Sunday 8th June 2025
Blog Page 285

From Cherwell to the BBC: Marianna Spring in Conversation

Charlie Hancock
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From Cherwell to the BBC: Marianna Spring in Conversation

It has been a busy year for Marianna Spring.

Since being appointed the BBC’s first specialist disinformation reporter at the start of 2020, she has monitored the spread of viral misinformation and conspiracy theories across social media, and the consequences when they bleed into the real world. It has been a year which has seen her delve into corners of the internet where QAnon and anti-vax conspiracies thrive, and present two episodes of Panorama: one on the anti-vax movement, and another on the spread of online misogyny. Her most recent work includes a special series of Trending on BBC Sounds – The Denial Files – which explores the evolution of climate denialism.

Does she ever switch off? “I’m probably the worst person to ask that question to!” she laughs. “I feel like I am permanently switched on, to my editor’s dismay.”

She traces her interest in journalism to hours spent watching BBC World News on family holidays. “I was very curious about what was going on in the world, and I used to make my poor little sister sit and watch coverage of tsunamis. I think my mum thought I’d gone a bit bonkers!” That sparked an interest in the news which she pursued through secondary school as part of a scheme for young reporters, which taught her how to identify and investigate stories, and got them published.

Going up to Pembroke College to read French and beginner’s Russian, Spring was set on joining a student newspaper. “I remember it being full of second and third years who all seemed to know each other.  And I thought ‘oh god. I’m actually a bit worried about this’. But with the encouragement of her family, she stuck with it, becoming a news editor covering stories ranging from changes to Oxford University’s sexual harassment policy, to interviews with Ian Hislop and Gina Miller.

Her year abroad presented new opportunities for reporting. While studying Russian in Yaroslavl, north west of Moscow, Spring wrote articles for the English language newspaper The Moscow Times. While living in France, she wrote for The Local, which allowed her to develop her skills as a reporter further: “It was a really crazy month in Paris: there were floods, protests against labour laws…which meant I got to be out and about reporting. I got teargassed. I remember going to the office with my mascara streaming down my face. My editor asked me if I was alright, but I loved it!”

Coming back to Oxford, Spring returned to Cherwell as deputy editor. Her work abroad and her experience from Cherwell helped seal work experience at Private Eye and The Guardian, which resulted in her working shifts at The Guardian offices in London. Alongside being paid for her reporting, this gave Spring the opportunity to pitch articles drawing on the networks she had cultivated in Russia. 

“Doing Cherwell was absolutely brilliant, mainly because you got the chance to report and edit in a way that you often don’t. You learn a lot of the really useful skills that are highly valuable when you’re a news reporter or an editor – particularly stuff to do with defamation and right of reply. My base-level understanding of that was learned at Cherwell…When I first started at the BBC a lot of colleagues who were the same age as me said I knew lots about editorial policy. I learned about it from the other publications I wrote for, too. But I learned a lot from doing Cherwell,” she says of how her experiences from student journalism set her up with skills she used later in her career. 

After graduating, Spring continued to work shifts at The Guardian and toyed with the idea of returning to Russia to continue reporting. A colleague at The Guardian recommended emailing female journalists at the BBC whom she admired, through which she invited for shadow shifts helping to produce Newsnight, which led to investigative work at the programme. 

Around the time of the 2019 European Elections, she started investigating the spread of disinformation and abuse in Facebook groups. Tackling the spread of fake news became a thread which ran through much of her reporting that year, including during the 2019 General Election, after which the BBC recognised the need for reporters who specialised in monitoring disinformation as election in the US loomed on the horizon. 

Throughout our conversation, Spring emphasised that her path into journalism was one of many. “It’s really worth putting yourself out there and asking questions. If you’re engaged and polite then no one will ever have a problem with receiving an email.

“Loads of the best journalists I know didn’t follow a traditional route in. They didn’t do a master’s degree. I didn’t do a master’s. They didn’t necessarily go through a grad scheme. There are all sorts of ways to get into journalism.

“If you’re someone who hasn’t realised they want to do journalism yet, there is absolutely still time to get involved. Lots of people get into journalism later. Don’t feel like because you’re in your third year you can’t decide to write some news articles for Cherwell, or you’d like to explore journalism as a career. It’s never too late. It’s a brilliant career that I absolutely love. And while it isn’t an easy one, it’s definitely incredibly rewarding and exciting.”

Image Credit: Marianna Spring

Review: West Side Story (2021)

Clementine Scott
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Review: West Side Story (2021)

CW: sexual assault.

For musical theatre purists and sceptics alike, Steven Spielberg’s reboot of West Side Story remains a hard sell. According to the naysayers, the Oscar-winning 1961 film, itself adapted from Sondheim and Bernstein’s musical update of Romeo and Juliet, is timeless, and sacrilegious for Spielberg even to think about revising it. Another possible argument is that the reboot should have at least set the classic story in the present day, instead of recreating 1950s New York through meticulously researched sets and costumes.

However, Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner have understood that, unlike the timeless tale of star-crossed lovers which inspired it, the love story between María (Rachel Zegler) and Tony (Ansel Elgort) takes place in a distinct political context which isn’t straightforwardly transferable to a different time and place. From the film’s opening shots, it is clear that the Jets and Sharks’ motivations for gang violence stem from misdirected rage against the gentrification of their Upper West Side neighbourhood — the unmistakable opening whistles of Leonard Bernstein’s score have a newly sinister quality when accompanying a wrecking ball about to tear down an immigrant neighbourhood in favour of the new Lincoln Center.

The question of why the gangs were fighting in the first place continues to be addressed throughout the film, with some tightly observed monologues from Riff (Mike Faist), the leader of the white European immigrant Jets, whose motivation lies somewhere at the intersection of working class disaffection and xenophobia. On the Puerto Rican side, gang leader Bernardo (David Alvarez) and his girlfriend Anita (Ariana DeBose) discuss, in one of the film’s most effective new scenes, the tension between Anita’s optimism about moving to New York and Bernardo’s insecurity in his outsider status and desire for a traditional life in Puerto Rico — these are, of course, themes touched on in the lyrics of ‘America’. Indeed, ideas of police corruption, disaffection, and the uneasy status of immigrants were all bristling under the surface throughout the 1961 film (those who deride Spielberg’s reimagining as a ‘woke’ corruption of a classic weren’t paying enough attention to the original), but Spielberg and Kushner’s added dialogue allows the audience a deeper look into what was there all along.

Sometimes the additional context can feel a little didactic — Lieutenant Schrank’s (Corey Stoll) opening monologue about the changes in the area edges on overly expository, and one more wonders whether eighteen-year-old recent immigrant María really would be so well-informed about social issues in New York. Moreover, some of the film’s most meaningful scenes are those which do not deviate wildly from the original film, but inevitably resonate more in the different political context of 2021 — Anita’s implied sexual assault and Anybodys’ (now played by non-binary actor Iris Menas) exclusion from the Jets have new meaning in a society with a more modern perspective regarding sexual violence and LGBTQ+ issues.

However, at its best, West Side Story feels like an expanded approach to a familiar tale, providing peripheral characters with humanity and a life outside the central love story. The devil is in the details of these characters’ lives, whether that’s Anita at church or Tony and María going on a date to the Cloisters in Washington Heights, or the very fact that we see characters take the subway, or the expanded role of shopkeeper Valentina (a reimagined version of the original’s Doc, played by Rita Moreno, who portrayed Anita in 1961) acting as employer and mentor to Tony. In the case of the Puerto Rican characters, the film’s commitment to portraying a more complete picture of their lives extends not only to (thankfully) casting only Latinx actors in these roles, but also to scripting crucial scenes wholly or partly in unsubtitled Spanish — as Spielberg recently told a press conference, “that language had to exist in equal proportions alongside the English with no help.”.

Spielberg’s approach — expanding upon the original without fundamentally changing it — also extends to the musical numbers. Though Spielberg’s well-documented love of the original stage musical and film is evidenced through some loving recreations of the original staging (other than a pointed reference to María’s illegal housing situation, ‘Tonight’ is nearly identical to the iconic 1961 balcony scene), most other numbers are subtly yet meaningfully altered. Rita Moreno’s performance of ‘America’ in 1961 was a musical theatre gateway drug for many, myself included, and in his version Spielberg fortunately doesn’t add gimmick-y detail so excessive as to prevent the score and choreography from speaking for themselves. Nevertheless, having the song performed in a community setting, in a lush period reconstruction of a majority-Latinx New York City street, celebrates Puerto Rican New Yorkers beyond Maria, Anita and Bernardo in a way that the original did not. More radically, Spielberg has Tony rather than Riff (as in the original Broadway musical) or fellow Jet Ice (as in the 1961 film) perform ‘Cool’, a decision so perfect one wonders why no previous production had ever come up with it — a number which felt like a bizarre afterthought in the original film performed by a character who had not previously spoken, is now a raw, desperate attempt on the part of a best friend to prevent further conflict.

Not every attempt at rethinking the staging of the original film’s musical numbers feels necessary, however. The sublime depiction of the universal thrill of first love that is ‘María’, performed by Tony on the way home from his and María’s fateful first meeting, was somewhat ruined by comical, fourth-wall-breaking reaction shots of bemused passers-by; this, alongside the decision to depict Tony as newly released from prison, represented the film’s questionable tendency of sacrificing the idealism and naivety crucial to Tony’s (and Romeo’s) character in favour of strict realism.

The musical numbers mostly work, though, thanks to the laudable decision to cast actors with backgrounds predominantly on the stage (with the exception of Elgort) in most of the leading roles. 20-year-old newcomer Zegler’s expressive soprano is capable of portraying a blend of ingenue charm and teenage defiance that is perfect for the new script’s more rounded version of María. Alvarez and Faist have their gang leader characters’ brutish charisma nailed to an extent that one realises how miscast the original Bernardo and especially Riff (whose vibe in 1961 was strangely wholesome) were. However, it is unfortunately also necessary to mention the allegations of sexual assault made in 2020 against Ansel Elgort; though West Side Story had already wrapped production when the allegations were made public, it is still a shameful oversight on the part of Spielberg and his fellow producers that the film’s trailers, press events and promotional materials have continued to feature the actor prominently.

