Having pulled the iron shutter down on another day, I logged into my computer and enviously absorbed Tab writers’ summer musings.

Their exuberant tales of backpacking and sun drenched train hopping brought out the squirrel-lusting Veruca Salt in me. Summer…I sighed: without a doubt a most heavenly time to be a student.  Far away from the pounding deadlines and aching pressure, we are left free to frolic in the throes of passionate romance, to trek through the jungles of Borneo or eat our pasta al bloody dente al sodding fresco beneath the Tuscan sun.

My summer may appear distinctly beige in comparison to the experiences of my peers; I did not spend it scattered all over the globe but dotted around call centres and sandwich bars earning a living like. Three glorious months of having threatening phonetic alphabets hissed into my ear and of tenderly putting together Darren’s chicken tikka baguette extravaganza.

This probably won’t encourage you to cast away your three month inter-railing tickets or your £2,000 volunteering posts in Tanzania…I may not have singlehandedly built an African orphanage but my summer has been touchingly life altering and an adventure nonetheless. Would I have swapped my mini scale adventures for those of some of my fellow students? Sometimes when people ring up, proceed to call you a bitch and say you’ve ruined their life I must admit I checked to see if Easyjet flew to the Andes yet…but as I look back on a summer filled with greasy men asking me to butter their baguettes and smatterings of exhausted Vauxhall Vectras, I can clearly see that it was a time filled to the brim with some of the greatest moments.

Summer is a time that simply comes down to making every day and penny count. Although I didn’t make it to the Andes there is no doubt that this kind of work throws people together and friendships are formed faster than in the mad orgy of handshakes that is Cambridge Freshers’ week.  I had never been so determined to make a mark in the mass of time stretching out like a yawn: Amongst other places I made it to Paris, Madrid, Strasbourg, Lisbon and Wales (naturally). The knowledge that I had firmly footed the bill made time away from the buffets and ketchup toasties all the tastier.

A whale in Skegness

A memorable and life altering summer isn’t just for the wealthy and well connected. As I reached for my headset on another shift at the office and awaited the first ear-ringing phone call of the day I came to the conclusion that you don’t need to spend a zillion to make the summer matter. You don’t need to go to Thailand to find yourself or to a tailor-made meditation class in Vietnam to meet like minded people. Despite starting my three months of work coveting my friends’ plane tickets, I soon came out the other side having met some wonderful people and weighed down with a healthy dollop of stories to tell nonetheless. These long summer months will inevitably have an impact on each of us; whether we were snuggling up with indigenous tribes in Peru, working in McDonalds or the highlight were those few days at Glastonbury. So, don’t envy your friend’s squirrel, let us recite together…A for alpha, B for bravo, C for Charlie…

Directed by Ben Affleck.

The storyline to Ben Affleck’s new cops and robbers drama The Town may not be anything new, but there is something oddly refreshing about a grown-up, anti-Danny Ocean heist flick held together by fleshed out, gritty characters. Anyone who saw Affleck’s directional debut Gone Baby Gone will know that the former Mr. J-Lo can do realism very well, but in The Town the director has stumbled upon something that could potentially make him a big player in the next few years: he’s pretty darn good at action too.

Charlestown, Boston claims to have more bank robberies than anywhere else in the world (I’ll book my tickets now then) which makes it the perfect setting for Doug MacRay (Affleck) and his crew of ne’er-do-wells to make a living. The first scene of the film sees the crooks, disguised in nightmarish skeleton masks, stealing thousands from a high street bank with little more than brute force and intimidation. In Charlestown, there are no Armani suits, no technology, no Don Cheadle doing a Cockney accent, just the raw, shocking truth. When bank manager Claire (Rebecca Hall) is unnecessarily taken hostage by Doug’s live wire best friend Jim (The Hurt Locker’s Jeremy Renner), she becomes a threat to the gang and must be watched.

This sounds easy, but not so if you end up falling in love with the girl you captured, which sweet-but-dim Doug does. Having a relationship with a girl while making sure she doesn’t give information to Special Agent Frawley (Jon Hamm off of Mad Men) isn’t exactly the easy life, but hey, Doug robs banks for a living. Despite wanting to escape the game, MacRay can’t resist a couple more jobs, and this is where Affleck’s true directing talent shines. A botched bank job which culminates in a thrilling car chase through the streets of Boston is one of the highlights of the film, and gives Michael Mann’s films (Heat being an obvious influence) a run for their bank money. However, this scene pales in comparison with the explosive climax, a massive heist on baseball stadium Fenway Park, a kind of blue collar Bellagio where the stakes are equally high.

