Tuesday 15th July 2025
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“Authoritarian and impulsive”: Union Officers speak out against Ahmad Nawaz as members prepare to vote

Freya Jones and Isaac Ettinghausen
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“Authoritarian and impulsive”: Union Officers speak out against Ahmad Nawaz as members prepare to vote

As President of the Oxford Union, Ahmad Nawaz, faces a vote on the future of his presidency, multiple senior members of his committee, including the Secretary, Librarian-elect, Treasurer-elect, and Chair of Consultative Committee, have spoken out against his leadership. 

Last week Cherwell reported that Nawaz’s lack of attendance at three meetings of the Union’s Access committee would trigger an automatic resignation unless he could provide a valid reason and collect enough signatures to bring the matter to the house. While successfully gathering the signatures, Nawaz argued that his absence from the meetings was due to “infectious or debilitating disease”. However, on one day when he claimed to have missed a meeting because of illness, he was later seen attending a dinner and speaking at a debate. Tim Green, the Union’s Senior Access Officer, said: “If [his disease] was infectious, then the president was knowingly endangering those around him. If it was disabling, then the speed of his recovery was remarkable given that just a few hours later he was able to make a 10-minute speech to a packed house.”

Daniel Dipper, the Oxford Union’s Librarian (vice-president) provided Cherwell with an on-record statement on the President’s absences, before requesting its retraction.

Ahmad Nawaz told Cherwell: “The role of President is extremely time-consuming, often with multiple speaker meetings, events and internal meetings in the same day which is why I have had to miss parts of earlier internal meetings this term. It is clearly absurd that illness is not deemed an acceptable reason for an absence with a grossly disproportionate penalty.

“It was an oversight that I had not passed earlier due to the fact that this term has been extremely busy. I did then bring my absences to the Access Committee and it was here that a member objected. This same individual had passed her own absence on the very same grounds, the previous week. This level of hypocrisy is completely unacceptable in any setting but is certainly not what members should expect from an elected committee.”

Following objections to Nawaz’s illness excuse, a vote on whether to accept his explanation and thus cease the automatic resignation will take place by secret ballot on Thursday. All Union members will be able to vote, although some of the committee have said it will only be open to those issued with voter tokens on the door of the chamber debate at 8:30pm.

Nawaz, meanwhile, claimed in a Facebook post that individuals from the committee are choosing to enact “nasty political ploys” against him. However, many members of the committee maintain that their complaints go beyond the failure to attend meetings and are a result of Nawaz’s leadership style as a whole.

The Union’s Secretary, Matthew Dick, said: “There have been countless times when he has failed to turn up to some of the more manual jobs such as moving benches or termcards, leaving Junior Committee demoralised and showing a disregard for the people who make his term and ultimately the glory he receives happen.”

The Librarian-Elect, Disha Hegde, said: “The President has shown a repeated failure to do the job that he was elected to do. From missing several meetings – without providing any reason, a failure to provide budgets when required to do so, and a failure to work a single shift during the membership drive. He has, however, shown up to every free debate dinner and drinks reception – which are all financed from the members’ money”. 

Nawaz said in response that the claim about his failure to work a single shift during the membership drive is “false” and that under Rule 14(b)(i) it is the responsibility of the President-Elect to organise the membership drive. He added that under Standing Order C1, “the Sitting Junior Offices are obliged to attend each Presidential Dinner and shall dine free of charge.”

As previously reported by Cherwell, the The Union’s Access Committee meets every Thursday and the President is obliged to attend. Failure to turn up on three occasions triggers an automatic resignation unless a valid reason for absence can be given. Under Union rule 23 (c)(ii)(2), “Any member of any Committee… having missed three ordinary meetings of that Committee without good reason in the same term, shall be deemed to have submitted his resignation from that Committee.”

The Chair of the Consultative Committee (a senior position within the organisation), Chloe Glynn, also told Cherwell: “It’s embarrassing for a President who is supposed to represent so many, to care so little about one of our most diverse committees. … There are many who have worked hard for him on different occasions and felt they did not receive the praise and rewards they deserved whilst a select few continuously seem to be at debate dinners.”

Committee members told Cherwell that Nawaz has given a group of personal friends  (“the Donnies”) a high number of privileges inside the Union. 

Image from the Michaelmas Term 2022 termcard of the Oxford Union.

Beau Boka-Batesa, an elected member of the Secretary’s committee, said: “The peer nepotism is quite blatant, which meant tensions were present in Union premises.”

Nawaz told Cherwell: “All appointments were made on merits through interviews and were ratified by the standing committee as per Rule 31 (e)(vi) without any objections from any member of the standing committee.”

Danial Hussain, a member of Nawaz’s college, Lady Margaret Hall, was appointed Director of Research. As the committee member responsible for researching questions to ask speakers, he was criticised by Standing Committee member Hannah Edwards in the 5th week Committee meeting for “asking people to write questions, when the point of this job is to write these questions”. Hegde claimed that she was asked to write questions for Nawaz’s guest AJ Tracey – a highlight of the term’s speaker schedule – the day before the talk.

Confronted with this claim, Nawaz told Cherwell: “I would refer you to the minutes of Standing Committee in 5th week where Danial’s efforts were praised by the Librarian who said he felt “quite prepared” and cited the “performance improvement” in the Union because he “always had the questions 24 hours in advance”.”

Two friends of Nawaz were specifically invited by Nawaz to the meet and greet with tennis legend Billie Jean King on Tuesday. When Cherwell reporters asked how they had procured an invite, one of them simply replied “a bit of nepotism”.

