Friday 11th July 2025
Blog Page 1008

Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream – OUDS Summer Tour

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Walking down Shaftesbury Avenue to the Tristan Bates theatre near Leicester Square, the eternal question of ‘who do I know who will make it big’ became surreally pertinent. But in spite of the setting of the OUDS summer tour, the hunger, scale and ambition of London’s theatre land meant it all did not feel so different to a good night in Oxford theatre.

The parallel between the bright lights and Oxford is not trivial; it explains a lot of what was good and not so good about this production. Like many high-powered Oxford pursuits, the sense of place and time haunts the enterprise. In this case, the annual Thelma Holt production sells itself as a platform for the next generation of big names. The west end with its history, promises as prodigious a future as the paths historic Oxford talent have carved out. As with many such Oxford things, living up to a future promised by the past, is a mixed blessing.

You feel this in the raw, almost rabid sense of drive in the cast. As the show races ahead, the actors shed an athletic athletic volume of sweat from their mannered brows. Their vocal chords are put through their paces in escalating shouting matches; their footwear ripped (though perhaps intentionally) from the stomping and pouncing they put themselves (and each other) through. Make no mistake; this production has a lot riding on it.

It hits you most when watching the four leads. Lysander (Cassian Bilton) and Demetrius (Calam Lynch) are the two male leads whose quests for Hermia (Clemi Collette) and Helena (Heloise Lowenthal) are sabotaged by the romantic machinations of the forest fairies. At the climax of the deception, both chase Helena, leading them to comically challenge each other to a fight. The net result is that both Lynch and Bilton leap through the air or toss themselves in prostration with alarming violence. When on two feet, Lynch purposefully gyrates in the direction of his beloved. The extremity of the performances by all four was in many places inspired “Hermia is a fucking cow”. But there was a limit past which the extremes of their inventive desperation became, bluntly saturated.

This ferocity was rife throughout the production in both acting and direction. It reached its climax in the sexualized encounters between the fairies and the mechanicals. In the key scene where the fairies break the spell, the main characters are led by leather clad fairies to the front of the audience as they howl like dogs while bondaged with dog collars. It was an image whose power summed up the excess that is the strength and potential downfall of this production.

At it’s best, the energy translated into genuinely very funny and joyous moments that connected the audience with the fun of the text and the fun actors seemed to be having with it. Very often these moments came when things calmed down. For example in the staging of Pyramus and Thisbe, the mechanicals (brilliantly led by Tommy Simon’s louche rendition of Bottom) the spectators play of each other fantastically with the leads’ reactions making the scene twice as funny. In this regard Maddy Walker really shined as a sort of beer drinking granny, whose melodramatic involvement gave the scene a whole new comic depth.

Will Felton’s overall direction likewise had moments of brilliance. The original mis en scene of Athens is transposed to 1920s Bradford and the fairy kingdom is headed by a steam punk Oberon (Christian Bevan) complete with leather trench coat and goggles. The industrial setting combined with the fairies’ post-industrial punk look, perhaps makes sense in connecting the sexual/cultural liberation of punk with the industrial mis en scene. From this angle maybe “the fierce vexation of a dream” Oberon describes, is its potential to liberate, sexually and socially.

For sure, the dreaminess was down in large part to the fantastic use of music by the extremely talented Callum Akass who prepared some wonderful and diverse guitar and percussion arrangements. His rendition of Bowie’s ‘let’s dance’ was especially cool.

Although the picture was therefore mixed in the flux from subtlety to extremity, this was overall an excellent production. Part of what made it, is the ambition and expectation its prestige calls for. More importantly what made it was the skill and energy went in living up to it. No doubt this was a source of fierce vexation in handling the expectation to carry it of, explaining maybe the bombast at some of its more extreme moments. But no doubt, once the run gets underway the cast will settle into the performance to show with greater ease why their dream is warranted.

Sunlight damaging exhibits at Oxford Natural History Museum

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Oxford University Natural History Museum’s glass roof has caused dangerously high temperatures within the building and failed to prevent UV rays from damaging some of the museum’s exhibits, according to Oxford City Council documents. The roof has created a greenhouse effect within the building during recent warm spells in Oxford, with temperatures inside reaching as high as 44 degrees Celsius.

