by Marley Morris 

Berkoff’s tragedy ‘Greek’, based on Sophocles’ ‘Oedipus Rex’, thrusts in front of us a vision of a decadent and brutal London.  It evokes William Blake’s description of the city in his famous poem, and is almost entirely populated by thugs and whores. Matt Ryan’s production of the play brings this vision to life, with the four actors onstage managing to capture London’s hustle and bustle, its unforgiving callousness, and its bitter social divides, without forgetting the city’s natural charm.

The production begins with the actors jarringly coming into motion and a vivid description of the local “corner pub” by Eddy (James Reid).  This immediately sets the scene for the action to come. The actors’ faces are painted a ghostly white, and this together with the faint sound of carnival music creates a terrifying tragicomic tone. Therefore when Eddy’s parents (played by Natasha Kirk and Phillip Aspin) reveal the gypsy’s horrific prediction after recounting an otherwise cheerful trip to the fair, the sudden twist in the tale seems almost inevitable.

But the pace of the play does not slow down from there. Instead we rocket through Eddy’s journey, meeting dozens of bizarre and gruesome caricatures as we go. (In fact, if anything the production moves too quickly; we are barely allowed an opportunity to catch our breath.) The location is endlessly switching: one moment the stage is a London alley, then it transforms into Heathrow airport.  All these shifts are made through the movements of the actors – one becomes a complaining customer, another makes the sound of a starting aeroplane. These energetic scene changes could have been more believable, however, if the set had been used as imaginatively as the actors, even if the Berkoffian notion of minimalist scenery is taken into account.  As it is, turning a table over onto its side is hardly the most original use of props possible (and begs the question of whether it’s needed at all).             It is in the acting that this production really takes shape. Perhaps most memorable is the linguistic battle between Eddy and his actual father, both actors clearly having a lot of fun as they mime each act of violence upon one another. Natasha Kirk’s long monologue as the Oracle is performed excellently, even if it does tend to over egg the pudding. The ensemble pieces, meanwhile, are even more impressive, from the actors’ opening depiction of an archetypal London pub to their staging of a typical dreary day in Eddy’s family home. The emphasis of movement and sound – surely the hallmark of a good Berkoff production – is wonderful. Although the play is now slightly dated, and can seem to be overloaded somewhat with a multitude of convoluted themes, its essence – that is, an atmosphere of cruelty and dissolution – is brought across with full force in this production.

by Marc Kidson
 

It is a pet fact of many History teachers that before becoming one of the chief architects of mass murder for the Nazi regime, Heinrich Himmler had been a modest chicken farmer. It seems incongruous that a man of so provincial an occupation could have stamped his mark so irredeemably across the twentieth century, and have been culpable for millions of deaths. Sadly, it is also hard to believe that David Cochrane’s Chicken Farmer could combine a plausible dramatic narrative with ribald farce and poetic dialogue. For this reason, the climactic tension of “the choice” that Himmler must make fails to materialise in a convincing way. Nonetheless, the production displays some effective writing and offers some worthwhile performances, especially notable given the potential for historical plays to descend into caricature.

            Cochrane’s most effective dramatic device is arguably Hitler’s position onstage. He remains upstage, often shrouded in darkness, mute and brooding over a revolver for most of the play. This acutely underlines the constant references to both his significance and his impotence with the coming end of the Nazi state, amplifying the attempts of all around him to manipulate their former Führer.

Rhys Jones offers us a repentant Albert Speer, played with a casual, almost flippant cynicism that contrasts favourably with the over-statement of David Cochrane as Goering or Dan Rawnsley as Dr Morrell. These characters appear indulgent, providing unnecessary and unwanted comic relief from the paranoiac intensity of the bunker.  Although the Blackadder-esque comedy is well played, its role in the play is difficult to fathom.

            Mona Schroedel-York and Roisin Watson, playing Magda Goebbels and Eva Braun, add a refreshing female dimension to the politics. Magda is portrayed as a scheming Lady Macbeth figure, which works well with Watson, who manages to evoke the only genuine pathos of the play as Eva Braun realises her powerlessness in the machinations around her. However, while Tom Garner’s role as Himmler is assured and at times impressive, it is let down by the failure of the plot to build a sufficient sense of climax in the character’s fate in which the audience can be swept up.