An elected member of the Secretary’s committee who resigned early in term, Kajaanan Vijitharan, told Cherwell: “The main reason [for my resignation] was that I could not justify serving under a President whom I believed to be morally reprehensible. One example that comes to mind is, when the motion ‘This House Believes Woke Culture Has Gone Too Far’ was proposed, multiple members of committee … raised to the President’s attention that the motion pandered to a right-wing ideology. Similar sentiments were shared by invited guests who refused to speak on the motion for this very reason …. In response, the President only cared about the media attention such a debate would receive, for narcissistic reasons, and not about the quality of debate at the Oxford Union.”

These sentiments were echoed by the Standing Committee member Spencer Shia, who said: “I have seen the President not take disagreement and criticism very well, often assuming a very litigious posture and not seeking to understand the opposing party’s position or to explain his own. … It is my view that the President’s authoritarian and impulsive management style has led to a breakdown in committee morale and cohesion.”

Nawaz disputes these claims, telling Cherwell that “No members of the committee raised concerns about this motion to me. The debate motions for this term were voted on by the entire committee and all the debate speakers for the term were sent to the Standing Committee for approval. This was received with no objections. The purpose of the Oxford Union Society is the advancement of education and upholding freedom of speech which naturally entail debating complex and challenging motions.”

Disha Hegde added that “a repeated failure to care about access within the Society, or the basic requirements of the job you have rusticated to do is an insult to the rest of committee and to the members.”

Asked about the vote, Nawaz told Cherwell: “I care deeply about this society. I believe that my committee and I have delivered a solid lineup of events and ask the members to consider the effort that goes into a line up of speakers and debates such as this. I would also ask for the members’ understanding that this role can be extremely demanding and exhausting. I do regret that I had to miss occasional meetings but assure members that this was indeed due to illness and ask for their understanding when debating whether or not to consider this as a reasonable excuse. Thank you.”

The Union’s 6th Week debate motion will be “This House Believes Woke Culture has gone too far”. The vote on whether Nawaz is fit to carry out the remainder of his term as President will take place that same evening.

Image credit: Meghana Geetha / US Department of State.

Westminster on the Potomac: The Americani(z)ation of British Politics

Daire O’Callaghan
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Westminster on the Potomac: The Americani(z)ation of British Politics

Families eagerly ate hot dogs, and red, white and blue banners were festooned all around as giddy fans tossed American footballs between them. When the spectators had finally taken their seats, they were greeted with two national anthems: “The Star-Spangled Banner”, followed by “God Save the King”. Such were the scenes at Wembley Stadium on 30th October as the NFL concluded the latest instalment of its 15-year-running foray into the British market before a record crowd. 

The growing interest in the US’s idiosyncratic take on football is not the only way in which the world’s largest economy has come to influence British culture. Increasingly, Britain’s political elite, as well as broader society, have looked west to determine both the policy and battlegrounds of British politics. 

America’s behemoth status forces other nations to pay it some regard, but Britain goes above this basic requirement. The intricacies of American party conventions, legislative developments and public opinion are all given much more national coverage (and indeed sustain more national interest) than the affairs of other nations. The results of the US’s midterm elections are set to dominate the week’s headlines. Interest alone is not a problem, but often fascination results in emulation and that is how Westminster has come to adopt Washington chic.

The obsession with the US brings real impacts. In the 2016 Brexit Referendum, a key plank of the Leave camp’s economic pitch was a putative trade deal with the US. During the campaign and the following years every concern over the UK’s severing from its largest trading partner was shooed away with assurances that a sweeping deal with the US would allow Britain to move away from the stagnant growth of the continent towards the dynamism, opportunity and lax food-safety standards of its former colony. 

No sweeping deal has been arranged and the benefits thus far remain minimal. In 2020 the UK signed a bilateral agreement with Indiana, a US state, and in October, British lamb was exported to the US for the first time in twenty years. In real terms, US-UK trade has fallen since Brexit, and the prospect of a deal remains dim. Unfortunately for the UK’s economy, the political obsession with America is decidedly unrequited. 

Americanisation also pervades the political discourse across society. Social media—especially Twitter, with which the political elite are so deeply enamoured—provides a direct Atlantic connection that inevitably displays an Americentric viewpoint. Transatlantic trade of goods might remain low, but trade of buzzwords and ideas has flourished. Following the right-wing in America, the Conservatives have made the fight against ‘wokeness’, especially on university campuses, a major concern, despite the relative dearth of militant social campaigners in Britain. Oliver Dowden, former chairman of the Conservative party and now Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, told an American crowd in February that “painful woke psychodrama” was now “ in our universities…in social science faculties, but also in the hard sciences”. His remarks drew praise from the Washington DC crowd but seem incongruent with the state of British campuses. 

Britain’s discourse around social issues is where America’s cultural grip has been the tightest. The US’s culture wars around abortion, race and religion make for compelling viewing, and in situations like this summer’s overturning of Roe v Wade elicit worthy solidarity. But the obsession with cultural issues in America sucks oxygen away from more pressing issues at home. It is important to note the horrors of police brutality in the US, and to castigate the American government as a catalyst for change. But it is just as important to understand the differences between the two countries’ policing systems so that we do not end up trying to fix American problems in Britain, while leaving the actual issues with UK policing unaddressed. 

America is an important ally for Britain in many respects, and it is helpful to take interest in relevant political developments. Issues arise when the interest becomes uncritical, and an assumption emerges that whatever is in vogue in America, ought to come to Britain too. Britons may watch American football, but they should not let it replace the real thing.

Image: Tvabutzku1234/CC0 1.0 via Wikipedia Commons

Banana Tree review — Signature dishes star

Oliver Hall
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Banana Tree review — Signature dishes star

‘Pan-Asian’ is a term that always raises suspicion for me with restaurants. I’m a strong believer in places that pick a clear focus, keeping their menus small and specialised. Often, the alternative is a hodgepodge of overs-sauced dishes trying far too hard to represent their origin. Although Banana Tree inevitably falls into this trap in places, it is a restaurant defined by a series of star dishes, a unique setting, and brilliant staff, that mean I can definitely see myself returning.

