What’s on our shelves: Dystopias, a Divorce Album, and the Danish Prince

Album: West End Girl by Lily Allen

Album: West End Girl by Lily Allen
Direct, brutal, outrageous, cathartic. This truly tragic concept album lands like a classic, sung for therapy as much as for performance. Jarring lyrics are repeated for bars on end, allowing ample time for the discomfort to leech into the listener’s bones. Nonmonogamummy effortlessly establishes itself as one of the best pop song titles of all time. It bangs, and it makes me want to give Lily Allen a hug.

Jake Bateman, Linux System Administrator – Open Fifth 

👽 TV series: Invasion by Simon Kinberg and David Weil

Apple TV

A 3 season show that spans the globe focusing mainly on our key protagonists in Japan, England, and USA. There are signs that production was farmed out to these countries too, which works well in some instances but other times leaves you with a disjointedness in the story telling; with some episodes being riveting and horrifying, some frustrating in terms of character actions and yet others a tad dull.

The concept is that an alien invasion force (with cloaking technology) lands and begins to terraform the world to their needs. Those needs are very much at odds with human survival! The first series explores the impact on everyday people, trying to get back to normal lives in horrendous circumstances but with a light and hopeful final episode, people across the world celebrating their victory. The second however shows the aliens have a great capacity to adapt and evolve…

Sam Goldsmith, Business Development Manager – Open Fifth

Book: Going Infinite by Michael Lewis

Lewis approached Sam Bankman-Fried long before the spectacular implosion of FTX, intending to write a much less interesting biography about his miraculous rise to success. When the wheels fell off, he was already present and had already familiarised himself with the people and systems involved. What he describes is absolutely insane. Sam is a deeply weird man, totally unsuited for many or even most of the tasks the world requires of a normal human person. I feel a great deal more sympathy with the callous flippant fraudster now than before I read this book though. To whatever extent he has a heart, it really was in the right place. His childlike approach to accounting for billions of other people’s dollars is just so charming. At one point, a huge pile of investors’ money is misplaced – entirely unaccounted for. Sam estimates, using vibes, that there is a 60% chance that this huge pile of money will just turn up at some later date, and therefore it’s reasonable to only count 40% of it as currently lost. Everybody tells him that this is bonkers. Later, the huge pile of money does indeed just turn up, and Sam gets to tell all of the sensible people that they must never doubt his vibes-based accounting ever again. The whole thing reads like a bunch of kids playing frisbee with landmines.

Jake Bateman, Linux System Administrator – Open Fifth

🧙‍♀️ Book: Maskerade by Terry Pratchett 

I was astonished to realise I had missed one of the late, great Sir Terry’s works – so I set about to rectify this. I have to say books featuring the witches Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg (and Greebo of course) are always my favourite. But now maybe I understand why I skipped this one at the time, this is a rare occasion where Pratchett “punched down” based on the physicality of a character. A mistake he thoroughly rectified later – but a shame none the less and I did cringe a bit sometimes. The rest of the book is a delight as ever, with our witches acting as detectives in a mad Phantom of the Opera style adventure. It’s very comforting returning to Discworld now and again, I thoroughly recommend it.

Sam Goldsmith, Business Development Manager – Open Fifth

Helen has a rant….

It’s been a busy couple of months for me, travel-wise, as I had two holidays within 6 weeks. The first was a two week jaunt to Japan, stopping off in Seoul to break up the flight a little. The second was two weeks in Sri Lanka.

You might think that those trips would influence my reading habits and that I would choose something to represent those countries; something that would give me an idea of the culture, history and people of those places. Not so. 

Firstly, because I don’t believe it is possible to incorporate a country, culture and history of a place and people in one fictional book. 

How could it? 

Whose culture should the story cover? 

What people within the country should be included? 

What time period? 

What, if any, significant events should it cover? 

