Didn’t quite get up early enough to catch May Morning at Oxford last Saturday? Not to worry, this two-minute video will fill you in on any hilarious episodes you might have missed.
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Review: The Importance of Being Earnest
It’s hard to imagine a better play than Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest for Ben Llewelyn and Jessie Anand to have chosen as the centrepiece for Lady Margaret Hall’s current Arts Week. Staged in the beautiful college grounds, the natural setting and low-key set works well, emphasising the centrality of performance and Wilde’s typically sparkling dialogue to the impact of the piece.
Wilde’s classic comedy of errors relies on strong characterisation and confident, well-paced delivery: enunciation and projection in particular are key to the success of the play’s outdoor performance. Nevertheless, Anouska Lester’s impressive period costume and full cast of props furnish the atmosphere of the intimate salon successfully.
All of the comic parts are played with flair and not a little Wildean camp, with Margaux Harris’ enthusiasm and idiosyncrasy in portraying Lady Bracknell’s setting a fine example to the rest of the cast throughout the show. Peter Beaumont’s sensitively interpreted, stiff upper lipped Jack and Caitlin McMillan’s Lady Fairfax share a tender onstage relationship and character is never dropped despite the appearance of ducks, ominous clouds and a chill wind.
Perhaps as a result of the cast’s evident consciousness of the necessity to speak loudly, a little of the conversational feel of the dialogue is lost, and more vocal modulation would serve the playful mood well.
Good use is made of LMH’s grounds, the play taking place in a judiciously chosen spot served by a convenient trellised backstage area. However, scenes tend to feel a little static; an upper class Victorian demeanour need not equate merely a crossed ankle, but a purposeful, theatrical equivalent to match the exaggerated, fantastical events of the play.
There is nothing quite like a good period drama, especially one of Wilde’s finest comic works, done well… Especially one with cucumber sandwiches, parasols and twinkling humour, for a summery Oxford afternoon.
Verdict: Certainly not a production of no importance.
Online Review: I Am Love
Known for translucently pale skin and chiselled features, Tilda Swinton has always cut a striking onscreen figure. I Am Love from Sicilian director Luca Guadagnino transports the ice queen of arthouse to snowy Milan in an elegant and enthralling drama of surprising warmth.
Swinton is the odd-one-out in an Italian cast, but it works perfectly for her character, Emma, the Russian wife of the wealthy Tancredi Recchi. “Collected” by him on the Russian art scene, she has since become assimilated into Milan’s haute bourgeoisie. We first see Emma as a sort of continental Mrs Dalloway, meticulously preparing her household for a birthday dinner in honour of Tancredi’s father, the founder of the clan’s profitable textile empire. She is composed, her appearance immaculate; but when talk at the table turns to business succession she takes on an odd opacity, participating awkwardly in a family toast. She regards her grown-up children – golden boy Edo and artist Elisabetta – with fondness checked by the formal mood imposed by her father-in-law.
The scene hints at a great family saga in the vein of Visconti’s film The Leopard, while the opening credit’s curlicue font and wintry wide-shots suggest a cool update on the postcard-pretty beginnings of Golden Hollywood’s melodramas. Guadagnino draws magnificently on both elements. The dynastic males of the family face a changing business world in London boardrooms, whereas Emma finds herself attracted to her son’s friend Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini), a gifted young chef. Only when her daughter tells her she is in love with another woman does Emma begin to seek her own freedom in Antonio, slipping away to see him in verdant Sanremo countryside.
Swinton’s Emma makes a fascinating protagonist, in what was previously the sole territory of Julianne Moore in films like ‘Far from Heaven’ and ‘The Hours’. Neither particularly self-perceptive nor introspective, and somewhat solitary and unconfiding, Emma is in theory a difficult character to read. However, Swinton plays her with flashes of interiority and makes her tenderness a defining characteristic. She is a sliver of a personality, consequently more likely to sympathise with others before she recognises her own particular feelings. Her affection for her children complicates her actions and leads to the film’s climax, devoid of moralising but richly powerful.
Ultimately, the plot soars above its appearance on the page because of Guadagnino and cinematographer Yorick Le Saux’s gift for telling the story in visual language. Their objective shots have a warmth and fluidity that would be hard to surpass; the camera always able to find the best vantage point, focus on the most interesting part of a composition, and then gracefully follow the movement of the scene. It’s a style that lends beauty to every detail in the shot (a plate of shrimp, cut hair, piles of clothes and bowls of transparent soup), but avoids the perfume-ad look of films like A Single Man. I Am Love is a sheer cinematographic delight that goes beyond being simply stylish: it trains the eye and intellect in the art of observation.
