Naomi Wolf’s new book, Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalisation of Love, charts the development of censorship around sexual deviancy and morality in the 19thcentury, through the lives of John Addington Symonds, writer and critic, and Walt Whitman. She spoke in conversation with Nigel Warburton (co-author of Reading Political Philosophy: Machiavelli to Mill) at Blackwell’s on Thursday the 23rdof May, as part of a wider promotional tour, and as part of Blackwell’s ‘Philosophy in the Bookshop’ series, set to include speakers such as Armand D’Angour and Jonathon Reé.
She began by explaining how moving it was to be giving a talk in Oxford, where the graduate thesisout of which Outrages came was researched and written. Oxford holds significance for one of the subjects of her book, too. J A Symonds studied at Balliol, where he fell in love with William Fear Dyer, a choirboy three years his junior. He was eventually elected to an open fellowship at Magdalen. He left Oxford for Switzerland following a breakdown prompted by an accusation of homosexuality, despite its eventual dismissal. Wolf charts the effect the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 had on Symonds and his writing, and on wider society. Most of Symonds’ work remained unpublished during his lifetime, locked in a metal box in his study for fear of arrest. Her study of censorship and decency laws becomes transatlantic with the inclusion of Walt Whitman, with whom Symonds enjoyed a close epistolary friendship, although they never met face-to-face. Symonds was an admirer of Whitman’s, frequently asking him to speak up on behalf of British writers from the position of increased freedom he enjoyed in America, until similar censorship laws were introduced in the States.
Wolf argues that the censorship laws of the 19thcentury were motivated by a need for social control, rather than an organic wave of moral panic over sexual deviancy – she points to the examples of the forced venereal disease examinations under the Contagious Diseases Act of 1864, which allowed authorities to arrest any woman suspected of prostitution and keep her in a ‘lock hospital’ until the end of her sentence. Wolf highlights the little-known fact that these examinations were often extended to men suspected of sodomy, with a whole branch of science devoted to examining men’s anuses to judge whether they engaged in gay sex. When discussing her research for this, Warburton brought up the controversy that emerged on BBC Radio 3, when historian Matthew Sweet pointed out that Wolf had wrongly interpreted the phrase ‘death recorded’ in the Old Bailey records as evidence of an execution following a conviction of sodomy, when the two men she cites were not sentenced. She responded by acknowledging the mistake, saying it would be corrected in the next print run, but cited other instances of men being executed for gay sex in the period, claiming that the fact that two of these men were not actually executed does not invalidate her thesis. Warburton directed those who wanted to follow the controversy to Twitter. (I have since followed her, and she has been tweeting about it. A lot.)
The floor was then opened to questions, and we were immediately assaulted by people asking Wolf to comment on trans issues. Wolf responded with an admission that she had been told not to wade into this discussion, as it is so different in the UK than in America, but that she was going to anyway. She said she believed people should be able to identify however they want, and use any bathroom they want to, which, although a noble sentiment, unfortunately opened the floor for people to jump in with increasingly aggressive ‘but what about THIS debate’ questions which Wolf was clearly unequipped to answer. The discussion was eventually shut down by Warburton, and we moved on to some fairly interesting questions – like one from a philosophy student asking how to make the curriculum more diverse, probably prompted by Wolf’s earlier comment that she had abandoned her original idea for a post-grad thesis in the 80s because she was told the Oxford dons didn’t think feminist criticism a valid method of study. There was then an opportunity to buy a copy of the book, and get it signed. She remarked to us that we should keep hold of the book, since the now-corrected mistakes in it would make it a collector’s copy. I look forward to reading it.
Ottessa Mosfegh’s novel, out in paperback since July last year, details the experience of an unnamed orphaned young woman living in New York at the start of the millennium who embarks upon a year of sleeping in a bid to fix her ennui. With the help of a questionable psychiatrist called Dr Tuttle who plies her with prescriptions to every sleeping pill under the sun, the narrator spends a whole year in a self-induced coma with only occasional trips to get coffee and visits from her bulimic best friend Reva as interruptions. The narrator is white, privileged, and in her words, like an ‘off-duty model’, with ample opportunities she rejects, brimming with insights on the world she sees.
