Tuesday 17th June 2025
Blog Page 674

‘Widows’ is a celebration of female grit and resolve

Angelica De Vido
-
0
‘Widows’ is a celebration of female grit and resolve

When the director of 12 Years A Slave (Steve McQueen) and the writer of Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn) team up to create a female-fronted thriller, it’s unsurprising that it combines all the explosive elements of the heist genre with a searing indictment of the systemic racism and inequality in contemporary American society.

The frenetic violence that pervades the film is immediately established in the opening montage, where a heist goes catastrophically wrong. The entire gang of men involved are killed, leaving their wives alone to fend for themselves.

However, the women have little time to grieve; Veronica (Viola Davis) soon discovers that her husband, the gang’s ringleader, stole $2 million from one of Chicago’s most notorious criminals, and she’s given only one month to return the money before facing violent retribution. The wives band together, forced to become criminals themselves to reclaim the money as they pull off a heist that their late husbands had planned.

These women are no secondary characters whose husbands take centre stage. Instead, while the women’s characters are established in relation to their husbands – from Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) who is struggling to raise her children after her business is repossessed because of her late husband’s debts, to Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) who is a victim of domestic violence and abuse – they are developed through their relationships with each other.

This narrative technique illuminates the diversity and nuanced characterisation of these women, offering an array of perspectives on contemporary American female experiences. It’s a marked rejection of the reductive female stereotypes that have dominated characterisations in American cinema.

Led by the tremendous force of Davis’ performance, McQueen repeatedly foregrounds the toughness of these women. In what could be seen as the film’s mantra, Veronica reminds the others that “we have a lot of work to do; crying isn’t on the list.”

Crucially, this ‘toughness’ is not antithetical to femininity in the film. Instead, Flynn writes characters who bring an array of attributes, skills, and insights to the table. In classic “heist preparation” montages, McQueen highlights the diversity of their skills and the different strengths and resiliences that each woman displays. There is not just one type of power that women in cinema can portray.

As opposed to the recent glitz of the all-female Ocean’s 8, Widows has grit running through its aesthetic and narrative preoccupations. The film offers a more overtly political message to its viewer. The film is inspired by a London-based ITV drama from 1983, but it transports this story to the suburbs of Chicago to offer a poignant indictment of the corruption, racism, deprivation, and brutality that continues to poison contemporary American life. Cutting between scenes of everyday domestic life and scenes of extreme violence at the hands of criminal gangs and the police, McQueen foregrounds the pervasion of this violence.

The exceptional cast portray the horrors and hardships that engulf people’s lives in this Chicago neighbourhood, and by intertwining multiple narrative threads the film offers a poignant, devastating portrait of the lasting effects of violence and corruption on the individual and the community.

Combining intimate, intricate character portraits of these individual women’s lives with spectacular action sequences, Widows is a fantastic thriller that offers an original take on the heist genre, and is most certainly a standout contender in the upcoming Oscar race.

England’s stubborn faith in Keaton Jennings reaps its reward

-
0
England’s stubborn faith in Keaton Jennings reaps its reward

It was a tough summer for opening batsmen: it took 34 innings before an opener registered a fifty during India’s Test tour of England. To contextualise this statistic, there has never been a five match Test series in which an opening batsman has not scored a fifty, and it was Cook’s 71 in the first innings of the final Test that ensured this record remained. Keaton Jennings experienced a dismal run of form in that series, only managing 163 runs at an average of 18. Some of his dismissals showed a worrying lack of game awareness: he failed to pick two in-swingers from Jaspirit Bumrah and Mohammad Shami, and seemingly forgot the presence of a leg-slip at the Oval.

There were deafening calls to drop Jennings for the final Test and to hand Surrey’s Rory Burns a debut at his home county ground in a low-pressure dead rubber. Ed Smith’s stubborn faith in Jennings denied Burns such an opportunity, which has now left England with a very vulnerable and inexperienced Test opening partnership.

There seemed to be a disconnect between what England’s captain Joe Root wanted, and the policies of the England selectors. When I asked Joe Root what County cricketers had to do to get noticed by the selectors, his mantra was simple: “continue working hard and score runs, big runs consistently”. Rory Burns was the only opening batsman in the County Championship who fulfilled this criteria. Indeed, he had been for several seasons, but this still didn’t give him the opportunity to replace Keaton Jennings.