Taking Time
Every year for the last few years, the Drama Officer has spent some of the Easter vacation at the NSDF in the hope that they might take on ideas and bring them back to Oxford. Events like the NSDF refresh our thinking; in amongst the workshops and shows, you find prejudices you had forgotten you had about theatre, and have the chance to interrogate them. So I headed off looking forward to a week of provocative and interesting plays.
This year the NSDF happened in Scarborough. The excellent workshop programme, organised by Artistic Director Holly Kendrick (ex-Oxford, and the first ever Drama Officer) and managed by recent Oxford graduate Chris Wootton, featured Richard Beecham, Richard Hurst, Blanche Macintyre, James Kell and James Phillips, all directors, writers or actors who came through Oxford, and the venue managers included Sam Sampson, ex-Oxford and the last Drama Officer but one.
But this strong showing from Oxford graduate theatre professionals didn’t translate into the shows being staged at the festival. Although company members from The Magic Toyshop have been invited to join an Ensemble that will perform at Latitude later this year, no shows from Oxford actually got into the NSDF. And this isn’t unusual. Oxford hasn’t sent anything to the NSDF for a long time, despite the close relationship the festival has with the city – the NSDF even organises the North Wall’s summer Arts Festival.
This is a shame. The exposure to theatrical invention and professional expertise offered by the festival is inspiring, and a company that made it up there could only benefit from what they saw and who they talked to. So one question I had when I went to Scarborough was why there wasn’t an Oxford production in the festival.
The answer I came up with was time: the shows I saw were assessment pieces by drama students, the equivalent of a Finals paper. The participants didn’t seem to be more talented than Oxford actors, or to have better ideas, but they had been able to fully develop their productions as their top priority. That’s not possible here. One of the extraordinary things about Oxford theatre is that everyone involved does something else as their day job, and still, I think, regularly achieves genuinely exciting results in spite of this.
But even if we can’t match the time conditions in which all the work that went to this year’s NSDF was made, the festival still offers a salutary lesson to Oxford theatre: that the best work comes when you commit to it for as long as is needed, and that theatre is always worth taking time over, even if it means you only do one instead of two or three shows every term.
I’d like to see more shows applying for the NSDF next year. If you’re planning something you’d like to apply with, come and talk to me in the BT: I’ll tell you what this year’s festival was like, and how to make an application.
The OFW Blog: The Forum
Taking place in the hallowed Union Debate Chamber, Oxford Fashion Week continued its campaign on fashion with its Forum. After a break on Sunday following the successful Style Show, the event brought five well-renowned members of the fashion industry all the way to Oxford on a Bank Holiday Monday evening: Dolly Jones- editor of Vogue.com, Frances Card- Brand Consultant, Claire Wilcox- curator of Fashion and Textiles at the V&A, Tony McGee- Photographer, and finally – perhaps the female favourite – David Gandy, Britain’s number one male model. We popped along, as any other budding fashionista would, to hear about what OFW dubbed their “Fashionable Lives” forum, and also to have a good look at Mr Gandy, thank you very much.
Unlike last year’s event focusing around the debate “Fashion is an unnecessary luxury” and which featured an enigmatic performance by Sebastian Horsely, this year’s Forum modelled itself around a talk followed by a ‘Q&A’, allowing the audience to get just as involved as the speakers. It was thus a surprise, and what we believed ultimately to be a shame, that the event on the whole wasn’t more popular. On entering the hall just before the talk began, only the front few rows had been taken and there was still space for us and a few more fashion conscious students before any of the rows looked full. However this had no bearing on what would be a truly fascinating talk, something quite different from your typical term card fair. The five panellists had all experienced the fashion industry in their own way: from how they got into the business, how they saw it from their own unique viewpoint and their predictions for the future of fashion, the talks covered followed their fashion journeys whilst the question and answer provided an opportunity to ask those burning questions, some that revealed more that we wanted to know!
