Monday, May 5, 2025
Blog Page 912

Review: John Hodge’s ‘Collaborators’

Bessie Yuill
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Review: John Hodge’s ‘Collaborators’

Oxford Innovative Theatre’s new version of John Hodge’s Soviet satire at the Pilch provided a fascinating balance of dark humour and surreal tragedy. Based on the real-life association between the writer Mikhail Bulgakov and Stalin, this play reimagines the dictator’s admiration for the often subversive artist as a Faustian bargain between the two, and portrays Bulgakov’s descent into the moral complications of associating with the Kremlin as Stalin increasingly occupies his art.

The scenes I previewed showcased Miranda Collins as Bulgakov’s concerned wife Yelena, Callum Coghlan’s comically sympathetic officer Vladimir, Sophie Badman as the officer’s wife, Alex Rugman as morally astute friend Vassily and Rupert Stonehill as fellow subversive artist Grigory. They interacted with a playful humour which was undercut by a sense of the paranoia surrounding the Kremlin and those artists that questioned it. The contrast of the setting—Bulgakov’s flat in Moscow—with the mentioned tragedies of Russian peasants also demonstrated the creeping darkness surrounding the artist’s dilemmas. The supporting cast appears to be excellent at conjuring this precarious, nightmarish version of a society comedy, while unaware of the precise danger that Bulgakov is in. The main draw, however, must of course be the two leads.

The balance of opposites in Rory Fraser and Joe Peden, playing Bulgakov and Stalin respectively, brings the central premise to enthralling, darkly comic life. The initially pleasant and relaxed demeanour of Peden’s Stalin threatens to break through to brutal aggression at any moment, creating a tense unease for the audience which would not exist if they were merely shown the cliched statesman figure that the name ‘Stalin’ conjures.

Fraser as Bulgakov captures a nervous intellectual perfectly: originally preoccupied with his artistry but increasingly haunted by the mounting moral conundrums. The scene between the two characters in Act 2 that I was shown played their conversation as cat-and-mouse manipulation, as the power shifted between them until Bulgakov caved. The casting serves this dynamic absolutely and charges their dynamic with a compelling contrast.

The tensions underlying the fast-paced wit are created equally by the script and the cast, and the chilling joviality of the play’s humorous moments are sure to amuse and disturb an audience. This play of paranoia and double-meanings delivers the promise of its ambiguous title, and makes you consider loyalties both artistic and political—but don’t be put off if you don’t know much about Russian history, as you’re guaranteed an incredible time with this surreal interpretation anyway.

Collaborators showed at the Pilch Studio from Wednesday 25 – Saturday 28 January.

1st Week News Summary

Cherwell Broadcasting
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1st Week News Summary

CherwellTV takes you through the headlines from First Week.

Do not limit the aims of the Women’s March

Susannah Goldsbrough
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Do not limit the aims of the Women’s March

Last Saturday, on the first full day of Donald Trump’s presidency, women’s Marches took place across the globe, from the city at the heart of it all, Washington DC, to countries as diverse as Thailand and the Bahamas.The mood in London was upbeat, optimistic even. Mothers pushed toddlers in prams, fathers strolled along, hand in hand with their daughters, and people of all ages and genders belted out pop songs, blasted over the crowd on loud speakers. It was a reassuring assertion of liberal ideas and feminist solidarity on a very disturbing day.

Yet strangely, over the last few days, liberals, feminists and people I generally consider rational have erupted in scandalised condemnation of the marchers as opponents of democracy. Janice Turner wrote in the Times that “this rally feels anti-democratic” because “Trump won”, while Rod Liddle, in a particularly nasty piece for the same news- paper, accused marchers of “approv[ing] of democracy only when the people [they] like are elected.”

Liddle is certainly qualified to critique the legitimacy of a feminist movement. His credentials include a 2009 piece for the Spectator, which began: “So—Harriet Harman, then. Would you? I mean after a few beers obviously, not while you were sober” and for which he would later have to apologise. Thank you for airing your views, Rod. Feminists worldwide are always fascinated to hear what you have to say.

