Monday, April 28, 2025
Blog Page 591

One van to rule them all?

Rohan jain
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One van to rule them all?

Many of you will already have a favourite kebab truck, and I bet you hold your opinion with conviction. An e-coli outbreak wouldn’t change your mind, let alone a review by some puny undergrad. Nevertheless, let me tell you who I think is the best in the business.

If you’re looking for love, forget the Taylorian – try the kebab truck parked out front. In the frigid air of an Oxford night, Hussain’s lights have an almost candle-like quality. The soft glow of the sign that adorns the van beckons visitors like a lighthouse to an island of deliciousness.

As you arrive, in an instant, the cold and darkness melt away and you find yourself bathed in the warmth of the van’s open façade. A golden rectangle illuminates the patch of pavement you stand on. It’s as if the van has achieved enlightenment, and has invited you to share in it.

Take a moment to stare in wonder at the menu. If you have ever craved food after a night of hedonism, Hussain’s will supply it. Pizza, kebabs, curry, falafel, hot dogs, you name it. How do they cook up such marvels in that small truck? Is there a secret underground kitchen? If so, does it connect to the Gladstone Link? I digress.

A wise man once said “ judge the character of a kebab truck by the character of its chips”, and Hussain’s passes this test with frying colours. The chips are hot, crunchy, and, most importantly, appropriately salted (it’s not sexy, but it matters). All of your standard toppings are on offer, but I tend to stick with just cheese. Anything more seems decadent.

If the universally loved chip symbolises the sharedness of human nature, then the mains represent joyful expression of self. Two in particular are worthy of note. The doner kebab is tender, and the flavours engage the sauces in a subtle dance of consistency and contrast across the palate. The popcorn chicken has a deliciously crunchy exterior, but, like your favourite tutor, is delightfully soft inside. You can get your meat in a wrap too, but try to avoid the (worryingly crunchy) rice. Whatever you choose, it’s unlikely to exceed a fiver.

One item, however, steals the show. The Special Chicken Burger is as exquisite as it is unique. While a sizeable piece of chicken sizzles in preparation, an egg is fried on the hot plate. In a few graceful sweeps of the boss’s dexterous hands, both nestle cosily together between soft white buns, alongside salads and sauces of your choosing.

The egg in burger move seems deliciously simple, right? But only with the benefit of hindsight. Lesser innovators try to break from the obvious, but the true visionaries redefine it.

So, next time you need a late-night meal, don’t be a tourist. Venture beyond Broad Street. Who knows, you might just like it.

In Search of a Poet

Franklin Nelson
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In Search of a Poet

As far as the British literary landscape is concerned, few public appointments provoke such interest as that to be the next Oxford Professor of Poetry. Established thanks to a bequest of a Berkshire landowner more than three hundred years ago, the role has grown to become internationally important, with the Nobel Prize laureates Wole Soyinka and Derek Walcott, from Nigeria and St Lucia respectively, being past contenders.

The Professor’s responsibilities are relatively straightforward: give one public lecture per term throughout their appointment, help to judgesome of the University’s writing awards, including the Newdigate Prize and Jon Stallworthy Prize, and, in the University’s own words, ‘encourage the art of poetry’.

Winner of last year’s Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, Simon Armitage, is due to deliver his final lecture as Professor of Poetry, entitled ‘When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer’, in 3rd Week. Alongside devoting lectures to individual figures including Elizabeth Bishop and Bob Dylan, Armitage has dealt with medieval literature and questions of literary form.

Every four years, as the Professor’s time in office draws to a close, Oxford University opens nominations for the next election. To become a candidate in the election, an individual must receive at least fifty nominations from members of Convocation, defined as ‘all the former student members of the University who have been admitted to a degree (other than an honorary degree) of the University, and of any other persons who are members of Congregation or who have retired having been members of Congregation on the date of their retirement’. Once nominations have closed, the final list of candidates is published, alongside the names of all those who nominated them, and an online election held. Shortly afterwards, at a meeting of Convocation, the result is announced. This year, the result will come on the last day of term – the 21st of June – making for an exciting end to the academic year.

If media speculation is to be believed, the search for the forty-sixth Professor is nearing its end. With five candidates in the race, Alice Oswald is tipped as the favourite, backed to beat Aaron Kent, Todd Swift, John Leonard, and Andrew Mcmillan. Were she to receive the most votes, she would be the first woman to be appointed to the position. Awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for her 2005 collection Woods, etc, Oswald studied Classics at New College, so Oxford is hardly unfamiliar to her. Her work synthesises this knowledge of classical literature with her experience of the natural world. Dart (2002) mixes Greek legend with folk myth to tell the story of the Devonshire river.

