Sunday 15th June 2025
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Math Roberts discusses his new song cycle ‘What Comes After’

Alice Williams
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Math Roberts discusses his new song cycle ‘What Comes After’

How did ‘What Comes After’ come about, is it a new piece or have you had it in the pipeline for a while?

The idea came from many different places, but the most prominent spark I can think of was when I went to see ‘How to Use a Washing Machine’ in the BT last Trinity term. It struck me then that Oxford gave such great opportunities to put on new writing and gave me the push that I needed to go ahead and actually write what had been stewing in my head for quite a while. The first couple of songs were written over the following summer and then it all took off from there!

Do you have any favourite scenes?

That’s a difficult question, as all of the scenes are essentially songs. I guess I did prefer some songs to others originally, but it all changed when we started rehearsing. Grace and Henry really bring out the nuances that even I didn’t realise were in these songs and make my views shift! I’m assuming by the end of the run all of the songs will have been my favourite at some point. Saying that, I do like the duets that they have together, as they really highlight the dynamic of the whole show.

What’s the some of the joys and challenges of the production?

One challenge I didn’t see coming was having to look at everything objectively (culling songs, changing lyrics etc) and how difficult that would be. Another challenge, that became a joy in the end, was letting people trust me and my music. Josh, the musical director, hadn’t heard all of the songs when he got on board, and so to know that he trusted me to write the rest was something that really propelled the writing process forward!

Tell me a bit about how your ideas translate into the visual scene on stage?

The cycle of songs will be presented as a quasi concert production, so when writing the songs I was always thinking about how they would be performed. One song is a sort of twisted waltz, and so I’m looking forward to breaking it to Henry that he’ll be dancing by himself..! One of the best things about developing new writing is that a lot of the ideas come from working on it together. Movement and blocking all merge into the content of the songs; the music is almost narratively written with passages accentuating certain actions and scenes so I hope to convey this!

‘What Comes After’ is described on the BT website as being about ‘two actors contemplating the many puzzling aspects of death’. Tell me a bit more about ‘these puzzling aspects’ and how they pervade the production?

The idea of death has always intrigued me because it’s something that applies to everyone. No one can monopolise it but equally no one has the right to tell others what they should be feeling, or, more importantly, what they should consider ‘death’ itself to be. We see many characters in the show, each having their own experience of death. Some are more significant, such as grief or acceptance. Others are more superficial; the end of a year or the end of a relationship. I hope, out of all the stories, that there’ll be something for everyone to engage with!

Are the words your own or written separately? How do you view the relationship between music and lyrics, or are they essentially separate entities?

Because the show is told entirely through song I felt that both music and lyrics needed to be written together. A song would usually start by mapping out the idea of the narrative and the arc of the characters. The rest of the process changed from song to song; sometimes a lyric hook would come first, sometimes a musical motif or groove would trigger a domino effect, and sometimes I would spend two or three days pondering over what the characters wanted to ‘actually say’! By writing both at the same time motifs would completely flip some of the lyrics on their heads when repeated in a different context, and musical nods to other songs link everything up in a way that proves that they’re not separate narratives at all!

91st Academy Awards: Predictions

Jonnie Barrow
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91st Academy Awards: Predictions

The Oscars have never felt more chaotic than this year, which is amazing considering the fact that two years ago they literally mis-crowned Best Picture on live television. Yet the 91st Academy awards have been mired in indecision from the get-go.

Back in August, the Academy’s decision to create a Best Popular Film category was met with a storm of (justly deserved) backlash that gave them little choice but to cancel the idea a month later. Then came the process of choosing a host for the ceremony. Weeks dragged by with no announcement, before Kevin Hart stepped in to take up the mantle. Within two days, he was ousted over controversial “homophobic” material in his Twitter feed, refusing the Academy’s offer to publicly apologise in return for keeping the job. The Academy elected to run the show with no host for the first time since 1989, but the ceremony was still a wellspring of malcontent thanks to announced changes in the ceremony format. They revealed that only two of the five Best Song nominees would be performed in the ceremony itself, and then announced that ‘lesser’ awards (including, inexplicably, cinematography and editing, two of the prime building blocks of filmmaking) would be presented in the ad breaks in order to keep the ceremony shorter. They swiftly revoked both decisions after sustained campaigning from Oscars fans and industry heavyweights alike.

Then we get to the films themselves, where the nominees are a real mixed bag. Black Panther is officially the first superhero film nominated for Best Picture, and Roma’s ten nominations are game-changing for a Netflix film. Ten well-earned nominations for a film as brilliantly eccentric as The Favourite provides much-needed fuel for any cinephile heart, especially in light of the many high-profile snubs in major categories.

Seeing the Academy under-nominate or even outright overlook If Beale Street Could Talk, First Man, Can You Ever Forgive Me, Suspiria, You Were Never Really Here, Widows and First Reformed would hurt much less if it weren’t for the genuinely atrocious films that have been nominated for top prizes, and for the two available spots in the Best Picture field the Academy chose not to fill. It’s oddly depressing to see a film as racially regressive as Green Book nominated in the same year as BlacKkKlansman or Black Panther, but it’s downright disturbing to see Bohemian Rhapsody and Vice receive huge nominations when they’re movies that seem to hate their audiences as much as they hate themselves.

It’s a fascinating mixture of nominees, especially considering the variety of outcomes in precursor awards ceremonies (such as the Golden Globes and BAFTAs), but guessing what should or will win in each category is as subjective as it’s ever been – and even more difficult than ever.

