Remember the last two weeks of April? Remember the cricket, the punting, and the blissful sunshine spilling out all over the quads? Remember the Met Office blithely telling us that it was the driest April since records began in 1659?

Flash-forward to May, the only one of the summer months that falls entirely in Full Term, and gaze disconsolately over a stunning vista of grey on grey. That is, if you can see it at all through the driving rain and forbidding clouds. The only people more miserable than the punters, picnickers and cricketers, are the global warming theorists. Where did it all go wrong, indeed?

There is, of course, an interesting point to be made here about how our expectations change. A British summer is the worst kind of oxymoron – the type that provokes wry laughter from foreigners and indeed, most natives. Whole years drifting by without a real cause for short sleeves haven’t exactly been unheard of. I think it’s only been the last couple of years when we’ve not only had real hot weather, but a lot of it. So rather than dropping everything and rushing out at the first rays of sun, we’ve gone steadily on in libraries and workplaces, safe in the knowledge that it will still be there at the end of the day. And that’s why, I suppose, people have been stomping around the streets of Oxford taking the rain as a very personal insult. “How dare you be raining?”, we ask the sky. Never mind that it’s early May in Britain, where’s the sun?

This is perhaps compounded by the fact that the clothes people choose to wear always seem to depend on yesterday’s weather, rather than today’s. If it was sunny yesterday, people will be wearing T-shirts and shorts, cotton skirts and flip-flops, in scant disregard of the puddles. It always seems to take a couple of days before it really sinks into the collective consciousness that wellies are the way to go. It’s hard to be Little Miss Sunshine when you’re wearing a miniskirt while it’s five degrees.

And, of course, Oxford is so very nice in the summer time. There are the traditional pursuits, already mentioned, of cricket, eating strawberries and cream and messing about on the river. But the simple, day-to-day course of life is also immeasurably better. It’s all in the details: the scent of flowers after dark, the intense colour of the sky, cobblestones baking in the sunshine warming your feet. It’s an old cliché, but it’s true, everyone really is much more cheerful. Total strangers smile at you and hold doors open. Even the people drifting past in sub fusc seem a tiny bit more serene. The only real disadvantage is that hot weather brings the tourists out en masse – hands up who’s had to dodge a Japanese-language tour taking up most of Broad Street – but it’s perhaps not too steep a price to pay for the glorious weather.

Still, there are probably wonderful things to be said about rain, although it must be said that right at this moment I am at a loss beyond the decidedly Aristotelian “it makes the plants grow”. Perhaps there is some moody poetic beauty about the dreaming spires seen through a blurring mask of rain. Still, I’m not convinced. Any beauty there is palls after ten solid days of thick grey clouds and endless downpour. There’s only so far you can go to wring literary significance out of stormy weather. Ultimately, it all comes down to the decidedly unromantic feel of rainwater down your neck, cars whooshing past through six inches of dirty water, and a sudden need for paracetamol and cough syrup. In short, there’s nothing like rain for making everybody miserable.

So I shall hurry to look on the bright side – no pun intended – and remind us all that it might just be improving. No longer must I run down Holywell Street with the Cambridge New History of India on my head because the heavens are opening in cacophonous fashion above. It’s been a gradual process. At the beginning of the week, the sun came out for twenty whole minutes and rumour has it that there were people seen engaging in sporting activity. Later on, this was followed by whole days of sun, and again, a renewed hope that maybe this time we could trust it would stay. I’m particularly enjoying the nights, at the moment. The heat of the day lingers, becomes deliciously cool and still, and it’s a joy to sit outside reading or having a picnic. Let’s hope that it stays, if not for good, or even long enough to develop an even tan, but long enough to dry out my umbrella and eat ice-cream without excessive need for self-justification. And, of course, long enough for the general mood of soporific misery to leave the city with the fog.

