Third-year English student Sa­mantha Shannon released the cover for her first book The Bone Season yesterday. Shannon, who signed a contract with JK Rowling’s publisher Bloomsbury last March, is expected to write seven books following the three-book deal.

The St Anne’s student told Cher­well: “The cover was designed by David Mann, Art Director at Blooms­bury. It was inspired by Seven Dials, a road junction in London where the novel is partly set. In the middle of the junction is a pillar with six sundi­als on it. This design is based on the dial facing Monmouth Street, where I first got the impetus to write The Bone Season. I wasn’t sure what to ex­pect when I went to Bloomsbury to see the design, but I’m thrilled with it. It doesn’t commit to a genre or an audience.”

The cover, designed to carry across the whole of the series, is set to have a different colour scheme for each book following the publication of the first novel on 20th August this year.

Viccy Ibbett, a second-year English student, remarked: “Suddenly the book has come to life! It’s a gorgeous design and very elegant. I’m now even more excited, if that’s possible, for the actual book launch.”

Set in the year 2059, The Bone Sea­son follows a 19-year-old clairvoyant called Paige Mahoney in the crimi­nal underworld of repressive ‘Scion’ London. Much of the action for the first book takes place in the familiar setting of Oxford, where Paige is kept imprisoned in the secret city where she meets Warden, a mysterious ‘Re­phaite’ creature and her keeper.

When asked why she chose to set the book in Oxford, Shannon said, “I think Oxford lends itself to fantasy; it’s innovative and traditional at the same time. It’s also a very small city, sometimes claustrophobic, which made it easy to redesign for a dysto­pian story. It’s no longer called Ox­ford in The Bone Season, and having been assigned a new purpose, there’s no longer a university – but you’ll see several of the colleges.”

In November 2012, it was an­nounced that Andy Serkis’s produc­tion company, The Imaginarium Studios, had optioned the series for the silver screen. Shannon said that working with the Imaginarium team has enriched the process of writing the book. “They gave me editorial notes on the manuscript, which to me shows they care about the book, not just about the film adaptation,” she said.

The film, which is yet to have a named production date, is a project in which Shannon will be heavily involved: she was able to keep con­sultation rights. The English student frequently offers ideas on décor and music.

When asked how she copes with si­multaneously studying for an Oxford degree, Shannon commented, “I try to divide my time equally between es­says and writing, though it doesn’t al­ways work! The Oxford schedule can be hectic, so sleep has become a bit of a luxury, but I’m enjoying the ride.”

Shannon, who is in her final year of her degree, maintains her blog, ‘A Book from the Beginning’, docu­menting her experience.

For more details of the next Live Friday event, ‘Musical Technologies: Old and New’, on 22nd February, visit http://www.ashmolean.org/livefriday/

With thanks to Sue Pickering, Patrick Penzo and Lucie Dawkins.

★★★★★
Five Stars

If confirmation of the sheer geekiness of Oxford students was ever needed then A Theory of Justice has provided it. A Theory of Justice is spectacularly, delightfully nerdy. The musical explores 2,500 years of philosophical thought through catchy songs and hilarious jokes. Surprisingly, for a play based on an academic text, there is not a dull moment.

Ollie Nicholls is wonderful as John Rawls, his enthusiasm and likeability enables the audience to connect with an atypically intellectual protagonist. It is not often that an audience feels deep compassion for a man desperately pursuing for a concept. Rawls search for Fairness is the backbone of the play and is successful both as a love story and in its ability to explain Rawls theory.

Indeed, the entire cast are convincing as the greatest philosophers in history. David Wigley is particularly comical as Immanuel Kant transformed into Rawls’ fairy godmother. Wigley provides one of many moments of pure silliness that make the play enjoyable for those, like me, who are not well acquainted with the main movements in philosophy. Although there are many jokes that may require a basic knowledge of political philosophy, there are also many that are amusing to those who are still ignorant of the theories of Nozick, Locke or Plato.

The major triumph of the play is that it is accessible to all audience members. The great conceptual breakthroughs of philosophy are not dumbed down for the general public, nor are they discussed in great detail for the enjoyment of those with a better understanding of political philosophy. The musical does not include all major philosophers of the past 2,500 years, but it would be inadvisable to attempt to include all philosophical thinkers in one two hour show.

A Theory of Justice left me wishing that there were musicals based on the history of every academic discipline and that there would be another philosophical breakthrough for Aslan-Levy, Sabi and Peto to transform for the theatre. Perhaps the most striking feature of the musical is that it inspires philosophical conversation between students on a cold and windy January night. All the way back from the Keble O’Reilly It was possible to hear people discussing their opinions on the different theories portrayed in the show.