The museum currently holds more than 250,000 specimens. Many of those that are on display are protected from UV light by glass cases, but some  rare animal skeletons and skins that are not encased have already been damaged. Temperatures in the museum have regularly been exceeding the recommended 24 degree storage temperature for exhibits.

The glass roof is an iconic feature of the museum, which contributes to the 1850 building’s Grade-I listed status It was refurbished in 2013 at a cost of nearly £2 million. It is thought that UV protective covering was not applied to the rood during the refurbishment as dirt which had accumulated on it had masked the problem.

The museum has applied for permission to apply UV reflective film to the roof and build a new ventilation system. If approved, museum officials hope that this work can be completed by the summer of 2017. They have not revealed how much this work is likely to cost. The plans have been supported by the Arts Council, who first appealed to the museum to address the problem, and Historic England.

The Oxford University Natural History Museum attracts over 600,000 visitors per year. During its history it has been the site of several important scientific events such as the 1860 evolution debate and the first public demonstration of wireless telegraphy in 1894. It is currently home to the world’s most complete dodo specimen.
A spokesperson for the University of Oxford said: “During 2013-14, the University of Oxford completed a major roof restoration project at its Museum of Natural History, which involved the removal of a protective film that had become degraded and patchy. Given the possibility that a new film would end up in a similar condition to the previous one, it was decided instead to protect individual exhibit cases with UV film.

“Since the museum reopened in 2014 we have monitored UV and heat levels closely, and after careful consideration of the potential impact on the few exhibits that are not in cases – including whale skeletons and organic taxidermy exhibits – we have applied for listed building consent to install a solar protective film to the roof of the museum. This will reduce the incoming UV radiation by 99.9%, adding further protection to the museum’s exhibits, none of which have thus far suffered any major deterioration but which are at risk over the longer term. The planned work should also provide a more comfortable experience for our visitors during the summer months.

“Because of the iconic Grade I-listed status of the museum building, steps to manage the environmental conditions in the museum have been taken progressively rather than wholesale, with the impact of each step being assessed along the way.”

Is the emergence of festival chic synonymous with the descent into festival faux?

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Last weekend, while the masses were at Latitude, I was at Truck Festival – a relatively small festival just outside Oxford, run by Truck Record. Truck’s first festival was in 1998, started by a bunch of teenagers with big dreams and a collectively overactive imagination. Tickets were £3. Since then, Truck has grown steadily, this year featuring the likes of Manic Street Preachers, Kodaline, and Catfish and the Bottlemen. Yet, somehow, despite the exponential rise in popularity and status, Truck has managed to maintain its raw and home-grown feel. Being there, I couldn’t help but think that in an age of mobile music streaming and Pokemon GO, festivals can be more of an exceptional experience than ever before. Away from the virtual and the digital, standing in a field at sunset, screaming lyrics into strangers’ eyes; the pounding of the bass eroding any difference in heartbeat between you.

However, this immersive vibe, simultaneously communal and deeply personal, is a far cry from the kind of event that commercial television would have you believe lies at the heart of a great festival. Spend no more than five minutes watching your average ITV-type channel and you’ll undoubtedly the festival is being bastardized for profit. As much as I’m sure this is a product of the commercialization of festivals themselves (you only have to look at most festivals bar prices to know what I’m talking about), this new on screen trend is contributing to it as a cause.

Take Boohoo’s ‘Festival Shop’ clothing collection, maximising on the festival season to add another ‘essential’ summer item to their online fashion store. Take L’Oréal’s latest ‘#FestivalReady’ advertising campaign, offering ‘Miss Hippie Mascara’ for one to, ironically, ‘stamp her individuality on festival beauty and stand out from the crowd’. The fashion and aesthetic they create may be intending to capture the spirit of freedom in festival life, but the commercialisation they force onto the self-proclaimed ‘alternative’ scene goes further than any antonym. Even in the freedom that is so inherent in the purpose of music festivals, the commercialisation surrounding them is in danger of slowly bringing about their degradation. If the festival experience has come down to being unable to take three steps from your tent without seeing a group of girls in identical crochet crop tops or matching ‘bohemian’ dresses , is it suprising that we pay extortionately for the ticket, for the camping, parking, merch, £5 for a box of chips and £2.50 for a bottle of water, without any indignation? Furthermore, as festival culture is absorbed into everyday consumerism – festivals lose their capacity to be springboards for new talented artists, musicians or filmmakers. It’s the established names that bring the crowds who shop for the commercially established aesthetic. Sure, a festival has to be profitable to be viable. Yet, the extent to which profit is becoming the point rather than a necessity threatens to turn the festival into a withered shell of its former self.

