Thursday 17th July 2025
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Review: D.I.D – The State We’re In

Natalia Bus
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Review: D.I.D – The State We’re In

“This is heavyweight, this is heavyweight” assures Rob Milton’s voice on ‘Flush’, the first single released off the Nottingham-based D.I.D’s sophomore album. It serves as a fitting warning for a collection of tracks telling of the band’s struggles to come of age in the last four years since their debut, All Our Favourite Stories. D.I.D certainly still tell stories through their music, but these are much darker and more personal than those heard on their previous feel-good indie tracks, which attracted fans with sugared hooks and jangly melodies.

The album mingles Rob and co.’s loss of innocence with a sometimes-humorous, sometimes-grievous cynicism, as is conveyed in the fast pace and immediacy of the opening ‘Fast Food’, the chorus of which is steeped in disillusionment with modern-day relationships: “All we do is eat fast food/ All we do is fool around/ All we do it means nothing, nothing”. Melodic and energetic tunes like the latter are contrasted with much slower and “heavyweight” laments about a sense of uncertainty or failure in the everyday, rendering the long-play a balanced diet of bouncing around and serious contemplation.

‘Big Lie’ is a model example of how a song should build in both sound and emotion until a brief release, which soon fades away into the next track. The acapella start jerks the listener into attention and adds layer upon layer of subtle synths and harmonies which only bolster Rob’s echoing vocals that pierce to the very core with accusation.

The resentment felt in ‘Big Lie’ is really driven home in the edgy and anger-fuelled heavy guitar riffs of ‘Hotel’. The forceful, almost Queen-esque harmonies and dramatic electric guitars are poignantly undercut in the much gentler chorus which asserts “Solitude arrives like a guest in a hotel/ When she ups and leaves for the devil in the detail”. The instrumental that follows will have crowds come away bruised, sweaty, and fulfilled after moshing violently at live shows.

A vast number of songs on this return album have a darkness and immediacy to them that surprise previous listeners of D.I.D’s teen-friendly indie-pop. This is not to say that the five-piece has become an entirely different band in the last four years, instead, their sound has grown and matured into more than light-hearted musings over a time when they were clearly toiling to do the same in their private lives.

OxFolk reviews: ‘a bit of blue’

Ben Ray
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OxFolk reviews: ‘a bit of blue’

There is something irresistibly lovable about Emily Maguire’s voice – it seems to swell silence the world around it, putting everything out of focus except for the low, soft hush of her voice. But ‘a bit of blue’, her first album in three years, doesn’t just exhibit her beautiful singing: nearly every track is also written by Maguire, making this album seem a personal distillation of the singer herself.

But there’s more to this album than first meets the eye – Maguire has a painful story to tell. A classically trained musician, she was left unable to play her instruments for two years after contracting chronic tendonitis in her arms, triggering a long depressive period. This darkness comes through in her music, in lyrics such as those in ‘Stone and Sky’: “she’s alone in a cemetery / skulls and bones beneath her feet / used to be alive”. However, accompanied by the talented instrumentalist Nigel Butler, whose carefully crafted piano and guitar arrangements help to lift the music and carry Maguire’s voice along, this album manages to convey many colours and stories in her emotive, symbol-laden songs. Many stories seem to be drawn from Maguire’s personal life, such as the utter heartbreak in ‘Words I Cannot Say’. “We knew we wanted [this album] stripped bare, haunting and as beautiful as it could possibly be”, Maguire says – and I think she and Butler have certainly achieved their aim. This music is bold in its sparseness, with Maguire’s beguiling voice put centre stage with no space to hide. Each track tells a different story, and the listener can’t help but be drawn in as Maguire weaves tale after tale together. The intimacy this manages to create is impressive – by the final track, you feel you know Maguire almost as a friend, and that you’ve experienced something together. An impressive feat for a singer-songwriter, and one Maguire manages to achieve with style.