While obviously few of the detractors are as unpalatable as Liddle, their arguments are nonetheless flawed. The marchers had plenty to say, none of which was antidemocratic. Their protest was not, as Turner claimed, “against the election result itself” or even specifically against Donald Trump. What these men and women were standing up against was an America whose priorities have become so skewed that 46 per cent of the electorate voted to make a man, who pointed at GOP rival Carly Fiorina and said “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?”, their president.

One media outfit that made the radical journalistic decision to actually ask protestors what they were protesting about—the much maligned BBC—identified calls for “racial and gender equality, affordable healthcare, abortion rights and voting rights” as key issues under threat from the Trump presidency. British marchers identified a wide range of issues on the table, including “anti-immigration feeling, the refugee crisis and Irish and Northern Irish women being denied access to abortion”.

One marcher, Erica Wald, summed it up well. She said that she was protesting against “the normalisation of Donald Trump” and by that, I think she means, the normalisation of his terrifying views. Not against Trump himself – that would be fruitless – and not against his assumption of office – that would be antidemocratic. Against a culture that produced 59.4 million voters who accept what he stands for as normal, or as necessary, or even as desirable.

The website for The Women’s March on London describes itself as “a grassroots movement of women to assert the positive values that the politics of fear denies”. Trump’s victory proved a “catalyst” for a conversation about all kinds of issues; it is not the issue itself. More than that, these marches were not entirely issue-based, they were symbolic.

Because on Friday, I sat down to dinner in college and everyone around me was just, well, sad. But on Saturday, people lined the streets and cheered each other, for being feminist, open-minded and undefeated. We needed some hope for democracy last weekend and that’s what the women’s marches provided. Please don’t do them down.

Blind Date: Rosie and Tom

Cherwell Life
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Blind Date: Rosie and Tom

Rosie

Somewhat uncharacteristically, I turned up five minutes early. This provided ample time to try to Facebook stalk my date, without much success (I blame the Turf’s poor internet connection, and to a lesser extent, the fact that I didn’t know his surname). After spending a couple of minutes deliberating which out of the two seemingly lost guys I should walk up to, Tom resolved the situation by coming up to me and introducing himself. This created a calm and laid-back atmosphere that lessened the inherent awkwardness of a blind date. We managed to talk for two hours without too many or too long uncomfortable silences, touching on ideal, but unlikely, exam topics for lawyers, Persian history, and Sergio Leone films. We even realised that we had a compatible taste in music (read: I actually knew who he was talking about).

Out of ten: 8

Looks? 7.5

Personality? Very agreeable (tolerated incessant sarcastic chatter)

Second date? We didn’t exchange numbers

Tom

Having never been on a blind date before, I entered into this with a certain amount of trepidation. Fortunately though, despite some slight initial confusion recognising each other, the evening was rather fun. Rosie was a pleasure to talk to, and we soon discovered a shared appreciation for classical music, in particular for Beethoven. It was good fun sharing in the usual sordid of tales of tutorials gone wrong and embarrassing encounters with tutors, and her sense of humour made the whole thing very enjoyable. The pub did have a tendency to get rather loud, which occasionally made hearing each other a little difficult, but overall I found the whole thing to be very entertaining. Alas, all good things must come to an end, and a need to prepare for early morning tutorials forced a conclusion to the date but, all things considered, it was a very pleasant evening.

Out of ten: 7

Looks? Attractive

Personality? Easy-going with a good sense of humour

Second date? Another drink as friends perhaps

 

The strange death of globalisation

Alfie Steer
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The strange death of globalisation

A lot can happen in a year. For the past thirty it seemed as though the west, and indeed most of the developed world, was moving towards one single destination: an increasingly interconnected, globalised, consumerist society. Liberal, democratic, multicultural, and metropolitan.

A destination of such political inevitability that even Francis Fukuyama was willing to describe the capitalist liberal democracies of the west as the end points of human development, the end of history as we know it. Any threat to the inevitable march of globalisation, be it from the anti-capitalists, religious fundamentalists, nationalists and fascists, were all cast to the side lines, knocked down by the waves of lattes and cosmopolitan liberalism. But history isn’t always linear.