We kicked things off with an eclectic range of starters. The crispy gyoza were distinguished by their hard outer shell but the freshness of the vegetables inside still managed to punch through nicely. The chicken satay set is certainly a good choice for those wanting to share, and the slightly bland seasoning on the chicken itself, is more than made up for by the peanut dip. However, the spring rolls and Thai calamari unfortunately both fell into the same trap — too much batter. The inside of the rolls was a great pickle mix but the flavours were lost in the heavy pastry coating. The calamari suffered a similar fate with even the superb accompanying tamarind dip able to make up for the quantity of breadcrumbs masking any potential hint of squid.

Vegetable gyoza.
Thai calamari.
Chicken satay set.
Spring rolls.

And so on to the main courses, starting with the Rendang beef curry. The menu calls it ‘legendary’ and to be fair it lives up to the title. The beef falls apart beautifully into a coconut-based sauce full of flavour, that manager Markusz tells us, has been cooking in for four hours. The tamarind crispy fish followed up with similar success. Here, unlike the starters, the batter is a perfect light dusting topped with tamarind, lime, chilli, garlic, and peanuts. The combination of flavours is brilliantly well thought out and still allows the tilapia room to shine. Drawing a contrast between it and the blackened chilli beef is quite something. The latter was so tough that cutting into it was an effort, never mind chewing, and completely lacked any flavour. A side dish of papaya salad saved its graces slightly but it definitely isn’t a dish to head back for.

Beef Rending.
Crispy tamarind fish.

Laksa is a Singaporean staple and Banana Tree’s seafood offering largely delivered. A rich, creamy sauce is accompanied by the traditional rice noodles and a large variety of fish and shellfish. The wok-tossed noodles come with a similarly generous helping of seafood and vegetables. Although delicious their only drawback could be a black sauce that at times overpowers. The sweetcorn fritters that come alongside were mainly dough and not worth ordering as a starter on their own.

Seafood laksa.
Wok tossed noodles.

Finally, the yum yum duck salad sees a return to a brilliantly constructed mains dish. The meat on its own is good but really comes alive when eaten together with the pickles, herbs, and mixed salad.

Yum yum duck salad.
Very blackened chilli beef.

Before heading to the desert options, it’s worth giving a nod to the cocktail menu at Banana Tree. Incredibly diverse and unique it has something for everyone with two standing out for us: the lychee mojito and the Rangoon zombie. Both are very easy to drink and the first a great twist on the reliable classic. The zombie benefits from a partnership with Dead Man’s Fingers to deliver its spiced rum with pineapple and a secret ‘Zombie Juice’ mix in a very pleasing novelty cup.

Rangoon Zombie.
Lychee mojito.

On the desert front, the so-called ‘banana frotiteroles’ drizzled in chocolate and caramel are an easy win alongside vanilla ice cream. Elsewhere, the Thai green coconut stuffed pancakes are fairly dry on the outside but filled with a delicious mix of cinnamon, coconut, and brown sugar that would work just as well on its own.

‘Banana frotiteroles’.
Thai pancakes.

Overall, Banana Tree is a pleasant surprise. Despite the occasional missteps that are somewhat inevitable when trying to deliver a menu covering an entire continent, it is defined by a selection of star dishes and reliable classics. The staff star across the board with their passion and friendliness to make this a lovely place to spend an afternoon or evening.

Image Credits: Oliver Hall.

Wags in the Rag: Remembering Manny the tortoise

Ciara Rushton
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Wags in the Rag: Remembering Manny the tortoise

My parents used to tell me that, back in the 1970s when they were growing up, everyone had a pet tortoise. Coming to Oxford, I didn’t realise how common they would be among colleges, even to the extent that, every year, Corpus Christi hosts a Tortoise Fair. Tortoises from across the University descend on Corpus to take part in the yearly tortoise race, with Lincoln College’s Tortilla winning the 2022 race. It is clear, therefore, that college tortoises, like other pets, are a huge part of college and university life.

In no college has this been made clearer to me than in Regent’s Park, with the late tortoise Emmanuelle. Though Emmanuelle sadly passed away in early October this year, she was an inspiration behind this column and a true presence in the college’s everyday life. She was purchased from the Covered Market in 1976, and though at the time the college was told that she was around seventy years old, estimates now suggest that when she passed she was around ninety to one hundred years old. Nonetheless, this made her Oxford’s oldest tortoise prior to her passing, and her yearly birthday party was a key event in the college’s calendar. The college were also initially told she was male, meaning she lived the first 50 years of her life as ‘Emmanuel’, before they realised she was a female and renamed her Emmanuelle.

Image credit: Kate Andison

Regents’ Tortoise Keeper, Kate, described Emmanuelle, or ‘Manny’ as she was known throughout the college, as ‘friendly, speedy, and old.’ Whilst Manny certainly lived a long life, she was also able to prove the other two. Though I didn’t personally see her on my many visits to Regents until Trinity 2022, leading me initially to question her friendly nature, many at the college recall fond memories of feeding her her favourite foods, including bananas, strawberries, and lettuce. Her favourite place to hide in Regents’ front quad was outside my friend’s first year room, so she enjoyed being around students and involved in everyday life.

Emmanuelle also certainly lived up to being speedy in her earlier years. She won many victories for Regents in the annual Corpus Tortoise Fair during the 1970s to 1990s, seeing her eat her way through a circle of lettuce faster than her competitors. Her successes in these races are reflected in the college archive as the ‘Emmanuelle Cup’. Whilst she did not win the 2022 race, it saw her grand return to Oxford after temporarily leaving during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Emmanuelle became a true fixture of the college during her time there, being elected an honourary member of the JCR and even honoured in the college’s new stained glass windows. She was a welcome break from the stress of academic life, with students coming together to meet her and making friends through looking after her. With her birthday party in 2014 raising £700 for charity, she also helped the college give back to the community. It is clear that her loss has been felt in the college’s community given how much she brought to it.

