Category: Reviews

By Jacob Watson

Five years does seem like a long time to take to get around to reading the highly anticipated follow up to Call Me By Your Name, one of the most iconic books/films of recent times. But then again I’m just your average common reader so I can’t be hated for taking this long. And the book was published twelve years after Call Me By Your Name anyway. So Find Me basically had to wait twelve years to get published, and then another five years to finally get picked up and read by yours truly. 

Still, that pales in comparison to the twenty years the characters – Elio and Oliver! – had to wait to finally reconnect. And the reader of Find Me might feel themself to be sharing in their waiting: as has been decried by almost every reader of this book, you have to push through over two hundred pages of seemingly unrelated material before the terrible twosome themselves finally get together properly in the last fifteen or so pages of the book. 

Waiting – being made to wait, making things wait – is clearly a big thing in the book. And it reminds me of the opening of Call Me By Your Name in fact: Elio’s recollection of Oliver’s constant and apparently meaningless use of the word “later”. One difference, though, may be that in the earlier book, we are made to wait and watch the romance develop, and the plot quicken and get weightier, and that’s really part of its appeal. Whereas with Find Me, your average reader is just waiting for the book to give what it needs to give, in order to justify its existence. 

And that’s the issue, isn’t it: this was always a book cursed to inherit all sorts of waiting, from the characters, the readers, the writer himself, and around the narrative skeleton of characters less pretentious and robotic as these ones, it may be the stuff great novels are made of. But Aciman seems to have misjudged the capacity of his characters to satisfyingly dramatise this waiting. So, apparently in order to add substance to his novel, he makes the cardinal sin of producing a novel that relies on the author’s (characters’s) intelligence and cultural knowledge to work. 

Thus in this instance, what you end up with, annoyingly, is a highly stylised and conceptually intriguing novel whose characters come across as utterly transparent, lazily drawn puppets, the sole purpose of whom is to voice (sometimes implicitly but gratingly often explicitly) all the theory and cultural reference and intellect with which Aciman feels compelled to salt his text. They certainly don’t think, talk or act the way people do, but they think, talk and act the way Aciman needs them to in order to fill the black hole in his text left by all the implicit waiting. And it doesn’t even pay off: when the characters finally stop their wholly unconvincing, preposterously robotic and referential and incessant dialogue, it’s seemingly only ever to pose little rhetorical questions inquiring into the nature of their own minds. Obviously, not all character-narrators owe the reader complete narrational and mental transparency, and a bit of unreliability and unclarity is nice. But one can only really groan when it becomes clear that the questions, for instance, are only there to hint at and suggest an awareness of the psychological depths and recesses that Aciman apparently can’t be bothered to plumb. Consider these random quotes where Sami Perlman is talking about getting to know the woman from the train: “Had I once again spoken out of turn and crossed a line?”; “When was the last time I’d spoken to someone like this?”; “Had I yet again snubbed her without meaning to?”; “Was she teasing me?” Girl, I don’t know! And it doesn’t look as though André Aciman does, either. For this whole first episode of the novel, nothing seems real, and not in the good way. Knowing each other for one day, Sami Perlman and Miranda, the woman from the train, decide that theirs is the greatest love story ever told, discuss having a baby and consider getting matching tattoos. I literally was not convinced for a single moment. Questions like these worm their way into Elio’s part of the novel as well. And again it just seems like lazy writing. 

There’s actually another little stylish trait that grated on me while I was reading Find Me. All four sections of the novel are strewn with these unbelievably cringe-inducing and irritating italicised phrases. I think this is a longstanding trait of Aciman’s actually – it was in Call Me By Your Name, too. But here, it’s just unfathomable. Or, at least, at first it was. Though there wasn’t ever much evidence throughout the novel as far as genuine narration is concerned, I was able to gradually come into an awareness of the nature of these italicised phrases, and I think it has something to do with tense. Though the whole novel is told through the minds of the narrators in the past tense, the italicised bits of narrative appear to be thoughts directly lifted from the characters’s actual minds at the time they are describing. Have some examples: “Why am I not even hesitating?”; “This is what I’ve always wanted. This and you.”; “I shook my head. Like you needed to ask.”; or even the woefully mechanical: “Just kiss me, will you, if only to help me get over being so visibly flustered.”

Now then. This struck me as extremely unnecessary. Doesn’t all past-tense narrative, its goal being to recollect and present the sensation of events as they had happened, work through burning the fossil fuel of present-tense sensations that have buried themselves in the brain? That is, given that all past-tense narrative operates via the previousness of a present-tense sensation pressing itself through time zones into a new present, and that that is the implied machinery of all past-tense narrative, especially one invested anyway in time, why should the writer even bother to distinguish between the two? Again, it seems to me to be a sort of gimmick, insisted upon by the novelist in order to fraudulently suggest a crisp and clinical awareness on his part of the stream of perceptions, travelling and morphing across time zones in and through his characters’s minds. But for the reader who has unhappily admitted that the characters in the novel are literally insubstantial, you have to regretfully accept that the questions are just there to create the illusion of insight.

This leads me on to another of the novel’s problems. If these annoying little italicised bits only serve to arbitrarily and for no reason severe the time zones of the narrative on the level of form, it may only be because the novel brings with it so much sort of theoretical baggage that Aciman seems to insist on including in the novel, apparently just as a way of justifying or advocating for the underperformance of the narrative itself. Aciman, a Proust scholar, can be forgiven for trying to make his novel pretty Proustian. But only up to a certain point. The characters have annoying conversations about time, and fate, and strike me as how Proust may have written his novels if he had written them to a deadline and on the toilet. William Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Edith Wharton, Marcel Proust, Bach, all worm their way not only into the novel, but into completely unrelated conversations. And often when they do so they do so clumsily. Consider the unforgivably clunky Shakespeare reference, when Miranda’s father describes her as having “a tempest” inside her. If reading Dostoyevsky on a train is improbably enough, talking to the stranger on the train about why you’re reading Dostoyevsky is more improbable still.

If the explicit engagement with cultural reference and intellect is grating enough as it is, the implicit cultural and theoretical inheritance is no better. There are two cultural patrons of this novel: Proust and Freud. The Proust bits are either terrible or nice. When Aciman successfully brings Proust into the novel, it’s because he’s written a passage of thought so attractive in its grammar, in the placement of its different lexical weights and even punctuation, that one feels highly impressed. I’ll transcribe a nice bit, from Elio’s section, here: 

“What never ceased to amaze me and cast a halo around our evening was that ever since we’d met, we’d been thinking along the same lines, and when we feared we weren’t or felt we were wrong-footing each other, it was simply because we had learned not to trust that anyone could possibly think and behave the way we did, which was why I was so indifferent with him and mistrusted every impulse in myself and couldn’t have been happier when I saw how easily we’d shed some of our screens.” 

See? Nice! This works well largely because it’s a pleasant contrast to the novel’s utter lack of character insight; the passage offers a detailed and sharp unravelling of Elio’s motives and thoughts in a way that feels natural and self-fortifying. But parts like this are few and far between, and indeed I had to work quite hard to find my nice example.

