Christ Church and Exeter JCRs passed motions on Sunday to fund the travel expenses of Irish students returning home to vote in the 8th Amendment referendum.
Exeter JCR resolved to allocate £220 for returning students’ travel, while Christ Church JCR’s Gender Equalities representative was mandated to lobby the college for funds.
While both motions initially endorsed the repeal of the 8th Amendment, they were amended throughout the respective meetings to include more neutral language.
The minutes of the Christ Church meeting, seen by Cherwell, showed that some students were concerned the motion was “irrelevant”, as there were only two JCR members eligible to receive funding. Other students felt the motion would be too political.
Exeter passed a separate motion in support of the Repeal the 8th campaign, which read: “This common room should oppose any measures which make it more difficult for our student members to choose either to terminate a pregnancy or to carry it to term and to work to ensure that no additional restrictions are imposed at any level so that Oxford students have a real choice.”
The motion passed with 31 votes in favour and two against.
Exeter JCR President, Ellie Milne-Brown, told Cherwell that students aren’t expected to vote to support the Repeal campaign.
She said: “Exeter JCR voted to endorse the campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment, and voted to provide funds totalling £220 to help Irish students travel home to vote.
“While the JCR supports the repeal of the Amendment and the right of women to choose what happens to their bodies, the travel funds are available to students no matter how they plan to vote.
“We are committed to allowing students to participate in the democratic process with no economic barrier, no matter their political allegiances.”
Former Oxford Students for Life committee member and third-year PPEist, Ben Conroy, told Cherwell: “Though it’s good to see that the money will be available for anyone who wants to fly back, Exeter JCR’s stance is both predictable and unfortunate. It’s sad that they decided to vote against human rights for all humans.”
“I can’t fly home myself, which I’m gutted about: the referendum is right in the middle of my final exams, and I have one on the day of the vote.
“I’d encourage ‘No’ voters who can make it to make use of the funding: this is a once-in-a-generation chance to uphold the idea that no human being should be outside the scope of justice.”
Residents and students held an emergency candle-lit vigil outside Balliol College on Tuesday night to pay tribute to the Palestinians killed and wounded in clashes with the Israeli military on Sunday.
Estimates say 58 people were killed and over 2,000 wounded on Sunday, as Israeli troops opened fire during protests in what was the deadliest day of violence in the region since the Israel-Gaza conflict in 2014.
Over 100 students and residents observed the vigil, which fell on the 70th anniversary of the Palestinian exodus of 1948.
Candles were placed onto a map of Palestine drawn on the pavement in chalk, with each candle representing a village which was sacked during the 1948 conflict. The name of each Palestinian killed on Sunday was read out to the crowd, accompanied by speeches and poetry.
The event was organised by Oxford Jewish Students for Justice in Palestine, Oxford Students’ Palestine Society, Oxford SU Campaign for Racial Awareness and Equality (CRAE), Oxford University Amnesty International Society, and the Oxford Islamic Society among others.
The event’s description stated that the vigil was held to “commemorate the seventy years of exile of the Palestinian people from their land, to protest the terrible events in Gaza and commemorate those killed in their struggle for freedom, and to stand for universal human rights, and in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s continued struggle for dignity, equality and the right to return to their homes.”
The name of each Palestinian killed on Sunday was read out to the crowd, accompanied by speeches and poetry. PHOTO: Isaac Mayne
In her speech, SU VP Welfare and Equal Opportunities, Farheen Ahmed, commented on the irony of holding the vigil at the centre of Oxford, “given the University’s history and contributions to the British colonialism and violence ensued across the globe.”
She continued: “However, as students have always done and always will, we stand on the right-side of history and we fight for a free and liberated Palestine.”
Oxford Jewish Students for Justice in Palestine spokesperson, Julia Peck, spoke of the “difficult conversations” Jewish communities are having today as they “see no Jewish future in the systematic oppression of our Palestinian siblings”.
Chairman of Oxford University Amnesty International Society, Ella Cohen-Haddon, praised the union of these varied groups.
