Wednesday 24th December 2025
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Online Review – Translations

Jacob Zwaan
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Online Review – Translations

Impressively round characters with pigs under their arms

A play about the tension between an Irish village with a small school, and its English masters in 1833, Brian Friel’s Translations is the place to explore the meaning of cultural differences. But it has the potential for two flaws: political correctness, and comical stereotype. Kate O’Connor and Tim Kiely’s production manages admirably to avoid the former, but doesn’t quite steer clear of the latter.

The lack of understanding between the Gaelic-speaking villagers and the visiting English cartographers is marked by giving the villagers Irish accents. Unfortunately, this means that a large part of the cast speaks an unnatural accent, and the English and ‘bilingual’ characters have to play up their pronunciations as well. Thus the English sound like they have planks in their trousers, the Irish like they have pigs under their arms, and naturalism suffers.

Nevertheless, Translations does not fail to engage. It is an ambitious and well-executed project, staged in a sizable theatre, with impressive stage props and a cast of ten. Of these not all, but certainly most, act their parts convincingly. Many characters are often on stage simultaneously, and it is a joy to watch them all interact, even without a word. As a consequence they do get over the stereotypical flatness suggested by the accents. A very convincingly portrayed character is Doalty, a good-for-nothing schoolboy, who entertains better than his counterparts in the real world usually do. Schoolmaster Hugh’s performance is truly impressive. After Maire, an ambitious village girl, has held a monologue on why she wants to learn English rather than Greek or Latin, Hugh stares at her, tipsy and mortified. In silence, he pours himself a drink from his hipflask, downs it, and continues the lesson.

Translations, written in 1980, aimed to reflect upon contemporary as well as past Anglo-Irish troubles. It is a grim play still, but perhaps less politically so, and I think the directors have done well to focus on the play’s lively characters in any case. Translations is most convincingly about what is lost in translation. In a scene with great potential, the girl Maire flirts with the English lieutenant George Yolland, mediated by an interpreter. They say the same thing over and over to eachother in their respective languages. Notwithstanding the veil of culture shock,here we see the most profound translation problem of all: that between any one person and another.

Translations is at the Keble O’Reilly theatre until Saturday

Stage Review – The Way of the World

Oliver Moody
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Stage Review – The Way of the World

It is a balmy evening in late spring, in the Master’s garden at University College. Candles star the flowerbeds, champagne sparkles into glasses, and the beautiful people of Oxford sit about like a court in exile from Czarist Russia. Between two fruit trees, the actors glide across the grass in extravagant period costumes, and the twilight is alive with the sounds of culture. The Way of the World has everything an Oxford garden play needs: a budget big enough to make Croesus’ eyes water, an idyllic setting, and a plot so intricate that not even the playwright really understood what was going on.

There is just the small matter of the acting. Congreve’s late ‘restoration’ comedy – actually written long after the Glorious Revolution – is a very demanding play to perform. Its language is patterned and immensely rich in irony and other precious metals, and the story is sufficiently elaborate to have fazed audiences in 1700, let alone today. To play The Way of the World properly, you need to know the precise value of every word and plot twist, and to make them come alive for the audience.

To give a grossly simplified summary of the plot, a young man called Mirabell is courting Millamant, but is pressing his suit on her aunt the Lady Wishfort to conceal his intentions. Mrs Marwood, who is in love with Mirabell, reveals his true intentions to Lady Wishfort. Lady W, in a fit of pique, declares that she hates Mirabell ‘more than a Quaker hates a parrot,’ and threatens to cut out half of Millamant’s inheritance if she marries her lover. Mirabell decides to force Lady W’s hand by marrying her to a fictitious uncle, ‘Sir Rowland,’ who is in reality his manservant Waitwell. Add to this the roguish Fainall, cuckolded by Mirabell and in love with Mrs M, and a supporting cast of assorted fops, and you have what Serj Tankian would call a ‘pyramid mindfuck.’

