Saturday Review - 18/07/2009

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by historian Tristram Hunt, playwright Julia Pascal and writer Michael Carlson to discuss the cultural highlights of the week, featuring lunar loneliness, anarchy in Wiltshire and some very small clothes. In the midst of the celebrations to mark the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing, Duncan Jones's directorial debut, Moon, presents a stark contrast to the brave new world of Apollo 11. Sam Jones (played by Sam Rockwell) is the only employee at a plant on the far side of the Moon which mines Helium-3 to solve Earth's energy problems. Nearing the end of his three-year tour of duty, he suddenly finds that he has far more than loneliness and boredom to deal with. Jez Butterworth's new play Jerusalem is at the Royal Court in London and features a bravura central performance by Mark Rylance, playing Johnny 'Rooster' Byron. As St George's Day dawns in a Wiltshire village, Johnny faces eviction from the encampment in the woods where he has lived for 27 years. He's a lord of misrule, a supplier of drugs to local teenagers, and possibly deeply connected to an older, more mystical England. Will Saint George come to his rescue? In his third novel, Menage, Ewan Morrison aims his pen at the rise of the Young British Artists in the early 1990s and the commodification of art which accompanied it. His three protagonists - Owen, Dot and Saul - who comprise the menage of the title, find themselves in a Hoxton-based cross between Withnail and I and Jules et Jim. Plenty of squalor, lots of sex and critical essays (with footnotes) on nine video installations. The Young British Artists of the Victorian era didn't have video cameras, but, if Desperate Romantics on BBC2 is to be believed, the pre-Raphaelites shared their Hoxton counterparts' interest in capturing real life, boozing and getting it on. Aidan Turner cuts a Jagger-esque Rossetti, strutting around town with Hunt and Millais in his wake, blowing raspberries at the Royal Academy and searching for the perfect model. Apparently, the aim of the series is to create Entourage with easels. Charles LeDray is a Manhattan-based artist whose meticulous work means that his exhibitions take years to prepare. Mens Suits - his first major exhibition in Europe, arranged by Artangel - is an installation in an old Victorian fire station in London which features an entire wardrobe of tiny, hand-stitched clothes in three separate areas, redolent of thrift shops and mens' outfitters. Perfectly crafted, he even brought his own dust.