Affleck may want the world to think that there is much more to The Town than good action, and there is, but the cat and mouse element of the film is much more engaging than Jim’s violent past or Doug’s daddy issues. That said, all of the performances are quite excellent, particularly Rebecca Hall, who could have easily made the role nothing more than quivering eye candy. Instead, the audience feels her fear and how torn she is between love and justice. Special mention too must go to Blake Lively of Gossip Girl fame, who justifies her casting in The Green Lantern with a scene-stealing turn as Doug’s on-off coke addict girlfriend.

Where the film is not successful is in its predictability, which spurns some unforgivably cheesy dialogue. Characters talk about their issues for no reason other than to show that they’re, like, really deep and stuff, and an attempt towards the end to make the film a more broad drama like The Wire fails because we only really care about Doug.

Involving, intelligently acted, and surprisingly witty in places, The Town shows that Ben Affleck has a great future outside of acting, and will inevitably come away with a more than a few bags of swag for his directional efforts.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnanPO_3Hqw

What: Exit Festival.

Location: Novi Sad, the second largest city in Serbia, about an hour and a half from Belgrade.

Venue: The festival itself is set in the sprawling 18^th Century Petrovaradin Fortress atop hill on the banks of the Danube River overlooking the city.

Date: 8-11^th July 2010.

Price: 85 quid i.e. a bargain if you compare it to Reading/Leeds, Glastonbury etc.

Vibe: Truly an incredible place, Exit Festival was created in 2000 as the “State of Exit” by three Novi Sad students as a protest against the brutal Milosevic regime. There is a wonderful atmosphere of freedom and multiculturalism, against the backdrop of the many nationalities, cultures and languages amongst the attendees. The music reflects the diversity of the festival’s attendants, as major bands from a wide variety of European countries are invited to play.

It’s very refreshing to attend a festival with such an international, diversified atmosphere, as it gives the opportunity to meet a wide variety of different people and listen to music you can’t really get at the average English festival. On the other hand, it’s still your general messy, dance-til-dawn five-day party. Moreover, the acts at Exit only start playing after 8pm, so don’t expect to get to sleep before sunrise.

Music: A complete eclectic mix, from punk to hardcore, reggae and dance to salsa and indie. There are around 13 stages, with the hub of the festival taking place at the main stage and in the dance arena. Major acts this year consisted of Missy Elliot, Mika (surprisingly good), Pendulum, Klaxons, Die Antwoord, Placebo, Royksopp, Crystal Castles, SebastiAn, Does It Offend You, Yeah?, the Chemical Brothers (amazing), David Guetta, Dirty South and, bafflingly, Ms Dynamite.

Musical highlight: Does It Offend You, Yeah?

Special mention must go to Does It Offend You, Yeah? for their fantastic set that inspired sweaty moshing at its very best, and to Mr Guetta, who can always be relied to on to entertain the crowds. The dance arena where he played is particularly overwhelming, a huge sweeping stadium, at its best when the sun’s rising at 5am and you’re high on life and dancing, jammed next to thousands of other equally euphoric people.

Brit boys The Klaxons played at this year’s Exit Festival

Accommodation: Unlike a lot of British festivals, only about a quarter of those who go to Exit actually stay in the campsite, while the majority opt to stay in hostels or rent apartments from local people in town. If, in true cheapo style, you decide on the campsite, ensure you equip yourself with a bumbag (sexy) for your passport etc, as there are thieves operating in the area.

Eating and drinking: Going into Novi Sad itself for food is a lot cheaper and nicer than eating the crap you get in the campsite and the arena. It gives you an opportunity to sample traditional Serbian dishes, and to visit the beautiful man made beach that sits on the banks of the Danube river, where many festival goers spend the day sleeping off their hangovers.

