Director Erin Grainger emphasizes the role of music in the performance, which incorporated an orchestra to support the actors. “Music is the underlying force of moods, opinions, and emotions,” he says. “The role of the orchestra is to externalize the feelings that the characters are having, so the audience can understand them better.”

The similarities in age between the characters and the actors who played them also reflected well on their performances. The actors were able to accurately portray feelings of love and heartbreak because of their own life experiences. According to Grainger, this was one of the reasons the play was chosen: “These characters have situations that the actors can relate to, feelings of love and false blame. Things like that happen to us all in our daily lives.”

Set design was another of the play’s most impressive features. The set was superbly constructed, with several large, well-detailed structures that created a lifelike environment. This was also aided by a good use of lighting, such as the change of background colour to reflect the current mood or the use of a silhouette to portray characters’ thoughts. The costumes were excellent too, whether the distinguished red livery of the Yeomen or the peasants’ plain attire.

The songs were often fun and upbeat, and the accompanying choreography was excellent and well-rehearsed. However, during more up-tempo songs, the ends of longwinded lines were often difficult to hear; the actors were low on breath but still tried to sing many words quickly. This became problematic, as lyrics were often used to drive the story forward.

Overall, the opera was well-executed and enjoyable. The orchestra and actors had good chemistry, and with such excellent set design and lighting, the final product was truly outstanding. Theatre and music lovers alike should not miss Yeomen of the Guard.

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This sugar-coated portrayal begins with a flashback to 1983 after Biggie has just been shot. At the time, he was just a young man living with his mom in Brooklyn. His father had left the family, leaving his mother, Volletta Wallace, to raise her son alone. The film is highly sympathetic to Biggie’s mother, and emphasizes the close relationship that they had – which is to be expected, considering she produced the film. As time passes, Biggie gets sucked into a gangster lifestyle, and begins to deal drugs.

The portrayal of Biggie’s hustlin’ days is highly idealized, suitable for white middle American teenagers wishing to emulate his lifestyle. It depicts Biggie as the ultimate gangster – packing heat, making money, and dealing drugs – without questioning the moral implications of his actions. Eventually, he finds out that he has “slipped one past the goalie” and will be a father soon.

Biggie begins his rise to fame because of connections he has with Sean Combs, aka Puff Daddy. At his first recording, those present are blown away by Biggie’s skills – possibly because they had all been smoking fat blunts. As a result of Biggie’s new-found success and smooth-talking abilities, he becomes very popular with the ladies. It truly seems as if no woman can resist his advances. The resulting sex scenes also betray the superficial nature of the film. The camera shows only Biggie’s head when he has no shirt on, ultimately to hide his overweight body, as if it were some kind of indignity to depict him like this. However, the director had no qualms about showing a variety of topless women.

Ultimately, the film offers little in the way of originality and innovation. Its cliché portrait of the life of the legendary rapper often makes the film feel like a two-hour rap music video. But although there is little innovative in the film, it remains an interesting story about the rise of a cultural icon who started with nothing and made himself into one of the greatest rap musicians of all time.

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HAIR is being performed at Moyse Hall this week, presented by the Arts Undergraduate Theatre Society. The production deals with a variety of social issues important at that time, such as patriotism, drug use, free love, and the draft. Although generally supportive of the hippies and their ideals, the musical is also often critical of their lifestyle of irresponsibility and excess. Throughout the play, they continually consume large amounts of marijuana and engage in impulsive sexual activity, with whomever is present at the moment. One character casually refers to asking her parents for money because she has become pregnant.

The musical also challenges American patriotism and the militaristic tendencies associated with it. This recurring theme is exemplified in a scene in which the hippies march in file chanting “Hell no! We won’t go!” In another scene, a variety of important American political and military figures are satirized onstage – for instance, George Washington lights up a joint.