David Gandy, Dolly Jones & Frances Card
Yet what we saw as the most poignant question asked, especially given the week, was whether fashion has a point, or is it as superficial and irrelevant as the empty seats suggested? For many of those attending (and organising) the event, fashion is an industry of great interest, but is it one that students with an Oxford degree should be so eager to enter, or should we pursue more “worthwhile” or “serious” careers, be it doctors, lawyers or teachers? It is true to say fashion is often not taken seriously: associated with frivolous shopping habits, irrational expenditure and impractical purchases (do we really need another pair of 6 inch heels?), it is appears wasteful, and referring back to the empty seats, not worth our time. However as Dolly Jones stated “fashion is a form of communication: it is what people judged you on before you even open your mouth,” fashion is certainly more than clothes, it is about identity, it is about personality and it is about culture. Furthermore, as Claire Wilcox described her learning of fashion through the history of textiles, fashion maybe mutative but it also synthesises our history, our political, social and cultural relations and expresses them through a form we can all understand. Yet, Francis Card argued during the talk that it is often the fear of fashion that creates a misunderstanding that consequently stops people from participating within it, leading to this criticism: yet as Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada argues about cerulean blue, what David Gandy stated, why you choose to wear a certain thing today, and what Dolly Jones so aptly asks: why do you get dressed in the morning?
Dolly Jones, Editor of Vogue.com
Now, we each will have our own interpretation to the question, we each dress a way for different needs, different purposes and to achieve different goals, but what it does show is that fashion is intelligent. Thus whilst we are not here to justify our own devout following of fashion (and hero worship of the panel and what they stand for), we want to argue that fashion is worthy of our time. During the talk, the panel dealt with questions on the influence of art, the role of Web 2.0 and the usage of social networking, the impact of the internet and the recession.Furthermore, they all recognised the role of smart decisions, such as the expansion of fashion onto the internet (highlighted by he recent sale of Net-A-Porter, which was valued near to $350 million) but also unexpected misfortunes including the loss of the brand, Luella, in the last year. The debate and issues covered thus showed how competitive and volatile fashion is – but it also acknowledged that it is through creativity and, if inadvertently, sense that it continues to survive. For those who attended, the event provided a platform for a formal but informative discussion of what appears so often to be an exclusive industry. The event producers, Lindsey Meyers and Alyx Barker, should be proud of the discussion (if not the turnout): the panellists were well chosen by their team, the range prevented viewpoints and ideas from clashing whilst the dynamics of the guests certainly worked well overall. Not only was it aesthetically pleasing in certain ways, but intellectually challenging. Whilst it is most likely to be the least attended event on OFW’s programme, we don’t and wouldn’t want it to go. The event needs a shake-up, but it will be hard to know what to sacrifice: as Francis Card concluded, “it displays what fashion is about for Oxford”.
Tony McGee
For all those that missed the talk, we will be updating the page with our favourite snippets from the talk, plus our own exclusive interview with the panellists (and David Gandy’s faux pas, no fear!).
David Gandy
Photography: Sonali Campion
The Wrongs of Politics and Our Right to Vote
Having spent half a lifetime in political journalism, David Seymour has a thing or two to say to those that can’t be bothered with the ballot box. As we take a seat in a South Kensington cafe he tells it to me straight: ‘The thing is, I’m all in favour of cynicism in politics as long as it doesn’t extend to the BNP or not voting’.
His point is not to be taken lightly. Election turn-out since the end of the Second World War has plunged from 80% to 60% and is expected to fall even lower in the wake of the MP’s expenses scandal. This is especially the case with young people; the Electoral Commission has recently warned that over half of 17-25s eligible to vote are not registered to do so.
‘But just because many young people don’t seem interested in the election, that doesn’t mean they’re not political’. I’m with David on this, and point out that many under 25s are heavily involved with climate camps, Twitter storms, and ethical consumerism. ‘Yes. Really it’s the politicians that say you’re apathetic about politics’, he adds.
‘The problem is that there’s a disconnect between being passionate about certain issues and actually channelling this passion into support for political parties’. Co-authering a new book Why Vote? he wants to remedy this. But he doesn’t want to do it by painting a picture of how marvellous politicians are. No, before telling me why I should vote, he wants to make it clear that politics is blighted by a serious malaise.
Personality is first on the list of problems and Gordon Brown is certainly in David’s firing range. ‘Sure, people that do see a lot of him think he’s fantastic. But if you stick him in front of a television crew, he really doesn’t come across like that. I’ve found this with so many politicians.’
In October Brown was asked about his favourite biscuit during a live web chat with the parents’ website Mumsnet: he failed to answer. ‘You know, that’s a classic! If he does say ‘I like chocolate digestives’, does he think he’s going to be attacked by the BMA or suffer criticism by McVitties rivals?’ Leaning forward and tapping on the table to drive home his point, he says: ‘I mean what is the bloody issue? Biscuits will be sprinkled on his political grave, really’.
‘Young people have an idea that a lot of it is all bollocks’
Another problem is cowardice. ‘When they’re ministers they say they’ve got to criminalise more drugs, and do more CRB checks. But when they come out of the spotlight and sit down with a cup of tea, they have completely different ideas’.