The political shockwaves of Donald Trump and Brexit have not only shaken the very foundations of the mainstream political establishment, but have diverged the course of history in the west.

Perhaps more than at any point since the Second World War, we face uncertainty, and impending calamity. The populist rhetoric of demagogues, tapping into the deep frustrations of large swathes of the population has seen the greatest kickback against globalisation ever. It is no surprise, that with the rise of the Neo-Fascist Alt-Right, and the shocking increase in racist incidents on both sides of the Atlantic, many have sounded the death knell of globalisation completely.

It is undeniable that the death of globalisation—in its current incarnation at least—has been delivered by its victims. The white working classes have felt little more than a sense of complete abandonment over the past thirty years at the hands of globalisation, stripped of their sources of lifelong employment, and thrusted into alienating and precarious service-sector jobs and zero hours’ contracts.

Deprived of a voice through harsh trade union laws, and marginalised by a system that values the south over the north, the urban over the rural, the white collar over the blue collar; is it any surprise that they seized the first promise of radical change offered up to them? The most bitter irony of all, however, is that those they have rewarded and empowered in this kickback, the rich white males of Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, will be anything but the champions of the forgotten that they shamelessly claim to be.

The death of globalisation will no doubt be greeted both by joy and terror. But that is not to say that the idealistic values of it are doomed. The liberal globalised society that rewarded and marginalised millions in equal number has been cast off and replaced with the most nationalistic collection of odious demagogues since the Second World War.

Those that have given them power, often out of sheer despair at the political status quo, will not be rewarded for their contribution. We as progressives must recognise its faults and failures, and why people rejected it, but we must never fall into despair or give into the pseudo-fascism of the old right.

Though globalisation in its rampant, unregulated and unequal form may be dead, its immensely positive values, the core, fundamental beliefs of solidarity, democracy and progress that made it a fundamental force for good, as flawed as it was, can and must continue to be championed. The very future of the west depends on it.

Professors and politicians awarded honorary degrees by Oxford University

Lucy Enderby
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Professors and politicians awarded honorary degrees by Oxford University

Seven people are to be awarded honorary doctorate degrees from Oxford University at Encaenia, the annual honorary degree presentation.

The recipients this year are Dr Robert Darnton, Professor Eugene Braunwald, Professor Joan Argetsinger Steitz, Professor Judith Weir, Bryan A. Stevenson and Baroness Shirley Williams. This is in recognition of their achievements in their fields, and are subject to approval from the congregation.

Bryan A. Stevenson, who is an attorney and Professor at New York University school of Law, founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a private non-profit law organisation, which focuses on defending those who may have been denied effective representation or fallen victim to racial bias. He is to be awarded with an honorary doctorate of civil law at the end of this academic year. Previously, he has received honorary degrees from universities such as Yale, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania, as well as several other awards for the work in his field.

Stevenson told Cherwell: “I am deeply honored and humbled by this unexpected recognition from Oxford University. As one of the world’s most prestigious universities, it will be a singular and distinct privilege to be awarded this degree. However, I am most grateful that Oxford would recognize someone who works on behalf of the incarcerated, condemned and marginalized.”

The composer and Master of the Queen’s Music, Judith Weir, is to become a doctor of music. She was resident composer with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in the 1990s. In addition, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the London Sinfonietta have also commissioned work from Weir.

She told Cherwell: “I admire Oxford University, particularly in the present era for its excellence in the teaching of my own subject, musical composition. So, should the proposal to award me an honorary degree be approved by Congregation at the end of this month, I will be glad to accept.”

Yale Professor of Biochemistry and one of the leading scientists in her field, Joan Argestinger Steitz, is set to receive a doctorate in science, recognising her work into RNA molecules, which play an important role in cancer and infectious diseases. The honorary degree will be an addition to the long list of recognition she has received for her pioneering work.

Speaking to Cherwell, Steitz said: “I am humbled and awed by the honor that Oxford is conferring on me. I have been privileged to have been a part of the 20th century revolution in biology. The time I spent as a postdoc at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge sealed my devotion to the molecule I love best, RNA, as well as my love of England.”