Best Picture

Should win: Roma

Will win: Green Book

As mentioned above, trying to decipher what could win Best Picture this year is a total crapshoot. Maybe the current state of global politics has made me overtly pessimistic, but it feels as if there’s enough Academy voters who are cranky and ancient enough to overlook a film as quietly revolutionary and emotionally devastating as Roma in favour of a regressive, aggressively average, glorified remake of Driving Miss Daisy (which, incidentally, won Best Picture back in 1989).

Best Director

Should win: Damien Chazelle (First Man)

Will win: Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman)

I promise I won’t devote too many “Should Wins” to people who weren’t nominated, but Chazelle is a legitimately astonishing snub in a category that somehow also managed to overlook Barry Jenkins, Marielle Heller, Lynne Ramsay, Debora Granik and Bradley Cooper in favour of nominating Adam McKay of all people. Regardless, this is the perfect opportunity for Lee to pick up a deserved Lifetime Achievement Oscar (as this is, inexplicably, his first ever directing nomination!), but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Alfonso Cuaron sneak a win here if the evening goes Roma’s way.

Best Actor

Should win: Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born)

Will win: Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody)

This category is incomplete without Ryan Gosling (for First Man) or Ethan Hawke (for First Reformed), but Cooper’s work in A Star Is Born is close to flawless and should be receiving the bulk of the attention in this category, especially with so many nominations (and no wins) to his name from years past. But despite the mountain of negative press BoRhap has attracted this season (from accusations of straight-washing Freddie Mercury’s story, to director Bryan Singer’s cavalcade of sexual abuse allegations), it seems there are still plenty of people who will happily confuse overbearing prosthetic teeth with a good performance, so Malek may do well here.

Best Actress

Should win: Literally any of them

Will win: Glenn Close (The Wife), maybe? Or maybe Olivia Colman (The Favourite)…

This is a strong category this year, filled with incredible work from genuine Hollywood legends to first-time actresses knocking it out of the park on their inaugural run. There’s not a single undeserving performance here, but for me it’s a two-horse race for the winner. Close’s turn in The Wife is the kind of subtle, mesmerising performance the Oscars usually overlook, but clearly they’ve realised it’s about time she win a golden statuette after 7 nominations without a win – a record, incidentally. Colman’s incensed, hilarious, and tragic performance in The Favourite has definitely caught Hollywood’s attention, though, and could upset the ballot before she plays another iconic queen in the upcoming seasons of The Crown.

Best Supporting Actor

Should win: Richard E. Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?)

Will win: Mahershala Ali (Green Book)

This category is funny because, as good as Sam Elliott is in A Star Is Born, and as lovely as it is to see Adam Driver nominated for something, there’s probably only two potential victors here. Ali already triumphed in this category a couple of years ago for Moonlight, but the marketing team handily included his overtly Oscar-baity scene in the trailer for Green Book, so plenty of people are well-aware of how great his performance is even if they’re less aware of how sometimes insensitive and generic the actual film is. Grant, however, has been utterly delightful on the campaign trail, which is sure to sway some voters, and his performance in CYEFM is a stunningly acerbic, unexpectedly sweet turn that easily ranks among the best supporting performances of the year.

Best Supporting Actress

Should win: Anyone but Amy Adams

Will win: Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk)

We need to run through each of the nominees here one-by-one because this category could go any number of ways. Adams has been overdue a win for years now, but she rarely rises above serviceable in Vice. Marina De Tavira’s nomination for Roma was a gorgeous surprise considering the lack of precursor attention she received, but she probably won’t win. Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, each nominated for the same film, may cancel each other out (though Weisz could edge it), which leaves Regina King’s stunning performance in If Beale Street Could Talk as a likely frontrunner for the win.

Best Original Screenplay

Should win: The Favourite

Will win: The Favourite

I’m beyond pleased that First Reformed got a nomination here, but a screenplay win for Roma would be a well-deserved outcome for Cuaron’s masterpiece. But only one of the nominees here contains duck-racing, mud moustaches, and coins an inimitable phrase for sexual obsession that rhymes with “blunt-struck.” The Favourite juggles tone flawlessly and hangs some gorgeous dialogue on a subtly idiosyncratic structure that definitely deserves a statuette. Go on, Academy – pick your Favourite, please.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Should win: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Will win: If Beale Street Could Talk

The snub for Widows in this category still hurts a little, but the nomination for Buster Scruggs made me yelp with joy when I streamed the nominations live. Beale Street almost definitely has this in the bag, though: Barry Jenkins’ work adapting James Baldwin’s novel is exactly the kind of faithful adaptation the Academy tends to reward. It’s a gorgeous and worthy script whose win was set in stone the moment Jenkins opened the film with a block-quote from the novel in place of an establishing shot.

Best Animated Film

Should win: Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse

Will win: Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse

Spider-Verse, Spider-Verse, best cartoon in the universe; will it win this great award? If Disney does, we’ll all be bored – justice for the Spider-Verse!

The year of the underdog: will outsider nominees come out on top at this year’s Oscars?

Jack Womack
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The year of the underdog: will outsider nominees come out on top at this year’s Oscars?

Awards season is well and truly upon us. After last week’s BAFTAs and Grammy awards, it is inevitably time for the Oscars, the Big Daddy of them all. Once again, those little golden statuettes will be awarded to Hollywood’s biggest stars. Can you feel the excitement building in the streets? Me neither.