These critiques of American militarism directly relate to the Vietnam War, for which several of the characters have been drafted to fight. The hippies hold a “Be-In,” a symbolic demonstration which has the characters burn their draft cards and take part in an orgy afterward. Yet one character has his doubts, as his parents have repeatedly told him that he needs to grow up and take responsibility for himself, and that joining the army would be an ideal opportunity to do so. Parents such as these, many of whom had fought in WWII and live by a strikingly different set of values than their children, offer a striking generational contrast to the youth of the hippie movement, .

Yet while the musical tackles these different issues, it continually maintains a highly energetic and upbeat feel. The singing is also full of energy, and interaction with the audience made it all the more engaging. The depiction of psychedelic drugs in the McGill production is also excellent, with its use of striking colours and imagery. Indeed, HAIR deals with an interesting historical period while challenging our conceptions of that time.

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Dr. James Orbinski, former president of Médecins sans Frontières, is no stranger to these questions. His latest book, An Imperfect Offering, gives detailed accounts of his experiences in some of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent memory. Beginning his work in Rwanda investigating the condition of paediatric AIDS, he realizes that much of the widespread pain and suffering he saw could have been prevented had the right political and economic choices been made. From there he travelled to Peru during a cholera epidemic, to Somalia during the American-led intervention, and to Afghanistan, which was still reeling from the attempted Soviet invasion.

Above all, it was Orbinski’s experience in Rwanda during its 1994 genocide that would fundamentally change him. “The Genocide in Rwanda was my undoing,” he writes, “It was where I came to know intimately the fullness of what we are capable of as human beings. No illusions or fantasies were possible after this; no retreat into false hopes or comforting yearning for a lost past.” The failure of both the Rwandan government and the international community truly altered his understanding of the world.

When governments like the United States and France initially blocked attempts to label the Rwanda crisis as a genocide – a distinction that would have made it obligatory for the Security Council to intervene – Orbinski decided to take a different approach. Too much emphasis, he believes, has been placed on the need for humanitarian groups to remain neutral – ultimately, such a position is impossible. To not speak out against atrocities committed by regimes essentially legitimizes them, allowing the acts to continue.

“The doctor’s role is to witness authentically the reality of humanity, and to speak out against the horrors of political inaction,” Orbinski explains. “The only crimes of equal inhumanity are the crimes of indifference, silence, and forgetting.” Ultimately, governments will act largely in their own self interest, not within the realm of higher humanitarian ideals. Orbinski calls upon humanitarians present on the ground at areas of crisis to tell the world what is happening.

A 2008 nominee for the Governor General’s Award, The Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action in the Twenty-first Century is $35.

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After beginning in 2004 at New Rez, Akbar has decided to open his own restaurant. Chef Guru opened last Friday and is located just south of St. Laurent and Rachel. He hopes he can corner the student market in the area by offering cheap food that is also freshly made.

“Many of Montreal’s fast food restaurants offer food that is tasteless and not fresh,” he says. “I will make my food fresh, not use sauces from a can. By making sauces and food fresh, it allows for more flavour.”

His restaurant will sell mostly Indian food but also variety of other South and East Asian cuisine, offering dishes such as naan bread, tandoori chicken, samosas, and – his own creation – fish and chips infused with an assortment of spices. The meals will sell from between $8-10, with a chicken curry lunch special for $6 as his special promotion.

Yet part of Akbar’s plans for the restaurant will be continued experimentation with different cuisines. “It is something I am passionate about. I love to create new dishes and try out new ideas. I want to fuse dishes from different cultures to create new foods for my restaurant.”

Ultimately, opening a new restaurant can often be a difficult task, but Akbar says he is not too concerned. He already opened two in his native Pakistan, and is confident that this one will be a success as well. He believes that he knows what students are looking for in a restaurant. “Students want tasty food and they want it for cheap. I am confident that once people have my food, they will want to return.”

Chef Guru is located at 4120 St-Laurent.