Despite some flaws onscreen and serious errors of judgment offscreen, Spielberg’s West Side Story reimagines its source material with obvious affection for its predecessor, but also with a new sense of ambition about the iconic story — it is not only a timeless love story, but a snapshot of a moment in history and of the people who lived in that moment.

Image: West Side Story Movie/Facebook

The Bike Project: Giving wheels to refugees

Joshua Low
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The Bike Project: Giving wheels to refugees

Social enterprise The Bike Project is on a mission to get refugees cycling across the UK. It is doing so by collecting unwanted and abandoned bikes, fixing them up in their workshop, and donating them to refugees and asylum-seekers who do not have the means or money to travel.  

According to the Project’s 2020 Impact Report, the gift of wheels can make a difference to the lives of refugees and asylum-seekers as it helps them complete essential trips, build friendships in local areas, gain a sense of normalcy, improve their physical and emotional wellbeing, and save transportation costs.

A bike would also be a valuable assistance to asylum-seekers because they often have to endure a protracted wait for an asylum decision from the Home Office. During this period they are prohibited to work and only given £39.63 of asylum support per week, amounting to £5.66 a day for food, sanitation, and clothing.

“Right now, the waiting list of refugees who need a bike is growing,” Charlotte Hu, the charity’s Digital Marketing Manager, told Cherwell. “If you’ve received a new bike for Christmas, or are doing a spring clean, why not donate your old bike to a great cause?”

Oxford Direct Services, the City Council’s entity responsible for removing abandoned and un-roadworthy bikes, removes around 400 – 1000 bicycles from public cycle racks every year.

Founded by Jem Stein, a social entrepreneur and qualified bike mechanic who grew up in the city of Oxford, The Bike Project also runs Bike Buddies, a programme that links volunteer cyclists with refugee newcomers to go on social rides together to help improve refugees’ cycling confidence and familiarity of the locality. People can sign up to become a Bike Buddy here.

Prospective bike donors living in Oxford are invited to first register their bike at thebikeproject.co.uk/donate. The organisers will then provide the full address (OX1 4LG) of the drop-off location. The donation drive will run from January 4th – 18th in the new year.

Image: The Bike Project

Interview: Cut, Paste, Enter.//Paper Moon 

Katie Kirkpatrick
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Interview: Cut, Paste, Enter.//Paper Moon 

Paper Moon’s latest production, an immersive theatre experience called Cut, Paste, Enter. Took at Modern Art Oxford. Ahead of their opening, Cherwell spoke to Chloe Dootson-Graube (Creative Director), Georgie Dettmer (Director), Grace Olusola (Writer), and Hannah Gallardo-Parsons (Sound Designer) about putting together this exciting new project.

How did the idea for this project first come about?

Georgie: “Chloe and I had worked on Paper Moon’s previous project ‘Spoon River Anthology’ together and we began talking about different ways to bring visual art into performance. From then on we began discussing Chloe’s work, her ideas about TVs, rhinos, and how much we loved Grace Olusola’s writing. I had recently heard about binaural sound and had also recently bumped into the best sound designer (Hannah Gallardo-Parsons) and so it all came together. A few zoom calls later and ‘Cut, Paste, Enter.’ was born!”

Chloe: “As for me, I’ve always been interested in dystopia, and more and more, trying to set up any kind of design based projects in Oxford was beginning to feel more dystopic, so I really wanted to push the boundaries of what you can do in an Oxford theatre space, and give more of a voice to the design team in so doing.”

Grace: “In terms of the writing, the idea for the narrative came from conversations we had about the type of story that could do the experiential nature of the show the most justice. What gives enough room to really let us be creative with sound? Or gives enough for the artist to respond to? We started thinking about the theme of dystopia and I remembered studying documentary as part of my A levels film studies course. In those classes, we spoke about the role of the editor and I was baffled by how powerful, yet silent the editor is. It seemed to link well to the dystopian idea, and the rest kind of came from there!”

How did you find the collaboration of the project? 

Chloe: “I think the wonderful thing about collaboration is that everyone truly has a say in every decision made – Grace and I discussed the idea we had extensively before she started writing, and I would contribute what I thought would be good artistically and what she thought would make for dynamic writing.”

Grace: “It’s been really fruitful. Writing with both sound and visuals in mind gave me boundaries that in some ways actually expanded the realms of what I could imagine for the script. Writing with collaboration in mind meant that the script almost felt bigger than itself!”

Hannah: “Yeah, I found that clever collaboration process incredibly open. No one had any big egos, we’re on the same level. And that was that was a truly a truly lovely feeling.”

How did bringing in actors affect this project? 

Grace: “They are all so amazing! They have really brought the characters to life, in ways I didn’t even imagine or think about when writing them. At the audition stage, I recommended to Georgie, our wonderful director, that diversity in voices (pitch, accent, inflections) was quite important for the audio elements of the production, and it’s been so great to see how everyone has brought something quite special  to their character – especially as there are so many of them!”