This cast have some way to go if they are to make all this convincing and watchable. Admirably, the producers have drafted in many students who have never acted before, but ten days before the play’s debut the new recruits had not been well drilled. Some of the actors cut quite a dash: Eleanor Lischka’s whimsical Lady Wishfort raises a smile and Tom Bradbury bustles about the stage as the blustery country squire Sir Willfull Witwoud. Others, however, seem to think that they are acting in The Importance of Being Earnest, and do not give their lines their proper emphasis. Much more imagination still needs to go into the characters, and the cast have yet to gel as a whole in spite of some commendable dialogues. One common fault is that the actors tend to speak the lines in the right tone without concentrating hard enough on the weight and meaning of the individual words.

In all fairness, however, the cast are rehearsing frantically, and with a bit more hard work and inspiration they could make something very beautiful here. I’d back them to pull it off. This will be a visually gorgeous production in a charming setting, and with any luck we will see a performance that lives up to its glamorous surroundings.

Verdict: a curate’s egg that could turn out sunny side up

Oxford controversially defeated

Richard Pickering
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Oxford controversially defeated

The 103rd Varsity match took place in 8th of Hilary term and the tensely contested affair saw two of the most controversial decisions in Varsity history. It was also probably the closest the Varsity match has come to turning into a riot! These two decisions allowed Cambridge to walk away with a 5-4 victory which was not theirs.

The first fight of the night was the Featherweight bout between Melvin Chen (Mansfield) for Oxford and Faisal Nasim (Cambridge). The first round was a relatively close affair with Nasim able to use his height and reach advantage to keep Chen at a safe distance from him but when Chen was able to get inside his opponent, he landed hard right hands. On coming out for the second round Nasim seemed to have tired considerably, Chen sensed this and for the remaining two rounds applied relentless pressure. He landed hard combinations, to which Nasim could give no answer. Chen took the first fight by unanimous decision to make the score 1-0 to Oxford.

The Lightweight boxers were the next pair to take to the ring with Chris Pearson (Balliol), one of only two survivors from last year’s crushing defeat, fighting Jason Blick. This was the most explosive bout of the night. Pearson felt out his opponent for about 20 seconds, before exploding with a flurry of punches. He landed several devastating uppercuts and right hands, which forced the referee to step in and give Blick a standing count. Pearson sensed that his opponent was hurt and quickly resumed the attack after the count. He landed unleashed a horrific barrage of uppercuts and the referee had seen enough to stop the fight. So Pearson won by stoppage and gave Oxford a 2-0 lead.

Next came the Light-Welterweight bout between Leon Upton (Pembroke) and Brett Shanley. From the first minute of the first round Upton took control of the bout; using his southpaw stance to his advantage and landing countless straight left right hook combinations. He did not lose control at any point. Shanley was never allowed to exert any kind of pressure or land anything of note in the fight and Upton won by a unanimous decision.

In the Welterweight bout Josh Fields (Pembroke) fought Fergal McCool. This bout was very technical, with McCool applying as much pressure as he could for the entire fight. He never stopped coming forwards, but in doing so he did not appear to land cleanly. Fields, though on the back foot, landed clean counter strikes. Fields counter boxed while McCool attacked. In the end McCool won a majority decision. Fields was very unlucky not to have won, for the judges seemed to have awarded the Cambridge boxer the fight not on clean punching, but on aggression. With McCool winning on a majority decision, the score became 3-1 to Oxford.

The Light-Middleweight bout saw OUABC Captain Richard Pickering (Wadham), and the only other survivor from last year’s defeat, take on CUABC Captain and former GB kickboxer Chris Webb. This bout was probably the hardest fought contest of the evening. Webb took control of the first round landing hooks from unorthodox angles, but Pickering applied constant pressure, landing hard left right combinations of his own. Pickering started the second round the stronger and hurt Webb with several hard right hands. However, Webb managed to land hard counter strikes, including several hard uppercuts. The bout continued in the same vein for the rest of the 2nd and 3rd rounds. Pickering never took a step back and applied relentless pressure, but the Cambridge man’s greater accuracy saw him land more punches and earn the decision. So the score went to 3-2 to Oxford.

