Tuesday 7th April 2026
Blog Page 1041

Shots and Statistics

Jack Harrison
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Shots and Statistics

After Chelsea dispatched Manchester United 4-0, Graeme Souness announced the death of stats in football. Despite losing so comprehensively, Manchester United had 56% of possession and crucially outshot their opponents 16-14. Souness couldn’t understand how on earth stats could be a useful metric to view a game which had such disparity between the score line and the simple match facts.

Souness was correct in one sense; comparing shots is an awful lense through which to view a game of football. This doesn’t, however, mean that statistics should be banished from the game: the wider football community needs to educate itself with better use of statistics. Instead of dogmatically listing possession, shots and shots on target, more sophisticated indicators of momentum and positioning offer us a way to understand nuances of the game and analyse critical moments in detail.

One method on the rise is expected goals metric. Instead of simply comparing shots, the quality of the chance is reflected. Weightings are given to each chance dependent upon a number of factors; distance from goal, type of assist, number of defenders.

If my memory of the game serves me correctly, a large number of United’s efforts were speculative attempts from Paul Pogba which had very little chance of producing a goal, and thus would have been given little weighting. Using historical data, we are able to roughly estimate the probability of any chance being converted, with cumulative chances being added throughout a game to leave us with an expected score line.

The map, courtesy of Michael Caley, reflects Chelsea dominance in the game (the larger the square, the larger the associated chance). Despite being outshot, the general quality of the chances they had were far greater than those of Manchester United’s, helping to explain Souness’ puzzlement.

The methodology is not perfect and is still being developed, but in terms of providing an idea of overall performance in a game, is far more useful than the stats we are currently provided with. Given the highly visual nature of “XG maps” it would come as a surprise if at some point down the line expected goals doesn’t become a regular feature of television coverage.

Expected goal data can also be viewed over the course of a season, once again providing us with a barometer of general performance as we look to potential unearth any lies of the league table. Compiling Michael Caley’s XG data from the first 9 game weeks we are left with the revised Premier League table below:

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There is a great deal that can be interpreted from our XG table. The season is still young and great unpredictability lies ahead, but with tools such as XG we can begin to better understand what is likely to pan out in the remaining 29 games. Next week, I’ll look to explore this, as the Premier League gets a quarter term report.

Graeme Souness was wrong—stats and football marry beautifully. You just need to use the right stats.

Statement Pieces: Beth Kidd’s Mouse Bracelet

Beth Kidd
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Statement Pieces: Beth Kidd’s Mouse Bracelet

My bracelet dates back to around the time my mother spontaneously opened a wool shop. It had been a turbulent time for Mum and I. My dad had moved out and my sister had gone to live with her now-husband. The wool shop was a short-lived enterprise, but I suspect she just wanted a distraction. The two of us were left in our big house alone, rattling around. The house had never been my mum’s choice. She’s an artist – she loves old and unique buildings, and so, now empty of the formerly fond memories of building a family there, she hated our home.

The shop was in a more rural part of Lancashire, half an hour from town. Mum didn’t mind the commute, as she enjoyed looking with envy at the cute cottages past which she drove. There was one house in particular that she labelled her dream-house. It was pretty weird to be honest. Imagine you’re by one of the canals in Amsterdam – lined with those tall, narrow houses with dramatic gables; now imagine they have knocked down all the houses but one, and shoved a cottage on either side. Now plonk that peculiar threesome onto a road side in semi-rural England. It would look pretty weird, wouldn’t it?

The house was for sale, but we weren’t really in a position to buy. It was then that the wool-shop came into its own – not through any formidable moneymaking, but because it had become a new gossip-central for the middle-aged women of the village.  Soon we came to know the owner of the house, who actually owned a jewellery-making studio nearby. Flattered by Mum’s adoration of her house, she agreed to rent it to us.

The cellar of the house was accessible by a badly sealed hatch in the living room, from which mice would poke out their noses and creep out. Being totally enamoured by the house, Mum insisted that the mice were respected residents. It remained this way until the landlady warned of infestation, and several humane and Nutella-filled traps were soon strategically positioned.