Renewed interest in who will be the next Professor of Poetry is almost certainly attributable to two developments: more scrutiny than ever before about appointments to senior positions in prestigious public institutions, and a surge in the reading and purchasing of poetry (in 2018, sales of poetry books rose by more than 12%). Nominations having closed at 4pm yesterday, we now know who is definitely in the running. Let the voting commence.

‘In Search of Equillibrium’

Kitty Horsfall
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‘In Search of Equillibrium’

Reading In Search of Equilibrium is unquestionably difficult. The poems are shocking, not because they trigger something alien, but because they are unsettlingly familiar. Their intense identification with the basic points of humanity activates an equally intense process of introspection; Lola, the current Young People’s Laureate for London, forces us to look at ourselves with precision in those moments when we are at our most vulnerable.

The entire collection can be summarised, in one sense, by the verb ‘process’. We are alert to the processing of a devastating loss, which the speaker achieves through her cathartic act of writing. At the same time, the reader is challenged to process these emotions at a heightened level of intimacy and empathy. The poems are uncomfortable to read, and I found the level of intensity demanding at times. Any hope of reading a gentle, relaxed poetry collection is quickly dispelled in the face of the realities of age, life, and disease. The vulnerability we are expected to emulate as readers is exhausting. If there is anywhere that Lola is less successful, it is these moments that lack reprieve.

The intensity of the poems could easily lead to their integral message being lost, and the collection does teeter on the brink of saturation with despondency. However, I felt that we are not meant immediately to understand the poems, but take our time in processing them, however painful. The poet Anthony Anaxagorou has said that ‘Theresa Lola will soon become one of the most important writers in the UK’, and his emphasis on the need for her poems, not necessarily their easiness to read, stands out. Reading the collection is a draining experience, but ultimately a rewarding one.

‘Process’ embodies a further meaning in Lola’s deliberate inclusion of the language of technology. She transforms the human brain into a computer, processing the indeterminable data of loss and love. My favourite poem from the collection, ‘<h> Cutting Back on Work Shifts </h1>’, is framed by computer- coding language, the angled brackets imploring us to ‘let the computer rest for a minute, exhale, today let silence be your search engine for peace’. I found an ultimately overwhelming sense of closure amidst the collection’s frequently- exhibited grieving: a reassurance that it is alright to cry, to rest, and to feel happy again. At the point where the poems become most painful and tender, Lola, as poet and griever, is able to take a step back and clarify the process with a striking precision. These are elegiac poems for a technological world.

The collection as a whole asks us, with a gentle but unescapable force, to re-examine our comprehension of faith, love, and grief. The title is active – she has not completed her quest, but is still searching for equilibrium and for closure. We are invited to join her in this pursuit, making the reading of her poems a shared experience, as we reflect on what it is to feel love, pain, and grief. This is a collection for those disillusioned by our often-impersonal modern world, and well worth buying if you are looking to question what it is to be human at an essential level.

The Power of Telling Tales in Ali Smith’s ‘Spring’

Jenny Scoones
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The Power of Telling Tales in Ali Smith’s ‘Spring’

The third instalment in Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet is a triumph. An uplifting and generous read, it utilises the formula established by the previous two novels of the series expertly, the result being a work that stands alongside its predecessors, but firmly on its own two feet. A novel concerned first and foremost with storytelling, it’s narrative weaves together art and modernity with all the ease and flair readers have come to expect of Smith. Yet where Autumn was striking for establishing the formula, and Winter for taking it further, Spring seems to stand apart as a distinctively complete work, a cut above in the sophistication of the ideas it explores. 

Just as Autumn began with an invocation our greatest writer of social commentary, Charles Dickens, so Spring opens with a wry nod to his 1854 novel, Hard Times: ‘Now what we don’t want is facts.’ This subversion of the mantra of Dickens’ arch-capitalist Gradgrind (‘Now, what I want is, Facts’) forms a part of a series of monologues distributed throughout the text which seem to represent the ‘story’ as the establishment would have us read it. Throughout the text these passages attempt a piercing deconstruction of the narratives so prevalent in contemporary media, an attempt to get at the truth in a post-truth world. Yet Smith’s invocation of Dickens points to a wider sense of the novel itself as bound up in questions of storytelling, of truth and misrepresentation.

