The Guardian du lieu suivant : London, Greater London, England • 25

Arts A squatted lido in Brixton plays host to a counter cultural cinematic experience Against the tide gow which could have been excruciating bring this tottering cabaret down to its proper level. Before a live audience, U2 couldn't possibly be the blank cyborgs they constructed in the studio for the Zooropa album. If technology is a means to human emancipation, then U2 bless 'em turn out to be implicit propagandists for a radical democratised -culture. In the space between encores, selections from a video box opened to fans were beamed out, full screen. And what about the music? "We're just learning these new mumbles Bono.

"So for fuck's sake don't clap along to this one." With their gleaming electronic cathedral behind them, sometimes U2 are revealed as the wobbly Irish garage band they essentially are. When they CLASSICAL 3 Edward Greenfield 'HE Royal Albert Hall still has its drawbacks, but nothing equals it for wallowing in sumptuous sounds. Following up Elektra on the Proms opening night this year came the other horror-work of Strauss, Salome not the whole opera, just the closing scene, with Maria Ewing curdling our blood in her depiction of total depravity, as she did at Covent Garden. What did it matter that Mark Wigglesworth in his thrustful conducting had the BBC Symphony Orchestra drowning the singer occasionally? Maria Ewing's clear projection was what mattered, and orchestral sound wrapped around the audience as it never can in the Royal Opera House. It felt as though one had just heard the whole work, and that was also thanks to having in preparation Strauss's Death and Transfiguration, a shrewd choice when Wigglesworth drew such concentrated, rapt, beautiful playing from the orchestra.

His concentration was just as keen in Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. Helped by the most perceptive, informative programme notes from the scholar and composer, Gerard McBurney one heard this most popular of the Shostakovich symphonies in a new, bigger and deeper context, with the controversial finale freed from any smear of bombast. The Strauss in the previous night's Prom was far removed from Salome, the genial Oboe Concerto of the composer's glowing Indian summer. Sympathetically supported by Rich- huddle on the small stage in the audience, bouncing against each other as they play old hits, it should be a moment of spectacle smashing intimacy. But it's just four awkward white boys, bearing riffs: vulnerable, not cutting it musically, clearly keen to get back to the safety of their steelalloy thrones 50 yards away.

As for Bono's thespian-fag MacPhisto character it frankly feels like an aftershow bar routine that's been disastrously over-estimated. OK, so he's the opposite of the old tubthumping Bono; but is that necessarily an interesting place to be? One gets a giddying flash of the real, tedious source of this: tired rocker, miles from base camp, pumping the hotel's cable channels for some human connection. Now, do you need art to work this lonely condition ard Hickox and the City of London Sinfonia, Nicholas Daniel played with a coaxing warmth and subtlety that nearly sustained the work's meandering length. After that it was welcome that Robert Saxon's Viola Concerto was so compact in its four sharply conceived and well-balanced movements. Paul Silverthorne was the masterly soloist, finding lyricism I volcano THEATRE COMPANY L.O.V.E.

BASED ON SONNETS BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE "This will go down as one of the most shows bUT sex for the 1990s IS AUGUST 1993 8pm THE PURCELL ROOM THE SOUTH BANK CENTRE SET BOX OFFICE 071 928 8800 £8.50, £6.50 conc NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN UNDER 16 YRS THE SOUTH BANK CENTRE Heads you win A man wearing a caricature head of Bono warms up the crowd at Parkhead stadium, Glasgow, on Saturday PHOTOGRAPH: IAN WALDIE therapeutically over hundreds of stages and multi-million pounds or should you just go home? The night ends scrappily, with bad lights, poor choreography: MacPhisto slips into Elvis, groaning Can't Help Falling In Love With You. I'm tempted to take this coda literally: ultimately, all rock 'n' roll is bad Elvis, no matter how glittering or edifying the superstructure. It's a crucifying, crushing insight: and the inevitable U2 question, "What will they possibly do next?" may, 1 I suspect, have a terminal answer. Lights out. even in some of the grittiest string.

