| | | Bootleggers, bondage and law-breaking bashes! The scandalous history of the wild party | | by Jonathan Jones Jan 31, 2022 | | From Prohibition-busting cocktail parties to all-night raves, illegal gatherings have been at the centre of modern culture for decades. So why do they still have the power to shock?
For more than a month now, the press has been full of stories of “illegal” parties in Downing Street. The government, we are told, has almost ground to a halt because of the scandal. Given the coverage, one might easily get the impression that the law-breaking bash is a recent invention, something that could only happen in lockdown, driven by privilege and an unhealthy sense of entitlement. Yet the modern party began life as a crime just over a century ago, when the Volstead Act banned the production and sale of alcohol in the US. As the New York Times explained in 1920: You cannot carry a hip flask.
You cannot give away or receive a bottle of liquor as a gift.
You cannot take liquor to hotels or restaurants and drink it in the public dining rooms.
You cannot buy or sell formulas or recipes for homemade liquors.
You cannot … “Oh,” said the Bright Young People. “Oh, oh, oh.” “It’s just exactly like being inside a cocktail shaker,” said Miles Malpractice. Continue reading... | | | | | The Wanting Mare review – tangled post-apocalyptic fantasy is all atmosphere | | by Phương Lê Jan 31, 2022 | | Set in an impressively realised world, Nicholas Ashe Bateman’s ambitious debut looks the part but moves too quickly and confusingly for viewers to connect Nicholas Ashe Bateman’s ambitious debut breaks away from the recent crop of fantasy epics based on existing materials. A mass of tangled storylines spanning decades envelops Anmaere, a post-apocalyptic world containing two cities named Whithren and Levithen, both of which are in a perpetual state of stagnancy. The citizens of the sweltering Whithren dream of escaping to Levithen, a journey made possible only by earning a coveted ticket on one of the ferries that transport horses to the elusive, snow-capped land. Despite Withren’s industrial griminess, the sun once shone on this forsaken land. Memories of better days haunt the city’s inmates – even those who were born after the mysterious events that cast Anmaere into darkness, the details of which are never specified. And while The Wanting Mare is able to create spectacular visuals out of limited means – it was largely shot in a New Jersey warehouse – the weak script offers little of emotional substance, as it haphazardly jumps from one character to another. Barely any time is paid to the doomed romance between Moira (Ashleigh Nutt), an orphaned loner, and Lawrence (played by Bateman himself), a wounded thief, before the film fast-forwards to the former’s children, who are struggling to break free decades later. Continue reading... | | | | | The Winston Machine review – the joys and dangers of dreaming about the past | | by Miriam Gillinson Jan 31, 2022 | | New Diorama theatre, London
A young woman escapes her present through reveries of her grandparents’ wartime romance in Kandinsky theatre’s playful, probing work The Winston Machine is a typically probing and playful work from Kandinsky theatre, shot through with music and mischief. It’s about a young woman called Becky who dreams of the 1940s and the dashing wartime romance between her grandparents, while planning to buy a house in a town she does not like, with a boyfriend she does not love. It’s a rich production, which dances nimbly across the decades and explores how our links with the past can be a joyful and enriching thing – but painful, misleading and crushingly claustrophobic, too. Directed with head-rushing freedom by James Yeatman and with deft dramaturgy from Lauren Mooney, this show is also about communication. And noise. The scenes in the present are full of clamour: a cacophony of constant distraction. Becky’s boyfriend tries to get her to look at their house listing on the internet but, in one continuous line of speech (which Hamish MacDougall delivers with such skill and humour), he also vocalises everything else that Becky is looking at on her laptop screen: Instagram feeds, Facebook likes and, of course, pictures of cats. The Winston Machine is at New Diorama theatre, London, until 19 February. Continue reading... | | | | | Joe Rogan pledges to 'try harder' after Spotify misinformation controversy | | by Sian Cain and Michael Sun Jan 31, 2022 | | Podcast host apologises to streaming service, which has faced criticism over episodes featuring guests who shared Covid conspiracy theories Joe Rogan has addressed controversy over his Spotify podcast, hours after the streaming service announced a plan to tackle the spread of Covid-19 misinformation. In a 10-minute video posted to Instagram on Sunday night, the comedian and host pledged to “try harder to get people with differing opinions on” and “do my best to make sure I’ve researched these topics”. Continue reading... | | | | | America Over the Water by Shirley Collins review – a vivid tale of ballads, gunfire and rattlesnakes | | by Neil Spencer Jan 31, 2022 | | In this welcome reissue of her 2004 memoir, the celebrated folk singer recounts her song-hunting 1959 journey through the American south with the folklorist Alan Lomax In 1959, transatlantic travel was still a niche privilege, not least for a young, single, working-class woman. Shirley Collins owed her ticket to New York on the SS United States to her romance with the American folklorist Alan Lomax, whom she had met in London a couple of years previously. She was an ambitious 21-year-old folk singer from Sussex, he a celebrated song collector and musician 20 years her senior. Lomax had been in Europe for several years, effectively in exile from the anti-communist witch-hunt that had blacklisted musicians such as Pete Seeger, alongside Hollywood stars including Orson Welles and Charlie Chaplin. Even when collecting Spanish folk songs, Lomax had found himself shadowed by “the black crows” of Franco’s guardia. After returning to the US, Lomax invited Collins to join him on a song-hunting trip through the deep south, a journey memorably recounted in this memoir – reissued after 15 years out of print, albeit without the atmospheric photographs of the first edition. It offers a vivid and sometimes shocking portrait of a country yet to confront the civil rights era. The couple’s encounters ranged from pentecostal choirs (both black and white) and hellfire preachers to blind fiddlers and mountain ballad singers, some of them familiar to Lomax from a previous trip with his father. For Collins, this was a new world of epic landscapes, rattlesnakes, racism and nocturnal gunfire. St Leonards-on-Sea it wasn’t. Continue reading... | | | | | |
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