Georgie: “Hearing the cast bring so many different interpretations to the script in such a short amount of time just proved (again and again) how talented people are here. Bringing actors into the room forces you to consider the script from new perspectives as well which is refreshing and challenging and exactly what you need when making a production.”

What was your favourite part of the process?

Chloe: “Working with such incredible people and having the space to do something that feels really fresh and free from an artistic standpoint.”

Grace: “It would probably be the first time I heard an early demo, during the recording process. It was the first time I had seen how the script had been interpreted, and there is no joy like knowing that your creativity has inspired creativity in others. This unique theatrical process especially has bred the loveliest ripple effect!”

Hannah: “Building this world together. It’s nice to have a truly collaborative project.”

Image: Chloe Dootson-Graube

Review: God of Carnage at the Blue Moon Theatre

Lucie de Gentile
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Review: God of Carnage at the Blue Moon Theatre

To know ourselves, we must know what we will fight for. All four characters in God of  Carnage fight against each other – and very rarely reflect upon their own failings. This is a play about how conflict with the outside world clarifies and sharpens our own character, through our opposition to others’ points of views.

Conflict in God of Carnage is created through two groups of parents‘ apparent desire to resolve a falling-out between their children. Alain and Annette’s child has hit and broken two teeth of Véronique and Michelle’s child. However, despite initial mature airs, the adults soon lose any sense of moderation, and themselves turn into quarrelling children. This play is therefore an intimate descent into savagery.

All the actors gave impressively dedicated performances of both polite respectability and of raw rage – not a mean feat! Michelle (Poddy Wilson) was particularly compelling to watch, showing an authentic range of emotions whilst remaining a grounded character. Her partner, Véronique (Imogen Front) provided the main source of energy, keeping the play buoyant. However, her movements were slightly exaggerated and there was a lack of palpable physical tension between her and Michelle – although if the intended effect was to intensify Véronique’s isolation and being stuck in her own space, then this was successfully conveyed. Alain (Michael Yates) and Annette (Bella Stock) were a much more unified couple, in the way they dressed, moved, and spoke. There was a real sense of uniformity in how they wished to be seen, and this level of subtle chemistry was noted. They also both had a great level of enunciation, which really brought the wit of the script to life. I did however find the transformation of Annette from rather meek to a prowling aggressor not to have been completely convincing, and it would have been satisfying to see Alain lose his temper more. Indeed, it was only Alan who did not become completely neurotic or depressed – and ironically, that was a shame.

The Frenchness of the play was very much emphasised – and understandably, because this is the work of the famous French playwright Yasmina Reza. Firstly, the actors’ efforts at French pronunciation should be applauded. However, I must say that the very accurate translation of French expressions, which tend to be very dramatic, did not quite come off as natural in English. Being desperate in French is a much more common expression than when an English person says it – therefore, an already dramatic play was probably over intensified through its translation. The choice of music “Tout plane pour moi” at the start of the play was very good, creating a sense of electricity and movement in the air. However, I did find the choice of “Aux Champs-Elysee” to finish the play to be rather confusing. I do however feel that this sensitivity is completely due to the fact that I am French – and that if one is not looking for accuracy, it is a completely charming depiction.

Director Alison Hall has successfully brought to life a play with primal animalistic emotion, witty dialogue and charismatic actors.So, if you fancy seeing people’s true disgust of each other, some witty insults and a general sense of civilised chaos, then I would whole-heartedly recommend God of Carnage!

Image Credit: Matt Coleclough

St Benet’s Hall has ‘credible financing’ to secure buildings and future

Isaac Ettinghausen
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St Benet’s Hall has ‘credible financing’ to secure buildings and future

St Benet’s Hall has “credible financing in place” to secure its two buildings from the Ampleforth Abbey Trust, an email to the Hall’s alumni which has been seen by Cherwell reveals. 

Last week students were informed that St Benet’s, which currently houses around 80 undergraduate students, would temporarily halt admissions following an assessment by the University that “the Hall’s financial prospects are so uncertain that the University cannot be confident that the Hall can support a new undergraduate cohort”.

Earlier this month, Cherwell saw communications detailing the planned legal separation of the Hall with the Ampleforth Abbey Trust, who founded St Benet’s and own the two buildings that make up its premises. The Hall has been governed by the St Benet’s Trust, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Ampleforth Abbey Trust.

In the email sent to students on Thursday evening, the Hall’s master Prof Richard Cooper, wrote: “As an independent entity without the underwriting of a parent organisation, we do also need to be able to demonstrate to the University and others that we have a) security of tenure on our properties, b) medium term financial resilience and c) an endowment that can provide a long-term underpinning of the institution.

“In connection with the first aspect, I am delighted to be able to tell you that St Benet’s now has credible financing in place in order to secure both 11 Norham Gardens and 38 St Giles’ from AAT and is working to complete these transactions imminently.” 

This will be a step towards financial security, as the University had previously asked the Hall to demonstrate ownership of its building as a condition for accepting new students next year.