Many of the most sad and difficult days of my adolescence are dominated by the happy memory of morning mouse-runs, taking any suspiciously heavy and wriggly traps to a field about a mile away. No matter how slowly I opened the little door, the mice would run out so fast that I could hardly see them. Mum doesn’t live there anymore, and though she is much happier now, the Mouse House is a fond reminder of how we made the best of things on our own. She had this bracelet made by our old landlady as a gift to take with me to university. It always makes me smile.

Review: Copenhagen

Mark Barclay
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Review: Copenhagen

The encounter between Nihls Bohr and Werner Heisenberg was a meeting of world historic tragedy and humanity. Yet creating a story from a situation so inherently mythic, so pregnant in pathos, is what makes telling this story so ironically difficult for both play and production alike.

In the 1920s Heisenberg and Bohr were at the forefront of a scientific belle époque in Germany and Denmark. Their bromantic collaboration gave birth to nuclear and quantum physics, laying the foundations for the development of the atom bomb. ‘Copenhagen’ takes us into middle of the Second World War, when one chilly evening, the German Heisenberg made a fateful visit to Bohr in occupied Copenhagen. Heisenberg had been charged with developing the Nazi atomic program and seemingly had come to tell Bohr.

Writer Michael Frayn wants to imagine what happened in the immortalised ten minutes after Heisenberg proposed to Bohr that they go out for a walk. What is at stake concerned both men, both personally and patriotically. After an exposition of the meeting, the play turns into a free form investigation into how the personal histories of both men might have determined their conversation. Its flirts with suggestions that one man was lying to the other (was Heisenberg trying to find out if Bohr was helping the allies?), or that Heisenberg could never have built the bomb. But the axis of the play turns in the question of why on fact Heisenberg never did build a bomb.

It is a fascinating question, convolutedly asked. As I understand it, the play explains this ambiguity as corresponding to the mysteries of the characters’ theories. The play uses the idea of a blind spot, the notion (Frayn appropriates the uncertainty principle and wave particle duality) that having a perspective on the universe within the universe, necessitates the incompletion of the view. The recurrence of “silence” and the “unspeakable” in the play signifies the blind spot where the viewer begins and the universe ends. It is the place where the traumas of both men reside and it was harrowingly conveyed by the production. The play’s conclusion is that this incompletion allowed the contingency for Heisenberg to world historically “bluff himself”.

As interesting as this is, the trouble is that the play cannot bluff itself; for Frayn is wont to leave stones unturned. No sooner is it delicately suggested that Bohr and Heisenberg have a father-son issue, we get half an hour of papal metaphors (and as we’re in Denmark, references to Elsinor for good measure). In the same vein, much dialogue serves as historical/ scientific exposition. It sometimes feels not like a story but a lecture on a really good story. It was fascinating and I learnt a lot but it left curiously little enigma. It was as if story was so inherently mysterious and uncertain that Frayn could not help but devour its subtext; forgetting in the process to give us a universe with its own blind spots.

Director Archie Thompson tackles the knots of self-reference with skill. The setting in one room, means the play makes big demands in creative staging. The space is covered in a grid/matrix of white tape except for a sitting room in the back third of the stage. The sitting room is like a little island exempt from the maths of it all. It makes the characters feel puny in the midst of the grandeur of their subject, an effect counterbalanced with to more intense moments amplified by the bareness of the space up close to the audience. The oscillation brought out well the personal/intellectual dichotomy.

Likewise there were huge demands on George Varley (Bohr), Rupert Stonehill (Heisenberg) and Miranda Collins (Margareth Bohr) who delivered huge swaths of intense dialogue with no break. The moments that allowed them to explore the more human dimension of their situation were particular highlights. With the global proportions of the issues at stake, they embodied a moving sense of vulnerability that brought home what extraordinary individuals their characters must have been. It is a real credit to their performances how they embodied with compelling realism the fallibility and responsibility for such wonders/horrors.