There’s unpublished Home Office research, he assures me, that shows that the reason the number of burglaries has dropped suddenly isn’t because of intervention of the state with a tough law and order policy, but because the price of drugs collapsed with the invasion of Afghanistan. A side effect was to flood the market with drugs.
‘Tough policy isn’t what works in containing drugs, but they don’t want to be seen to acknowledge that. When will we ever hear a politician stand up and say “I know how to cut crime by 50% over night. The way to do it is to decriminalise drugs.” I’m not saying we should just do this. But if you’re arguing about crime, why has no politician got the balls to admit this?’
Seymour also thinks Parliament is a shambles. ‘MPs are used as lobby fodder to put through the next policy gimmick. The BBC’s The Thick of It is really it. That’s what’s actually happening inside. The House of Lords is actually far better than the House of Commons because most don’t give a toss about the whips or gimmicks.’
He hasn’t come to a conclusion about whether the character of politicians can change. But he does think that part of it is a reaction to the way the media operates now. ‘Politicians weren’t confronted with these things 40 years ago. There was no real direct challenging on TV. Now they are all the time and they just have to run the party line.’
There is a glimmer of hope, however. Seymour eagerly tells me that in this sea of political inanity, there are some that still keep politics afloat. His favourite is Ed Milliband. ‘Most politicians listen but respond with a stock politician answer. But Ed: you can challenge him on anything and he will have a debate about it; he really does it! That’s also why Cameron and Clegg are where they are. People realised they were actually good at having an open debate.’
‘To say you’re not going to vote is to let them get away with it’
But what about the rest? Can we intervene? ‘Yes! To say politicians aren’t doing anything for us, so we’re not going to vote, is to let them get away with it’. What’s more, and students should take note of to this, Seymour believes that ‘young people are in a better informed, more educated position to vote than ever before.’ This is partly because of the development of the internet and new media technologies. Sites such as Youth Net and Left Foot Forward provide a platform for young people to communicate about politics in a way they could never have done previously. He also suspects that young people are far less inclined to vote on the basis of celebrity or empty policy. ‘They have an idea that a lot of it is all bollocks’.
That’s all very well. But if you’ve got one vote, there’s not a lot you can do. ‘But the point is’, Seymour rebuts, ‘that you’re part of a bigger mass. Go out and get active!’
Hearing this, I feel a sense of urgency. Maybe, as a ‘young person’, I really am in a better position to avoid either naïve enthusiasm for voting as an end in itself, or cynical rejection of democracy as a meaningless charade. Sadly – and I’m sure most students (apathetic or not) can sympathise with this – buying a round in the pub that evening rather than purchasing a copy of Seymour’s new book Why Vote? got the better of me. Perhaps they stock it in the Bodleian.
Why Vote? A guide for those who can’t be bothered is by David Seymour and Jo Phillips. Published by Biteback.
No Ordinary Rally
What do you do when 8th week comes to an end and exams have been taken? When the Balls and their associated hangovers are just fading memories, leaving you with three months of nothing but the world cup or the new term to begin?
Many people would argue that the following are the best things to do with your time:
1) Become a tourist guide
2) Catch a wild trout and eat it for dinner
3) Hold a fake protest against 1920’s jazz music
4) Serve Earl Grey tea in Russia’s Red Square
5) Climb a mountain over 5000ft
6) Go to the mobile phone throwing championships in Finland.
7) Perform a Shakespearian monologue in a classical amphitheatre.
New College Graduate John Rendel who runs the growing charity Promoting Equality in African Schools (PEAS), thinks that he has come up with a way to get all these things into one wild adventure.
His solution is U Rally – a two or four week road trip in August to wherever you want to go! Participants compete for points scored by completing up to 51 ‘Pub Story’ Challenges, like those featured above. Through the pub story ‘points multiplier map’, you can increase the points you score by completing the challenges further from home. Teams also score points by ticking off potentially hundreds of postcard challenges which often involve simply visiting marvellous places in Europe, North Africa and the closer bits of Asia.
The winning team in the four week event will receive the much coveted ‘Hub Cap’ trophy with those in the two week event (the two weekers) competing for the slightly less coveted but no less envy-inducing ‘Steering Wheel’ trophy.
The whole event is being run to raise money for the charity PEAS, with the aim being that 100 cars will raise enough to launch an entire, sustainably-financed secondary school under the PEAS ‘smart aid’ model. The event costs £100 per-person to enter and each team is asked to raise a further £750 for PEAS.