Robert Darnton, a cultural historian and academic librarian, who studied at Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship, is to be presented with a doctor of letters. His current research focuses on topics such as French culture in the 18th century and the history of the book.

Speaking to Cherwell of his time at Oxford, he said: “My tutors opened up whole new vistas of understanding when I was a student, and I learned a great deal from colleagues and friends in later years, when I was offered hospitality at Balliol and All Souls.”

Oxford students showed somewhat conflicting opinions on awarding of honorary degrees. In response to the honorary degrees, Jacob Greenhouse, a student at Regent’s Park College said: “I don’t think that honorary degrees are a huge problem. They tend to be given out to older members of society who have made a huge difference to the world. It’s not as if they are then going to use these degrees to some use, they are more ceremonial and everyone knows that.”

An undergraduate who wished to remain anonymous told Cherwell: “These are arbitrary titles awarded to valuable members of society, yet in some ways devalue the months of successive hard work of true PhD students.”

Honorary degrees have been awarded by the University of Oxford since 1478.

Four Gorillaz of the Ape-ocalypse

Natalia Bus
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Four Gorillaz of the Ape-ocalypse

A narrow corridor and a darkly clad, ominous figure swaying in a gold Trump-esque elevator follows the disturbing white noise which begins the first taste of Gorillaz music for six years. ‘Hallelujah Money’ was released the day before Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday, marking, as Gorillaz indicate, the beginning of the end.

Benjamin Clementine’s old-fashioned croon offers an eerily soulful meditation on money, power, and humanity.

An enlarged Big Brother style eye is the first of many appropriately random backdrops in the video released alongside the single. It unnervingly blinks behind the figure of Clementine as he begins.

The tune enters its chorus as Clementine drops his enduring stare with the first “Hallelujah/ Hallelujah money”. Next the vision turns to nightmare: Clementine’s oblique figure is dominated by a man’s screaming pale face, with his eyes ritualistically rolling back in his head.

Damon Albarn’s robotic emotion-purged voice filters out the background, his words questioning all that keeps us tethered to who we are: “How will we know?/ How will we dream?/ How will we love?” as if through a megaphone during an especially dark rally. The emphasis is on knowledge, which in this post-truth world seems to have been lost. Gorillaz search for it with the same intensity as the huge blinking eye which returns again and again.

Apparently reading from the Bible, Clementine then resumes his piercing stare and almost clinically assures “What the whole world, and whole beasts of nations desire: power” as three geishas all in white wave goodbye and proceed off the screen. Here, the synthetic beat becomes especially repetitive, seemingly leading to an exultant climax.

Instead, the video ends with Clementine stroking the Bible as the track disintegrates to a jarring conclusion of sound and image. He is suddenly replaced with a brief, all the more disturbing clip of SpongeBob SquarePants running away in shrill horror.

This is what the future holds according to Damon Albarn and co. If we heed the warning, as it is difficult not to, we should all be afraid. Very afraid.

Review: ‘Edward II’

Susannah Goldsbrough
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Review: ‘Edward II’

You could tell Edward II was going to be something special from the very first lines. Sam Liu’s Gaveston sprawled across the stage floor, gifting the audience with a profile view of his never-ending, leather-legginged legs. His delivery was seemingly effortless, packing as much drawl and sneer into Marlowe’s lines as they could possibly take. So there, in microcosm, we have the whole of Charlotte Vickers’ production: some seriously skillful acting clad in a whistle-stop tour of 1980s fashion.

Calam Lynch was remarkable. Edward is not an easy character—whimsically romantic yet bloodthirsty, politically inept but power hungry, he is riddled with contradictions. Lynch took it all in his lolloping stride. He made Edward endearing with a kind of childlike naivety—just a bouncy, enthusiastic, overgrown kid who’s never had to deal with being told no. In one particularly enjoyable scene, Edward dismays his uptight nobles by displaying his pleasure at their decision to recall Gaveston from exile with hugs and kisses all round.