The opening chapter of the novel finds Richard, a small time TV director, at a station platform busy resisting the urge to write his life into story, disillusioned as he has become. He observes himself ‘storying his own absence’ until his becomes a ‘story of myself avoiding stories’; 

‘He was a man on a railway platform. There was no story.’ 

His is a disillusionment fed by a script he is working on, with its hyper-sexualised, near-ludicrous account of the lives of poet Rainer Maria Rilke and writer Katherine Mansfield, veering about as far from the truth as is possible. Richard’s existence (as an artist) is thrown into chaos. His despair (he is also mourning his friend, lover and long-time collaborator Paddy) is such that he attempts suicide. The idea of killing the story becomes, for Smith, akin to suicide. Yet what to do when those stories become corrupted, seem under threat and ineffectual? It is in typical Smithian fashion that, before he manages to kill himself, a chance encounter throws Richard’s life off course, and ultimately reunites him with the power of the story and its truth. 

Across the quartet so far, Smith seems dedicated to the power of these chance encounters, of the magic when two strangers of opposing world views meet and interact. The notion is evocative of E. M. Forster’s ‘only connect’, and it is surely in such a condition-of-England tradition that Smith writes. She is the Forster or the Gaskell for our time, the novelist-as-national-healer made post-modern.  

Later on in the novel Smith relates the passion with which Rilke, at the end of his life, read the novels of D. H. Lawrence, giving him new creative energy – which for an artist means hope. More broadly than the power of storytelling, however, Smith is concerned with the power of art. As with the last two instalments, the novel also serves as a showcase for the work of a British artist, this time Tacita Dean. Richard attends an exhibition of her work ‘hung with pictures of clouds’ and is instantly struck by its power as art;

‘As he stood there what he was looking at stopped being chalk on a slate, stopped being a picture of a mountain. It became something terrible, seen.’ 

Smith’s use of ‘terrible’ is ambiguous here, yet the experience enriches Richard, making ‘the real clouds above London look[-] different’, as if ‘they were something you could read as breathing space.’ Art thus becomes a means of reading the world around oneself, but also of bringing people together, as Richard exchanges a ‘look[-]’ and ‘laugh[-]’ with a fellow exhibition attendee. Later, describing another of Dean’s works, Smith’s narrator observes its effect; ‘what’s left is the story of human beings and air.’ The power of art comes full circle and becomes the power of storytelling itself; the story Richard reads in the cloud’s after seeing Dean’s clouds, the story of his interaction with another at the exhibition. Stories are revealed to be essential to our comprehension of the world around us, the one irrefutable.

Smith does more than her bit to fight back against the mis-telling of stories in the mainstream media. Her acknowledgements reveal the research that went into her portrayal of the experiences of detainees in UK Immigration Removal Centres, and the appalling conditions they are forced to endure. In this way the novel functions as a necessary and powerful response to Windrush. 

The ending of the novel is ambiguous in its treatment of story. It’s final chapters are staged dramatically, teasing narrative detail piece by piece for maximum effect. The denouement is perfectly choreographed into something beautifully tragic. Here, Smith drops her self-reflexive stance to allow the power of the story, the very thing the novel has attempted defended from misuse, to take full hold over the reader. Story, then, becomes rapture as well as site of interrogation, and while Smith’s conclusion offers no easy solution, the lasting impression of the novel is one of hope.  The story is allowed its time to act as a force for good, returned to its proper position, reclaimed from the careless story-tellers that dominate the media today. Smith’s is a call for the truth of the story.

A necessary and tender novel, it is this spring’s must-read. This third instalment in Smith’s quartet is perhaps the best yet; a novel for our times that asks all the right questions of the current climate, but also of itself. With Smith at the helm we are never in danger of entering the realm of propaganda; always there is ambiguity and rumination, self-awareness and humility, allowing the reader the chance to fit the pieces together for themselves rather than be told what to think. With one more novel to come, Smith’s four-year project is shaping-up to be a stunning achievement in contemporary literary fiction, and a necessary remedy to the mis-use of story-telling in our time.

Professor of Poetry Simon Armitage named next Poet Laureate

Sam Millward
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Professor of Poetry Simon Armitage named next Poet Laureate

Simon Armitage, the current Oxford Professor of Poetry, has been named the next UK Poet Laureate.

Succeeding the incumbent Carol Ann Duffy, the poet’s tenure as Laureate will last ten years.