She told Cherwell: “It was an honour for us [the OUAIS] to be asked to co-host the speaker event earlier today and I look forward to any opportunity to collaborate with these other groups in the coming year to try and encourage an ethical divestment policy to distance the university from the human rights abuses that are being undergone by Palestinians everyday.”
President of Oxford Students’ Palestine Society, Hugo Raine, told Cherwell that he hoped the vigil reminded attendants of Britain’s “key role” in both displacing the people of Palestine and subsequently helping to rehabilitate the population.
After the event, Raine said the number of attendants demonstrated that “the fight for Palestinian rights is something that affects everyone.”
He added: “It is a simple case of a colonial state which is abusing the basic human rights of Palestinian people and breaking international law every day.”
Communications Chair for Islamic Society, Nabeela Zaman, said it was “heartwarming to see so many show their solidarity with Palestine.”
Zaman told Cherwell: “This morning I painted a bleeding Palestinian flag on my face for obvious reasons, because whilst I can’t do much, I think art is a good way to show your support ad starting a conversation which is what’s happened today.
“So many people have asked what flag that is and to be honest, when I heard that, it was really disheartening and my response was ‘you probably know every other flag in the world but not this one but that is exactly why I’ve put it on my face in the first place.'”
“The white-haired old ghoulish fecking whore. She’s owed me the price of a pint since nineteen-seventy-fecking-seven. It’s always tomorrow with that bitch. I don’t care if she does have Alzheimer’s”.
The intimacy of the Burton Taylor Studio thrusts you instantly into the twisted morality of the Connor home, where patricide is met with shrugs and mild reproach, and a gun is drawn over the disfigurement of some plastic figurines. Martin McDonagh’s The Lonesome West, the last in a blackly comic trilogy set in the fictional Connemara town of Leenane, contains many of his reliably entertaining tropes – a harassed priest, familial hatred, a butchered animal companion – all rendered in comically overblown Hiberno-English. The brothers Coleman (Cameron Forbes) and Valene (Roman Marshall) are joined intermittently by Father Welsh (Celeb Barron) a despondent priest trying to inject some morality into the residents of the “fecking murder capital of Europe”, and the precocious Girleen (Lara Deering), a school-aged poitín-dealer.
The standout performance came from Roman Marshall’s original take on the tight-fisted brother Valene, who lurches terrifyingly from weedy pettiness to moments of grinning menace. His handle on accent and timing is impressive. His oily fussiness works well as a counterpart to Cameron Forbes’ wide-eyed and gormless Coleman, who manages to deliver aggressive misanthropy quite endearingly. The duo’s interactions provide the most pleasing scenes in the play. The supreme effort required by each to have a discussion not erupting into violence is communicated in an uproariously funny way. That the profundity contained in the exaggerated vernacular is also thoughtfully brought forward is a credit to co-directors and producers Joel Stanley and Joe Woodman.
Lara Derring is compelling as soon as she arrives onstage, and delivers a superb performance as the most complex and self-aware character in the play. The adolescent pain of her emotional climax is very moving. Caleb Barron’s turn as the withdrawn and melancholy Father Welsh also provokes a lot of laughter. Idiom proved both the biggest challenge and the greatest help to the production. Where the actors occasionally struggled to get their mouths around the language, a fact which robbed some lines of their full force, the playwright’s genius for comic phrasing was rarely lost, and McDonagh’s excellent dialogue still landed well throughout. It is a shame that dialogue was sometimes rushed when a more measured delivery might have been more effective. However, all of them eased into it as the show went on, a fact which bodes well for the coming performances.
In a play imbued with references to chance, where fraternal squabbling flares up and de-escalates seemingly at random, the tension in the BT rises along with the temperature, not unlike a stove set needlessly to gas mark 10. The decision to forgo an intermission creates a pressure-cooker of rage and almost-erupting violence which comes to an excellent comic climax. Overall, this is a promising debut for Perfectly Peter Productions, and those who come can expect to be highly entertained.