The email revealed that the Hall has an “agreement in progress” with the Westminster College Trust, whose trustees have agreed “in principle” to acquire the Hall’s premises at 38 St Giles”. The Trust will provide St Benet’s with an initial lease of 99 years, at a cost of £1 per year. The agreement would also allow the Hall to buy the premises in the future.

Professor Cooper described the news as a “tremendous boost”. He added it was unfortunate that the College had not finalised these arrangements before the University decided to pause undergraduate admissions, but that the news was a “crucial step on the journey to reinstatement [of undergraduate admissions] for future years”.

The Westminster College Trust has also pledged to underwrite any of the Hall’s losses up to £300,000 a year for “at least the next three years”.

Image: Janet McKnight/CC BY 2.0 via flickr.com

Oxford University received £70,000 from controversial mining company Rio Tinto

Isaac Ettinghausen
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Oxford University received £70,000 from controversial mining company Rio Tinto

Oxford University received at least £70,000 from trans-national mining company Rio Tinto since 2013, Oxford Climate Justice Campaign have revealed. 

A press release from the climate justice group asserted that in 2013 the Blavatnik School of Government (which offers a course on oil, gas, and mining governance) received at least £25,000 from the conglomerate. Between 2014 and 2019, the Anglo-Australian corporation also made three donations to the Saïd Business School’s centre for Business Taxation totaling 45,000. 

Rio Tinto, the world’s second-largest metals and mining corporation, has faced accusations of corruption, environmental degradation, and human rights abuses. These include the demolition of two sacred Aboriginal sites in Western Australia despite opposition from their traditional owners, and the pollution of the Kawerong-Jaba river in Papua New Guinea, which has led to ongoing health problems on the island of Bougainville. The Human Rights Law Centre reported that the same mine left people on the island with poisoned water, polluted fields, and a ruined river valley. In 2017, it was fined £27.3 million for breaching the UK’s disclosure and transparency rules. 

Benny Wenda, Chair of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua said: “Institutions like the University of Oxford, revered around the globe as a beacon of reason and justice, cannot continue to perpetuate and gain from this pillaging of our land. When genocide is taking place, everyone has a moral responsibility to cease their participation in it.” Wenda has alleged that Rio Tinto has “close relations with the military to protect their mining interests in my people’s lands – the very same military that is estimated to have killed more than 100,000 of my people.”

OCJC has previously highlighted companies “greenwashing” their reputations through University funding; in January 2021 Cherwell reported on a £100 million donation from petrochemical giant INEOS, which OCJC described as “parad[ing] an ethical donation front”. 

Matilda Gettins, an OCJC member, said that “It is disgraceful, although totally unsurprising, that the University of Oxford continues to take money from Rio Tinto, one of the dirtiest mining companies around. The university is laundering the reputation of Rio Tinto, funneling graduates into its careers, and helping the company with research; the losers are frontline communities, primarily across the Global South, who are fighting for their lives against extraction and climate breakdown.”

When approached for comment, a spokesperson from the University of Oxford said: “Throughout its history, Oxford University has benefited from the generosity and foresight of philanthropic donations. The funds we raise help discover cures for debilitating disease, offer solutions to the worlds most pressing problems and assist worthy students, from diverse backgrounds, to obtain an Oxford education.

“The University is aware of its position within, and responsibility to, the wider community in which we operate, and has robust and rigorous guidelines regarding the acceptance of donations and research funding. 

“All significant gifts and donations are reviewed by Oxford University ‘Committee to Review Donations and Research Funding’. This committee includes independent, external representatives and has a rigorous due diligence process for donations and gifts. 

“We have a very clear position on academic independence from donations. Our donors have no say in setting the research and teaching programmes of the posts or infrastructure they fund, nor do they have any access to the results of research, other than publicly available material.”

A representative from the Blavatnik School of Government said “The Blavatnik School of Government received donations in 2013 and 2014 from Rio Tinto to fund student scholarships. We have not received any donations from Rio Tinto since 2014. Donations from a wide range of organisations help ensure that the vast majority of our students come to us on financial support.”

The Saïd Business School and Rio Tinto have been approached for comment.

Image: Ray Harrington

Review: Please Clap // 00Productions

Anna Stephen
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Review: Please Clap // 00Productions

Please Clap is a play about revelation. The premise: a talk show becomes increasingly tense when it is revealed that its histrionic host knows more than he should about his sarcastic, tipsy-on-arrival celebrity guest. The script, written by George Rushton (who also directed the play) is sensitive to when, and how, information is revealed. Lily Lefkow-Green shines as Ariana, delivering a complex and nuanced performance that shows what can be revealed in a single gesture or a change of tone. But the whole cast, completed by Alfie Dry as the host and Leah Aspden as the stock superfan (or so it seems), clearly understand the extent of their own character’s knowledge. They use this to hold back, to let slip, to betray something that contributes to the spiralling chaos of the interview.