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About 40 students work for SSMU, employed at Gert’s, Haven Books, or within various administrative offices. According to students organizing the Association of Undergraduate Students Employed at McGill’s (AMUSE), the membership of SSMU employees would help the union reach their membership quota and benefit the employees themselves.

Max Silverman, former SSMU VP External Affairs, who is involved in AMUSE organization, hopes the union will provide a voice for employees to express their concerns.

“The biggest issue for SSMU employees is the lack of clearly defined structure to deal with labour issues and concerns,” Silverman said. “I hope we can provide a clear framework that will give workers a place to turn outside of their current employers.”

SSMU employees approached AMUSE about the possibility of their membership.

SSMU declined to comment, noting that the Quebec Labour Code forbids employers from making judgments about union formation, but Silverman assumes they would be responsive.

According to the Quebec Labour Code, AMUSE must sign 35 per cent of all undergraduate workers at McGill before holding a referendum in which all employees will vote to make the union official. If over 50 per cent of employees sign, the union can be created automatically without a vote.

Hoping to attract more workers, including SSMU employees, AMUSE sponsored a free pizza and beer event at Gert’s on Thursday night.

Because SSMU employees technically work for SSMU, and not the administration, they would form a distinct group within AMUSE if they join. The two groups would have a loose affiliation, each with their own respective agendas and decision-making processes.

Employees of SSMU have cited fewer problems with their positions than their McGill counterparts. A SSMU employee, who wished to remain anonymous, said his experience working with SSMU was positive, noting that the organization’s small size allows for much more intimate relations with managers and the SSMU administration.

“The working environment here is much more personal and there have been few issues with our employers. There just isn’t the same bureaucracy present as at University,” he said.

The worker did admit that a union could help SSMU employees when mediating conflicts with managers.

“Problems are dealt with through the manager, but if for example you have a problem with the manager, there is not any obvious person to turn to,” he added.

The McGill administration has had tense relations with its unions over the past year. The teaching assistant union went on strike last spring over higher wages and other demands.

Currently, they University is refusing to release a list of all undergraduates employed by the University to AMUSE. AMUSE must therefore seek out all those employed to reach its 35 per cent signature minimum requirement.

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The characters’ interactions are presented in a series of contrasting scenes. Rarely more than two characters are present on stage at once, putting immense focus on their intimate one-on-one relationships. These emotionally-charged exchanges take on a somber mood, showing well the difficulty and imperfection of love that is so central to the story. Indeed, the changing sexual interests of all the characters create a frightening picture of married life – full of deceit, adultery, and anger. As the four characters continue intermingling in a bizarre love quadrangle there seems to be little hope that it will end for the best.

Even the careers of the four characters project detachment and loneliness. Alice works as a performer in a strip club, Dan is an unsuccessful novelist working as an obituary writer, Larry is a dermatologist, and Anna is a photographer who specializes, she says, “in the portraits of strangers.”

All the characters begin as strangers and try to maintain this detachment during their first encounters. They exhibit feelings of indifference and remoteness, showing the isolation present in their own lives. Yet as they become romantically involved, the protection that detachment offers from pain and suffering is gone.

Central to the play’s message is its portrayal of human sexuality. The film noir motifs of moral ambiguity and sexual fixation establish the mood right away, and the play is riddled with sexual language and tension whenever interactions occur. Many of the characters seem to have perverted sexual tendencies. In an especially graphic scene, Dan pretends to be a libidinous young woman in an Internet chatroom, displaying not only his sexual confusion, but also boredom with his current relationship.

The play portrays a disheartening view of adult relationships and married life. It seems that these characters have become so detached from others that they are almost unable to truly love someone else. Despite the many agonizing interactions these characters have, one wonders if it they even have the ability to be truly hurt. The final tragedy of Closer is not that these characters cannot love each other, but rather that they are ultimately unable to love themselves.