With regard to alcohol, you’re best buying along the side of the road, as Novi Sad locals make full use of the influx of foreigners by selling cheap (potentially bootleg) liquor all along the mile or so of pavement leading from the campsite to the arena. Alcohol is generally good vale for money; a very large bottle of vodka will cost you around 4 quid. The vendors are also generally keen to give you free shots of eye watering Rakia, a traditional Balkan spirit, particularly if you’re a group of young, hot females. Hot as in sweaty obv.

View From The Fort: The Danube, with Novi Sad in the background

Comfort Factor: The festival has around 200 deliciously cold showers, essential refreshment in the 30 degree sweaty, grimy, Serbian heat. The toilets, sadly, are the basic vile festival portaloos, worsened by the heat which causes their contents to ferment slightly. Don’t look down.

Why You Must Go: Exit is for seasoned festival goers who wish to have a seriously good time in a new and exciting environment. As it’s all the way in Serbia, it’s definitely the perfect excuse to explore Eastern Europe while you’re there. I can personally advocate Budapest as a vibrant, student friendly city, but Zagreb in Croatia, Sarajevo in Bosnia and Belgrade in Serbia itself all come highly recommended as places to culturally and socially enrich yourself on the cheap. With the risk of making this review sound like I am being employed by the people who run Exit, I’m going to end by letting the below picture speak for itself.

Still undecided?

Although direct flights to Serbia are hard to come by, Easyjet offer flights to Budapest, from where Exit festival offer a shuttle bus to the festival site at Novi Sad. If you can afford the BA air fare, the airline does offer flights to Belgrade.

Directed by John Erick Dowdle

Despite plastering his name all over the publicity for this film, Shyamalan appears to be taking a back seat in Devil, merely co-producing and supplying the original story. But don’t let that lull you into a false sense of security – as evidenced in this modern-day horror flick, Shyamalan is like a twitchy Jenga player: with just one move he can cause everything to fall apart.

The film’s wonderfully simple premise is like a demonic Breakfast Club: a thief, a blackmailer, a murderer, a thug and a fraud are forced together and we witness the fallout – however, since one of the above is no other than the King of Darkness, they’re in for a little more than bickering and life lessons. Their escalating torment is intercut with the story of a police officer’s desperate attempt to minimise the body count as he watches the gruesome events unfold on CCTV – essentially, a superfluous subplot with all the dramatic tension of Total Wipeout.

It begins promisingly enough, with a disorientating title sequence and some claustrophobic first-person camerawork inside the lift where our ill-fated fivesome are trapped. Their inevitable conflict fuelled by rising suspicion and fear is morbidly fascinating to watch, and a mangled repairman’s blood slowly leaking into the overhead lighting is a neat reminder of the encroaching danger. Yet as soon as this satanic set-up has us by the throat, unwelcome interruptions from our stereotypically embittered cop dash any hope of sustained horror.

The imprisoned individuals’ reactions of the Devil – or rather lack of – are also a disappointment. Despite some of the killings being beyond even the most skilled murderer’s capabilities, those trapped never openly entertain the thought that something satanic (or even just supernatural) is occurring, meaning their fear never rockets as high as it should. When people should be as terrified as an arachnophobe surrounded by a legion of tarantulas, they’re merely mildly shaken, resulting in the audience with the impression that we needn’t be scared either.

However, it’s the frankly pathetic ending which robs the film of any lasting scares. Throughout the film the makers attempt to shoehorn in various moral platitudes, concluding with the sentiment that Satan can be defeated by a heart-felt apology. Even though various characters emphatically flagged as innocents are killed, sinners can dodge the Devil by saying sorry in an underwhelming ‘climax’.

There is, lastly, the elephant in the room to deal with: Shyamalan’s customary twist – or, should I say, Agatha Christie’s. Yes, the filmmaker felt that audience expectations would be best subverted by stealing the twist from the world’s best-ever-selling mystery novel, And Then There Were None, an act falling firmly on the wrong side of the brave-stupid divide.

Though aspiring to be an intelligent and restrained horror, ultimately the only thing unholy about Devil is the transformation of a brilliant concept into a dull, uninspired and scare-free film.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aINOilb_Kzc

Bestival was predictable.

