What makes something beautiful? There’s probably no answer to that question. Philosophers have wrestled with the task, as have evolutionary biologists, and all can only make vague suggestions at best. And yet, we know that some things are beautiful, and some are not, and people generally seem to agree.

The obvious response is perhaps that there is nothing essential that makes something beautiful; it’s all entirely subjective and different to every culture, and there is clearly a certain truth in this. On a basic level, different cultures throughout the ages have had very different ways of beautifying themselves, and different ideas of what is beautiful.

It’s inevitable, when considering what makes something beautiful, to turn to the modern idea of feminine beauty, beamed at us from every media outlet and advertising campaign, with the message that women should be thin and tanned. From a growing gym culture to Itsu’s repulsive “eat beautiful” slogan, the idea is ubiquitous in the modern world. But go back several hundred years and quite the opposite is the case. Go back several millennia and one finds in the Bible the line, “You had choice flour and honey and oil for food, you grew exceedingly beautiful.” No one ideal is more or less sexist, and interestingly, it seems that the most unattainable is always the most beautiful.

And of course, in human beauty there is another factor, one which the evolutionary biologist propounds — our ideals of beauty are built around what shows people to have money. If you’re tanned today it shows you’ve been on holiday (let’s ignore fake stuff), whereas several centuries ago it showed you had to work in the fields. Just like in the animal kingdom, we are attracted to those who can provide for us and our offspring. Just think of ‘lotus feet’, the binding of feet from a young age to make physical work impossible, showing a superior social status. To the modern eye, the results are horrific, but they must have become seen as a facet of beauty. In fact, it’s almost scary how our ideals of beauty appear to be simply fads, each giving way to the next as societies subtly change.

But this isn’t necessarily true, and modern research has thrown up some surprising findings — that maybe human beauty has a basic, objective level. Everyone’s heard of the golden ratio, the proportion that the human eye finds beautiful (it’s about 1:1.618, if you want to know). I daresay you’ve seen the spiral constructed from a series of ever growing ‘golden rectangles’. The ancients were well aware of this ratio as the proportions of beauty — it’s found in both the Parthenon and the Great Pyramid, and architects and artists have made use of it ever since.

It becomes fascinating, though, when we apply it to the human face. A ‘beautiful’ face can be divided up in hundreds of different ways, and a surprising number of these will show the golden ratio. For instance; you know how bottom lips are always fuller than top lips? Well, chances are the widths are in the proportions of the golden ratio. Faces can be divided up horizontally and vertically, both showing the golden ratio in action. All kinds of things, from the flare of the nose, to the centre of the lips, to the chin, often show a golden ratio.

It’s a slightly odd thought that our perceptions of beauty might simply be down to what is essentially a mathematical principle; that our brains are so unknowingly attuned to invisible numbers. But actually, this happens in another sphere of beauty, that of music.

What makes a chord, or any musical interval, for that matter, sound good? I’m fairly loathe to use the word again, but it’s got to be done: the ratio between the frequencies of the notes. We can leave the golden ratio behind; here what we’re after is any ‘perfect’ ratio, one that can be expressed in terms of whole numbers. The ancients knew this too, and Pythagoras is said to have been the first to discover it and understand music theory.

The legend goes that as he walked past a blacksmith’s he heard certain hammers ringing out together and producing a pleasing noise. Investigating further, he found the weights of these hammers to be in perfect ratios. That’s essentially bullshit (the note that hammers ring out isn’t directly proportional to their weight, for one thing). Instead, Pythagoras probably did use a ‘monochord’, an instrument with one string and a bridge in the middle. By moving that bridge, Pythagoras was able to divide the string visually into lengths of different ratios.

The result is that ratios of whole numbers make good sounds. Where the frequencies are in the ratio 1:2 we get an octave, 3:2 produces the interval of a perfect fifth (you can go on and list pretty much all vaguely nice-sounding musical intervals). But the point is this: our ears indisputably respond to mathematical perfection, so maybe we shouldn’t think it so odd that our eyes might too.

The decision to stage Henry V as a promenade production is a masterstroke. Need a battlefield? Worcester gardens are ready and waiting. Need to travel from England to France? You have to move from one scene to another anyway, so why not make a feature of it? Need an army? You have an audience. This production, directed by Luke Rollason, takes the fullest advantage of the opportunities offered by this staging, and it’s an exciting and innovative decision that really breathes new life into a play which perhaps more than most bears the heavy weight of tradition and — some might say — unfashionability.