His final lecture in his current position will take place on Wednesday of 3rd Week, entitled “When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer”.

The decision to award the post, made by the Queen on advice from the government, comes days after Imtiaz Dharker publicly declined the position amongst unconfirmed rumours of her impending appointment.

In line with the theme of his latest collection The Unaccompanied, Armitage has said he wishes to create some form of climate change themed initiative and to set up a National Centre for Poetry.

Described by the Culture Secretary as having a “witty and profound take on modern life…known and respected across the world”,  Armitage has published 28 collections of poetry, received a CBE and won the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry 2018.

Carol Ann Duffy remarked at his appointment that Armitage has “touched the matter of our lives with characters and subject matter that lived among us: teachers and council tenants, chip shops and television shows, figures who drank in the local pub and shopped in the nearby supermarket”.

Singing to Say No to Cinematic Fantasies

Viola Cozzio
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Singing to Say No to Cinematic Fantasies

Titanic Rising is a record to drown in. The fourth studio album by Weyes Blood is massive in scope, filled with layered string arrangements and synths that sound like an alien playing the organ.

Natalie Mering, the woman behind Weyes Blood, partially credits her Californian roots and relatives in creative industries with inspiring an early interest in film. Titanic Rising is all about the fantasies peddled by cinema, the way the films we watch and the media we consume populate our minds and impact our relationships, to each other, to ourselves, to the planet. The album cover is a snapshot of this idea; Natalie Mering stands in a completely submerged bedroom, curtains billowing behind a desk bearing an old-fashioned laptop. Posters for various bands and films hang on the walls. Mering, with slightly bent knees and one arm half-raised, looks caught in the act, making the image seem candid despite its strange subject matter. According to Mering, the submerged room represents the subconscious mind, the careful clutter symbolizing the pop-culture altars teens arrange to neatly express and summarize their personalities and their worlds.

This callback to teenage attempts at cosmology is evident on the first song on Titanic Rising, “A Lot’s Gonna Change”. The album opens with a dramatic synth melody, something that sounds like it should accompany a summer blockbuster’s title credits appearing on screen in the biggest possible letters. You know you’re in for a treat. The synths cut out abruptly, and over soft piano, Mering sings about going back to a time when she had “the whole world gently wrapped around” herself. She has a voice like a roll of film unspooling, operatic and almost old-fashioned in its lushness, as she sings to her younger self about all the things that will change in her lifetime – rising water levels, dying trees, friends and family lost. The threats of climate change, natural disaster, and floods in particular, are omnipresent on the album, and yet, it manages not to be depressing. This is in part due to the instrumentation on the record. The strings nearly bowl you over in their vastness, and the synths and organs are a whole space opera in their own right.

At the same time, Natalie Mering’s penchant for internal and slant rhymes give her lyrics an unexpectedly close, off-kilter feel. Her absurdist sense of humour comes through in the music video for “Everyday”, a song about momentary romantic connections that can be meaningful even in how brief they are. The upbeat, plodding piano chords lend the music video its inexorable tempo, as a group of friends partying in a cabin find themselves in a slasher flick while Mering sways idly in the foreground and sings about the hang-ups of modern dating.

Similarly, she offsets cathartic moments like the harpsichord- and guitar-driven build on the song “Something to Believe” with self-effacing lines like “by some strange design, I got a case of the empties”, or an explanation that she has tried to cure her sadness by “staying away from the quicksand”, an obstacle famously only encountered in films. Mering’s conflicted relationship with cinema – as a teenager, deeply disappointed with the illusions she had grown up consuming, she abstained from watching films for three years – comes through most vividly on the sixth track on the album, unsurprisingly titled “Movies”. Monotonously, the first verse declares that “This is how it feels to be in love/This is life from above”. Over looping, space-age electronic beeps, the singer declares that she is “bound to that summer big box office hit, making love to a counterfeit”, yearning for nothing but to be the star of her own movie. In the music video for the song, a rapt audience watches a film in which Mering plays an ingénue with her blonde wig and white dress swirling underwater. When the song builds, and finally breaks, spiraling out into giddy string arpeggios, one by one, the audience members rise from their seats and run at the screen. They enter the world of the film, splashing around onscreen with Mering herself, swallowed up by the movie. Listening to that crescendo, you really can’t blame them.

