Tuesday 1st July 2025
Blog Page 2028

Greece’s rising debt

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What is the role of the EU in matters of fiscal and monetary policy of its member states?

The European Central Bank sets interest rates for the members of the euro, but has no role in the monetary policy of other EU members. Fiscal policy is controlled by the individual Member States, but ostensibly regulated by rules limiting borrowing. Theoretically, Member States can be fined for borrowing too much (the money goes to EU central coffers), but that has never happened and the rules have been broken so many times, and by such wide margins, it is difficult to see that it could now. The normal limit for annual borrowing is 3% of national income, but the euro area as a whole is currently at about 6%, and Greece at about 12%.

Why is Greece currently suffering a severe debt crisis?

They have borrowed a very large amount over quite a long period. Recently, the lenders have been waking up to the fact that it is going to be very difficult for the Greeks to pay them back. One result of that is that when the Greek government seeks to borrow new funds – that 12% of national income that it needs – or to borrow to ‘roll over’ existing debt (ie pay it back with new borrowing), it finds that the interest rate it has to offer is higher than before. From the lenders’ point of view that is their compensation for making a ‘risky’ loan. From the Greek point of view it makes their position even more difficult since they are already faced with a large borrowing requirement, and are now having to do it at higher interest rates. Why have they borrowed so much in the first place? Some of that is bad management, some of it is domestic politics. Some of it is in a way traceable to the inefficiency of the Greek tax system – vast quantities of tax which should be paid, isn’t.

In what way can EU nations provide aid or support?

First, if it comes to it, by being ready to organize the bailout. It would be more sensible to ask the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help, but for the time being, europride seems to be in the way of that. Fortunately, Greece is a small state. So even though its debt is huge relative to the size of the economy, it is relatively small by international standards. Nevertheless, other countries – their taxpayers – had better be ready for the bill.

The second thing to consider is the effect of announcements by other EU member states and EU institutions on investor confidence. If Greece is going to be able to escape from this position without a bailout – some people think that is possible – then it is certainly going to need the interest rates it pays to stay low. If that is going to happen, it will be because the lenders are not afraid of losing their money, and in practical terms that means they have to be confident there will be a bailout if one is needed. The difficulty with that is that some people think that if they promise a bailout, that takes the pressure off the Greek government to deal with the problem with tax increases and expenditure cuts.

And the third thing is that it might well be better to move sooner rather than later. If a crisis goes on and on, the danger grows that lenders will start to worry about other countries too – and if the interest rates they pay start rising, more countries could quickly be in the same sort of position as Greece.

Were the situation not to be remedied, what would the effects be on the European economy?

If there were a outright default by Greece it would start another round of financial crisis. Much of the Greek debt is owed to banks – both in Greece and in other countries. If it is not going to be paid back those banks take a capital loss, so their solvency would come into question. Even if that was not enough to cause bank failures, the panic that would go with it surely would. Some debt is held by insurance companies and pension funds and they would be in much the same position as the banks. Some of it is no doubt held directly by households, so for them a default would mean a loss of savings. Quite apart from the immediate loss to those households, the resultant fall in their spending would further damage economic prospects.

Not all defaults are ‘outright’. A more likely outcome is that the Greek government would fail to make interest payments; or fail to repay some of its debt; or an international rescue will partially compensate the lenders; or compensate them after a delay. Any of those sorts of things have the same kind of effects as an outright default, but muted.

There is a further ramification because other countries are in only a slightly better position than the Greek one. It is probably fair to say that Spain and Ireland are doing much better than Greece. But on the other hand, Italy and Belgium are not all that much better off. If Greece were allowed to default outright, some or all of these, and possibly others, would surely find a collapse in confidence would make their positions impossible too.

 James Forder is economics tutor at Balliol College

 

Are there limits on free speech?

CC Pancheva, Law, Exeter

“Extreme views should not be given a public platform”

Inviting politically controversial speakers and inciting headline-churning protests is something that the Oxford Union is, embarrassingly, rather well known for. In the name of ‘the wider debate’, members have recently witnessed the tumult that ensues following visits from a number of politically-extreme speakers, ranging from the debacle last week surrounding the visit by Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, to the hostile welcome given to Nick Griffin, party leader of the BNP. But although freedom of speech is a central tenet of any debating society, what are we actually gaining by inviting speakers well-known to hold hateful, racist and discriminatory views.