Alongside historical facts clunking awkwardly from the mouths of the characters, the playwright makes key cultural allusions, to Wagner and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire amongst others, and adroitly introduces classical references. Some of these sit oddly within the dialogue of the play; they are at times apt and profound but are often conspicuous and forced. The dialogue shifts from highly poetic language in antiquated syntax to very modern coarse language. Neither of these approaches is to be derided as a possible portrayal of the last days of the Third Reich, but jumping indiscriminately from one to the other leaves a credibility gap.
            Cochrane’s interpretation of the Führer’s bunker risks at times reducing the bitter struggle for power at the end of Third Reich to little more than the jostling for position in the Oxford Union, or worse, the backbiting and duplicity in the Big Brother House. However, he writes with some flair and expression, which need only to be reconciled with dramatic realism to allow his characters to come truly alive and the narrative to unfold more naturally.
  Chicken Farmer is running Tuesday 16th-Saturday 20th October at the OFS at 7:30, with a 2:30 Saturday matinee.
 

The problem with having a cold is that people don’t generally feel sorry for you. In fact, they tend to feel rather annoyed. Your anti-social symptoms don’t help matters – snivelling in the library or coughing through lectures are never going to win friends, but your depressed demeanour and tendency to whinge about your illness will probably make things worse.  However, if you are unlucky enough to have a genuinely bad cold, it can make you feel really washed out. As a true object of our sympathy therefore, Cherwell 24 presents you with a guide to some of the alternative remedies available.

My absolute hands-down favourite cure for a sore throat is blackberry vinegar.  It’s acidic yet sweet and though it sounds disgusting, it’s actually divine.  A perfect winter warmer, it sooths your throat and tastes surprisingly good. I think of it as a grown-up’s version of hot Ribena. However, it’s not that easy to get hold of.  My mum conjures it up using some ancient recipe she has, but I’ve yet to find any in Oxford. 

Instead you can always go for the traditional honey and lemon.  Simply squeeze half a lemon into a mug along with some hot water and two teaspoons of honey.  The honey actually works not only to sweeten the drink, but also to draw water out of the inflamed tissue in the throat, which reduces the swelling.  And you can add a glug or two of brandy or whisky, which will have a mildly numbing effect on your throat.

This week however, I branched out and tried ginger tea.  Very tasty and very simple.  Grate about ½ a teaspoon of ginger into a mug and pour in some hot water. Voila.  Add honey too if you want it sweet, although to be honest, once the ginger has been in a while it gets quite sweet anyway. This seemed to work quite well for me and apparently there is science behind it – I’m told that ginger contains things called ‘gingernols’ which are natural cough suppressants.

My favourite suggestion was to use a hair-dryer to kill the cold virus.  The idea is to point the hair-dryer at your face, turn it to a medium setting and inhale the warm air for about 5 minutes to allow the heated air to get up your nose and kill the virus.  I tried it, felt a bit silly, and stopped. Maybe other people will have greater success.

I’ve always found that putting a few drops of olbas oil on my pillow or on a handkerchief works quite well to ease a congested nose, but it’s no use for a runny nose.  Alas, I have yet to find a better remedy for that than the simple tissue. However, there are other exciting suggestions to help ease your nasal problems.  Anything with a bit of a kick in it should help – so try adding Tabasco or chilli flakes to your food, and apparently wearing damp socks to bed with warm woolly ones over the top works wonders.  I wasn’t convinced by this one. I stuck to the warm woolly ones.

If in doubt though, there are three basic maxims which are worth sticking to.  Firstly: “Make sure you drink plenty of fluids”.  This is what my mum always says and she’s a nurse, so she should know.  The next one is a piece of general folk-wisdom which says “feed the cold, starve the fever”.  So eat more when you have a cold.  And the last one is “a little bit of what you fancy does you good”. That is from my great-grandma. A wise woman indeed. 

 by Luke Bullock  

I have to admit that I went to see Martin Crimp’s Fewer Emergencies with a degree of trepidation.  Like many theatregoers these days I couldn’t resist the temptation to gen up on the various Google snippets about the play beforehand.  Despite my preconception that Crimp’s piece would be overly arty and poetic, I found myself fascinated by the intriguing sight that greets the audience as soon as they enter the auditorium: a woman swinging on a swing, gazing into the middle distance.  These thought-provoking moments continue throughout the piece, engrossing the audience at every step.

The play is composed of three parts, which at first glance seem completely autonomous.  Immediately upon the first interjection by someone, apparently an audience member, you get a sense of a story being created in front of your eyes.  The style is almost that of a script conference – the characters jostle for the right to progress the narrative or add intimate details.  The performance therefore seems organic and fluid, with characters picking up and completing each other’s lines.