Whilst the awards show regularly drew an audience of around 45 million throughout the 1990s, last year’s ceremony was watched by only 26 million – the lowest figure since viewing records began in 1974. Significantly, the proportion of viewers in the 18 to 35 age bracket are also rapidly declining, indicating that the Oscars are increasingly failing to appeal to younger audiences. Whether or not the infamous Best Picture announcement mix-up of 2017 was a desperate attempt by the Academy to claw back some of its relevance is open for debate, but what is certain is that the Oscars are fading fast as a serious cultural institution. The criticisms levelled at the awards are both well-known and valid. Despite the #OscarsSoWhite campaign, nominees from ethnic minority backgrounds are still largely underrepresented. Of the 25 people nominated for Best Director in the last five years, twenty-four were men. The Academy claims to reward excellence in film yet remains almost completely oblivious to cinema from the non-English speaking world. Moonlight’s win in 2017 was a rare exception to the rule that films with small budgets cannot compete for the major awards in a competition.

Last year’s ceremony was the first since the #MeToo movement entered the mainstream, yet despite the series of impassioned speeches from actors like Frances McDormand and Ava DuVernay, the shadow of Weinstein still looms large over the Oscars. This is an institution which was dominated by Weinstein for years. We may never know how many awards were swayed by his bullying and manipulation, but many have come forward detailing Weinstein’s aggressive campaigning tactics. “Everyone knew if you were in a Harvey movie, chances are you were going to win or be nominated for an Oscar,” Sasha Stone, founder and publisher of AwardsDaily.com, an industry awards tracker since 1999, told Forbes. “It’s a sick thing to be in a business where that was the collateral used to coerce women.” While Weinstein himself has now been cast out of the Academy, it remains to be seen whether his style of campaigning based on financial and personal aggression can also be successfully purged. The Awards remain deeply in thrall to big money, and their falling viewing figures may mean they are even less willing to reward less commercially successful film ventures.

Yet despite this, there are reasons for cautious optimism if you look hard enough. There are three films nominated in the Best Picture category this year (BlacKkKlansman, Green Book, and Black Panther) which centre on different elements of African-American experiences. The two films with the most nominations – The Favourite and Roma,with ten apiece– have been lauded for their complex, emotionally sophisticated female roles. In different ways, these films challenge the idea of what a conventional Oscar-winner looks and sounds like, meaning that this year is proving difficult to predict. The initial frontrunner of this year’s race, and still the ‘favourite’ in the eyes of many bookmakers, is Bradley Cooper’s remake of A Star is Born, starring himself and Lady Gaga. It isn’t hard to see why: as a remake of a successful film it is already on safe ground, and both of its stars are already firmly established as Hollywood royalty. After the highly political nature of last year’s ceremony, Academy voters may feel it is time for a more conventionally ‘feel-good’ film, one which appeals to as broad a base as possible.

Yet the film’s frontrunner status has taken somewhat of a hit as awards season has progressed. Roma and The Favourite have slowly but surely made up ground. In different ways, both these films are innovative; Roma is the first ever Netflix production to score a Best Picture nomination, whilst The Favourite represents a completely new way of depicting the past onscreen. Oddly, A Star is Born now appears somewhat like the ‘safe choice’, despite the fact that one if its leads is a global pop star with relatively little acting experience. The contrast between these films is sharp, and it will be intriguing to see which direction the Academy decides to go with their awards. Should Roma pull off Best Picture, this would represent a significant change in the Academy’s attitude towards cinema from outside America; only eleven foreign language films have ever been nominated in the category. The Artist is to date the single example of a Best Picture winner wholly financed outside the United States, and sceptics would argue that as a silent film, the lack of an audible foreign language was crucial in its success with American voters. Roma’s success further demonstrates the inherent ridiculousness of the Best Foreign Language Film category, and should it triumph in a week’s time, perhaps the Academy will finally decide that ‘foreign’ films should no longer be consigned to a separate category.

Another film which is sparking similar discussions this year is Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War. This is an emphatically European work, which flits breathlessly between capital cities, retelling the story of Pawlikowski’s parents. His nomination for Best Director is highly deserved, but the omission of Joanna Kulig from the nominees for Best Actress is baffling, and evidence of the Academy’s continued disregard for non-English speaking actors. In terms of the potential for an underdog shock, it is hard to see Cold War pulling off a win in either of its two categories. Perhaps Roma has exhausted the Academy’s limited reserves of tolerance for foreign cinema.

So where are the potential shocks then? A welcome upset would be Richard E. Grant winning Best Supporting Actor for his turn in Can You Ever Forgive Me? – a part which is essentially Withnail thirty years down the line. To see how much Grant is obviously enjoying the nominations process is genuinely heart-warming, and serves as a reminder of why, despite its many and serious flaws, the Oscars still appeal. “This is the ride of my life!” was how Grant described it to The Guardian recently, having never previously been nominated for any award. It would be great to see him, and the other nominees for whom this experience is still fresh and new, with a statuette on 24th of February.

Entitled to return?

Colleen Cumbers and Joe Davies
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Entitled to return?

Forget it , says Colleen Cumbers

In 2015, Shamima Begum chose to leave the UK to join the Islamic State. From that moment, she became a traitor to our country, an enemy of British citizens and a threat to all that the Western world stands for.

That she now wants to return to the UK would be humorous if only there were not a real risk of this actually happening.

The most important thing to note here is that Begum does not show remorse for her decision to join IS.

Aged only 15 when the left the UK, some people argue that she was a naïve, brainwashed girl, unaware of what she was getting involved with.

The reality is that Begum knew exactly what Daesh stood for and this was what attracted her to the terrorist group. In her recent interview with Sky News, Begum admits that she was aware of the beheadings and executions carried out by IS and that she “was okay with it”.