Regents has recently announced that, in February, they will be welcoming Emmanuelle’s successor, Truffle, to the college. Truffle is 13 years old, and so will undoubtedly be at the college for a long time as Emmanuelle was. Whilst the loss of Emmanuelle has been sorely felt, the college is excited to welcome a new pet for members of the college to make memories with. Even non-furry college pets can, therefore, bring a huge sense of community to a college, and I am excited to meet Regents’ new tortoise in Hilary term!

Image credit: Kate Andison

Dysfunctional parents = a kid’s BFF

Maddy Bellucci
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Dysfunctional parents = a kid’s BFF

CW: dark humour, dysfunctional family.

I am by no means stating that people with happy, functioning parents have unfulfilling and bland bonds with them, I am merely contemplating the notion. No conclusions have yet been drawn – it would be premature to do so two lines in.

All I am saying is that affection isn’t limitless, and I am fairly certain that the birth of my brother and me divided the love my dad received in three. So, if my mum loved my dad at a rate of, say, 6/10 before us, since 2001 (moi), it became 4/10, and from 2004 (the brother) onwards it was 2/10. My mum since had to replace one big love bucket with three mini buckets to fill (and indeed over time she replaced mine and my brother’s buckets with two significantly larger ones, and my dad’s with an even smaller one). I can see why this may frustrate the poor Italian man who is so full of passion, infatuation and zeal. “Wai you two come-a and took-a away-a my-a wife-a??!”  This is just the way the buckets in my family crumbled. However, I am unfortunately not the only quirky and troubled kid who suffered the high tensions of a mental-health riddled home. In fact, I stupidly seem to have surrounded myself with people who actually steal this special quality of mine and even put my “my dad went to Italy for a month because my mum exiled him for locking us in the house all day as I was wearing a miniskirt that could be a belt” story to shame, as my close friends yawn and sigh when I promise them that this time it really is going to happen, my parents will divorce next month. I can feel myself slowly metamorphose into a boy who cried “divorce!”. But I guess a parent in prison will always take the cake. “Oh my dad is in prison, I’m so cool” – she always feels the need to whip that one out. That’s easy too, the law got involved. No personal credit can be taken there. Whereas I (and my brother) am the sole reason for my parents’ ruination. Now that’s honourable stuff.

I tell my mum everything. Not everything, but everything. When my dad and I aren’t ripping each other’s eyeballs out, we lie for hours on the sofa as he plays everything from an indie Italian punk band called something like The Grungy Faecal Matters to ‘Nowhere Man’ by the Beatles. The only reason both my parents have so much time for me is because they don’t have time for each other. Well, my dad does for my mum but, unfortunately for him, in this day and age, reciprocity is an important thing. An unreciprocated hug over the table – nearly tipping over the red wine, whilst there are guests, as the blonde woman you are seizing is grimacing and pushing you away – is regrettably deemed pitiful to the modern spaghetti-slurping audience. Ultimately, people chortle it off because he is-a Italian-a and passionate. He has cooked them what they’d usually pay £80 for at a Michelin-star restaurant. I have to admit, however, seeing my dad constantly get rejected is a sorry sight. Sometimes I try to give him a surrogate charity hug but my efforts go unappreciated because, ‘tis true, I am not his beautiful, blonde, “stupenda” wife.

As I said, I seem to loiter in circles where everyone’s parents are unhappily married or divorced. Almost all my best friends’ parents have got something going on. Whether it’s a nasty divorce; two people living together but leading two completely separate lives; two people co-existing in hatred; bipolar disorder in one or both parties; or even one party openly cheating. All my friends have one extremely close bond with one of their two parental nutjobs.  I am convinced it is this non-dedication between the spouses that allows for more dedication for the child. If you take me for example (me me me), my mum is not just my mum, she’s my manager. She does everything for me. And I mean everything. Picture a helicopter with my mum’s face on it. She knows all of my awkward encounters with the silent pork noodle-cooking girl who seems to be unaware we actually get the privilege of personal fairy-lit caves and lives in the kitchen. Mum even asks for updates: “did pork-girl glare at you again today?”. To top it off, I went on a girls’ trip to Cape Verde with my mum on my parents’ 20th anniversary. I am officially a leach.

One of my best friend’s parents would smother her in attention and devotion, making us the most delicious spinach and chicken ravioli in the hopes we would then hate the dad, who only got us frozen margherita pizzas. As much as I love pizza, the creamy ravioli took the amore. She would then egg us on to tell us all of the latest ridiculous things the man had done that week, whipping out a banana bread from the oven that tasted as though it was from the Garden of Eden. She is but one of many examples of such parental dynamics.

The people I know who have happy, functioning parents tend to not be anything to write home about. My nutjob friends, who have nutjob parents, however, make for a good story.  Most of the time they also happen to be better company. Sorry, I said it. I guess what I am saying is, if you regrettably had the misfortune of waking up in a home of co-made, smiling pancakes, and you were left with sulking babysitters whilst your parents went on romantic dates, you can still fix this and make sure of your close bond with one or both your parents. There are many ways you can ensure destruction. You can either do the classic, and squish red thongs on the side of your dad’s bed frame – although if they’re truly happy, their honeymoon trust will cut through that. Alternatively, buy your dad a guitar and tell him you’d love him to play ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door.’ After the fourth month of the same four chords, he will definitely be knocking at your front door. And in the mean time you can snuggle up to your mum and tell her you’d love to go shopping with her because you need her fashionable opinions.

