Boris Johnson's staged rows with government exposed
Boris Johnson’s many public rows with David Cameron are agreed by both parties in advance and are part of a strategy to paint the Mayor as independent, a government insider has claimed.
22 Jun 2011
Sweet Nothing by The Castells
We here at Snipe are big fans of Tape Club Records; we featured Bronze Medallists on these very pages a couple of weeks ago. They seem to have struck gold again with new signings The Castells. A four-piece from Durham, they’re in possession of a certain something – Sam Reynolds’ charged, impassioned vocals perhaps? Whatever it is, it should enable them to neatly sidestep the inevitable Arctic Monkeys/lad rock comparisons. New single Romance is out July 11th. Download Sweet Nothing below.
21 Jun 2011
From the files of the Londonist for June
The print edition of Snipe has been featuring some of the best of London-obsessed site, the Londonist. Here’s what interested co-editor M@tt Brown in June.
Where’s the Centre of London?
Estate agents are trying to rebrand the Holborn area as ‘Midtown’. We hope it’s a futile mission. Although Holborn is undoubtedly ‘mid’, sandwiched between the ancient City and the tourist’s West End, the term is far too generic to gain popular support.
But where is the real ‘mid-town’? Where is the centre of London?
Traditionally, that place is just south of Trafalgar Square. Most signs take their measure from the statue of Charles I. This well-weathered landmark stands on the spot previously occupied by the Charing Cross (a Victorian pastiche of which can now be found outside the station of same name). Before that, and since Roman times, a sorry piece of rock in Cannon Street known as London Stone was at the heart of our city.
There’s a more scientific way to find the centre of London, however. Take a map of the entire Greater London area. Cut it out and paste it onto card. Then, locate the point on the cut-out where the map can be balanced on the head of a pin. This is its centre of gravity. Turns out, the middle of London, by this method, is in Lambeth, not far from the Imperial War Museum. We always thought South London was the real heart of the capital.
PLUS
Ten London Stations Named After Birds
City of Moats
How Many Nipples Are There In Our City’s Galleries?
London’s Best Pub Signs: The Three Kings
How to Destroy The City
21 Jun 2011
The decades did not define Big Bird, Big Bird defined them
“The original Big Bird is ungainly in design and characterization, with clumsy body movements and a hick-like voice.”
A brilliant run down of how Big Bird has changed over the years. The scraggly 70s, the garish 80s, the vibrant 90s, the thoughtful noughties…
21 Jun 2011
The things that go on at an outdoor Hackney rave
“This was a place people came to drink, dance, fornicate. An edgeland hideout. A zone for liminal activities.”
The Hackney Marshman stumbles upon the site of a woodland rave. Human detritus is everywhere. Then it takes a turn:
“One man was hanging by his hands from a branch, trousers down…”
Read the full story here.
21 Jun 2011
London agenda for Tuesday 21 June
1. Listen to Alain de Botton tell us why museums are terrible at art [Run Riot]
2. Check out 93 year-old fashion photographer Lillian Bassman’s bewitching, almost hallucinatory images, 1950s images at Donna Karan [Flavorpill]
3. Ponder if subversive tactics bring our public spaces back to life? [Ian Visits]
4. Buy maps from the Warwick Leadlay Gallery [Tired of London]
21 Jun 2011
Sweetest Touch by Gross Magic
Gross Magic is 20-year-old Sam McGarrigle from Brighton and with Sweetest Touch, he has at his disposal possibly the catchiest tune I’ve heard all year. Part Nirvana, part Weezer, with a chorus to make Billy Corgan beam with fatherly pride, it’s taken from his forthcoming Teen Jamz EP, out August 8th on The Sounds Of Sweet Nothing label. Sickeningly young, frighteningly talented.
20 Jun 2011
Emperor and Galilean
In Emperor and Galilean, Caesar Julian, last pagan ruler of the Roman and Byzantium empires gives an impassioned and possibly drunk/drugged speech to the citizens of Constantinople. All shall be free to worship as they wish, and the suffocating, false morality of the Christian centuries shall be washed away in a tidal wave of free love, man, and, like, creative thought and tie-dye parties and does anybody have some crisps or something, or maybe some brownies?