Have Begum’s views changed? No. She does not want to return to the UK because she has had a sudden realisation that IS is evil, but because IS has lost its strongholds and so life has become more difficult.

Begum is a classic example of somebody who hates western culture and wants it destroyed, yet also wants to benefit from the positive aspects of this society, i.e. to raise her child in better conditions.

Whilst Begum claims that she was not directly involved in any acts of violence, she is nevertheless a threat.

She maintains strong links to IS: she is still in love with her husband, an IS fighter, and in her interview, she used the pronoun “we” when discussing IS – “when we lost Raqqa” – she still considers herself a member of the organisation. She is dangerous. Should IS or another similar organisation’s fortunes improve again, Begum would seemingly be the first to join back in. Begum recently said that seeing a severed head of an IS enemy in a bin “didn’t faze [her] at all”.

She believes that the Manchester Arena attack where children as young as eight were murdered was “justified”. Begum is an evil, dangerous woman who cannot be reintegrated into British society. She has no place here and to bring her back would be a major security concern for British citizens as well as an enormous insult to victims of IS brutality.

If she must return to the UK, life-impris- onment for treason is the only solution, with her child being taken into care. The cost of this to taxpayers however means that, ideally, Begum will be left where she is.

She states that “a lot of people should have sympathy” for her. I personally will not be shedding any tears.

Forgive her, says Joe Davies

It goes without saying that if you go and fight for a terrorist organisation that throws gay people off of buildings and sells women into sex slavery and commits genocide and wants to bring ‘death to the west’, you must pay the price for that. That’s why I completely understand the instinct that says we should never allow this woman to return. But should we always listen to instinct? Being only fifteen years old when she left, Begum was brainwashed. Yes, she was the age of legal responsibility; but are we really going to give somebody a life sentence – and, yes, forcing her to remain where she is is a life sentence – for making a terrible, terrible decision when they were 15, and faced with incredibly persuasive propaganda? That is a difficult call to make.

Indeed, as far as I understand it, there is no legal basis for denying her return. In the words of Chris Daq QC, ‘she is a UK citizen and we do not make our citizens stateless’. You must be 18 and of sound mind to renounce your citizenship, meaning that she was still a British citizen when she left – and therefore presumably still is. From my understanding, there is no law that says we can deny re-entry to people for leaving the UK – and it is both illegal and a human rights violation (Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights grants us all protection from retrospective legislation) to subject somebody to a law that didn’t exist when they have committed the act in question: I don’t see how we can legally prevent her return.

Linked to this point is the moral argument that what separates us from Daesh is our belief in the rule of law; this woman must pay the price for what she has done, but she must do so with all of the normal protections offered to those facing criminal prosecution. Should she not be brought to justice, rather than left to die in a desert?

However you feel about these arguments, there is one point that I think settles this debate, and that is Begum’s newborn child. The child of a native-born British citizen is automatically a British citizen themselves, so – even ignoring the clear ethical obliga- tion that we have towards an innocent, vul- nerable child – we have an obligation to this child as a British citizen. Let us be clear: Shamima Begum’s previous two children died in Syria. If she is not allowed to return home, we should be under no illusion that her latest child will face the same fate.

How can it possibly be right to allow a child, a British citizen, to die in Syria because their mum is a terrorist? This child needs to be placed in a safe, secure and caring environment. That is never going to happen if Shamima Begum is not allowed to return. Forget everything else if you must, but we cannot turn our backs on this child.

Taboo: the work and legacy of Nobuyoshi Araki

Hannah Healey
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Taboo: the work and legacy of Nobuyoshi Araki

The explicit photographs of Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki have been the subject of much controversy due to their blurring of the line between pornography and fine art. Over the course of his prolific career Araki has gained the support and acclaim of arts institutions around the world, but last year allegations of exploitation emerged which have drawn protests at his exhibitions and further complicated the legacy of this contentious photographer.

Born in Tokyo in 1940, Araki was witness to the sexual liberation that swept through Japan in the 1960s and the rise in popularity of kinbaku or shibari. This Japanese erotic tradition is a style of bondage that became prevalent in the 1950s through the photospreads of magazines such as Kitan Club and Yomikiri Romance which showed the practice of binding the body with ropes and suspending the individual in the air, often in asymmetric and uncomfortable positions. Over the past six decades Araki has produced a prolific output publishing over 400 books and participating in exhibitions all over the world, with several taking place in Japan alone each year. He has come to be considered one of, if not the, most important photographers in Japan.

Araki’s images obsessively portray beautiful young women, nude and often bound by intricate formations of rope, ranging from full figure shots to close ups of the face and genitals. Captured in black and white with a high contrast, his images depict the unblemished perfection of the model’s pale skin against her black hair. While kinbaku is an erotic tradition, it is also essentially aesthetic in its expression and prescribed formations of bindings and knots are used to create katas or forms to bind the body in unnaturalistic forms. With knees hoisted up to shoulders and arms held against the back, Araki uses these forms to create enigmatic images of contorted bodies and perfect flesh.

His photographs have been hailed as a celebration of sexual liberation, the man himself lauded as a bastion of expressive freedom in the arts. Such readings position the gaze of the model staring out of the image as the sexually empowered stare of an individual unashamedly celebrating her body and sexuality by relinquishing control. These images however have also faced strong criticism for objectifying the female form with the arrangement of the body for the viewing pleasure of the beholder reducing the model to the subject of male desire. Araki himself has dismissed such readings as simplistic, and prominent figures of the art world have defended his work. Creative Director of the New York Museum of Sex Serge Becker suggested that the viewer’s discomfort in looking at Araki’s photographs comes not from contention with his depiction of women, but from an unease with the urges which are provoked by his images: ‘Some of the discomfort is not necessarily because we disagree with him, but because he touches us and shows us aspects of ourselves we tend to cover up.’