This brand-new play by student writer Sam Moore, directed by Rowan Wilson, exists within a small, bare space, and yet transcends it to resonate with the audience on many emotional levels. Every stage of teenage/young adult relationships from across both the heterosexual and LGBTQ+ spectrum is evoked through subtle and easy conversation between the three characters, as Sarah begins to admit her feelings for Sophie and Emma goes through a difficult break-up. The storyline is simple but evocative; for a 55-minute play, the range of relationship difficulties explored, turned into metaphors, and to some extent resolved, is certainly impressive. Not only are the characters relatable, however, but so is the content of even their more mundane conversations; there was a tangible ripple of recognition in the room as they discussed how they had originally thought Like A Virgin was just part of Moulin Rouge and hadn’t realised that it was in fact originally a very successful song by Madonna.
A few opening-night difficulties beset the production. Unfortunately, many prompts were required for all three actors, and scenes often came across in a very stilted fashion as a result. This created a somewhat bizarre atmosphere within the BT, as the audience seemed to be willing the actors on with every line and there was an odd sense of camaraderie through the room as they took a very short on-stage break and then continued the play with fewer issues. With any luck, these teething problems will be rapidly resolved, and the remaining performances will be unaffected, because when the actors really got going they were generally very good. The juxtaposition of Melanie Brooklyn’s anxious Sarah with Imogen Edwards-Lawrence’s lively and multifaceted Sophie was particularly sparky. It was refreshing to see a non-male-led cast, and hopefully as the run continues their confidence will improve, given that these are clearly talented actors who could be truly excellent with a little more time to learn all their lines.
For a play set exclusively in a teenage bedroom, lighting and set were necessarily very basic, but within the confines of the Burton Taylor this proved more of an asset to the production than anything else. The simple combination of pale white light and a bed/table set-up allowed the small audience to really focus on the words being said; at times, I even thought that Like A Virgin might work better – or at least equally well – as a radio play, given that the words and well-written natural dialogue were the star of the show.
It took me the 400 mile journey from my home in Fife to really embrace Frightened Rabbit. My ears’ yearning for more familiar accents and themes had driven me to explore the countless Scottish artists I had overlooked in my school days. Ballboy and The Delgados were two particular gems, and even the oft-derided Proclaimers, whom our generation will forever associate with the wanderings of a green ogre, won over my heart with their back catalogue of honest love songs and bespectacled nationalism.
Of all the new discoveries, however, it was Frightened Rabbit who really excited me. They were not an entirely new discovery – I remember distinctly how much I had enjoyed the frenetic energy of some of their records as a young teen – but for whatever reason only a handful of their songs were scattered among my playlists. It was only more recently, when I listened to 2008’s The Midnight Organ Flight in full, that I truly began to understood why so many of my friends couldn’t get enough of them.
Far rougher than the spellbinding vignettes of Belle and Sebastian, though not as crude as the bleak tales of Arab Strap, Scott Hutchison vocalised the things I could never: the pain, the self-loathing, the perils of intimacy. I use ‘vocalised’ here since it was not simply the words Hutchison sang which resonated so strongly, but also the way his voice squalled through them, as if he might not make it through to the other side of the chorus. His lyricism laid bare the insecurities that come with young love, his voice seeping with masculine vulnerability. ‘The Twist’ perfectly captured the pained numbness of anonymous hook-ups: “Whisper the wrong name,” sings Hutchison. “I don’t care and nor do my ears”. Yet he endures it all the same, because he needs the warmth of another – regardless of how fleeting it is, or how unworthy it makes him feel. It is only in ‘Keep Yourself Warm’ that he realises “it takes more than fucking someone you don’t know to keep warm”. But where does that leave the despondent and heartbroken? “If someone took a picture of us now, they’d need to be told/That we had ever clung and tied/A navy knot with arms at night” he wails in ‘Poke’, as he is left cold, lonely, and desperate. A brilliant heartbreak record, Midnight mirrors the fumblings of young love like no other.
Much of the appeal of Frightened Rabbit is how easy it is to empathise with their lyrics. Hutchison is not a narrative songwriter in the Jens Lekman sense, whose work is illuminated with intricate specificities. He does write songs about things that have happened to him, but in his lyrics the concrete details make way for more primal emotions. In this way, Midnight feels like it’s just as much about my heartache as it is Hutchison’s. It’s less lyrical escapism and more a cathartic reality, my voice rasping along as the music rushes and swells. The concrete details he does give are ones which I can’t help but identify with, given that our memories share a similar setting. In the album’s penultimate song, Hutchison contemplates killing himself in the cold water of the Forth – the river whose Northern banks I call home.
