11th Dec2016

The Pass (Film)

by timbaros

19-arinze-kene-ade-russell-tovey-jason-smallTwo footballer players end up scoring with each other in Ben A. Williams feature film debut ‘The Pass,’ which was recently featured at London’s BFI Film Festival.

‘The Pass’ take place in a ten year time span which tracks the relationship between two Premiership football players. There’s always been some kind of chemistry and attraction between James (an electric and very good Russell Tovey) and Ade (Arinzé Kene – Hollyoaks – also very good). We meet both of them while they’re sharing a hotel room in 2006 in Bulgaria right before one of their first big matches. They’re both very young, and they’re also both very fit, masculine and extremely sexy, and they spend the first third of the movie in their tight white underwear. James and Ade are talking lads stuff, having a laugh about other players, and watching a video that was taken of another player having sex. The sex talk continues, and the banter goes something like ‘getting as hard as your sister sitting on my face.’ They’re playing around with each other; it’s hot, it’s erotic, it gets brutal, and homophobic, plus, we find out later, it leads to more than just talk.

‘The Pass’ takes us beyond the hotel room to tell us the story of the relationship between these two men, but especially about the relationship James has with himself. He’s all man, a star footballer, with all the trappings of stardom; money, women, celebrity, and eventually a wife with two kids. But he’s also battling with his sexuality, and even though he buys whatever, and whomever, he wants when he wants it, the thing he wants most is out of his reach. And when he’s questioned about his sexuality by a woman who has been paid to videotape having sex with him, he wants to go through with it, just to prove to the world (and obviously to himself) that he’s not gay. He’a a man who is not able to accept who he is and who he really wants to be with.

‘The Pass’ is 88 minutes of purely charged up adrenaline. It’s a movie that’s full of dialogue, dialogue that goes from playful banter to sexually-charged hi-jinks, up to and including the final third scene of the movie, which involves a hotel bellboy that’s a bit over the top. But it’s not to take away from a movie that brings up a real issue – that there is not one out gay football player in the game now. Let’s hope this film opens up the dialogue that it’s fine for a player to come out of the closet. Originally produced for the Royal Court Theatre in 2014, ’The Pass’ makes an excellent transition to the big screen. Kene brings a real toughness kindled with a bit of softness to his role, but it’s Tovey who owns the movie. He’s never been better; his James is battling with his sexuality while at the same time trying to uphold his image. Tovey is electrifying and is at the top of his game. This is one pass that you have to catch.

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11th Dec2016

Buried Child (Theatre)

by timbaros

34016_fullIf you want to see Ed Harris sitting on a couch for close to three hours, then ‘Buried Child’ is the show for you.

Harris, film and television star, is excellent as Dodge, the father of two sons (dysfunctional doesn’t even come close to describing them). He lives in an old, ramshackled dilapidated house in Illinois with his wife Halie (Harris’ real life wife Amy Madigan), who pops up in the first and third acts. Yes, this play has three acts, with two very quick ten-minute intervals between the acts. The last show I saw that had three acts – ‘The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures’) was very painful to sit through and felt a bit like Chinese water torture. ‘Buried Child,’ playing at Trafalgar Studios, is not that bad but it still feels like a long show.

Harris does spend the whole time on centre stage, on the sofa, and he’s even on the sofa before the show even starts. Dodge and Halie share their home, unwillingly, with their two grown up sons. They’ve obviously missed the financial gravy train and are unfortunately tethered to their poor lot in life. One son, Bradley (Gary Shelford), never left home, and who continues to bring into the house freshly dug up vegetables from no one knows where because there’s not a garden anywhere near the house. Tilden (Barnaby Kay), who used to live in New Mexico, has returned to the family homestead because of an incident that happened there. It’s up to Halie to be the sane member of the family, this is until their grandson Vince (Jeremy Irvine), son of Tilden, arrives in tow with his girlfriend Shelly (Charlotte Hope). Immediately Shelly is uncomfortable in the house full of Vince’s miserable and depressed and sick grandfather, father and uncle. But there is a family secret that’s slightly mentioned which peaks Charlotte’s curiosity, and she wants to find out more. Meanwhile, Vince goes to the grocery story to buy booze for his grandfather because the bottle he had under the couch is missing, and while Charlotte is speaking to Bradley and wanting to know more about this secret, and starts nagging a bit too much, he puts his hand into her mouth (at this point if I were her I would’ve ran out of that house). But the secret that has doomed this troubled family is literally, and eventually, out of the bag, but not before Vince goes missing for the rest of the night and Halie returns home with the family pastor who’s just as uncomfortable in the house as Charlotte is. But it’s not until the final scene that leaves you with an image that you won’t soon forget.

‘Buried Child’ is a very wordy play. perhaps a bit too wordy, but it being a Sam Shepard play, there’s lots thats overdramatic, over the top, and bordering close to the unbelievable. Surely cutting out one act would’ve made this play more biting, sharper and dramatic instead of long-winded,, but director Scott Elliott is able, just, to keep the drama and tension up, while maintaining, until the very end, the mystery to this family’s tragic existence on earth.

‘Buried Child’ is now playing at Trafalgar Studios until February 18, 2017.

http://www.atgtickets.com/shows/buried-child/trafalgar-studios/

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