Maguire’s work has been called “music for the soul” (Maverick Magazine), and I can’t help but agree with this. From the heartbreak of losing your dreams in ‘Getting Older’: “I’ll still be young before I’m old / getting older nothing changes”, to the pain of miscarriage: “a hole is left inside / where a heart once beat, and now it’s gone”, Maguire has the ability to summarise the experiences many of us feel, and to express them perfectly in her music. Although most of the songs are about traumatic, saddening events, there is certainly beauty and joy in this album too – with all these emotions resonating long after the final track has finished.

Exeter alumna Helen Marten wins Turner Prize

Daniel Curtis
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Exeter alumna Helen Marten wins Turner Prize

Exeter College alumna Helen Marten has been awarded the 2016 Turner Prize.

Marten, who graduated in Fine Art in 2008, won the prestigious art prize for a year’s worth of output including Eucalyptus Let Us In (Greene Naftali, New York) and Drunk Brown House (Serpentine Gallery, London). Her recent exhibition in the Tate Britain for the Turner Prize combined sculpture, household objects such as bicycle parts and hygiene objects, writing and screen printing to create interactive works of art.

The Turner Prize, established to “promote public debate around new developments in contemporary art”, is awarded to artists under fifty years of age who are deemed to have presented the finest exhibition of the year.

Marten, the youngest artist shortlisted at the age of 31, claimed that she “wasn’t expecting” to win. In her acceptance speech given after poet Ben Okri announced her victory, she described herself as “numb”, despite being “deeply honoured”.

The award is Marten’s second this month, following her receipt of the inaugural Hepworth Prize, after which she split the £30,000 prize money among herself and the other three nominees. Marten confirmed that she plans to do the same with the £25,000 Turner Prize fund.

London-based and Macclesfield-born Marten fought off Michael Dean, Anthea Hamilton and Josephine Pryde for the prize, whose quality she described as leading her to struggle to imagine “a more brilliant and exciting shortlist of artists to be part of”. Each runner-up will receive £5,000 in addition to Marten’s proposed splitting of the prize fund.

Given the recent attention afforded to her work, Marten said, “It makes you realise that the art world as a whole is operating in a very hermetic bubble of sign language that is not necessarily generous to a wider public audience which is not initiated in that kind of language or visual information.

“Putting something here and seeing what the public perception of it is is very humbling and educational. It makes you think, ‘Maybe my work is not universal—maybe the themes I’m employing are not immediately understandable.’”

Alex Farquarson, director of Tate Britain and chair of the prize’s jury, described Marten as a “kind of poet” whose art is “is outstanding for its extraordinary range of materials and form”.

“It doesn’t present you with an easy, simple, static view of itself”, he continued. “The work is like reading very rich, very enjoyable, very elusive, quite enigmatic poetry—rather than a very clear report on what happened in a newspaper. I think the thing is to enjoy it for its visual qualities, its physical qualities, and get lost in the game of meaning and games of composition that it offers up.”

The Ruskin School of Art’s Head of School and Marten’s former tutor, Professor Brian Catling, said, “We are all tremendously excited by the news of Helen’s success, but not remotely surprised. Helen showed a distinctive talent at the Ruskin, and an exceptional energy in putting her ideas into practice.

“She was one of the leaders of her year. There is no doubt she will go on to have a brilliant career as an artist.”

Jessica Evans, a second-year Fine Art student at Marten’s old college, said, “It is absolutely wonderful to discover that Helen Marten has won the Turner Prize, following her recent successes. It is most timely as well, as the college is seeking to expand its focus on the visual arts for 2017. I couldn’t be more delighted and inspired being a current student at Exeter.”

From cocaine to porcelain: how one homeless person escaped crime

Michael Jacobs
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From cocaine to porcelain: how one homeless person escaped crime

“Sometimes a scared person is the most dangerous person”

Pete (his real name is withheld for reasons that will become apparent) is never at a loss for words. I arrange to meet him outside Taylors using the number he gave me after I met him coming back from a night out the week before. He offers me the other half of his cardboard seat, asks me how I am, then, without hesitation, gets on telling his story.