For someone who could lay bare their soul on record, and provide expression to the mental demons of his listeners, it might seem surprising that Hutchison himself struggled to talk about his insecurities. “In a more standard, one-to-one conversation basis, they are quite uncomfortable. I think that’s what draws me to write about them, because unfortunately, for better or worse, I don’t really talk about them, and that’s what exacerbates the situation.” He regularly spoke about his hatred of “the idea that opening up is in any way emasculating”, and the difficulties men have in speaking frankly about their feelings. It can be too easy to spin narratives of an artist dealing with their depression through their work, of Hutchison’s songs being a purgative outlet for his troubled soul. While they might hold some truth, the realities of mental health cannot be captured by such simple mechanisms. Hutchison sometimes wished “he had a better mode of communication for when I’m feeling depressed” – a struggle he shared with millions, and one our society still desperately needs to address.
Everyone knows it’s shite being Scottish. We’ve built a cultural identity on deep disappointment, punctuated only by degrading debauchery. But Hutchison always had an eye on a brighter future, and a longing for the people and things he loved. Through bearing his deepest insecurities to the world, he helped thousands of grateful listeners first identify and then combat their demons, giving expression to the things they were incapable of saying. The lives he has touched with his music will forever be incalculable, but that does not mean his impact will go forgotten by those who found solace in his words.
You can call Oxford Nightline on 01865 270 270 between 8pm and 8am every night from weeks 0-9 of each Oxford term. Alternatively, you can call the Samaritans on 116 123.
Inspired by the notorious 1960s Beast of Jersey case, Michael Pearce’s tense psychological thriller centres on the search for a serial killer who is murdering young women in Jersey’s isolated island community. The seemingly idyllic island is immediately established as a place of danger, as the film’s opening scene offers close-up images of the murdered girls’ shallow graves. These images imbue the film with a sense of unease and menace that remains until the very end.
The film follows the life of 27-year old Moll (Jessie Buckley), who is trapped between her oppressive home life with her controlling mother, and a yearning to escape and start a new life far away from the island. Moll’s domestic oppression is repeatedly contrasted with the vast, open landscapes of the island and surrounding sea. Moll considers herself akin to a killer whale trapped in captivity, a trapped soul longing for escape from the claustrophobia of island life.
However, Moll’s life changes irrevocably when she is saved from assault by a mysterious stranger, Pascal (Johnny Flynn). Although Pascal and Moll are seeming opposites – he is a rebellious figure who smokes in her house while she is the product of a deeply traditional upbringing – he and Moll strike an instant connection. As she later tells him, “we’re the same, you and me”. Pascal aids Moll in unleashing the inner beasts that have lurked within her since her teenage years. The two spend the majority of their time together in nature.
Alone on the Jersey beaches, Moll begins to feel free, throwing off the shackles of her traditional upbringing under Pascal’s tutelage. Like the ‘beasts’ of the natural world, Moll too is revealed to be a wild creature, as elements of her increasingly dark past are revealed, and questions are raised as to just how reliable and innocent a protagonist she is.
Indeed, Pascal is warned by one of Moll’s old school friends to “watch your step, Moll’s a wild one”. Although Pascal’s influence helps to unleash this new side to Moll, the question that hovers over all of his and Moll’s encounters is whether his feelings for her are authentic, or whether he is in fact hunting her like the animals that he poaches in the forest. To this end, Pearce employs an array of fairy tale motifs to explore the different aspects of Moll and Pascal’s relationship – most notably, when they first spend a night in the woods together, as Pascal encourages her to stray off the path with him into the dark, wild forest vegetation. As they walk into this darkness together, the audience is left anticipating what manner of beasts lie in wait within this forest, and questioning whether Pascal will prove to be Moll’s ‘prince charming’ or a ‘big bad wolf’ leading her into his lair.