The charity PEAS was founded in 2005 and now runs 5 low-fee secondary schools in Uganda. With many African governments introducing Universal Primary Education, many students are finishing primary school but then are unable to follow on to secondary school because of lack of quality and access to state secondary schools. PEAS is trying to change this situation by creating affordable and high quality schools, as well as trying to improve state run schools with the help of the local governments.
The next sign-up window for the U Rally event is at 4pm on Sunday May 9th, with the last a month later. All you need is a car (just get a dodgy old banger for £300), a route, some mates, two or more weeks free from August 1st and a sense of fun. This definitely beats sitting around all summer.
Even if you can’t make it to the event this summer, U Rally is giving you the chance to make a quick buck by paying £50 for every team you encourage to sign up. Just ask the team to record your name on the sign up page as they register.
A Croq of Old Hit
The sun is obscured by a blanket of cloud, there are several empty pitchers littered with browning fruit slices and freshers with wooden mallets are staggering across the quads without arousing the wrath of the porters. Yes, it can mean only one thing- that the British Summer is here, and with it, the fine game of croquet.
As a state school kid from suburbia, the game of croquet has always struck me as something of a joke. When trying to think of the most ridiculous sport imaginable, croquet would often come to mind (2nd only to Polo, in that at least croquet didn’t utilise equine locomotion). To my unwitting mind, the game simply consisted of the upper classes rambling around a lawn in tweed blazers, knocking brightly coloured balls through hoops in some seemingly unintelligible fashion. The aim of the sport was quite beyond me, a pursuit too distantly surreal from my own lifestyle for me to ever care for it, let alone want to play it.
Fast forward to Oxford, some arm twisting in the college bar after a few drinks and the promise of a lazy “sport” which many involves quaffing gin based spirits. I have become an overnight convert to this summer pursuit. Speaking of which, the game is essentially that- a pursuit of one team’s balls against another’s, to try and pass through a circuit of hoops before the other team in a specified route, in order to hit a peg in the middle of the pitch and win. The game sounds simple enough- at this stage. However, players win extra shots by hitting another a ball, in a similar way to which extra turns in snooker or pool work. Therefore, a tactical game of positioning, to build as many shots as possible in a row to help you through the hoops, through extra goes hitting your own balls, as well as those of your opponent, are required. As such, croquet is not merely just a game of skill, like some kinds of drink related game. It is not like a posh darts or pool or bare knuckle brawl. Rather it has the cognitive finesse of chess, draughts, or cheating on a quiz machine (although for those of us familiar with latter, know the common utility of a mallet in play.)
However, the real fun in the sport is the attitude with which it is played. Leisurely, with sly tactics and backhanded aggression, the game comes to life in a mix of skill, tactics and psychological banter that make it genuinely fun and eminently social. It is a very simple game to get to grips with, but very tough to master. And that’s without the inevitable home rules to account for different pitches. Whilst some may have perfectly smooth, pristine croquet lawns, others of us have to get use to dips and divots- not to mention wells and walls- all of which add to the charm of a game as you watch your opponents struggling to straddle a fence!
So, with summer here upon us, Cuppers is now well under way. What better way to lose yourself in the mystique of Oxford legend, day-dreaming of Alice’s own experiences of the sport in Wonderland, than to give the game a try? Well, at least that’s what I thought. How my illustrious SPC 8 shall do, against the slightly more illustrious SPC 7 in the most homogeneous draw in history, we will have to see. Somehow though, I don’t think we’ll go down in the annals of croquet history. Instead, I’ll make sure to bring along my anorak, a pitcher of the same from Sainsbury’s (for those of you who know your cheaper alternatives to popular summer fruit drinks served with fruit and lemonade!) and a good excuse to explain to give the porters to explain mallet marks on the quad. We were just playing whack a mole, honest.
There ya go!
Luke & Jack Fill Your Ears with Films
The first in a new series looks at ‘Up In The Air’ starring George Clooney, as well as checking in on Uma Therman, Jennifer Aniston, and Gemma Arterton.
May Day!
Fancy yourself as a photographer?
Want your photographs from around and about Oxford seen by the thousands of people who visit the Cherwell website every day?
If so, why not send a few of your snaps into [email protected]?
Photographs by Wojtek Szymczak, Jin Lee and Ursa Mali*
Wojtek Szymczak
Wojtek Szymczak
Wojtek Szymczak
Wojtek Szymczak
Ursa Mali
Ursa Mali
Ursa Mali
Ursa Mali