For me, this was the brilliance of Truck. No extortionate food prices: just an endless (and delicious) choice of local and independent food stalls and vans; locally sourced ingredients; family-run businesses charging their regular prices and all food profits, festival-wide, being donated to local charities. Drinks allowed into the arenas. Big name bands performing alongside Truck veterans Danny & the Champs and local up-and-coming Oxford artists like Esther Joy Lane, The Dreaming Spires and Pixel Fix. I couldn’t help but notice that there was no one paying more attention to their flower crown than they were to the stage in front of them. Truck was unfitting to the consumerist angle with its cafe/record store roots and its cross-age appeal, untouchable by the ‘Hippie look’ advertisers – and wholesome due to this.

 

Cherwell Summer Picks: A Little Bit More Than Five Unmissable Albums

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1. Metronomy – Summer 08

Yes, Metronomy’s latest offering literally contains the word ‘summer’ in its title, but that’s not the sole reason for its position on this list. It has everything a summer album could possibly need. The snarky synthpop of Old Skool and spiky discordance of Back Together will be there to soundtrack your summer’s dancing and flirting. The slightly weird, sombre groove of Mick Slow will be the backing track to those sunsets you watch whilst pondering the world, whilst wobbly synths and haunting falsetto wash around your brain. This record even ends with a track entitled Summer Jam, which itself is perfect for a balmy summer’s evening around a fire with beers and friends and fun. If you’re looking for weirdly slick grooves to soundtrack your summer: Metronomy are your friends.

2. James Blake – The Colour In Anything

An artist who’s music has often been referred to as ‘blubstep’ might not be everyone’s first choice for a summer album. However, there are few factors which seem to justify James Blake’s place on this list. Firstly, his is the kind of music that you hear in your head as the sun is going down. When you’ve been drinking steadily since two in the afternoon and are full of barbecued meat, I Need A Forest Fire, a collaboration with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, is exactly what you want in your ears. Similarly, picture this: the last embers of a fire are slowly burning out, most of your mates have already gone home, the night is almost at end; the irresistibly sultry groove of Timeless kicks in – bliss, you can go to bed all thoughtful and introspective. Finally, Blake is playing at few festivals this summer and positive reviews are pouring in: St Hilda’s music student Ed Maclean claims that Blake’s set at Field Day ‘banged’ – so there you have it.

3. Slum Village – Fan-Tas-Tic Box Set

Taking a step away from the too-clever-for-their-own-good indie kids: some chilled, soul-infused hip hop from the group that once counted J Dilla as a member. Fan-Tas-Tic is a huge boxset of a reissue, which contains a whole load of the aforementioned jams. Shove any of its many disks on at a chilled gathering and you’ve got a pre-made good time. Also if any of your ‘really into their music’ mates are there you can spout off some stuff about how J Dilla ‘really was the genius of his generation, such a sad loss to us all – but Donuts man, what an incredible album, instrumental hip hop really is an art and Dilla was the master’. The final fragment of that pre-made chat is of course true, and is abundantly clear in this reissue.

4. Gold Panda – Good Luck and Do Your Best

Since his 2010 debut Lucky Shiner, Gold Panda has been making people happy with off-the-beaten-track samples and bassy grooves. His latest release is somewhat moodier in places. Album opener Metal Bird might fit into a similar category to the aforementioned James Blake creations – less of an obvious, technicolour summer jam; more of a chilled, warm and smokey vibe. A lot of this album probably fits into this category quite nicely, but whack on Chiba Nights and you’re guaranteed a good time, with it’s soul-infused sampling and incessantly scatty drum loops. Gold Panda’s latest release will make you smile this summer, that much you can be sure of.

5. Kamasi Washington – The Epic

Kamasi is a big dog. He is being touted by many as bringing jazz back into the mainstream; listening to The Epic does not make me question why this is. This album is big – both literally, clocking in at a whopping 2 hours, 53 minutes, and figuratively. Perhaps the reason Kamasi is able to connect with such a large audience is his collaboration with Los Angeles beatmakers and jazzers Flying Lotus and Thundercat. Having played side roles for the likes of Erykah Badu and Raphael Saadiq, Kamasi has now finally stepped into the spotlight. The mainstream appeal has certainly informed The Epic in one way or another. He has already been tearing up the summer festival summer circuit, getting people up and grooving to jazz all over the world. The grooves of Askim and Final Thought are surely able to get even the grumpiest winter-enthusiast off their seat and onto their feet. Jazz hands.