There are also some plot points that are quite heavy-handedly Freudian, and these come across as sort of amateurish. I mean, the sexual psychology of Call Me By Your Name itself was liable to read in all sorts of Freudian ways, but in Find Me it gets a bit crazy: 

“I loved […] being coddled this way, loved when he started rubbing a lotion on me that felt wonderful each time he poured more of it on his palm and touched me everywhere. I felt like a toddler being washed and dried by his parent, which also took me back to my very earliest childhood when my father would shower with me in his arms.” 

I mean, come on. That sounds like if you pushed a microphone into a stranger’s face on the street and asked them to say something that sounds like something one of Freud’s patients would say. This man is a professor! Throwing Freudian-sounding little bits of lore is not enough to actually construct a narrator; but it appears to be all Aciman has at his disposal – alongside rhetorical questions and Shakespeare references, that is.

Aciman’s marginally more subtle involving of the Freudians, though still pretty obtrusive, may be in Find Me’s unusual fascination with dying, soon-to-be dead and dead fathers. Almost every character – I dare say every – has a father who is one of these three. It’s like a weird remix of kill your gays – kill off the fathers, and their sons will start being gay, acting gay, or come out as gay, or reconnect with the gay lover of that one Italian summer twenty years ago. I don’t know what the reader is meant to make of this. And I don’t know what Aciman was perhaps wanting to demonstrate: maybe he was just hoping to repeat an event throughout time frames and throughout his novel and hope that eventually it sediments into something bearing the semblance of relevance in the reader’s mind. 

But I think the worst crime this novel commits – and the one there is absolutely no excuse for – is the disgusting omnipresence of clichés so ridiculously overused that you can’t even yawn or roll your eyes at them because you’ve already yawned and rolled your eyes at those clichés throughout your life anyway. My hand almost cramped underlining them. Here are some:

I stared at him. “You know I’d like to.” And this wasn’t the single malt or the wine speaking.

My heart was racing, yet suddenly I felt awkward even if none of this was unfamiliar to me. 

[By] now his body knew mine better than it knew itself. 

I have nothing to add to this. It speaks for itself. 

You know, there’s a bit in this novel where Elio’s much older lover, Michel, describes their morning sex, having taken place after their night time sex, as their “hasty little […] sequel”, and if this weren’t such a lazily and amateurishly Freudian book I’d feel a morsel of guilt about reading those words as a bit of a Freudian slip on Aciman’s own part, too. But I don’t, since if any book opens itself up to criticisms of the nature of its actual writing, it’s this one. It’s a shame. A lot of the things everyone hated about this book I saw no reason to hate. For instance, I didn’t really care that there wasn’t much Elio-Oliver content, and would have been perfectly happy reading about the sexual adventures of Elio and his father (not together, I hope! But for a book this Freudian it’s not out of the question! (I joke.)); but this hasty little sequel to Call Me By Your Name is lazy in too many ways for me to like it any more that on a neutral level.

By Jacob Watson

Alan Hollinghurst’s third novel, The Spell, is unique in his bibliography, qualitatively and, if you like, quantitatively, in some compelling but confusing ways. His novels have tended to be huge six-hundred-or-so page tomes, large-scale state of the nation works which announce themselves formally and sometimes explicitly to be the inheritors of the Jane Austen and Henry James type of social novel. The Spell, on the other hand, barely makes it over the two-hundred page mark, and lacks the expansive social vision and criticism that his other novels are able to offer. 

The novel is described on the blurb as a “comedy of sexual manners”, and the placement of those terms is more revealing than it might seem. At points in the novel I wondered if it perhaps could do with being inverted: “a sexual comedy of manners”; I occasionally felt as though the novel represented something that maybe could have been a sexless comedy of manners, but which had had sex smothered onto it, resulting in a sort of neutral, traditional comedy of manners rendered sexual by Hollinghurst’s desire to just do so. But I think the description is in general more accurate, as the “sexual manners” the novel deals with are, themselves, indeed comedic, and a source of comedy. So, in a way it’s the inverse of my first thought: it’s not a comedic novel rendered sexual, but rather a sexual novel that can’t help coming across as comedic. 

The Spell is a more or less plotless affair, a pseudo-modernist carousel of narratives which focalise, revolvingly, on the perspectives of each of a set of four gay men, whose sex lives are intertwined beyond belief, twisted into a Gordian knot of desire that binds itself up even across implicit family lines. The sexual extremities on display here, and the neutrality with which they’re described, seem to amount to (to borrow the novel’s term slightly) a transvaluation of all sexual values, and in this regard the novel brings to mind the works of Jean Genet, in particular his Our Lady of the Flowers, to me at least. 

And it’s interesting that it does so, seeing as it resembles a piece of Genet-inclining modernist prose fiction. But it does so only in a limited way. I suppose the novel resembles Genet in a world where, instead of spending years in prison for homosexuality, Genet had gone to boarding school and then got two degrees from Oxford. This is a pretty colloquial phrasing of what I do in fact take to be the novel’s problem. In The Spell, Hollinghurst appears to have tried his hand at writing an airy, elusive, plotless circuit of intermingling sexual psychologies; but this kind of narrative can only succeed if the writer is genuinely willing to relinquish an insistence upon facts and details, actual and mental, to allow the novel, which he wants to be evocative, to actually evoke. Let me explain.

*

The kind of novel that Hollinghurst intended to write with The Spell only really works by being slightly elusive and unclear. But Hollinghurst can’t seem to shake off his formal affinity with the Victorian and Edwardian novelists: I mean, he did write his MA thesis on the novels of Forster, Firbank and Hartley. Perhaps this novel would have succeeded more if Hollinghurst were able to stop describing his characters’ every thought with a level of self-evaluation and insight that, if they actually had at the time of the events the novel describes, they may not have acted this way and produced the plot the descriptions are describing.

I mean, just look at the state of this sentence: “Alex felt the beautiful unwise emotions of something starting up, and grinned to himself between bites, as if his sandwich was unaccountably delicious; though what he was savouring was the longed-for surprise of being wanted.” This is the kind of sentence the modernists with whom The Spell is implying an affinity would never write; can you imagine Jean Genet, Woolf, Mansfield, writing something like that? Sentences like this, which are constant in the novel, imply a razor-sharp awareness and ability to monitor all the thoughts and feelings that stream through a character’s mind – an awareness that people just don’t have in real life, and which, looking at the actual plot of the novel, the characters certainly don’t have, either. Moreover, this kind of penetrative, retroactive psychological insight is not conducive to the success of the kind of novel that The Spell is striving to be. Those kinds of novels work by exploiting the evocative, richly sensual, the whiff of the unconscious occasionally finding its way to the surface, for instance. I guess what I mean is: a novel can’t be this plotless and unbelievable whilst also maintaining an Edwardian, Bennett-esque focus on the details, the events, of real life and the mind. 

Here’s a comparison by examples. Consider this extract from Our Lady of the Flowers:

“Now, as there was no bathtub in Darling’s home, he used to be dipped into a wash basin. Today, or some other day, though it seems to me today, while he was sleeping, he dreamed that he was entering a wash basin. He isn’t, of course, able to analyze himself, nor would he dream of trying to, but he is sensitive to the tricks of fate, and to the tricks of the theatre of fear. When Divine answers, “I’m doing the wash basin,” he thinks she is saying it to mean “I’m playing at being the wash basin,” as if she were “doing” a role. (She might have said: “I’m doing a locomotive.”) He suddenly gets an erection from the feeling that he has penetrated Divine in a dream. In his dream he penetrates the Divine of the dream of Divine, and he possesses her, as it were, in a spiritual debauch, And the following phrases come into his mind: “To the heart, to the hilt, right to the balls, right in the throat.””