The issue here is a glaringly obvious one: racist speakers will try and promote racist views. True, inviting them to speak at the Union inevitably provokes hostility and barbed questions from the rather more liberal student body, and it wouldn’t quite be a Union debate without a few well-timed points of information! But it would be foolish to suggest that the only thing going on here is your run-of-the-mill debate chamber sparring.

There is a good reason why hostility towards controversial speakers is taken beyond pointed questions and disparaging remarks to fully-fledged, all out protest. All publicity is good publicity, and an invitation to speak at the well-known, prestigious and headline-making Oxford Union gives radical speakers a platform to promote and spread derogatory and offensive views.The biggest problem caused by this is that we simply do not seem to be taking issues of racism or other forms of discrimination seriously. For those affected by those issues, inviting the very people who insist on segregation, inequality and oppression is a serious slap in the face.

As with any debate on political issues, there is always the suggestion that views on either side may be justified, or at least are genuinely arguable. Opening the floor for ‘debate’ on extreme right-wing secularism or white supremacy gives these abhorrent policies a chance of approbation, or at least a very public mouthpiece. Thus despite the number of anti-racism and discrimination policies we adopt, isn’t there an element of hypocrisy in cordially inviting and setting up a platform for those who represent the complete antithesis of those policies? Were it not for the protests and hostile reactions, could we not be seen to be endorsing those views? Quite simply, if we want to make a serious statement about equality and rights, there is no room for giving a platform to those who deplore these ideals.

Ravin Thambapillai, PPE, St John’s

“The invitation is a question of motive”

How far should free speech go? There are two separate, but linked, debates here and I want to draw the distinction clearly. The first debate is more or less settled so I won’t dwell on it; I’m sure almost all will agree with the principles of free speech. If not, then the following questions arise; a) how will we progress if we ban things we don’t like? b) How do we know arguments are wrong if we don’t have the chance to rebut them? and c) to whom is the power given to determine which arguments are fit for public consumption? So far as I am aware, no-one has come up with convincing counter arguments to these problems, so I treat the first debate as settled.

The second one is more intriguing, if only because it is less settled in our society. That is the question of providing platforms. On the one hand providing platforms is supposed to lend credibility to these idiots, on the other hand, it’s supposed to be an opportunity to take them head on and rebut them. Since I assume most of the ‘hawks’ and right-wingers in this debate will treat the issue as settled, I felt it worthwhile to make the point that should underscore the left’s commitment to free speech. The truth is, the best reason to support free speech and open platforms is precisely because we do not have it. Is it ‘free speech’ whenever an author criticising Israel’s foreign policy is flooded with death threats? Is it ‘free speech’ when American television journals are so blatantly skewed in their reporting, since AIPAC has decided that almost any criticism of Israel’s policies implies anti-Semitism? It isn’t. Yet, if we expect a voice and a chance to explain ourselves when we have accusations of bigotry thrown at us (and we do), we really ought to at least listen to the people who seem like bigots to us. They may not convince us and we may not expect them to, but if the organisers sincerely believe these people don’t have the chance to explain themselves properly, then there is a moral case for providing them with a platform to do that.

It seems to me, that if you accept that honest debate on Israel-Palestine is largely shut down in America, then the issue of whether these people could be invited is a question of motivation. If invitations are extended to boost the ego of the Union President, this vanity is deplorable. However, if the invitation was extended out of a belief that people who hold these beliefs are shouted down, then the invitation was legitimate. There is of course the question whether there are other people out there who deserve the platform more. Well, obviously yes. So I assume the organisers were either not creative enough or else that these people chose not to come. With these caveats, and the assumption that the invitation was sincere, then I think that belief in free speech does give us a reason to provide platforms to people we despise.

 

Here’s What You’ve Missed: 5th Week

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This week audiences react to Tom Stoppard’s “The Invention of Love” at the Oxford Playhouse and “The Aphorist” by Fred Sugarman-Warner, at the Burton Taylor Studio.

