Lost (C4) : Anyone hoping that the opening double episode of the second series would make clearer the many mysteries at the heart of Lost will be sorely disappointed.
If anything, it's murkier than ever what's happening to the plane crash survivors on their desert island.
I'm still totally confused about the secret hatch and the Others, as well as why all the men haven't grown long beards by now (are they being sponsored by Gillette?) and why everyone looks so well-nourished and healthy. Must be all that fresh air, sunshine and fruit they're eating.
As the first series ended, we left the Lost castaways split into two groups - four attempting an escape on a home-made raft and the rest cowering in camp as the Others, the island's other mysterious inhabitants, closed in on them.
Locke is annoyed that he was pulled into a hole by "what appeared to be a column of black smoke". Surely he knew that smoking wasn't good for you.
He blows open the hatch, persuading Kate to be lowered down the shaft as she's the lightest. "You left out the part where you want to see if I get eaten by something," she points out.
Landing at the bottom with a bump, pretty soon she's stuffing her face with chocolate bars after finding a stash of food. Unfortunately, she's been found by Desmond, the gun-pointing resident of this underground hideaway.
This is puzzling for him and for us as he's just appeared in one of Jack's flashbacks. What's the connection? Why does the door of the hatch have QUARANTINE painted on it in alarmingly big letters? Where the hell has Vincent the dog disappeared to? What's with these numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42 that keep turning up everywhere? And do the writers actually know the answers to any of these questions - or are they making it up as they go along?.
Only the fat guy who won the lottery sees the positive side. "Sure, the others are coming to eat us, every once in a while someone blows up all over you, but you get to sleep in every morning," he points out.
At least, he's dry - which is more than can be said for Michael and Sawyer, drifting around the ocean on what's left of their raft. Michael's son Walt has been snatched by The Others (very painful) and Jin is missing.
"I'm gonna get back my son," bleats Michael, so much that I understood Sawyer getting annoyed with him when he wasn't taking a bullet out of his shoulder with his bare hands.
He's probably better off doing it himself than letting Doctor Jack perform surgery. After operating on car crash victim Sarah, he told her that she'd be paralysed for life from the waist down.
"But I can wiggle my toes," she said. So much for Doctor Jack's diagnosis. And this is the man the survivors have elected leader.
Jerry Springer - The Opera
Theatre Royal, Newcastle
HUNDREDS of people gathered outside the theatre singing hymns before the show opened on Tyneside, waving placards and handing out Christian Institute leaflets denouncing the show as blasphemous.
Indeed, there were more people on the street than bums on seats.
It made the crowd feel as if we were all destined for downstairs for daring to watch such a piece of theatre but, if anything, the protest has only ratcheted up interest in the controversial work.
Censoring 'art', no matter how low brow, does not sit well with most people and after seeing the show I wonder what all the hoo ha is about.
There is a lot of swearing and crude references, highlighting the ugly side of the human condition. But this is a satire of a show that aired at teatime and I don't recall the same level of opposition to the real thing.
It raises interesting questions about morality and the religious aspect does not come into it until part two, when Jerry, played superbly by Rolf Saxon, dies and is taken to Hell and forced to do a show with the devil.
It features God, Jesus, Mary, Adam and Eve and portrays them in the same cynical vein as guests of the show.
But it is clearly a bit of fun and done with entertaining professionalism that makes a mockery of the widespread demonstrations from the "anti" contingent outside.
Until Saturday
Box office 0870 905 5060
Gavin Havery
Battleship Potemkin soundtrack by the Pet Shop Boys and Northern Sinfonia
Swan Hunter shipyard, Wallsend
A 1925 silent black-and-white Russian film about a failed 1905 revolution aboard a Black Sea battleship shown in the open air of a Tyneside shipyard accompanied by an orchestra and hardcore electronics. This was esoteric stuff.
Daring stuff, even, given English early May nights are not generally balmy enough to encourage standing around until 10.30pm watching old movies.
The 14,000 free tickets for Monday night disappeared within hours of becoming available, but just ten minutes after the klaxon sounded to launch the show, a trickle of people began wending their way to the exit. Perhaps they had come expecting the Pet Shop Boys' greatest hits - West End Girls, It's A Sin, Always On My Mind - and were disappointed that there was barely a Pet Shop Boy to be seen. There was just a glimpse of Neil Tennant's left hand in the subdued lighting on the rare occasions that he stirred himself to sing.
Instead the screen, framed by a pair of Swan Hunter's dramatic cranes, took centre stage. On to it was projected Sergei Eisenstein's movie Battleship Potemkin, an evocative piece of Soviet propaganda, all throbbing steamships, toiling workers and unfeeling bosses. It has some powerful passages, most notably when a young boy and then his wailing mother are callously shot down by the tsar's jackbooted soliders on the Odessa staircase.
The score develops the film's meaning. It questions the role of religion, the nature of freedom, and asks as the young boy dies: "If you don't understand the cause...why did we go to war?" This was a fascinating audio-visual experience. From the concept, organisation and setting, it was a triumph.
Chris Lloyd
C
ends
Published: 03/05/2006