But perhaps I have been a little too scathing about the rain. If we pause to consider the even brighter side, fifty years from now, whilst we all roll in battered wheelchairs across the dried, arid sands of the Greater South-eastern Deserts of England and Wales, watching salamanders loll in the baking sun, we can look back to the good old days at Oxford, when temperatures were not hot enough to melt lead, and occasionally, water even fell from the sky. Take your comfort where you can find it is the moral of the story, I guess. More importantly, take an umbrella, and sing in the rain while it lasts.
Iona Sharma

It was always going to be interesting: six of Oxford’s finest young playwrights paired with six directors, randomly assigned to a group of actors and then given twenty-four hours to produce an original piece of theatre, all in the name of charity.

The results were varied, both in content and quality. The majority clearly fell vitctim to a conflict between the grandiose ideas of the playwrights and the time constraints imposed by the exercise. The Gingerbread House in particular, while to be commended for its artistic vision, was dull and practically incomprehensible, and surprised everyone by abruptly finishing within ten minutes.

The two most enjoyable plays, Alex Christofi’s The Reception and Cathy Thomas’ Who Needs Jesuits? kept it simple. The former centered around three slightly-inebriated bachelors slumped in a forgotten corner at a wedding reception, while Thomas’ delightfully irreverent production began as a stereotypical family breakfast that soon degenerated into bedlam. Both managed to be funny without seeming contrived and featured some excellent one-liners – but the highlight had to be an enthusiastic dance from Jack Farchy wearing nothing but a polka-dot mini dress. Also deserving special mention was Tom Campion’s touching play about the relationship between two cantankerous old men, roles which were played to perfection by Jonny Totman and Peter Clapp. And, as one would expect from any self-respecting playwright hailing from Wadham, there was of course a gratuitous and completely unnecessary reference to Nelson Mandela.

While, conceptually, the idea of the 24 Hour Plays pulled all the right strings, in that it tested the creative skill of the playwrights and the initiative of the actors, the productions were, by and large, over-complex and over-ambitious, and as a result unpolished and unclear. In many of the plays the audience was left confused and frustrated, and dare I say it, wishing they had spent the last two hours watching re-runs of The OC. Ultimately, in a production with such unique time constraints as this, simplicity would have been preferable as opposed to trying to make artistic statements at the expense of coherence and clarity.

Sarah Davies
Dir. Various
Keble O’Reilly

Summer’s onset leads, like the turning of the seasons, to a crop of plays performed in the balmy environs of college quadrangles, and it’s with almost equal unstoppability that we see at least one of these, every year, to be Shakespeare’s tale of Woman’s love for Beast. The sheer frequency with which it’s performed makes this most luminous and stylish of comedies subject of a close watch, even cross-examination.

In an imaginative bid for reinterpretation Sophie Duncan’s production in Oriel shifts the play into Blitz Britain, transforming the fairies into abducted evacuees in lost-boy style fairy-schoolgirl outfits and giving the Rude Mechanicals even more the air of a group of earnest misfits as Home Guards. It’s a lively and interestingly skewed view on a wonderful show and if the weather holds one well worth your money.

That said, it’s difficult these days to say with the properly casual air, even to an Oxford readership, “If you only see one Midsummer this year…”. A judgment particularly difficult in this case as Sarah Branthwaite’s OUDS Japan Tour offering has not yet seen the light of day. It must truly be a tribute to the quality of the drama scene that two entirely seperate Midsummer Night’s Dream casts could exist side-by-side.

However it’s the decidedly un-military Mechanicals who light up this show, most notably John-Mark Philo’s enormously entertaining Bottom. ‘Fabulous’ would perhaps be more apt; the rattling, fustian camp of his performance transforms Bottom’s unwilling seduction by the queen of the fairies into a hilarious spectacle of a groomed, healthy young man trying to let an amorous lady down easy: Philo has the presence of a hippo kickline.