Image Credit: Lisa Fotios via Pexels.

The Duchess of Malfi: A Review

Clementine Scott
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The Duchess of Malfi: A Review

The servant Delio (Riya Banerjee) enters the stage, a tense, static figure, and cloaks the Michael Pilch Studio in an uncomfortably long silence. Rhapsody Productions’ version of John Webster’s tragedy The Duchess of Malfi begins as it means to go on, encapsulating the moment of quiet before disaster, in a minimalist production in which the performances of a talented cast carry this tension throughout. 

Webster’s play paints a brutal picture of political corruption in 16th-century Italy, through the lens of a recently widowed young woman and her ambitious brothers, and stagings of the text often live and die on the strength of the interactions and rapport between members of the cast. There is a complex web of relationships, between the powerful and the power-hungry, the lovers and the ambitious courtiers, to be established in a series of vignettes before the escalation to violence in the final acts. While Rhapsody Productions have slightly slimmed down the cast and removed some scenes, the complexity remains, and has been well navigated.

None of the cast members ended up defaulting to the well-worn stereotype associated with their role. The performance of Nathan Crewe (who also directs the production) performance granted the disgraced spy Bosola a degree of emotional depth, while losing none of the character’s innate sliminess; Alex Bridges as lovelorn steward Antonio knew when to rein in the nervous energy in favour of a more authentic tenderness.  Jules Upson was deliciously unhinged as the Duchess’ brother Ferdinand, although one sometimes felt as though he amped up the volume of his dialogue at the expense of emotional expression. Disha Kashyap’s eponymous Duchess was the sun around which the rest of the play revolves, the character acting as a fittingly blank canvas onto which the men around her can project, though later in the play a degree of tenacity on her part does shine through.

Elspeth Knight’s costumes were  another highlight, with Crewe’s corset and mesh shirt ensemble and the touches of androgyny in Bridges’ look being especially memorable. However, given the strength of the cast’s acting performances, it is a shame that the production wasn’t more impressive aesthetically. The minimalist set design by Ruby Sayer did  not necessarily correspond with  the lavishness of either  the costumes or the sordid decadence on display in Webster’s script.The production seemed to occupy a strange grey area between a modern adaptation of the themes of The Duchess of Malfi and an attempt at authentically capturing the play’s setting. The only real element of set design were a few translucent white curtains hanging off-centre at the back of the stage, which are not utilised as seamlessly as they could have been in facilitating various actors’ entries, exits and, in one case, imprisonment.

The staging of certain scenes was also awkward — with the space at times too crowded and in other moments underutilised. The visceral onstage murders, revolutionary when the play was first staged,  were well performed, but the production had not sufficiently thought through how to get around the placement of several corpses centre stage halfway through the show, so the later scenes sometimes felt claustrophobic. Moreover, the staging of some of the play’s dialogues felt very static, and as a result one became keenly aware of how often that space wasn’t being filled, despite the modest size of the Pilch. 

 Rhapsody Production’s version of ‘The Duchess of Malfi’  had some teething issues, but these do not ultimately detract too significantly from the production’s merit. The cast and crew  demonstrated a strong ability to convey the play’s themes to a contemporary  audience through evocative performances, despite a convoluted script and limited visual resources.

Christian Girl Autumn : hot or hated ?

Naomi Man
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Christian Girl Autumn : hot or hated ?

Shortening days and falling temperatures signal for many things, but most excitingly it means that Caitlin Covington’s Christian Girl Autumn shoot is just around the corner. The photoshoot typically features heavily saturated of Caitlin in warm, autumnal hues of orange and brown, wide brimmed hats or beanies, knit jumpers and knee-high boots. Initially gaining traction from a tweet joking that it was the antithesis to the concept of Hot Girl Summer, introduced into the mainstream media by Megan The Stallion, Christian Girl Autumn is used to mock the perceived idea of basic that usually comes hand in hand with a privileged, prejudiced, right wing, white woman. Caitlin’s responded suggesting social media users made fun of her “good ones” instead, this was received well and she followed up with outlining that she did not align herself with the stereotypes that could be drawn from the images though acknowledging the humour that was found in it. 

After this, Covington has been able to create a fanbase through harvesting the clout she gained as The Christian Girl of Autumn. Yet what is more interesting is the stereotype that is found from her position as a representative of “basic white girl core[1]”. The aesthetic has become a uniform whether that is playing into the irony as Covington does, or a sincere appreciation of knee-high boots, skinny jeans, and off the shoulder knits. And yet despite the self-awareness that those dressing in this manner likely have, this aesthetic that is looked down upon as a joke in comparison to other aesthetics that offer the same uniform like outfits. There is a level of superiority on the internet that many hold over the “basic b*tch” aesthetic, yet surely those lacking the self-awareness that they are dressing the same as huge swathes of people like them should be considered in the same manner. Over the course of the pandemic, many aesthetics crystallised and many were passing fads, the speed of trend cycles increased to unattainable time constraints until they imploded, and the algorithms became an echo chamber of styles and individual pieces of clothing. Going to any event demonstrates the accidental uniformity of people – there is a reason that decades’ costumes are easy to boil down into a few constituent items. People crave familiarity and for that reason there will always be a conscious or subconscious effort to assimilate into certain groups, or to be led by certain individuals.