This debate was further complicated in April last year when a former model and ‘muse’ of the photographer published allegations of exploitation during their 16 year collaboration. In a blog post about her work with Araki, Kaori detailed allegations of non-payment, failures of the artist to maintain the privacy of the model during shoots, and the use of images of her without consent. The claims provoked strong opposition to Araki’s work from feminist groups and exhibitions of his images became the subject of protests. In Berlin the activist group Angry Asian Girls Association protested a solo exhibition at the city’s C/O gallery, and in Warsaw the group Bison Ladies We Say No protested the Raster Gallery’s group show Foreign Bodies. The allegations of financial and artistic exploitation and his apparent lack of regard for the welfare of the model has given strength to the argument that Araki views the women he photographs not as autonomous individuals, but as objects for his own artistic and commercial gratification. Kaori herself wrote: ‘he treated me like an object.’

Discussing his motivations, Araki claims to work in service of the overarching themes of art – love and death – which he believes are ultimately expressed in depictions of the female nude. In doing so, Araki aligns his work with the canon of art history among countless other artists who claimed that it is by portraying the naked female form that the essential themes of life and of art can be immortalised in pictorial form. Told that an intellectual could be defined as a person who had discovered that there were more interesting things in life than women, Araki vehemently protested. ‘There is nothing more interesting than women, and nothing more exciting. Their biggest attraction is being mysterious…You absolutely cannot understand them.’

With these views, the photographer betrays a strikingly traditional opinion of women as a subject for intrigue and fascination which begs the question; do the explicit images of women Araki produces actually challenge us with something new that pushes boundaries, or are they just a new vision of the objecthood of women that has been parroted throughout the history of art?

Restaurant Review: Oli’s Thai

Darius Parvizi-Wayne
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Restaurant Review: Oli’s Thai

It is high time that I write a negative review. After my gushing fascination with Peppers, infatuation with Pan Pan, and absolute satisfaction with Jee Saheb, I’m sure some of you are wondering if there is any restaurant in Oxford that I don’t like. Yes, of course there are, and someday I will review one of them. But today will not be that day, because today I’m talking about Oli’s Thai.

I feel somewhat guilty about reviewing Oli’s Thai because so many of you will be unable to go. In fact, just before a fortuitous invitation from a friend, I had booked a table for two at Oli’s Thai at the nearest possible date. This paper would have withered away, its fragments floating down St Giles, by then. Just joking: I managed to get a table on the 2ndMay. Nevertheless, May?! Three months down the line our Prime Minister will have probably expended all our capital on jet fuel for her flights to and from Brussels, and there will be 1000 more compilation videos of John Bercow bellowing ‘Order’. Far too long to wait. 

So how lucky I am to find myself in this tiny little restaurant in East Oxford, that everyone, from your tutor to the bouncer at Bridge, has been talking about. Rufus Thurston, who runs Oli’s with his Thai wife, Laddawan, has stated that “a lot of my favourite restaurants are in Brooklyn, and it’s not obvious where they are, they’re plain, food-focussed and the customers are people who walk there.” Upon entry, one can see that Rufus’s aims have been fulfilled. No more than six tables scattered all around, a soft glow illuminating everything: Oli’s could not be more welcoming. The attitude of the customers reflects the Williamsburg ideal too. Entirely nonplussed, very few students, one must assume that these are regulars. But even if they come to Oli’s every week, every day even, to not betray at least the slightest indication that what they are eating is something extremely special is an impressive feat. For the food at Oli’s is so stupendously extraordinary that one is left simultaneously pleased and astonished that such an institution can retain its effortless charm.

Where to start. Well, a chickpea salad came out first. You may be asking yourself how exciting that can really be. Really fucking exciting is the answer. At Oli’s the simple becomes the sublime, and such an ability to transform a simple chickpea to an entity of such flavourful depth is something to be marvelled at. Crunchiness and heat surge to the fore before being cooled off by perfectly juicy tomatoes. Next up is another salad, this time with cod as its centrepiece. Again, so so good. Flaky cod melts in your mouth, supplemented by fiery red chillies, onions and a wonderfully punchy, tangy sauce. The understated star of the dish, however, had to be the miang leaves. God, why do we not eat more of this stuff. Salad leaves simply won’t do any more. 

Then it was time for the main event: confit duck panang. Confit initially confounded me – surely more Paris than Pai? But it works ever so well. Like the cod, tender, juicy pieces of duck fall off the bone and then dissolve in your mouth, its softness balanced out by the crispiness of the skin. The heat is there too, bubbling under a sea of warm coconut. Subtly magnificent and totally heart-warming, it just does not get better than this.  

I simply could not stop there and opted for Oli’s take on a pastel de nata. A Portuguese delicacy in a Thai restaurant? Anywhere else I’d be apprehensive, but at this point I was far too smitten to care. And I had little to worry about. Creamy custard bursts under flaky pastry, bringing my tastebuds back to earth in the most satisfactory manner possible. Flawless.

I should also add that the service is pretty much faultless too. Supplies of water inconspicuously provided at all points, all questions regarding the spice of this and the spice of that handled with precision, knowledge and a charismatic lack of condescension. What was most striking, however, was the reverence for the food on show, and rightfully so. At Oli’s, food is nothing short of a pure expression of life. Is there any better restaurant in Oxford? I really don’t think there is.