The format of the show (technically the ‘show-within-the-show’) is inventive. We are the live audience at the Burton Taylor Studio, but we are also the live audience of Dougie’s show, The Lights with Dougie Harrison. Rushton comes on at the start, stepping onto a purple velvet-draped set, and addresses us in a way that allows us to understand our function as a dual audience. Then on leaps Dougie, his sparkling charisma the perfect material for a seamless façade, before settling himself behind the safety of his desk. He welcomes his guest Ariana, a former sitcom child star who is here to promote her new project: a film about her life on set.

The play is well-paced: we are drip-fed revelations throughout the conversation. Dry and Lefkow-Green play off each other well, each of his questions battering her down in some unique way. Dougie’s recurring references to Ariana’s relationships with ‘Joel’ and ‘Henry’ – just names at this point in the play – do much to intrigue. There are many deliciously uncomfortable moments of tension when a question goes too far. Ariana certainly reaches for the wine more than once throughout, an action that punctuates the emotional stages of the interview. Lefkow-Green’s body language is integral to the character and how we perceive her: her movements range from the subtle to the pronounced as she gears Ariana’s responses to the increasingly probing questions. She plays the typical seen-it-all, been-there-done-that celebrity, a role that quickly could have become stale if not for Lefkow-Green’s performance. As the interview goes on, Ariana’s persona slowly crumbles. Through a twist of a ring or a bounce of the leg, a shrugs or a shift of position, I became more and more interested in the person beyond the actress. Although she claims to have “tied off being a teen with a neat knot”, it’s a knot that seems to be coming undone.

The conflict between truth and performance is a particularly well-executed theme throughout. In the first ‘ad break’, the lights go down and the forced physical distance between Dougie and Ariana breaks down. He sits beside her on the sofa in an intimate, deliberately strained scene. “Talk to me,” he urges. “It’s much better to tell the truth here than on a stage.” This got a laugh, but it was one tinged with uncertainty. What is the truth, and why is Ariana not telling it? I certainly wanted to know.

All is eventually revealed thanks to the arrival of Serafina, Ariana’s biggest fan. Her entry comes at the right moment to re-energise the atmosphere: Leah Aspden adopts a breathy, puppyish adoration that is endearing in its familiarity (after all, what would anyone do if we were sharing a sofa with our idol?). However, like everything in the play, Serafina’s character is not without its darker undercurrent. She has the destructive knowledge we know is going to ruin Ariana’s reputation. It’s a trope, but it works. Serafina knows about the mysterious ‘backstage’ (something constantly alluded to), having heard Ariana and her boyfriend Henry arguing on the set of the biopic. The script and the actors cleverly handle the shift in the dynamic of the interview, when it becomes clear that Serafina is the authority figure, telling Ariana’s story and actually getting more out of her than Dougie. Ariana’s simultaneous distaste for Serafina and tangible fear of what she might reveal is a notable strength in this part of the show, which felt a little slower than the first half. “I want people to believe me when I say things,” says Ariana. It’s a quotable line – and we don’t believe her. “If people can see the film, they’ll understand what I think,” she insists.

Ironically, the part where a clip from the film is actually shown is where things falter a little. Albeit a delightfully ambitious choice (a lighting change indicates that we are now being shown a clip that Ariana, Dougie, and Serafina are all watching), it wasn’t completely clear from the clip what Ariana thinks. Aspden now plays ‘Marissa’, Ariana’s character. The actor-character shift had me a little lost, and I was relieved when the scene reverted to the golden light and forced cheer of the talk show.

This is when the emotion reaches its climax. Serafina blames Ariana for arguing with Henry and betraying him. In a moment of shock that didn’t quite come through, Serafina reveals that Ariana is (in fact, she was) pregnant, and she is a hypocrite for not being honest. Perhaps the long build-up had me thinking something much darker had happened. However, the darkness is reliably delivered soon afterwards. Ariana stands and confesses, revealing that on the set of the sitcom, co-star Joel watched her while she changed. We see her at her most broken. But we are spared (both disappointingly and fittingly) any further explanation. As all talk show hosts must, Dougie ‘rescues’ the mood, compressing the entire story, the entire show and all its emotions, into a line I especially liked: a syrupy “Isn’t she brave.”

It’s a well-paced script with a clear trajectory, and the revelations are fed to the hungry audience. Perhaps the ‘ultimate’ reveal wasn’t quite as shocking as I had supposed. However, I must note a couple of great ad libs from the cast. When an audience member dropped a phone, Lefkow-Green was straight there with “that’s quite rude” (in character and mid-line); when Dry stumbled over a consonant, he saved it with “that’s enough wine for me.”

Overall, I very much enjoyed Please Clap. Experimental, and at the same time digging into the solemn secrets of celebrity and humanity, the fakery of the media and the forgery of façades, this was a show to be applauded. Please clap for Please Clap!

Image Credit: Eloise Fabre

Review: Songs of the Silenced // Musketeer Productions

Clementine Scott
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Review: Songs of the Silenced // Musketeer Productions

Upon reading the premise for Sav Sood and Alex Rawnsley’s new BT Studio musical Songs of the Silenced, one could be forgiven for thinking that this ground was slightly too well-trodden. In this cabaret-style series of solo performances by eleven well-known women from Greek mythology, the influence of historical revisionism musicals such as Hamilton and especially Six is never far from view, nor are the echoes of similar recent cultural attempts to ‘give voice’ to the women of antiquity (including Madeline Miller’s Circe, which the show namedrops).

