Wednesday 16th July 2025
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Hannah Kessler: “Music is an incredibly therapeutic thing”

Lily Begg
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Hannah Kessler: “Music is an incredibly therapeutic thing”

Hannah Kessler, an Arc-and-Anth student from St Hugh’s, is one of the most formidable up and coming musicians at Oxford. Having just released a new music video for her fierce single, My Love is Not a Currency, and with an album release on the horizon, I wanted to chat with Hannah about how things were going.

Famous for her jaw-droppingly risqué cabaret performances, she’s an artist who’s difficult to ignore, and I can’t help but love her unapologetic attitude. When she answers my Skype call one summer’s morning, she’s reclining delicately in her room having just returned from an all-nighter. Apart from a slightly croaky voice, Hannah is on sparkling form as ever and I start asking away, aware that she’s secretly dying to pass out on her bed.

I take her back to the beginning: where her music-writing days began. Like most of us, Hannah came across music-editing software from an early age and started messing about with tracks: chopping, changing and creating loops.  Unlike most of us, she became a lyric-writing factory and learned how to play the guitar beautifully. By thirteen she was doing her own gigs around London.

Since then, she’s come a long way and performs both as a single artist and as the lead singer for her London-based band, The Quim Smashers. They’re a three-piece band and play in a genre which Hannah describes as “punk burlesque”. I blink at her and she then elaborates: “We sing in revealing clothing which is oddly subversive. For example, Stella, the bassist, has a pair on knickers which she sowed a load of fake pubes and wears them on stage. It’s all a bit disgusting, but always challenging the male gaze.”

In her own performances as a single artist, Hannah is well-known for her subversive presence. However, she explains to me that her solo work is less about the anger and the politics, and more about expressing her own feelings, and the words which go around and around inside her head. More than anything singing is cathartic for her, a way to access experiences which have made her fragile: “The more I sing about them, the stronger I become.” On that, I ask her about her single, My Love is Not a Currency. It’s a song which she wrote when she was 17, for which she has recently released a music video, and which I know to be about a particular experience in her life. Unwilling to retell the story in my own words, this is what Hannah says to me:

“When I was 17 I was invited to a test shoot by a mysterious photographer. He spoke to my father first – dad trusted him, and he’s very protective. So I went to meet this man; he picked me up at a tube station and drove me to a private boat docking station where we got on his boat. The first thing he said to me was: ‘take your clothes off’. It felt like I was in a movie because you hear all these stories about girls being taken off to secluded locations and told to strip, but it’s not the sort of thing that happens to you. But it didn’t seem weird at that point: he said ‘I need to measure you, just take your clothes off’.

“So I took my clothes off and he measured me, but he was sort of pulling at my arms, claiming he was looking for self-harm scars. It was all very man-handly, and it just got worse and worse. I went into this weird dissociative state and I didn’t know what was happening. He was making me do these really suggestive poses and wearing really revealing clothing. He told me I would be nothing if I didn’t embrace my sexuality, and that ugly feminists only campaigned against this sort of stuff because they’re not beautiful. And then the icing on the cake was when I was locked in his car on our way back to the station, he told me that if I wanted to work with him, I’d have to have sex with him.

“This man was about 50 years old or something, by the way. When I asked what would happen if I didn’t want to sleep with him, he just said ‘Well, I’m only human, and I’ll find someone else to work with.’ And I was like ‘Well I don’t really want to be a model that badly’. And so I ran away. But it was a scary situation as I was locked in his car, and I felt very vulnerable.

“The song is basically just a middle finger up at him. The line: ‘Sex it up alright, but I won’t be at your beck and call’ is like, ‘You want me to sex it up? Ok, I’ll sex it up, but you won’t touch me. I’m doing this for myself.’ It’s all about personal empowerment, and nothing to do with you. All this is why I’m interested in subverting the male gaze and being sexy on my own terms. If I want to have hairy armpits and wear stupid shoes, that’s what’s sexy for me. It’s not a man’s job to tell me what I shouldn’t wear.”

Hannah’s encounter is unfortunately one which is not unique – talented and dedicated teenagers who are thrown into competitive industries experience this sort of thing very often. I ask Hannah whether she believes that this song has the power to speak to others who have undergone similar experiences, and can inspire them to “put a middle finger up” at those who have harassed them. She considers this for a moment.