Scottish debate

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Dry topic, political Union. Only really cared about by a few wonky PPEists. And yet I really enjoyed last night’s debate. ‘This House believes in the Union,’ was the motion, which even I thought was a bit ambiguous. I wasn’t the only one: poor old Lord MacLennan claimed that he thought he was supposed to be debating the future of the Oxford Union, rather than the 1707 Union of Scotland and England, and had to quickly rewrite his speech. Alex Just, ex-president and an old school friend of the current president, gave a punchy opening speech stressing the economic benefits to Scotland of remaining part of the UK. David Thomas opened for the opposition. When on form, David (DT in hackish circles) can be quite a good debater. This was one of his better speeches – plenty of statistics, some solid jokes – except for the fact that, somewhat bizarrely, he chose to argue against the Union by saying that it was bad for England, because Scotland takes all our money. This is true, but it also happened to be exactly what Just has told us five minutes earlier, only he, being Scottish, thought it was a good thing. No-one really knew whether the debate was supposed to be from a Scottish or English perspective. After DT’s speech, they settled on Scottish, which was understandable, given that apart from David every other speaker on the order paper was born north of the border. Listening to the never-ending torrent of thick Scottish brogues felt a bit like sitting through a particularly geeky Sean Connery film.

There were a couple of SNP M(S)Ps, who proved to be the lunatics that SNP politicians always are, moaning on and on about three centuries of English repression and how if Scotland had remained independent the Iraq war wouldn’t have happened, the banks wouldn’t have collapsed and Jedward would have been kicked out in the first round of X-Factor (or something – I was so busy shivering, thanks to the snow and the chamber’s many broken windows, that I wasn’t really paying much attention by this point.) Lord Forsyth brilliantly pulled the SNP guys up on their whining: Scottish Nationalists, he pointed out, have for three hundred years walked around with chips on both shoulders, made cripplingly hunchbacked by the sheer weight of their bitterness and resentments (ok, I might have embellished his point slightly, but that was the gist of it).

It was a fun, lively debate, but for one, glaring problem: most of the speakers gave the strong impression of being completely historically illiterate. Stewart Hosie, the Deputy Leader of the SNP at Westminster, was the worst: when a member making a floor speech remarked that the Royal Family were now no longer Scottish but German, ‘ever since, um…’ Hosie piped up helpfully: ‘William!’, a big, self-satisfied grin on his face, as if the other speaker should have been grovellingly grateful for the benefit of Hosie’s incredible wisdom. Actually, Stewart, William was Dutch – the first German king was George I. The other glaring historical error belonged to David Thomas, who, when quoting from some seventeenth century English pamphlet about the Scots, read out a line to the effect that ‘the beasts there are not at all great, but the women definitely are,’ or something like that. David seemed to take this to mean that the English author thought Scottish women were really quite fit. Actually, he meant that they were really quite fat. It wasn’t really David’s fault: this is the kind of error that always happens when you let PPEists loose to write a speech without adult supervision, and they start reading historical documents that they’re not really capable of understanding. Has anyone noticed that the UK only really started running into major problems around the time that PPEists started getting into government? Now they run the whole bloody thing, and the Oxford Union too, and as a result everything’s falling apart, from the windows in the Union Chamber to the practise of British Democracy itself. Both David and Hosie demonstrated the kind of mistakes you can make without a decent knowledge of history. Fewer PPEists and more historians in positions of power, please, and then everything will be alright again.

 

Moments snatched in a life of touch and go

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Jan Morris’s retrospective collection of vignettes opens with an encounter with a man on a bench in New York which perfectly distils the tenor of her writing. It embodies an eye for the beauty in apparently unremarkable scenes, a warm sympathy for others, tempered with just a touch of the old-school anthropologist’s detachment: the stranger is consistently ‘the black man’. Morris has a predilection for verbal grandeur, offset by a self-consciousness which punctures any threat of pretension; she enlivens the prosaic with literary allusion and, most characteristically of all, good humour – ‘Be not afeared’, she says, ‘the isle is full of noises’. ‘Bugs, too’, responds the man.

This scene launches a series of ‘brief encounters’, animating the human beings who populate the places she has visited. Taking its name from the cry ‘Contact!’ which launches a spitfire, or the image of electrical contacts, this collection expresses the energising and ‘inspiriting’ effects of human contact. It consists mostly of short independent passages, each with a title ranging from the faintly cryptic – ‘Breath of the woods’ – to the more matter-of-fact – ‘Costa del Sol, 1960s’ – sometimes lifted verbatim from previous publications, otherwise re-remembered and shaped to fit the format. Its subjects are by turns demotic and elite, from Aborigine activists to Yves Saint Laurent and Harry Truman. She leads us from Istanbul to Slovenia by way of a Manhattan McDonalds or a flasher in Athens, taking in portraits at times funny, at others haunting, like the unhappy man in Kanpur who touches objects in the street without a word, ‘apparently to strict unwritten rules’.