From a family which fled from Belfast to Liverpool during the Troubles, Pete’s early life was one that often forced him to live outside the law. With a father high up in a criminal business that engaged in everything from money laundering and class A drugs, to hiding runaway IRA members, Pete says he had to be hard and unforgiving. ‘Don’t give people any care,’ was what his father demanded. By the time he was 15, his dad was locked up for life and Pete had to abandon his job at a catalogue shop in order to help run the business for a few years – until a “fuck-up” led to the loss of £170,000, leaving him and others who were implicated to face severe punishment. Pulling your trousers down and having a shotgun fired at your legs (kneecapping) was the norm for big mistakes, he says. Pete was shot by his brother in both legs. His brother had said he didn’t want to shoot him. He shows me the scars of the entrance and exit wounds along his legs. His friend however, was killed from a shot in the back of the head. He repeatedly says that the loss of the money was his fault and that he should have been the one killed.

“I told you I’d have a good story,” he adds wryly as he watches me scribbling this down. “Though I bet if you told your mates they’d say it was a load of rubbish.”

After this incident Pete decided to sever all ties with the business and with that world. The best way to disappear? He points down at the pavement. “Go to the streets… tone down the accent, don’t mix with criminals.” Yet this didn’t mean an end to the crime. The £3,500 needed for his sister’s IVF treatment, as well as a heart operation for a nephew with Down’s Syndrome, were funded by a series of robberies, ultimately leading to a stint in Dartmoor.

But it was in prison when his life finally took a turn for the better. The first few times he met his future wife (a Christian prison worker) he was tongue tied, finding no other way to approach her than by walking up to her with an empty milk bowl that needed refilling. As soon as he was out, the pair settled into a council house and they had two children, one of whom was later lost in a car accident, along with his wife. Devastated, he took to drinking. He hardly remembers the four years that followed.

That was all 12 years ago and ever since he has been living off building and repairing bikes, selling on valuables unnoticed by charity shops (an eye for antiques which he gained from his mother), and the few benefits he receives. After the fines he repeatedly gets for begging, he usually only has about £74 left over from his fortnightly £180. Walking with me down Little Clarendon Street, he shines a light though a shop window and onto some pieces of porcelain crockery, as well as some pictures which he says will fetch a pretty penny down at a place on the high street. He talks about other paintings, and says Munch’s The Scream is his favourite. It’s been evident that he is popular round town, as going down the road he regularly stops and talks with people, checking how they are, agreeing favours and asking after their bikes.

Reconciling himself with his past has not been easy. “Sometimes I hate myself,” he says in a moment of reflection that cuts the general pace of his story. Nowadays he can’t stand violence, and will break up fights whenever he can in an attempt to be “a half-decent person.” Tomorrow he’s going to visit his daughter in Bath, about whom he waxes lyrical, describing in detail her appearance and the complexion of her skin, “pale like porcelain, angel blue eyes, dark copper ringlet hair” – an “Irish beauty” like his mother, he says with a twinkle.

After he’s looked over my bike and recommended some repairs, he tells me to take care, and then walks back into the cold, parallel reality increasingly being shared by hundreds of homeless people every night in Oxford.

 Oxford Homeless Pathways works alongside a thriving network of organisations to provide life-changing services for homeless people in Oxfordshire: http://www.oxhop.org.uk/

Katherine Mansfield: The implosion of femininity

Priya Khaira-Hanks
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Katherine Mansfield: The implosion of femininity

Katherine Mansfield’s writing is a pearl that wriggles, twitches and uncurls into a maggot. Exquisite, feminine dream-worlds are again and again spun out of pink sugar; to devour them is to experience the nausea that must follow the sweetness, the dark truths that lurk beneath aesthetic delight.

In the latter half of 1921, Mansfield’s own life mirrored this duality more than ever before. Cloistered in a picturesque chalet in Switzerland, Mansfield and her husband enjoyed a sky so blue and vistas so beautiful, it seemed to her that she was tucked close to heaven. Long languorous mornings spent smoking and reading aloud melted into gentle afternoon walks among the pine trees and wildflowers. She wrote in her room overlooking the valley, accompanied by her beloved cat, Wingley, with baskets of flowers and apricots, sent by her Countess cousin, close at hand.

