Another good reason, joyous rampant bisexuality aside, to be a Wadhamite. This Saturday, do anything you can from begging, bribery and sucking Wadhamite cock to gain entry to the definitive student band event, Wadstock (free for college members, £5 for their guests). Featuring everything from disturbation and guaranteed sadistfaction from At Risk to scratch-licious DJ sets later in the evening, this promises to be a great opportunity to get that faux-festival feeling. And to get really really pissed. More drunken dallyings are guaranteed on Monday 19 May at Po Na Nas. It’s another school disco-themed party, organised by members of the law school. We at Cherwell Arts are disappointed by the usually half-arsed attempts at what should be great excuse to dress up in fetish gear, and we demand that people go the whole hog with leather and authentic schoolgirl knee-high socks. Either way, it’s for charidee. Less exhausting is Egmo’s film night on Wednesday 21 May at Magdalen Auditorium at 7.30. Don’t be put off by the fact that these will be authentic Awwwxfud-made films, promises cinematic bliss. At nominal fee of £2 entry, it’s better than scoring those dodgy Es for the same price, right? Look out for St Peter’s Arts festival: if big brother extravaganza and poetry slam mean anything to you. It’s diverse and experimental, they say. Kinky, then. Is it time to finely hone those pulling skills? Maybe you just want to look like a twat in front of your friends? If you haven’t done this adequately after Friday night, then you’re a loser. And you’re not too hungover to wake up for the 11am beginners Salsa class in the Mure room, Merton College, Saturday 16 May, then you’ve missed the point of being a student entirely. More Latino antics than you can shake a J-lo-esque arse at: get piss-fucked on booze in swanky settings at the University Salsa society-organised ball at the Randolph on Saturday 24 May.
ARCHIVE: 3rd Week TT 2003

Not a term goes by without one of Shakespeare’s plays being staged outdoors with varying degrees of excess. Director Liv Robinson made a wise choice in selecting Shakespeare’s final play to be staged al fresco since The Tempest so heavily relies on what Robinson calls “exposure to nature and to the elements”. Much has been made of the socio-historical and political context of this play, but Robinson deliberately chooses to put greatest emphasis on the psychological shifts undergone by the protagonists. This also explains the occasionally bizarre costumes, designed to reflect each character’s personality rather than traditional Elizabethan dress. This emphasis on character means that the play’s success or failure depends solely on the strength of the actors, and since Prospero is the central figure the burden is largely on his shoulders. It’s an unenviable task, and whilst Basher Savage tackles the part with admirable effort, he falls just short of stirring the audience. Stalking around the stage as if he’s participating in a master class instead of fully immersing himself in the complex psyche of one of Shakespeare’s most enigmatic protagonists, Savage doesn’t quite capture the power of Prospero. However, Ben Var der Velde is successful in his enraged yet sensitive portrayal of the monstrous Caliban, whilst Fiona Pearce delivers a refreshing performance of Ariel, miraculously breathing mischief into whichever scene she floats.Yet it is the farcical drunkards, Stephano and Trinculo (spiritedly played by Kieran Pugh and Iain Drennan) who steal the show and move the audience to laughter, alleviating the slightly monotonous mood of Prospero’s scenes. This is a charming production of one of Shakespeare’s more challenging plays, but it ultimately lacks the spark to make it truly magical.
ARCHIVE: 3rd Week TT 2003

Pre-Paradise Sorry Now is quite unlike any performance I’ve ever seen before; the best description I can offer is an amalgamation of Beckett, Donnie Darko and The Silence of the Lamb cast on the absurdist stage. Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s highly controversial piece invites its audience to view the world through the eyes of Ian Brady: one half of the infamous Moors Murderers who molested and murdered an estimated six children, burying their bodies in the desolate Yorkshire Moors. Locating the action in the dark recesses of Ian’s mind, his depraved fantasy-land becomes the symbolical epicentre of mankind’s propensity toward evil. Considering its taboo subject, it is easy to understand why the play has been banned until recent years. In a bold innovation Fassbinder decentralises Myra and Ian who sit at opposite ends of the stage, silent for much of the action as three grotesque figures act out contre scenes: images of vice and squalor which represent the wasteland of Ian’s psyche: they all demonstrate what Fassbinder deemed the “factoid underpinnings of everyday life”. These fictions of Brady’s malevolent imagination all depict some form of violent intimidation, powerfully evoking the terror and helplessness of Brady’s child victims. As harrowing as these scenes may be, they fail to excite the same level of discomfort as the taciturn Brady who glares blankly into the audience. The penetrating gaze of Rizwan Ahmed, who plays Ian, was enough to convince me that I was in the presence of pure evil, as I mentally scanned the room for the nearest exits just in case I happened to be next on his hit list. Ahmed’s brilliantly understated performance makes Hannibal Lecter look like the kind of guy you would be proud to take home to mother. It goes without saying that play with a subject matter as distressing as this is will contain unsettling scenes, and yet one of the most disconcerting touches is, strangely enough, provided by costume rather than content. As they sit amidst the grotesque violence, Brady and Hindley appear pristine, in a state of hyper-naturalism, their presence contrasts dramatically with the monochromatic contre scenes. We are forced to confront the Hindleys not simply as an evil abstraction, but as real people, wearing the mask of normality with a disquieting nonchalance. So what’s the final verdict on Pre-Paradise Sorry Now? Entering the consciousness of one of the country’s most notorious and feared serial killers is not a comfortable experience and yet makes unforgettable viewing. would advise anybody with fascination for nihilism and the darker side to see this play. One word of advice: whatever you do, try not to catch Ahmed’s disquieting gaze.
ARCHIVE: 3rd Week TT 2003

