Sports OutreachThe Combined Universities of Oxford Sports Outreach Scheme (known as CommUniSports) was designed to try to improve existing sports provision in the local community providing members of university sports clubs as enthusiastic volunteers. The scheme gives clubs the opportunity to take their sport into the community and earn some vital extra development money. There are plenty of ways for individuals to get stuck in as well and even gain recognised coaching qualifications in their chosen sport. There is also the opportunity to invent new schemes to add to the existing programme. Outreach is an excellent method of helping out the community, having a fantastic time in the process. Check out the Outreach website at www.sport.ox.ac.uk/outreach for more details.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

Amateur Football Association put Oxford to the sword in pre-season friendly BLUES FOOTBALL Oxford 0 Amateur Football Association 4 An experimental Blues side, missing several key players, was well beaten by a fit and combative AFA side in the traditional curtain raiser to the new football season. New captain Arran Yentob saw his charges respond positively to a first-minute goal before spending the last hour on the rack, thanking goalkeeper Alexander Hill for a series of outstanding saves to keep the scoreline down. Ahead of the big BUSA kick-off against East Anglia, this was a useful workout for a team that comprised several players who will be looking to establish themselves in the OUFC setup. The match had barely kicked off when AFA striker Neil Hurst ran from what appeared to be an offside position to drill home the opener from eighteen yards. The Blues responded with some bright and confident approach play, and were almost rewarded when Dan Walbole burst clear, only to be denied by an excellent one-handed save. Both midfields closed space down well as the game tightened up, but the visitors were to change the course of proceedings in the twenty-seventh minute when Colin Hawkins beat Hill to the ball and finished from close range. The hosts’ confidence visibly drained, with the AFA’s Jack Costello starting to pull the strings for the London-based representative side, and the Hurst-Hawkins axis repeatedly causing havoc in a makeshift Oxford defence. The latter miscued a lob over Hill when well placed, and the Blues’ shot-stopper thwarted him with two point-blank saves in the space of fifteen seconds as half-time loomed. Hopes that the home side might effect a comeback were dashed by another early blow, as Hurst nodded home a right-wing corner only forty seconds after the restart. Hill then had to recover smartly to collect his own fumble from a Concannon drive, as his team-mates saw themselves repeatedly forced back by opponents whose extra fitness levels were becoming increasingly evident. Controversy again reared its head in the 57th minute as Hawkins’ looped header over Hill appeared to cross the line after bouncing down from the crossbar, but the referee’s assistant was well-placed to wave play on. The visitors’ striker was to claim his second ten minutes later, though, stabbing home after a corner was hooked back into the six-yard box. Osman Akkaya whipped a shot into the side netting for the Blues, but at the other end Costello saw a thirty-five yard effort narrowly miss the target and a driven free-kick fisted over by Hill. The home custodian completed his afternoon’s work with an acrobatic parry from Steve Hair’s hooked shot, and fine low saves from Gillard and Sonne.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003

MOUNTAINEERING Over the summer, members of the Oxford University Mountaineering Club travelled to Chamonix, in the French Alps. We practised ropework on a glacier, before climbing to the dining-table sized summit of the Aiguille Des Petit Charmoz (2867m) and Mont Blanc du Tacul (4248m), where we could watch the sunrise from the summit. Several group members then moved to Saas Grund in Switzerland, where we climbed the Lagginhorn (4010m) and the Weissmies (4017m). Meanwhile, others moved to the Petit Aiguille Verte (3512m), and the Table de Roc spur of the Aiguille du Tour (3544m), followed by the Aiguille de Belvedere (2966m), the highest peak in the Aiguilles Rouges with great views of Mont Blanc. Alison Parker summed up the team’s enthusiastic reception of the trip, “The first thing that struck me about the Alps is that it is such a different scale to anywhere I’ve climbed before – but I have certainly gained a lot of experience this summer and I’m starting to plan next years expedition!”ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

BLUES BASKETBALL With four consecutive appearances in the BUSA final and a record fourteen straight Varsity match wins, there is a lot of pressure on the Men’s Blues going into the 2003-2004 season. This impressive record has made the Blues Oxford’s most successful team and, as a result, the annual Varsity match between Oxford and Cambridge is one of the highlights of the sporting calendar. In addition, the Women’s Blues won the BUSA Shield, recording only one loss during the regular season. The Men’s Seconds likewise had an extremely successful 2002-2003 season. Highlights included winning the BUSA Trophy competition and an emphatic Varsity match win despite Cambridge having home court advantage. With the departure of many key players, notably Sexton and Henderson, the Blues will be relying on a lot of new faces this season. Nevertheless, Blues Captain Graham Ewen is confident that, with players like Gomes, Card and ex-Shropshire Warriors star Dan Woodbridge, the Blues will have another successful year. They will be taking on old adversaries in the BUSA Premier League but by far their toughest test will come against reigning champions St Mark and St John. The rivalry between these two teams is as strong as ever, having met in the final for the last two seasons. Their first encounter of the new campaign will be on 29 October when the Blues travel down to Plymouth to face the Marjons once again. This is a big year for me and OUBBC. Judging by the talent on display at the trials, a fifteenth Varsity win and a place in the final eight appear once again to be imminent.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