…and a half. Todd Terje & The Olsens – The Big Cover-Up

Having broken through with the synthpop groove of Inspector Norse, from 2014’s It’ Album Time, Todd Terje has been melting hearts and hips with his own wonky brand of dancefloor bangers. The Olsens, Terje’s live band have been involved with this latest release: an EP of obscure disco covers. Firecracker gets this EP off to exactly the start it deserves: the smash of a gong. Terje and his band then launch into an disco groove that betrays all sense of normality and is certain to have you at least nodding along enthusiastically. Baby Do You Wanna Bump does exactly what it says on the time – a sexy groove, paired with low echoey vocals; this track is sure to soundtrack some summer love. If you’re looking for something groove-filled, slightly weird, and entirely Norwegian: Todd’s ya man.

A day at the races

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This, despite my sustained campaign of passive resistance, is to be a summer of sport – televised sport. If, like me, when it comes to sport you prefer the metaphorical to the actual, then there has at least been a position of compromise that doesn’t put you in the compromising position of paying attention to sport. Yes, everybody’s favourite kind of race – the political party leadership race – has been underway in earnest, with virtually every political institution competing to see who can put on the raciest race of the lot.

The Tories:

The Tories, as ever lusty for power, were the first off the blocks. In the end it was hardly a photo-finish. Liam ‘inevitably-out-foxed’ Fox and Stephen ‘wait-for-the-surname’ Crabb appeared to fall, somewhat voluntarily, at the first hurdle, calling into question their understanding of a race. Michael Gove, taking aim at Boris from behind, ended up shooting himself in the foot with the starting gun, and the second round was barely underway when Andrea, perhaps overwhelmed by her strict dietary regime, became distracted by the thought of a tangible steak in the future. So, in the end, Theresa won a nine week leadership race in the record time of one morning – a result even the Russian track and field team could be proud of.

In the face of the terrifying post-referendum chaos, it might be easy to forget that we’ve actually taken back control, among other things. We’ve also taken back our sovereignty, our country, and our democracy – which raises the question of where to put it all. Now, some slow-learners have branded Theresa May’s election ‘undemocratic’, given that she was effectively selected via Andrea Leadsom’s withdrawal. But actually, if you think about it and then stop thinking about it really quickly, this is actually just a literal enforcement of the one-man-one-vote electoral principle. Unfortunately the one vote belongs to Andrea Leadsom.

So we’re stuck with Theresa May – a kind of Cruella de Vil without the charisma – who combines evil and dullness in quantities that are somewhat disconcerting. In media circles this is known as having a ‘safe pair of hands’. As news of Theresa’s victory flooded into the Westminster bubble, Tory MPs scrabbled over her like the last lifejacket on a sinking ship, ushering in a period of easily contained excitement as we waited to see who would end up at Theresa’s very safe right-hand.

In the end Theresa impressed – the cabinet choices could hardly have been more consistently boring. In fact, as day turned to night (both actually and figuratively), the BBC cliché thesaurus was rapidly exhausted. Gluten-free-George-Osborne, Phillip Hammond, was a ‘safe pair of hands’.

Phillip Hammond

Even Amber Rudd’s hands were looking secure.

Amber Rudd

Eventually, to avoid recruiting a cabinet whose obsession with safety verged on timidity, May threw in wild card one-man-band-of-bigotry Boris Johnson, whose hands are certainly not safe but are at least hilariously tied. A rather safe move if you ask me.

So that’s the result we’ll have to live with. As Theresa says, ‘Brexit means Brexit’: a slogan which, while superficially cryptic, does explain why she was so quickly fired from her job as a dictionary compiler.

Labour:

The Labour leadership competition, now an annual event, is not so much a race as one of those wrestling matches where they smash furniture over each other. With Jeremy Corbyn managing to rebel against his party from the front bench, he was eventually challenged by Angela Eagle, who announced her bid with all the confidence of a lame badger in culling season. Next turned up Owen Smith, the Labour party’s answer to a question that nobody asked; in response Jeremy announced a five-point plan to tackle inequality, repetition, discrimination, repetition, and something else. Gripping stuff.