Morris has always had an eye for people and a tendency to pepper her accounts of places with insights into those who inhabit them. Her descriptions often have the slight air of a social taxonomist or ethnographer, and her anthropocentric approach brings this aspect of her writing to the fore. The term ‘Negro’ stands out, as does the description of Ethiopians as ‘beautiful lithe-limbed animals’.

There is nothing objectionable in her sentiments, but the reader may occasionally feel a little uncomfortable, as one might with an awkward great-aunt. At times her prose reads like the field notes for Frazer’s The Golden Bough, recording the curious characteristics of the world’s tribes, national, ethnic and social, and their rituals. Morris has seen more of humanity than most, though, and has taken more time to experience its variety. The warmth of her regard for her subjects often comes through.

The fragmented nature of the recollections, and the absence of any narrative cohesion, suggest that this is a book best experienced a little at a time. When read in sustained bursts it can feel like sitting at dinner with a well-read and well-travelled raconteuse: the sheer flurry of anecdotal variety can leave you with diegetic indigestion. The book moves between portraits of individuals with well-chosen details – like a playwright’s spare notes on his characters – suggestive snapshots, and overheard conversations.

Like memories which come unbidden, there is something at once sentimentally satisfying and frustratingly hollow about these portraits: each is a witness to something that is past, its wider context apparently irrecoverable; detached, staccato. Eichmann appears in the dock, but so incidentally that he is immersed in the pool of common humanity, such is the brevity of these vignettes. The collection ends with moments of human intimacy: a shared complicity in winking at a cab driver in Alexandria, and a personal memory of holding hands with her partner as their child dies. The reader, too, feels incomplete: there’s no closure here. All the images it gives us resonate, yet few other portraits are as intimate as this last one. Ironically, this recollection is set at home, and as a counterpoint it reminds us of the transience innate in any human contact.

Landy’s ‘Art Bin’. Trash or Treat?

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I’ve often wondered what Michelangelo’s reaction would be if he were plucked from 16th century Milan, and deposited in, say, the Tate Modern. I can’t help but feel that he’d be a little disappointed at what he saw. He must have known that art would develop and change – yet I don’t think he would have predicted the path that the art world has taken in recent years. In the last few decades alone, we have had pickled sharks and unmade beds, people in bear costumes and sheds that are actually boats that are actually sheds.

And now we reach the latest manifestation of this never-ending mutation: Michael Landy’s Art Bin. Essentially, it is a skip. A very large and transparent skip, yes, but a skip nonetheless. As the name suggests, this skip is designed for a particular type of rubbish – unwanted artworks. A ‘monument to collective failure’, Art Bin has already swallowed works by big-name artists such as Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst, and Landy is running a scheme through which we, the members of the public, can apply to have our artworks disposed of. After six weeks, the contents are to be crushed and turned to landfill (or ‘Landyfill’ as the artist has termed it).

Landy is no stranger to such acts of destruction; in 2001 he famously catalogued and then destroyed all of his personal possessions with an industrial shredder. Break Down was celebrated by some as a protest against consumerism, but was criticised by many as a waste: surely it would have been better to give his belongings to charity? Others merely dismissed it all as a stunt. But not only did he destroy his clothes, his passport, his photographs and even his car, he also wrecked hundreds of artworks (a few of which had been gifts from other artists), which was condemned by some in the art world. Landy is by no means the first to carry out artistic destruction – Robert Rauschenberg once erased a drawing by the Dutch abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning – he is simply the first to take it to such an extreme.

As in Break Down, Landy tries to use Art Bin to question the concept of ownership of an artwork. If a piece is sold or given away, whom does it belong to? Of course, legally it belongs to the purchaser or recipient. But does the artist retain any rights pertaining to what happens to the work? Members of the public wishing to dispose of another’s art in Landy’s skip need to confirm they have the express permission of its creator before it will be accepted, which does somewhat quash the debate. But can we go further, and ask whether art should even be destroyed at all? Obviously, only a small fraction of artworks are actually masterpieces, but all art is a creative celebration of the world around us – is it not wrong to destroy any part of it?