The ominous, detached tone of “Movies”’ first verse, however, carries over into other tracks on the album, such as “Mirror Forever” or “Picture Me Better”. These songs outline the fact that moving pictures and projections might be enticing, but that they cannot substitute the reality of another person in a relationship. Both songs are full of misdirected or lost gazes – the speaker’s partner on “Mirror Forever” is “looking right through her”. “I see it so clearly/That we play a part”, she sings, while fingers snap out an almost resigned rhythm in the background. This sense of roles we must play continues in “Picture Me Better”, a ballad that blends acoustic guitar with swelling strings, written about a friend of Mering’s who died of suicide. The title is both an indictment of having to perform a better version of oneself at all times, and a plea for any reality in which her friend might still be alive – two impossible fantasies, played out against each other. The lines “And you’re making me act funny/Can’t help to smile with those eyes that shine/Only, if only you could see” turn the intimacy of friendship into a grand spectacle. The implication that a friend might be putting on a face even with those closest to them lends a sinister dimension to the “eyes that shine”, which serve as a reminder of the popular etymology that movie stars are so named because of the otherworldly glint in their eyes, reflections of the set lighting.

Finally, the nods to Titanic, the ultimate embodiment of cinematic bombast, thread themselves throughout the entire record. 1990s movie magic is superimposed over references to the very real disaster of 1912. “Andromeda”, an entire galaxy of a song about attempting to connect with someone while feeling adrift in an endless void, features the line “Lift the heart from the depths it’s fallen to”, a reference to the Heart of the Ocean diamond Kate Winslet’s character drops into the sea at the end of the film. At the same time, the final, instrumental track “Nearer to Thee” motions to the hymn reportedly played by the RMS Titanic’s string ensemble as the ship sank. The song’s string section reimagines the synths which open the album on “A Lot’s Gonna Change”, fitting the prosody of the line “you’re gonna be just fine”. If we’re going to be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, we might at least try to shift ours a bit nearer to Natalie Mering playing onstage. This constant awareness of doomed theatricality continues into Weyes Blood’s live performances. On her first show of the Titanic Rising tour, at the Haunt in Brighton, Mering wore an all-white suit under the wavering blue and yellow stage lights. She looked like an underwater cinema screen. A surface so overt about inviting projection that you’re almost embarrassed to try. 

Fantasy Music’s Apex – Djwadi’s Score for ‘Game of Thrones’

Pierce Jones
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Fantasy Music’s Apex – Djwadi’s Score for ‘Game of Thrones’

Warning: this article contains spoilers for the latest episode of ‘Game of Thrones’.

HBO masterpiece ‘Game of Thrones’ is lucky enough to possess one of the most iconic title themes in television today. Even those who don’t watch the show will recognise its majestic opening number which perfectly captures the heroics and darkness that drive the plot through its bombastic, melancholy cello melody. 

Ramin Djwadi’ impresses with a distinct tone in the fantasy market. Historical fantasy is a hard genre to score. Communicating a non-existent medieval world through the sounds of the modern world poses challenges. Pre-existing associations with certain instruments or melodies risk confusing our perception. The organ, whilst a powerful instrument, has religious roots. Saxophone rarely feature in fantasy music due to its strong link to jazz and thus distinctly modern tone. 

This challenge is exacerbated by the show’s character-driven narrative. ‘Game of Thrones’ is known for its complex but realistic heroes. Individuals like Jon Snow and Jaime Lannister undergo significant authentic development. The juxtaposition of a medieval fantasy world with the modern conceptions of humanity the audience would understand makes ‘Game of Thrones’ an even greater challenge.

Excellent choice of instrumentation allows Djawadi to tackle this challenge. Series creators Benioff and Weiss specifically gave Djawadi a ‘No flutes. No violins.’ policy, stating this timbre was overused in fantasy music.

As a result, the cello plays a central role in the soundtrack, be it in the main title or in the more emotional House Stark theme. The cello’s low melancholy sound combined with its history dating back to the fifteenth-century provides an amalgamation of emotive sounds and a distinctive fantasy tone. 

Other instruments are used precisely because of their modern-day connotations and the way this intuitively informs the audience about the universe by playing on our preconceptions. The didgeridoo is used to represent the Wildlings, projecting the tribal image we possess of Australian aborigines onto the societies found Beyond the Wall.

Similarly, the Dothraki, a nomadic-horse-warrior people inspired by the central Asian steeps, are portrayed using an Armenian duduk. This instrument is essentially an ancient and ethnic version of an oboe, helping to reinforce the basic, arid nature of the Dothraki people.

The melodies also used to represent both peoples are typically minimalistic with heavy use of percussion in the accompaniment, creating a shared similarity of toughness between the two tribes.