However, this vision of bourgeois contentment, if not a façade, was certainly not the entire picture. She wrote, not out of love, but to afford her medical bills, as tuberculosis wracked her body. Dissatisfied with her work, she struggled with creative angst whilst acutely aware that every story would take days to recover from, and, by pushing herself in this way whilst her body deteriorated, she might be chipping away at her time left in the world. It is fitting, therefore, that the resulting stories blend beauty and pain, creating a luxurious silken cocoon only to unravel it, suddenly, in their abrupt and often chilling endings.

The apotheosis often occurs when brute masculinity ruptures the sparkling female universe. The aesthetic of feminine desirability meets the reality of male desire, and, thus, the rose-tinted glasses are smashed and ground into the dirt. A summer garden in twilight becomes the site of sexual assault, teenage girls at their first ball have a lecherous older man in their midst, a young woman recoils when her idle flirtation is ruined by inappropriate lust—her heroines struggle with how the patriarchy places them on a pedestal, infantilised and quasi-pure, yet the men they encounter continue to be grunting and carnal.

Time after time, Mansfield’s female characters are thwarted in their desire to live a life of dainty naiveté, as men map out this role for them only to selfishly reject it. This is a message that continues to be relevant today, as simpering Victoria’s Secret Models, piggy-tailed porn-stars and paternalistic boyfriends everywhere continue to encourage a cutesy feminine aesthetic. As long as femininity caters to masculine desire, women will continue to struggle in the same way as Mansfield’s heroines.

In ‘Carnation’, the appropriately-named Eve takes a flower and pulls it to pieces, “eating it, petal by petal”. With every swoosh of glossy hair, chink of the floral tea-set and flutter of a lace fan, Mansfield does the same to femininity: she deconstructs and subverts, “petal by petal”, what it means to be a woman.

Who is to blame for the ‘Post-Truth’ era?

Jonathan Bowering
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Who is to blame for the ‘Post-Truth’ era?

With the creation of the internet, came a new era of self-educators, a new era of students eager to find out information for themselves and less likely to accept the ‘facts’ prescribed to them by teachers and parents. We can think of these people as a new breed of anarchists. Instead of a reaction against prudishness and uptight-ness, as in the 80s, it is a reaction against conforming to the state-prescribed educational structure.

These students have been told, through a multiplicity of sources-not least the previous generation, about ‘untrustworthy politicians’ and how they have been ‘lied to’ time and time again. After all, how readily are we told that it was Thatcher who destroyed northern domestic industry? How often is it said that it was Blair who autocratically led us into an illegal war in Iraq? Why should we trust governmental educational policy if we can’t trust their other home or international affairs policies?

This is the view of the misrepresented and it is part of the reason for populism’s recent victory over the progressive liberalism of the last 50 years. It is simply a fact of people refusing to look at the full picture and instead turning, due to a lack of time and motivation, to attractive young people flouting their often undeveloped views over social media. These people write with a level of passion not often found in legitimate sources of information. It is an obvious psychological reality that, following a disenchantment with authority, the self-educator will turn to the most convincing orator or writer-regardless of the legitimacy of such a source. We have seen this with Brexit and with Trump. The question is whether we allow rhetoric to dominate truth.

What we notice, as a result of this educational disenchantment, is the young following in their parents’ footsteps by taking an anti-intellectualist view with a foundation in opinion, rather than fact. This group often writes under the heading of the ‘alt-right’, a synonym for “I am angry with the nature of society without necessarily knowing anything about it but a man, with cool hair and sunglasses, told me all about it so he must be right”. The line “everyone is allowed their opinion” may be issued in response to my complaint and it is, of course, true. However, it is not freedom of opinion or speech that is the problem in our society but the ease with which the ‘layman’ accepts opinion as truth.