Speaking to Aaron Finch after a Surrey T20 Blast match, the Aussie was heavily critical of this decision saying that Burns “obviously” deserved a spot in the England side.

By the end of the summer, after two more low scores at the Oval, it seemed as if England’s stubborn faith in Jennings was bordering on absurdity.

However, despite this extraordinary run of poor form, Jennings still found himself on the plane to Sri Lanka as England began their post-Cook era.

It may have been a slow and agonising process, but England’s persistent faith in Jennings finally reaped its rewards as Jennings made an elegant 46 and a match-winning 146* in their first Test against Sri Lanka. This came in some tough turning conditions, with batsmen like Rory Burns and Joe Root struggling. It set up England’s crushing 211 run victory.

It is crucial that Jennings does something that he has not been able to do before: score runs consistently for his country and guide England’s opening partnership in this vulnerable transition phase. As the supposed heir to Alastair Cook, Jennings will have a lot of pressure on him and the next few months will test his mental strength and resilience. Jennings, though, has had the best possible start to the post-Cook era.

Nevertheless, England are still in a precarious situation in terms of their opening composition and they ought not to rest on their laurels. While one opener has finally recorded the big scores he needed, the other is just starting out in Test cricket and is under a lot of pressure. These two opening batsmen are likely to have an extended run in the Test side.

This isn’t necessarily due to their merit, but is instead a reflection of the severe shortage of opening options to choose from. England’s County Championship is struggling to produce specialist batsmen, although they provide a bounteous supply of allrounders and bowlers.

If England’s Test team is to succeed in the long term, it is key that this changes, and that the ECB explore ways to promote the lost art of Test batsman-ship at a grass roots level.

Salome Review – ‘struggles to take audience into another world’

-
0
Salome Review – ‘struggles to take audience into another world’

Wilde’s one-act play Salomé has a controversial history: it was banned from British theatres when it was first translated into English from French in 1891 (censored due to an old law banning the staging of biblical characters) and, surprisingly for plays of that period, the script’s potential power to shock an audience has not waned. The themes in the play are dark and grim – the presentation of Salomé’s obsession with Jokanaan is visceral and animalistic, and her twisted relationships with both the tetrarch and her mother uncomfortable and unsettling.

Source: Tea Party Productions

With its rich language, biblical setting, and heightened emotion, the play seems designed to take the audience member into another world. This is something that Tea Party Productions really struggles with – the thrust stage and representative set made one constantly aware that what was being witnessed was a piece of theatre and constantly aware of the minutiae of the audience’s reactions. Certain costume choices were also jarring. Salomé and her mother’s plain dresses worked well but the more minor characters’ plain white shirt and black trousers had enough vague variation that the overall effect was poor. The trousers of Eleanor Cousins-Brown, playing both Herodias and the Young Syrian, were hemmed with lace in a distinctly modern and feminine fashion and she was wearing earrings that appeared to simply have been allowed to be left on having been worn throughout the day. The black shoes worn by the secondary characters in the play, alongside the white shirt and black trousers, had the effect of seeming like school shoes, adding to the strange ‘school play’ feeling that was also created by the representational set.

The play’s struggle to fully draw its audience in also lay in the scattered movement of the first scenes involving the Young Syrian, The Page of Herodias, and the first and second Soldiers. No-one stayed still for a moment, people were hovering, strolling and dancing around the stage in a way that made it difficult to gain an impression of atmosphere or place. This wasn’t helped by the frantic pace the play was conducted at, there was little pause or silence between the spoken text and even Jokanaan’s prophetic orations came at you like bullets. Undoubtedly the play would have been helped by capitalising on its quiet moments, and not brushing past them for moments of greater ‘importance’ or intensity. Some of this certainly could, however, be attributed to first night nerves. The potential for these moments was continual.

The consistent intensity of the play meant that some moments, such as when the corpse of the young Syrian was scattered in rose petals, seemed contrived and awkward. Two shockingly uncomfortable moments stand out. First, the section in which Salomé effusively praised the whiteness of Jokanaan’s skin, despite Jokanaan being played by Sunny Roshan, an actor of colour. Secondly, when Jokanaan’s severed head was brought out onto stage – a crudely painted hairdresser’s model head. The thrust staging did not help these moments as the audience could see their fellow audience members’ reactions.