This is one extract which actually bears some likeness, content-wise, with The Spell, but obviously is different in ways; ways that make it succeed. There is, I admit, a suggestion of genuine self-awareness (“he thinks she is saying it to mean […]”), but it of course ultimately falls, in favour of an obscuring, evocative stream of little psychic convulsions which imply rather than state the psycho-sexual state of affairs. Of course, to be fair, Our Lady of the Flowers is a first-person account, and the minds of the characters it describes obviously can’t reasonably be entirely traced by the limited narrational capacity of Jean; whereas the free-indirect-discourse of The Spell nominally allows for the narrator to know everything about its character’s motivations. But firstly, novels of this sort blur the lines between these distinct modes of narration anyway, and moreover, Hollinghurst actually remains probably just as present in the narration as Jean does in the Genet. And the very fact of that difference is part of The Spell’s unsuccessful attempts to adopt a precise formal mode – one that allows for the plotless narrative circle it wants to be. Here is Hollinghurst in The Spell describing a comparable psychological moment:

“One simple possibility for today was to give Terry a ring, but he [Justin] rejected it with a clear sense of tactics. He mustn’t give Robin any new occasion for his old grievances, and Terry’s discretion was still untested. He took a mug of tea through to the sitting-room and then remembered that there were some photographs of Danny in the little commode. He kept forgetting that he fancied him now as well.”

In both of these extracts, Genet and Hollinghurst are basically attempting to describe men absent-mindedly considering sex. But in the Genet, although the narration is of course much more imprecise, we nonetheless get a much more emphatic understanding of Darling’s character-essence. Whereas in the Hollinghurst, every single quivering of psychological motive is aired by the narrator. And let’s face it. There’s nothing more unsexy than having attention drawn to all your actual thoughts. Simply stated, everything may work in some novels, but not in a novel which strives to be airy and impressionistic, and especially not in one which allies itself with the queerly modernist aesthetic. Not to be basic, but I can’t help recalling these words from Woolf’s “Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown”:

“I let my Mrs. Brown slip through my fingers. I have told you nothing whatsoever about her. But that is partly the great Edwardians’ fault. I asked them—they are my elders and betters—How shall I begin to describe this woman’s character ? And they said, ” Begin by saying that her father kept a shop in Harrogate. Ascertain the rent. Ascertain the wages of shop assistants in the year 1878. Discover what her mother died of. Describe cancer. Describe calico. Describe -” But I cried, ” Stop ! Stop !” […]”

Woolf is, unsurprisingly, right; and Hollinghurst, striving to emulate the style of the queer modernists, ought to remember that there was a reason “modernism” felt a need to supplant the Arnold Bennetts of the world in the first place. The extreme nature of the psychological self-awareness in The Spell is completely dissonant with the seemingly unmotivated randomness of the events which form the threadbare plot of the novel. The narration implicitly claims and enjoys a staggering insight into the thoughts and motivations of the characters; and yet if all this was, in fact, actually available to the foursome of characters in the novel, they would, I’m sure, have acted differently. Couple Robin and Justin both independently sleeping with the much younger rent boy lover of Robin’s own son, for instance, was a quasi-incestuous moment that makes one question what the use of these layers and layers of psychological detail exactly is. 

Still, to be fair to Hollinghurst, this seems to be the novel that he had to write, quite early in his career, in order to get out of his system everything that would have otherwise stood in the way of the brilliance of his later novels such as The Line of Beauty and The Stranger’s Child. And as well, it’s worth putting the novel in its proper context. One of Hollinghurst’s intentions, I think, has always been to properly render gay psychology to make it seem normal to a general reading public. The Spell was released in 1998, and I guess at this time a novel which attends to and presents the psychology of the gays was likely worth having around.  So this novel isn’t really as major an outlier amongst Hollinghurst’s bibliography as I had assumed. It’s more like a typical Hollinghurst novel which couldn’t help but fall under the spell of the modernists; and as for the characters, the spell of an attractive external influence can be difficult to resist.

Image credit: Interview Magazine 

Settling differences with Susan Hill’s horror

By Edward Bayliss

There’s a wonderful quotation I chanced upon recently in George Eliot’s Silas Marner – itself a novel so well informed by superstition and the supernatural. It goes: ‘Before such calm external beauty the presence of a vague fear is more distinctly felt – like a raven flapping its slow wing across the sunny air.’ It seems to me that this is the force that fills the sails of good horror. Like the small itch of a splinter between your toes, or in film terms, the almost imperceptible cant of a camera lens, there should exist an unease, barely there but present enough to unsettle you gradually. This is the agitated and wrinkled sheet on which the real time body horrors lie.  

Susan Hill’s 1983 gothic horror novel, The Woman in Black, has borne two cinematic adaptations. Doubtless, most have heard of James Watkins’ 2012 version (starring Daniel Radcliffe), but I suspect Herbert Wise’s 1989 feature leans lonely against the shaded edge of our film shelves – even so, I must remember that I speak for a certain generation. In broad strokes, the films take markedly different approaches in their realisation of Hill’s novel on the screen. Wise’s Woman in Black is much more faithful to its source text, save his strange alteration of Arthur Kipps’ surname to ‘Kidd’, and the fashion of his family’s death; he leaves the meat of the original plot unspoiled. Watkins instead kills Kipps’ wife before the film has even begun, and donates much more of the film’s minutes to the circumstances of the children’s deaths in Crythin Gifford which are treated in more mysterious terms in Hill’s novel. Though I am very fond of the novel, I won’t pedestal it as some god-breathed scripture that must be followed to a T. 

What interests me more are the directors’ treatment of that heap of a house – Eel Marsh House. We must consider not only the fact of the setting, but also the framing of the setting. The Drablow estate, set isolated across a marshy causeway suffocated by ‘sea threats’, is a great invention of horror. In Watkins’ 2012 adaptation, we see it first from high angle shots – it’s a black and brown tangle of trees and rocky outcrops, a kind of unspectacular Mont-Saint-Michel. It’s obscure and dark, very dark. The geography of the ‘island’ I’ve noticed doesn’t actually add up when we arrive at the house on ground level. Whether this is an intentional move from Watkins, I’m not sure. The estate grounds bear all the hallmarks of high gothic horror, with gnarled gravestones, trees antlered with dead branches appearing as grey phantoms, and carpets of smothering moss and ivy covering every unbreathing surface. A bluish grey filter sits on the lens throughout. The gothic catalogue is well read, maybe too well read. 

