots are embedded in a region north of the border, The Twilight Sad sure do boast an impressive set of ties with Brighton.  Perched on the edge of The Freebutt’s stage just minutes before the venue opens its doors to the public, vocalist James Graham first breezes through some sort of confession about the alcohol-fuelled nights they’ve spent here (most of which, he assures me, have ended spectacularly on the beach).  Second, he insists Brighton is a city he, personally at least, favours over England’s capital.  But most significant, of course, is the small matter of Fat Cat Records; the label which, as Graham himself recalls, impressively snapped the four-piece up after flying into Glasgow to witness their fourth gig.

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Everything must go: papas, puppets and pathos

One of the performance editors told me she had a puppet show to review: ‘Of course!’ I said. ‘That sounds like a larf’. But, happily, the ‘puppet show’ formed only a fifth of this stunning performance from award-winning performer Kristin Fredricksson. A live art extravaganza comprising narration, film, cardboard cut-outs, wild movement and delicate puppetry, this was a one-woman-wonder portrayal of the creator’s father, Karl a man who – quite literally – showed his bloomers to orthodoxy. The necessarily unconventional performance took us on a family saga, from tricky beginnings in Wales, through the shockingly sudden death of Karl’s wife and the consequent genesis of his cross-dressing, to the solicitous ingenuity that her father developed later on in life.

Kristin first performed the show with her father, and the pair danced offstage together in the final scene. Sadly, however, Karl died in June this year (at the ripe old age of 78), and that scene was replaced with video footage of the original performance.

Kristin had already created a remarkable living memorial of her father and his story, but it now takes on a new poignancy. Why brood quietly in your bedroom and sigh at the passing of a person the world should have known, but didn’t? Show the world that person! And he was quite a man: hurdler, P.E. teacher (who covertly taught his pupils ballet), cross-dresser, player of characters, obsessive hoarder. He undoubtedly bordered on fruit-cake status, with snippets of film showing us his penchant for milk-crate collection and nipple exposure; one felt at times that his constant masquerading was almost an obstruction to his love for his daughters.

The piece having been conceived and performed before Karl’s death, the newer audiences’ perceptions of meaning within the play are inevitably transformed. Whilst Kristin’s intentions may have remained the same, her father’s passing has invested the work with an increased sense of loss and longing. This new element of mourning seemed to draw out the intensity of the love felt between father and daughter, with a gut-wrenching rawness that left the audience weeping. It is said that all people grieve in their own way and I’m sure that’s true, but Kristin really showed us a unique approach: on stage, unaided, in an hour of inspired, magic theatricality.

‘Everything Must Go’ was staged at The Basement, 24 Kensington Street. For other similarly original productions, see their December listings at
thebasement.uk.com

The Grass is Greener

‘The Grass is Greener’ is undeniably a slick, polished, well acted and aesthetically pleasing production. The script is competent throughout and funny in parts, and although there are occasional comic gems and tastefully set up gags, it is a muted comedy style which is particular to the 50s when it was written and set. Unfortunately, this dated feel extends throughout the piece, and there is a pervasive sense of the inaccessible, elitist and rather antiquated style and subject matter of traditional theatre: the universality of enumerable other classic plays is sadly lacking.
Although the script is somewhat moralistic, with the clear maxim that marriage is for better or worse, it treads quite lightly, and so avoids having many eye rolling moments. Nonetheless, once the situation of the impoverished English Lord’s wife falling in love with the American oil millionaire is set up, it is apparent that the plot could only result in a couple of outcomes, and the denouement feels slightly inevitable, without any real sense of excitement or tension. The actors are all strong and polished in their roles, with Liza Goddard and Christopher Cazenove delivering particularly good performances as Lord and Lady of the manor. This may be due to the fact that they are the only fleshed-out roles, next to the stereotypes of the butler, rich American and high-society diva.
A polished production with a rather irrelevant script, it is a shame that pieces of theatre with so much money thrown at them cannot be innovative or important in the context of their contemporary society. ‘The Grass is Greener’ feels sadly representative of the world of mainstream theatre: catering for a well off, elderly audience who are the only ones willing and able to pay en masse the extraordinarily high ticket prices of venues such as the Theatre Royal.

McGoughière

Liverpool poet Roger McGough has written plays before, but “never,” he modestly admits, with “as much success” as his adaptations of Molière. “It’s the combination you need, Molière and me” he jovially explains. After going to see his rave-reviewed latest adaption, The Hypochondriac, at the Theatre Royal, Performance Editor Olivia Wilson spoke to him about becoming ‘McGoughière’.

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Best of the Fest

Best of the Fest’ showcases five comedians performing at the Brighton Comedy Festival, and although the night is value for money, and has some solid comedians and funny moments, you’re not really left in hysterical raptures.

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John Hegley

The rigid mouth of the bouncer twitched a little. A snot-nosed ten-year-old messed up on cranberry juice jetted about, grinning madly to herself. The kindly ushers looked at us like we were clever as dolphins for having come to this show. The point is, everyone was terribly excited to see performance poet John Hegley back in Brighton offering his unique brand of “awesomely mundane” verses, where potatoes and spectacles become the focal point for the best poet Luton has ever produced.

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