Moshfegh places her novel in a pre-9/11 New York filled with super-ficiality and narcissism, best exemplified in the Chelsea art gallery where the protagonist worked before getting fired. It is a place of emptiness, filled with ‘avant- garde’ art designed more to excite shock than to present anything of value, a trend which the narrator mocks repeatedly. With a straight face, she baldly describes how the star artist Ping Xi inserts pigment pellets into his penis and then masturbates on a canvas to produce works which were ‘all nonsense, but people loved it’.
Locating the plot in this period is an excellent move – a time far enough from the present that technology and social media do not intervene in the central sleep mission, while still being recognisable. Chunky cell-phones, and VHS tapes of old Whoopi Goldberg movies crop up intermittently in the plot.
Rest and Relaxation is not the most restful or relaxing of reading experiences. The protagonist is caustic and darkly humorous, but I soon begin to find myself agreeing, and viewing the world through her misanthropy. But for all the cynicism which pervades the book, there are moments where I felt genuine sympathy.
There are instances of disconcerting sentimentality, as when she explains her reluctance to sell her dead par-ents’ house because there may be remnants of their skin cells and fingernails still inside. It is often the physicality and imagery which are the most moving: descriptions of Reva crying or binge-eating. Like Moshfegh’s previous work Eileen, there is a deliberate attempt to create a subversive image of a woman that might provoke disgust. She is no sleeping beauty – three-day spells of hibernation triggered by Infermiterol (a made-up drug) leave her covered in stains and ‘eye boogers.’
For a novel in which the heroine spends a lot of time comatose, it is enthralling. The voice is compelling and witty, drawing one into the experience.
Characters like the quack Dr Tuttle (found in Yellow Pages of course) and Reva, whose dialogue is straight out of a Noughties advice column, fill up the pages with vivid nonsense. Lines are delivered candidly and designed to leave you with a wry smile. The ending is epiphanic, and left me questioning all that had just happened in the past 300 pages without rendering them at all a waste of time.
Looking at this book, it’s difficult to know what one’s getting oneself into. ‘Convenience Store Woman’: the phrase has a kind of menial heroism to it. And reading the book is like realising that, in a climate of social pressure and conformity, some kind of purpose can be found at the checkout till of a convenience store, in a world of rice balls and cans of coffee, amongst the ringing greetings of ‘Irasshaimasé!’
Keiko Furukura, the heroine, has been a misfit since childhood. Now 36, and having worked at the Smile Mart convenience store for 18 years, she deals constantly with the probing questions of a nosy, judgemental society. ‘How come you’re only doing that sort of job?’ ‘How about if we find someone for you?’ ‘Why don’t you register on a marriage site?’ Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Keiko, deciding that ‘deep down’ she ‘wanted some kind of change’, establishes an arrangement with self-pitying, misogynist co-worker Shiraha (also on the margins of society) that will bring an end to their existence as ‘foreign objects’. But the desperation from which society continually suggests she should be suffering is exactly what Keiko so noticeably rejects throughout the novel. There is a kind of poignance to her innocence and honesty: ‘my very cells exist for the convenience store’.
It’s rare to find a relatively static narrative evoke such an intense atmosphere. And it’s strange to be persuaded that the atmosphere of a convenience store has a beauty that warrants the best part of an entire novel. But there’s a sort of tranquility and predictability about the store, a refusal to apologise for what it is, that contrasts strikingly with the constant self-pretence of the world outside. The impulse to construct one’s own narrative, for example, is a source of sustained interest for Murata throughout the novel. Keiko’s sister Mami is the main culprit. As Keiko notes with almost childlike simplicity, ‘she was getting carried away with making up a story for herself.’ Such moments are nicely preserved in Ginny Tapley Takemori’s translation.
The slightly unnatural quality of Murata’s dialogue complicates things slightly, though. Conversations often feel drawn out, characters are prone to over-explanation, Shiraha’s mansplaining becomes almost sickening. It sometimes feels as though Murata is spoon-feeding us. This infuses the world of the novel with a kind of pervasive unreality, a convenience-store-type perfection that we can’t quite believe. It’s an interesting and unsettling technique. In establishing a gulf between the reality of the world and the unreality of Keiko’s version of it, it gives rise to an ironic sense that Keiko is saving herself from the homogenising effect of society by resorting to an alien, robotic, and unnatural alternative.