Herbert Wise approaches the site with much more austerity, open space, and bigger skies. Eel Marsh House’s surroundings are unwooded, bare, and unsettlingly unfilled, except for the romantic ruin of a chapel arch which appears also on the cover of the first edition of Hill’s novel. This is the most notable difference in terms of the Eel Marsh grounds. To return to our initial assessment of ‘good horror’ prompted by the Eliot quotation, it’s the 1989 version that best exemplifies this undercurrent of edge. Let it be said, the scenery of the Drablow estate in Watkins’ film is uncomfortable, but it’s comfortably uncomfortable – for me it’s too explicit in its presentation, too direct. Its effects are overground, like a wind slapping against your cheek, whereas with Wise’s Woman in Black we feel more the unsteady shift of soil beneath our feet. 

Now to the house itself. In the Radcliffe film, much like it’s outside, the inside of the house is in a state of complete disrepair (seemingly abandoned for decades), with Satis house-esque shivering cobwebs and burnt-down candlesticks. An infinitely long corridor on the first floor is unsurprisingly exploited in several POV push shots. The camera, I should say, behaves unsubtly in Watkins’ Eel Marsh House. It too often frames Radcliffe in the corner of the frame, demanding us to look elsewhere in the shot, and ‘shockingly’ discover the blurred shape of Jennet Humfrye, the woman in black, against a far away wall. The camera also appropriates the perspective of Humfrye too regularly so that the effect is rendered less and less potent in each instance. Here, the camera gymnastics often distract from the subject, creating a self-awareness, reminding us we are watching pixels on a screen in our sitting room.

There’s a theme here, if you hadn’t gathered. In Wise’s adaptation, the interior of Eel Marsh house is intact and lived in (Alice Drablow had only died a week prior to Kidds’ visit). There is even electricity, as in the novel, and few dark corners for phantoms to lurk. The electrical aspect of the house is used brilliantly. In an outhouse, a panting generator eerily sounds out through the house’s tight corridors. One of the most striking moments of the film occurs when the faulty generator is revived, and all the lights of the house are restored. In this exterior shot, the house again becomes uncannily alive. Wise’s film doesn’t rely on dark corners for the dark deeds of his woman in black. The lens, as though afraid, often shrinks back from the Jennet Humfrye rather than possess her. 

Herbert Wise’s Woman in Black is the better of the two. For want of more coherent expression, it’s better to have uneasy easiness than easy uneasiness on the screen.     

Image credits: IMDB & BFI

The diabolical exploitation of the Menéndez brothers.

Lyle Menéndez (left) and Erik Menéndez (right) during their highly publicised trial. / Associated Press

‘Violence is never an answer, never a solution, and is always tragic. As such, I hope it is never forgotten that violence against a child creates a hundred horrendous and silent crime scenes darkly shadowed behind glitter and glamour and rarely exposed until tragedy penetrates everyone involved.’ — Erik Menéndez in response to Monsters

If you are not familiar with the Menéndez brothers, I simultaneously feel very sorry for and very envious of you. The 1989 murder case of wealthy entertainment tycoon Jose Menéndez and his wife Kitty, fatally shot in the den of their Beverly Hills mansion, may predate bite-sized TikTok rundowns, long-winded docuseries and ‘white woman true crime podcasts’. But by no means could the trial of the brothers responsible be described as anything other than a media circus—one that dominated the televisions and tabloids of the early nineties and turned suffering into spectacle, their tragedy into tableau. Nearly thirty-five years have passed, though the echoes of that anguish refuse to fade.

The public’s fetish for this case — and discourse surrounding the brothers’ defence that they were sexually abused by their father — are once again brought into controversial conversation with Ryan Murphy’s newest instalment of Monsters. This is not the place for learning about the idiosyncrasies of the Menéndez brothers’ crime; this is a place solely dedicated to the scrutinisation of the heinous and invented story Ryan Murphy so bumptiously tells. It is a place for examining the wounds he has reopened and unpacking why this spurious and irresponsible distortion of the truth matters. In August of 1989, Lyle and Erik Menéndez, twenty-one and eighteen respectively, shot and killed their father and mother. It is crucial before watching and digesting the fiction of this programme you understand why. In 2005, Erik Menéndez would tell People magazine: ‘It’s as if there was kerosene all over the floor that a match could light at any time. And my soul was burnt to death. The way I reacted was so destructive to all. It was the most awful devastation.’

Cooper Koch (left) as Erik Menéndez and Nicholas Alexander Chavez (right) as Lyle Menéndez. / Netflix

I’ll come clean and admit to being borderline ecstatic when I heard there was a new series about the Menéndez brothers coming out. It’s a case that sits very close to my heart, and affects me to a degree no fictional tragedy could ever hope to inspire. But I was less so after seeing it was produced by Netflix, even less upon learning it would be spearheaded by Ryan Murphy and the next instalment in his ‘true crime’ franchise. Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story. Shuddersome. I understand the title is meant to be ambiguous, a possible subversion of itself depending on what side of the fence you happen to sit on. The implication is still there; it’s still not right to even suggest these two men could stand on the same level as Jeffrey Dahmer. 

And this is where the cruel exploitation of Lyle and Erik Menéndez begins. Murphy takes off running from here and never seems to stop. There are a great many issues I take with this series, but I do believe its mindful and mannerly to mention the brilliant acting by breakout stars Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez, poignant score by Thomas Newman paired with a captivating soundtrack that has reintroduced an entire generation to Milli Vanilli, and outstanding cinematics achieved by a talented team. It is a well-crafted and engrossing show; I will not shy away from admitting to that. Any fond remarks I may have about this series now come to an abrupt halt. 

Erik Menéndez takes the stand in 1993. / CourtTV

I boast no behavioural psychology qualification save the common high school course. Nor do I intend to imply that having an interest in true crime—no matter how intense—grants me any authority to make sound claims about the truth of this trauma. Still, I find it impossible not to mention the presence and manner of the Menéndez brothers in court; how their disposition and the details of their demeanour during their testimonies add nuance and colour to the words that come stuttering, hesitant and embarrassed, from behind their teeth. Though the pain and trauma these two men suffered throughout their childhoods is, I do believe it’s fair to say, nearly their entire defence case, there is an astonishing and noticeable lack of self-pity in their statements. The physical and sexual torture they were subjected to is presented to the jury by the defendants with the same straightforward candour a twelve-year-old boy may explain his process of long-division to a tutor. Step-by-step. ‘That’s just the way it goes, see?’ When there are tears, put them under a microscope. You will find no ‘poor me’s, no crocodile victimhood, only their wretched, childlike frustration at not being able to spit out the words they need to say. ‘My dad…my dad…my dad…’ is how Erik Menéndez begins when questioned by his defence attorney Leslie Abramson: ‘What do you believe was the originating cause of you and your brother … shooting your parents?’ It takes him minutes of frustrated brow-furrowing, aborted sentences, hard stares at his lap while he tries to get his tears and his breathing under control. There are shaky sighs and sharp exhalations blown into the microphone—too close, the pops filling the courtroom. He pulls his mouth, desperate to school his expression. This lasts for fifty-five excruciating seconds. ‘It was you telling Lyle what?’ Abramson prompts. He looks physically ill as he finally forces out the full sentence: ‘That my dad had been molesting me.’ The mic captures a sharp inhale as the defendant’s face twists in embarrassed agony. There is no vaunting present. This is not something spoken lightly, with an air of ‘Look, see?’ Erik Menéndez chokes these words out, his voice saturated with defeat and shame. To be eighteen, feeling smaller than nothing as you tell this to your big brother. To be twenty-three, even smaller as you admit this to a courtroom full of strangers, a camera crew, the whole world. Can you imagine?