It’s a funny thing, hysteria. It can mean a terrible, debilitating disease caused by a functional disturbance of the nervous system or that you have found something extremely comical. This double-meaning suggests an essential aspect of the comic art: hysteria results from one’s thoughts functioning at the boundary of reason, and comedy is the art of testing boundaries. Indeed the happy union of medical dysfunction and comical function are exploited to their full in Le Malade Imaginaire. Molière was able to get full ironic mileage out of a man so acutely aware of his medical condition that he created his own diseases, only to be blind to the betrayal of his wife. The playwright happily wraps these up with a wry mockery of the seventeenth century medical profession and a dash of good old-fashioned farce. The performers have to work very hard with such a text to garner a good response from the audience and I am not entirely sure they manage it. But all the cast, without fail, have confidence and assurance both in stance and delivery of their lines. There is a wonderful rhythm about the exchanges particularly between Argan (Deval Desai) the hypochondriac and the feisty maid Toinette (Julia Morgan). Angélique (Ewa Szypula) not only looks perfect for the part but conveys genuine emotion. When Jeremy Gould enters as the doctor Monsieur Purgon the stage flickers with a dramatic spark that should be sustained throughout the entire play. Yet these positive aspects do not allow the cast to overcome the underlying problem that complexity of character is not immediately apparent in the words themselves; the onus lies on the actors to “think” it into their performance. The cast as a whole need to examine their lines and make them bigger, more apparent, more detailed. Instead there is broad brushstroke effect throughout the entire play, which unfortunately verges on the monotonous. Nonetheless definitely one for the francophiles.
ARCHIVE: 3rd Week TT 2003

With just two characters and two park benches, The Zoo Story holds up a magnifying glass to the human condition. The dynamics between the two protagonists: erratic, confrontational Jerry and mild, conventional Peter, are arresting attention is focused upon the personal development provoked by chance meeting in Central Park. Their dialogue flits between conventional banality, “it’s a nice day”, and absurd neurosis, which conjures up Peter’s “parakeets making dinner”. Evidently Peter’s tranquil veneer belies a darker disatisfaction and the arrival of the penetrating stranger reveals the deficits in his family life with irrevocable consequences. Jerry’s development serves as a sinister parallel as his ecstatic glee depicting the attempted slaughter of his landlady’s dog conceals more disquieting desire for own extermination which must climax as the play reaches resolution. With plot and scenery as minimal as this, actors must necessarily have outstanding command and this production does not disappoint. Spencer Wong exquisitely captures Jerry’s intense, yet childlike neurosis, while equally powerfully Jason Wool provides the vital counterpoise in the ostensibly staid, and slightly lofty Peter. As the play approaches its fatal dénouement we realise the significance of the animal imagery which is shot through the entire play: as they crescendo to climax, we realise with sickening culpability that the microscope extends towards us and we too are caught behind the bars of the zoo.
ARCHIVE: 3rd Week TT 2003