Particularly entertainingly warped is the ‘chink’ in Maxim Cardew’s marvellously deadpan Wall, through which Philo steals a moment’s romance with Jessica Wild’s Flute, a woman playing a man playing a woman with poise. Flute’s mourning for the play-dead Bottom often feels like the play’s real ending and Wild’s sweetly solemn is carried into a stirring, candlelit conclusion on Oriel’s library steps.

Robert Morgan
 
Dir. Sophie Duncan
Oriel College, 8pm

As a ‘New Writer’ in Oxford, what do you feel are the obligations of the modern playwright?
Obligations…I think the obvious ones are firstly to entertain and secondly through entertaining bring the audience into contact with ideas and viewpoints that they wouldn’t necessarily have considered otherwise. The way theatre is now, it’s never going to change the world, but it can act in more subtle ways, and I believe it’s about presenting ideas and getting them into the public eye, getting the audience to consider them, rather than simply hammering home one point of view. I’m not sure I’ve fulfilled either of them yet. But I’m trying.

Which pieces of New Writing have you particularly enjoyed this year?
There are a number of writers I admire. I think the my highlight was Kathryn Rickson’s Bare Feet on a Cold Floor, which was the most assured piece of student writing I think I’ve ever seen, and the best thing to grace the Moser. I really enjoyed the 24 hour plays last week, it was fascinating to see what people came up with. Ben Arnold is definitely a writer to watch – he’s got a unique style and some great ideas. And Tom Crawshaw’s NWF winner was great fun, too.

Are you working on anything at the moment?
I’m working on a couple of things – I’ve got a show going up to Edinburgh called I’m a Lab Rat, Get Me Out of Here! and a play hopefully on next term which is a little darker called Knuckles in her Heart, both of which I’m really looking forward to.

Should we move on from the Past Masters?
It’ll always depend on what the audience wants to see. I personally want to see new ideas and interesting takes on old conflicts. If that’s done through reinterpreting classics or through brand new plays then so be it. I like watching new plays because it’s like meeting new people – it’s exciting, it can lead to more than what it starts as and it’s always got the potential to make you feel something completely different.

What place should New Writing take in the future of the theatre?
‘New Writing’ seems like a rather grand title. Obviously people will continue to write plays, and some of them will have the potential to define an era or capture a moment in history. I think writing is becoming more and more accessible, so hopefully we’ll see a bigger diversity of playwrights and new plays – it’s all about expanding the horizons of the audience (without them noticing, because then they usually get scared and run away).

[1] Find a place to play

This really shouldn’t be difficult: after all, you are in Oxford, and there’s a good chance your college has a croquet lawn. Of course, you’ve got to make sure you’ve got the right lawn: for example, in Magdalen the New Buildings centre lawn is the croquet lawn and St Swithun’s lawn is the Frisbee lawn. You don’t want to get those two mixed up in case you end up having to roquet with a Frisbee whizzing through your hair. But that hardship, unlikely though it is, is as nothing compared to what some people go through in order to find the perfect croquet location: croquet has been played on iced over lakes, in Nevada’s Black Rock desert, and even at the South Pole.

[2] Get your equipment

Again, you should be OK here  to borrow your college’s gear. Take care to keep it in good nick, though: competition-standard equipment doesn’t come cheap – for instance, the only set of balls recommended by the Oxford University Croquet Club costs £139 for four, and the set of hoops costs £188. And if you’re buying a mallet, you have to contend with almost as much conflicting advice as when buying a golf club; some of this advice centres on, for example, the relative merits of wooden shafts and fibreglass shafts, but some is a little more obvious – here’s a direct quote from the OUCC website: “For inexperienced players, it is advisable to have a mallet with a relatively wide head to reduce the likelihood of mis-hitting.” If only that could apply to cricket bats, I’d be sporting a two-foot-wide one.