A Theory of Justice is both entertaining and educational, a truly remarkable musical. You would be a fool to miss it.

★★★★★
Five Stars

If drama is a means of escapism, seeking to transport us into another world or merely into another person’s experience, Bluebeard pulls it off by inserting the audience into the head of an old lady with Alzheimer’s, and also into the shoes of her two adult children. It is impossible to watch Bluebeard
without imagining that it is your parent on stage, and therein lies the play’s power.

In the same way that Mufasa’s death in The Lion King upsets children because parents at that age are our entire frame of reference, the idea of parents degenerating gradually has a similar effect on me now. The idea of sudden death is in a way less heart-breaking than the experiences of Michael Roderick (David) and Carla Kingham (Emily) as they visit their mother in a care home and have to convince themselves that her brief moments of lucidity make the cost of care, not to mention her discomfort, worth it.

The mother in question, Claire (Becky Banatvala) is passive and unresponsive, and gives faultless stares into middle distance. From the opening scene, the audience settled in for an examination of mental illness at very close quarters, with a clear dichotomy between the realistic Emily and the sentimental David.

However, the tragic moments in this play are actually relatively rare: instead of watching seventy minute of frustrating, stilted conversations taking place over armchairs and cups of tea, the playwright is given terrific freedom within the disjointed memories and visions of a lady with Alzheimer’s. We are led through Claire’s tempestuous youth and invited to examine the consequences of marriage for our grandmothers’ generation: the young Claire tells us, “The first choice my mother ever made was the last choice she ever made,” before she and her daughter go on to make similar mistakes.

The play has a cast of three and some initially disorienting scenes, and the obligatory students-being-children scenes we come to expect from student theatre. My initial criticism was that the scope of one lady’s mental illness was perhaps too narrow to give a very emotional play enough substance: however, an unobtrusive but thorough treatment of feminist issues and euthanasia gave the audience more than enough to think about.

The proportion of bitter to sweet is just right, with very British comic touches coming at choice moments, particularly from Roderick’s array of characters. Banatvala is a dream to watch – she switches seamlessly from impertinent schoolgirl to wry, world-weary single mother to engaged twenty-something and back to old lady. Her attention to detail makes a non-linear play completely comprehensible: we can ascertain her age after just a few seconds of dialogue, and Kingham supports her beautifully by gradually adding impressive depth to the apparently callous Emily. It is unusual to see a student production as entertaining, thought-provoking and polished.

★★★★☆
Four Stars

As I sat in front of the woodland set of Milja Fenger’s latest play They Will Be Red, waiting for the show to start, I wondered what exactly I was about to witness. There are few plays which feature solely soil, leaves and tree stumps as a set, especially within the intimate confines of the Burton Taylor stage which is laid out so that most of the audience are on a level with the actors, the soil quite literally beneath your feet if you’re on the front row. When they marketed it as “organic” in the programme, they meant it.

It is also marketed as not being a “polished final product”. However, as
the actors come on stage, the slick and intricate coordination of lights, live
soundtrack and a fast-paced script make it very clear, very quickly that this is by no means an amateur or sloppy production. They Will Be Red follows the story of Anna, and her determination to save the ash trees of England from a killer disease, at the expense of her relationships with friends and family. Whilst this is an original plot, it is the way in which Anna’s story is told through the narration of Fin, played spectacularly by Nick Williams, which elevates the play to what is an impressive height. Being just a two actor show, Williams also plays the part of every other character Anna meets, switching between them at lightning speed without breaking character or fluffing his lines once. Maisie Richardson-Sellers also delivers a solid and authentic performance as Anna, and handles Williams’ character changes excellently. Although these fast changes can occasionally cause some confusion as to which character Williams is playing at any given moment, these instances as rare and brief. It is impressive to say the least.

However, They Will Be Red is not just about saving trees. Fenger’s script is about growing up, change and how we deal with it. Well, I say script – Fenger wrote the backbone of the play, and the rest has been brought together through improvisation in rehearsal; each night, the cast plan to change it slightly. Just like the set itself, They Will Be Red is alive and changing. This may seem risky, but fear not, the backbone of the script is a sturdy one, switching from humorous one liners to poignant directness just as smoothly as Williams moves between characters. This is one not to be missed.

Beyoncé faked her performance of the United States national anthem at President Obama’s inauguration ceremony.  Since this revelation, crestfallen fans around the world have delivered declarations of disappointment and despair on the Internet.  Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has even called for Obama to resign over the lip-syncing controversy.