“It can, but it doesn’t have to. Perhaps it’s a little bit selfish, but it’s a song I had to write. In the weeks that followed, I was in a turmoil inside. I didn’t really know what had happened. I was confused and blamed myself a lot. And I just had to write that song. I think it’s got quite a catchy hook and so I think at minimum people listening to it will enjoy the sassiness and then if there are people who have been through similar things, they might find it refreshing to be like ‘fuck you’ rather than to be submissive. It might empower people a bit and make them feel more like they have the right to say what they do with their bodies.”

Those who know Hannah will be aware via her frequent Facebook profile picture updates that she’s involved elsewhere on the University scene; it seems as if every week she’s either acting in a new play, directing one, modelling, or making films. It must be that all of these activities complement one another, or act as different ways of expressing the same thing?

“Not really. Acting is just completely immersive for me. My actual Hannah brain is completely empty, and it’s great. I love the creative control of directing, and collaborating with people. It’s very exciting. But music is the one I want the most.”

Fair enough. So, between juggling her degree, her acting, her social life and her sleep, has Hannah had a chance to think about what the future looks like for her music? You bet. Up next is a new album release entitled Not your little girl – a series of songs which focus on toxic relationships, and the empowerment of not letting anyone else make you feel “shitty” about yourself. She’s still working on it though, so stay tuned. As the yawns become more frequent and her ability to hold her phone in front of her face diminished, I steer the call to its close, and ask whether she has any parting words.

“Music is an incredibly therapeutic thing and I highly recommend it. Any young woman who’s feeling pissed off and pent-up, find a guitar somewhere and screech your fucking lungs out.”

The Oxford Imps at the Fringe review: ‘High energy and entertaining’

Izzy Smith
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The Oxford Imps at the Fringe review: ‘High energy and entertaining’

The Oxford Imps’ Edinburgh Fringe show is consistently high energy and entertaining. Each of the performers brings something different and uniquely hilarious to the group, and yet what is most impressive is how they play off each other and work together seamlessly. All are incredibly versatile and quick-thinking, responding to audience suggestions with creativity and flair. I was particularly impressed by Sophie Ward’s versatility, uproariously funny as everything from a sexually frustrated Egyptologist to a romantic cow – or even just in reacting to her fellow Imps’ comedy.

The hour, which raced by far too quickly, is organised into several short ‘games.’ The audience is asked to provide a few prompts, which are then used imaginatively in the group’s improvisations. In the performance I saw, games ranged from a dialogue (in this case between the two amorous Egyptologists), during which the pair had to slip into rap when the music kicked in, to spontaneous quips reminiscent of  Mock the Week’s ‘scenes we’d like to see.’

Perhaps my favourite was a game in which the Imps asked for a relationship and a few genres from the audience, and ended up enacting the interactions between a surfer and their board in the style of Film Noir, cabaret, romantic comedy and mime. This game particularly demonstrated the Imps’ impressive capacity to be slick and witty, even while utterly silly.

The final section of the show involved a complete, albeit ridiculous, improvised musical. Given only the location of a farm and the title, ‘Bucket,’ the Imps and their guest Katy Schutte gave a rib-splitting and impressively harmonious performance. They improvised genuinely catchy, though crazy, songs about farming, moving to the country from the big city, and the dangers of falling in love with a cow. Even as events became increasingly nutty, the humour was tight and well crafted, and the singing was genuinely wonderful to listen to.

Watch the Oxford Imps at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for an hour of lighthearted and hilarious comedy, which you won’t want to end.

The Paris Climate Accord is now little more than scrap paper

Daniel Villar
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The Paris Climate Accord is now little more than scrap paper

When faced with the hustle and bustle of daily political life, it’s easy to forget that human civilisation is in a continued state of jeopardy. Brexit, Trump, Isis, and every other human geopolitical issue all pale in comparison to the continued threat of climate change. Yet despite the known severity of the issues at hand, it took until 2015 for there to be an international consensus where countries agreed to combat global warming. The Paris Climate Accord was lauded as a brave step forward in collectively tackling the issue of global warming. It gave every target a precise goal as to the level of refutation in greenhouse gas emissions were required, and managed to pass the objections of major polluters like China and the US.