Just as in any form of creative form of self-expression, there is never and there will never be a completely original thought. The collective consciousness of people now is more united than ever thorough things like the Tiktok algorithm which feeds you what other users that it believes are like you have already enjoyed. There is a frequency in the distorted chequerboard pattern, in Mary Quant-esque five petaled cartoon flowers, wide leg jeans and Airforce-1s that runs parallel to the uniform of the Christian Girl in Autumn. The design ideas and items of clothes that I have listed will evoke your own images, thoughts and cliches in the same way that the term “basic” to describe clothing will. The term has recently begun to be used to describe Jordan 1s, Nike Dunks and the like, items that have always been popular holy grails amongst the community that labels themselves as ‘sneaker heads’ , which often appears to be gatekeeping-ly masculine. The increasing perceived basicness of these shoes has occurred almost in symmetry with the increasing popularity with young women. This condescending superiority complex is seen elsewhere in women’s interest, from music to films, to video games. Women cannot have casual enjoyment of something as they are so often gatekept out of these things until they cannot be at which point men abandon it. American cheerleading used to be a male dominated sport as men were the only ones admitted to university until women began partaking after their admission and its increasing popularity among them leading to men leaving the field until it became competitive. 

Clearly this male superiority complex crosses over many facets of daily life. Men seem to rarely face the ‘basic’ criticism or any kind of criticism over the way they dress that women face. This is despite the fact options for accessible men’s fashion remains limited or they choose to allow it to remain limited. The regular branding of different styles of women’s fashion as ‘basic’ illustrates that the negative connotations of this uniformity is done so through the lens of misogyny rather than a ‘fashion’ or ‘personal style’ forward mindset. Even aesthetics that appear to be less ‘basic’ than that of Christian Girl Autumn still have characteristics that are common among that specific community—take for example goths, cottage-core, or subversive basics. There will always be an inspiration for clothes or an outfit no matter how niche the aesthetic, and as fun as the concept of Christian Girl Autumn is, the constant drive to appear not-basic, or fashion forward through regular wardrobe updates to keep up with trends has become exhausting and unsustainable. 

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/18/style/christian-girl-autumn-caitlin-covington.html

Image Credit : RawPixel

We need to talk about Pasoori

Tom Farmer
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We need to talk about Pasoori

We need to talk about Pasoori. It’s Coke Studio’s hit single by Ali Sethi and Shae Gill which has taken the world by storm. Ranked third on Spotify’s Global Viral 50 list, it was the first Pakistani song to feature on its global song chart. It was sampled in Disney’s Ms Marvel, has been covered by a Dutch vocalist, a Californian violinist and me, all the time, in the shower. You might have heard it on Tik Tok, or on radio stations from Delhi to London. And if you haven’t, you need to. 

Pasoori is more than just a catchy hit which broke out of Pakistan; it’s a beautiful and progressive statement of social and cultural values. Dubbed “quietly subversive” by the New Yorker, it’s subtly provocative all the while feeling profoundly familiar, invoking classical themes and drawing on a number of cultural sounds. Sethi describes it as a blend of raga and reggaeton (“ragaton”), but it blends Turkic, Arab, Persian and Indic influences into a collective inheritance: Turkish baglama alongside Afghani rubab alongside the mandolin. The fusion genre is absolutely stunning, fiercely demonstrating the ‘free movement of ideas and melodies through song’.

Sethi says a lot through this song. Its lyrics were finalised just 12 hours before the music video was filmed, and it reads more like poetry than pop. To understand its message, you have to consider the context of its production. In 2019, as tensions in Kashmir escalated, Pakistani artists and actors were banned from working in India. . Tours were cancelled, prominent Bollywood actors returned to Pakistan, and the mood turned sour for artists on both sides of the border. Despite political tensions, Pakistanis have historically consumed Bollywood movies just as Indians do Pakistani dramas – a huge blow had just been dealt to the cultural exchange between the two nations. That’s why it’s all the more interesting that Pasoori hit No. 1 on Indian charts, just as two teens were arrested for listening to Pakistani music. The song’s success speaks to artists’ ability to dissolve borders, even as they remain as tense as ever.

It almost comes as no surprise, then, that Pasoori follows star-crossed lovers, with potent lyricism that is passionate, uplifting, and full of anguish. Written in Punjabi, a language spoken on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, the lyrics grieve for a love that never was, beseeching the listener to end the lovers’ separation; in the chorus, “My love, don’t let this distance reign”, and the bridge, “Don’t let these lovers be in pain”. To me, Pasoori isn’t a clichéd song which asserts that love conquers all, whatever challenges it faces. Rather, it feels in its entirety the pain of the separated lovers, decrying the injustice of it all, and dreams of a fairer world. Love itself is given no power, it simply exists, regardless of the world around it – Gill sings, “I forgot about my chains \ and people’s refrains”. It exists, regardless of morality – “If your love is poison \ I’ll drink it in a flurry”. 

I should add, rather unhelpfully, that I don’t speak Punjabi, and that many of the words used are difficult to translate. For example, the expression ‘my love’, mere dhol, used in Pasoori also means ‘my drum’, as though invoking the sound of a heartbeat. Pasoori itself can translate to a number of things, including ‘conflict’.

Pasoori, then, is familiar in more ways than one. This conflict is a universal story. Sethi says ‘it’s about somebody who is oppressing you, and preventing people who want to be together from meeting’. A song like this isn’t particularly bold or new; classical desi music is full of examples. Only, it feels ever more prescient in today’s world of fortified borders and isolationism. This song, this conflict, has struck a global nerve. And as with all great pieces of art, it faithfully reflects whatever interpretation we project onto it; the border in question might be India and Pakistan, but it could be the US and Pakistan – Sethi spent his life between these two places. Pasoori could equally be an anthem for the diaspora, people whose identities are truncated by borders and who live isolated from their family and culture. 

I’d propose an alternative interpretation. 