This fluidity is helped by the sheer pace that the actors bring to it, giving a lasting impression of creative intensity.  The characters antagonise each other, but are ultimately highly imaginative and constructive in their exploration of the human psyche.  The play is concerned with improvement and identity.  It becomes increasingly obvious that the three sections are in fact inter-linked, and delve into aspects of one man’s life as he becomes ever more tortured and psychotic.

The sense of contortion in the piece is certainly a focus.  Characters become increasingly neurotic and almost euphoric as the psychosis builds.  Crimp attempts to highlight a society fascinated with violence and hurt.  The tension reaches its explosive crescendo with the dark sexual creations of the characters, which contrast with the simple undertone of a boy searching for love.  It is this search that forms the continuing theme of the piece – the questioning of the mother’s love in the first scene, a killer’s fascination with children holding hands, Bobby’s desperation for people to love him.  The play is therefore haunting as well as graphic.  The image at the end of Bobby climbing a spiral staircase in pursuit of an elusive swinging key – a key that will open a door that will make people love him – is desperate, and certainly leaves you thinking about this tortured soul.  Fewer Emergencies is a fast paced, intense evening analysing the creative process, identity and love.

Fewer Emergencies is running in the late slot (9:30) at the Burton Taylor, Tuesday 16th-Saturday 20th October. 

A leading Oxford academic is to take on the position of vice Chancellor at Sydney University next year. Michael Spence, an expert in intellectual property law and current head of the Social Sciences Division at the University of Oxford, will succeed to the post in July next year. Spence is a graduate of the University of Sydney himself, gaining first class honours in English, Italian and Law. He obtained his D Phil from Oxford and his career at the university has seen him take a special interest in encouraging fundraising and sponsorship. "Sydney is a world-class institution with an exciting future," Dr Spence said."At the heart of the university's mission is a commitment to excellence in research and research-led teaching. It is a privilege to take on this new role."

When I applied to Oxford I didn’t really understand how the collegiate system worked.

To the naïve Irish kid, the only difference between Hertford and Balliol was the size of the college. In a way, the college seemed to be the residential holding area, while the university existed everywhere else. Since I’ve been at Oxford, I’m amazed at how untrue my initial conceptions were.
Oxford is a collegiate university, and is pretty unique in how it is structured (Durham and the other place excluded). The college is the hub of everything you do during your degree. You live there, you eat there, you’re (often) taught there, you socialise there, and you play sports there. The college becomes a second-home. Of course, not all colleges are perfect, and some make better homes than others. But, as a rule of thumb, you become immersed into the college, and leave here with an attachment to the college, not the university. When phoning old members from Hertford over the summer for the college annual appeal, I discovered that affections for a college can continue for decades.

The existence of the collegiate system makes a difference when it comes to how our student union is structured as well. OUSU has come in for a lot of flak in recent years, some of it undeserved. People accuse it of being detached and out-of-touch with the concerns of normal students, or suggest that the sabbatical officers are merely seeking to kick-start their political careers. My own experience of OUSU is that those involved are well-intentioned, and generally competent. OUSU’s problem is that of over-reach.JCRs and MCRs are the life and soul of student unionism in Oxford. At the centre of every college beats the regular heart of common room meetings, elections, and referenda. Common rooms deal with the issues that matter most to our students. If someone thinks we should offer more money to students facing hardship, the common room can bring this about in their own college. If another college common room wants to spend all their money on their sports teams, they can bring this about in their own college. The diversity of the colleges and their JCRs and MCRs comes about because students can directly affect the direction taken by their representatives. The procedure is simple and not particularly bureaucratic.
OUSU should recognise the primacy of common rooms more. An Oxford student union should promote issues that student representatives do not have time to deal with, such as student rent, top-up fees, or the College Contribution Scheme. A JCR representative should be able to approach OUSU and get information at the drop of a hat. OUSU should be a collator of the swathes of facts out there. In a sense, OUSU should try to be less of a political campaigning vehicle and more of a service provider. This would mean that OUSU should not adopt clearly political positions without the approval of the majority of common rooms. For instance, this term OUSU is leading a campaign to stop the Oxford Union inviting known racists to speak on free speech. This decision was taken in Council before consultation with common rooms was possible. Do we know what the students of Oxford actually think about this issue? How could they have their say? It is wrong for OUSU to be involved in this campaign against free speech without direct approval from the common rooms and their members.OUSU should take a couple of steps back. I believe that the normal student wants OUSU to provide us with good leadership on university-wide issues. OUSU should organise good club nights. OUSU should give assistance to student societies. OUSU should provide us with good deals on bulk purchases (i.e. condoms). This would mean OUSU leaving the politics to the political societies and concentrating on helping common rooms. This change is happening but needs to happen faster. From my experience of speaking to Hertford’s old members, once most students leave Oxford they remember what their JCR did for them, while OUSU is a distant non-entity. That must say something about which body has the most impact on student life. I live in hope of seeing OUSU become the servant of the common rooms, and the facilitator of good common room stewardship. After all, it is common rooms which actual matter to students and who keep OUSU in business.