On a more suspenseful note, the White-Walkers, ice-zombie-like monsters who are the main antagonist of the show, are represented by the glass harmonica in the earlier seasons due to its high, eerie and icy sound, playing on our understanding of horror music.

Arya Stark, an energetic and fiery young girl, is expressed by the hammered dulcimer. Djawadi ascribes this to the instrument’s “fun, plucky sound” which matches Arya’s personality. Djawadi utilises unique instruments and uses their timbre to create his own tone in the score by playing with our associations of them in the modern world. 

This changed in the grand finale of Season 6 when a grand piano was used in the famous ‘Light of the Seven’ score. The piano is modern, invented during the eighteenth-century and noticeably detached from the medieval world Djawadi had previously aimed to portray.

An obvious reason exists: Djawadi wanted to signal to the audience that something is not quite right and build suspense. During the track’s airtime, we witness one of the most shocking events of the whole series: Cersei Lannister explodes the Sept of Baelor and murders all her political opponents, including many main characters, before crowning herself Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.

Djwadi emphasises the emotional gravity of the event and the new reality our cast must face. Similarly, during the finale of the Battle of Winterfell in last week’s episode, the piano took centre stage in ‘The Night King’. The audience’s experience with the piano two seasons ago alerts us that a major event will take place: the Night King and his White Walker army are defeated for good. A new age dawns with the piano as its carrier.

Djwadi’s score is an integral part of the universe of ‘Game of Thrones’. Through music, he conveys the unspoken and the unseen elements of the show. The fantasy world becomes more vivid and believable.


LOVE/SICK – ‘Your trip to Tesco’s will never seem the same again’

Imogen Harter-Jones
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LOVE/SICK – ‘Your trip to Tesco’s will never seem the same again’

“That sex was the most fun I’ve ever had without laughing.”  When seeing John Cariani’s one-act, nine-play cycle LOVE/SICK, think more of quick-witted lines such as this from Annie Hall rather than twee romcoms. Overflowing with life and energy, Matter of Act brings John Cariani’s play to life in an engaging, fun and memorable experience. Although often categorised as a writer of quirky romcoms, Cariani aptly describes LOVE/SICK as a “very funny tragedy”, dealing more with the problems of love than the ‘happily ever after.’

Set on a Friday night in “an alternate suburban reality” each idiosyncratic ten-minute play tells the story of a different couple at cross-roads in their relationship, these vignettes operating under the overarching themes of love and loss. Co-directors Olivia Marshall and Luke Dunne navigate the comedy, cliché, and melancholy of the sharply written script with skill and verve, highlighting the universal experiences of love, attraction and affection with unconventional delight.  

A strong four-person cast of Sabrina Brewer, Eddie Chapman, Noah Seltzer and Olivia Marshall form a cohesive ensemble, with each playing multiple endearing characters over the course of the nine stories. This combination proves highly effective due to the energy and seamless ability of each to shift across the wildly varying ages, sexualities and personalities of each of the characters that they portray. All have a keen sense of timing and exhilarating, sparky delivery.

From the fearless opening ‘IMPULSE DISORDER’ – set in a large Target supermarket –  it is clear that the wild, messy and complicated nature of love will run wild. Brewer and Marshall inject this scene with forceful excitement, high passion and a sense of intimate urgency. This is fitting for characters suffering from a rarely diagnosed impulse disorder, whose symptoms make them act impulsively: hence, this sizzling make-out scene between strongly attracted strangers in the supermarket. Forget simple eye contact and a shy smile – your trip to Tesco’s will never seem the same again!

These offbeat sketches include a man physically incapable of hearing the words “I love you” from his boyfriend – a phrase that “dazzles” his nervous system into submission. In ‘WHAT?!?’ Seltzer and Chapman heartwarmingly show the bravery needed in the midst of falling in love, and their coy displays and declarations of love are thoroughly charming.

Echoing Simone de Beauvoir’s 1968 novel The Woman Destroyed, ‘WHERE WAS I?’ poignantly examines the female condition, portraying a wife who searches her garage for the self she has lost since marriage and children consumed her existence. In ‘LUNCH AND DINNER’, a Freudian slip (“I had sex for lunch”) results in honest interrogation of intimacy issues for one married couple; in ‘UH-OH’ Marshall, displaying a huge emotional range exudes playful psychopathy – with enigmatic knowing glances and sarcastic tones – as she tries to find the shocking fun in the post-honeymoon period of her marriage.