The outrage has revealed how supremely ignorant the public is regarding the ubiquity of lip-syncing.  Lip-syncing is an unfortunate but permanent fact of the modern world.  The majority of high-profile vocal performances by popular musicians are pre-recorded and subsequently lip-synched live.  If you pay big money to see Rihanna, Katy Perry, or Justin Bieber at giant arena gigs, you’d better be a fan of light shows and costumes, because the vocal performances will be the same as those on your iPod.

Is this practice acceptable?  That depends.  There are often practical reasons beyond laziness or lack of talent to justify lip-syncing.  Michael Jackson never would have been able to pull off his immortal dance routines onstage while simultaneously preoccupied with singing.  Strong winds might have caused Beyoncé’s vocals to sound muddled, and the microphone may have picked up an undesirable whooshing noise.  Poor Ashlee Simpson claimed to have been suffering from a bout of acid reflux disease during her notorious Saturday Night Live flub; this is clearly a reasonable excuse.  But often, no such practical reason exists, besides that it is easy to sound good when you aren’t really singing.

Frankly, we have brought this upon ourselves by coming to expect music to sound perfect.  Do today’s pop stars possess much cleaner and better-tuned voices than the musicians of yesteryear?  A bluesy, mournful sigh emanates from Billie Holiday’s grave at this suggestion.  Although there is one exception: Justin Bieber was grown in a laboratory underneath Disney World, and his vocal chords, constructed from carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer, are flawless.

The truth is that even in today’s recorded pop music, the singers themselves contribute minimally to the finished product.  Computer programs like Pro Tools and Auto-Tune allow producers to touch up, process, and homogenize vocals to the degree that computers do about 80% of the singing.

If pop singers fake their live performances and allow producers and their computers do the majority of the studio work for them, what are they?  They are mere spokespeople for the music to which they attach their names and their pretty faces.  Brad Pitt may be the new face of Chanel No. 5 perfume, but nobody mistakenly attributes the creation of that iconic scent to this laughably miscast celebrity representative.

There is no need to abandon pop music over this lamentable reality.  However, we need a widespread shift of recognition.  We need to start delivering credit where credit is due.  Somebody is still making the music, even if it’s not Taylor Swift and Harry Styles.  It’s time for songwriters and producers to emerge from the shadows.

With the increasing disappearance of live instrumentation in pop music, producers can now usually claim all of the credit for creating the backing track and the general sound and aesthetic of pop music, and through the use of aforementioned computer programs, they are responsible for the tweaking of the vocal tracks that so strongly determines how they end up sounding.  Often the songwriter and producer are the same person, and certain songwriting-production teams share these responsibilities.  Some of these individuals have had enormous influences on contemporary music, yet they receive a grossly disproportionate lack of recognition.

A Swede named Max Martin has been perhaps the most important figure in pop music of the last fifteen years.  He has written and/or produced a mind-blowing number of megahits, including ten number one chart-toppers. His work ranges from some of the most recognisable hits of the Backstreet Boys, N’Sync and Britney Spears to ‘It’s My Life’ by Bon Jovi and more recently, Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed A Girl’ and others and Taylor Swift’s ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’

Martin’s full discography also includes songs by Kelly Clarkson, Taio Cruz, Usher, P!nk, Ace of Base, Cyndi Lauper, Simple Plan, A-ha, Carrie Underwood, Ke$ha, Céline Dion, T.I., Robyn, Avril Lavigne, Pitbull, Nicki Minaj, Maroon 5, Justin Bieber, Christina Aguilera, Carly Rae Jepsen, and James Blunt, among many others.  The inconsequentiality of the singers who end up with the credit for these songs is illustrated by an anecdote about one of Martin’s most successful hits: “…Baby One More Time” was first offered to the Backstreet Boys and subsequently TLC, who turned it down before it was passed on to Britney.

Some of Martin’s frequent collaborators include Lukasz Gottwald (also known as Dr. Luke) and 24-year-old Benny Blanco.  In their own right, either or both of these men are responsible for Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok” and “We R Who We R,” Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger,” Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the U.S.A.,” and the list goes on and on.  Nearly all of Rihanna’s hits have been created by a Norwegian writing-production duo known as Stargate.  These unsung heroes are the real pop stars of the modern world.  Though their hair and makeup may not be as flawless as that of the young men and women who strut around onstage moving their lips while their songs play in the background, it is their talent and creativity that have shaped the music we listen to today.

Distraught fans and Senator Rand Paul, go ahead and rip the Beyoncé posters off your walls.  But if you really care about music, you should at least replace them with Max Martin posters.