Full disclosure: Henry V hasn’t ever really been one of my favourite Shakespeare plays. Maybe it’s the overtones of jingoism and undertones of xenophobia, maybe it’s the overwhelming maleness of the dramatis personae, or maybe it’s just that I’ve never been able to take the line “then imitate the action of a tiger” entirely seriously. Whilst I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Rollason’s take on the text has entirely changed my opinion, it’s certainly opened my eyes to Henry V’s possibilities, and it’s by far the most enjoyable and intriguing version of the play that I have seen.

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One of the great strengths of this staging is the way in which the actors interact with the audience. This might not be to everyone’s taste — you’ll almost certainly be directly addressed at some point, and possibly even manhandled — but for me it added a new, more interactive dimension to the piece, which allowed for an investment with the characters that might be more difficult to engineer under other circumstances. A play like Henry V implies crowds — of soldiers, of noblemen, of random citizens of both the French and English varieties — and this production really exploits the potential of the audience to fulfil this role. The prologue bids us to “into a thousand parts divide on man”; in this production the multiplicity of functions assigned to one person applies not only to the actors but to the audience as well.

It seems somewhat disingenuous to single out any one actor for their contribution when you’re faced with such a talented ensemble, most playing multiple roles to great effect. However, praise is surely due to James Colenutt, who gives an engaging performance as a young King Henry learning what it is to be a leader. James Aldred’s petulant and petty-minded Dauphin is also a delight.

There’s a strong vein of humour running throughout, which, whilst extremely entertaining, doesn’t quite gel with the gritty violence of “warlike Harry’s” campaign, and in the more serious final act the pace drags a little in comparison to the punchier earlier scenes. The production at times caught between being knockabout comedy and intense drama, never satisfyingly settling on either.

Nonetheless, even as a long-time Harry Five sceptic, I thoroughly enjoyed this production, and I’d recommend it to fellow doubters. There’s really something for everyone with heroism, hilarity, dodgy French accents (and dodgier French maids), along with well-cast and extremely talented actors. Wrap up warm, prepare to make your theatrical debut, and head to Worcester College to enjoy this well-conceived and ultimately successful take on a classic.

Orlando is a complicated and fantastical biography covering numerous centuries, detailing several controversial love affairs and, most notably, seeing its protagonist transform from male to female. It is by no means a conventional novel and the same can be said for this exciting new production, directed by Niall Docherty and Livi Dunlop and showing at the Keble O’Reilly in Sixth Week. Rather than the cast acting out a specific, well-rehearsed scene, I was instead invited to observe a rehearsal in action.

Translating this text to the stage is no easy feat, but the energy and enthusiasm that the cast displayed inspired hope that it could be achieved. They were experimenting with one of the most famous scenes between Orlando, at this point a young nobleman, and his lover, Sasha, an androgynous and aristocratic Russian princess, on the frozen River Thames. Flo Brady has perfected the Russian accent and gave a compelling performance as Sasha, whilst her male counterpart, Dominic Applewhite, who recently starred in The Pillowman, depicted Orlando in a manner befitting the novel.

The chorus were focused and their energy contributed to making some of the more dramatic moments a success. The whole rehearsal seemed very much a collaborative effort with both directors and actors contributing to the creative process. This meant there was a vast improvement from the beginning of the rehearsal, where new ideas were being tested, to the end where they managed to convincingly translate this complex scene onto the stage.

Their dynamic movements and the chorus’ use of the stage meant a realistic scene could be created without props or scenery. Through narrating their own actions in the third person, the characters added a new dimension aside from dialogue, which helped to provide an appropriate translation of the biographical genre of the original text onto the stage.

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One of the main questions which comes to mind about this play is how to convey the gender transformation. One way in which this production has dealt with this is through alternating Dominic Applewhite as Orlando with his female counterpart Grainne O’Mahony, swapping the title role from performance to performance. The audience can choose whether they wish to see a female or male Orlando. O’Mahony, too, is perfectly suited to this role in both appearance and character; her intensity and boldness when working with Flo Brady was particularly captivating.

The actors were successful in creating a scene that balanced gentle wit with more serious and passionate moments. The use of projection mapping means the technical team will create three dimensional images on the stage. When the cast polish their lines, and continue to keep up the energy evident at this early stage, this innovative backdrop should provide the setting for an exciting new play.