The first Middleweight bout of the night was between Carl Walton (Balliol), the clubs’ most experienced member as a double Blue from 2007 and 2008 and Ed Chadwick for Cambridge. This was the first of the controversial bouts. Walton looked extremely calm and was not at all phased by Chadwick’s attacks. He blocked all of Chadwick’s punches and Chadwick spent most of the time swinging with his forearms; only occasionally landing some hard left hands. In contrast, Walton landed solid right hand counters, left hooks and jabs. On several occasions he forced his opponent into the corner and landed hard right hands which made the Cambridge boxer turn his head away. When the announcer called out a unanimous decision, the crowd were already sure of a victory. To everyone’s horror, the bout was given to Chadwick! The crowd booed the decision and one of the Oxford coaches threatened to walk out with the remaining three boxers. It took a full 10-15 minutes for the night to resume. The Oxford crowd was outraged at the decision and were probably two steps away from starting a riot in protest. With this controversial result, the score went to 3-3 with three fights remaining.

The second Middleweight bout saw more of the same horrifying controversy. Borna Guevel (Somerville) faced Ssegawa-Ssekintu Kiwanuka. The bout started very explosively, with both boxers landing decent punches; Kiwanuka landing several hard jabs, but Guevel answering with sharp right hands of his own. It was difficult to separate them after the 1st round. In the second Guevel came out with huge determination and attacked his opponent for the entire two minutes. Kiwanuka was forced to turn his head away under the barrage of blows from Guevel. Guevel came out for the 3rd round tired after the pace he had sustained throughout the 2nd. Kiwanuka took advantage of this and landed several hard jabs. However, Guevel dug deep and responded with another burst of energy. He attacked his opponent with fury and landed right hand after right hand. The referee was forced to give Kiwanuka a standing count in the last 30 seconds of the fight. Once again the Oxford team were sure that the bout had gone their way, however, the mc announced a majority victory to Kiwanuka!

Now it was time for the Heavyweight boxers to take to the ring, with the Light-heavyweight bout between former paratrooper Ben Morris (St Hugh’s) and Tom Burlton. Burlton started the fight aggresively and attempted to match Morris’ ferocity and strength. However, Morris soon overcame any resistance his opponent could offer and proceeded to knock his opponent from one side of the ring to the other. At the end of the second round Morris landed several devastating uppercuts, which forced the referee to administer another standing count to the Cambridge boxer. The Cambridge coaches showed a degree of class by retiring Burlton at the end of the second round. This victory for Morris, kept Oxford’s chances of winning the fight alive.

With the score tied at 4-4, it all came down to James Ogg (LMH) to avenge the decisions at middleweight by beating Cambridge’s Bart Dear. Ogg started by using his greater height to keep his opponent at a distance. However, as he tired he stuck less to his strategy and allowed his opponent to pressure him and land punches on the inside. He never got back into the fight after this. Dear won the bout in a unanimous decision and in doing so gave the Light Blues a 5-4 varsity victory, albeit a controversial one at that.

Although the Oxford team and coaches remain hugely angered and disappointed by the result and by the judging on the night, on the plus side, the Dark Blue team successfully managed to restore their pride after last year’s crushing 9-0 defeat.

 

Why not try: Punting

Aleks Klosok
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Why not try: Punting

Think Oxford. Think summer. Think Punting. After all, who could study, visit or even live in Oxford without trying their hand at bit of good old fashioned punting? And who knows whether they will be sublimely skilled in the art of punting and capable of naturally propelling their craft past all obstacles and streams of all depths, or resplendently inept and prone to taking the odd dip in the stream and incapable of keeping in time with the speed of the stream?