Yet a mere two years after its original ratification, it’s now little more than scrap paper. Most obviously, the US has adopted a decidedly archaic approach to science. The Trump administration, spurred on by mercantilist misunderstanding of global economics, myopic nationalism, and flat out denial of science, has decided to pull out of the climate agreement. Trump has said that he did so in protecting America’s best interest, because he was elected by “Pittsburgh, not Paris” – a statement the progressive Pennsylvania city resents, and which will seem much less America–focused once the swing state of Florida becomes a shallow sea.

It would be sufficiently worrying if the only threat to the Paris Accord was the United States’ potential withdrawal, but it is in fact the hypocrisy of the rest of the world which poses the greatest danger. Despite world leaders at the recent G20 summit reiterating their commitment to the Paris Agreement, and the worldwide scolding of Trump for his recklessness, nearly every nation is failing to honour the promises they voluntarily adopted.

Of all the signatories of the Paris Agreement, a mere five percent have actually taken steps to realistically reduce emissions to the levels they have committed themselves to. The rest are either like the UK – where political cowardice is leading governments to do the absolute minimum possible, or like India – where emissions have actually risen as a direct result of government policy. Nearly every country has treated the Paris Agreement with the same level of disrespect as Trump has; the sole difference being that the rest are hypocritical.

All of the aforementioned problems with the Paris Agreement become yet more ridiculous when one considers the pathetically low level of commitment that it required from its signatories. Despite being heralded as a bold piece of environmental legislation, it was incredibly weak, and left emissions so high that even if they were met, global warming wouldn’t have been averted.

Part of this can be attributed to the pernicious existence of independent nations, jealous of their sovereignty, who are unwilling to surrender it even when humanity is faced with an existential threat. This stubborn defence of national sovereignty meant that every nation put national interest over human interest, dragging out negotiations for the agreement beyond the point to which global warming could be averted. This attitude has also prevented an enforcement mechanism on nations to be established, and meant that industrialised nations lobbied high emission levels compared to those recommended by independent scientific studies.

The Paris Climate Accord was made with good intentions, but now appears to be little more than a series empty promises. Humans have been polluting the atmosphere for so long that it would appear we have reached a point of no return. I am not a natural pessimist, but it appears evident that in place of collective progress, we have allowed collective failure in the fight against climate change. Our descendants will damn us for the consequences.

 

Oxford’s ethnic minority graduates have higher starting salaries, new study finds

Mia Millman
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Oxford’s ethnic minority graduates have higher starting salaries, new study finds

Ethnic minorities graduating from Oxford University have higher starting salaries than white Oxford graduates, a study has found.

Research by the University’s Career Service, analysed nearly 3000 graduates and suggested that social background did not impact career prospects after graduating from Oxford.

The average starting salary for ethnic minority graduates was found to be £26,000, compared to £19,200 for white graduates.

However, it was implied that this was partly because of the industries chosen. Both the highest-paid sector, banking and investment, and the fourth highest-paid sector, health and social care, attracted a higher proportion of ethnic-minority students. Of those entering banking and investment, it was also found that they were much more likely to have studied science.

Looking at data from the government’s ‘2014-15 Destinations of Leavers’ survey, the study found no significant difference in employment rates or starting salaries between students depending on financial or educational background.

It also found no difference in these areas between private school and state school students. The findings also suggested that subject choice did not restrict career options.

This study largely contradicts previous research by the Social Mobility Commission which had suggested that there was discrimination in several industries against graduates from low-income backgrounds.

Jonathan Black, director of the Careers Service and leader of the research group, said: “This research should provide reassurance not only that social background has no bearing on an Oxford student’s career prospects, but that course choice is also unlikely to limit a student’s options.”

‘Peer Gynt’ at the Fringe review – “a masterfully crafted production”

Ela Portnoy
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‘Peer Gynt’ at the Fringe review – “a masterfully crafted production”

Set in a timeless world of trolls, princesses and flying deer, Peer Gynt tells the story of a young man’s adventure after he leaves home for the first time. Gruffdog Theatre’s adaptation of Ibsen’s classic uses physical theatre, music and puppetry with a minimalistic set to relate a tale of fantasy and intrigue.