But regardless of this tension, we realise that the wish to belong is basic to all mankind, but prompts widely differing behaviours. To one person, belonging means getting married, having kids, being promoted. To another, it’s living life by the manual, being useful, being ‘a cog in society’. And that’s a notion that I think most readers will find reassuring.
The University of Oxford has released its 2019 “Annual Admissions Statistical Report”, presenting minor improvements in accessibility in all categories and a significant increase in the total number of applications.
The 2018 intake saw an increase in the proportion of students admitted from state schools from 57.2% to 60.5%, as well as a 4.7% increase in the number of BME students admitted. The total number of applications also increased by 1577 from 19,938 in 2017 to 21,515 in 2018, including an 11.2% increase in the number of disabled applicants from 1080 to 1201.
In her introduction to the report, Vice Chancellor Louise Richardson wrote: “It was precisely because of our concern that the pace of change was too slow that this year we are increasing the size of our flagship summer programme UNIQ by 50% to 1375 school pupils.
“We also announced the creation of two new programmes, Opportunity Oxford and Foundation Oxford, which we believe will significantly accelerate the pace of change. When both programmes are up and running in four years’ time we expect that one in four of those admitted to Oxford will be from a deprived background.
“The entire University community, colleges and halls, departments and divisions, have united behind a commitment to effect a sea change in our admissions practices.”
In a statement to the press, the University said: “The new figures, for Oxford’s 2018 intake, show a solid foundation for the two major access initiatives announced by the University last month, which are due to accelerate the pace of change dramatically.
“The report is being published for the second year, as part of the University’s commitment to greater openness about its admissions process.”
The statement also claimed that: “Early figures for 2019 entry show still more progress. Offers to state school pupils are up again, to 64.5%.
“Offers to students from areas of low progression to higher education is up to 13.8%. However, the University is determined to move faster.”
Oxford SU’s VP for Access and Academic Affairs told Cherwell: “It is a major positive step that the University is continuing to release annual admissions data.
“The figures themselves show an incremental improvement – which is welcome, though still not at the pace we would like to see.
“Oxford SU has campaigned hard over the past 18 months to see tangible work be done to improve these figures and the future plans around the two major initiatives will go a long way to bring around a sea change.”
Region
Students from London and the South East made up 47.2% of all applications and accounted for 48.7% of students admitted to Oxford in the academic cycles of 2016-2018. Of the 1577 increase in applications in the last year, 49% was accounted for by increased applications from these regions.
The figure is significantly greater than undergraduates from the North East, who comprised 2.1% of students admitted over the period, with 159 students matriculating from the region, versus 2,005 from the South East.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland together accounted for 6.6% of admissions. The University’s breakdown of application and admission by region pairs together figures from the last two admissions cycles, showing an ongoing gap in numbers of admitted students between regions in the South of the UK and those in the North.
When compared to 2016-2017 statistics, successful admissions by London increased by 4.2%, but this positive growth was not shared by the South East. The region saw another 266 applications when compared to the previous cycle, but still registered -1.2% decline in successful candidates.
Most other regions noted only minor changes in their application and admissions rates. Among these, the South West saw 133 more applications but a drop of 25 in admissions and the West Midlands saw 19 more successful candidates accompanying 96 more applications.
Almost all regions around the UK measured a slight decrease in admissions, averaging -1% across the board, a statistic that comes in light of increased competition for places and a rising acceptance rate for international students.
School type
The number of students applying to Oxford from UK state schools has increased by 5.7% from the previous year, a rise of 442 students, whilst the number applying from independent schools rose by just 0.5%.
The period also saw a small increase of 3.3% in the number of students from UK state schools as a percentage of the total intake. The number of places taken by independent school students also fell from 1029 to 981, marking a decrease of 2.3% as a percentage of all students accepted.
Over 90% of students admitted to study at Mansfield attended UK state schools, compared to just 48.3% at Trinity, the worst-performing college. Over 60% of students were admitted from state schools at 12 of Oxford’s 29 colleges. Only Trinity offered fewer than 50% of its places to state educated students.