They did manage to convey the intensity of particular moments effectively, however. The conversations between Jokanaan and Salomé (Katie Friedli Walton) held enormous weight. For this play to be successful it is imperative that the actress playing Salomé is captivating, and Katie Friedli Walton’s portrayal of the character – with her wide eyes and cold voice – was completely haunting. Her presentation of her unwavering obsession with Jokanaan gave the audience that unsettled feeling, as if contending with complete madness. A stand-out moment was the dance for Herodias, started and ended by Friedli Walton and completed by Kristen Cope. The movement was enthralling, and the chosen music worked well for a piece with no set sense of culture or place but a definite sense of non-western antiquity. It was the necessary moment where the audience felt fully drawn in to a world not their own.

How Charlie Chaplin lost his voice

-
0
How Charlie Chaplin lost his voice

Charlie Chaplin was well aware of the gulf between being heard and having a ‘voice’ from a very young age. He grew up in poverty stricken South London in the fatigued, fractured late Victorian period.

He lived a childhood characterised by perennial financial shortcomings and those Dickensian staples of nineteenth century urban life: depressing, austere schools, terrifying ‘asylums’ and the inescapable workhouse, which lurked as a threat to any family teetering on the boundaries of destitution.

Yet somewhat paradoxically, he came from a family of performers: people whose working existence hinged on the possibility of finding entertainment and public joy despite the general misery of everyday life.

His father was a popular music hall singer, and his mother, though less popular, also performed in music halls, specialising in comical impersonations. The projection and expression of sound was for the Chaplins more than just frivolous escapism, it was a financial imperative for a people trapped in a society wired to prevent them being otherwise ‘heard’.

Chaplin inherited his family’s love of entertaining – he almost could not have done otherwise, as it defined the environment he grew up in. A talented young performer himself, he appeared on stage as a member of the ‘Eight Lancashire Lads’ clog-dancing troupe aged ten, before registering with a theatrical agency as a teenager and eventually joining Fred Karno’s prestigious comedy company at the age of eighteen.

It was on the second tour of America with Karno that Chaplin was spotted and hired by Keystone Studios, beginning a stratospheric rise through the motion picture industry. His authorised biographer David Robinson asserts that Chaplin’s was ‘the most dramatic of all the rags to riches stories ever told’.

As he began his reign as the most recognisable, indeed most famous person in the world, Chaplin acquired his ‘voice’, ironically expressed through the medium of silent film that proved so universally effective at conveying simple but strong narratives. Initially he used it to do what he’d always striven to do: make audiences laugh.

Bringing his traditional physical comedy of the bumbling, vaguely theatrical everyman and combining it with a new fascination with the comedic potential of the hopeless, homeless ‘sad clown’, he created the iconic ‘Tramp’.

The vaudevillian clowning of his earliest films, as he fought for mass appeal and world fame, is best captured in his relentless, awkward following of the camera in 1914’s ‘Kid Auto Races at Venice’, as he desperately overacts, demanding the audience pay attention and fall in love with him.

Gradually Chaplin became more artful and ambitious. His 1918 A Dog’s Life was called ‘cinema’s first total work of art’ by Louis Delluc. In 1918 he also produced a wartime propaganda film, The Bond, which controversially brought comedy to the trenches. 1921’s The Kid, meanwhile, spilled over conventional running times at 68 minutes, as Chaplin strove to transcend comedy, and engage with serious dramatic issues in a shattered post-war world.

As his voice developed and his influence grew, Chaplin then found targets for the acute satire woven into the ostensibly placid narratives of his films. In The Gold Rush (1925) it is the self-destructive greed of prospectors and single-minded businessmen more generally.

In City Lights (1931) it is that old, stratifying enemy of class, surely rooted in the tribulations of his British youth. Then, most famously, it was the terrifying spectre of hysterical fascism in The Great Dictator (1940).

Chaplin had, therefore, finally combined his bitter resentment of systems and human characteristics that restrict, reduce and attack the innocent everyman, and had dominated his own youth, with his family’s primal urge to entertain. But this constant seeking of a voice would end up being his own downfall.