Predictably, extortion abounded (£4.10 for a pint of cider in the ‘Magner’s Garden’; £6 for a cheeseburger). Predictably, the toilets were a scatological Paradise, although I lack the requisite prurient interest in faecal matter to locate Eden in a Portaloo. Predictably, there was an impossible queue for everything. Predictably, I could have drowned in the mud by Friday night. Predictably, there was a female uniform (a Kate Moss incarnation, to varying degrees of success). Predictably, other people – other sweaty, smelly, offensive people – shook your faith in humanity. Less predictably, a ginger adolescent flashed my friend at the Example set, although later someone pissed on our tent and the balance was restored. I would have predicted that.

Of course, it was all great fun. Festival huxters have located a primal pleasure in being filthy and drunk and listening to big, loud noises and sold it to us for £157.50 a ticket including booking fee. But Bestival is a model. It is obviously, exactly like any other music festival, for all its pretensions. I don’t think its organisers would like to hear that. This year was, apparently, ‘The Year of the Fantastic’, but although elements – see: the decorations – were relatively ‘fantastic’, the ultimate experience was largely indistinguishable from V, or Reading, or Leeds in the sense that a festival is what it is: being filthy and drunk and listening to big, loud noises.

A crowd like any other crowd

The campsite opened at midday on Thursday, except it didn’t; it actually opened at half past one. That was annoying. The site was huge, and to give Bestival a little credit for individuality, it looked pretty cool. Although, like most May Balls, the decorations lacked coherence, unlike most May Balls, the incongruity was exciting, rather than symptomatic of too few helpers, and adhered to the proffered theme. The large magenta Bollywood tent boasted chandeliers and sequined peacocks suspended from the ceiling. The Knees Up! tent reminded me of that below-deck party in Titanic; random vestments hanging like bunting and a few low tables and sofas for smoking and arm-wrestling, a fitting theme for the smallest venue. At night, huge coloured stars set in the landscape shone; the Arcadia stage (which looked, slightly alarmingly, like the sort of big metal spider you imagine stomping through Trafalgar Square come the Apocalypse) sent a little puff of flame into the air at frequent intervals. Sort of like one of those air fresheners.

The best act I saw were The Correspondents, whose mutant electro-swing nearly caused a riot in the Cabaret Tent. They performed on the Main Stage on Saturday night, but the intimate venue suited them infinitely better. They brand themselves as, ‘like hyperactive ducks on a lava lake’; the singer was certainly tireless, even when he knocked himself off a platform – skinny limbs flailing – in a particularly acrobatic move. From this to what was less a stage dive than a stage length – from the back of the audience to the front -  he was a consummate performer.

I Blame Coco performed on Friday afternoon to what I thought was an unfairly tough crowd: although we all tire of hearing, “Good afternoon, Bestival!” after the first time, the female front woman – Sting’s daughter, Coco Sumner – was perhaps, touchingly, entertaining a vision of herself commanding the sort of crowd that a Main Stage slot would usually draw. Her throaty tones provided moments of brilliance – Selfmachine was particularly good – but her set lacked the sort of crowd-pleasers than an afternoon set requires. Example – on straight after – provided them.

The xx filled the Big Top, despite Bestival scheduling them at the same time as Simian Mobile Disco; Hot Chip were – predictably – fantastic live; Roxy Music were louche, ageing rockers whose set was visually fun – shots of the babes who graced their famous album covers, a sort of hypnotic swirling amoeba, the word Roxy in a series of different fonts – and good for a dance. There was, predictably, too much on (although I would happily have sacrificed Tiny Tempah, who basically played Pass Out for fifteen minutes and shouted, “Bestival” for the remaining fifteen minutes of his short set) and stumble into any one of the smaller tents at any time of day or night and you’d find all manner of rousing sets; Karauke! – karaoke, with ukeleles – were a particular gem.

There were so many Cambridge students around that you were never more than a few steps away from the edge of the maw: finding yourself in the shaded area of a Cambridge Venn diagram where your tent-mate plays college badminton with the person you’ve just met outside the Big Top, whose brother is – what a coincidence! – in a Themes & Sources seminar with their friend who they’ve lost in the Spiegeltent but should be back in a minute. So if you were chewing your face off (or anyone else’s) outside the Portaloos on Friday night, well, news travels fast.

For Bestival’s price, you get good music, and a scenic view, but an ultimately predictable experience. Its price places it at the extreme upper end of the May Ball spectrum, but without the chance to reimburse yourself in gluttony and I don’t really think it’s worth £150-odd quid. But I don’t think any festival really is. Bestival was just another fun weekend in a field.