When Pascal becomes chief suspect in the murder investigation, Moll must decide what, and who, to believe, as Pearce’s finely crafted plot makes the audience constantly question who can be trusted in this haunting narrative. Beast has all the virtues of an independent film – inventive visuals, fine acting, and an original story – with few of the flaws. It is well worth a cinema trip in the next few weeks.
Ben Lloyd-Shogbesan was re-elected as Labour councillor for Lye Valley earlier this month, having held the seat for the party since 2010.
However, he has since come under widespread fire after Cherwell revealed he had compared Israel to Nazi Germany, praised former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, and alluded to same sex marriages as a “perversion” on his Facebook page.
Now, at the first city council meeting since the election, chief executive Gordon Mitchell has announced that Mr Lloyd-Shogbesan has resigned the Labour whip ahead of a standards committee hearing set to determine whether he has broken council rules.
This means he will remain a local councillor but will no longer be officially affiliated with Oxford Labour.
Leaders of all other major parties in Oxford have called on Lloyd-Shogbesan to resign or be sacked. Liberal Democrat group leader, Andrew Gant, said: “Council leader Susan Brown has described his comments as “disappointing”. This is nowhere near good enough.
“It is sad to see the poison that is infecting the Labour Party nationally appearing here in Oxford, along with the same feeble response from the leadership.”
We're calling on @CllrSusanBrown and @Oxford_Labour to suspend Cllr Ben Lloyd-Shogbesan following his disgusting, anti-Semitic comments. They can do so much better than calling his actions 'disappointing'. https://t.co/EhqRPAbt8g
— Oxfordshire Liberal Democrats (@LibDemsOxon) May 11, 2018
In an email sent on Monday night to his fellow city councillors, Lloyd-Shogbesan said: “I am sure that you are all aware of recent publications in Cherwell news about my reposting of images and comments from other organisations and individuals on my Facebook account.
“I regret the repostings and would like to offer my profound apologies to colleagues on Oxford City Council for any hurt or discomfort they may have endured.
“I have deleted my Facebook account and the offensive posts. I am also making overtures to the Synagogue and the Jewish community and other groups and communities affected in order to engage in positive and meaningful discussions about concerns and how best to redress the situation going forward
“Lastly, I have referred myself to the Oxford City Council Standards Committee for them to investigate and I will cooperate fully with subsequent developments.
“I am not and have never been antisemitic or racist or homophobic in all my life. I have worked hard to challenge injustice and discrimination and promote equality and diversity at all times and would continue to do so.”
The Labour Party confirmed on Monday that a complaint has been made and it is investigating. Labour MP for Oxford East, Anneliese Dodds, is yet to comment on Lloyd-Shogbessan’s comments.
Those who loved The Weeknd’s first releases were probably attracted to his mysterious appeal. In a world obsessed and distorted by the bright lights of fame, it was refreshing to see a musician take himself out of the spotlight and instead let an undoubtedly incredible talent do all the talking.
The chilling quality of songs such as Wicked Games and Loft Music marked an eye-opening vulnerability, and this won humble Abel Tesfaye his early fanbase. Despite House of Balloons releasing to critical acclaim and Trilogy charting at number four on the Billboard 200, widespread recognition didn’t come until his breakout hit Earned It for the Fifty Shades soundtrack. Although infectiously catchy, it lacked the affecting bitterness of The Weeknd’s earlier tracks, and subsequent albums became increasingly pop-oriented.
However, original fans can rejoice at the sound of The Weeknd’s latest project. The very name of My Dear Melancholy, shows a rediscovered maturity and a return to the murky darkness from which he first emerged, after the recent glitz of the commercial Starboy. Though the first track listed, Call Out My Name, is reminiscent of the hit Earned It that it samples, the ‘old Abel’ mood is evident in his clear channelling of pain through the lyrics.
Try Me continues in a similar vein, imitating most of the early Trilogy tracks in establishing a haunting intro and outro in the use of echoes. While the visuals for the first two tracks invoke much of the red and yellow colour symbolism of Starboy, the hazy viewpoint is disturbing and there is an afterparty-esque ambience in both. The videos allow an insight into his solitude behind the façade and the iPhone-camera feel of it is refreshingly intimate.