His wartime campaigning for greater Soviet-American cooperation was spectacularly misjudged, and the effect on his image was compounded by knowledge of his communist friends and attendance at Los Angeles soviet gatherings.

Investigated by the FBI as early as 1947, he fought against the relentless work of the House of Un-American Activities Committee and protested against the public and political denunciation of his character and morality, crafting the melancholy Limelight (1952) as an autobiography charting his sadness and insecurity over such a precipitous fall in popularity. When Chaplin’s re-entry permit to the US was revoked while he was away at Limelight’s London premiere, he chose not to engage in the demeaning process of interrogation demanded for its return.

Instead, Chaplin chose quiet exile in Europe, the universal voice he’d utilised silence so effectively to gain, taken away by this new world of yelling, shouting, and irrationality.

Protesting Bannon doesn’t legitimise aggression

Zahra Farzanekhoo
-
0
Protesting Bannon doesn’t legitimise aggression

On Wednesday, the Oxford Union announced that Steve Bannon would be giving a talk on Friday, giving protesters two days notice to mobilise. And mobilise they did.

However, the methods adopted by the protesters were ineffective and downright disgraceful. Preventing entry to the Union came at the severe cost of alienating their peers, losing the opportunity for challenging questions to be asked, and incurring a massive cost to the police.

Though I would have preferred for Bannon to not have been invited, the simple reality is that he was. The behaviour exhibited by protesters on Friday, namely in preventing members from entering the Union and accusing the police of being Nazi sympathisers, was childish, embarrassing, and ultimately undermined their goals. There is a vital difference between peacefully and effectively protesting against an ideology, and personally attacking fellow students and law enforcers.

The first issue with the protest was the blocking of people from entering a building they had paid substantial sums to be able to enter, to listen to a speaker they wanted to hear and engage with in debate. Merely protesting disapproval outside would have been acceptable but physically blocking entry was arrogant. Whilst the protesters have a right to protest, the students trying to get in also have the right to exercise their membership rights and go inside the Union. The line must be drawn when one group begins to forcefully impose their own beliefs as to what is acceptable and what is not onto another.

Blocking Union members from entering only alienates them against the protesters’ cause and plays into the hand of Bannon and his supporters. We each have a right to our respective beliefs on whether Bannon was to speak or not but that right stops there: it does not entitle one group to demand the other group agrees with them. Protesters should have accepted that preventing entry would only undermine their cause and that antagonising their peers was not the most effective way to persuade.

Secondly, many protesters on Friday were plainly disrespectful. Many students simply wanting to attend the talk had cameras shoved in their faces whilst being insulted. At the Union entrance on St Michael’s Street, the protest leader repeatedly put their megaphone directly in the face of those trying to enter, which was unnecessarily aggressive and also blatantly ignored any possible health implications.

Many of protesters, though not all, were far too aggressive in their approach and lacked basic decency and respect. Most of those present were members of the University. We see each other around college and in lecture halls. There was no need to accuse those trying to enter of being racists and Nazi sympathisers, an insult which is frankly dangerous. Loosely throwing around such accusations and in particular the use of the word ‘Nazi’ is very harmful and risks distorting what the Nazi Party actually did and stood for.

Finally, the protesters repeatedly yelled at the police who were simply there to maintain public order. Chanting ‘the police protect Nazis’ and ‘the police killed Mark Duggan’ was problematic for two reasons. The former is not only inaccurate, as the police had driven from Reading to protect the protesters themselves, but also misused a very loaded word. As for the latter, whilst true, it was both irrelevant and inappropriate to chant. Misappropriating significant historical events, such as the Holocaust and the police brutality that caused the death of Mark Duggan, is disrespectful to the police present on Friday who were in no way responsible for either event.

The disapproval for Steve Bannon could have been expressed in a much more effective manner which did not play into the belief those on the right hold that the left are incapable of listening to views they disagree with. Antagonising peers, insulting the police, and demanding to see the bod cards of Brasenose students simply trying to get into their accommodation in Frewin Annexe – something which left a few students crying – shows just how poorly the protesters conducted themselves.

Of course, individuals are entirely justified in engaging in peaceful protest and exercising their free speech. However, physical obstruction crosses the line. Many Union members, including myself, felt the entitlement of the protesters to determine who should enter, or who members should be allowed to listen to, was inappropriate and ultimately undermined their cause.