Directed by Stephen Frears

Naively judging a film by its trailer, I thought Tamara Drewe would be a Richard Curtis-style series of inoffensive comical romps in the picturesque countryside: in short, as edgy as a sponge. Then I actually saw it. Adultery, death, stalkers, deception…and, yet, still less edge than a Cindies playlist.

It follows the love affairs of various over-sexed and under-loved villagers, catalysed by Tamara (Gemma Arterton) returning to her childhood home. Her process of choosing between broodingly sexy drummer Ben (Dominic Cooper); ruggedly sexy farmhand Andy (Luke Evans) and, ahem, author Nicholas (Roger Allam) is predictably roundabout and misguided, making the tentative romance between writer Glen (Bill Camp) and Nicholas’ wife Beth (Tamsin Greig) the far more watchable plotline.a Stirring all of this with the expertise of a Michelin starred chef is Jody, a jailbait headcase who makes Britney Spears look mentally stable.

The performances are all of a consistently high quality, with Tamsin Greig brilliantly combining Beth’s insecurity, naivety, hurt and anger. Cooper, Camp and Allam provide the vast majority of laughs with their respective self-indulgence, social awkwardness and utter lack of self-awareness. However, with only Camp being required to juggle both drama and comedy, you sense that for many of the talented cast this film is as challenging as a two-piece puzzle.

As for our eponymous heroine, she’s as appealing as a bout of herpes. Whether she’s arrogantly outlaying her future career plans, displaying zero guilt at repeatedly shagging a married man, or even – gasp – queue-jumping, Tamara comes across as an inherently unlikeable figure. Which would be no problem, if the film’s central plot didn’t require us to root for her happiness and fulfilment.

The film’s biggest handicap, though, is its severe case of cinematic schizophrenia, a result of the difficult transition from comic strip to film. Momentary flashbacks and fantasy sequences (15 year old wearing only a gossamer shirt about to be ravished by Dominic Cooper anyone?) might have worked well on paper, but are awkwardly redundant on screen. I suspect that Jody was quite funny when just a drawing, but seeing her ricochet between cartoonish nympho, childish stalker and damaged, fatherless schoolgirl the character comes across as completely misjudged. Lastly, the film makes the mistake of trying to juggle middle-of-the-road comedy and brutal drama (think Michael McIntyre doing Hamlet) and consequently succeeds at neither.

Tamara Drewe does, admittedly, have plenty of potential: a stellar cast, some well-observed writing, Dominic Cooper in eyeliner, and enough surprises to avoid being a by-the-numbers flick. But the cast’s talents are wasted, the writing inconsistent and the surprises outweighed by the predominantly pedestrian plot. It might just have reached its potential too, had the makers not forgotten about simply telling a story well. And all because they were too busy tittering at lines like ‘fuck soup.’

Edinburgh Fringe: Zoo Roxy

Written and Directed by Will Seaward

If, out in the dark backward and abysm of the open sea, a cannon is fired and there is no one there to hear it (never mind there being someone there to set it alight in the first place) did it make a sound? In the topsy-turvy world of Silent Cannonfire, to which many of our own laws of physics do not pertain, probably not. In this world the play’s name is no more an oxymoron than the company’s (“Of Vast Bigness”) is a tautology. In this world, sailors, mutinous pirates, devious whores, cannibals, an evil captain, and a well-intentioned imperialist, if ever there was one, play out their noiseless existences to the musical accompaniment of a couple of violin and accordion-wielding mermen.  One of the most absurd, fun, original and anarchic performances of the Fringe, Silent Cannonfire had me smiling and giggling helplessly all the way through—on both occasions.

That’s right, I saw it twice. Perhaps because I am a little too forgiving.  A cross between Victoria Wood’s send-up of Crossroads in Acorn Antiques and Michael Frayn’s, Noises Off (a farcical comedy set in the tumultuous backstage, whilst a fictional performance takes place onstage) the company will probably agree that the first night was an utter shambles. Forgive me for not counting, but Legend has it that the show incorporates and relies upon over 200 props (the Kraken alone sported some four or five tentacles), including cannons, sabres, scrolls, casks and handwritten captions, which narrate the scene and supplement the absence of dialogue.