Some say Labour is in crisis, which would explain the threats of violence, intimidation, legal disputes, and why Jeremy increasingly wears the look of a geography supply-teacher on playground duty in a high security prison. On the other hand, there is also talk that Labour is having an ‘existential’ crisis, which would explain why it’s turned into a smoking Frenchman in a black turtleneck and hasn’t spoken for three days. It’s difficult to know what to think.

America:

Speaking of finding it difficult to think, there’s also an election happening in the USA. Like the American version of everything, their races are larger and less sensitive to irony. Melting waxwork of himself, Donald Trump, held his convention last week, which, in the spirit of his whole campaign, had the quality of being carefully orchestrated by someone desperate to end Donald Trump’s political career. The Donald seemed particularly keen on shouting his entire speech, perhaps according to some slight confusion over the idea of reaching a silent majority, or maybe because the autocue was accidentally written in capitals. Overall the Republican’s unifying message seems to be that Hilary Clinton should be in prison, which, if Trump wins, may well be the safest place to be.

 

Yes, the terrifying results just keep on pouring in! So if you don’t want to see the scores, look away now… and probably keep looking away. Forever.

Ndakuna Fonso Amilou, Oxford’s Rare rising star

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Oxford postgraduate student Ndakuna Fonso Amilou has been named the best black student in the UK at the Rare Rising Stars awards for 2016.

Amilou, a postgraduate student at Green Templeton College and the Oxford Internet Institute, was given the top spot on the list of ten black students during a ceremony at the Palace of Westminster on the July 14.

Rare Rising Stars is organised by recruitment agency Rare, which specialises in professional employment for people from ethnic minority backgrounds. Set up eight years ago, it seeks to highlight the exceptional talent of some of the UK’s black students.

The students showcased by the award are selected by a panel of judges, which this year was made up by Tom Chigbo, Adrian Joseph, Trevor Phillips OBE, Jean Tomlin OBE and Labour MP David Lammy, the last of whom presented the award.

Amiou was born in rural Cameroon. After qualifying as a mental health nurse, he moved to London and worked full time for the NHS whilst studying for a degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from Brunel University.

After graduation, he founded a clinic in the Cameroonian village of Bessengue, using his own money to cover the start-up costs. The clinic is now run by one of Amiou’s brothers, also a nurse, and treats over 100 patients a day.

Amiou went on to work for Motorola and Vodaphone before winning the Oxford Pershing Square Graduate Scholarship to study a 1+1 MSc and MBA in Social Science and the Internet. He is the first Cameroonian to attend the Oxford Internet Institute.

Students from Oxford University have often featured on the Rare Rising Stars list in the past. Fourteen Oxford students have been named in the last eight years, three of whom were awarded the top place.

The coup in Turkey: an aid to authoritarianism

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It was truly a 21st century coup.

Live television and social media afforded millions of transfixed observers around the world the opportunity to witness the sordid night of the 15th and 16th July unfold in real time from the sanguine pavements of Istanbul and Ankara. Developments in information and communication technology have provided a uniquely comprehensive image of the crisis for the global commentariat and armchair political enthusiasts such as myself to dissect.

Unfortunately for the optimists, the vast body of information that has emerged from the coup exposes a harsh reality: the increasingly authoritarian President Erdogan will only draw strength from this abortive challenge to his rule. Freshly imbued with a triumphalist sense of vindication, Erdogan now possesses a pretext to assert his authority in a vengeful wave of oppression that has already begun to take form.

Turkey has had a long and tumultuous history of military intervention in civilian politics. From the seventeenth century, Ottoman Sultans were effectively subjects to the demands and diktats of the elite Janissary infantry. These guards were replaced in the early nineteenth century by a secular, westernised military outfit which was able to seize power in the Turkish War of Independence (1919-1923) under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. This hero is still lionised by nationalists in the country today.

No less than four coups erupted in Turkey between 1960 and 1997, the military striving to manage the direction of government policy. However, the influence of the armed forces has been largely subdued since Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) took power in 2002. Notwithstanding the ongoing Ergenekon trials (which have seen the arrest of 275 suspected secularist plotters from within the military and beyond), Turkish politics has been marked by a generally cordial relationship between the government and the armed force in recent years – a relationship that has now been left battered and defiled upon Turkey’s bloodstained streets.