Tom Lowe is JCR President of Hertford College.

Local residents campaigning against the redevelopment of a historic boatyard in Jericho were joined today by a senior architect condemning the plans.

A former president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, George Ferguson, has called plans to build 54 flats on Oxford’s Castle Mill Boatyard as ‘uninspiring’ and ‘dull’. His letter of complaint to Oxford City Council is one of more than 600 from local residents opposing the scheme, who object to the ill-considered character of the plans.

The residents state that they are not anti-development, but are calling for the site’s developers Springer Residential to produce a more thoughtful design for the area, which would take into account community facilities and the area’s heritage, neither of which they say the company has considered.

Philip Pullman is among those in opposition to the plans. He spoke earlier this month specifically mentioning them in his complaint that Oxford is becoming a ‘concrete wasteland’.

The plans are currently under consideration by Oxford City Council.

The usually serious weekly broadsheet Die Zeit has allowed a bit of rare 'humour' to fill its politics pages this week. German speakers might like to check out their satirical A to Z of politics in the latest issue.Here's one definition:

Welfare state reform: Synonym for: There's no money left, so we'll either scrap services or make them more expensive

Funny indeed. A nice try I guess.Cherwell 24 is not responsible for the content of external sites

Sitting in The University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, fragments of chamber music could be heard as the London Mozart Players began to warm up for the first concert in their 2007/2008 Oxford series. As the start of the concert approached, and the church filled, more instruments joined the warm up until music could be heard throughout the church and the audience took to their pews.Scott Ellaway, formerly organ scholar at Keble, returned to Oxford on Friday 12th October as both the conductor and the performer (directing Bach’s third Brandenburg Concerto and Widerstehe doch der Sün’ from the harpsichord). ‘The opportunity to perform music with other people is an amazing experience:  I have wanted to be a conductor since the age of eleven’, he told me afterwards.
The concert opened with Haydn’s symphony number 83, La Poule, so called because of the ‘clucking’ of the instruments in the first movement. The work was commissioned for a larger orchestra, however the energy and enthusiasm with which it was performed here made up for any lack of numbers in the ensemble.  This vigour was carried into Bach’s third Brandenburg concerto, which left the audience breathless by the interval.The highlight of the evening, however, was the performance of counter-tenor Robin Blaze.
Having read Music at Magdalen, Blaze then studied at the Royal Academy of Music, where he is now a professor of vocal studies.  He grew up playing both the flute and piano as well as singing: his flute teacher, who later taught at the Royal Academy of Music, jokingly told him that he ‘was very glad he became a singer, rather than a flautist’!  Blaze’s tone was beautiful, and his performance of Bach’s cantata ‘Widerstehe doch der Sünde’ was very engaging, despite perhaps the voice being slightly overpowered by the orchestra in the final aria.
The concert ended, rather fittingly, with Mozart’s Symphony number 40. This passionate finale acted as a good advertisement for the next LMP concert in Oxford, at 8p.m. on Saturday 26th January 2008 at the same venue (student tickets £20, £15 and £10, available from Tickets Oxford 01865 305305 or on the door).
By Robin Thompson

Police voiced concerns about youth-culture in Oxford over the weekend, following a serious incident on High Street.A 17 Year-Old was put into a coma on Sunday after a fight broke out on High Street in the early hours of the morning.The incident, which occured around 2:30am when a drunken tit-for-tat conflict got out of hand, left Declan Dew fighting for his life. He was rushed to Christchurch Hospital where he was listed as "seriously ill".The attacker, Hamish James McQuillan, is charged with wounding Dew with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. McQuillan did not plead to the charge and was remanded on bail.Dew regained consciousness yesterday, but the extent of his injuries will not be known unil the swelling on his brain has subsided. Detective Sergeant Rex Barnett said "It is not acceptable and if parents are not prepared to set standards, then there is little wonder why teenagers are overstepping the boundaries themselves.He warned: "This boy was close to dying. Someone will die and no-one will want that on their conscience."