writing. Otherwise it was a programme inspired by Italy, with Rossini's Turco in Italia Overture, Wolf's Italian Serenade and Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony evoking warmth and sunshine, even if the 40-odd players in the Sinfonia had to work hard in so large a hall. Sean O'Hagan for alternative ventures, coupled with the increasing distaste that many young creative film-makers feel for SHERE was an eerie glow over the mainstream, has produced weird Brixton's Brockwell Park lido and occasionally wonderful eruptions on Saturday night and a series from the margins. of strange noises emanating from The Exploding Cinema is a nonwithin. Around 2,000 people, the curi- profit-making venture, which stages ous easily outnumbering the faithful, regular smaller events at fixed vengathered at a disused and recently- ues, usually the upstairs room of a squatted outdoor swimming pool for pub or anywhere, in fact, that the latest manifestation of the Explod- "subverts the normal cinema going ing Cinema.

When I arrived, there Their philosophy of "cinwere strangely-clad men running ema for everyone" means that they around the changing room roofs with neither censor nor edit nor even phosphorescent torches. Down in the select films on any qualitative basis. empty pool, a series of scratch video Anyone can show up and have their images were being projected on the work screened, with the proviso that wall at the deep end to an accompany- they must then be prepared to stand ing soundtrack of discordant music up and defend their images if the intercut with tape looped human audience objects or disrupts the perscreams. I saw two policewomen formance. "Ultimately," one of the enter the lido, look around in disbe- Explosive subversives informs me, lief, and exit hastily.

"the event is always more important Despite the WPCs' discomfort and than the films shown." the indulgent nature of some of the This edict held through for Saturmore material on display, the day's all-night extravaganza where poolside vibes of the attendant multi- most of the audience were content to tude were surprisingly mellow. This move around from installation to permay have had something to do with forinance to screening rather than sit the heavy aroma of reefer that hung too long before a passing parade of in the air. This was abstract short films that, after a all the evidence anyone needed that while, would have tested the patience the contemporary underground scene of even the most die-hard experimenis alive and kicking against the main- tal cinephile. One of the notable exstream with a vengeance. ceptions was Richard Stanley's exThe night's programme of indepen- traordinary Voice Of The Moon, a dent film-making, performance art, poetic 40-minute homage to Afghaniinstallation and music was the latest stan's anti -Soviet rebel guerrillas that episode in an ongoing experiment in is part dreamscape, part docudrama.

cinematic mischief that began two That a film as visually stunning and years ago in a Brixton squat. Back technically brilliant as this one has then, the Exploding Cinema num- been confined to the margins speaks bered less than a dozen disaffected volumes about the commercial values independent film frustrated that have all but -jacketed lowwith Britain's mainstream and avant- budget film-makers in this country. garde film culture. The Exploding Cinema will obviThe Exploding Cinema articulates a ously run and run for some time to do-it-yourself philosophy that has its come. As one of their slogans puts it, roots in sixties American under- they have "no taste, no pretensions, ground cinema and seventies punk no rock.

That said, it is definitely a mu- The Exploding Cinema are looking tant offspring of the beleaguered nine- for a new venue. If you can help, ring ties, where a critical lack of funding 071 703 3912. Lhis is the second part of our three day competition to win one of a hundred pairs of UCI cinema tickets. Just tell us if the scene below, taken from Clint Eastwood's latest film 'In the Line of Fire', shows a hero or villain. Send all three answers to the address we'll print tomorrow and the first hundred correct answers will win the tickets.

The Guardian CIN ELS Do you feel lucky, Punk? David Glass IT'S BACK and brilliantly evoked" hind Our Mon 2. 'Sat 28 Aug "SEE IT Whar's On Mervyn Peake's "Sumptuous beguiling. Ensemble present. Gothic CORMENCHAST Lyric 071. THST 536 CALL 340 081 741 2311.

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