[3] Decide on the rules

Most croquet played in Oxford is Association Croquet, but that’s not to say that other forms of croquet don’t exist. Golf Croquet, in which each player takes turns trying to hit a ball through the same hoop, the winner being the player who manages to hit the ball through the most hoops first, is the fastest-growing version of the game. For a less simple and more strategy-heavy game, you could always try American-rules croquet, in which physical skill counts for less than clever tactics; or, if you find croquet a little bit too easy, you could always try playing it on a bicycle – Bicycle Croquet hasn’t caught fire worldwide yet, but it does have a dedicated following in Graz, Austria.

[4] Learn the lingo

‘Hoop’ and ‘mallet’ are nice and easy, but you should know at least a few more terms. ‘Making a roquet’ is when your ball hits another ball;  ‘running a hoop’ is when your ball passes through a hoop in the correct order; and ‘becoming a rover’ is when your ball has scored its last hoop point. That’s only the start of the jargon, though: ‘Von Schmieder Sweep’, anyone? (It’s a stroke played with the mallet held horizontally with the shaft just a couple of inches off the ground played on a hoop-bound ball lying about a foot behind the hoop which allows you to roquet a reception ball lying further behind the hoop, if you really wanted to know).

Agatha Christie caused a stir when she adapted her Death on the Nile for the stage, altering it nominally to Murder on the Nile, and conspicuously denying the moustach-etted detective his role de force. Fortunately, this production provides the reintroduction of Monsieur Poirot in the form of Matt Lacey, who delivers with estimable gravitas and faultless ‘langue Belgique’.
Quite brilliantly, Lacey’s Poirot combines volatility with an aloofness that allows for the character interaction Christie had so sought. Indeed, these interactions, between the highly innovative minor characters especially, are the source of much of the play’s humour; of particular note is the bohemian-clad Salome Otterbourne (Emerald Fennell) in all her sexual and passionate theatricality. Poirot blushes masterfully at her advances, while Colonel Race (George Carr) fastidiously revels in this build-up to the dénouement.
Grace Overbeke, moreover, is distinguished in her leading role as the ignorant yet manipulative down-on-her-luck American, while her ‘so English’ fiancé Simon Doyle (Jamie Brindley), maintains a manly rapport with the bevy of stylish women on stage. All in all, the play is an energetic mixture of tension and humour, executed by an enthusiastic cast committed to the era of glamour.

Daisy Dunn
Dir. Steve Lomon
Worcester Gardens, 7.30pm

It took an informal chat between two PCs to bring into the open what everyone must already know: the University owns Oxford. From shop-owners to senior Councilors, people who might easily go from one week to the next without stepping foot inside a quad have to tiptoe around our college authorities.

What this leaked transcript  illuminates is the extent to which we treat Oxford like a campus rather than a city. And that collective ‘we’ often tries hard to blind itself to dissent, when it should be open to possibility. Most members of the University are happy to conduct medical research on animals, or at least not to think too hard about it. They should certainly be forced to.

The problem is that Speak is its own worst enemy, targeting students and their beloved sports grounds rather than asking for our support. The second thing they would be wise to consider is a formal denunciation of the ALF – their more radical colleagues in the fight for animal rights.

Instead, the group persists in its aggressive and unreasonable tactics. But Speak fought for and won its right to be unreasonable last term when the University failed to prosecute its famous activist leaders Mel Broughton and Robert Cogswell. Ever since, counter-organizations like the student-run Pro-Test, as well as further attempts by the University itself, have failed to stop their demonstrations, and the antagonism rumbles on day after day in the Science area.

Until now, Speak seemed to be fighting a slowly losing battle. Provocative tactics were being met with less and less indulgence. As a passer-by, it’s easy to let ‘Stop the Oxford Animal Labs’ fade into background noise.
But this week’s embarrassing revelations by the police will prove to be their best chance yet. The bullies have suddenly become bullied, and added to the unreasonably forceful language of the police is the undemocratic clout of the University’s name. The police seemed eager to please only the University and Oxford’s ‘impressed’ response to the arrests is both highly embarrassing and damaging. We heard of the police’s ‘draconian’ policies and their aggressive desire to ‘take bodies’: a product of Blair’s target-lust to which the University is also notoriously prey. But it seems that the University have ultimately failed in their mission to steamroller over those who dare to speak out. If Speak is wise – and for reason’s sake we can only hope they aren’t – the group will play the victim now, and court rather than challenge the student body.