It is unfair to blame the internet too greatly for the new wave of anti-intellectualism—there are many other causes of it. The disproportionate representation of white, Oxbridge-educated males in high-level professions, for example, is a legitimate reason to feel disenchanted with ‘the system’. And of course, the internet does provide a wealth of legitimate information. The difficulty lies in part in public laziness. People are unwilling to look hard enough for the truth when so much convincing rhetoric on major issues can now be found on social media. This is not a new problem—why take the time to look for the truth when something claiming to be that truth is so easy to find?

The traditional media must therefore also take its share of the blame. The media, the pinnacle of freedom of speech and information, perfectly exemplifies my point. The issue with the traditional media is that everyone knows that news companies are corporate businesses which are ultimately designed to make a profit. By their very nature, they must appeal to the masses and thus project and represent a specific political view. What was not explained clearly enough to the previous generation is that people read whichever news has political spin aligning to their own views, and that this does not make it the objective truth.

Throughout 2016 we have seen that there is an over reliance on media, both traditional and social, for facts. This failure, mostly caused by the past generation, must now be conveyed sensitively to the present internet generation. We must explain to them that opinion is individualistic and personal, it should not be relied upon as truth. Whilst we must allow freedom of speech and access to the opinion of others, we must not allow millennials to be indoctrinated by rhetoric and must teach them the value of differentiating between falsehood and fact.

Brasenose graduate sues Oxford after not receiving a first-class degree

Ethan Croft
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Brasenose graduate sues Oxford after not receiving a first-class degree

Oxford history graduate Faiz Siddiqui is currently suing the University for £1 million because he did not leave with a first-class degree.

The 38 year old solicitor, who left Brasenose College in the summer of 2000 with a 2.1 in Modern History, is bringing a loss of earning claim against his chancellor, masters, and scholars of Oxford University.

He told the High Court that “negligent” teaching by members of the faculty during his Indian imperial history module prevented him from achieving a first-class degree and forging a successful career as an international commercial lawyer.

Siddiqui claims that his special interest module was poorly provided for by the University, with four of Oxford’s seven Asian history experts on sabbatical during his final year 1999-2000 and his result pulled down his entire degree.

In court, his lawyer Roger Mallalieu claimed that thirteen of his fifteen contemporaries studying Imperial Indian history scored their worst mark overall in that module.

Mallalieu said, however, that the claim is not a direct attack on any particular member of the faculty, which Siddiqui understands was under pressure at the time due to staff shortages.

Siddiqui now suffers from depression and insomnia, which he has linked to his exam results and which he claims have led to an inability to maintain long-term employment.

Oxford University initially asked for the claim to be dismissed given the length of time since the graduate left the college. The University also pointed out specific instances where Siddiqui received personal attention during his studies, including additional time in examinations after complaints of hay-fever.

A judgement on the case is expected before the new year.

Siddiqui and Oxford University’s History Faculty have been contacted for comment. Oxford University declined to comment on an ongoing case.

“What matters is what you see”

Amy Booth
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“What matters is what you see”

”One day I decided that I was beautiful, and so I carried out my life as if I was a beautiful girl. I wear colors that I really like, I wear makeup that makes me feel pretty, and it really helps. It doesn’t have anything to do with how the world perceives you. What matters is what you see.” (Gabourey Sidibe to Harper’s Bazaar.)

I was a shy and self-proclaimed ugly duckling of a sixteen-year-old when I came across these words for the first time (on Tumblr, because where else would my faux-deep, semi-reclusive teen self have been spending time?), and I feel I’m only being very slightly over-dramatic—and, perhaps ironically, only very slightly less faux-deep—when I say that they changed my life for the better. It’s hardly a secret that younger girls and slightly older, oh-my-god-I’m-an-adult-now girls (like I must begrudgingly admit I am now) are under constant pressure from the media and their peers to look and act in a certain way, and that mental illness among children and teens of all genders is at an all time high.