Landy wrote in The Guardian that he was ‘interested in failure’ and that it was ‘all about value’. This is one of the major problems I have with the piece. How can an artwork ever be a creative failure? Of course, it can fail in the eyes of its creator, but a piece will always have some value, however small and difficult to find. In terms of artistic merit, there are countless works in galleries around the world that I would have been ashamed to produce as a toddler, yet others celebrate them. It takes only one person to view an artwork, and it is worth something. Or, in the case of Art Bin, it just takes Landy to view it, and it can be worthless in a moment. And that is the strange thing. He judges what ends up in the skip – he is the self-termed ‘bin monitor’. So the contents of Landy’s creation are based on his opinion of failure, rather than on the opinions of others.

But can we even call Art Bin a creation? Surely it is the opposite of creation; the whole concept behind it is centered on destruction and its own existence is meaningless without the dropping, smashing and eventual crushing of the work of others. Can we even call it art? Perhaps it is something else. Anti-art? Call me old-fashioned, but there needs to be some aesthetic appeal to something for it to be referred to as ‘art’. That doesn’t mean that I only consider paintings and sculptures to be art – in fact the ‘readymade’ work Bicycle Wheel, by the pioneer of conceptual art, Marcel Duchamp, is a favourite of mine. It possesses an innate beauty and poise, with the wheel balanced gracefully on the stool. A large skip, on the other hand, holds no such attraction.

Art Bin projects a question mark onto the state of the art world today. What is the value of art? Like most contemporary artworks, it sets out to be novel and outrageous and, for a brief while, it has commanded the attention of the media. But is this enough?

Drama Briefing

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Fifth Week blues are a cliché, but a reality for many of us. While others drown them in a night at Shark End, or shun them altogether on the first train home, Oxford’s thesps would rather beguile them with a trip to the theatre. You may already have done so at The Invention Of Love. Now renowned as the most expensive student production ever, it’s also had the largest ever amount of private funding. With a cast that seems to originate entirely from a (fairly) comprehensive school near Slough, this may not come as a surprise, but did they live up to the hype? You have until Saturday night to find out.

If you’re reading this in 6th Week, however, there are far more chances to improve your mood. Oxford comedy giants go head to head, as the Imps and the Revue take a double slot at the Burton Taylor. We’ll have to wait and see whether Imps producer Chris Turner will combine his backstage support with onstage success, but we hear he’s surprisingly funny. The Revue’s Jess Edwards, on the other hand, will doubtless come blinking into the stage lights after a week locked in darkened rooms editing this term’s edition of The Isis.

Where did all these journo-thesps come from? Cherwell’s Antonia Tam, Theo Merz and Harry Phillips have been associated with some of the biggest shows in Oxford theatre, while OxStu deputies Anoosh Chakelian and Adam Bouyamourn have notched up five Shakespearean roles between them. Their actual Drama editor seem to be a different breed altogether, defined by an inner conflict between the actor and the journalist: to miss out on James Corrigan’s trip to the Bahamas, Mr. Maltby, may be regarded as misfortune; to print his holiday diary looks like vicariousness.

Another holiday destination, Spain, is the source of Blood Wedding, a 7th week show for which directors Brittany ‘Catherine Tate’ Ashworth and Ellen ‘very sad’ Jones have secured the services of music hack Genevieve Dawson composer. After playing Anita in Michaelmas term’s West Side Story, Dawson was last seen at the Globe Theatre handing out business cards. What this talented trio will do to Lorca’s tale of honour, grief and rebellion is anyone’s guess, but Alex Khosla’s appearance should ensure a female rush for tickets – even if he isn’t getting topless this time.

Review: IMPerium

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The Imps are all about improvisation and this latest show is no exception. If you’ve been to anything they’ve done before, you’ve seen how they work the same word or idea in many unexpected ways.

This show continues with their trademark audience involvement and improvisation. Here they use just five performers and the energy level felt muted; of course that could be due to the grey Thursday evening, but it was disappointing.

The other consequence of the small cast was that the characters could be confused easily as roles changed raidly. The lack of props makes the characterisation all the more important and, although in some cases this was handled well, greater consistency was needed.

Details aside, the acting was quite impressive and the cast seemed to be enjoying themselves. The second half revisits the first half’s scenarios with an ambitious twist, yet this wasn’t really pulled off well. The idea of setting the first half’s scenarios in the past is a good idea but was not always convincingly executed. The choice of time period relies on the audience.