I can’t fault the show’s execution because at its core it was a masterpiece. Gruffdog Theatre’s creativity in devising is unbelievable. Their ability to make  a cosy room out of people holding up towels and clocks around wooden beams, or a shipwreck out of lighting, beams, and movement, was simply stunning. Different media were used with skill and perfect coordination, and the actors were breath-taking to watch. The physical theatre was especially good. The ensemble worked together in extremely varied ways, and the execution was slick and professional. In general, the physicality injected the piece with an electric energy. This company’s magic lies in the creativity with which they use a mix of puppetry, music, movement, and props to craft a fantastic whole.

My only disappointment, despite the flawless execution, was that the play was pitched at a very safe level.

While the technical side of the play was undeniably incredible, the effect could have been enhanced on a greater scale. The storyline was also quite hard to follow in places, and leaving the theatre, I was annoyed at myself that I hadn’t been able to understand the point of the plot – I kept trying to piece together the strands and couldn’t make a thread.

Still, I can’t deny that Peer Gynt is an original piece of utter genius. I look forward immensely to seeing what Gruffdog Theatre create in the future. 3 stars.

The Norrington Table serves no meaningful purpose

Daniel Kodsi
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The Norrington Table serves no meaningful purpose

There are two questions that are raised by the annual publication of the Norrington Table. One of these is interesting and important; the other not so much. The uninteresting question concerns how we are supposed to interpret the table’s results each year. The answer is that there are many meanings that we could impute to the Table, and because of this, it’s probably best not to impute any. The more difficult question is what meaning we should ascribe to finals marks, and here it’s at best wrong and at worst stupid to say ‘they don’t matter’ or ‘so long as you do your best’ or any vaguely therapeutic-sounding pleasantry like that. Finals marks do count for quite a bit, both as a measure (albeit, a potentially bad one) of one’s intellectual ability and as a determinant of what options are available immediately after graduation.

But the importance of the second question, unfortunately, leads us to think too hard about the first one, in that it leads us to think about it at all. Since individual finals marks are highly important, there is a natural inclination to think that the aggregate finals marks of one’s college also matter. Rowers care a lot where their college places in Eights – why shouldn’t students care where their college places in finals? There is a rather prurient interest to the whole thing as well: the Norrington Table is about as close as it’s possible to get to seeing under other colleges’ skirts. It’s titillating, in the way that getting a glimpse of any closely guarded secret can be. There are, after all, people behind those marks. When we say Merton would have placed first if a few more finalists had gotten firsts, there are probably a lot of Mertonians who are thinking ‘if I had just gotten a few more marks, I would have gotten a first’.

Yet there is an obvious distinction between Summer Eights and the Norrington Table. With the former, there is usually no mystery as to how exactly the race was won. But there is a very deep, and I suspect to students impenetrable, murkiness around why marks are distributed as they are. Is it significant that the top three colleges all eclipsed the previous record in finals? Should Lincoln be worried that it has plunged to the bottom of the League? How pleased should Pembroke dons be about how high they’ve climbed in the last couple years? Of course these questions have answers, but there’s no way for us to figure out what they are. There are simply too many variables at play: the proportion of students at each college studying subjects with a higher first rate; the stringency of each year’s examiners; the attitude and competitiveness of each year’s student body; the quality of instruction, both in tutorials and exam prep sessions; the astuteness of college interviewers; and so on. Maybe colleges, or the University, have access to information on each of these data points – but students certainly don’t.

In the aftermath of last year’s Norrington Table I asked what it was that the Table really measured, having taken a quick look at the relationships between League performance and different variables, like college age, wealth and popularity. It is probably worth, a year later, admitting to the crime: that kind of analysis is deliberately sensationalist; the factoids might be fun, but they’re largely empty. To the credit of the Oxford student body, I think this is widely recognised. The Norrington Table is a good excuse for a few minutes of inter-college banter, and for the most part nobody treats it as much more. But there is a real problem with according it even that level of attention; it keeps the Table firmly rooted in the University’s consciousness, and to treat it jovially is usually to fail to treat it critically. Because finals matter, how colleges perform at finals also matters. If it is actually the case that some colleges better prepare students for exams than others – and I see no reason why it wouldn’t be – then this is an inequity that needs to be addressed. But the Norrington Table, given how superficial the information it provides, fails to present a valuable insight into the problem.