 

 

 

Clothes with a conscience

Just Love
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Clothes with a conscience

When faced with the scale of injustice and corruption in the fashion industry, why try? Why would a group of students sit in the middle of Queen Street on a standard Saturday morning, attempting to sew new clothes from second hand fabrics? Because each time we make a purchase, we can choose either to support slavery, or to take a stand and say that human lives matter more than cheap clothes.  Last Saturday, October 22nd, Just Love (a Christian student justice organisation) hosted a Sew-In, where students met for a few hours and made all sorts of garments – tops, slippers, a bag, a dress, shorts. We modelled these in a street photography style to comment on the way in which the fashion industry glamorises garments which may be beautiful, but may still have a very ugly story behind their creation.

In our globalised society, we rarely think about the people that make our clothes and other textiles. The supply chain is concealed and we only see the finished product.

Arjun, a child weaver in India, explains about the conditions in which he was enslaved, forced to work for no money: “Most days we were only given one break for eating and one break for toilet. If we tried to sleep, they would beat us. Sometimes they gave us pills so we can work all night. I felt so tired I cut myself often. If the blood from my fingers came on the carpet, they would take green chili and rub it on my wound for punishment.”

There are more than 45 million people in slavery in the world today, and many more working in conditions that are too terrible for us to imagine. Every time we buy something carelessly, we essentially say that their lives do not matter to us. Living ethically is important for many reasons, including person ones, but our choices also have the collective power to catalyse structural, long-term change. A senior executive from a big high street clothing company told the Guardian that shoppers ‘don’t care’ about conditions, and research that both reflects and dictates the current market shows most ‘prefer inexpensive items over respect for human rights’. For companies to change the way in which they work, we need to show that, as shoppers, we do care about human rights. Over the last few years significant steps have been taken, both by campaigners and companies, to expose exploitation and to improve working conditions throughout the supply chain, but there is still so much to be done. We need to join together, raising awareness, empowering and informing people and ultimately transforming the horrendous injustice that many of us unthinkingly propagate.

Our sew-in was in no way an attempt to imitate the horrific conditions that workers face. It would be insensitive short-sighted and patronising to draw comparisons. Rather, by sewing clothes in a public space, we wanted to remind shoppers of the hidden people behind the clothes that hang on rails.

We want to stand together in peaceful but uncompromising protest to say that we do see through the poor ethics of much of the fashion industry and, furthermore, the glamorisation of these clothes through publicity and the media, which come at an unacceptable cost to so many individual lives and communities. We want to bring people together in this stand against injustice and hold each other accountable for the many times that we fail and put our convenience above the lives of others. We want to change our habits, motives and expectations in the way that we live and shop, and challenge you to join us as we pursue equality, dignity and true beauty for our global neighbour.

Folk, it is a-changin’

Daniel Villar
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Folk, it is a-changin’

When the Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature to Bob Dylan, they justified Dylan’s eligibility due to his “creating new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”. But what exactly is the great American song tradition? In Dylan’s case, its rather clear—folk music. But that only raises another question—what is folk music?

At first, it seems like the answer to that question is self explanatory—folk is what common folk sing and pass on from generation to generation, without any composer. Yet obviously that isn’t what Dylan or other great folk singers do—they may each do a cover of ‘Bread and Roses’ or ‘We Shall Not be Moved’, but Dylan’s real contribution is due to work he did himself, such as ‘Tambourine Man’ or ‘Like a Rolling Stone’. Instead, the folk Dylan is a part of is a product of the great mid twentieth century revival of folk music in the United States.

In the beginning of the 20th century it looked as if folk music would die away in the United States. Jazz and Ragtime music were crowding out the market for traditional American folk music, and most musicians seemed to be convinced that folk music would go by the wayside by the end of the century.

That Americans didn’t appreciate their own culture worried one particular Polish Jewish immigrant, Moses Asch. Asch was the son of the great writer Sholem Asch, and had come to America in 1915. In the 1930s, after recording a plea for German Jewry by Dr. Einstein, Asch had a conversation with Einstein. The great physicist told him that it was up to Asch, a Polish Jew, to let Americans appreciate their own musical culture.

Asch took this to heart, and began a career that would end up reviving folk music not just in America, but would end up being instrumental in saving folk music globally. Working with musicologists and anthropologists, Asch sought out traditional folk singers and recorded them. It was Asch who brought into the American musical mainstream musicians such as the Oklahoman Woody Guthrie and the Louisianan Lead Belly.