Free speech is essential, but part of that requires that one can choose what speech to listen to. It becomes dangerously totalitarian when a mobilised belief group starts to dictate what speech cannot be accessed.

Blues take Major Stanley win

-
0
Blues take Major Stanley win

Oxford University’s Rugby Blues beat Cardiff RFC 27-5 in what was a comfortable win to mark the first fixture of the revamped annual Major Stanley’s match.

After a convincing 55-14 win against Trinity College Dublin, the Blues opted to rotate the team, giving some fringe players an opportunity to prove themselves with just one fixture to go before the all-important Varsity match.

Playing in white kit, an allusion to the historical strip of Major Stanley’s XV, the Oxford side started the game well, forcing the first ten minutes of the match to be largely fought inside the Cardiff half.

The early dominance of the Blues continued to show. Despite Cardiff seeing more possession than in the first quarter of the half, the Welsh outfit struggled to convert their time with the ball into distance gained.

The game burst into life just after the 20-minute mark when a penetrating 50-yard run by Henry Martin forced Cardiff deep into their own half. With Cardiff’s back up against the wall, a lapse in judgment led to an Oxford penalty when Cardiff’s no 11 was sinbinned for a high tackle on Oxford’s fly-half Louis Jackson. The resultant penalty kick was duly put into touch and Oxford turned the line-out into an effective rolling maul from which Alasdair King scored the first try of the match.

Oxford continued to dictate the game and a poor kick from Cardiff found its way into the hands of Martin. The ball found its way to Jackson, whose incisive runs caused Cardiff serious problems throughout the game, who found a gap in the Cardiff defence before offloading to Conor Kearns for Oxford’s second try. The Blues thus went into the dressing room 10-0 up at half-time, after Jackson’s boot failed to live up to his otherwise high-quality performance.

The second half saw an emphatic start. The crowd had barely returned to their seats when a scrum in midfield led to Jackson turning on the afterburners and outpacing the Cardiff defence to score Oxford’s third try in a manner reminiscent of Johnny Sexton.

Not to go down without a fight, Cardiff fought back in the 69th minute after a sustained attack resulted in a momentary lapse of concentration for the Blues’ defence, allowing the Welsh no 11 to burst through and put some points on the scoreboard for the away side. Another conversion missed saw the score at 15-5 in Oxford’s favour.

Oxford were determined to put the game to bed, and they converted their supremacy into a fourth try inside the game’s last 5 minutes after multiple scrums resulted in Dylan McGagh finding his way over the try-line. Kearns stood up to take the subsequent conversion and duly secured Oxford’s first conversion of the match, setting the score line at 20-5.

In the dying breaths of the game the Blues scored their fifth try of the match after Tom Stileman found his way into the corner, securing a deserved victory with a convincing 27-5 final score in a match that showed the depth of the Blues’ squad ahead of their clash against Cambridge on the 6th December.

Purple Turtle to close down

Greg Ritchie
-
0
Purple Turtle to close down

The popular night club Purple Turtle is set to close down, as it failed to reach an agreement with the Oxford Union regarding a new lease.

In a statement, the club said: “As some of you may know we have been negotiating our new lease with theOxford Union over the last few months and unfortunately much to our disappointment we have not been able to come to an arrangement that would allow us to remain in Frewin Court, our home for the last twenty years. We’ve been asked to vacate the premises by the 30th of November, yep, that’s in two weeks.

“So, this week is our last, at least here anyway, we will be back once we find a new home and we hope you’ll all come along with us after all it’s never been the building that makes the Turtle, it’s the Turtle that makes the building.

“We’ve always striven to create an inclusive, fun and safe environment for you all to party and that will never change wherever we are.

It added: “We’d like to say a massive, massive thank you to all of our Staff, DJ’s, Promoters, Bands, and most importantly Customers who’ve made this one of the most special venues in Oxford.

“We hope you’ll all join us this week to give our old home the send off it deserves.”

President of the Oxford Union, Stephen Horvath, told Cherwell: “The Oxford Union and our tenant The Purple Turtle were unable to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement on a new lease, with the prior twenty year lease having expired in September 2018.