Lyle Menéndez at trial. / Getty Images

This older brother Erik Menéndez confides in is hardly present in Murphy’s rendering. There are crucial facets of Lyle Menéndez’s personality he miserably fails to show. Take, for instance, his considerable emotional connection to soft toys. Lyle considered them family: ‘They made me feel safer,’ he would go on to testify, ‘Especially early on, but really all the way through my teenage years, sometimes they got me through the day.’ He took them to high school. When Erik would orphan his stuffed animals, having grown out of them, Lyle would take them in. He would impose different traits, roles, temperaments onto them, crafting highly complex hierarchies and social orders. Dr. Jon Conte, a psychologist specialising in child abuse and who worked with Lyle Menéndez during his time in jail, would remark of this behaviour: ‘In a way that I’ve never heard from another victim, he … was doing play therapy. When we see traumatised kids, we often ask them to act out with [toys] their bad experiences. The difference between Lyle’s [playing] and play therapy is that there was no therapist there to help guide the process.’ It is difficult to reconcile this Lyle Menéndez with Murphy’s brash, Janus-faced caricature, prone to violent threats and bratty outbursts.

Emerging talent Nicholas Alexander Chavez as Lyle Menéndez. / Netflix

Chavez’s disarming and ill-tempered Lyle swears at ticket agents, frightens children on Halloween, punctuates his immature shouting with wild gestures, banging on tables and slamming doors. Murphy even goes so far as to imply this awful imitation of Lyle is capable of deceiving the ‘audience’ of the jury, of putting on a performance of pain and misery so as to elicit profound, falsely-rooted sympathy. It is vile. Today, Erik Menéndez continues to fight on behalf of his brother, still defends him. In direct response to Murphy’s loud, violent, near bipolar portrayal of Lyle, he had this to say:

‘I believed we had moved beyond the lies and ruinous character portrayals of Lyle, creating a caricature of Lyle rooted in horrible and blatant lies rampant in the show. I can only believe they were done so on purpose. It is with a heavy heart that I say, I believe Ryan Murphy cannot be this naive and inaccurate about the facts of our lives so as to do this without bad intent.’

A rare and raw moment of brotherhood Murphy delivers. / Netflix

We now arrive at the principal thing I take issue with. The great stain on what I genuinely consider to be an otherwise technical cinematic achievement. Ryan Murphy’s representation of Lyle and Erik Menéndez’s bond is nothing short of repugnant. There are moments where he almost captures it—tender and tearful apology met with easy forgiveness on the bow of a boat, the poignant contrast of Lyle paternally dressing his younger brother for the moment they hear their verdict, still finding ways to take care of him. All things in line with the real, corporal Lyle Menéndez, living and breathing outside of fiction at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility. The same Lyle Menéndez who wrote to his brother in 1990 a letter from behind bars, containing the phrase: 

‘Never think for a second that I favor someone over my brother.’ / Netflix

But it’s all mangled, distorted, perverted by a sickening, intentional incestuous undertone. Ryan Murphy injects this poison for sheer shock value. This itself existing within the fictive vacuum of the show is nauseating enough to bring up, but when you consider that these are characters born from real people, real brothers, real victims of incestuous abuse still living and suffering today? It is unforgivable, and it inspires true rage.

You see, Lyle Menéndez was out, one could say. He had ended the cycle of sexual abuse between him and his father years prior; he was attending Princeton, he was in a committed relationship, he was on his way to forging a successful, independent life for himself. But when his little brother finally came to him, suicidal and terribly, terribly lost, it all went out the window. And that’s just the way it had to be. Witness of the prosecution and Lyle Menéndez’s former friend Donovan Goodreau would say of Lyle: ‘He takes care of his brother … It’s his biggest concern.’ When questioned by his attorney why he didn’t simply leave his younger brother to handle the situation himself, Lyle responded: ‘I would never say that to him, and he would never expect me to say that.’ When asked for a reason, the answer he provides echoes a sentiment Erik would repeat: ‘Just because we were brothers.’ Erik slept in Lyle’s bedroom that night, eighteen-years-old and terrified. Lyle testified he remained wide awake. He’ll come with me to Princeton, was planned, or I’ll figure out how to transfer to UCLA. There was confidence—misplaced confidence—but to Lyle Menéndez there was only one outcome: Erik would be safe, Erik would feel safe. And this he would make sure of; it didn’t matter how. Before Lyle Menéndez was a student, a partner, a businessman, an athlete and especially a son—before any other label, any other marker of identity, Lyle Menéndez was an older brother.

Erik Menéndez at trial. / Associated Press

And Erik? Well, when asked during trial if he ever considered running away, hiding or fighting extradition in any other manner, Erik Menéndez denied this. When questioned why, the answer was plain: ‘Because I wanted to be back with my brother.’ When presented once more with the question of why that was, he looked baffled, no answer prepared. In what world would any other scenario play out? In what world would any other truth come to pass? In what world would Lyle ever go through this alone? To Erik Menéndez, this question was stupid, undeserving of an answer, undeserving of consideration. This line of questioning was not taken any further.

This is who Erik Menéndez is. As stated by himself, standing behind Lyle was his ‘fixed position’ in life. It’s a core tenant of his identity; a marker of who he is, who he was and who he will always be. If it can be said that above all Lyle Menéndez takes pride and pleasure in his role as a big brother, then Erik Menéndez takes equal honour and comfort in his role as a little brother. ‘Erik Menéndez had always had few friends and fewer confidants, so his brother became, during that stage of his life and thereafter, the one person on earth it felt safe to love’: Leslie Abramson does a marvellous job of communicating to the jury how ardent a bond this is. She delivers its weight, its breadth—the scope and scale of its many nuances and shades of grief. This is a fraternal bond born out of fear and nurtured in an environment of great pain. It is built on a foundation of devotion, loyalty and shared torment. These two men are the only people on earth who will ever be able to entirely grasp what the other languished through. I cannot stress the importance of that enough. At the risk of sounding maudlin, it is the purest form of love I have ever witnessed, even from this great distance.

It is this very reason Ryan Murphy’s abashed exploitation of the Menéndez brothers’ story sends me into potent fury. Murphy sees two attractive young men in close proximity and makes the extraordinarily shallow decision to fetishise it, to suffuse it with surface-level suggestions of underlying brotherly incest, in an attempt to appeal to…whom exactly I can’t even say. If it is not intended to captivate a certain audience, then it must simply exist for equally surface-level shock value. To take a bond such as this and filthily taint it in hopes of a few gasps and shaking heads? 

The Menéndez brothers at their preliminary hearing in 1990. / Associated Press

When asked by Barbara Walters on ABC how he would feel should the two be sent to separate prisons, Erik Menéndez responded: ‘There are some things that you cannot take, and there are some things you can endure … With everything taken away, that’s the last thing you can take.’ Following this interview, the two were placed in two separate vans. In Alejandro Hartmann’s documentary The Menéndez Brothers, released earlier this month, Erik reflects on his reaction: ‘I started screaming.’ The brothers spent twenty-two years separated before both were finally placed at Donovan, where they reside today. On being reunited with his brother, Lyle Menéndez would say ‘I felt like it was finally a chance to heal, and I was starting on that day.’