But a warning must also be extended to Pro-Test tag-alongs and the rest of the student onlookers. This tape provided an unusual and strangely satisfying insight into two police officers’ attitudes. But in general, we can’t know what goes on behind the closed doors of Wellington Square or St Aldates Police Station. What we can do is re-evaluate our attitude towards ‘townies’ and learn to think as individuals towards other individuals, whatever the official line from the all-powerful University. Otherwise, we can hardly be surprised at Town’s blatant antagonism towards Gown, in a situation where power falls so heavily on one side.
Willa Brown and James Rogers

The Canterbury Tales is quite a project to undertake, and this production is somewhat ambitious.
One thing that struck me was the conspicuous absence of even a semblance of actual sexuality, a theme that is supposed to be prevalent and even excessive in all of Chaucer’s tales. This is particularly lacking in some of the female roles, where any attempts at supposed seduction are a little naïve.
Hillary Stevens, seen twice in roles of ‘temptation’, is more like a child experimenting with high heels from a dressing up box than an object of obsessive desire. Similarly, Johanna Deveraux’s Wife of Bath was more like a children’s television presenter than a scrumptious harlot. As a whole, the adaptation is good, and the language flows – comprehensive to a modern ear but maintaining an air of restoration.
Having evidently drawn heavily on the recent adaptation by the RSC, this play is a mildly amusing with a few inspired moments. If you like perky theatre, it works.

Kate Antrobus
 
Dir. Harriet Bradley
Magdalen Gardens, 7.30pm

Fans of new writing have a veritable dramatic feast at the Burton Taylor studio in seventh week, and they should not be disappointed with Max McGuinness’ Up the Republic! A rhyming political farce which claims to have no agenda of its own, this play should be avoided by staunch Communists, those who have yet to become jaded, and Jacques Chirac, should he be considering attending a student production this week.

The play centres on Georges Duclos (Nicholas Bishop), the mayor of a blighted Parisian suburb during the 2005 riots. It quickly becomes clear that Duclos has abandoned the Communist roots that won him his position in favour of pleasing the majority, neglecting the poor and a little light embezzlement on the side. The major conflict is introduced in the form of Bridgette Papon (Harry Creelman), Duclos’ Fascist ex-wife determined to unseat him, all the while wearing tight leather trousers and displaying her, ahem, décolletage. With the assistance of her lover, Charles Dupont (Paul Clarke), the Chief of Police, Bridgette devises a plan to alienate Duclos from the minority vote using the law against the wearing of religious symbols in public in order to become mayor herself. With the help of Nathalie Weil (Sophie Siem), a sympathetic headmistress, Duclos must attempt to win back the Muslim vote.

Although some of the references are a little dense for the layman, politics students will appreciate the satire of these not-so-distant events, although the general decrying of government, politics, and the banning of headscarves in schools will be clear to even the least politically aware.

The dialogue is sharp and, in places, laden with puns and sexual innuendo, although it rarely strays from its major themes of the corrupting nature of power and the weakness of men. The characters, for the most part, move well and with good energy and the ending is amusing, especially in that it seems to have been snipped neatly from The Simpsons.

There are some very nice touches: Duclos’ speech after he is encouraged to ‘re-brand’ by Nathalie is almost painfully reminiscent of many politicians’ humiliating attempts to be perceived as ‘cool’ by the young and ethnic minorities. His sudden, obsequious and hypocritical support of multiculturalism on Bastille day is cringingly hilarious as, with a reggae band playing the French national anthem, he declares that “imposing our Western ideals is, like, totally unfair.”