“We are looking forward to announcing our new tenant in the coming weeks – watch this space for an exciting announcement, which we are sure will please clubbers from the University and Oxford more broadly.”

The announcement follows a tough year for Oxford’s night life. The Cellar is still in a fight to save its future, while Plush Lounge announced that it was also having to change venue.

The power of silence: the art of Marina Abramović

Grace Morgan
-
0
The power of silence: the art of Marina Abramović

Marina Abramović is known for producing unconventional art. Throughout her career, the self-professed ‘grandmother of performance art’ has persistently subverted the conventional, challenging and redefining the boundaries of what constitutes art.

Using the artist as a medium, her work occupies an odd, and somewhat unclear space between reality and performance, as the body becomes a vehicle through which the message of the piece is conveyed. In her early career, Abramović pushed the physical limits of her body to extremes, creating work verging on the self-destructive. Her infamous piece ‘Rhythym 0’ (1974) invited the public to do whatever they wanted to her motionless body, using any of the 72 objects she had arranged on a table: these included a saw, paint, scissors, perfume, and a loaded gun. Sacrificing herself to the decisions of the audience, the work makes a profound comment on the corruptibility of human nature; the performance was stopped after six hours, as participants became increasingly violent towards her body. Her silence and stillness throughout fulfilled the accompanying statement of instructions: ‘I am the object’. She has since described how the audience then left immediately after she began to move, unable to face her as a human, rather than a passive object.

As her career has progressed, Abramović’s work has increasingly focused on the capacity of the mind. In ‘The House with the Ocean View’ (2002), she spent 12 days living in three rooms, raised on platforms open to the public, in the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York. Audience members could watch her sleeping, washing, drinking, and urinating. She neither spoke nor ate for the duration of the performance. Describing the work as an experiment, Abramović has explained the piece as an attempt to subtract meaning from time, claiming that whilst they watched the performance audience members would find hours had passed instead of minutes.

This use of silence and ritualization to enhance concentration underpins Abramović’s ‘Counting the Rice’ interactive installations, which often feature in her retrospective exhibitions. Members of the public surrender their mobile phones and watches, to sit at tables and count individual black lentils and rice grains from large piles, all the while wearing noise-cancelling headphones. This project forms part of Abramović’s focus on gaining back free time by immersing oneself in long durational activities, in which there is no sense or even understanding of time.

Abramović believes that “the hardest thing to do is to do something that is close to nothing, because it is demanding all of you”. It is no surprise, then, that she has described the aptly named ‘The Artist is Present’ (2010) as her most ambitious work. This was performed in accompaniment to her major retrospective exhibition of the same name, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This piece was essentially a reinvention of the earlier ‘Nightsea Crossing’ (1981–87), which was performed with her then lover and fellow performance artist, Uwe Laysiepen, commonly known as Ulay. The pair sat separated by a table, in total silence, for eight hours a day. The MoMA rendition replaced Ulay with a member of the public, so that Abramovic sat opposite an empty chair, in which anyone could sit, for as long as they wanted.

The premise of the performance may sound simple when compared to some of her more outlandish work, but this brief explanation belies an extreme feat of both mental and physical endurance. Abramović sat motionless and silent, for nearly eight hours a day, six days a week, for three months. In their original performance, Ulay stood up prematurely, so intense was the pain brought on by days of fasting and sitting still. In Matthew Akers’ documentary, Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present, which records the run up to and duration of the show, the curator suggested that she end the performance early, given the physical toll it was taking on her body. Yet Abramović refused to even contemplate this possibility, such is her commitment to her work.

Audience participation was essential to ‘The Artist is Present’; the curator warned her before it opened that the chair opposite her might remain empty for the majority of the performance. But it was never empty: people queued for hours, with many sleeping overnight outside the museum to be first in line the next morning. 78 people returned to sit more than 20 times.

Communication and silence form a central part of this monumental piece. The mutual gaze between Abramović and the audience member is a silent interaction, a form of unspoken dialogue. In the documentary, Ulay comments on the pertinence of the performance, claiming that inactivity and silence are becoming increasingly discredited. Removing all distractions from an interaction, including dialogue, Abramović created a vacuum in which reflection and observation became the focus, protected from the noise and movement of the museum. Watching the footage of the piece is bizarre, but surprisingly transfixing. Many participants, and even the artist herself, became overwhelmed by emotion. Abramović has explained the power of the work by saying that she became “just the mirror for their own self”, and that she “never saw so much pain”.