‘Together’ Treasurer barred from standing in Union election

Angus Brown
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‘Together’ Treasurer barred from standing in Union election

The treasurer candidate for the ‘Together’ slate, Lee Chin Wee, has been barred from running in this term’s Union election, per a ruling issued by the Union’s Returning Officer.

It has emerged that Lee is ineligible to stand under Union election rules, which require that all candidates must be a current member of the Standing Committee or a Senior Appointed Official, and must have served for at least one term as a member of the Secretary’s Committee or as an Appointed Official.

This would normally mean that Lee was able to stand, but it transpired that his position as International Officer (an Appointed position) was never been ratified by the Union’s Standing Committee last term as required. Per Union rules, he has thus not officially served a term as an Appointed Official or member of Secretary’s Committee, meaning he does not meet the requirements to stand for election as Treasurer-Elect.

In his official ruling, the Returning Officer wrote that: “I received an envelope with a message from ‘A Member’ in my RO pigeon hole at 2.57 pm, before the Close of Nominations, which informed me that the Member had concerns about the ratifications of Mr Lee as International Officer in MT18.

“Having investigated all of the Standing Committee Minutes from the term, I am satisfied that there was not a vote to ratify Mr Lee as International Officer.”

He continued: “With this in mind I gave Mr Lee the opportunity to make a submission before the hard deadline required for posting a list of validly nominated candidates. However, nothing brought forward by this submission persuaded me from my initial reading of the rules.

“Therefore, I rule that Mr Lee shall not be considered as having been Ratified as an International officer under current Rules. This means that Mr Lee, under the current Rules, can not [sic] be considered as having been International Officer for the purposes of this election.”

The official ruling concluded that: “As CDSC, Mr Lee is a current Member of Standing. However, as Mr Lee can not [sic] be considered as having been International Officer, he does not meet the requirements of having served a further term either on Secretary’s Committee or as an Appointed Official.”

In an official statement posted on social media, Lee wrote: “Yesterday, I was disqualified from running for Treasurer. It’s Union politics in its full, toxic, viciousness: The precise event which triggered my disqualification came three minutes before the close of nominations.

“A letter written by ‘A Member’ was pidged to the Returning Officer, laying out the technical reasons as to why I was not eligible to stand for election. It is clear, both from the timing of the letter and its contents, that this was a pre-planned attack; a move to disqualify an officer candidate from a slate that some individuals just do not want to see win.

“As it turns out, I was never ratified as International Officer because I’d completed an insufficient number of vacation days. Fair enough; but ironic considering my position as International Officer – as an international student, I was unable to serve these vacation days because my flights back to Singapore were pre-booked months in advance.

“It’s a pity, because had I been elected, I’d have pushed for changes to the vacation day requirements that would’ve made it easier for international students to participate in the Union.

“While I served as International Officer, there was no indication anything was amiss. On the minutes, I was indicated as ‘International Officer’. When I organised an International Pub Quiz for the Union, I was recognised as an ‘International Officer’. When I handed over my portfolio to Alice, I was referred to as the ‘Outgoing International Officer’. Yes, there is no evidence I was ratified through a formal vote by the Governing Body; that much is true. The issue of what should count as ratification, however, is a different question – that is a fight left for another time.

“Had I been ratified, I would’ve been eligible to run for Treasurer because I was International Officer for a term, and then Debate Chairperson (a position on the Governing Body of the Union) for another.”

With Lee barred from running and the election’s nomination period closed, the Together slate, led by Brendan McGrath, will now not be able to field a candidate for the position. The ‘Engage’ slate’s candidate for Treasurer, Rai Saad Khan and the independent candidate Shining Zhao will be the only candidates on the ballot.

The Oxford Union, Together, Khan, and Zhao have been contacted for comment.

Preview: Many Moons – ‘the edges of a crowd’

Cesca Echlin
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Preview: Many Moons – ‘the edges of a crowd’

In Many Moons, one character remarks that pushing for space on a crowded London street “feels a bit like the end of the world.” It is this tension between the intimate and the immense that Alice Birch is concerned with in in her debut full-length play, brought to the Michael Pilch Studio this week in a new production by Small Fry Theatre.

First shown at Theatre 503 in London in 2011, Many Moons follows the lives of four people living in the London suburb of Stoke Newington. The trajectories of these characters come together to create a captivating, and at times sinister, portrait of the urban experience.

The play’s action takes place entirely within one day in July. The characters navigate the same few square miles, colliding at different points. Meg (Abby McCann) is a pregnant housewife, suffering in the domestic haven of her own making. Ollie has a fascination with the cosmos, but is crippled by social awkwardness. Juniper (Mati Warner) has just moved to London and is optimistically on the hunt for love. Robert (Henry Wyard) is growing old and simply wants to keep himself to himself. Whilst these four are seemingly unconnected, by bringing these disparate identities together, Birch’s text forces us to think about how we all fit in.

The selection of scenes I preview a few days before opening night starts at the play’s beginning. Director Rudi Gray’s staging is simple yet powerful – I am told that Small Fry’s Many Moons will be in the round, with each character sat on a chair at the stage’s edges, turned in to face one and other.

The play begins with a monologue from each character, and the staging has a visual effect in this section not dissimilar from what I imagine an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting would look like. In the opening scene, each character sits, or stands up, to say their piece – together enacting a kind of group confession, revealing what they think of themselves or their lives as if they had been prompted by some non-existent group facilitator. Meg explains how she likes to “make bread in the bread maker and marmalade on the stove” but her monologue takes a more ominous turn when she lets slip that she “found a dead rabbit in (her) compost bin once.”