However, in the maelstrom of reinterpretations of misunderstood Homeric women and Greek tragedy revivals, the show’s lyrics stand out for consistently centring the core themes and questions asked by the ancient texts themselves — perhaps the most striking engagement with antiquity is the choice to include a Muse (Rawnsley), an ambiguous piano-playing figure who is variably a suitor, therapist, or mere musical accompanist to our heroines.

In the songs themselves, there is the Iliad’s central question of whether a glorious death is preferable to a long and uneventful life, captured by Thetis (Eliza Niblett), belting in anguish as she resigns herself to her son Achilles’ death; later, a comic duet between the Oresteia’s dysfunctional mother and daughter Clytemnestra and Electra (Lara Bulloch) explores to what extent revenge can be justified (the cast and crew also deserve praise for their adaptability — Rawnsley stepped in as Clytemnestra due to the original actor’s illness, which occasioned a nifty comic device implying Electra’s matricide had already occurred). Furthermore, given how often this particular genre resorts to exploring how women have been oppressed historically, it was refreshing to see Sood and Rawnsley write about mythological women who achieved happiness — Atalanta (Sood) enters a loving marriage with a man who is her equal, and Eurydice (Bulloch) sings poignantly yet not regretfully of the ‘golden times’ she had with Orpheus, in a folk-influenced number which laudably differentiates itself from the music of Hadestown.

In the uninspiring space of the BT Studio, set designers Alfie Carter and Ellie Moriuchi excel at creating the ambience of a cabaret show, through an abundance of red velvet and a distressed dressing table poised in the corner as though about to be used by a singer before her grand performance. This effort is mirrored both by Catherine Allport’s costumes (lots of flowing, jewel-hued maxi dresses which manage to evoke both Classical Greece and the Prohibition era), and by Sood and Rawnsley’s compositions. The score makes room for the brash belting we’ve come to expect from contemporary musical theatre, but also for Circe (Leah O’Grady) as a sultry jazz alto, and for an unexpected, unhinged comic soprano take on Medea’s (Eleanor Bogie) regrets about killing her children.

In light of the laudable decision to write female roles both with a wide range of stories and for a variety of voice types, it is regrettable that there are rare moments where Sood and Rawnsley forget the uniqueness of their subjects in favour of writing a certain ‘type’ of song. Perhaps the most meaningful line in Penelope’s (Sood) number (‘faithfulness in women is just pragmatism’) only comes in her spoken dialogue with the Muse after a generic loneliness ballad, while Helen’s (Niblett) lyrics focus excessively on her role as a pawn of the goddess Aphrodite, without ever really questioning if Helen actually had any agency in leaving her home and marriage with Paris. However, while there are minor concerns about potentially simplistic interpretations of mythology, the show on the whole provides an excellent and varied musical introduction to some central questions surrounding women in ancient literature.

Image Credit: Neily Raymond.

Tradition in innovation: Fluminense’s mosaico

Maurício Alencar
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Tradition in innovation: Fluminense’s mosaico

The Ancient Greeks created the mosaic, using pebbles. The Romans imitated them, using smaller and more colourful pebbles. Fluminense FC animated the mosaic, using people and placards.

Fluminense FC are one of Rio de Janeiro’s 4 biggest clubs. They are a club of innovation. Some of the best players to have risen through the youth ranks at Fluminense’s Xerém academy include Richarlison, Thiago Silva, and Marcelo. Kayky, another one of their youth products, has recently joined Manchester City. 

Fluminense’s success in innovation may be more prolific off the pitch- or rather, just off its side.

Among its various self-professed invention is the coinage of the Brazilian-Portuguese word for fan. The poet Coelho Netto referred to the Fluminense’s early 1900s female supporters, who would dress overly fashionably, as torcedoras because the women anxiously “torciam” (would twist and pull) their gloves from their hands as they watched the men play football. “While the men play, the women twist,” he wrote.

Yet, the mosaic, in the form of a tifo fan display, is probably Fluminense FC’s greatest creation. Mosaico displays involve coloured placards being placed on every seat for supporters to lift over their heads, so as to create a large image or message that covers a whole stand. As the revered writer and journalist Mario Filho wrote in his 1947 book “O Negro no Futebol Brasileiro” (The Black Man in Brazilian Football), this tradition was born at the Maracanã in a Fla-Flu match between Fluminense and Flamengo: 

“The Fluminense fans wanted to be better than the Flamengo fans using confetti, streamers, balloons, and coloured inflatables. Each Fluminense fan would find on their seat a small bag of confetti, a packet of streamers, and a balloon, which were either green, white or red. Everything was well organised, with the stands split into three sections: red balloons were set down on the right side, white balloons down the middle, and green balloons on the left side. 