The music video provides further clues. It sets the song among striking visuals that tell a powerful story of identity and authenticity. To me, everything from the introductory soundscape to the costume design says ‘be proud of who you are’. The aesthetic captures the traditional crux of the song while feeling contemporary, reflected in the singers’ modern interpretations of traditional outfits. Sethi wears a striped kurta and matching cap, what one might wear to the mosque, but with bold colouration and futuristic sunglasses: as he describes it, ‘of the past and of the future’. There are gorgeous scenes of a girl with a nose to ear chain, bridal jewellery turned gothic, and boys performing a traditional jhumar dance, kurtas flaring in an effeminate flurry.

Although it took me a long time to decipher, I was immediately struck by what I perceived as queerness. Tucked alongside the old-Bollywood duet of forbidden lovers are stills of a young man in gem-studded makeup, piercing gazes from a woman in a room of flowers, a boy in bright yellow and blue clothing. Their meanings just beyond reach, their stories untold. Shae Gill brings a slightly smoky timbre to the duet, very different from the high pitch of classical Indian female vocalist. And Sethi is singing masculine pronouns in a love song: “He said he’d come, he never did \ my heart lurched and slid.” I wasn’t surprised to discover, then, that Sethi is a queer artist, and has touched upon gender identity and sexuality in his work before, such as with his song Rung (meaning ‘Colour’) which celebrates LGBTQ identity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when I listen to the song, this is the conflict that resonates with me the most.

And yet, for such subversive undertones, the heart of the song is the Ghazal, which is a form of amatory poem associated with Sufi Islam. The music video begins and ends with Sheema Kermani performing a classical Indian dance called a Bharatnatyam. The beat follows traditional Indian raga, which is a framework for improvised classical music. It’s no mistake that Pasoori readily evokes traditional themes; Sethi admits that the appetite for Sufi music in Pakistan allows him to approach subversive ideas through the metaphors of Sufi poetry. He calls these metaphors ‘beautiful, deliberate ambiguities’. Like singing a love story as a man, to a man, perhaps.

It’s hard to describe the boldness of this metaphor, and the importance of it going viral. The closest analogy I can think of is how Hozier’s Take Me To Church uses Gospel to deliver its message to religious communities. Homosexuality has been criminal in Pakistan since the British Raj. Since then, religious fundamentalists have kept it so. Yet, the Ghazal has never been entirely heterosexual. Although we may now call this queerness, pre-modern Ghazals left the gender of the subject ambiguous as they were concerned with expressing man’s love for God; the subjects were simply aspects of this divine beauty. Men’s openly romantic or erotic attachments with other men in 19th century India ultimately shocked British missionaries enough to enact anti-sodomy laws in 1861. These were repealed in India in 2018, but remain in place in Pakistan today. Pasoori boldly reclaims this pre-colonial identity, reconnecting with the history of Ghazal and delivering a powerful, and very queer, message. As its music video passes 300m views, and it remains on Pakistan’s top charts, it speaks to the heart of our understanding of love and God.

It’s fascinating to see this element of Islam portrayed;Sufism embraces pluralism, tolerance and an inward search for the divine. It’s a far cry from what many (in the West and outside of it) perceive Islam to be, today. As Sethi says, ‘It’s unfortunate that we [Pakistan] are associated with close-mindedness sometimes, especially in the West. And I think that our music and our art and our culture are opportunities […] to showcase the alternative: which is that long before they thought of it, we were it’. Although Pasoori speaks through metaphor and imagery, our collective hope for these star-crossed lovers must be that they teach us to be kinder to one another, that ‘this song is able to transcend boundaries, borders and binaries’.

(Now go listen to the song, with captions on)

Narcissus : a review

Will Wilson
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0
Narcissus : a review

It is perhaps unsurprising that a play named after a boy who falls in love with himself should be as self-indulgent as Kian Moghaddas’ Narcissus is. The play unapologetically devotes itself to Oscar Wilde and attempts to recreate the decadent culture of fin de siècle England. At best, this leads to moments of delightfully frivolous conversation peppered with aphorisms worthy of Wilde himself, as when Mr Norris (Ezra Jackson) declares, “I can resist everything, except temptation”; at worst, the endeavour to resuscitate the diction of dandyism becomes shot through with modernisms such as “ready when you are” so that we are left with a somewhat Frankensteinian dialogue that brings the action of the play to a jarring halt. 

The more general issue these narrative fissures reveal is that Narcissus cannot sustain the emotional gravitas it heaps upon itself. Take, for instance, the scene in which Echo (Sophie Magalhaes), who has recently fallen in love with the young Narcissus (Sam Burles), goes to the house of his father Lord Necropher (Noah McGarrity) in search of him only to learn she may never leave. Magalhaes’ voice resounds with all the pathos of one who has learned they may never really live again; McGarrity inflicts this fate with a gratifying Machiavellian glee; David Street’s work on lighting does much to create an appropriately sinister atmosphere. Yet at times the lines feel so stilted as to undermine all this, so that ultimately the scene conveys all the threat of a 3D-printed Keir Starmer.

Narcissus is at its strongest when it allows this unselfconscious theatricality to slide and flaunts its own underlying absurdity. Burles’ pairing with Cosimo Asvisio as Arthur Minyas works particularly well in this regard. The latter, playing a dusty socialite whose life clearly peaked in his (presumed) time at Eton, delivers his plaints to his reluctant lover with a droning monotonousness sufficiently soporific to euthanise an expiring poodle. The resulting bathos is superb, because it allows the play to register most acutely its ironic distance from the world it purports to recreate: Narcissus and Arthur are no Dorian and Lord Henry, it seems to acknowledge, but only a flaccid imitation of them. This point seems to be reinforced by the comic moments of the play, such as when Narcissus and Arthur, lying in wait to uncover Norris’ secret lover, are discovered and claim, respectively, to be looking for their (third) shoe and tying their (already tied) shoelaces; or when the matriarchal Lady Necropher (Charlie Lovejoy) grills a squirming Arthur over his intentions in his friendship with Narcissus. The dynamism between actors in these scenes conjures up the slapstick hilarity of a Fawlty Towers episode, an aspect all the more entertaining because it is transplanted into the world (admirably recreated by set and costume designers Iona Eyre and Eliza Browning) of upper-class Victorian London.

