David Grieg’s “black comedy” The American Pilot, was first performed by the RSC at The Other Place, Stratford, back in 2005, and thus it still retains a contemporary, and yet timeless atmosphere.
Crashing into a remote valley in an unnamed war-torn country, the badly injured American pilot is taken in by a farmer and his wife, whilst the rest of the community squabble about what to do with him. His attempts to alert them to his humanity by showing them pictures of his young family and giving his hosts his name over and over again, are met with either blank incomprehension or crude blows. Only the farmer’s daughter, Evie, seems to see the young man as a human being. The rest see him only as an “American”.
He appears as duped as they are, telling them that America is their friend and that he and his “guys” just want to help them to freedom. As a study in how the World sees America and how America sees the world, it is forceful, shocking and even funny at times.
Dramatically, the piece has a tendency to plod, despite a charismatic performance from Bob Booth as the Captain, a chillingly controlled but simmering James Silk as the Translator, touching humanity (and a lovely singing voice) from Jim Cottrell as The Farmer, the usual flawless intelligence from Helen McGregor in the thankless role of the God-fearing Sarah, and an impressively honest debut from Audrina Oakes-Cottrell as Evie. She spoke her lines as if they had only just occurred to her and was clearly thinking all the time. The Pilot himself, John Mansfield, was a wounded and beautiful Eminem, all bleached blonde hair and fearful blue eyes propped up on his sacks of grain, wondering what was going to happen to him next (the teenage girls in the front row were clearly impressed, the hair-flickometer was off the charts…).
That said, there was still rather too much in the way of standing about and not knowing what to do with arms, as is all too often the case with amateur drama, but this was opening night, and once the cast are eased into the swing of it, the force of the play promises to bring out better and better performances with each curtain up. Go on Hallowe’en.
Reviewed by: Emma Blake
The American Pilot
David Grieg
The North Wall
28, 29, 30, 31 October 2009
Oxford Theatre Guild
Every now and then a performance comes along that takes Sundance by storm. This year, it's Carey Mulligan's star-making turn as a 16-year-old schoolgirl who falls under the spell an older man in early '60s London in "An Education."
Topped by a fine cast, a first-rate script by Nick Hornby and tight direction by Lone Scherfig, the film is a smart, moving but not inaccessible entry in the coming-of-age canon. Sony Pictures Classics scooped up the picture after a heated bidding war and should do well with its investment.
Scherfig and her team -- production designer Andrew McAlpine and costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux -- do a convincing job creating a repressed London still reeling from the war and not yet exploding with the counterculture. It's a period when a seismic shift is just starting to stir.
It's a fearful, drab world, and no one is more bored with it than Jenny (Mulligan), a straight-A student (except for Latin) at a stuffy all-girls school. She's a bright kid with a yearning for culture and all things French. Her ambition is to wear black, smoke cigarettes, read books and try anything new. Enter David (Peter Sarsgaard), a knight in a shining sports car who gives her an education she wasn't expecting.
Their meeting in the pouring rain on a London street is one of the cutest of meet-cutes. A music lover, David tells her to put the cello she's carrying into his car to keep it dry and walk alongside since she surely wouldn't take a ride with a strange man. Who could resist? Certainly not this curious, impressionable girl.
The biggest obstacle to their budding relationship is Jenny's father, Jack (the wonderful Alfred Molina), a strict but loving middle-class parent who remembers the hard times of the war years and only wants the best for his daughter. That means Oxford, and he makes sure, in his sometimes overbearing way, that Jenny has the right extra curricular activities to get in.
Danny is not one of those activities, but he sweet-talks Jack into allowing him to take Jenny to a concert in the West End, which to Jack seems like an exotic place. One thing leads to another, and before long David is taking Jenny off to Oxford for the weekend, which in Jack's distorted vision will be an asset to furthering her education.
The education she is getting has more to do with sultry singers in jazz clubs, fine food and a heretofore unknown world of expensive things. For his part, David is sweet: He's not an ogre, and he respects Jenny's wishes to remain a virgin until she's 17, which is just around the corner. Hornby's script keeps up the character's mystery, and Scherfig wisely doesn't push it. Eventually, what he's up to is revealed, and it's not on the up and up.
But Jenny is smitten and turns 17 in Paris, her dream come true. At that age, a child doesn't have the judgment to see what's happening, and that's where parents should step in, but Jack and his wife (Cara Seymour) are blinded by the upward mobility the noveau riche David represents for the family.
Jenny doesn't understand the subtle class warfare at work here; all she sees is a way out of her dreary life, but perhaps one that threatens her future. Mulligan captures every nuance of the character with an understated charm reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn. Her transformation from an English schoolgirl in a gray uniform to a lovely young and desirable woman is nothing short of miraculous.
But without Sarsgaard's restrained and morally ambiguous performance, Mulligan would not be able to shine as brightly. Dominic Cooper is suitably smarmy as Danny, David's best friend and partner in crime, and Rosamund Pike as his party girl girlfriend is a perfect new role model for Jenny. What makes "An Education" a special piece of work are the social forces going on beneath the surface that inform these all-too-human characters.
By James Greenberg
In September 2009, nine new grotesques were unveiled at the Bodleian Library. A contest was run with local schoolchildren who were encouraged to submit drawings for new grotesques. The winning drawings were then interpreted by Oxfordshire stone carvers Alec and Fiona Peever.
The competition - named 'Design a Gargoyle' - was judged by the Director of the Oxford Preservation Trust, Debbie Dance, Head of Building Conservation in the Estates Directorate, Isobel Hughes, Bodley's Librarian Dr Sarah Thomas, and the sculptor Martin Jennings, who is perhaps best known for his statue of poet Sir John Betjeman at London's St Pancras station.
A gargoyle is a waterspout that guides water away from walls. A grotesque is an animal or human figure created originally to scare away evil spirits. Historically, stone carvers were allowed to use their own creativity in designing the figures. In this case, the ideas for the figures came from children's drawings.
The chosen grotesques are shown here, along with their creators. Tweedledum and Tweedledee (top of page) was created by Eva Masmanian, (first row of photos below) The Green Man by Hannah Duckworth, General Pitt Rivers by Kerrie Chambers, Wild Boar by Ben Bryant, (second row of photos below) Aslan by Hayley Williams, Three Men in a Boat by Henry Chadwick, (third row of photos below) Sir Thomas Bodley by Alfie Turner, From Myths to Monsters (based on Tolkien characters) by Alex Sermon, and Dodo by George O'Connor.