Classics continued to offer the fewest places to state school students at just 29.2%, and was the only subject to offer more than 60% of places to independent school students. Maths and Computer Science admitted the highest proportion of state school students at 76.8%, closely followed by Computer Science at 76.3%, Mathematics at 73.3%, and Law at 73.1%.
Between 2016 and 2018, 37% of state applications were to five of the most oversubscribed subjects, including Economics and Management, Medicine, PPE, Law, and Maths. By contrast 20% of independent school applicants were for the five least oversubscribed subjects: Classics, Music, Modern Languages, Chemistry, and English.
Background
The number of students from Acorn 4 and 5 backgrounds (the most disadvantaged in the UK) also increased this year, from 16.2% to 20.25%, an increase of 110. However, the number of students from POLAR 1 and 2 backgrounds decreased from 19.04% to 17.81%.
The POLAR system is a tool which measures how likely young people are to participate in higher education based on where they live. POLAR 1 and 2 are the most disadvantaged backgrounds listed.
At New College, the number of students admitted from Acorn 4 and 5 backgrounds fell by 4.6%, compared to a 3% increase at Mansfield. Only New and Queen’s saw a decrease in the number of students being admitted from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Ethnicity
The University’s report suggested a significant offer gap between UK applicants based on their ethnicities. In 2018, across the University 25.5% of white applicants received an offer, compared to 15% of Asian British applicants and 17.8% of applicants of all BME backgrounds. This offer gap appears to have changed little from 2017, when 17.9% of BME applicants received an offer compared to 25.9% of white applicants.
All colleges have each been found to admit a greater proportion of white applicants than BME applicants. Most notably, at St Hilda’s 43% of white applicants received an offer compared to 11% of black applicants and 25% of BME applicants as a whole. A similar gap was found at St Anne’s, where 40% of white applicants received an offer compared to 12% of black applicants and 19% of BME applicants as a whole. At St Anne’s and Teddy Hall, white applicants were at least twice as likely as BME applicants to receive an offer.
The number of BME students as a proportion of all admitted students has risen since 2014, from 13.6% to 18.3%. However, there is significant variation between colleges. At Magdalen, BME students make up just 10.8% of UK students admitted, compared to 21.8% at LMH.
At every college the offer rate was greater for white students than for Asian students. At Trinity, 28.2% of white applicants received an offer, while 11.1% of Asian applicants did. At St John’s, 17.6% of white applicants received an offer compared to 7.7% of Asian applicants.
There was also a significant gap in the conversion rate between offer-holders and admitted students for BME students compared to white students. At Magdalen, 72% of BME offer-holders were admitted between 2016 and 2018, while 90% of white offer-holders were admitted. However, at Mansfield, the conversion rate was very similar, with 86% of BME offer-holders admitted, compared to 83% of white offer-holders.
Gender
The proportion of UK-domiciled undergraduate students admitted to Oxford who identify as female has risen every year between 2014 and 2018. In 2014, 46.5% of admitted students identified as female, whereas last year the total had risen to 51.2%. For comparison, among Russell Group universities as a whole the most recent statistics in 2016 show that 55.4% of admitted students were female.
The University’s report also contained a breakdown of gender by subject, demonstrating a “wide variety” in male-to-female ratios among Oxford’s 25 main courses. The results covered UK-domiciled students over a three-year period between 2016 and 2018.
Experimental psychology, Biomedical sciences and English recorded the highest proportion of female UK students, with 79.3%, 74.7%, and 72.1% respectively. However, only 9.8% of UK students admitted to study Computer Science identified as female. Maths and Computer Science also saw a low intake of women, at 15.8%, with Physics at 18.3%, Engineering Science at 20.2%, Economics and Management at 27.5% and Maths at 28.5%.
Across the three-year 2016-2018 period, 19,301 UK men applied in total compared to 18,488 UK women. At the majority of colleges, more men applied than women, though this was not true at Lady Margaret Hall, which received 707 applications from women compared to just 486 from men. Similarly, Wadham College had 868 female applicants and only 684 male applicants.
The report also showed that the majority of colleges had a relatively even male-to-female ratio. However, this was not true of Balliol, where only 38.7% of students admitted were female, making it the college with the most unequal gender split of UK students. Female students also made up only 40.7% of total UK admissions for New College and 44.4% at Magdalen.