But Asch didn’t just record folk singers that already existed; he also influenced a new generation of folk singers. The most important of these in Bob Dylan’s tale is the son of a Harvard educated musicologist Charles Seeger, Pete Seeger.

Pete Seeger came from a traditional WASP family which could trace its family back to the revolution, and which had for generations gone to Harvard. But influenced by his father’s work and by Moses Asch, Pete Seeger entered the world of traditional folk singers. With the Almanac Singers, he recorded songs from the unionization struggles of the turn of the century, and became a singer of protest. A kindly man, Pete Seeger became the grand don of generations of folk singers, including the likes of Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, and Bob Dylan.

Dylan himself was born Robert Zimmerman, in Duluth Minnesota. In 1960 he moved to the center of the American folk scene—New York City. There he met the giants—there was a young Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, an aging Woody Guthrie, a ravishing Joan Baez, and of course, Pete Seeger. Within the decade Dylan would have expanded his range from just folk, but the early influence of these folk singers would stick with Dylan for the rest of his musical career, including his current work in his Never Ending Tour.

Dylan wasn’t just the most versatile folk singer of his generation—he is likely one of the most versatile folk singers ever. His generation of folk singers, the tail end of the great folk revival, have a good claim of being the greatest generation folk has ever known. He may have not excelled in any one area of folk—Phil Ochs, Utah Phillips, and Joan Baez were better at protest folk music, and John Denver was better at conveying genuine country songs (Take Me Home, Country Roads), and as he was equal to Willie Nelson. But Dylan was a preeminent figure in all of these genres of folk, ubiquitous in all areas of folk.

And he was influential. Before Dylan, for all the popularity of folk, it was for the most part still relegated to a slightly nostalgic section of the American public. Dylan was the man who broadened the appeal of folk with songs such as ‘Tambourine Man’, and who managed to make it mainstream. Without Dylan, there would have been no Kris Kristofferson, no John Prine or any of the multitude of folk genres that have spawned since Pete Seeger introduced Bob Dylan to the Newport Folk Festival in 1964.

Dylan created new expressions in the American song tradition—that is undeniable. There is a bridge from Moses Asch collecting traditional music from old men in Kentucky Valleys, and the modern powerful institution of folk music that makes millions of year. And Bob Dylan is that bridge. He was the future of the American folk tradition, but also a link back to its past.

Review: Michael Kiwanuka at the O2 Academy

Ellen Peirson-Hagger
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Review: Michael Kiwanuka at the O2 Academy

For a musician signed to Communion, a label with definite folky origins, Michael Kiwanuka’s opening at Oxford’s O2 Academy is undeniably spacey. ‘Cold Little Heart’ begins with just the keys player onstage. The chords he plays are straightforward, but a close ear to delay and reverberations ensures these sounds bounce around the room in an oddly psychedelic manner.

When Kiwanuka leads the rest of the sixpiece band on, they seamlessly join in on this meandering instrumental, the opening to the eight minute–long track. The track soon steadies into a bluesy groove. It’s a startling opener on record, too, particularly since it follows an album made of tracks of just three or four minutes. 2012’s Home Again was a well-received debut of catchy, well thought-out melodies which established Kiwanuka as ‘one to watch’ on the North London scene. July’s Love and Hate reached number one, a serious sign of public recognition for the Muswell Hill-born artist who worked as a session guitarist before taking centre stage. The “critics” were impressed too—Love and Hate was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize this year, no small feat when set next to musicians including David Bowie, Radiohead and 2016’s winner, Skepta.

Live, the reworkings of album tracks, stretched-out and heavy on instrumentals, show Kiwanuka as a talented guitarist. On record his skilful playing is too often lost underneath swaying backing vocalists and thundering drums. In front of a live audience, stretching out across the strings of his guitar with a slide, Kiwanuka does not play as if at ease. He isn’t one to make his skirmishes up and down the guitar’s neck look heartless. Instead, he pulls faces, and wears a furrowed brow all evening. It’s rare to see a performer putting so much soul into every single note.

It is in his voice that his soulfulness is most apparent. While he may play with bluegrass guitar techniques, rock ‘n’ roll style riffs, and the emotional sentimentality of folk, the notes Kiwanuka strains out of his throat are of a raspy charm. Like the gruffness of the voice of label buddy Nathaniel Rateliff, the tone of these notes comes from somewhere inside Kiwanuka you can only imagine him finding whilst practising alone in a dark room.