Let’s talk about chlamydia

Anonymous
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Let’s talk about chlamydia

I feel an odd sense of solidarity as I take my seat in the waiting room at 9.31am – a time I have chosen to minimise my chances of encountering my peers. One girl is reading Cosmo. A guy is writing out some fractions. A middle-aged business woman is calmly perusing a leaflet on genital warts. I have to say – I thought that rampant moral degeneracy would be more visible on a trip to the clinic.

My name is called and I follow the nurse into a side room, where we make small talk about the H&M sale while she runs a blood test to check whether I have HIV. Then the inevitable question comes. Why am I here? And, in spite of all the support and acceptance I have encountered, the inevitable feeling of shame begins rising again.

I explain the story as briefly as possible – an ex-boyfriend has tested positive for chlamydia, and has told me in no uncertain terms that I must have given it to him, thus here I am. The nurse shrugs, pulls out a swab test, and directs me to the toilet, which also doubles as a baby changing room, so I spend a good ten minutes attempting to penetrate myself with a giant cotton bud while trying not to think about how this is defiling the nappy changing area.

“I think you’re unlikely to have it,” the nurse says. “You haven’t seen this guy since Christmas.” She asks how many sexual partners I have had while at Oxford. The answer is apparently enough to pre-empt a diagnosis, and I am given antibiotics immediately. I leave the clinic an hour later with a box of pills and an overwhelming sense of inexplicable shame.

The funny thing about chlamydia is that, as STIs go, it really isn’t that bad. It has no long-term health consequences (unless undiagnosed for years, in which case it can cause pelvic inflammation or infertility in women), and can be easily treated with a week of antibiotics. To be frank, I have had colds more annoying than chlamydia. And yet, the very mention of the word is enough to inspire terror – one need only look at the prevalence of STI-themed ‘confessions’ from trolls on Oxfess to see how much we as a student body fear infection. In a study by the University of Michigan, two sample groups were confronted by hypothetical scenarios, in which their partner had given them either chlamydia or a potentially fatal flu which could be sexually transmitted. Even though chlamydia is easily treatable and the flu was potentially fatal, the scenario with the chlamydia was considered to be far worse. Reading studies like this as I desperately Googled my situation, I couldn’t help but wonder whether such a response was symptomatic of a naïve ignorance of the realities of infection, or indicative of a darker channel of moral judgement and leftover sexual conservatism.

Sexual morality at Oxford is, in my opinion, fairly progressive. In around eight months of having casual sex, I have been called a hoe approximately once, and been praised as a feminist approximately ten times. At no point in my first two terms did I ever doubt what I was doing, but after getting off the phone to my ex, who came out with such gems as: “I don’t want to slut shame you, but…” and “I just hope you didn’t give me this deliberately,” I began to reassess my lifestyle –what had been a standard way to end Thursday Bridge became something I associated with shame and guilt. This was my fault. I was a slut. My ex was right: the hatred I would presumably incur was deserved and inevitable.

It is worth saying that I am by no means alone in experiencing feelings of worthlessness in the immediate aftermath of the diagnosis of a suspected STI – incidences of depression following this are well-charted.

Fortunately, my friends did not see things this way, and found the entire debacle hilarious. My Facebook nickname was changed to ‘chlamydiaaaaa’, an STI-themed Spotify playlist was created, and a cocktail was devised (Squash-Tequila-Ice). While their reaction was definitely comforting, and gave me some excellent inspiration for my linguistics coursework (which I ended up writing on the NHS webpage for chlamydia), the underlying feeling of worthlessness that that conversation with my ex had inspired didn’t fade.

My next task was to compile a list of everyone who would have to be informed if the diagnosis came back positive. Partner notification is morally complex – you are legally obliged to inform partners only from the past 3 months, but we decided that I should inform everyone on the list, even though, as one friend put it: “you’re going to have a lot of people to avoid in Park End.” The debate as to how best to notify ex-partners is very contentious. Most online sources tell you that a face-to-face conversation is the only acceptable way, but it seems excessive to arrange to meet someone for coffee, when the coffee might be longer and more engaged than the original encounter. “Make a group chat,” one friend suggested. “Pidge them urine tests,” suggested another. Eventually we colour-coded those who should be told in person, and those for whom a polite Facebook message would have to suffice.