To me and to many, it seemed the situation and circumstance of the Menéndez brothers was utterly, hopelessly lost. The release of this series and the consequences of the case returning to the public mainstream in this fashion only promised devastation. To have the sensationalism and media spectacle that so heavily infringed upon the first trial resurrected? It spelled disaster. To have it centred solely around this new interpretation so far removed from the truth? I couldn’t begin to describe the resentment I felt towards Murphy, Netflix and everyone who sat adjacent to this project. Lyle and Erik Menéndez are still alive and striving for their release; the weight of this programme’s influence cannot be understated.

There is, however, hope to be found in Hartmann’s new documentary The Menéndez Brothers, also bizarrely distributed by Netflix, which worked in direct collaboration with the brothers through extensive audio interviews. It is two hours of accounts, testimony and context; it is very difficult and very necessary to watch. For it to have been released so soon after Murphy’s farce is vital, ineffably so. I have hope it will instil in this new generation of interested parties a sense of obligation to the truth. I have hope it will counteract any damage Murphy has done to the public’s perception of this case. And I have hope it will prove Erik Menéndez wrong in his sullen belief that he has ‘taken the painful truths several steps backward—back through time to an era when the prosecution built a narrative on a belief system that males were not sexually abused, and that males experienced rape trauma differently than women.’

By Cara Crofts

“The next parish over is Boston,” the locals of the Aran Islands will proudly tell you. They are the edge of civilisation this side of ‘The Pond’ and like it that way. For the most part. Suspended off the west coast of Ireland, three limestone slabs are the foundations for life in a world outside of time; a far cry from Boston’s big city lights. American filmmaker Robert Flaherty was enchanted by the primitive lifestyle of the Aran Islands in 1934, fetishizing the fight between islanders and nature in his fictional documentary Man of Aran. The sea is strong but the community spirit is stronger – this romanticised portrayal doesn’t survive Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan. The play satirises the real-life filming of Man of Aran and Flaherty’s sentimentalised documentary, instead exposing the boredom and cruelty which breed in such a tight-knit community. “Cripple” Billy’s attempt to escape to Hollywood fails but, in The Banshees of Inisherin, McDonagh writes a way out for Siobhán (Kerry Condon) whose future teaching on the mainland frees her from her claustrophobic life. She urges her brother that on Inisherin there will be “nothing but more bleakness and grudges and loneliness and spite and the slow passing of time until death.” We can’t help hoping Pádraic (Colin Farrell) will join Siobhán but it is no surprise when he insists his life is on Inisherin. For him, nowhere but this secluded island could be home. 

A misshapen scrabble board of rocky fields. Calm waters stretch to the mainland. Folk music swells as the mist rises over McDonagh’s fictional island of Inisherin, inspired by the Aran Island of Inisheer. You could be forgiven for expecting a film of sunshine and rainbows as Colin Farrell strides through the port in this opening scene, framed by a saturated rainbow while he waves past the camera to fellow islanders. A cursory glance at the trailer is enough to realise that the blue skies and Irish green grasses are a backdrop for macabre confrontation and threats, but does not prepare us for the unrelenting isolation of life on Inisherin that pits friends Pádraic and Colm (Brendan Gleeson) against each other. 

“Be ready to cry,” my childhood friend warns as he recommends The Banshees of Inisherin to me over a pint of Guinness at O’Gorman’s pub in Thurles, Co. Tipperary. Having never seen this brawny, unsentimental hurling player near tears in twenty years I struggled to believe a film could have this impact. Moments before he had blindsided me with his belief in banshees; not a full acceptance of the traditional Celtic legend of a woman wailing to forewarn a family member’s death, but a sincere admission to avoiding the shortcut home along the bog road at night. “People say they’ve met banshees on the bog road which seems crazy, sure, but it’s hard not to believe it at least a little,” my invariably rational friend confesses. Pádraic dismisses the existence of banshees on Inisherin, but Colm is not convinced: “Maybe there are banshees, too. I just don’t think that they scream to portend death anymore. I think they just sit back, amused, and observe.” Mrs. McCormick, the film’s token banshee equivalent, fits Colm’s description as she predicts smilingly that two deaths will come to Inisherin. She is an overseer of the island’s tragedies, leading Garda Peadar Kearney to Dominic’s corpse in the lake and watching Pádraic wave goodbye to Siobhán at the cliff. Before the credits roll, Mrs. McCormick’s seated silhouette above the beach breaks the distance between Colm standing at the water’s edge and the retreating Pádraic. She sits back and observes the death of their friendship, but it is not her who haunts the island. Banshees are nothing to these men haunted by their own loneliness.

J.M. Synge, visiting the Aran Islands at the turn of the twentieth century, had “seen nothing so desolate” before. Such remoteness lends itself to sadness and, in The Aran Islands (1907), Synge recounts speaking with an old man who told him “how one of his children had been taken by the fairies” along with stories of assault and drowning on Inishmaan which inspired his Playboy of the Western World and Riders to the Sea. Although the Aran Islands of the 21^st century have become a different place to where Synge stayed, visiting in 2019 felt like a journey back in time. The only other passenger to step off the Doolin Express at Inis Meáin (Inishmaan) was a caricature islander with wind-blown grey hair escaping the sides of a lightly salted beanie hat. Most backpackers and families stayed on the boat ready to flood the bigger Inis Mór in search of bike rentals, horse and carriages or ice-cream. Free from public transport and tourist attractions, the middle island is a place of the past. It is easy to imagine Inis Meáin’s one post office and shop functioning as the hub of village gossip – a modern version of Mrs. O’Riordan’s post office where she grills Pádraic for news and opens Siobhán’s letter. Several villagers were speaking in Gaelic when we came in, switching to English to ask us about our lives and travels before pointing us up the hill to ‘Café Baile’, a garden patio where a woman brought us homemade soup and soda bread from her kitchen. This taste of a simple life seemed desirable to us, soaking up May’s few rays of sun and looking back at the Cliffs of Moher while we refuelled. Not so easy in winter though, our host assured us. Or for her teenage children who get the boat to school on the mainland each day. The island has no bank, a primary school, a church, one pub – hardly more than Inisherin in 1923. Back in Co. Clare that evening, we had Cristy Moore’s ‘Lisdoonvarna’ cranked up high while driving through the song’s namesake town. 

“I like to hit Lisdoon,

In around Friday afternoon

…

Ramble in for a pint of stout 

And you’d never know who’d be hanging about!”

Nothing could be further from the darkened windows of the pub we’d just seen on Inis Meáin, or from Inisherin’s J.J. Devine Public House where it is always certain who will be ‘hanging about’. Jonjo’s shock to see Pádraic arrive at the pub without his drinking partner Colm marks the start of the rift between the friends who normally arrive together like clockwork at 2pm. Pádraic remains unable to accept Colm’s rejection: “It takes two to tango,” he whimpers. Dancing through life is no mean feat on Inisherin and McDonagh shows us that without a partner the dance becomes a dirge. 