Charles Clarke has a right to be believed, and I do believe him, when he says that his recent remarks about medieval history (and other medieval studies) have been misrepresented and that he is not at all hostile to this particular study. Nonetheless what reported – that medievalists are merely ‘ornamental’ and that their study is not deserving of public funding – even if it is not a fair reflection of what was said, in itself requires an answer. I would make three points about it. It seems that medieval history has as good an effect in developing the brain power of students and their mental flexibility to turn their minds to wherever they are needed as any other subject. My pupils have gone into all walks of life and done very well in them. That discipline of reading on a new subject, perceiving what is interesting in it for oneself, understanding the salient points, and writing about it lucidly, seems to be very much a transferable skill. And surely it is transferable mental skills which our society most needs where it is no difficult to predict the fast-moving developments of the future. I should say that all subjects that are able to develop the mental power, and capacity for interest, of students, are wealth generating subjects. Medieval history interests very many students. The remarkable thing that I have discovered over four decades of university teaching is that what interests intelligent students often has very little to do with its closeness to or distance from the present time. My pupils are interested in the Carolingian Renaissance because they are interested in how other societies and ruling elites tried to define and foster their own cultures. That is, they are interested in how any society conceives its cultural substratum. They are curious about why the hard-bitten administrators who founded Oxford colleges in the Middle Ages wanted the majority of their scholars to study Theology! It is always thrilling to see how Beowulf, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, Augustine’s Confessions, the Letters of Abelard and Heloise, the Visions and wonderful music of Hildegard of Bingen, the architecture of a twelfth-century parish church like Iffley here, and much else besides, speak to, and move, many human beings of all conditions, regardless of period. If one aim of university education, indeed of all education, is to enlarge our human experience and our perceptions of where we fit into human experience ourselves, many students find many different and equally valid ways of achieving that. Whatever students find the most interesting, I would argue, is what most effective in developing their mental power and making it most useful to society. If one wants to understand the modern world, it is important that society as a whole should not have an artificially foreshortened perspective on it. Whether one is for against greater integration into Europe, for instance, it is important to understand how and why the concept of Europe goes back Charlemagne c.800 – and not further back. When I was medieval history tutor at St Peter’s, we had weekly group discussions for the historians in their first and third years. What this showed up, as the modernists were the first to agree, was that there were no artificial cutoff points before which a period was irrelevant to considering continuum of history and historical problems. For instance, many the first strings in the knots, where the seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution was concerned, were untied in the Middle Ages. Again the medieval Crusades cannot be unimportant to us, if they are important to how Israelis perceive their situation today. So on the grounds that medieval history is one good developer mental power and flexibility capacity for taking an interest, university level; that it speaks meaningfully as more modern periods do to a significant proportion of intelligent students; and that society as a whole is the poorer any foreshortened perspective what concerns it; I hope Charles Clarke may be influenced to think that it is as deserving government support as any other area of the humanities, and to modify his reported draconian position. Professor Henry Mayr-Harting, Christ Church, is Regius Professor Ecclesiastical History.
ARCHIVE: 3rd Week TT 2003

A member of the OUSU executive has resigned this week, slamming the leadership, we report on today’s front page. Another exec member has also resigned, and the future of John Blake, widely tipped as being a potential presidential candidate next term, is uncertain. But should most Cherwell readers care? Probably not. Despite the efforts of William Straw and the move to Bonn Sq, OUSU remains deeply irrelevant to most of our lives. One of the big issues that has exercised the minds of student journalists for generations is the modest profile of the Student Union. In 1996 the Reform Club commissioned some research to find out exactly what the average undergraduate’s view of student representation in Oxford was. Not surprisingly they found that a large proportion of students were almost entirely ignorant of OUSU and those that did have some inkling of what went on in its previous Little Clarendon Street home were often heavily critical. Stripped of its potential to lay on large-scale entz events and genuinely useful facilities for students, OUSU is regarded by many as bureaucratic, distant and pointless. The secession of Oriel in Trinity 2001 added a greater sense of urgency to the ever present obsession of the few dozen or so genuine OUSU supporters out there (the president, his sabbaticals and various hangers-on) to make the student union more ‘relevant’ to students. The solutions that OUSU has come up with over the years are nearly always pretty banal are useful without being particularly eye-catching. Entz events come, go and are often dismal and a plethora of terminally dull handbooks and publications nothing to touch students’ lives Despite the weekly paper, the portfolio of publications and the night bus scheme, OUSU remains extremely marginal the lives of most students. Has its new site in central Oxford provide the cure for the malaise? Hardly. The new site still doesn’t contain a bar, poolroom, canteen or any other amenity students at most universities enjoy as their rights. The major problem for OUSU is not that it is full trotgimps and media whores, but that it is attempting to be centralising force in a university that remains resolutely, defiantly decentralised, or rather, ‘collegiate’. This is a city of lots small campuses – or colleges rather than one monolithic single- campus in the fashion American universities. While students do come together and join forces in certain endeavours (acting, university sport, etc.), there is very little reason why they should feel compelled to interact with other students simply because we are all Oxford. So, please, continue to ignore Toynbee, Blake, the VP-Grads election, and the end of Straw and Sullivan, and enjoy the sun.
ARCHIVE: 3rd Week TT 2003