And still, although the experience had produced some excellent sconces, I couldn’t help but feel contaminated. As I looked at the list of names, I imagined how each of them would remember me – not as the girl whose room had been really messy, but as the girl with chlamydia who had ruined their first year at Oxford. I basically felt worthless and tainted.

Although I hadn’t received my diagnosis yet, we decided that the ex-partners with whom I was still friends might as well be informed immediately. Logically, the process of notification is just protocol, but as the time got closer I was so ill with nerves that I could only keep down soup. “I’m really sorry,” I babbled, expecting anger and hatred, “but I have to tell you something.” And so I rambled on about statistics and the effectiveness of condoms, close to tears. I will always be grateful to the guy who gave me a hug and told me it was fine, that it was not my fault, and that we should just wait and see what the results came back with.

The truth is, he was right. The risk of contracting an STI is something you have to factor in when you have casual sex, and since more than half of us will have an STI before we are 25, at least one person reading this will have undiagnosed chlamydia and be none the wiser. The best thing you can do is to use condoms, get tested regularly, screw the haters, and remember that chlamydia is easily treatable. In my experience at least, the stigma surrounding chlamydia is far worse than the reality of the condition.

I do not blame my ex at all for his initial reaction. He was understandably scared by his own diagnosis, and, although his comments were unacceptable, blaming the person you think has infected you is a fairly common reaction, and one that is symptomatic of the fear and ignorance which surround STIs. I know this article won’t do much to combat the stigma, but I do hope that you can take away some basic life lessons – if nothing greater than the fact that if you’re mature enough to engage in casual sex, you’re also mature enough to face the consequences. And finally, to any of the men on that list, I am sorry if reading this article has been an emotional rollercoaster for you. I should probably end the suspense by letting you all know the news – my results came back clean.

‘Queen Anne’ review – ‘a complex portrait of our political inheritance’

Ethan Croft
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‘Queen Anne’ review – ‘a complex portrait of our political inheritance’

Crippled, grieving, and the laughing stock of England. This is how the Princess Anne, heir to the English throne, begins her story in Helen Edmundson’s play Queen Anne, now showing at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Emma Cunliffe’s impressive portrayal of the woman who didn’t want to be Queen never falters in communicating Anne’s jittery weakness. Even when wearing the purple robe of state, with orb and sceptre in hand, she hunches visibly, and talks to her counsellors with a nervous high-strung voice. Rising like a phoenix from a vicious smear campaign orchestrated by her closest confidante in the latter half of the play, the central paranoiac element of Anne Stuart’s character never leaves Cunliffe’s performance. Rather, as the Duke of Marlborough tells us, “she has become the Queen.” Though she is personally feeble, Anne begins to fulfil the essentially performative role of the English monarch that was emerging in the years following the Glorious Revolution.

Queen Anne is set during a period of momentous change in British government and society. This is most obviously demonstrated in the title character’s acceptance of her role as an increasingly apolitical head of state, the basis of our modern constitutional monarchy. But it is also shown in characters such as Robert Harley, Speaker of the Commons and later Lord Treasurer. Though played with a particularly comedic flair by James Garnon, his character offers more than comic relief. Harley is the archetypal modern politician, responding to almost all questions from the Queen with his trademark answer “yes, no, maybe.” There were also some unintentional laughs elicited from the audience by Chu Omambala’s Duke of Marlborough. He plays England’s chief soldier with such a declamatory staccato that he was almost chewing up the scenery. Nevertheless, he is given some of the play’s great lines by Edmundson. After a century of civil war, republicanism, a decadent restoration, and another revolution, Marlborough sums up the mood of his time with the words: “These Stuarts have outlived their use.”