This is a crisis of Erdogan’s own making. He commands fierce support from around half the electorate, but has left the other half feeling disaffected and marginalised by his meteoric ambitions and authoritarian tendencies. Under Erdogan’s tenure, judicial prosecutions have become increasingly arbitrary with the arrest of journalists, academics and other public figures. In one instance, a 16-year-old boy was even taken into custody for insulting the President.

Erdogan was denied an executive presidency when his party failed to gain a parliamentary majority in the 2015 general election but this coup could provide him with another opportunity to centralise authority. Over 6,000 arrests have been made at the time of writing, including over 2,700 judges.

Erdogan has even seemed to celebrate the coup as a ‘gift from God,’ giving him ‘a reason to cleanse our army.’ Tellingly, the Gulen Movement – a liberal, transnational Islamist movement led by Erdogan’s political ally-turned-mortal enemy Fethullah Gulen – has been accused as the unlikely perpetrators. Across social media under the hashtag #TheatrenotCoup, there have been claims Erdogan’s government may have fabricated or permitted the attempted coup, at the least showing a wide perception of its potential benefits.

Whatever the truth may be – although the evidence for a Turkish government orchestrated conspiracy is lacking – the military plotters have only succeeded in reinforcing Erdogan’s strength. No doubt the President will choose to interpret the spontaneous protests against the would-be-junta as an expression of personal support for his leadership.

It does not not matter that many of those who challenged the prospect of military rule were avowed critics of the AKP administration. Erdogan has now been gifted with the responsibility of being the symbolic defender of Turkish democracy.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, the undermining of his presidency has left him in a more secure position than ever from which to arrogate to himself more and more far reaching powers. As the Turkish journalist Ece Temelkuran wrote in the Guardian, ‘yet again Turkey’s children have awoken to darkness at dawn’. Such is the unassailable reality of this coup. As always, it will be the ordinary people who will suffer.

Tuition fees: Here we go again

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Jessica Evans depicts her annoyance at the prospect of further rising tuition fees for university students. Fees for many universities are likely to rise to £9,250, the first increase since fees were almost trebled to £9,000 in 2012.

Review: OUDS Tour – A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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The OUDS international tour describes itself as the “pinnacle of any student’s involvement with drama” – not without cause, as this tour which is associated with Thelma Holt kickstarted the careers of the likes of Rosamund Pike and Felicity Jones – both names writ large in the programme for this show.

This year’s production, manned to the brim by this generation’s would-be Pikes and Jones, is of A Midsummer Night’s Dream – directed by Will Felton. It was fitting on one of the warmest July evenings I can remember, to be ushered into the secluded idyll of Brasenose quad, to be drawn into the magic and the wonder of the Bard’s most outlandish romp through romance and dreams. The incessant bells of University Church, a police helicopter, and at one notable point, a pigeon, may have punctuated the evening but failed to spoil the magic of this production.

As is the form with any student Shakespeare production, this Dream was transposed from the lofty acropolis and heady groves of Classical Athens to the sooty lows of “1920s industrial Bradford”. I can only presume that director, costume designer, and production hairdresser all share in the same fervent love for the sharp lines and thick woollen suits of the BBC’s Peaky Blinders.

It is a shame that this exciting and fresh angle on the production did not extend particularly far beyond costume or hair – with the Mechanicals (particularly Tommy Siman’s Bottom and James Mooney’s Quince) and Demetrius (Calam Lynch) being the only actors capable of summoning up a half decent Brummy accent. So yet again we have a production playing lip service to an interesting theme or reimagining, but failing to meaningfully incorporate these ideas into the action, other than in purely aesthetic terms.

As excited as I was for a faithful reconstruction of the woes of Thomas Shelby in iambic pentameter, I can’t really fault this production for failing to double down on conceptual underpinnings – it made this a solid but relatively straightforward production of a MSND, rather than one that overreaches itself.

Four entangled lovers comprise the main body of the action – Hermia (Clemi Collett), Helena (Ellie Lowenthal), Lysander (Cassian Bilton) and Demetrius (Calam Lynch). It’s a little bit convoluted, but Demetrius betrothed to Hermia, Lysander and Helena are deeply in love, whilst Helena’s adoration for Demetrius is left unrequited. The powers that be in Athens have decided that Demetrius and Hermia must marry – leading Lysander and Hermia to elope from the city together, hotly pursued by a thwarted Demetrius and lovelorn Helena.