Unfortunately, the play does not entirely commit itself to this comical self-reflection. Burles’ final monologue seems at first to capture the naïve ardour of a youth entirely in love with himself, spoken by an actor setting out to ironise the performativity of this pose. Yet by the time Narcissus stabs Arthur in the back (to an uncomfortably short snippet of Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu) it is unclear whether play and actor share the unreflective sincerity of the character himself. The denouement does have the merit of turning around a well-orchestrated plot-twist, yet this fails to bring the hoped-for gasp from the audience because the play lacks the narrative backbone to support it. Each scene up to this point feels almost like an Instagram reel, something to be enjoyed for itself but then largely forgotten, so that Magalhaes’ character, in spite of how well she plays it, feels by the end of the play less like an echo than a whole in a shirt you took to Oxfam six months ago. 

Wilde, of course, with his emphasis on style over meaning, would laud Narcissus reel-like quality. Indeed, the sexual politics of the play, which seem at one moment to condemn adultery, at another to champion homosexuality, and then finally to declare its apathy towards both these issues, seems thus to disavow any moralising purpose in favour of technical flourish. Particularly impressive are Magalhaes’ interaction with McGarrity, and later a dinner scene involving Lord Necropher, Narcissus, Arthur and Norris, in which characters echo one another, pick up one another’s lines, speak together and, at one point, comment on the artificiality of all these tropes. Yet the play (once again) self-sabotages this ambitious formalism in a moment when Arthur, Narcissus and Echo perform a polyphonic speech on the taboos and attractions of adultery and homoeroticism. What was previously a mere technical feat becomes infused with a moralising tendency, and what unfortunately results is a scene that smacks of a GCSE Drama piece on the throes of secondary school romance. 

Ultimately, Narcissus, much like Dorian Gray, looks at itself to find an image that it does not recognise. Regardless of the undeniable merits of its constituent parts, holistically it cannot decide what it wants to be.

Skin Review 

Teagan Riches
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Skin Review 

CW // cancer, death 

Written and directed by Peter Todd, and led by a phenomenal central performance from Izzy Lever, SKIN is a deeply moving and emotionally honest portrayal of a young woman named Sadie (Izzy Lever) after she is diagnosed with melanoma. Following a brief opening scene between Sadie and her sister Clara (Elise Busset), she learns of her new diagnosis before we, the audience, are hurtled through the next few scenes alongside her as she barely manages to process everything around her. The pace of Todd’s writing and the staging are both key here: Lever is essentially thrown about the stage from scene to scene, with transitions often marked only by a swapping of set pieces and brief changes of lighting. It’s a dizzying experience, appropriately so for young Sadie. We watch her subjected to procedure after procedure and bad phone call after bad phone call, and witness the emotional reverberations of her ordeal.  

There is a consistent motif of entrapment throughout. Sonically, for instance, where sound designer Alva Orr does some remarkable work: in moments of extreme stress, a deep bass hum plays from the speakers to simulate tinnitus, drowning out voices and shaking us in our seats. The sound design created an especially visceral atmosphere within the Keble O’Reilly, which is a large space, though set designer Sav Sood fills it well. The set design was smart and functional: minimal enough for efficient stage transitions and to focalise the emotional spectacle rather than the visual, whilst still giving the actors space to breathe. Sadie is mentally entrapped, by a body trying to kill her in her own suffocating skin, but also by uncertainty. The plot is structured to give her virtually no respite, where the threat of ‘sorry, I have some bad news’ always looms. I sometimes felt implicated in Sadie’s entrapment by simply being in the audience, the thrust staging of the audience rendering us more like observers in an operating theatre. 

The most arresting part of the play was the expressionist emulation of a CT scan, told largely through movement and metaphor. Sadie begins by speaking to her doctor: this time, a voice from the speakers, and Sadie begins to almost physically shrink in comparison. The stage lights dim, Sadie’s heartbeat thrums, and four nurses with light bars walk around her and start scanning her. She is thrashed around these luminous walls while she struggles to reach for her red ‘panic button’.  Lighting designer Ana Pagu and choreographer Tiggy Jones did brilliantly here and made the whole sequence uniquely terrifying. 

Crucially, the visual and sonic elements of the play always served to enhance the performances and never detracted from them. All to the good; the performances were incredible. The supporting cast had to double up on their roles, but you’d never guess it, because they were always convincing as either. Proshanto Chanda was warm and funny as ‘hair dryer man’. Sal Algannin made me genuinely angry as Sadie’s unreasonably awful boss, Simon. I was particularly impressed with the precision of Pip Lang’s dual performances as bubbly Nurse Caroline and stony Dr Kinsela: at one point, one after another! Balaji also remained a friendly and patient presence as Jill, Sadie’s work friend. The two standout performances however, were Lever’s and Busset’s as sisters braving the struggle (and indeed a shared one, as Todd smartly shows). They commanded the stage effortlessly and delivered mountains of heart-rending dialogue with finesse and sincerity, and were totally convincing as siblings. Todd’s writing also deserves more praise than I have space for here, in managing to craft a complex and realistic interior life for Sadie, through dialogue that was quietly beautiful but never heavy-handed or enamoured by its own poetry.  

I also appreciated the ending that Todd wrote, despite it being spoiled in the show’s programme (maybe I was meant to read that after the show). Though we never hear the voice on the other end, Sadie receives one last phone call from the hospital: “Yes..?”, she answers, as the final light shines on her face, lingers for a second, then goes out. I’d imagine that’s how she feels. 

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