Juniper declares that she thinks of herself as “a bit of a free spirit”, but concedes that wouldn’t say she was a feminist in front of a boyfriend because it’s “not that sexy really, is it?”

Birch’s writing is an absolute treat in these monologues, the text being abundant and delightfully dense. At times the characters even speak in lists – Meg remarks that she likes to “go on Facebook on Youtube on Hotmail and Gmail and Mumsnet and MySpace with Jeremy Kyle then Woman’s Hour and Loose Women in the background.”

Birch enjoys scattering the text with snapshots that serve to sum up our modern world – “traffic light parties” and “Snakebites” – with phrases that are so believable they bring you to the point of laughter – “I’m a bit cartwheely, a bit sort of out there, you know?”

The subject matter explored in these opening monologues reflects what I think Birch is really interested in in Many Moons. In these monologues, the four characters are attempting to construct a sense of self and present it to us with the markers that can be read and understood by a modern audience.

Juniper insists that she is “very good at empathising with people” and that she was “going to go on the Reclaim the Night March last year” but couldn’t because “it was so rainy.”

We come to understand which categories these characters identify themselves with – Robert “liked being called a ‘know-it-all’” – and which categories they firmly reject. But, crucially, Birch points out the gap between how these characters want to be perceived, and who they really are. In this way Many Moons explores the very boundaries of the self.

In bringing four very different characters together onto the same stage, Birch is asking questions about how our understanding of the self transforms when we are part of a collective – for example, a city. Collective experience is explored through the use of movement in Small Fry’s production. A particularly compelling moment I saw from later on in the play was a representation of Ollie walking through a crowded street. Standing in the centre of the stage, Scruton is surrounded by the other actors who tug at his arms, legs, and torso, rotating around him as they go. This has the effect of intensifying the presence of the four actors on stage, creating a spatial experience that is utterly claustrophobic.

The play comes to a head when the four characters attend the same street market, unknowingly walking within metres of each other – at one point Meg and Ollie literally bump straight into one and other. Is it “fate” like Juniper declares? Later, when I ask the cast and crew what they Birch meant with the play’s title, Gray points out that all of the characters share an interest in cosmology. I suggest that each character is like a celestial object, bound together somehow, and McCann comments how in our society we exist as individuals but there are “moments when we interconnect” which have the potential to “change your life forever.”

Producer Lizy Jennings thinks it’s also about how we “orbit” around others, how as individuals, we “obsess over other people,” without realizing the extent of it. We are many moons orbiting around several different centres, colliding as we go.

Small Fry Theatre’s new production of Many Moons promises to be a delicate and haunting exploration of Alice Birch’s stunning text. I advise all those who can to head down to the Pilch this week to see it.

Many Moons is at the Michael Pilch Studio until Saturday 23rd February.

Fame, fortune and failure

Aine Kennedy
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Fame, fortune and failure

His biography reads like a particularly lazy Onion headline: Canadian man, 32, accrues $227,000 of debt in pursuit of light-up sneakers, flatscreen TVs, and motivational-rap superstardom. Alas, Curtis ‘Unkle’ Adams’ unenviable predicament is all too real, and while it has spawned a bountiful crop of memes, a 19,000-member Facebook group, and a brief squabble with music critic Anthony Fantano, it has failed either to further his ambitions or to restore his grasp on reality. Whether you see him as a slighted genius or just a delusional Saskatchewan, ‘The Unk’ is a sobering example of the perils of the rocky road to celebrity seemingly offered by social media.

The past decade has seen YouTube propel plenty of musicians into the big-time, with other platforms enhancing this effect since 2012. While most have been fresh-faced and homegrown- notably more illustrious fellow Canadian Justin Bieber- older artists have also reinvigorated their careers online; Lana del Rey was 26 when Video Games went viral. But Unk is different. Unk, say much of his fanbase, needs help.

The reaction to the first episode of ALAM, which Unk describes as “a reality series with no script”, elicited genuine concern from many of Adams’ followers. Although the overwhelming majority of ‘nieces and nephews’ enjoy Unk’s oeuvre with a healthy pinch of irony, they do so with an enthusiasm which some artists would leap to monetise. The Unkverse wiki chronicles an elaborate ‘lore’, a mythology built around characters in his songs, Adams’ personal life, and a rallying cry that ‘Unk f****d my wife’. Bizarre as it may be, Unk’s fanbase is passionately dedicated, and would be a valuable tool on his journey to fame- if only he could accept it.

Sincere as his intentions may be, Unk refuses to recognise the limited commercial appeal of public-domain beats ornamented by nasal Canadian pronouncements on the dangers of drugs and climate change. Meme fame- insincere admiration- just won’t cut it, and so he disables comments, blocks followers, and denounces the Facebook group as ‘a bunch of trolls’ for trying to reason with him. Some of the comments on ALAM 1 sound like a cop trying to talk someone off a bridge. “Please dude. You gotta confront the fact that what you do won’t get you fame. Take a break, get a job, take the lessons….”