It doesn’t take a genius to realise that, if you’ll pardon my French, sidestepping the bullshit of the former can have a positive impact on many individuals’ mental health, too. It’s for this reason that I consider Sidibe to be an important feminist role model for what has been dubbed the Selfie Generation. In a world so focussed on the aesthetic, helping to convince even one girl she is not unworthy of feeling beautiful is, in a highly individual and perhaps (but unapologetically) superficial level, a revolutionary act.

Everyone who defines for themselves, on their own terms, what makes them feel beautiful sticks up a huge middle finger to the media, to peer pressure, and to any other so-called authority that defines beauty in the narrow ways we have grown so used to. Sidibe’s words are powerful because she herself is far from ascribing to these ideals; being dark-skinned and overweight, she is the antithesis of what the mainstream media would promote as beautiful. And yet, as she asserts so eloquently, what other people think of her individual beauty does not faze her. She decided she was beautiful, and so she became. I implore every girl reading this who has ever been made to feel ugly or unworthy by anybody to do the same. And I am heartened to see girls and women who, on some level, already do.

The ‘Selfie Generation’ is empowered, liberated; every selfie is a composition, taken with the right lighting and the right angle to create an image that its subject feels happy and comfortable with. For the first time in media history, women are in control of their own image, taking, selecting, and uploading self portraits that they feel good about, regardless of whether girls who look like them would ever be found gracing the pages of a Vogue editorial.

It hopefully goes without saying that a girl’s self-worth should not start and end with her appearance. Obviously we can and even should aim for much more. However, my personal experience following the adoption of Sidibe’s words as a kind of mantra is that, superficial as it may seem, feeling that you look good by whatever standards you have set for yourself is a massive first step toward feeling better about other aspects of yourself, too. When media pressure to look a certain way is so omnipresent and pervasive, it can be pretty draining to have to contend with this as well as anything else that might be going on in your life and getting you down. Taking control of your own self-image means that nothing and nobody else can make you feel you ought to look a certain way. And when everything else is turning to crap, be it down to a bad breakup, drama with friends, or merely a looming deadline, it’s at least one load off your mind.

Although I’m mostly speaking from a personal perspective, I imagine that my experience of body image and self-confidence will be a familiar tale for many other girls and women. For years, I used makeup and meticulously straightened hair as props in order to feel pretty enough to go to compete with other girls. This ‘competition’ wasn’t malicious. It was about me wanting to feel pretty like the others, dreading being the plain one among girls who looked how the teen magazines I read religiously told me I should.

In hindsight, of course, everyone else was probably feeling exactly the same way—despite what I thought when I was scrolling through Tumblr in a My Chemical Romance t-shirt and comically heavy eyeliner, I was, in fact, just like other girls. Feeling physically inadequate is, sadly, an everyday part of life for many girls and women, and that’s why it’s important to me to share Sidibe’s words. “What you see” can be what you want to see: sometimes you might have to fake it ‘til you make it, as the 16-year-olds on Tumblr are saying these days.

British skier found dead at Varsity ski trip resort

Felix Pope
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British skier found dead at Varsity ski trip resort

A 22-year-old British man has been found dead at Val-Thorens ski resort after a night out drinking.

NUCO Travel Ltd has confirmed that the student concerned was involved in the Oxford-Cambridge Varsity ski trip, which it helped to organise.

A spokesman said, “Sadly one of our passengers passed away on Sunday 4th December 2016. At this time, to respect their family’s and friend’s privacy, we will not be commenting further.”

According to Swiss newspaper Le Matin, which cited police reports, the man was discovered unconscious in his room by friends early in the morning. Emergency services were called, but the firefighters that arrived at the scene were unable to revive the young tourist, who had died from cardiorespiratory arrest.

According to police reports the man and his friends arrived by coach yesterday afternoon before immediately attending a party. It is believed that he died at some point between Saturday night and Sunday morning.  

Val-Thorens is currently hosting the Oxford-Cambridge Varsity ski trip, the largest student snow sports event in the world. Thousands of students from both universities are currently at the resort, with about 15 per cent of Oxford students attending. The annual event was first held in 1922, and has previously been criticised by Oxford college deans for its reputed debauchery.