Each of these stories offers a fast-moving and unique insight into the minefield of modern love, emotional vulnerability, intense attraction, the rules of dating, intimacy issues, breakups, parenthood and problematic marriages. Cariani litters the play with reminders of our 21st century idiosyncrasies.  A married couple tell each other “I’ll send you the link”; a morally conflicted ‘SINGING TELEGRAM’ man (Seltzer) ends a painful breakup by asking a hysterical now-former-girlfriend (Brewer) to “rate my performance”. Then, in an attempt to comfort her, he reminds her: “this is just temporary. Everything is”.

Matter of Act exploit these poignant moments of comedy and, despite the play’s more melancholic moments, the BT Studio was still full of laughter. Love is found and lost in supermarkets and suburban living rooms, but the banal settings are contrasted with the overload of emotion and passion which permeates even the most clinically bright supermarket aisle. LOVE/SICK is full of highs and lows – emotions and passions rise, soar, crash and repeat.

Between the stories, tracks such as Britney Spears’ ‘Oops I Did it Again’ and Talking Heads’ ‘Psycho Killer’ are wittily used as transitions to each new scenario. They tease out themes and gently mock the scene that has just finished, bringing a sense of conclusion to an otherwise abrupt end of scene.

Whether you’re going through an essay crisis, manically revising for Prelims or Finals, or just enjoying Oxford life unencumbered by Trinity Term’s exam season sting, LOVE/SICK provides a captivating, thought provoking and sardonically humorous exploration of complex, imperfect love – the passion and joy of finding it, the pain of losing it, and monotony once the excitement has waned. Yet still as a society we are obsessed with love: just look at the popularity of Oxlove!

In LOVE/SICK love is blind, it was love at first sight, love comes and disappears when you least expect it. Despite these clichéd ideas that all romantic comedies navigate, LOVE/SICK avoids being schmaltzy and is bittersweet rather than over-sweet. It is intelligent and insightful, tender and at times surreal, mocking ideas of conventional love involving passion, honesty and excitement.

Every Brilliant Thing – ‘strikes a staggering balance between serious and joyful’

Evie Atmore
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Every Brilliant Thing – ‘strikes a staggering balance between serious and joyful’

Content warning: discussion of suicide and mental health

For a play beginning with the first suicide attempt of the narrator’s mother, Spare Room Productions’ take on Every Brilliant Thing strikes a staggering balance between serious and joyful. Intrinsically this is a play about loss, about guilt, and about how one continues on after trauma – thankfully these themes are handled with a great deal of nuance and care. However, this production is also hilariously funny, and epitomises the feeling of laughing so you don’t cry.

This is a play about a list: a list of “brilliant things” began by the narrator as a seven-year-old, in order to convince his mother that there are things worth living for. From the first entry of “ice cream”, to later entries like “falling in love” and “sex”, the list grows with the narrator, played by Harry Berry. The list creates a vital synergy between the otherwise episodic scenes from the narrator’s life. The play moves seamlessly between more serious discussions of suicide to lighter topics, like first love, for which director Jamie Murphy ought to be commended.

Harry Berry’s ability to sustain this play is astounding, especially considering the lack of other actors or any real set to aid him. The narrator is a challenging role, requiring both comedic timing and seriousness of expression, but Berry’s performance meets the high bar with a portrayal that is equal parts funny, vulnerable, and compelling. In my view, the character is less strong in the opening sections, but this is largely due to the need to establish the format of the play with its interactive elements.

An outstanding aspect of the play is its employment of audience participation. Each audience member was given at least one “brilliant thing” on a post-it note (or a spoon, or even carved into a baguette) upon entering. By encouraging the audience to read these out when the number was mentioned in the play, the list became ours as well. In a way, describing this play as a one-man show feels slightly disingenuous. Audience members were often brought into the centre to play the other characters in the narrator’s life – his dad, the vet that put down his dog, his girlfriend at university – and these brief moments of improvisation balanced the play’s otherwise serious subject matter. Props were also sourced from the audience, leading to a hilarious discussion of a book on potatoes. The fact that these moments will inevitably be different on each night of the show’s run is a huge draw, and Harry Berry’s abilities as a spontaneous comedic actor particularly shines through during these interactions with the audience.