Edmundson’s play is probably best described as a court drama. Though the Queen and her entourage at one point move from St. James’ Palace to Kensington, the action never leaves London, and almost all of the characters are aristocrats and members of the elite; there are, for example, some notable cameos from Jonathan Swift (Jonny Glynn) and Daniel Defoe (Carl Prekopp). But Edmundson gives us a glimpse of the real England through the play’s musical interludes. They illustrate the extent to which the ‘majesty’ of the English monarch had been debased throughout the preceding Seventeenth century. We begin with a pantomime depiction of Princess Anne and her husband Prince George copulating, followed by a phantom pregnancy where instead of bearing a child, the parody Anne passes wind. This shocking insult to the heir apparent is made particularly cruel by the context of Anne’s many miscarriages, and the recent death of her eleven year old son William. The revellers’ satirical songs later play a central role in a crisis of Anne’s reign, when she stands accused of “passionate femininity” with a handmaiden. The playwright here demonstrates the increasing power of satire and unfavourable public opinion over the royal family itself. We see the origins of the modern smear campaign acted out for us on stage, with strong undertones of Diana Spencer. The story of the satirists comes full circle towards the play’s close, as they parade effigies of the Marlboroughs and ceremonially hang them, pre-empting the decline of the couple’s fortunes. At the end though, we are still left pondering that old question that haunts the issue of tabloid propaganda today; do they shape opinion or simply reflect it?

The Queen learns to rise above the politicking, and accepts her situation. And though that might seem a little passive of her, there was perhaps no greater struggle than for a monarch at this time, shrouded in the language of divine right and magnificence, to accept their place as one cog in the machinery of the modern state. While earlier Anne had complained about the divisive language of ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’, she embraces both parties as servants of the Crown, remaining informed and dutiful no matter what the political stripes of her government were. Perhaps Anne truly becomes the Queen when she decides to sacrifice her oldest and most intimate friendship with the power-hungry Countess Marlborough for the sake of the realm. This reminded me of Peter Morgan’s The Crown, where Elizabeth II faces similar tribulations early in her reign. But whereas Queen Elizabeth only learnt to accept precedent, Queen Anne shaped it. Queen Anne is, above all, a play that shows us our political inheritance.

Queen Anne, Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, until 30 September.

@EthanTheFirst

The Handmaid’s Tale: unnervingly familiar and uncomfortably relevant

Beccy Swanson
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The Handmaid’s Tale: unnervingly familiar and uncomfortably relevant

We aren’t in Gilead, so I can assume that you, reading this article, have a degree of personal agency. That you are reading this at all, in fact, gives you more autonomy than half the population of Margaret Atwood’s near-future dystopia. I can’t make you do anything. However, I can ask you – beg you – not to marathon The Handmaid’s Tale. You don’t deserve that. The show definitely does not deserve that.

Its trippy, slow motion, trance-like pacing, and copious (perhaps over-enthusiastic) deployment of flashback sequences are too much to handle in one sitting – and that’s without getting into the gruelling content of the show.

In one-hour chunks, Channel 4’s The Handmaid’s Tale feels like a brutal assault on the viewer’s complacency. In a binge watch, the unrelenting violence of Gilead’s zealous and extreme patriarchy made me feel nauseous, then numb. Working in conjunction with Atwood, the show’s creator, Bruce Miller, has pulled no punches. The show covers a range of both gendered and non-gendered violence: rape, FGM, and surgical removal of hands and eyes – not viewing to be undertaken lightly then.

For all this violence though, the series finds time for quieter moments. Before watching, I wondered how the show would spin ten hour-long episodes from the relatively slim novel. In part, the time is made up by the extension and invention of storylines only hinted at in the novel: television offers the advantage of moving beyond the boundaries of first-person narration. Miller uses this flexibility to follow characters like Ofglen and Nick – whose attempts to escape or resist are portrayed brilliantly by Alexis Bledel and Max Minghella – and in this way, to offer viewers a glimpse of how the regime feels for those who, unlike the lead, Offred, are not straight or white.

Even among these extended storylines though, the show still manages moments of inaction. Deployed judiciously, these scenes are opportunities to enjoy the real talent of stars Elizabeth Moss, Samira Wiley, and Yvonne Strahovski (respectively the protagonist Offred, her best friend and fierce activist Moira, and the infertile Serena Joy, whom Offred serves). Wheeling, slow motion close-ups are justified by their subtle but powerful performances. Ironically, given the second-class status of their characters, these women dominate the show. Occasionally however, these moments are spoiled by a sense of directorial self-indulgence, and there are times when the balance of tension threatens to fail, particularly in the middle of the season.