His lyrics come from the same place. In ‘Rule the World’, he sings “I don’t understand the game/ Or who I’m meant to be/ It’s driving me insane/ The way you’re playing me”. On paper these sound twee, but as his voice lilts above heavy keys and guitar effects Jeff Buckley would be proud of, the texture suddenly thins, leaving these heart wrenching lyrics to waver, poignantly, alone in the air.

Imperatively his voice can be gentle, too. ‘The Final Frame’ is a smooth number in triple time which sees Kiwanuka rein in the huskiness of his voice, leaving a rare delicacy. ‘Tell Me a Tale’ was once Kiwanuka’s signature track, played steadily with the warmth with which it first appeared on the Tell Me a Tale EP in 2011. Now, with the accomplishment of his richer second album, he plays it as a freewheeling jazz number. The drummer plays with brushes and a second percussionist rustles around his kit and the side of the stage.

As a frontman, Kiwanuka is appreciative of his audience, but says little more than “thank you” between each song. Until, that is, he announces the last song of the night, to an array of sounds of disappointment from the crowd. “There’s a club night in here afterwards—they want us out”, Kiwanuka explains, one of the few things he can get out in breaths between his brooding song lyrics, “it’s Calvin Harris after us.”

Review: A Woman Killed with Kindness

Priya Khaira-Hanks
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Review: A Woman Killed with Kindness

Theatron Novum has transformed Thomas Heywood’s 17th century domestic drama A Woman Killed With Kindness into an intense, emotional character study. This works especially well in the Burton-Taylor Studio, where the audience almost sits amongst the actors in the intimate space, and props and set are kept to a minimum. The black box theatre facilitates total immersion, allowing stellar performances to take centre stage.

Director Eleanor Sax chooses to omit the sub-plot, and in doing so loses out on a thrilling story line involving a bet gone wrong, incarceration and a brother who pimps out his sister. This original narrative provides a valuable social exposition of the misogyny of Heywood’s society. By bypassing it, Sax’s production is less politically impactful and misses out some of the potential of the original script. However, what is lost in socio-political message is gained in emotional impact. By focusing on the hapless Frankford this production becomes an unflinching examination of lives falling apart.

The first half of the play captures Heywood’s rotten, bourgeois world of falsity and pretences. Marisa Crane’s set design effectively consolidates the themes, as it is revealed how Anne and Frankford’s love is as unsubstantial as the red satin wall hangings that are eventually stripped away. This rich colour evokes the “scarlet sins” that Frankford will go on to lament, and Anne’s matching gown marks her out as the nexus of this evil. As the play goes on, Anne swaps her elaborate dress for plain white nightwear and the props used to portray a middle class manor house are taken away. By removing the accruements of the period as the play becomes more emotionally affecting, director Eleanor Sax has found a perfect way to maintain a sense of the Elizabethan setting, whilst making sure that it does not become a distraction. The set design choices change our attitude in the second half of the play, ensuring that we focus less on the differences between this society and ours, and instead recognise and identify with timeless human pain.

Joe Stephenson plays Frankford as painfully earnest and innocent, utterly undeserving of his wife’s betrayal. Yet no one in this production is truly villainized—even Wendoll is sympathetically portrayed by Tobias Sims. His soliloquy, where he decides whether or not to pursue Anne, is one of the most powerful moments in the play; Sims captures a man wrought by lust, physically shaking with the force of his internal struggle, as he tries and fails to overcome his desire. His performance is nuanced enough to reveal how Anne is the victim; he becomes predatory, towering over her, so that when she finally acquiesces and kisses him, it seems she is submitting to external force rather than surrendering to her own lust. Victoria Gawlik’s performance is unexciting up until the point where her husband finds out about her betrayal. After this Gawlik comes into her own. She portrays Anne as if she is descending into mental illness, wringing her hands and pulling at her clothing to reveal how she literally cannot contain her pain. This effectively draws attention to the interpretation that sees Anne’s downfall as one of the first recorded cases of anorexia.