Lady Margaret Hall and St Hilda’s College had the highest proportion of women, with 57.9% and 57% of the total admissions respectively. Both of these colleges are former women’s colleges, as is St. Anne’s, in which 55.7% of total admissions were given to women. At Hertford, female students made up 55.8% of admissions.
Disability
According to the report, the number of admitted students who declare a disability has increased. In 2014, 6.0% of UK-domiciled students declared a disability, but this has risen to 9.2% of total admissions in 2018. Across the three-year period of 2016-2018, 623 admitted students declared disabilities, amounted to 8.0% of the total UK intake in this period.
This figure for Oxford’s 2018 intake is slightly lower than equivalent figures for other universities. The most recently published statistics in 2016 show that disabled students made up 11.9% of the total intake at all Russell Group universities.
The report also included a study into the categories of disabilities among applicants over the three-year period. Approximately 36% of these students declared themselves as having a learning difficulty, such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, and ADHD. A further 18.9% declared a disability that was categorised as a mental health problem.
The remaining 45.1% declared disabilities including autistic spectrum disorder, blind/ partial sight, deaf/partial hearing, longstanding illness, and wheelchair/mobility issues. Also included were “multiple disabilities” and “other disabilities”. No disability statistics for non-UK admissions were published in the report.
Nationality
In 2016-18 admissions to students from the US were up 23.5% on 2015-17 figures, whilst admissions to students from China were up 19.9%, and admissions to students from France were down 10.9%. Italy and France remain the most difficult places to apply to Oxford from, with an average acceptance rate of 7.1% and 7.6% respectively. The average acceptance rate for UK applicants has fallen 0.8% to 20.5%.
Reporting by Angus Brown, Amelia Horn, Sam Millward, Charlotte Moberly, and Ben van der Merwe.
The Tories are in decline, perhaps terminally. They are exhausted from months of May’s attempts to bully the Commons into passing her awful deal through brute repetitive force, and by simultaneously threatening MPs with both ‘no deal’ and ‘no Brexit,’ despite the two being mutually exclusive. They are close enough to schism as it is. And then came May’s final insult: her decision to cosy up to Jeremy Corbyn (the illegitimacy of whom the Tories have spent the last four years painstakingly illustrating) and a Customs Union.
Regardless of where you find yourself on the Brexit spectrum, the Customs Union ‘compromise’ really is the worst of all worlds. If the country is to succeed economically in any shape or form post-Brexit, we must be able to determine our own trade relations. Shaping our own global economic policy and trading with the entire world is a path to prosperity. Handing the power to define this over to our protectionist market competitors in Europe is a path to ruin, and would be even if the people to whom we were giving these powers had no reason to use them punitively. It doesn’t even solve the Irish border problem.
Most of the Conservative Party – the Party of free trade and enterprise – understand this, at the Parliamentary and the grassroots level: even in simpler times an imposition of a Customs Union would be enough to tear it apart. But the path May took to arrive at this terrible outcome makes it that little bit more toxic: via the party leadership that allows its members to call its own female Jewish MPs “‘shit-stirring c** buckets’ in the pay of Israel” without condemnation, let alone punishment.
The Customs Union proposal is symptomatic of May’s political outlook: she has never understood what makes most modern Conservatives tick – the spirit of the individual, true meritocracy, enterprise, liberty. Throughout her tenure, she has been tin-eared, illiberal and paternalistic to the point of authoritarianism.
Let’s take a stroll through some of May’s highlights from her time as Prime Minister and at the Home Office. Introducing totalitarian porn laws which will fail in their aim to prevent under-18s watching it but will encourage illegal activity and consumption of far darker, potentially illicit material by children? A smash hit, coming to a teenager near you this year. Using EU citizens as a bargaining chip and refusing to guarantee their right to remain despite calls (rightly) on all sides for her to do so? A real crowd-pleaser. The ‘citizens of nowhere’ soundbite? Printed on t-shirts. Sending ‘Go Home’ vans into neighbourhoods with high immigrant populations? An instant classic. Windrush. Announcing her intention to give the Government the power to remove or censor any undefined “online harms” or “unacceptable content” (which would include the press, by the backdoor) as a White Paper laid out last month, via the creation of what would essentially be a State censorship agency? Genuinely terrifying – and that’s without considering that a Corbyn government (and one that she legitimised) could be heir to these powers.