Candid, experimental and lucidly conceived, Hit Me Hard and Soft welcomes in a new era of Billie – a young artist in touch with her roots, but ever more willing to venture into new musical terrain.

By David Bayne-Jardine

Modern music consumption is becoming more and more short-lived. It is often the case that a few lines from a song go viral, soundtracking a new trend, only for the rest of the song, album, or artist’s work to remain relatively untapped. This is why Billie Eilish refused to release a single from her third studio album in advance. Hit Me Hard and Soft (2024) is designed to be listened to in one sitting; confident yet vulnerable, it calls for a return to the lost practice of album listening. Resisting staying in any place for too long, it is a stylistic rollercoaster that weaves between genres mid-song, and blurs the boundary between a track’s start and end. At times ecstatic and at others mellow, HMHAS marks a return to her roots in urban emo pop, but breaks into new musical territory in method and topic alike.

Eilish’s music has always drawn us close, both emotionally and physically. Launched into international fame at just 17 with her first album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, addressing personal and taboo subjects with a rawness and realism has come to characterise her music. Physically, her breathy vocals create a distinctly personal relationship with the listener, and in the first track of HMHAS we are greeted once again with music that is questioning and open. A sequel song to her Grammy-winning ‘What Was I Made For?’, in ‘Skinny’ Eilish reflects on her life in the spotlight, as she struggles to grasp just who she is in a world adamant to define her by her recent weight-loss or queer sexuality. An enchanting, stripped-down guitar and bass line, topped off with light and vulnerable vocals is followed by the crooning, cinematic strings of the outro – a new experimental feature in Eilish and her brother FINNEAS’s music production. 

But in the first about-turn of the album, as the tenderness of ‘Skinny’ ends, so begins the driving, grungy sound of ‘Lunch’ – a track that gloriously celebrates her newly-discovered queer attraction in the heavy electronic style of her earliest music. Eilish’s coming out was not without some commotion, as the artist famously called out Variety for caring too much about her sexuality and not enough about her art. Her admittance that she’s ‘attracted to them [women] for real’ became the focus of many magazine articles, including that of Variety, despite having expressed her frustration at the media’s obsession with her sexuality numerous times before. In this song, for the first time, Eilish addresses her attraction to women confidently and openly. Her breath, sensitive and emotional in the album’s first track, becomes sultry and passionate in this song, combining seamlessly with sections of spoken word. 

So it seems that contrast lies at the heart of HMHAS, from the impossibility of the title’s demand to the quick-shifting genre changes that define the album. Light/dark play runs through ‘Birds of a Feather’, with its bouncy indie pop but morbidly obsessive lyrics. Safely describable as the most palatable song of the album, this fourth track is a head-bopping, smile-inducing, coming-of-age love song (it’s no surprise it features in the new season trailer for Netflix’s hit teen romance Heartstopper). Yet, in true Eilish style, the lyrics overlying the playful backing track speak in a darker tone – ‘I want you to stay/’Til I rot away, dead and buried/’Til I’m in the casket you carry’. Airy, light vocals transform into an impressive belting range in the later choruses – a technique with which she had experimented in her second album, Happier Than Ever, and with which she engages full-throttle in this, her third. In ‘The Greatest’, for example, the ascending vocal line climaxes into an immense belt of frustration and anger, before falling into an unexpected but powerful modulation. Eilish riffs in her upper range as the instrumental line marks out a more unconventional and experimental rhythm, where each bar of 8/8 is beat in groups of 3, 3, and 2. This head-bopping, heavy rock feel, aptly shows off the mastery of Eilish and FINNEAS’s writing and production.

It’s no coincidence that HMHAS seems much closer to the emo-rock style of her first album than that of her second. In her Rolling Stone Cover Story, Eilish expresses her desire to return to her electronic roots in HMHAS, describing her previous album’s more acoustic feel as a product of Covid and its restrictions – a time when she felt more out of touch with who she was. In HMHAS, Eilish revisits the topics and features of her first album, but this time with a sound that is more refined, mature and experienced. ‘Chihiro’ is like a more grown-up version of ‘bellyache’ with its punchy, sub-terranean bassline. ‘The Diner’ emulates earlier tracks like ‘Therefore I am’ with its immensely heavy downbeat. ‘Bad Guy’ is somewhat reborn in the bass-driven nature of ‘Lunch’. Whilst Happier Than Ever was refreshing because of its experimentation with a lighter, more instrumental feel, in HMHAS Billie turns back to the urban, technological music that first brought her to fame. 

And techno is what we get in ‘L’amour de ma Vie’ – the sixth and perhaps best track of her new album. The song opens with a rich, jazz-infused ballad sound, but is soon cut short in a mid-song transition that flings us into the incandescent, electronic world of the 1980s. A four-on-the-floor beat morphs into a driving techno line, accompanied by reverberating synth descants and heavily-processed vocals that tell of her liberation post-break-up. The juxtaposition characterising this song is as exhilarating as it is unorthodox, and occurs several times across the shapeshifting album. For example, reversely, in ‘Bittersuite’, synthy techno transforms into a lighter waltz, before moving seamlessly back into grungy electropop. A third transition occurs between the end of this song and the start of the final one, ‘Blue’, in which the oscillating synth line of ‘Bittersuite’ is reborn into a vocal melody. ‘Blue’ is very much a conclusion to the entire album, with the orchestral lines from the opening track returning to accompany Eilish, who reflects on the experience of her turbulent relationship. Another mid-song shift in style occurs for a final time, as Eilish admits the sympathy she has for her ex-lover, who, despite hurting her, has had their own struggles too. 

These elegant transitions across, and within, songs are testimony to the importance of listening to Hit Me Hard and Soft in its entirety, in order. In an era where music consumption is becoming increasingly momentary, where songs are TikTok-ified into short soundbites that come to define an artist’s work, HMHAS resists conforming to traditional album structures – it is very much a musical experience. 

By Ed Bayliss

There might not have been a better place to watch Fourth Wall Theatre’s student production of hang than in the Durham Union Chamber, the traditional seat of university debate and dialogue. In collaboration with Durham Law Society, this legal drama pits the grief, anger, and ultimate lust for revenge of a wronged woman known only as ‘Three’ (Alexa Thanni) against the emotional ineptitude of a pair of legal officials (‘One’, Tilly Bridgeman, and ‘Two’, Charlie Fitzgerald). Three must decide the fate of an unnamed man who has committed a crime against her and her family under the supervision and legal advice of Two and Three. 

Minimalist in design, the set consists of three chairs, a desk, and a water fountain. The last of which is used to good effect to fill not only the cups that sit neatly below it but also the toe curling silences that so frequently punctuate the play. One yellow light shines blindingly from the front of the stage. This gave good opportunity for One and Two to stand before the single source of lighting and leave Three in dark, literally, and metaphorically. 

Hang is intentionally frustrating. In the first third of the play, we wrestle with the mundanity of cumbersome legal jargon, protocol, and process. Lines are reeled off in stichomythic exchanges between One and Two with good poise and precision; but all we hear is sound with little to no substance. We develop the neck muscles of a tennis umpire as our sight and attention shift constantly between the two legals in their trivial but constant asides to one another. These are two unprofessional professionals attempting to carry out their jobs ‘by the book’ (bound in bureaucratic red tape) but failing miserably, and often comically. Their dialogues trip over each other as the disillusioned Three remains largely silent. 