Bishop is excellent as the shady politician, portraying a good mix of greasy compulsiveness and quiet desperation. Similarly, Bridgette, for all her posing and pouting, is delightfully devious. The relationship between the two, both as political foes and former lovers, comes across well. The dynamic with their collaborators, Nathalie and Dupont respectively, is less strong however. Siem plays the passionate schoolteacher with a touch of hysteria and Clarke, playing a character named for a washing machine, is at times no less clunky and laborious.

The use of rhyming couplet adds an interesting element to the piece. It is quite subtle, reminding the audience of half-forgotten nursery rhymes and chants from the schoolyard. Though it struggles a little at times and can detract from the dialogue, the juxtaposition of the childish and the supposedly adult world of politics really underlines the farcical and charming nature of this play. However, I’m not entirely convinced that, as the advertising proclaims, this play is ‘enough to make Lenin spin in his grave’. Up the Republic! focuses much more on the weakness of one man rather than the weakness of Communism as a political position. Nonetheless, it is enjoyable, something of a lesson in French politics, and, for the lads, it also contains a rather fit bird.

Monique Davis
Dir. Max McGuinness
BT, 9.30pm

America has changed from the champion of international order to its antagonist. Bush has rejected the idea that a set of strong international institutions, built on a set of common agreements about values and the rule of law, is good for America and the world.  

First came the unilateral abandonment of the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty so that they could complete testing and then build the first stages of a ballistic missile shield.  There are many problems with this, aside from the fact that the technology doesn’t work. It is preposterously expensive; it does not protect against terrorist attack (the most likely kind); and it is strategically destabilizing. That is a quartet of problems that should have doomed it. But the core message America sent in ditching the treaty it is that their commitments are valid only so long as they are also convenient. The Russians have recently used the proposed first phase construction in Poland as the basis for saying they will not observe their commitments under the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty.  What goes around comes around.

The Administration then announced that they would not sign the treaty establishing the International Court of Criminal Justice.  The ostensible reason for this was to avoid “rogue prosecution” of American soldiers by those who might wish the US harm.  This is, on its face, preposterous.  The standards of the Court were specifically rewritten to respond to US concerns over precisely this issue. Once again, the message is that the US will accept no limits on its power.

Then, in an almost offhanded way, the Administration simply rejected the Kyoto Treaty.  Among European countries this was, along with Iraq, the most shocking step.  Absolute and unilateral rejection was far outside the range of what informed observers thought would be the US response.

Next the Bush Administration asserted that the Geneva Accords were not binding on US treatment of detainees – and this has only put coalition soldiers at greater risk.  

Finally there is the National Security Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction. This paper reasserts the right to preventative war, but a more dangerous element of that same paper was called to my attention by an article in Foreign Affairs by George Perkovich. 
 
One weapon of mass destruction – nuclear – is fundamentally different from chemical and biological weapons, which are absolutely outlawed. The core treaty regulating nuclear weapons is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968. And the core “deal” of that Treaty is that all state signatories agreed not to acquire nuclear weapons and the five nuclear states agreed, over time, to reduce and then eliminate their own nuclear arsenals.

But now the Bush strategy calls for assuring US nuclear superiority indefinitely. In order to do this the US will necessarily abrogate its commitments under NPT, including the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the commitment to eventual elimination. In short, in the most dangerous area – nuclear – the Bush radicals have asserted the right to abrogate the Treaty that has worked so much to the benefit of the US. The inevitable consequence of this action will be violation by others, making the world a vastly more dangerous place.

For those Americans who believe in a rule of law at home (including protection of civil liberties) there is real risk and real work ahead.  But it is in the international arena where the radicalism of this Administration poses a direct challenge to the world’s security. America will pay heavily – in security, in economic well-being, in their long-term leadership – if it allows this Administration to make the country a rogue state not bound by treaty and unconstrained by the decent opinion of mankind.
Sam Brown

Sam Brown was the Ambassador of the United States to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.