In modern times, the art of punting and punters have, it has to be said, become somewhat of a dying breed. Nevertheless, punts are still made in England, mainly to supply the popular tourist trade in Oxford and Cambridge. Originally built as cargo boats for angling, the punt is undoubtedly the perfect way to take a pleasure trip around Oxford on a warm summer’s day with the sun glistening off the tranquil waters of the River Cherwell. For those looking took take a more hands on approach to punting the best way to learn is to start out in a boat with a competent punter in order to watch him or her at work. Budding punters should though follow Jerome K. Jerome’s words of guidance in his witty novel on boating, Three Men in a Boat, where he proclaims “Punting is not as easy as it looks. As in rowing, you soon learn how to get along and handle the craft, but it takes long practice before you can do this with dignity and without getting the water all up your sleeve!”

So after a 5 minute lecture entitled “Teaching yourself Punting”, it’s time to pick a place to punt. Whether it’s in a traditional wooden or modern fibreglass punt, the best punting to be had in Oxford is on the Isis alongside Port Meadow to the west of the town. This particular stretch of the river is both shallow and gravelly (perfect punting conditions), has attractive scenery, and is well supplied with pubs, perfect for a Pimms o’clock. If you’re feeling truly inspired then a float along the Cherwell past the Botanic Gardens and along Christ Church meadow is the perfect way to take in the all the visual splendour that Oxford has to offer. Except in the near vicinity of Magdalen Bridge, all in all punting in Oxford is a quiet and truly rural experience.

Whether you’re keen on taking a back seat with a pimms in hand or taking punting to the edge, it’s a sure fire way enjoy the sights and sounds of Oxford in the summer. So the next time you’re by the river, why not go and have a punt or two!

 

Raising the Bar

Archive
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Raising the Bar

The name Beth Tweddle may not instinctively roll of the tongue of followers of mainstream Sport. Mind you, neither would gymnastics. Despite a injury prone career, Tweddle has constantly defied the odds and proved all her critics wrong. At the age of 24, and OAP in gymnastic years, Tweddle has gone where no British female gymnast has gone before, winning numerous British, World and European titles and crowning it all with an MBE. The only major accolade to elude her during a remarkable career is an Olympic medal. With London 2012 just over the horizon, a medal of any colour in her home country would cap of the perfect finish to a sparkling career. Here Tweddle reflects on her remarkable path to stardom, how she’s helping to inspire the next generation of gymnasts and what the future holds for both her and British gymnastics.

AK: Gymnastics wasn’t your first passion so when did your love for gymnastics first start off?

BT: I was a very hyper-active kid. I tried all sorts of sports ballet, swimming and one of my dad’s friends took me along to the local gymnastics club and I absolutely hated it. It was only when I did my first competition that I realised that this was the stage I wanted to be on and I never looked back after that.

AK: If you’re going to be really critical of yourself where would you say your weakness lies? Would you say you’re weaker on the floor than on the bar?

BT: I think the artistry on the floor. I’m not the best dancer in the world! I know that and I think the judges know that so I have to work harder on the skills and the leaps to cover it up!

AK: A lot has been talked about regarding your age. You’ll be twenty-seven when you appear in London. Is age a barrier in gymnastics?

BT: It can be if you let it be. I think the main thing is I’m clever with my training and I work closely with my trainer and physios. After every major international I get time off to let my body recover and when I’m training for the events I don’t necessarily do the same sort of training as what I did when I was fifteen or sixteen. I just believe that with age comes experience and hopefully I can take that experience away and use it to my advantage.

AK: Do you still feel that there’s quite a lot of pressure on you given that you’re the stand out figure in British gymnastics?

BT: I think obviously gymnastics is seen as a little girls sport and every parent wants to put their little girl into gymnastics. Hopefully by having the likes of Lewis Smith who won Olympic Bronze and Dan Keatings who won a silver at the World Championships last year and was recently crowned European champion, hopefully little boys can look up to them and have a role model now. Their profiles are only just starting to build whereas my profile has been around for a while. Hopefully they’ll help to spur on the younger kids to get involved and not just go down to the local football pitch!

AK: Do you think the future is a bright one for gymnastics in this country?