The production of the play was seamless, in particular the use of music, which is central to the play’s plot. The jazz soundtrack is timeless and enjoyable, and the narrator’s joyful response to it is contagious. Upon entering, the minimal nature of the set was visually striking in contrast with the vibrancy of a stage littered with multi-coloured post-it notes. The arrangement of the audience in a circle also encouraged the feeling created throughout the play that the audience are part of the story, that the list is also ours.

The subject matter of this show is serious, which the cast and Spare Room Productions emphasise before and after the show. Their nuanced and considered approach is a real credit to them. Nevertheless, it should also be noted that the play, whilst not graphic in its depiction of suicide, does discuss some methods and the effect of suicide attempts on others.

For a play about suicide, I left the Pilch thinking about what I would add to the list – and that’s the real beauty of this show. It would be so easy for Every Brilliant Thing to only be morose, and the fact that this production struck the balance so well between uplifting and serious is a testament to its success. I thoroughly enjoyed this play and, if you feel up to the content, I would highly recommend that you grab a ticket for it.

Q&A – a play that ‘takes a turn into the chaotic and absurd’

Katie Knight
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Q&A – a play that ‘takes a turn into the chaotic and absurd’

It is rare that I begin a show literally on the edge of my seat, but this is one of the few occasions I can confidently assert it to be true. On this occasion it would be because I’m stuck next to a particularly unruly elderly lady in a shawl who keeps peering at the stage, sniffing, and at one point almost hits me round the head with a wicker bag. When she starts harassing an actor about the Bridge club and sidles past me to get up on stage, I’m hardly surprised.

‘Sylvia’ is one of just a few quirky characters surreptitiously planted in the audience before the performance starts (the intimacy of the venue captured well by the BT Studio). Billed as an ‘immersive comedy’, Q&A is staged as – you guessed it – a live Q&A after a performance of Salinger’s classic The Catcher in the Rye – a book most famous for a) being entirely narrated by a nihilistic teenager, b) including no action, and c) being vetoed from being performed live. Not the most auspicious start – although this is of course the intention. I’m impressed by the poster-homage (designed by Olya Makarova, who also plays the ditzy Niamh), which bears a striking resemblance to the original book cover, although a sign for a Travelodge is present along with other details I don’t remember being there. I’m assured all will become clear as the performance unravels.

At its most naturalistic and impromptu, the play is hilarious. As the shambolic reimagining of The Catcher in the Rye draws to a close to polite applause (bearing in mind this is within the first three minutes), a muttered “Jesus” from nearby critic Clive Edwards (Jack Blowers) has me laughing more than anything. The voice of reason in a cold, cold am-dram world, he creates a startling impression despite never leaving his seat. There’s a strange sexual tension in the rivalry between himself and ex-Emmerdale star Sebastian (Tom Saer) which I’m not sure is supposed to be there, and which seems to be rooted in something involving a BBC party and cocktail sausages. The details are lost on me.

Isaac Troughton (holding a dual role along with playwright) is similarly fantastic as the 17-year-old drama student Jesse, replete with deadpan snark. Again, there’s a Holden Caulfield joke to be made there – the teenager, out of all of them, comes closest to understanding the protagonist – but unfortunately it’s never quite made explicit. Nevertheless, a scene where the young actor is taught to declaim a line comes close, as the group of actors squabble over whether to step forth on the dramatic word ‘war’ or ‘hell’ for best effect. The moment is a highlight particularly for the ‘veteran’ Jasper (played with aplomb by Stepan Mysko von Schultze), who is vaguely reminiscent of Ralph Fiennes’ parodic turn in Hail Caesar!.

There are some very witty lines, ranging from the misquoting of Robert Frost (“Two paths converged in a yellow wood”), to mysterious allusions to a lawnmower accident, to the downright alarming “Can you sign my coccyx?” from the sweet old lady next to me (masterfully characterised by Fifi Zanabi). Theatre manager Sam (El Wood) rushes around trying to keep the whole thing in line with admirable verve.  If there’s a fault, it’s that sometimes the whole thing feels a little too knowing, which unfortunately detracts from the intended spontaneity. The dialogue doesn’t quite flow smoothly enough to seem fully natural – a hard enough task on stage at the best of times, but needed here to make the back-and-forth fully believable.

It’s a script and show at its best when it takes a turn into the chaotic and absurd; and, as it confidently veers into a spectacular car crash in the last quarter, I can’t help but think that it certainly had not come too soon. Standing at a confident 45 minutes, it’s a short and sweet one-act play which doesn’t beat around the bush. It may not quite reach complete naturalism, but it’s certainly entertaining. Just make sure you check who you’re sitting next to first.

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