Wasted Times acts as a self-declared breakup anthem, if the Twitter response was anything to go by, especially if the allusions that litter this song are considered in light of his relationships with Bella Hadid and, more recently, Selena Gomez. Evocative of a Craig David-style vibe, with any other (remotely happy) lyricset, this would make a surefire bop, but The Weeknd’s unsettling vocals quickly depress any optimism.
Continuing through the tracklist, I Was Never There is an instant declaration of vulnerability and the presence of Yeezus collaborator Gesaffelstein is obvious: piercing sirens detract from otherwise-repetitive lyrics and the track is foggy yet atmospheric from the outside. A Weeknd-trademark inversion halfway through introduces a second movement which delicately floats, as in House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls.
While Hurt You bears striking resemblance to hits of Abel’s more recent fame, with a sample of Starboy being just-distinguishable, the sexually-charged lyrics are more closely aligned with The Weeknd’s early remix repertoire, including Drunk In Love and Or Nah.
The outgoing track, Privilege, sounds the most like his early tracks composed in a fogged and drug-fuelled stupor under the XO’TWOD tagline. It offers a perspective similar to that of the Trilogy Eps: a hazy Abel refuses emotional dependence on lovers and instead turns to substances to numb any pain. A promise that Abel will “be back to [his] old ways” epitomises the message of My Dear Melancholy,. The lack of promotion for this project is in-line with his original faceless obscurity and suggests some discomfort with the extent to which his life became public in a matter of months.
As someone who appreciated the uniqueness of The Weeknd’s early distinctiveness, this release is exciting and, despite its liminality in that awkward state between EP and album, it’s a welcome move away from the exhausted sound of Starboy. The lyrics may still be repetitive, but the return of his sweet falsetto tones juxtaposed with their gritty material subverts his recent conformity to the constraints of mainstream popular music and even R&B standards.
Oxford MP Layla Moran has urged the government to formally recognise the state of Palestine, following widespread violence in Gaza.
Moran, who is the first British MP to be of Palestinian descent, said that hope “had died” this week – but that Britain could resurrect it through recognising the Palestinian state.
Her call for action came as funerals were held for the 58 Palestinians reportedly killed on Monday when Israeli troops opened fire during protests, in what was the deadliest day of violence there since the war in 2014.
The violence in Gaza has resulted in not just the death of children, but the loss of hope. Britain can give hope life: by recognising Palestine. pic.twitter.com/LTRUzXAwhx
Moran began her speech on a personal note, saying that if it weren’t for Nakba – the term Palestinians use to commemoration the displacement that preceded and followed the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948 – she might not be speaking there today, and that this compelled her bring the matter to Parliament’s attention.
She continued: “In between Hamas and a very extreme Israeli prime minister, we have the blood of children.
“The two sides are not meeting as equals among whatever peace process table. Now is the moment to give recognition to the Palestinians so that we have hope, because that is also what has died this week.”
Ms Moran held her head in her hand and was comforted by Green party leader Caroline Lucas as a foreign office minister, Alistair Burt, replied: “Recognition to the Palestinian state remains open at a time when it is best designed to serve the cause of peace and that will remain the UK’s position.”
How do you get an audience to do what you want? How do you get them to suspend their disbelief, to believe in fairies and flashbacks, in otherworlds and acted emotions? How do you involve them in your performance games without disrupting the fragile construction of the play-world? These are questions that have troubled the theatrical discipline for centuries, but Butt Kapinski’s award-winning combination of plying your audience with alcohol, then unleashing a deranged detective with a lamp sticking out of his back to insult them, yields marvellous results. This eccentric one-woman (and an entire audience) show is a masterclass in both light-hearted entertainment and audience participation.
Even before entering the Old Fire Station theatre, I am stopped to be told a short list of instructions: pick any seat; do not move from it; “no seat is safe”. I take my seat in a room with very few chairs bunched up in a semi-circle formation in the middle of the theatre. Enter Butt Kapinski, immediately establishing dominance over the audience, bursting out from behind the curtain, darting in and out of the aisles, and lap- dancing with one viewer. The audience both knew what they were getting into, and could not possibly comprehend what was coming next.