No surprise, then, that when I arrived to find half of these missing, I was utterly bewildered as to what on earth was going on. The story seemed sporadic and unclear, and the ensemble eventually resorted to indeterminable miming and mouthing to little avail. Yet still they pressed on, their togetherness adamantine, and it was clear that this must have been a good show let down by a curable bout of first-night calamity.

Thank God I saw it again. The calamity had subsided, and the remedy shed light upon a lustrous gem. As far as piratical adventures go, the tale made no compromises—unpaid debts and unreturned favours, old loves, new loves, sex, blood, sweat, tears, death and a bit of making merry in between. The play’s only shortfall was its neglect to exploit the full potential of the visual and physical: there was the odd superfluous gesture that served little more than to advance the plot or pass the time, and some delightful moments of physical humour might have been better homed in on. Otherwise, it had a certain, endearing anarchy about it. The thing was, quite literally, a bloody riot.

(The cast was Pierre Novellie, Max Levine, Emma Stirling, Florence Carr, Matt Lim, Emerald Paston, Hannah Laurence, George Potts, John Haidar, Chloe Mashiter, Stephen Bailey, Julia Leijola, and Chrystal Ding.)

Read Toby Jones’ review of the Cambridge run here.

Edinburgh Fringe: C Central

Performed by Nick Goodwin, Hal Munby & Charlie Cotton

We’ve seen their mandolin-based flirting up and down the Royal Mile for days now, so it comes as no surprise that eighty percent of Truly Medley Deeply’s audience is female. I am cynical. How can three geek-chic Cantabs dressed as comedy superheroes occupy an hour-long set with a few pop covers? True, they tore up every May Ball going this year, but hyperactively drunk exam-free undergrads are a fairly forgiving crowd. And C Central’s Cabaret Bar appears rather a boozing than a bopping venue.

But the bar is perfect. Perched on stools, we are cluttered closely together near the stage, cosying up to the trio. As for the outfits, they are unthreatening and cheerfully childlike, not unlike the group members themselves.

A human medley.

This is central to Truly Medley Deeply’s appeal. They are so far from cool – with their enthusiasm, dodgy dancing and single, cheesy joke – that they become, somehow, cool. The group’s delivery taps into the zeitgeist that made Glee Club so popular. More than once, hordes of dancing audience-members leap unannounced onto the stage, liberated by the affable trio’s lack of self-consciousness. Indeed, the enthusiasm in the Cabaret Bar audience wouldn’t be out of place in America, which is saying something.

Close to the front sit TMD’s core audience: a bunch of devout-looking girls, bobbing and mouthing nervously. These are probably the same lot that go crazy for male Oxbridge a cappella groups, but this trio’s pre-worked medleys are far more impressive and amusing. They act as a kind of musical word search: you become dimly aware of some Gaga minutes before the fully worked Poker Face finally arrives from within Summer of ’69. It has the same impact as if they had played a song you’ve had in your head all day.

The ‘Medley Book’ is a bold move. The trio pass it round the audience, asking for song suggestions to improvise a new medley. True, there is some heavily un-slick faffing when the book reaches the stage – and they didn’t do my song – but the childlike excitement of each when their song arrives is more than worth the wait. Even the esteemed editor of this section, Toby ‘too cool for audience participation’ Parker-Rees emits a (coyly) excited exclamation when his song (Next Episode by Dr Dre, Parker-Rees fans) is played.

Truly Medley Deeply’s set has all the aspects of the best Fringe shows: comfortable audience participation, singing, unusual costumes and bongo drums. Most importantly, you leave with a glow of enjoyment that more than makes up for the free one-man revival of Evita you misguidedly attended earlier that day.

Edinburgh Fringe: C Soco

Written & Directed by Freddy Syborn

As is fairly obvious from the title, Freddie Syborn’s new play, and half of the Negative Capability duo, is about love. We’ve heard it all before; man meets woman, man woos woman with his charming goofiness, their relationship meets problems (long distances, a mystifyingly abrupt pregnancy), and then the man gets a terminal illness and dies.

This clichéd storyline was where The Love Story fell down; for all of Syborn’s excellent writing, and the valiant attempts of Patrick Walshe McBride and Guilia Galastro as the two characters, this play had nothing new to say. It was a chick flick on stage.