20 Jun 2011
Six Rounds
Photo © Helen Mildmay-White
As a sport, boxing is pretty abhorrent to me. On the other hand, I usually aggravate everybody around me during any sort of game when I cheer both sides for getting a goal. “But look at how happy they are,” I explain. “Why shouldn’t everybody get points?” However, people punching each other, getting points for causing injury and pain, means I can’t root for anybody but the referee, hoping he’ll step in and suggest they try something else to resolve their differences, like chatting amiable over a pint. As a metaphor, however, boxing is pretty sweet. Two figures in a ring fighting to survive. Good versus evil, wrong versus right, life versus death.
Six Rounds, produced by Liminal Theatre, turns around the old adage of boxing being a metaphor for life, and makes life a metaphor for boxing. There isn’t much boxing in the play. Just getting by, day to day, is the real battle.
Ace is the semi-angelic young black man trying to avoid falling into the cliched traps of inner city life: gangs, crime, domestic violence, a quick trip to the morgue. Solo is his brother, a former boxing hopeful who did fall in and is now literally trapped in a wheelchair. Written by American playwright John ADEkoje the play is set in New York, or perhaps Chicago, and works the poetry of the sweet science relentlessly. Maybe a little too relentlessly. Maybe by the end I was a little punch-drunk from all the poetry, but the solidity of some of the performances helped keep my feet on the ground. Or, at least, my ass in its seat. And the determination that, dammit, this is a emotional powerhouse of a play so you’d better appreciate the spiritual catharsis, means the Yankee sentimentality of the text often threatened to overwhelm the solidity of its performances.
Director Prav MJ did explain to me why she kept the American setting, rather than rewriting and setting the play in the UK, but I still can’t see why it wouldn’t have transferred just fine. Some of the faked accents worked, a few were so gratingly unnatural I felt myself curling into a ball with teeth-grinding despair. It’s perhaps no surprise that the most comfortable performer was also the only American.
Much of the language in the play is undeniably beautiful, and the spare set at the LOST Theatre in Wandsworth, as bare as a boxing ring, lets us focus on the actors. On the whole the performances were good. Again, only a couple were awful, and I won’t single those out, because they were so glaring they don’t need me to highlight them. Rather, I will underscore the performance of Tommy Coleman as the wheelchair-bound Solo who absolutely shone with angry and selfish charisma. He brings a knowing realism to a slightly flighty play.
MJ told me afterwards that she was considering approaching Arcola Theatre to remount the show there after it has finished its run at LOST. It’s a good idea. Not that LOST isn’t an interesting little venue, even if the seating is terrible. And just down Lansdowne Road, the Priory Arms has one of the best blue cheese burgers ever created. And the sticky toffee pudding is as big as a koi drowning in caramel sauce and a pitcher of custard. But Six Rounds, despite its flaws, has enough merits it deserves to be seen by a wider audience, one that might be provided by a venue with a larger circle of regulars.
The show has legs and a few good hooks, it just needs to stop dancing so much and throw a few more solid punches.
Six Rounds plays until 2 July at LOST Theatre, 208 Wandsworth Road, 0207 622 9208, Stockwell Station.
20 Jun 2011
Gazelle Twin - Men Like Gods
It’s not often we get excited about a music video trailer, but everything about Gazelle Twin bleeds mystery and intrigue. Her debut album “The Entire City” comes out on July 11th.
20 Jun 2011
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- Peter Bayley has worked for 50 years as a cinema projectionist in East Finchley
- 9 poems about London: one for each of your moods
- Only 16 commuters touch in to Emirates Air Line, figures reveal
- A unique collection of photos of Edwardian Londoners
- The five spookiest abandoned London hospitals
- London has chosen its mayor, but why can’t it choose its own media?
- Margaret Thatcher statue rejected by public
- Random Interview: Eileen Conn, co-ordinator of Peckham Vision
- Hope and despair in Woolwich town centre
- Punk brewery just as sexist and homophobic as the industry they rail against
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