RUGBY WORLD CUP Wales 41 Canada 10 Blues prop Kevin Tkachuk scored a seventy-first minute try as his native Canada collapsed to a 41-10 defeat at the hands of Wales in their opening fixture. The Canucks had been completely outplayed by their opposition when Tkachuk’s success offered a flicker of hope in an otherwise disappointing display. Things had looked decidedly promising when Bob Ross kicked a drop goal to give Canada the early lead. Yet Wales recovered and, despite the loss of Colin Charvis to the sin-bin, it was the Welsh, clad in their changed white strip, who took command through tries from Sonny Parker and Gareth Cooper before the interval. Further tries followed, with Iestyn Harris impeccable with the boot for all five of his conversions. Yet, from the Oxford perspective, it was Tkachuk who stole the show. Introduced in place of injured captain Al Charron on sixty minutes, the twenty-seven year old made the most of his opportunity on the global stage, flinging himself over the line after some good work by the Canadian forwards. Tkachuk was delighted on a personal level, but disappointed with the result as a whole. “The try was quite an exciting moment of my life but I must admit at the time it did not matter much as it was much too little too late,” he told Cherwell “More than anything I believe the result displays the unfortunate truth about how much the gap has widened between the amateur and professional countries at the World Cup. It does not get any easier with this Friday night’s match against the All Blacks so we must continue to persevere, work hard and probably most importantly enjoy every moment of it.” Meanwhile, Charron, whose problem is a reoccurrence of a serious knee injury, is doubtful for the forthcoming match: “I’d like to play against New Zealand but we have got to do what is best for the team,” said Charron. Should the Canadian skipper be ruled out, Tkachuk may be in line for a starting place. Elsewhere, former Blue Simon Danielli scored a seventy-ninth minute try as Scotland stuttered to an unconvincing 32-11 victory over Japan.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

BLUES RUGBY Worcester Warriors 26 Oxford 26 The Blues bid to regain their Varsity title looked decidedly promising on Monday night, as they forced an away draw with the Worcester Warriors at Sixways. Worcester, currently lying top of the first division, fielded a relatively strong side which included nine senior players as well as members of their development squad, while a series of minor injuries as well as World Cup commitments meant several key players were missing for the visiting team. Oxford were very quickly behind, as a combination of good passing by the Warriors and bad defence by the Blues led to two quick tries. Worcester winger Birchall’s pace exploited the narrowness of the Oxford back line, and after the first of several missed penalties for Oxford, Worcester fullback Hylton made it 14-0 in fourteen minutes. Far from beaten however, the Blues kept the pressure on, and their patience was rewarded when captain John Allen finished off a well-executed backs move with a powerful try. Having stopped the rot, Oxford’s defence seemed less shaky, and Adam Slade made an excellent tackle in the fortieth minute to prevent a third Worcester try. Fly half Jon Fennel’s last minute penalty ensured a creditable half-time score of 14-8. The Blues started the second half in style, with a quick try after a superb forward drive by winger John Bradshaw. A successful conversion would have handed Oxford the lead, but the score remained 14-13 as pressure on the Warriors’ defence increased. Another penalty took Oxford in front, before an excellent wide move in the sixtieth minute led to John Allen’s second try of the match, converted comfortably by Fennel. With the score now 14-23 to the visitors, the home side stepped up a gear, and a textbook dummy by Worcester winger Garrard gave Neil Mason an easy try. The conversion put the Warriors within two points of the Blues, when poor tackling by the Oxford defence gave Worcester captain David Officer another five points. Now three points ahead, the Warriors conceded another penalty, and Fennel’s conversion levelled the scores at 26-26. After a chaotic last few minutes, Worcester kicked for touch to take the draw. Far from being complacent, OURFC Chairman Martin Jackson was already focussed on progress and potential in the lead-up to Varsity: “We are testing the team at quite a high level, especially since a lot of players are new to the Blues squad. Our next match against Leicester will be vital, as they are also shortly playing Cambridge, so we’ll know where we are and what we want to do. A few silly mistakes cost us the game today.” However, with two consecutive draws against First Division teams, and an unprecedented sponsorship deal with Aggregate Industries, the atmosphere is optimistic.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