Back from the USA May 6th. The swifts have made their annual return to the Museum tower; exactly on schedule. But safety regulations now prevent anyone except researchers from scaling the ladders to see the nesting boxes from inside. An article appears Private Eye trashing our plans repairs to the Museum roof, one the glories of our fabulous Grade One listed building. Unfortunately leaks, due apparently to an inherently inadequate design (1855). Expert consultants to the University Surveyors recommend installing a high-tech false roof over the top: invisible from the street and a completely reversible, non-invasive solution. The Victorian Society prefers a more risky approach of removing and re-sealing all the existing 140 year-old glass tiles. As we have been trying to have an informed dialogue with the Society and English Heritage to find the best solution, it is rather disappointing to find this silly, abusive article in the Eye. The University Gazette announces the transfer of space from Inorganic Chemistry to the Museum when the new Chemistry Research Building is completed. After five years of campaigning, we can build a proper shop and café to serve both the University Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum next door. Bad news is that installation of a lift to the first floor is now delayed until spring. Explain the roof situation to meeting of Museum Visitors. There is also concern about the appointment of two new curators when I retire in September and Professor Jim Kennedy takes over; Professor John Woodhouse reassures everyone. Interviewed on Radio Oxford about the roof May 8th, try to downplay any controversy. May 9th, letter arrives from English Heritage saying that they disapprove our solution to the roof problem. But we hadn’t formally asked them for approval yet. As the Private Eye correspondent ‘Piloti’ is evidently Gavin Stamp, a member of the EH Historic Buildings Committee, at least the timing of the article is clear. Our ‘please touch me’ stuffed cheetah (Mike O’Hanlon at Pitt Rivers calls him ‘Baldy’ although he isn’t yet) is sporting a bandage on his foot the next day; overly attentive visitors have dislodged a claw. Remind Education Officer Janet Stott to call the vet; no, the taxidermist. May 12th, Radio 4 calls to arrange a programme about the Wilberforce- Huxley ‘Monkey’ Debate (held at the Museum in 1860). Oxford Times leaves message about the roof. May 13th, have to stand in as chair of Pitt Rivers Museum Visitors meeting. Keen discussion of Dr O’Hanlon’s plan for a new building to house the parts of the Museum currently dispersed up the Banbury Road. New site is the old ‘Green Shed’ behind PRM. This to be the exciting £5 millions first stage of a whole new addition to that Museum. Renewed rumours of draconian budget cuts for the University’s libraries and museums. Professor Keith Thomson is Director of the University Museum of Natural History.
ARCHIVE: 3rd Week TT 2003

Croquet might be seen as a quintessentially Oxford sport; this year’s cuppers competition has an entry of over 500 players. However, outside Oxford the game is very much a specialist sport, and for this reason there are no university leagues. During the croquet season the players therefore instead battle out for the Frank Cooper Varsity Bowl against Cambridge, compete in the nationwide Longman Cup and play a number of friendlies, such as the game against High Wycombe last Saturday. This fixture was not without a history. The Oxford team entered the Longman Cup for the first time last year, and was defeated in the first round by High Wycombe. It was a tense affair, finishing 4:3 to the Buckinghamshire club, and the result may well have been different if the teams had been playing to the 3hour 30-minute time limit set in the rules. The friendly was a chance to seek revenge after this earlier loss. A game of croquet takes most of the day, and the two teams of four commenced at nine in the morning with doubles. The captain Stuart Romeril and Peter Barker lost to the High Wycombe duo of Bryan Judson and June Robinson, but the other Oxford doubles team, Simon Proctor and Andrew Cottrell, won their game to level the tie going into the lunch break. After the break all four team members engaging in singles play, and the players were paired together on a handicap system, similar to that of golf. Croquet has been dubbed ‘snooker on grass’, and the singles game between the Oxford captain Stuart Romeril and David Croker exemplified this. Like professional snooker, the players in croquet aim to create the opportunity to finish in one go, very similar to break building in snooker. After a scrappy start to the game, which could be compared to safety play in snooker, Stuart broke away and created an early lead. However, the points scored and the hoops passed can be a misleading guide to who’s winning because a good player, given the right opportunity, should finish the course in two goes or less. This theory was put into practice when, after a relatively easy miss, the Oxford captain let his opponent back into the game, and subsequently lost by 5 points. In the other singles the Oxford players won twice and lost once, and therefore the day ended in what the Oxford captain called “an honourable draw”, the scores in games three a piece. The Oxford team still have a number of home friendlies throughout term, but the main focus will be the Longman Cup, in which their first challenge will be an away fixture in Bristol, and of course the Varsity match, both of which will take place in June.
ARCHIVE: 3rd Week TT 2003