Students left by coach for Val-Thorens on Friday and arrived yesterday. The trip ends next Saturday.

Val-Thorens resort and the Varsity Committee have been contacted for comment.

Review: In the Republic of Happiness

James Lamming
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Review: In the Republic of Happiness

In my eyes, Martin Crimp’s experimental play In the Republic of Happiness is somewhat reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984. Just as Orwell proclaimed that he wrote “because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention”, Crimp’s play delivers a shocking critique of the 21st century’s self-obsession, consumer culture, and delusional dreams. Performed for the first time in Oxford in the Burton Taylor studio, the student production does well to capture the spirit of such a complex and layered script. The incredibly talented actors competently navigate the stormy seas of traditional acting, physical theatre, dance, and singing.

As it starts the play seems reasonably straightforward. We see three generations of a working-class family, clearly uncomfortable in one another’s presence, suffering through a Christmas dinner. Awkward subjects are raised, such as alleged favouritism and internet pornography, and characters can scarcely move for the presence of incredibly obvious elephants in the room: family grandfather (Max Cadman) has dementia and teenage daughter Debbie (Alexa Mackie) is unexpectedly pregnant.

However, all awkward tension is shattered when Uncle Bob (played by the charismatic and talented Hasan al-Habib) enters uninvited, only to drop bombshell after bombshell on the characters’ already difficult lives. After his diatribe, the lights dim and the play’s centrepiece, the Five Essential Freedoms of the Individual, begins: plot and character are cast aside and cast member after cast member becomes a generic member of society, proclaiming how independent and free-thinking they are. However, it quickly becomes clear that they are not; in a sly piece of deconstructionalism, each cast member shouts defensively that “I write the script of my own life”, but both Crimp’s dialogue and the excellent choreography of director Una O’Sullivan make it clear from the outset that this is not the case; words and phrases are repeated and jumbled up, while O’Sullivan has the multi-talented Lucy McIlgorm act as the masterful puppeteer behind each character’s actions.

But it would be remiss of me to talk too much about Crimp’s writing, when the performance is really all about the director and the actors. Much like Crimp’s more famous work, Attempts on Her Life, In the Republic of Happiness is one of those plays which requires significant interpretation on the part of the director; the original script is sparse, lacking stage directions and unlike a Shakespeare play, the director cannot fall back on the safety net of prior adaptations for ideas, since the play has not been regularly performed in the past ten years.

In a very real sense, Una O’Sullivan had the chance to break new ground in her adaptation of the play, which is exactly what she has done; the choreography of the dance and physical theatre are excellent, and the play seems suitably fractured. The work’s chaos and discordance relies on the grindingly incongruous repetition of certain words and phrases, and O’Sullivan does well to really bring this out; the play’s middle section feels fittingly uncomfortable and nerve-racking due to her directorship.

Considering what was asked of the cast of eight, the acting is good. The conversation in the opening scenes is a little stilted and Debbie (Alexa Mackie) at times seems undecided as to whether her accent hails from Notting Hill or Aberdeen, although I am sure this is just down to first night jitters. As the scene progresses, actors seem to settle into their temporary characters. Amelia Coen is completely believable as the angry younger daughter Hazel with her cutting jibes, while Hasan Al-Habib’s masterful portrayal of the outwardly charismatic but sexually abusive Uncle Bob steals the first act in my eyes.

Each and every actor comes into their own during the second act; I can fully understand the somewhat jerky nature of the first act when I realise how much blood, sweat and tears must have gone into the carefully crafted choreography. Lucy McIlgorm here shines with her incredible singing, as well as her dancing and acting. Clearly chosen for the role of puppeteer for her on stage gravitas, she masterfully commands the audience’s attention.

Despite a slightly stilted beginning, this Oxford production competently handles a difficult play. Under director Una O’Sullivan’s leadership, the acting goes from strength to strength as the play progresses, and I would thoroughly recommend trying to get your hands on a ticket.

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