There were some good moments when the actors managed to include a few references to the World Wars or other topical details, but even these were not that funny. Transforming a scene set at a bus stop in the first half, to one at a tram stop in the second is clever but not in itself humorous.

The concept is probably too ambitious because it demands that the actors know the appropriate vocabulary and social customs for whichever time period the audience choose and that they must convey this without props or costume.
The idea is an ingenious one, but I’m sceptical about whether even the Imps at their best could do this and I don’t think they were at their best during the preview. Despite this, it is still a fun way to spend an hour or so, and it will be interesting to see how the show changes when it is on next week.

two stars

IMPerium is at the BT Studio, 23-27 Feb, 19.00

 

Review: Three Sisters

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The day is May 5th. The year is unspecified. The cast and crew of Anton Chekhov’s infamous Three Sisters invite you to a small provincial town in Russia (conveniently located in the Hertford College Bop cellar) for Tara Isabella Burton’s rendition of the play.

The piece, performed in a promenade style where the audience is invited to sit, stand and walk around the living room set, deals with the frustrations and aspirations of the Russian Prozorov family, who are dissatisfied with the state of their current lives.

Olga (Flo Oakley), Masha (Cassie Barraclough), and Irina (Ali Walsh), the three sisters, distinctly unique in their respective character approaches, each give the performance an authentic believability that carries the play.

The brave attempt to incorporate spectators directly into the piece challenges the audience to see an overall picture of the piece as it progresses. ‘Dynamic performing’ is taken to a new level as the acting is not limited to one section of the ‘stage’ at a time, but involves continuous action throughout the duration of the play.

Keeping the audience continually involved, however, at times impedes on the focus on any ongoing dialogue as there is a lack of specific focus.

The ensemble struggles to find a rhythm throughout parts of the play, and there is a slight lack of energy and flow within the group as a whole. Yet there are notable highlights, including several touching and mesmerizing monologues. One is almost compelled to lean over and console Masha as she passionately declares her love for Vershinin (Huw Smith-Jones) to the other two sisters in Act Three.

Anything but conventional, one will inevitably be drawn into the play. If not on a mental plane, then at least physically.

three stars

Three Sisters is at the Hertford Bop Cellar, 23-27 Feb, 7.30pm

Review: Samson Agonistes

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The impressive and imposing setting of Merton’s Gothic chapel gives this production of Milton’s 1671 tragic drama the weight and atmosphere it deserves.

The play combines a model of Greek tragedy with a Hebrew setting. Taking its inspiration from the Book of Judges, it follows the struggles of the Biblical hero Samson and his attempt to come to terms with his loss of strength and betrayal. The play begins with the protagonist reduced to a blinded captive and unfolds as he is visited by three important figures.

The play is staged as a promenade performance in which various scenes are performed in different parts of the chapel. The audience follows the action around and is herded between scenes by the chorus. This approach gives the play a dynamism which it otherwise lacks.

As the play progresses the action moves from the outer chapel into the main chapel itself. This mirrors Samson’s own character development and emphasises a sense of inevitable tragic progression. The performance is thus rendered visually varied and innovative. The choice of space really does carry the production and adds a heavy solemnity to the action. The staging has been carefully planned to maximise the space available and does so very successfully. With a large audience, however, it could be awkward and huddled. I was put off slightly at the thought of standing for fifty minutes in the cold chapel and having to fight for a view.

The acoustics of the chapel were, on the whole, excellent at maximising the actor’s deliveries. Lines however needed to be delivered more clearly and slowly at times due to the echo. The production uses liturgical chants to aid the movement between scenes, contributing further to the sombre feel of the performance. Music also helps to smooth the transition between scenes and builds on an already great atmosphere.

Bevil Luck’s Samson successfully combined the portrayal of an anguished and broken man with the more self-assured elements of his character, andJames Lowe’s sneering and superior Harapha was very enjoyable to watch. His performance made good use of space and movement. However, I would like to have seen more physicality from the performance as a whole. The longer speeches at times lacked variation in tone and pace. The chorus has a perhaps unavoidably problematic role as observers of the action but unfortunately I felt that they only added to this static feel.

Overall the use of the chapel’s stunning visual backdrop was enough to overcome these more problematic elements. In this way they have succeeded in creating a deeply atmospheric and emotionally engaging production.

three stars

Samson Agonistes is at Merton College Chapel, 24-27 Feb, 8.15pm