PLAY THE MAN by James Mumford & Patrick Malone Broad St/Trinity College Wednesday 22 – Saturday 25 October Top Oxford drama is self-conscious, wary, defensive and probably insecure. Clever people stride carefully into the empty theatre and set about constructing art, watching the detail, treasuring a precious considered subtlety. They have generally acknowledged values: innovation, sensitivity, progressiveness, vigour. A Cuppers judge this year told the wide-eyed freshers, inverted commas gestured with her fingers, “We want to get away from, you know, the stereotypical ‘Oxford Shakesperean actor’ thing”. And the thesps do flee from it, spiking their hair, choosing challenging scripts, masturbating on the Playhouse stage. Modernist plays flood our studio theatres. They want tightly formed creations of intricate intimate quality, the hand of the thinking artist prominent at every stage. They seek freshness and grit, and, in general, glad I am of it. Play the Man is not typical Oxford drama. The whole production hinges on a sense of significance, of moment and importance, buzzing with zealous, religious fervour for the gravity and immensity of the story it has to tell – that behind the burning at the stake on Broad Street of the Protestant martyrs in 1555. It begins on the street itself, where the audience stands around the Actual Place of Burning Real People. Then after three minutes, despite all the hype, that’s it for Broad Street, and we trundle into Trinity’s Durham Quad, where the rest of the play takes place. The script, written by James Mumford and Patrick Malone, both students here, is for the most part like a Shakespeare history play without the poetry. The dialogue is uncomfortably inconsistent, leaping from authoritative antiquated rhetoric (“Look around, Sir, the Abbey tells its own story this evening”) to jarringly modern banter (“It’s a gamble they hope will pay off”). The action, similarly, cuts from Renaissance-style history (figures of importance pace around, wring their hands, recite long political speeches) to scenes of intimate human interest. Acting, consequently, tends to lack subtlety. But the writers have lent so much thought to the overall dramatic impact and structure of their play, to the significance of every event and the development of each character, that rough edges of psychology and language are smoothed over by sheer energy., momentum and ambition. Each awkward moment is saved by rushing into something else; missing delicacy in the acting is papered over with sudden and convincing emotional extremes. Ned Dalby, as Cranmer, is particularly commanding. The direction is exciting and the staging meticulous. Despite everything, they pull it off. Some top figures at OUDS will scorn this cod, hamming B-grade RSC, but those who temporarily relax their drive for art will genuinely enjoy the fruits of an exciting, worthwhile project.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

THE OXFORD REVUE vs THE CAMBRIDGE FOOTLIGHTS Playhouse Tuesday 21 October Only
Is comedy the new Peruvian sloth manufacture? No. Is it the new masturbation? Unlikely. The Oxford Revue steer a mostly judicious course between two poles of comic crapness: vacant surrealism and trite ribaldry. As a result they are very rarely crap.
As director and co-writer Leander Deeny points out, like the stench of an embarrasing parent slowly going off in the fridge, the spectre of Monty Python remains, for both Revue and Footlights, hard to dispel. And, yes, it’s in evidence here. But The Oxford Revue have some nice, if contrived lines (guy with cold feet to fiancee: “What if we’re too hairy, and we shave, and we get stubbly, and I grow it back, and you don’t, and we stick together like velcro?”). They have some nice ideas (tearful son phones up dad for advice while adrift in the Pacific Ocean). And they have at least one great comic actor (Daniel Harkin, terrific as a useless boxer).
Most importantly, they have masses of bacchanalian energy, which when all else fails (as very occasionally in this production, it does), carries them through with aplomb. As a result they are the one thing that really matters: laugh out loud funny. Who cares if the sherpa is a bit gammy in his left leg in cold spells at the end of the month if he gets you to the top of the mountain? Still, the Revue could do with finding some new things to take the piss out of. Embarassing parents, homophobia, hermaphroditism – all wholesome stuff, but easy. And they make it look difficult. Perhaps the best emblem of this production is its (brilliant) prank of writing to the BBC with a set of intentionally crap sketches. The laughter here (like all the best laughter) is somewhat nervous. Look! They’re taking the piss out of student self referentiality! Ha ha ha (wait a minute, what about…?) Because what’s really holding these people back is the feeling that somewhere, at some point, they’ve sat back and self-conciously racked their brains over the need to produce something called comedeeeeee.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