The lovers excelled when grating up against one another – the conflicts and losses occasionally showing genuine flares of frisson-inducing passion.

I didn’t quite follow all of the characterisation – Lynch’s brusque Brummy Demetrius felt very earnest, in stark and confusing juxtaposition with Bilton’s foppish and farcical Lysander; Lowenthal showed an impressive range, but a lack of continuity made Helena’s characterisation feel slightly disjointed over the course of the play, whilst Collett’s Hermia reached an intensity during her perceived betrayal which it struggled to reach elsewhere. These Athenian nobles collide with the magical world of the fairies – where a lover’s tiff between Oberon and Titania leads to a long and similarly convoluted series of hijinx.

The absolute stand out performer in this section was Ali Porteous as Puck – an unparalleled level of manic energy brought a sorely needed dynamism to several scenes. The Mechanicals (Bottom’s acting troupe) played out Pyramus and Thisbee at its most melodramatic, hectic and side-splittingly funny. The attention to detail in the characterisation of the players must be lauded – a toe-curlingly awkward Flute (Isaac Calvin) and a startlingly balletic Snout (Nils Behling).

Overall, when tight direction combined with strong characterisation, the drama hit brilliant and entertaining peaks; however, occasional drops in pace and rhythm of speech left some scenes feeling slack and overlong.

An idea that has increasingly gained traction in Oxford theatre of late is the concept of ‘physical theatre’ – try playing bingo with this phrase in the programmes, previews and marketing materials of various plays come Michaelmas. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that this production similarly incorporated some tried and tested techniques to express thematic overtures through the physicality of the actors. The Dream opened with an oddly mechanical dance – wherein the doting, scheming, valiant lovers of Athens contested one another on the field of love – the course of which, we are told, never did run smooth.

The jerkiness of the choreography here suggested some sense of predetermination – later compounded by the intervention of Puck, who repositions the dancers into a variety of compromising positions. This opening sequence plays powerfully upon the themes of free choice in love, and intervention (both social and magical), which stands between our heroes and happiness.

However, as with physicality elsewhere in the play, some really phenomenal ideas were undermined by a sloppiness that can only be a consequence of under-rehearsal – hopefully something that will improve over the course of the run.

The music was an outstanding aspect of this production – lunging haphazardly from “electroswing, to R&B, to Bosnian ska” in perfect alignment with the action of the play (although again, failing to live up to the promise of 1920s Bradford). The band primarily formed of Bottom’s acting troupe brought moments of high energy that picked up the pace amongst occasional lulls in a play that comfortably fills out its three hour running time.

When this production shone, it really shone – a subtlety of language and expression which is rare in student drama.

Oxford academics win award for Women in Science

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Two Oxford academics have won “Women in Science” Fellowships, awarded to some of the most promising and talented female scientists from around the world.

From among 400 applicants, mathematician Dr Maria Bruna and paleobiologist Dr Sam Giles were two of the five selected for the prestigious fellowships, sponsored by L’Oreal and UNESCO, worth £15,000 for any purpose related to their research.

Dr Bruna’s won the award for her work studying group behaviour. She creates models that predict how particles interact, which can then be scaled to understand how tumours form, how animal flocks interact or how people act collectively.

On the other hand, Dr Giles studies evolutionary history using 3D renderings of brains and the bones that protect them. This allows her to research evolution through novel and modern techniques, helping illuminate the history of vertebrates dating back millions of years with limited fossil remnants.

The timing of the award could not have been better for Dr Bruna. “It comes at an ideal time for me, as I’m on maternity leave for the birth of my first son, and I will use the Fellowship to kickstart my research on my return from that”, she said.

Like her fellow award winner, Dr Giles sees the fellowship as a way of pushing forward with her research, but now with a bit of added flexibility that may allow her to pay for years of childcare or travel to international conferences to present her findings and learn more from colleagues across the world.

The ways in which they intend to use the award points toward struggles which often afflict women in science: balancing career and family. Both of them have expressed hope that fellowships like this will help correct gender imbalances at the university and across the sciences in general.

“Awards like this one are very important to raise awareness of women in science and to help redress the gender imbalance in most sciences”, Dr Bruna said. “While we have a lot more women in the University now than 50 years ago, I feel that in some sense the culture in academia (with long hours, more administration, scarcity of jobs) is becoming harsher, especially for women and people with young families.”