THE REBEL CELL – Rapping up a Storm at the Lighthouse

 

Courtesy Speers and Giddy Ox

New Media Woman’s Editor Vanessa Edwards reviews the touring production The Rebel Cell at Poole’s arts centre The Lighthouse.

There’s often something rather illicit about going to the theatre at The Lighthouse. At the start of the evening the bar is crowded, but just before the curtain rises hundreds of classical music fans head one way for the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s latest concert. In contrast, just a few dozen theatre buffs turn the other way and shuffle into the front few rows of the colossal theatre space.

This evening was no different as I joined college and school students along with a few adventurous oldies to see the rap play The Rebel Cell. I wasn’t optimistic. It’s tough for the most hardened actor to play to a house that’s barely a quarter full. I’ve seen a lot of depressed faces look out from that stage. I hadn’t bargained for the sheer passion and bloody-minded determination of Baba Brinkman and Rowan Sawday. They came, they spat and they conquered.

Sheer passion and bloody-minded determination.

The Rebel Cell is an illegal terrorist organisation fighting for freedom just a few years into the future. A terrorist attack at the 2012 Olympics has sent the UK into a downward spiral of dystopia, with a Fascist government, a Guantanamo-style detention centre in Glastonbury and the supermarket Tesco running pretty much everything. The leader of the Rebel Cell MC Dizraeli has been thrown into prison. In a desperate attempt to get him to confess to the Olympic bombings, the government arranges for old friend and journalist Baba Brinkman to interview him on live TV.

Intelligent, cleverly structured rap poem.

What follows is an intelligent, energetic debate about the merits of capitalism, anarchy and friendship, delivered entirely as a rap poem. The discussion is punctuated by scenes from the young men’s past as rap artists. Refreshingly, the political philosophy never feels laboured or difficult to follow. Just when things get complicated, the cleverly structured flashbacks take the audience back to brighter days as they join the rappers at the Glastonbury Festival. The whole performance is illustrated with creative and well-executed video imagery and special mention should go to the third member of the team on the decks.

The audience clapped and cheered at every opportunity.

There was little doubt the characters felt real to the young audience. They cheered and clapped at every opportunity and when the two rappers embraced briefly before parting, the scene was greeted with a chorus of “ahs” – quite genuine and spontaneous.

Perhaps Brinkman and Sawday’s greatest achievement though was to generate enthusiastic audience participation in the mostly empty auditorium. I watched in fascination as the elderly couple at the end of my row yelled “Bomb Tescos” with some conviction and then got up to dance. It’s the most fun I’ve had at the theatre for years and it made me think. As I passed the Tower Park Tesco on the way home I was quite tempted to stop off and daub a few choice messages on the window. Then I remembered I still have £30 of vouchers on my Clubcard and decided to give it a miss. Public protest has its limits.

Check-out The Rebel Cell on You Tube:

SEX AND THE CITY 2 – Why more is so much less.

Courtesy New Line Cinema

NMW’s editor Vanessa Edwards finds plenty of reasons to avoid the latest movie in the Sex and the City franchise.

There is so much to dislike about the new Sex and the City movie; the casual racism; the clothes (which at times border on pantomime costumes); the leaden and obvious script and the complete betrayal of the spirit of original series; it’s hard to choose where to start a review. However for me there is an even bigger crime; the film’s ludicrous and inappropriate obsession with financial excess.

The film opens with the unedifying spectacle of four women, who live luxury lifestyles in one of the world’s most affluent cities, whining and complaining about their bad luck. There have been no happy endings for Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte. Despite entering their forties and getting married, the girls seem genuinely surprised to discover that life is not all a bed of hand-picked, designer roses. Only Samantha clings on to her single-girl lifestyle and she is held up as a figure to lampoon and pity. Apparently she can see no value in any of her lifetime achievements, other than her ability to maintain a smooth face and rapacious sex drive.

Sex and the City 2 has become a product-placement cliché..

Watching Sex and the City 2 is like browsing through an Argos catalogue. The film displays scene after scene of things you can’t afford, promoted by bevy of blank-faced, anodyne models. The franchise has ceased to be a witty and insightful comment on the lives of modern women and become a product-placement cliché.. Along with the usual designer gear the film promotes a dreary directory of less glamorous consumer goods. Each of the women has a different brand of mobile phone (Charlotte mentions hers more often than Samantha mentions her private parts), Carrie’s biggest gripe is a flat screen television and there is even a plot built around a well-known make of luxury car.

The girls discover that excess doesn’t make you happy and then buy some more stuff (just in case.)

For a while it looks like this overwhelming buffet of consumerism might cheer up our heroines. In one scene they gasp in delight as they’re offered the chance to travel in FOUR luxury limousines. Perhaps they are each secretly delighted at being given the chance to avoid talking to the vacuous, self-obsessed friend who sat next to them on the flight over? But it doesn’t take long before they make the shock discovery that spending huge sums of other people’s money is not going to resolve the terrible lack of fulfilment in their lives. A valuable lesson is learned, they buy some more stuff (just in case they were wrong) and it’s cocktails all round.

Of course Sex and the City was always about excess. Nobody who admires a man nicknamed “Mr Big” is likely to be interested in philanthropy. But somehow I hoped that as the women (and their fans) aged, in changing economic times, the producers might have considered moving the series forward. Surely there are some valuable and interesting things to be said about the role of women in our changing world? Or perhaps the sad truth is that America only sings from one song sheet and that ditty is consumerism. It may not make anyone happy, but it keeps a few people singing all the way to the bank.