While not everyone is this sympathetic, there is a sense of real unease that surfaces occasionally in the collective voice of the fanbase, only to retreat back into flippancy when Unk reminds the world again of his inability to take any kind of criticism. Pleas like the comment above go unacknowledged; ‘haters’ are blocked; the unfavourable Fantano review, Unk’s highest level of publicity, triggered a public tantrum hinging on a puerile insult derived from Fantano’s username, ‘TheNeedleDrop’. After the debt announcement, thousands of people on the Facebook group suggested that each member make a contribution to pay it off and get Adams back on his feet- persuade him to go back to his job and make music at home, instead of spending thousands on studio time and flashy music videos (if anything filmed in Regina, Saskatchewan can be described as such). But such schemes are inevitably abandoned when the hive mind remembers that Unk is too far gone.

Refusing to alter his behaviour, fixated on the promise of ‘viral fame’ and defying all reason in pursuit of this goal, Unk is obsessed with social media, although it has now become a vehicle for documenting his decline, which he mistakes for increasing his celebrity. Group members have posited that he might suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias of illusory superiority whereby lower-ability people cannot objectively evaluate their competence. Behind all the memes, the proud proclamations of cuckoldry, and the chants of ‘lelelele’ (a quote from ‘Original’, which recently appeared on Oxfess) the tale of the Unk is a sad and cautionary one. As one commenter put it: ’It’s like watching a car crash. It’s interesting for a bit but when the car’s done burning, you drive away.’

Leave her alone!

Molly Innes
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Leave her alone!

Our generation does not remember Princess Diana, or the treatment she faced by the media. We know she was hounded; we know she died.

Conspiracy theorists even believe she was murdered, trying time and time again to prove the Royal family are to blame. They’re not; the media is. Surely we can’t know what it was like to read about Diana in the news every day?

But, we actually kind of do. Not a day goes by without a story on Meghan Markle: everyday a new dress, a new leaking from her family, a new image of her ‘cradling’ her bump.

Meghan Markle’s assimilation into the Royal family, and into British consciousness and the public eye has not been simple.

It seems that no lessons have been learnt from the fate of the previous ‘People’s Princess’.

There are arguments that this treatment is to be expected for anyone of such high profile; A sense that if Meghan is going to be so prominent in the public eye, then the public are entitled to know everything about her, to harass her, that it makes it ok that her family have leaked all the informa- tion they have about her into the world.

But we are not entitled to any of these things. We are not entitled to Markle. It is one thing for it to be reported that she has attended an event, given patronage, or for it to be breaking news when she soon gives birth.

It is another thing entirely for news outlets to give interviews to her attention seeking, cruel distant family. In the past few weeks, a letter Markle sent to her father was leaked to the Daily Mail.

It could only really have been leaked by one person: him. The man who claimed victimhood when unable to attend Markle’s wedding in May last year.

The man who says he wants reconciliation with his daughter, and yet has caused the severing.

A world where a person’s handwriting can show them to be a ‘narcissist’, as one ‘handwriting expert’ has analysed of the leaked letter, is a world where everything has gone too far.

This isn’t news, it isn’t any semblance of decent reporting, it’s bullying. No matter what the status is of the person receiving the abuse, it is still abuse.

If you type ‘Meghan Markle Bump’ into Google, a myriad of stories appear. One from the Express on the 26th of January stands out, titled, “Meghan CAN’T STOP showing off: Duchess uses these SNEAKY tricks to flaunt her baby bump.” Crude insinuations of attention seeking and sneakiness are bizarre: the bump cannot be hidden.

The article – and all others in the same vein – made me think: Why are we criticising a woman who wants to touch her baby bump anyway?

The reaction to Markle’s apparent bump cradling highlights more about her critics than it does her.

Some people cannot stand the sight of someone seemingly doing ‘better’ than them. It reeks of jealousy. And of course, it is not only jealousy that fuels the media’s torrent of criticism: racism and classism are obvious factors in the media’s treatment of Markle.

There are racist ‘trolls’ on twitter and Instagram, and there are unscrupulous journalists covering Meghan’s every move. I’d suggest there isn’t too much difference between the two.

The media insinuates, and the public pile on, in comment sections, in conversation. It is hard to avoid. I’ve seen more photos of Markle’s baby bump than I’ve seen photos of my own mother in the past few months, and she posts on Instagram all the time.

One of the tabloids’ current Markle obsessions is the rumour that the ‘fab four’ (William, Kate, Harry, Meghan) are fracturing, and that she is to blame. Speculation and unnamed sources have led to a strange situation where we follow the daily activities and dramas of the Royal family as if they are a reality show.

The two couples are reportedly ‘splitting their staff’ as Harry and Meghan move away from Kensington Palace. What is so radical and dramatic about two grown-up brothers finally deciding not to live together? Nothing, really.

It seems that the media is attempting to pull the individuals apart in order to break down each one individually. But their main target will always be Markle.

Most of us will probably remember the media attention given to Kate Middleton before and after her wedding. Everyone was obsessed with her, just as originally, we were all obsessed with Markle in a positive way, but Middleton was never really attacked in the media.

Not to the same extent, anyway. William never had to put out a statement urging the media to leave her alone. In a post-Diana and post-Leveson culture, it is surprising that the media continues to act as it does. Nobody really sees the Royals as ‘real’ people, and in many ways they’re not real. They seem untouchable.

Society is somewhat split into two sides: the side who love the Royals, and hence believe they’re entitled to know everything about them, and the more Republican side who see no point in monarchy existing anymore, and therefore in criticising Markle they think they’re actually attacking the monarchy as a whole.

But the Markle criticism is over the top, insidious, targeted and cruel.

Whilst the media are free to report on events as they do, the practice of giving media space and attention to Markle’s father and other family members highlights a darker side to news which we should be avoiding, not encouraging by reading and watching it.

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