(…)

“Each Fluminense fan would blow up their respective balloons, hold their confetti, and grab their streamers, waiting for their cue. There would be one prompt to throw the confetti, another to throw the streamers, and another to lift their balloons at head height. Very beautiful: it looked like a huge Fluminense flag, made out of several balloons.”

Like during Carnival, where various Escolas de Samba (Samba Schools) compete against each other for the best display of music and dance, the various Torcidas Organizadas (fan groups) contest in a tussle of pyrotechnics, songs and crowd tifos, complementing the competitive fixture occurring on the pitch. As Mario Filho tells it, Fluminense’s fan-mosaic meant that Fluminense had easily beaten Flamengo off the pitch, thanks to their miraculous mosaico display. A spokesperson for Mobilização Tricolor, one of Fluminense’s Torcidas Organizadas (fan groups) who have taken charge of organising the club’s crowd displays at the Maracanã, told me that each “festa” they create today “justifies the greatness of our tradition”. 

‘Festa’ directly translates as ‘party’ or ‘celebration’, but the word more specifically captures the image of a thousand colourful people dancing together to the sounds of surdo drums and cuícas. So, underneath the surface of floating pieces of coloured paper are multitudes of fans dancing, chanting and jumping in a relentless attempt to mute the opposition fans’ voices. Each is partaking in a ritual that has survived generations. 

The ambition of the fan group is to “maintain symbolic traditions” and, at the same time, to “always look to innovate”. If this balance is struck, Mobilização Tricolor produce crowd displays that “are always spectacular, magical, as if the football being played on the pitch and the festas in the stands merge into one”. 

Since the beginning of the century Fluminense has become the first Brazilian club to create a “3D mosaico”, which happened before Ronaldinho’s first game for the club in 2015, and the first club in the world to create a pyrotechnics-mosaico, which occurred when they spelt out “FLUMINENSE” in the 2008 Libertadores final against LDU.

 The spokesperson for Mobilização Tricolor told me how they go about coming up with new ideas: “We think as a group on what we are going to do, with the focus always being on creating an event which would be unprecedented. We struggle with the restrictions imposed on us, such as the Maracanã’s rules, the financial restrictions, bureaucratic restrictions or the weather conditions, which end up affecting some of our plans which then do not go ahead.”

Mobilizacao Tricolor’s long list demonstrates just how difficult it is for them to organise mosaics. Yet, above all, the declining number of supporters since the turn of the century has made the challenge of creating mosaics all the more challenging for Mobilização Tricolor. Brazil has the world’s worst ticket price to wage level ratios, making it the most expensive place in the world for fans to watch football. Brazilian clubs’ recent financial turmoil is just an earmark of the country’s failing economy, with Fluminense’s debt piling up to RS$649 million. There has also been serial negligence by the league’s main broadcasters. TV Globo, the country’s free-to-air television network, often chooses to push back kick off times to as late as 10pm, protecting the viewing times of its ever-popular novelas (soap operas).

There is now some mention of clubs forming a breakaway league, given the series of administrative and financial errors in the last 20 years. It could be a detrimental prospect for traditional Brazilian football fans looking for cheap match tickets- not to mention the moderately recent modernisation of the Maracanã, which has also emphatically repelled some other traditional supporters from attending fixtures. 

There’s also the fact that Fluminense have under-performed since their last Brasileirão win in 2012. Winning less, inevitably, means smaller attendances, as the spokesperson explained to me. The spokesperson explained to me how the group looks to mobilise the club’s fanbase and encourage attendance: “Whenever we organise these actions,” he added, “we look to pick games which have some appeal- the festa we create in the stands can be the extra fuel for our players. Or, [it might be the case that] the advert we put out for some organised action will spread among fans in such a way that they will come down to the stadium in order to get behind it.” 

The most recent blow to Fluminense’s low attendances has inevitably been the pandemic. Upon the return of domestic Brazilian football in the first leg of the state championship final between Fluminense and Flamengo, albeit behind closed doors, Mobilizacao Tricolor produced another historic mosaico. By covering the seats with green, white and garnet-red flags to spell out #ÉPeloFlu, they relocated the festa one would normally find beneath the surface of the mosaico to the online world. 

There are fewer and fewer signs of optimism for fans in Brazil, and also for fans across the world. The mosaico display is arguably but one symbol for football’s international gentrification. Nowadays, it would not be uncommon for club owners and event organisers to create inauthentic, tone-deaf crowd mosaics as a method to enhance the overall corporate spectator experience. While Brazilian football has fallen well behind in financial terms, and thus struggled to retain the traditions of a genuinely authentic match experience, the hypothetical possibility of catching up with Europe is just as unappealing. The current political and economic climate in Brazil will unquestionably test the durability of Fluminense’s traditions of festivity and celebration, of its mosaico.

Regardless, Mobilização Tricolor constantly plans ahead to the future. The group is hopeful that Fluminense’s innovative mosaico traditions will survive. when I asked what it would be like to have all fans back in the stadium, without any capacity limits, the spokesperson for Mobilização Tricolor promised me one thing: that it would be “enormous, like Fluminense is”. 

Image courtesy of Mobilizaçao Tricolor. / Translations my own.

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