BT: Definitely. I mean our Romanian coach was there at the weekend when we won team silver and it was the first time we’d ever come above sixth so to win a silver medal was a massive achievement for British gymnastics both on the girls and boys side. [Our coach] was so emotional. He said ‘I’ve waited eighteen years for this results and its finally come.’ A lot of people gave him stick over the years saying ‘You’ve not got the results, you’ve not got the results,’ and he was saying ‘It takes time, it takes time.’ Obviously he spotted us when we were tiny tots and it’s taken that ten to twenty years to come through and finally it has started to come through.

AK: If we look past London 2012, you’ve talked about working in schools and local communities in trying to promote, amongst other sports, gymnastics, how important do you think it is to give kids, especially those from deprived backgrounds, that opportunity to do something with their lives?

BT: It’s a massive thing. Sport for me has given me passion in my life. For me it has kept me off the streets and it has given me something to aim towards and if I can give one child that opportunity then I’ve done my job. Kids get such a bad reputation these days but at the end of the day I don’t think they’re bad kinds – they’re no different to what were as youngsters […] That’s why I’ve set these academies up in the deprived area of Liverpool. It gives them the opportunity to have a go at gymnastics. They might find that they absolutely hate it but at least at the end of the day they’ve given it a go. […] When the Olympics come in 2012 I think a lot of the lower profile sports, whether it’s Judo, Fencing or Volleyball, a lot of people will start to pick up on them and maybe start having a go at them. The uptake on gymnastics always goes over the wall when the Olympics comes. Every parent wants to take their kid to gymnastics because it’s on the TV so much! So hopefully we’ll have the same effect with the Olympics in 2012.

With further funding set to be pumped into the sport and with such wonderful ambassadors as Beth Tweddle, there’s no doubt that the future for British gymnastics looks like being a bright one. Here success in a sport which has gradually come to occupy a soft spot in the hearts of the British people is really testament to Tweddle’s highly admirable passion, enthusiasm and determination for a sport she could not live without.

 

3rd Week Photo Blog

Cherwell Photo
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3rd Week Photo Blog

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 photo@cherwell.org?

 

 

Saturday – University Parks Cat – Ursa Mali

 

Friday – Acis and Galatea St.Peter’s Chapel – Ollie Ford

 

Thursday – Gone… Rowing – Ursa Mali

 

Wednesday – Reflections in University Parks – Lauri Saksa

 

Tuesday – Biker on Banbury Road – Lauri Saksa

 

Monday – St Hugh’s Ball – Robert Collier

 

Sunday – The Ambling Band on Broad Street – Wojtak Szymczak

Cherwell’s Election Day Album

Cherwell Photo
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Cherwell’s Election Day Album

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]?

 

 

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

Shaun Thein

 

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Shaun Thein

 

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Jeremy Wynne

 

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Niina Tamura

 

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Lauri Saksa

 

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Lauri Saksa

 

Lauri Saksa

 

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

Wojtek Szymczak

 

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Wojtek Szymczak

 

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Wojtek Szymczak

 

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Wojtek Szymczak

 

 

 

Mark Mills re-elected to City Council

Rebecca Ratcliffe
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Mark Mills re-elected to City Council

Liberal Democrat candidate Mark Mills has been re-elected as Oxford City Councillor for the Holywell ward, winning 1,073 votes in Thursday’s elections.

Mills, a student at St Edmund Hall, promised constituents that if re-elected he would work towards an overhaul of the way that the council consults students to ensure that their interests are always taken into account.

Mills had campaigned on the basis that the he was the only real opponent to Labour, warning prior to the election that “Only the Lib Dems can kick Labour out of the town hall in May. A vote for the Conservatives or the Green party will only help Labour here.”

Labour was not, however, Mills’ most successful opponent. Alistair Luke Strathern, a second year PPEist from St Anne’s College who stood as Labour candidate won only 478 votes while Sophie Lewis, a finalist from Wadham College achieved 621 votes for the Green Party.

The Conservative candidate Dr Frances Kennett, who is also head of development at Regent’s Park College, won 583 votes.

All four candidates ran in the Holywell ward which, situated in central Oxford, is dominated by University students. Most Oxford University Colleges fall into the Holywell district of Oxford.