Where Three first carries herself with a quiet remoteness and disillusion, clutching her jacket to her body, she gradually becomes more vocal and begins to challenge both Two and Three in their mishandling of the situation, as well as the judicial system in general. At one moment, about halfway through the production, Three delivers an outburst aimed at the sickening diplomacy of Two and Three. At the plastic performance of relatability from the two officials, Three, in a moment of authentic vehemence cries aloud, ‘can you just stop fucking talking!’ Two, wearing a shop-bought smile responds with, ‘I can see how upsetting this is for you.’ 

Director Megan Dunlop manages the space of the stage well to accommodate her audience in the round. One and Two, as though on a conveyor belt, move up and down the central protrusion of the stage in tandem, ensuring all spectators are afforded their fair share of attention. Three has the impressive quality of attaching herself to individual audience members in her particularly turbulent moments of emotional eruption. Being seated on the front row of the benches, I found myself subject to an episode of Three’s fits of anger and felt its effects very personally. Dunlop utilises the off-stage as well; we occasionally hear One and Two squabble over legal technicalities and small prints from the stairwell outside in some instances of comic relief. 

As with most plays, hang finds its ‘crescendo moment’ near enough to the end of the play. But where most theatre productions will raise volume, visible emotion, and physical action, Dunlop’s direction delivers a cold and clinical finale. Three, having contemplated for the man in question the executions of beheading, firing squad, and lethal injection, settles distressingly comfortably on the monosyllables, ‘I want him hung.’ We are told that this will be carried out by an ‘anonymous expert execution team’: it is lines like these that playwright Debbie Tucker Green executes so knowingly in her bouts of black comedy. 

I find that the journey of Three from woman of victim to vengeance is the most striking feature of the play. It’s true, the production riffs on and satirises the longevity and incommodious nature of ‘the legal process’, presented really very entertainingly by Bridgeman (One) and Fitzgerald (Two). But, the most interesting and gripping aspect of Dunlop’s arrangement was the liberty at which she allowed Three to make the seamless transition from vulnerable sufferer to the cunning and calculated author of the man’s fate she eventually becomes.    

By Maggie Baring

I find myself, once again, unable to write about anything other than Noah Kahan. Hot off the heels of a Grammy nomination this February and a final re-release of his Stick Season album — complete with a new song, ‘Forever’, and eight other songs featuring special guests such as Hozier and Sam Fender — Noah Kahan played two sold out shows at Wembley Arena this week. I had the utter privilege of witnessing night two. The tickets were bought months ago, before Noah Kahan was huge, before Grammy nominations and number ones, so they were highly anticipated. 

Even so, the cheapest seats I could find saw us sitting at, laughably, the furthest point from the stage. You could not have picked a worse seat. The electricity of the entire evening nevertheless assured that not a single person in the arena left without being moved in some way. Kahan himself, in one of his many quippy comments between songs, outlined his aim for the evening: that if anybody left the concert with a smile on their face, he had not done his job properly. This was undoubtedly met with laughter, and as I looked around me it was definitely difficult to find a frowning one. In fact, Noah Kahan fans, of which I proudly call myself an avid one, are very lovely people. The atmosphere of love, empathy and charged emotion shared between ten thousand people, gently swaying to the slower more gut-wrenching songs, or dancing manically — arms around one another or holding hands — to the faster-paced songs, can be attributed to the kind of people who listen to Noah Kahan’s music. I have been to my fair share of concerts where the fans have felt on-par with rowdy football fans, and so I understand first-hand how an atmosphere in a venue as well as the attitude of the audience can affect the impression of the music. Kahan has spoken frequently about his gratitude to his parents for encouraging him from a very early age to be open about his emotions, and teaching him how to convey them through talking and later singing. The fans that flock to listen to his songs are similarly emotionally intelligent. There was a deep sense of camaraderie and support, and my friend and I spoke to surrounding fans at our seats in the very back with a friendliness that one rarely finds among strangers. A shared love of music, and an understanding of the deep feelings that underlie each song, is truly a powerfully bonding force. 

Now onto the concert itself. After a rather drawn out start to the concert, with an opening from up-and-coming Wild Rivers at 7.30pm, a set that only lasted 45 minutes followed by an hours wait, Kahan emerged onto a golden-lit stage complete with drummer, bassist and electric guitarist. He himself switched from mandolin, electric and acoustic guitars regularly. A banjo was even thrown in occasionally. I was struck in equal measure by Kahan’s vocal control and musicianship, from both him and his band members. Being able to remain in-tune when the cheers and voices of ten thousand are drowning out almost all other sounds (his in-ear monitors would help with this, no doubt), is a feat that is often taken for granted by audiences in large venues. Vocal deviations from the recorded versions of songs — added vocal riffs or ‘oohs’, for example — make audiences feel special, like they are witnessing something fresh and new. Many of Kahan’s songs have instrumental breaks that offer space for guitar solos, complete with knee slides and complex drum fills that prompted raucous screams from the crowds. The image of Kahan himself, labelled as ‘Hairy Styles’ or ‘Jewish Capaldi’ acting out energetic rock guitar moves, whilst singing incredibly sad songs about mental health or the death of his dog, was rather bizarre and created some funny moments. But his self-depreciating attitude (beginning the set calling himself ‘your favourite non-Grammy winner’) means that we are always laughing with him, never at him. 

Much to our delight, Kahan brought out James Bay (who had brought Kahan on tour when he was nineteen, launching his career) and Ben Howard to sing harmonies and verses on songs. James Bay was more impressive, singing the second verse on ‘Growing Sideways’ with his classic low and vibrato’d grain, whilst Ben Howard could hardly be heard in his harmonies in ‘Orange Juice’. The guests rushed on and off the stage in quick succession however, retaining full attention on Kahan himself. 

The energy ebbed and flowed throughout the set, beginning with some powerful rock numbers including ‘Northern Attitude’ and ‘New Perspective’. Kahan was then left on his own on the stage, armed only with an acoustic guitar, captivating the audience in near silence as he sang his sadder, slower acoustic songs. He even graced us with a new song, and two songs from his oldest album, which delighted my friend who had been listening to Kahan since she was fifteen when the album, ‘Busyhead’ came out. Kahan left his most famous song, ‘Stick Season’ until the very end, and taunted the audience by leaving the stage before he played it, claiming it to be the end of the set. The cheers and screams during this tense few minutes raised the electricity to new heights and by the time he reemerged to reveal he was going to play three more songs, almost everybody was screaming. Although not my favourite Kahan song, one cannot deny that the single that sent Kahan to stratospheric fame deserves every credit it receives. There is something completely revolutionary about hearing it live. The song is incredibly lyrically complex, and yet every single word of the song was sung clearly by the audience, drowning out Kahan’s own voice. It is clear from watching his face as he sings this song that he is still not used to how it changed his life, and how it resonates with his audiences. 

Noah Kahan now leaves England to continue his tour in France, then Germany and other European countries. He will return to England in August. Get your tickets if it’s the last thing you do.