Kapinski himself, played by Deanna Fleysher, is the heart of the show. The level of charisma Fleysher demonstrates in singlehandedly controlling her audience across an hour-long show is astounding. The character’s accent and lisp, replacing all r’s and l’s with w’s and distorting the vowels, never gets old. I would have deemed this stylistic decision to be a little on-the- nose, if it were not also cleverly incorporated into some killer lines: before the “film nwoiw” (noir) can began, Kapinski outlines some tropes and asks “are we all queer?” (clear) to which we all assented, naturally; one of the characters Kapinski brings into the narrative has some advice that “will change your wife” (life). The creaking of the rusty lamp above Kapinski’s head as he shoves it into an audience member’s face at various speeds never failed to crack me up. Butt Kapinski is an ingeniously odd creation.
But Kapinski himself is only half the act: “no seat is safe”. Butt Kapinski taps into that repressed desire within the audience when watching a highly formalised display such as a play: the desire to perform with the actors, to test the limits of that world. That lamp above Kapinski’s head is not just great to laugh at, but the perfect way to aid dialogue by shining it over an audience member, giving them a visible cue without having to say anything or break out of character. Fleysher’s audience conditioning and conveyance is so strong that everyone in the audience gets really invested in their roles disturbingly quickly, to the point that they were contributing to the show without cueing. One woman was given a microphone and told to provide appropriate music throughout the show: by the end of the show, she was inserting ironically seductive songs into the performance at opportune moments. Another woman was told to act as a police officer, but remained largely unused throughout the show. After the reveal of the murderer, however, she sprang up, arrested the perpetrator and fiercely told the audience member to “get down!”.
At the end of the show, Kapinski reveals that (shock horror), he was actually a woman the entire time, and Butt Kapinski but an act put on by a lonely American woman. Fleysher then sits down and asks an audience member to duct tape her to the chair, after which she then wishes for a hero like Butt Kapinski to rescue her. We did what any good audience would do: nothing. We sat and waited to see how long Fleysher would keep it up, before she said that she could go on like this all night. The joy of Butt Kapinski comes from being able to participate in the show, whilst deviating from what is expected of one, being in competition with the actress, whilst simultaneously aiding her craft.
I did not escape participation, either. If anything, Kapinski singled me out very early on, catching sight of me scribbling down notes, and forced me into more uncomfortable situations than the rest of the audience. On multiple occasions, he came over, grabbed my pen from out of my hand, and proceeded to scribble over my notes. One time, I was forced to improvise a poem about my abuse at the hands of my husband. Another time, I had to play a lesbian prostitute, make out with my friend, and then pose erotically with the other men whilst the women imitated male masturbation around me. Fleysher knows that her humour is amoral, and you know it is when contributing to it, yet she somehow makes it okay in this liminal space.
Breaking News: Charles is assaulted by Butt Kapinski. I do hope that isn’t what I think it is.
That said, this is the third murder mystery-related improvised comedy show I have seen in a row, and the third to fall slightly short of exploring everything that narrative structure has to offer. I was lucky(?) to have been picked to act on so many occasions, and I am glad that so many of the cues involved the whole audience, but there could have been more skits based on the murder mystery theme – Fleysher is so charismatic, I have no doubt she could have persisted for half an hour more. When I was given the instruction not to swap chairs with anyone, I was anticipating having to move more. Only a brave few had the opportunity to stray from the safe confines of their chair, meaning the distance between actor and audience was still very much perceptible.
Even with those small blemishes, Butt Kapinski remains an incredibly bold show and the closest a production has come to achieving a perfect mastery of audience participation, at least that I have seen. Although it at times made me very aware of the middle-aged audience I was in, with its saucily erotic jokes, Fleysher’s creation is a delight to watch and act alongside. Her command of the audience is indomitable, even when we tried our best to deviate from what was expected of us. Unfortunately, Butt Kapinski was only showing in Oxford for a single night, but the show is touring around London and Bristol, among others, and I would implore you to grab tickets if you get the chance. There’s nothing else quite like it.