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What We Do Is Secret, a posthumous biopic directed by Rodger Grossman, depicts the rise of Darby Crash (Shane West) as the frontman for the Germs, a band that emerged out of the late seventies punk rock scene in L.A. It is done in a faux-documentary style, with numerous fictional interviews throughout the film in order to give a variety of perspectives on the band and Crash’s mystifying persona. Often, the characters featured in interviews gave little insight, resorting mostly to clichés about the band.

The film follows a typical storyline in many ways, depicting a breakthrough artist’s rise to fame, followed by his descent into heavy drug use and general self-destruction. However, Crash’s many humourous antics give the film an often funny and light-hearted tone. At their disastrous first show, he dumps a bag of flour on a group of naysayers. Indeed, West manages to portray Crash’s human side in a way that allows the audience to understand the man inside this hardened, punk-rock exterior.

Central to Crash’s vision for the Germs is a “five-year plan” for attaining punk-rock infamy. His bizarre idea involves the recruitment of band members who aren’t actually musicians to play gigs, incite riots, fan the hype, and only then learn to play their musical instrument. However, Crash’s strategy is not entirely lacking in seriousness, and his character is made all the more compelling by his musical passion. For a pro-fascist, nihilist punk rock singer, he is certainly a careerist, announcing in one faux-interview that, “I have a very, very set idea of what I want to get done and how I’m going to do it. And I need people to help me do it.”

His band members are Lorna Doon, Pap Smear, and Don Bolle – all names Crash himself chose. Their relationship with him is often tumultuous; they switch roles from band-mates to concerned friends after Crash’s incessant drug use becomes a source of strife. Despite these tensions, he is often affectionate and appreciative of his band members for all their help in fulfilling his musical vision. This general authenticity is well displayed throughout the film and makes Crash genuinely likeable.

Yet despite these warm-hearted moments, the film is unable to get inside Crash’s tortured soul. There is scant attention paid to some of his more troubling characteristics, such as his incessant drug use, self-mutilation, sexual confusion, and his deliberate drug overdose after the band’s final show. His suicide, his desired ending for the five-year plan, perhaps, is overshadowed by the assassination of John Lennon. As Crash lays dying, his band members are watching news coverage of Lennon’s assassination; the final misfortune of Crash’s life – and his chance to become a musical icon – is snatched away by fate.

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Should buildings be designed simply for function, or rather, should they be engaging and unique, becoming places where people will actually wish to spend their time? Well-known for his colourful, avant-garde architecture, Alsop believes the latter.

Many architects, Alsop said repeatedly, are immensely bored; they create places that people will never go to. He believes that architects, unlike lawyers, accountants and so on, should be peddlers of joy, creating places that are unusual and thus remembered in the often-bland urban centers of the modern world.

One of Alsop’s earliest creations, a large visitors’ centre modeled after a disposable cigarette lighter, certainly attests to this. Accountants, whose profession he mocked throughout the lecture, made predictions that 25,000 people would go to the centre in its first year. Despite this estimate, over 450,000 people visited during its first year alone.

Why would 450,000 people go to see the Cardiff Bay visitor’s centre? Because it is unusual. It is this unusualness that people want; an out-of-the-ordinary building can evoke feelings of curiosity for those who have not seen it, which can be formidable desire. Alsop believes that the OCAD (Ontario College of Art and Design) building has a similar effect.

Architects in urban centres should try to break free from the orderliness and sharp clarity that many buildings try to create, he explained. But what does this mean for the future of architecture, and urban centres in particular? Does a style such as his have the power to transform and revitalize often lifeless cities?

Alsop referred to the importance of engaging the general public and breaking down barriers so that it is not just the architect who is a part of the design process. Architecture should be a reflection of the people that inhabit a city, he suggested. It is something that we pass by every day, and thus, he believes that architecture influences us in unknown ways. Buildings should not simply be functional, but interesting, unique, and ultimately a reflection of the direction which are headed in the 21st century.

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