Special mention should also go to Christopher Page and Han Whitmore, who play the servants Nick and Jenkin with wit and aplomb, providing essential light relief. The dark subject matter calls for an outside perspective, which is skilfully provided by Page’s Nick. By having him perform the prologue, he is from the beginning associated with its wry, tongue-in-cheek commentary on the verisimilitude of the theatrical space. This perhaps contributes to the fact he comes across as the most level-headed character in the play, despairing at his naive master and poking fun at the obsequious Jenkin. Focalising events through his eyes is a masterstroke, and it ensures that the play remains grounded, despite taking its characters to the emotional brink.

Preview: The Nether

Matt Roberts
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Preview: The Nether

An Oxford Playhouse show is pretty much as serious as it gets in university drama. The size of the budgets, the complexity of the staging, the sheer volume of tickets to be shifted, competes admirably with the scale of a fair proportion of real life professional theatre. I was thus expecting, when I went into the rehearsal room on Monday, to find a stressed and amped up cast and crew, fairly disinterested in the inane questions of a low quality student journalist. What I found instead was one of the most passionate, enthusiastic, welcoming, and quite frankly talented groups of actors that I have ever had the pleasure of watching in rehearsal. It is worth noting that the play covers some concerning themes of a sexual nature, which I will be explicitly discussing in this preview.

The Nether, a 2013 Jennifer Haley Sci-Fi thriller, opens at the Playhouse in 4th week, and its fundamental premise is initially a little bit overwhelming.

It is set in a near future where the development of virtual reality has proceeded at such a speed that it becomes difficult to distinguish between the being in the ‘Nether’ (basically the internet) and being ‘in world’ (real life). Our narrative centres on the character of Sims, and his online persona of Papa (both portrayed by Rory Grant).

Sims has made the most realistic and sophisticated Nether server ever made, called the Hideaway, a gloriously rendered, lush slice of Victoriana which tastes, feels, looks and smells just like the real world. The small caveat to this sublimity is that it is a server primarily dedicated to simulated sexual relations with minors; when I say ‘simulated’, what I mean is in the virtual reality, with someone who has the online persona of a child, but is in fact a consenting adult in the real world. It is from the moral quandaries that underwrite this concept that the drama and violence of the play stem. ‘In world’, Sims and the users of the server are being investigated for their online actions, and we see a string of interrogation scenes where detectives and characters fight back and forth over whether what they choose to simulate online is or isn’t illegal, and more pressingly, whether it is moral.

Speaking to director Livi Dunlop about this production really made me realise how pertinent some of these questions are. As they reflected, we are the first generation to not really remember a time before the internet—virtual reality has arrived, and is in its infancy, but the leap from dial up connections and chat rooms to Oculus rift and an increasingly all encompassing social media, seems so vast a growth in our lifetime, that ‘The Nether’ seems frighteningly imminent. Also, many of people of our generation are utilising online space in different ways—forming identities, livelihoods and lives online, the line between ‘in world’ and ‘online’ is more blurred now than it has ever been before.

As I’m sure you can imagine, the rehearsal process for the Nether has been exhaustive— distinguishing between different characters, their online personas and their flesh and bone identities requiring extensive role swapping, and child’s play—notably a rehearsal spent by Madeleine Walker (the 11 year old Nether character ‘Iris’) building a pillow fort. In one particularly painful scene, the detective Morris (Shannon Hayes) painstakingly drags an unrepentant Doyle (Jonny Wiles), through his actions in the Nether, watching an increasingly frantic Wiles crash like waves against the steely calm of Hayes is quite frankly a sight to behold.

It’s pretty rare that I actually get genuinely excited about set design on a student production, however the plans to represent this physically impossible online space as a “Abstracted, Morris patterned, disintegrating Victorian house”, drawing on MC Escher and playing around with perspective quite frankly sounds incredible. I strongly recommend you head down to the Playhouse in 4th week, as it sounds like its going to be quite a show.