An incredibly moving moment of the performance was when Ulay, her former lover and collaborator, sat across from her. Their relationship, which lasted over ten years, was a period of intense and passionate creativity, resulting in some of most pioneering and seminal performance artworks ever made. They referred to themselves as parts of a ‘two-headed body’, creating relational works of extreme intimacy, such as ‘Breathing In/Breathing Out’ (1977), in which they both blocked their nostrils with cigarette filters, pressing their mouths together so that they only inhaled each other’s breath. This symbiotic artistic and romantic partnership came to an epic conclusion with ‘The Lovers’ (1988), a 3 month project in which they each walked from one respective end of the Great Wall of China to meet the other in the middle, and finally say goodbye. They did not speak for the next 10 years. Ulay’s appearance at, or perhaps participation in, the MoMA performance was evidently a surprise to Abramović, whose implacable composure was unsettled when she saw him. The communication that takes place between them in this moment, though silent, is palpable as Abramović’s eyes fill with tears. The poignancy of the interaction is reinforced by the way in which the scenario exactly recreates ‘Nightsea Crossing’, performed at the height of their relationship. Such is the intensity of this moment that Abramović reached forwards, breaking protocol, to clasp Ulay’s hands.

In this work, Abramović renders the conventional totally unconventional. She stages an ordinary scenario, in which two people sit across from one another, but removes it from any we have known before: silence becomes a new mode of communication, a context for observation and, crucially, self-reflection.

Table Manners Preview – ‘reworked in a highly engaging manner’

-
0
Table Manners Preview – ‘reworked in a highly engaging manner’

There’s something about the claustrophobia of Alan Ayckbourn’s plays; the light-as-a-feather humour, the acutely observed relationships, that makes them particularly suited to the Oxford stage. Breathing new life into such well-trodden and familiar material is no small feat, and it is one such feat that Antonia Hansen and Flared Productions have managed to pull off skilfully and intelligently.  

From Monday to Wednesday of 7th Week they will be bringing Table Manners, the play that forms one third of the trilogy known as The Norman Conquests, to the Crisis Cafe on George Street. The plot is intricate and complex; but it’s enough to know that it concerns an extended family and their weekend in the countryside, as secrets and lies come to light under one small roof. It’s an intriguing piece, set in the 1970s amongst the cutlery and polite conversation of a dining room table, where private fears and public tensions are blended together to form a theatrical cocktail of humour and subtle nuance. As director Hansen tells me, theatrical space has been a preoccupation of hers in this production: if Table Manners is staged end-on, then we lose so much of the human interaction that makes this drama so compelling. Thus, Flared Productions have chosen the Crisis Cafe on George Street to create this tension-filled dining room. I think it’s a winning choice – the audience surround the actors and the central dining table, sit in the same chairs as the characters, and even smell the toast being made during the production. The sheer proximity of onlookers to the action is immersive, and helps to create a sense of the uncomfortable tensions which are so important in the play.

There were intelligent performances from the entire ensemble cast: Lara Deering brought a dynamic, bustling mania as Sarah, the wife of the put-upon Reg (Frankie Taylor). A nice contrast was provided with the watchful, angular performance of Antonia Mappin-Kasirer as Ruth, her sister-in-law. All of these characters felt rich and detailed, and the whole company expressed to me their desire that the people we observe round this dining table are more than just tropes. There is a subtlety and subversion to the norms of Ayckbourn which was pleasing and very refreshing. Martha Harlan’s Annie has been brought to the fore of this production, and although the men are not simply reduced to comic foils (although Jed Kelly provided some well-calculated physical comedy), Hansen is clearly attempting here to imbue these women with a power that counters the tone of previous productions. And I think she succeeds – Flared Productions’ piece begs the question of the women of Ayckbourn have not been particularly well serviced by directors of the past. The shift in emphasis of narrative power from Cameron Forbes’ Norman to Annie is a clever decision and it really works for this production.

Hansen and her cast have taken Table Manners and reworked it in a highly engaging manner here. Don’t miss it.