Labour has won full control of Oxford City Council, securing 25 out of 48 seats. This follows the success of Oxford East MP Andrew Smith who was elected with an increased majority.

 

 

Has Freud gone full circle?

Carinne Piekema
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Has Freud gone full circle?

While Freud’s theories have had an enormous impact on psychiatry—psychoanalysis today still uses similar methods to the ones Freud developed in the beginning of the 20th century—they have long been engulfed in controversy. Freud’s psychoanalytical thinking focused on the understanding of human behaviour by gaining access into the unconscious mind. In a typical session on Freud’s sofa you might talk about your dreams and fantasies, letting your mind wander and speak without controlling your thoughts. Freud would listen to you, absorbing your thoughts and interpreting them, unravelling the unconscious conflicts that caused the symptoms for which you came to this session. Unveiling and subsequently dealing with these unconscious conflicts would cure the original symptoms of your mental instability.

One of the major criticisms of Freud lies in the lack of experimental scrutiny that surrounds his methods of baring the unconscious. Such lack of empirical evidence was, and still is, seen as unscientific. In the 1960s and 70s however, the idea of the presence of the unconscious re-emerged and became of particular interest for neuropsychologists who were trying to gain understanding in seemingly unconscious processes in split-brain patients and in disorders such as Alien Hand Syndrome.

In split-brain patients, all the connecting fibres between the two sides of the brain were surgically cut to alleviate severe symptoms of epilepsy such that there are no direct routes for communication between the two halves of the brain any more. While this undoubtedly helped reduced the severity of symptoms, this procedure also had some other interesting effects. In a series of experiments that went on to gain him a Nobel Prize, Roger Sperry showed that each hemisphere could seemingly have simultaneous systems of volition. For instance, when he showed a split-brain patient a picture on the left side of a computer screen, which will be processed by the right side of the brain, the side that usually does not contain the language areas; the patient would tell him that he/she had not seen anything. However, when he then asked the patient to select an object from several alternatives with their left hand (the one controlled by the right hemisphere), they would choose the object that was presented to them just a second ago even though they could not express why they had picked that exact object.

While complete sections of the corpus callosum tend no longer to be performed, similar bizarre “unconscious” desires also manifest themselves in patients with particular brain damage that affects this region. For instance, in patients with Alien Hand Syndrome one hand does something completely different and independent from the other. Perhaps the most famous example was the brilliant and eponymous Dr. Strangelove, a nuclear war expert and former Nazi, whose uncontrollable hand seemed to still be living under the Third Reich. Another compelling example is that of a woman who was determined to smoke a cigarette, but whenever her one hand had put the cigarette in her mouth, the other would grab it and throw it away.

In fact, as Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology at Oxford Larry Weiskrantz has pointed out, a curious facet of many clinical syndromes caused by brain damage is that, while these patients may lose particular conscious faculties such as being able to recall past events or identify people by their faces, they still retain “unconscious” abilities to do exactly these things. A patient with prosopagnosia may not consciously be able to recognise faces as a result of damage to the temporal lobe, a region in the lower part of the brain particularly important for memory, but will still able to show changes in arousal when seeing someone familiar.

Today, with the advent of fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging), we have the ability to look inside the human brain while someone is ‘thinking’; we can observe the processes that go on inside, even the unconscious ones. With such brain imaging techniques, neuroeconomists have already started to gain insight into unconscious thought processing by showing that when we make economic decisions, for instance buying something on eBay, we tend to depend much less on our conscious, rational deliberation and much more on subconscious gut feeling and emotion. Perhaps Professor John-Dylan Haynes at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin made an even more intriguing discovery: he was able to predict, by looking at someone’s pattern of brain activity with functional neuroimaging, what a person is going to do and when they will do it nearly 10 seconds before he or she actually does. In a recent article published in Brain, Robin Carhart-Harris and Karl Friston argue that with the aid of these brain-imaging techniques, Freudian concepts might now be tested experimentally. Until recently, one of the most common ways to analyse brain imaging data was to directly compare networks of brain activation during a specific task to networks of activation during periods where the brain was assumed to be at rest. However, over the past ten years, research pioneered by Marcus Raichle started looking into what was actually going on in the brain during these periods of rest. Surprisingly, he and his colleagues noticed that the patterns of activity during rest periods were remarkably consistent, which lead him and other researchers to suggest the existence of a “default” network. According to Carhart-Harris and Friston this default network might represent intrinsic internal thought remarkably consistent with the unconscious thought processes in Freud’s later theories. Many of the key principles of Freud’s theory they argue, such as ‘the ego‘ (our conscious self) and ‘the id‘ (our unconscious self), echo our current knowledge of how the brain functions on a global level (ie a different set of areas in the brain is active during conscious processing compared unconscious processing).