Charity by Sara Kreindler OFS Tuesday 21 –Saturday 25 October A Pembroke musical about financial crises? The irony got out of its seat and gave me a good slap round the face when I entered the theatre. Sara Kreindler, a loquacious Canadian studying at Pembroke, has written both the book and score for this show. Her talents composing are never thrown into question throughout the piece, but a plausible narrative unity is lacking here. The curtain opens on the meeting of a foreign aid charity. Its members are trying hopelessly to organise the most important event of the year, the Charity Ball. Conflict soon arises, as the committee splits into two, hurling abuse at each other through the camp medium of song. But ultimately, this is a story about that ol’ chestnut Love. More specifically, of Anita (Reina Hardy) and Ben (Richard Power). These two insecure, inexperienced souls refuse to admit their powerful attraction to one another, rendered paralysed by their shared fear of rejection. Anita worries that her strength and intelligence will alienate any man (how out-of-character for a girl to think that), whilst Ben contracts verbal dysentery when speaking to the opposite sex. Power plays Ben with an endearing humility and diffidence. Although his character is shy and unforthcoming, Power has a tremendous presence on stage, combining the naivety and ingenuousness of Jack Lemmon with the zeal and tenacity of a confident leading man. His voice is as strong as his acting, making him the highlight of this production. The relationship of Suzy and Trevor is explored, too. This is where my initial delight at the show turned to an uneasy dislike. Alice Shepherd, in the role of Suzy, lacked the necessary qualities to convince us of her character’s dissatisfaction with the sweet, but unexciting, Trevor. Suzy does not want her lover to be so thoughtful and caring. I began to cringe as Suzy launched into her lamenting “Why can’t you be wrong for me?” number; I’ve heard girls complain about guys being too sweet enough times without hearing it committed to music. Stop bloody complaining! Ahem. A bit about the staging. The OFS is set up in traverse, to accentuate the polarisation of the charity board: radicals against moderates, men against women. This opposition is achieved well, where many of the songs, whether politically- or ardently-driven, feature a tête-à-tête between man and woman. Christine Chung plays the femme fatale, Mavis, with seductive intensity that inveigles poor Trevor into her arms. And in ‘Farewell’, the intertwining of Anita and Ben’s vocals strongly suggests a gradual intimacy between the two. The music itself, however, is somewhat repetitious from song to song, with little stylistic variation. Vocally, the male leads outshone their female counterparts, most significantly, in their enunciation. Kreindler is very lyrically skilled, and the songs have a verbal playful quality. But on leaving the theatre, I was not sure what I had learnt from the show. Was the political element really necessary to drive the amorous plotline forward? Does charity really help us to change ourselves fundamentally? I was not convinced.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

The Garden Party by Vaclav Havel BT EARLY Tuesday 21 –Saturday 25 October Written in an unstable political climate by the now-President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, The Garden Party is a play written by a young man with ferocious talent. Director Tom Gatti’s production is both entertaining and timely, getting electric performances from the cast and making the most of the play’s rich symbolism. In our age of corporate officespeak, where one thinks outside the box, empowers the consumer and squares the circle, the prescience of The Garden Party (written in 1963) makes for a great hour and a half at the BT. We see young Hugo Plantek (Beau Hopkins), solitaire chess aficionado, being sent off by his bourgeois parents to the titular garden party of the Liquidation Office. Once there, he takes naturally to the buzzwords and newspeak of central government, and talks his way to the top, over the heads of charismatic smooth-talker Maxy Falk (played by the director) and the President of the Inauguration Office, who ends up half-naked crouching down looking up at the exultant Hugo on his side of the desk. Written around the time that Beckett’s best work was behind him, and Stoppard’s best lay ahead, Havel’s play belongs to the continental Absurdist tradition. Unlike some modern productions of the best of that tradition, Gatti’s production never flags under the potential tedium of constant wordplay. This is very much a play about words, about the power that command over words can have in fuelling a passage to further power, and of the emptiness of words used without substance, but the play is never too clever for its own good. Nonsense phrases are delivered with such terrific conviction (above all by the mesmerising Falk), that we only realise the ludicrousness of such phrases as “catch a rabbit and you have it” and “without the warp, you will never bury the wolf” a couple of beats after we take them in. From the folksy psuedo-wisdom of Hugo’s self-affirmingly middle-class parents to Hugo’s later brilliant engineering of the Liquidation of the Inauguration Office, words exercise a strong hold over all characters, even though they may well be utterly meaningless. The play never loses “the human touch” (in the phraseology of Maxy Falk) for all its witty dialogues, and its presentation of the play’s interpersonal relationships are involving and even warm. We witness love blossom, like the proverbial moss, between two bureaucrats before their dedication to their task gets the better of them. And we wish the best for Hugo as he falls into a completely different world, one which he blags his way to the top of, before the play reaches its almost inevitable conclusion. Forty years on, The Garden Party has not suffered from the passage of time; rather it is reinvented through its evocation of New Labour and contemporary managerial nonsense. Though we are a considerable distance from Communist Czechoslovakia (two concepts which are both seemingly long gone), the power of buzzwords and arbitrary institutional logic still hold sway over the modern world. Gatti, his cast and crew have brought the criminally over-looked work of Havel to Oxford, in a production that speaks clearly to us while faithful to Havel’s original concerns.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003