Glory ahead for St Peter’s?

Joe Sibley
-
0
Glory ahead for St Peter’s?

Division Two side St Peter’s continue to blaze a bright green and yellow trail through the Cupper’s tournament this season, knocking out Premier Division opposition for a second consecutive round. They have reached the Quarter-Finals and earnt themselves a shot at downing the holders Worcester.

After toppling league leaders Catz in their own backyard in the first round, Peter’s travelled into the heart of Cowley to face Jesus College, again rating as underdogs away from home.

That they reigned victorious – in the process overturning a losing situation at the break to win 4-3 – has created a buzz about the side back home in Central Oxford.

Victory over Jesus, 4th in the top flight, leaves the side with 4 victories from 5 games this season. Just as importantly, they are in possession of a centre-forward in red-hot form: Owen Ace blitzed all 4 versus Jesus and has also added 3 more in a further 3 appearances.

There’s nothing quite like a cup run to bolster the bonds or summon the spirit within a team; it’s a fact that the college will know only too well after the recent exploits of their armoured rugby side, and a home tie only teases further the possibility of another giant-killing materialising.

Olly Cobb netted a hat-trick for Worcester. Ultimately, the team proved too strong for Brasenose in their second round encounter: a flurry of second-half goals against the Black and Gold takes their tally to 14 in this year’s edition and, ominously for their rivals, already eclipses their exploits in front of goal from the string of tight-fought encounters that took them to the title last season, despite the absence of Blues’ enforcer Sam Hale.

Worcester know what glory tastes like but you sense that St Peter’s are beginning to catch the scent. In the same half of the draw Exeter, benefactors of a first-round-bye, defeated St Anne’s 3-2 to move a step closer to an impressive triumvirate of back-to-back semi-final (albeit never finalists) appearances in the competition.

They face an austere assessment to get there however, as they take on leading contenders New College in a second successive all-Premier-Division tie for the Holywell Street outfit.

In their eagerly anticipated and well-hyped matchup, New consigned St John’s to a painful repeat second-round exit from the competition, prevailing through a sole goal from Tom McShane.

Captain Ben Gregory was keen to emphasise the financial disparity between clubs and praised the potential effect a lucrative TV windfall could have on the season ahead: “We all know John’s are well endowed, but I guess this just proves that money can’t buy happiness, or a gritty 1-0 Cuppers win at home.”

In the top half of the draw Christ Church remained unbeaten for the season, disposing 3-1 of a free-falling Balliol College side that are struggling to re-find the form that led them to the top of the pyramid in the festive period last year. Christ Church will travel to face Hertford, who edged past St Hilda’s 1-0 to earn their place in the Quarter-Final line-up.

The Catte Street College will face off against strong opposition, and a wealth of experience: of the 7 sides confirmed in the next round, 5 have reached the Semi-Finals at least once in the past two editions.

Within the same bracket Wadham remain the sole Premier Division side in contention after totally battering of St Hugh’s.

The light blue Cuppers’ veterans have the feel of a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde duality about them this season: regularly struggling with player availabilities and yet to claim a point in the league but displaying their full repertoire with merciless Cuppers results.

Centre-back Alex Coonar points to the effect their wide Merryfield home pitch has on their game, accentuating a style based on building fluidly from the back; indeed, Wadham are the only Premier Division side to boast a better home than away record in the past two seasons and, crucially the side have been handed a home Quarter-Final draw once more.

The identity of their opponents is yet to be decided as Teddy Hall and LMH face off at Uni Parks this Saturday. LMH have started the season in good form, finding themselves wedged between Hertford and St Peter’s in Division Two, but face up to the stat that since 2015 Teddy Hall have either won the competition (2017) or lost to the eventual Champions (2016, 2018).

“That’s the way people that don’t understand football analyse football, is with stats…”

The QuarterFinal round fixtures will now be scheduled, with the competition reach a climax next term.

1...673674675...2,512Page 674 of 2,512

Support Student Journalism

Cherwell is Oxford’s oldest independent newspaper, established in 1920. We are entirely student-run. By supporting us, you will contribute to keeping our paper in print and online. Every donation makes a difference.

Donate

Explore

Follow us

More

Oxford Student Publications Limited © 2025 - All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy

Website by James Ashley