Could it be that, after his initial success and subsequent fall from grace, Freud has now come full circle? Appropriately, it turns out that even Freud himself had originally attempted a not dissimilar scientific approach in the Project of Scientific Psychology published in 1895. In his neurophysiological theory he suggested that the transfer of energy between neurons in the brain caused unconscious processes, but in the years to come he decided that neuronal processing as understood at the time seemed much too complex for such an interpretation. Therefore, instead of focusing on energy between neurons, he based a new theory on the analyses of the dreams of his patients. He proposed that the unconscious is a result of highly condensed, symbolic thoughts which he called the primary processes, whilst the secondary processes, the highly rational and logical way of thinking, describe the conscious processes. That neuroscientists are currently, consciously or unconsciously, returning to these ideas would likely have amused Freud.

Review: Lashings of Ginger Beer

Andrew Mccormack
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Review: Lashings of Ginger Beer

Don’t be fooled by the name. Bike rides and picnics do not feature in the latest cabaret-style showcase from Lashings of Ginger Beer, Oxford’s own Radical Feminist Burlesque Collective. Certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, Lashings’ goal is to entertain and challenge the audience through song, dance and stand-up comedy. 

The sunny personas adopted by the performers mask their politically charged intentions to bring about greater awareness and tolerance through an enjoyable art form. Good intentions abound, and a parody of a number from Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Musical! makes a witty and poignant comment about the treatment of gay and lesbian characters in mainstream media, namely their alarming tendency to end up very quickly dead or mad.

One is left to presume the opening tune ‘You’re the Top’, sung by Sebastienne, the most seasoned cabaret performer of the troupe, is thoroughly tongue-in-cheek, descending quickly into imaginative and amusing parody of sado-masochistic preconceptions one may hold about lesbianism. Lyrics including ‘You’re like animal testing/ baby, stop protesting/ I’m your guinea pig’ and a generous smattering of allusions to popular culture, from Mickey Mouse to Professor Snape, draw the audience’s attention to the evident humour, optimism and intelligence of the troupe. Although entertaining and of admirable sentiment, there is a vocal tendency of the lead performers to stray off key in favour of enthusiastic physicality. It’s one thing to have your heart in the right place, but having your voice in the right key is just as important in so intimate a venue as those in which Lashings strut their stuff.

The exposive and explosive go hand in hand in Lashings’ showcase, and transgender comedienne Sally’s standup routine is courageous and original in its content. Sally, like every member of Lashings, does not look vulnerable onstage, instead supported by the energy and attention of her co-performers. The intimacy of her transgender standup segment offers a welcome contrast to the brassy, burlesque musical sequences.

Just as Lashings seeks to challenge the misconception of feminism as a strictly po-faced, militant pursuit, the group should show some caution as to reinforcing another stereotype of kinky, carefree, hedonism. Their desire to give a fresh, reassuring and confident voice to often misaligned and taboo LGBTQ subjects in an entertaining way is commendable, and one hopes an open-minded and receptive audience will appreciate the exuberance and warmth of Lashings of Ginger Beer. With six shows under their belt, performances at St. Hilda’s Queer Cabaret and LGBT Soc’s 40th Anniversary Ball, Lashings’ ambition to appear at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is very likely to be realised.

Verdict: Not for the faint hearted.

 

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