The personality clash playing out before our eyes had something of the flavour of punk aesthetics against Thatcherite principles, which I think was just as Vickers intended. Lynch’s lethal combination of tactile and untactful, his tendency to bestow ever more ridiculous sounding aristocratic titles on anyone who brought him good news, his capacity for passionate love (some of Liu and Lynch’s ‘embraces’ were rather juicy) all came together in to make a seemingly revolting character rather sympathetic. I would be completely unsurprised to this guy take a turn on a West End stage in a few years time.

Vickers deserves plaudits for finding a thread of humour for the audience to cling to through a very dark play. From Edward’s comical making the sign of the cross to mock a pompous bishop, to the ridiculously punky appearance of Gaveston’s toy boys, the audience was constantly allowed comic relief from the dramatic intensity. She also made some creative and bold decisions in the way she handled the text, placing a scene in which queen Isabelle and her lover address their troops in battle within the bedroom, as a kind of sexually charged role-play.

Marcus Knight-Adams produced the best set of costumes I’ve come across in an Oxford production, drawing out the themes that Vickers was playing on. From the “manly” fur collars on the coats of the nobles, which began to seem subtly effeminising as the production continued, to Isabelle’s progression from slightly mumsy dress to scarlet ball gown, mirroring her rise in power, to Edward’s adoption of a leather jacket as he became increasingly thug-like. Brutalist architecture was given a nod in a throne carved out of a huge hunk of rock. It’s imposing aspect proved an effective foil to Lynch, who at one point curled up in it, touching the audience with the instinct of a child in a hostile world.

There were a couple of inevitable first night hiccups. A few too many lines were fluffed, and in particular Julia Pilkington twice anticipated her cue and interrupted another actor. Yet, with a little ironing out, I would like to confidently predict that this production will be talked about far beyond second week of Hilary. A couple of weeks ago in this newspaper, I pointed out the tendency of Marlowe’s masterpiece to flop on the Oxford stage. Undoubtedly because of my valuable input, Vickers avoided any such pitfall. If, in a few years time, another student decides that this play’s continuing reverberations with the contemporary world merits another production, they will have some seriously large shoes to fill.

Reintroducing grammar schools will solve nothing

Charlotte Tosti
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Reintroducing grammar schools will solve nothing

One morning at home during the Christmas holidays, I found my mother gazing at a message on her phone, looking slightly confused and agitated. She looked up and asked me whether she should send my eight-year old sister to a local prep school. “Obviously not. She’s happy where she is.”

Yet my mother didn’t seem to take my abrupt “no” for an answer. She explained that one of her friends had decided to send her daughter to a prep school, in order to maximise her chances of passing the eleven-plus, and getting into a grammar school. “I just want the best for your sister”, she said.

My sister was in the other room, drawing. Very soon, her colouring-in book would have to be replaced by dreary eleven-plus practice books, for at least a year. Many aspiring, bright children at her school won’t ever set eyes on one.

I come from Buckinghamshire, a county that has maintained the same school system since 1944. Comprehensives don’t exist, and all children are made to sit the eleven-plus in their last year of primary school.

They are then divided between secondary moderns and grammar schools accordingly. I went to a local all-girls grammar school. I enjoyed my time there (as much as it sometimes felt like Hillford in Ja’mie: Private School Girl) and am grateful for all the opportunities that were given to me during my time at school.

Equally, however, I disagree with Theresa May’s plans to lift the 1998 ban on opening new grammar schools. May believes grammar schools tackle inequality but she is wrong.

Most children from low income families, even if they perform well at primary school, do not enter grammar schools. In local authorities with grammar schools, 26 per cent more children who achieve level 5 in both English and Maths at Key Stage 2 and cannot receive free school meals go to a grammar school than similarly high achieving children who are eligible for free school meals.

The day I sat the eleven-plus remains one of my most vivid memories. In the exam, I glued my eyes to this ‘life-changing’ paper and vigorously rehearsed collective noun phrases in my head. A gaggle of geese, a shiver of sharks, a mischief of mice…

Every now and then I scanned across the room for my best friend. As she had warned me, she was absently resting her head on her desk, not touching the paper. I was desperate for her to join me in my quest to get into grammar school. But her family couldn’t afford to give her tuition, and she adamantly refused my many attempts to tutor her myself her in the playground with my eleven-plus practice book.