Secondly, because I’m terrible at that kind of thing. Even if I did want to read something that represented all of those things, I’m much more likely to read it after the fact than before. In the same way that when I go to see someone in concert, I don’t listen to their back catalogue or new album before the event, that would be too easy and sensible. No, I listen, read and/or watch it all after the fact. I don’t know why, it’s not deliberate or for any political belief. It’s just what I tend to do.

I’d be very interested in hearing other’s opinions on this (I’ll continue to think you are wrong, but I’ll still be interested to hear you try to justify it). Are there any books you have read that you feel do fully incorporate a country, people, culture, history and essence? What are they? I want to know so I can read them and tell you you’re wrong.

Rant over.

I did actually read a collection of short stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories, before heading to Japan. However, that was my fourth trip to Japan (including the year I lived there) and it had been on my Kindle for several years.

I also read Gertrude Bells’ Desert and the Sown: Travels in Palestine and Syria whilst in Sri Lanka because my travelling partner wrote her dissertation on Gertrude Bell so I was curious. It was interesting but I felt that it was very of it’s time – i.e. quite racist and a very ‘English Lady of the aristocracy’s’ narrow view. I disliked the writing style as it seemed to change throughout the book. That had also been on my Kindle for several years so it seemed a good opportunity to read it and discuss it with someone who had done a lot of research on Gertrude Bell (and is distantly related to).

Helen Symington, Sales Executive – Open Fifth

👻 Performance: Hamlet directed by Justin Audibert 

3rd October, Minerva Theatre, Chichester

This autumn Chichester Festival Theatre staged their first production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, directed by Justin Audibert. If you saw the reviews for Grand Theft Hamlet in our January’s WOOSH, you’ll know there was a lot to measure up to… 

Giles Terera played the titular Hamlet and was dynamic and intense, as the role necessitates, as well as just feeling very approachable, such as when he guffawed from an empty seat in the audience at one point. (Terera was recently announced for the role of Abraham Lincoln in the West End run of Oh, Mary! – definitely one to check out.) Polonius was played by Keir Charles, who was excellent at bringing the comedy to the tragedy. The iconic lines that appear throughout the play were not over-performed or anticipated.

The staging was dark, with wall design that could read as either dingy or luxe depending on the scene they enclosed. A large pile of dirt featured at the back of the stage throughout, and a second floor was used effectively to separate action. The lighting was low, featuring a central light shining down on the crown to start, with later use of candles or a ring of lights to focus attention. The sound-effects were equally pared back, building atmosphere through dripping or fuzzy background noises to unsettle. The few pieces of furniture used were based on mid-century modern Danish style, which was a great touch. 

The run-time was 3.5 hours, with a brief interval, making for a nearly 23:00 close, quite past my bed-time and another layer to the intensity building throughout the performance. 

Dame Patricia Routledge passed away in Chichester on  3 October, aged 96. Routledge had performed many times at the Chichester Festival Theatre, was Patron of Chichester Festival Youth Theatre, and President of The Nest Appeal, a creative space which opened this year. Terera delivered a speech in appreciation of Routledge on behalf of the CFT at the end of the performance, which was touching to be present for.

Lauren Purton, Marketing Executive – Open Fifth

Video Game: Stray by Annapurna

Cat antics writ large in a dystopian future, Stray takes you through the gorgeously ambient underbelly of Walled City 99 in search of fellow cats. Along the way, you meet and befriend numerous rather characterful robots who help you to find a way out of your predicament. 

Uniquely, because this game sees you embody a cat, rather than a person, you allow yourself some creative freedoms in interacting with, and interpreting, the beings you meet. “Does this robot understand my seemingly chaotic mews, and can my cat-character understand their dial-up tones?”

There is replay value in Stray, too; the characters are engaging enough to want to revisit, and there are enough side-quests (mostly hunter-gatherer in nature) to warrant returning to finish.

Reviewed to completion on a Mac, it looks best on a high-resolution high-quality display, but I do believe it is available on PlayStation or Switch, too, if you’re that way inclined. 

Jake Deery, Junior Software Engineer – Open Fifth