Review: Guys and Dolls

Katie Sayer
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Review: Guys and Dolls

An eager fresher preparing for my first ever Cherwell review, I entered the Keble O’Reilly theatre not entirely sure what to expect. All I knew about the production was what I had heard from chorus member Dan Zurbrurgg—that the casting was only confirmed three weeks ago, that rehearsals had been intense, and that there are a lot of surprises. To an extent, Dan was right. ‘Surprised’ is certainly a word I would use to describe my reaction, but perhaps ‘mind blown’ would be more accurate.

The sheer detail in every aspect of production is what first impressed upon me. From the carefully designed set (a replica of the New York skyline made out of cards), which changes from a gambling den to a missionary Church centre within seconds, to the meticulously choreographed chorus scenes, the production flows seamlessly. The careful direction makes full use of the space provided by the O’Reilly Theatre, with cast members at times sitting among the audience on tables at the front, affecting a sense of intimacy that perfectly suits the size of the venue. Indeed, this sense of immaculacy extends to all aspects of the play, from the diverse casting—led by the immensely impressive Laurence Belcher and Emilie Finch—to the musical team, who execute delicate romantic pieces with the same ease as classic big-band show stoppers. The ensemble cast are also superb, and the overall impression is both professional and engaging—it is hard to believe the production is run by students as the standard is so incredibly high.

Perhaps most notable are some of the creative decisions taken that really give the production a certain joie-de-vivre. The decision to relocate the play to prohibition America (rather than the typical 1950s post-war setting) contributes to the unique sense we get that what we are seeing is something new, rather than a well-loved classic, and this sense is further enhanced by the personification of ‘luck’ as (incredibly talented) dancer Lena Schienwild,a creative decision that gives the show a stylised and artsy feel. Overall Issy Fidderman’s version of Guys and Dolls is exceptional in the way that it revives an old classic in refreshing and new manner, and after listening to the “oohs” and “wows” of the people sat around me, it seems clear that this opinion is universally shared by the audience.

Guys and Dolls really has something for everyone, whether you’re looking for an endearing love story, an outstanding musical score or just an evening of entertainment. The enthusiasm of the cast members is infectious and it is impossible not to leave the auditorium with a smile on your face. Overall, the cast, crew and musical team have all done a phenomenal job on Guys and Dolls, but tickets are selling out fast, with the final performance on Saturday, so my advice would be to act fast so as not to miss this gem of a musical.

Restaurant review: Moya, a taste of Slovakia

Oliver Bealby-Wright
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Restaurant review: Moya, a taste of Slovakia

Moya: 97 St Clements Street, Oxford OX4 1AR (01865 200 111). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £40-£70

We arrived by chance—a cold wind and inadequate layering drove us into the invitingly lit Moya late in the evening, without a reservation. When the waitress informed us that the cuisine was Slovakian, we weren’t sure whether to be excited or anxious. Hearty, cabbagey and pig-centric was my pre-formed prejudice about Eastern European cuisine. But at Moya such stodgefests are only part of the story.

The décor, for one, is hardly traditional:whitewashed and with arty photographs of Oxford serried in rows along the walls, the space feels modern and sophisticated. Moya is rustic Slovakia with a metropolitan edge, showcased in the impressively large cocktail menu. Get there before the end of happy hour (8pm) and you can begin your meal with a Maker’s Mark Old Fashioned for £4.55. The food surpasses expectations: heavy flavours are treated with a light touch, the clever use of fruit and pickles giving a tangy edge to what would otherwise be unpalatably rich meat dishes. Our meal had the comforting quality of a Sunday roast, starchy and soporific, but with undercurrents of savoury sharpness.

After the obligatory cocktail to start, try the “devil’s toast”—sour bread toast topped with smoked sausage, vegetables and a shockingly delicious patty of grilled goat cheese. Follow up with a fiery Hungarian goulash, or the innocuous-sounding “pork-shank”, so enormous that it looks like a joint of meat from a cartoon. If you’re still going by desert and crave more things “stodgy but delicious”, have the apricot dumpling with poppyseed and butter sauce; if not, the liqueur coffee is excellent. Moya is not the flashiest international restaurant in Oxford. The wipe-down chairs give the otherwise modern décor a slightly dated air, and, however craftily prepared, Slovakian home-cooking is never going to be as hipster as sushi or tapas. Yet seated at Moya’s tabes are locals who come back again and again because they know they’ll leave fuller and happier.

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