Most of the few who eventually got into grammars from my school had received the pricey eleven-plus tuition (around 1,800 pounds), or like me, had a parent who had passed the eleven-plus and could ‘show them the ropes’.

The lack of true social mobility encouraged by the grammar school system became even more visible when I started school. Unlike my primary school among others in town, rural primary schools (catering for areas with high house prices) provided regular eleven-plus tuition sessions.

Indeed, most students lived outside of town. I would often have to convince my parents to give me lifts down poorly lit country roads to visit my friends, some of whom didn’t even live in the same county.

Recent data shows that under one per cent of the total pupil intake in grammar schools receives free school meals, and almost 13 per cent of entrants come from fee-paying preparatory schools. Yet there were a few ‘success stories’ at my school.

A girl who had recently migrated from Sri Lanka, and whose mother worked as a cleaner in the school managed to get a place. One of my closest friends, whose parents’ did not go to grammar schools or university, went to the boys’ grammar school opposite mine, became Head Boy and now studies at Oxford too. But these examples are few in number.

In Buckinghamshire, those who go to secondary moderns are, in terms of funding per pupil, at a distinct disadvantage. Most grammars have now become academies, free from the ‘shackles’ of local authority regulation, and even before then pocketed far more funding from LEAs than secondary moderns despite the fact that the needs of pupils at secondary moderns, which had the vast proportion of low income children, were far greater.

During my time at secondary school, two of the three secondary moderns in my town were placed on ‘special measures’, and one was eventually shut down. The fact that this is the only alternative for most children who fail the eleven-plus represents how the grammar school system excludes able children from low income backgrounds to the benefit of more privileged students, and denies them the right even to a comprehensive education that can attend to their academic needs.

In truth, it appears as though Theresa May’s projects to revive the grammar school system are part of a nostalgic plight to resurrect the ‘romance’ of 1950s Britain, as if the reintroduction of grammar schools were the Saveloy to the increased amount of British fish we’ll get when we leave the EU.

If the government really wanted to induce greater social mobility during an uncertain economic climate, it doesn’t even need to bother with grammar schools, which already enjoy a great advantage.

It should place its ‘scarce’ funds where they are most needed. And they are needed in secondary moderns, and under-performing comprehensives. Whenever I come back home from university, I try to take my little sister out for a Chinese meal, since she is an avid lover of noodles. This time, she wasn’t demanding a tutorial in how to use chopsticks, but seemed anxious about something else. “Charlotte, how did you pass the eleven-plus?”.

The beginnings of anxiety about my future when I was approaching the eleven-plus were staring right back at me. The fear and agitation seen in young children around the transition from primary school to secondary in Buckinghamshire is deeply saddening. No eleven-year-old should have to feel that they have no future if they don’t pass a test that only money can buy.

Audience walk out on Anna Fendi’s translated Union talk

Lowri Howard
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Audience walk out on Anna Fendi’s translated Union talk

A large proportion of the crowd walked out during Anna Fendi’s talk at the Oxford Union last Friday due to the event over-running, and the Union not publicising that she would be speaking Italian with a translator.

One student also told Cherwell that she was invited to meet Fendi before the event but could not ask any questions as her translator was not there.

Many students attended Fendi’s talk, hoping to hear her speak about her rise to fame as an Italian fashion designer and entrepreneur. Fendi created the luxury fashion house Fendi with her sisters and was the first Italian woman to win the IWF Hall of Fame Award.

A large proportion of the crowd walked out towards the end, after Fendi’s speech overran by 20 minutes. Her translator told her to conclude her speech when the event was supposed to end.

This meant that many of the crowd left before the Union President asked if anyone had any further questions. Speaking to Cherwell, students said that it was “unfair” that no one told her to stop her speech sooner.

Students leaving the event early were also angered that Fendi spoke entirely in Italian. The Union did not publicise this fact beforehand on their event or on their term card. Although there was a translator, there were short intervals of silence in order for her translator to translate her speech.

One student who attended the event told Cherwell that the use of a translator, “made it harder to focus. I wouldn’t have gone if I had known, because it wasn’t particularly a relaxing break!”

The Oxford Union has been contacted for comment.

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