Review by Rees Arnott-Davies.One anticipates when seeing a play in a foreign language (especially one so distant as Mandarin) that something is always going to be lost in translation. Unfortunately, this was very much proved to be the case by 'I Love Peach Blossom', a play seeming to offer so much, but unfortunately failing to deliver. Sitting in the audience watching the breakdown of not only a relationship, but also reality, I felt all too shackled by the prison-house of language.
      
This is not to say that 'I Love Peach Blossom' didn’t have its moments. In particular, the progression from comic to tragic is carried out practically without fault, adding to the dramatic effect. Furthermore, the blurring of the lines between the suffocating reality that engulfs the lives of the characters, and the impossible play that they are trying to stage, is ultimately successful. One gets a very real sense that fiction is, for the characters, the only reality that they can escape to when their lives have reached an impasse or they are close to collapsing about their heads. And it is this sense of a deferring of the inevitability of the passage of life, which raises the play up, which makes believable what one might otherwise consider too simplistic or two-dimensional.Unfortunately, these moments of excellence are undermined by more material problems. The fact that the play is translated for the audience on a screen behind the actual stage can, at its best, lead to unintentional Brechtian moments of alienation, and at its worst lead to an entire breakdown in the dramatic project. I will not go into specifics, but needless to say, it is inadvisable to place the concluding revelation on the play slap-bang in the middle of the stage before the final scene has even started. Equally, the translation leaves more than a little to be desired, demeaning a script that might in the right hands have sparkled with vitality.
       
Nonetheless, one must always jump at the opportunity of experiencing a cultural production from outside one’s own social background, and if you were to take nothing at all away from seeing I Love Peach Blossom apart from the realisation that there is another side to theatre besides that approved by the Arts Council of Britain, it would still be worth it.

Review by Frankie ParhamConflict can always make good drama. From Homer’s Iliad to Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, warfare offers the perfect environment for man to seek the answers to questions of morality and consequently recognise his own insignificance in a brutal world. Max Seddon and Ben Judah, creators of The Desert of the Real, seem to strive for the same artistic profundity – and they almost do it.First we meet Nick (Rupert Cohen), an archetypal Oxford post-grad student,obsessing over his thesis. He is too self-centred to notice that his girlfriend, Alice (Hana Chambers), is only seeking emotional attention when she proposes a trip to Iraq.  Alice, however, ends up actually going, enlisting the help of the mysterious Dr. Regev (James Schneider) an Israeli born in Baghdad. We follow her tumultuous journey towards the capital via a crazed driver (Roger Granville), Dr. Regev’s psychopathic friend Jamal (Oliver Harvey) and an unstable American officer (John Maher).Back in Oxford, Nick pines for his girlfriend, whining at the long-suffering Chloe (Rachel Smith), who happily welcomes the arrival of charismatic Ibrahim al-Ansarn (James Kingston). The alleged Arab arts enthusiast is in fact a terrorist, out to capture Nick in an attempt to blackmail his father, who aided the start of nuclear warfare in Ibrahim’s homeland.The plot itself reflects how much Seddon and Judah are giving their audience to deal with, not to mention the number of heart-felt speeches and tantrums they burden their actors with. However, the entire cast take on the difficult task with admirable gusto, and there are a number of performances which truly stand out: Kingston is marvellously erratic, while Granville flexibly doubles as several angry Arabs. Chambers also gives the play a solid backbone, portraying the Oxford student we all relate to – oblivious to the consequences of her actions.Yet, for all the ironic juxtapositions between the petty preoccupations of privileged Westerners and ethnically-charged conflicts of the East, the play never makes clear what message it wishes to give. Are we supposed to feel remorse for Ibrahim and the sufferings of his country, after we have just seen him in a farcical tussle with a “dirty Jew”? The shift in tone is too sudden, similar to the voiceover (which acts as a diversion during scene changes): it’ll suddenly declare that another coup has broken out in the Ukraine or China. Is the world falling apart? Frankly, you don’t know what you’re supposed to be concentrating on by the end.Much of the fun of the play comes from hearing references to Oxford life (prepare for allusions to the Turf and scenes in the King’s Arms), but even this begins to wear thin. The characters are either unexplained (Dr. Regev’s intentions are completely indecipherable) or deserve much more development.  While the last scene hints at Alice’s reasons for escape,too much time is spent pulling at other strings to give an answer. It’s all intriguing enough to go and see, but too confusing to enjoy.
3/5

Max Thompson and Rachel Fraser find out what it is to be a Viking in the 21st century.

Sangwon Yoon and Jenny Moore keep us update on news this week in the mid-week news round up .
 

The excellent German blog Die Achse des Guten ("The Axis of Good") has drawn my attention to this bizarre claim in today's Daily Record:

Legendary [Loch Ness Monster] hunter Robert Rines is giving up his search for the monster after 37 years. … Despite having hundreds of sonar contacts over the years, the trail has since gone cold and Rines believes that Nessie may be dead, a victim of global warming [my emphasis].

Is this a joke? Cherwell 24 is not responsible for the content of external links

It didn't take long to notice that the Germans have no equivalent of the verb "to facebook".So I thought I'd coin one. "Facebookieren."It uses the conventional German trick of adding "-ieren" to pretty much any foreign word (cf. "abandonnieren", "kommandieren", "absorbieren") to make it from a noun into a verb Germanise it (or should that be "germanisieren" it). So far I've only succeeding in getting one other person to start using this word. Hopefully my success will improve.Does anyone have any further suggestions for some new German coinages?

A bid by Oxford University to build a £29m book depository will now be decided
in early May, pending a planning inquiry. Permission for the depository, which could store up to eight million volumes, was refused in November. City councillors rejected the application on several factors, including the potential
landscape intrusion and the failure to meet energy efficiency standards. Colin Cook, Labour city councillor, said: "The inquiry will give both sides the chance
to go through the arguments in greater detail.” By Clare Barnard