However, the writing was brilliant. The love scenes managed to perfectly capture that strange paradox of being in love; everyone in love feels like they’re the only person to have ever felt like this, yet everyone in love acts in exactly the same way. Watching Ed and Victoria act out moments of tenderness, which I could recognise having done myself, almost made me cringe as I realised just how pedestrian love really is.

There were certain moments, though, which just didn’t fit with the rest of the play. For example, a bizarre scene in which Victoria tells Ed she’s pregnant, and she’s going to have an abortion, jarred with the rest of the plot; considering a baby had never been hinted at beforehand, and is never mentioned again afterwards.

It felt as though Syborn was busy ticking his list of relationship problems: unwanted pregnancy, check. Equally, after his diagnosis, Ed launches into a long diatribe against the British government, for their policy of not checking blood donations for his disease. This moment of polemic could have enlivened a dragging plot, but instead just felt weird.

The acting was competent, though it never shone. Both Walshe McBride and Galastro are brilliant actors, though here they seemed to be lacking in both direction and rehearsal. Although the scenes had been blocked well, with some interesting movement, character development was lacking, and Ed and Victoria never felt coherent, and so the play never felt like a cohesive whole. This disjunction between scenes was also found in the awfully long scene changes, especially annoying as the props brought in and out so painstakingly added nothing to the play.

Despite the brave attempts of Syborn, Walshe McBride and Galastro, this play was never going to dazzle. With such a weak plot nothing they could have done would have kept the audience interested. I was even more disappointed after having seen Anatomy Act, which was excellent, to see the waste of Syborn’s talent on such a worthless topic. This play felt like an afterthought; hopefully he’ll stick to writing more about the word cunt from now on.

Director: Jon Turteltaub

It’s times like these when I can begin to comprehend the utter hatred that about half the population seems to harbour against Nicolas Cage. I myself am quite a fan. But in his latest outing, Disney’s ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’, there was, I’m certain of it, a series of audible (and justified) cringes from the audience I sat with throughout every second of his screen-time.

Granted, most of this venom should be directed against the costume designer. Why oh why oh why does he need those fingerless gloves? And what’s with the long, straggly, so-greasy-it’s-a-shade-darker-than-normal hair? The look, we can tell, is trying to say, ‘Check me out, I’m cool and rugged. Like Aragorn.’ Instead, what we’re hearing is, ‘Big Issue, anyone?’

Despite this, ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ is a great summer romp. It follows the adventures of young physics nerd Dave, played charmingly by Jay Baruchel – though can anyone decide whether that voice is endearing or simply painfully annoying? I’m still straddling the issue. After a traumatic childhood run-in with sorcerers Balthazaar Blake (Nicolas Cage) and the brilliantly evil Maxim Horvath (Alfred Molina), Dave is forced to realise ten years later that he, in fact, is the descendent of Merlin and subsequently the only one capable of defeating the evil sorceress Morgana. As Balthazaar embarks on the task of teaching his young apprentice the tricks of the trade, Dave must embrace his fate and save the world – whilst at the same time, of course, trying to win the girl of his dreams.

All very original stuff.

But it doesn’t really matter too much that all of this has been done before. Many times. It’s the dynamic duo of Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer – though they’ve lost the magic they once had. The glory days of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl’ ended long ago; with ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest’, in fact. But never mind. It’s still bundles of fun if we ignore Cage’s outfit.

Which, luckily, proves remarkably easy to do. Baruchel really is proving a wonderfully comic find, hitting exactly the right notes of geekiness in all his roles so far. Who needs good looks when you’ve got a voice that sounds like a nasal foghorn? The blond hottie is clearly charmed senseless. Then there’s Alfred Molina, who can do no wrong in my eyes. Yes, it’s cliché that they’ve again classed the goodies as wholesome Americans (though, as I’ve mentioned, ‘wholesome’ isn’t the word that comes to mind when looking at Cage), and the baddies as well-spoken Englishmen. But Molina’s just so damn good at it, that I forgive them completely. It’s Doc Ock with a goatee and a fur coat. It doesn’t get much better than that.

In the end, it should all be wrong. And a lot of it is. But, for the most part, it’s actually pretty fun. So go enjoy it, and just love the little spark of magic that Disney and Bruckheimer have retained. It’s a dwindling fire, but still enough to put a smile on our faces. That’s good enough for me.