Issues with pacing aside, the show’s atmosphere is consistently creepy, in a way that wasn’t as obvious in the novel. What the show can’t convey of Atwood’s gleeful wordplay, it more than makes up for in cruelly effective visuals. The silent threat of a hand on a thigh, the raw, constant visibility of a mutilated face or the oppressive monotony of red: these are all chilling reminders of Gilead’s regime not available in the verbal world of the novel.

Visually, too, The Handmaid’s Tale distinguished itself from the novel through its updated setting.  Even the soundtrack – which punctuates ominous strings with incongruous Kylie Minogue – prefers unnerving familiarity to horror-movie distance.

Much has been made of the show’s uncomfortable relevance, the worrying ease with which the patriarchal regime takes control. Whatever you think of Trump’s America (and it’s worth bearing in mind the show was made before he was even elected), The Handmaid’s Tale is a difficult reminder of the danger of complacency. Atwood’s original novel included nothing that had not been done in some place, at some point in history. Although the show pushes beyond this remit, it doesn’t have to push very far – which leaves one with the bitter afterthought that this isn’t Gilead – or at least, not yet.

Grief pushes music to its conceptual limits

Joe Baverstock-Poppy
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Grief pushes music to its conceptual limits

We’ve all been there – you’re showing your friend a cool band you’ve just discovered. The song you’re playing may be a little abrasive or unorthodox and the denunciation arrives: “This isn’t music”. It’s an insult most have heard applied to music as normal as punk, free jazz, and rap by particularly closed minded listeners. However, it does offer an interesting question, where is the boundary between music and sound?

One definition could be that any human organised sound is music. But does that make audiobooks, performances of poetry and stand-up albums music? Most would disagree, the primary purpose of these sounds is the words they convey rather than the sound itself, but much of humour is dependent in rhythm, think of comedic timing, much of music relies on poetry and messages to give it emotional weight.

Artists who deliberately explore the grey areas between music and sound have produced some of the most challenging music ever: noise music, field recordings and lowercase. I like to call this music conceptual music, alike to conceptual visual arts in its question of what makes music music. Field recordings my artists such as Bill Fontana and Jana Winderen are akin to objet trouvé, noise music and lowercase similar to abstract expressionism in its use of single varied timbres for entire songs.

However, these experimental music genres are somewhat alien. So caught up in high minded aesthetic questions that they fail to speak to the human experience. Phil Elverum’s A Crow Looked at Me may be the first in questioning the boundaries of what is musical, whilst keeping it strongly tied to the human experience.

Elverum has always used moments of abstraction, most notably in his album Mount Eerie, but the majority of his work across his 20-year career has been noted for its musical and emotional power. On a personal level I have grown up with the songs and soundscapes of Phil Elverum more than any other artist. This connection gave A Crow Looked at Me an especially potent punch to the gut.

A Crow Looked at Me is the first album Elverum has released since the death of his wife six months prior. The album is purely focused upon this event, Elverum’s approach to the topic giving the album its conceptual/musical grey area status. This approach is stated immediately in the first song: “Death… [is] not for singing about… it’s not for making into art”. Elverum acknowledges that death is so empty that no real art can be made of it.

This self-denial of art puts it in an unusual place. It most certainly is musical, featuring pretty sorrowful guitars and floaty percussion, however, contrasted with the complex arrangements of Elverum’s previous work, this bare bones album seems comprehensively amusical. The purpose of this album is not to produce a work of art for people to enjoy but as a visceral release for its author. Elverum refuses to make his grieving process attractive to the voyeur. Criticisms of this album, denounced as ‘uneventful’, ‘lacking’, or ‘dull’, are failing to realise that this is exactly what grieving is, to make an album that wasn’t any of these descriptors wouldn’t be an accurate portrayal of grief.

Phil Elverum’s efforts in stripping his style down to minimal forms and challenging the role of the audience and a crowd to be placated is deeply conceptual, however unlike other conceptual musicians, it carries a message beyond questioning art: it is a treatise on the nature of grief. By taking experimental ideas surrounding music and art as a whole and being able to connect it to a deeply personal and emotional subject makes this album a triumph of music as high art. Listen to this album, hear Phil’s pain, but don’t expect to enjoy it.

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