More than 200 of the current crop of Tory MPs support leaving without a deal over a Customs Union or further extension, as does a large majority of Tory voters and grassroots members. Had she been successful, a Government pivot to a Customs Union would have meant Tory schism, probably irrevocably.
This may be the heat death of the Conservative Party; if so, May has carefully nurtured its path to perfect entropic nothingness. When the leader of a party is not only presiding over its decline, but is personally fomenting its tortured deathbed throes, it is probably time that the party was rid of them. Even now that it is, it may be too late.
When Ann Widdecombe has defected, when even sitting Tory MPs did not vote Conservative at the European Elections, when Tory council candidates are losing faith because “belief in the party they joined is gone,” it might be a sign that the Tories are in trouble. The polls have them at single digits, trailing the Lib Dems and the Greens. No money is coming in. To natural Tory voters, handing the fate of party and country to a man of Corbyn’s character and politics is unfathomable, a point that the Tories themselves have spent the last four years painstakingly illustrating. That May even contemplated gift-wrapping the future of the Conservative Party and presenting it to him, as she then did, beggars belief. We have seen the terrible price the Party is paying for this at the local elections; watching the results for the Euros come in on Sunday night will be even worse.
Ultimately the talks did fail. Corbyn’s ‘balls to the Establishment’ instincts prevailed, and all this came come to nothing; the pressure to finally bow to one side of his party or the other on the matter of a second referendum was too much too bear and he chose neither – again. Yet even this mere flirtation with Corbyn and his dreaded Customs Union may still prove fatal. If Lord North is condemned as our worst Prime Minister just for losing the American colonies – which has really worked out pretty well for both them and us – I dread to think what history will make of Mrs. May (and her Cabinet) for destroying the Tory party’s claim to be the ‘natural party of government;’ for sacrificing our sense of national decency upon the edifice of prolonging her career; for handing power and legitimacy to a communist-supporting terrorist-sympathising anti-Semite; for the painful, slow-motion destruction of our international standing.
One day, historians may look back at these weeks and play Cluedo to ascribe blame for the murder of the Conservative Party. They will find it was Mrs. May, with the Labour Party, in the Customs Union.
It may not be too late. A new leader may yet save the Conservatives and the country by sorting out Brexit (it was never going to be easy but really Theresa…). Only time will tell. It was hard not to feel moved when we finally saw a glimpse of her humanity as she stood teary-eyed in front of No. 10. But thank heavens she’s gone.
Oxford has lost its place in the top two of the Guardian’s university league tables, and now sits behind Cambridge and St Andrews.
Oxford’s lower ranking is a result of its poor performance in affordability and graduate outcomes, where it ranked 24th nationwide. However, Oxford retained its traditionally strong performance in maths and medicine.
St Andrews beat Oxford by just 0.3% points in the Guardian’s rankings, at 97.6 to Cambridge’s 100. Oxford has the lowest student to staff ratio of the top three, but the highest expenditure per student.
Sally Mapstone, vice-chancellor and principal of St Andrews, said: “For a small Scottish university to be competing among the very best universities in the United Kingdom says much for the strengths of research-led teaching and student experience across the sector north of the border,” Mapstone said.
“This ranking bears contemplation simply because it describes a point in time on St Andrews’s journey, a signpost of the advances we have made in the measures by which the Guardian judges the quality of an institution – and where we might go from here.”
The fact that Oxford scored highest on student expenditures, tied with University of the Arts London, is likely to raise concerns about accessibility in the wake of yesterday’s release of the University’s 2019 access report.
Few crowds ever out-flock the bustling tourists of Christ Church’s Tom Quad, but on one sunny Saturday afternoon, the feat was achieved by a set of chess players, brought together by the Oxford University Chess Club (OUCC) for the annual Cuppers tournament. Seventeen teams, each of four players, entered from thirteen different colleges. The three-hour tournament resulted in a victory for Magdalen College’s first team.
Several teams threw down a serious challenge for the title. Magdalen I, looking to defend their title after last year’s victory, fielded former national English player Daniel Abbas and former national Singaporean player Ben Foo. Christ Church I proved stiff competition though with Isaac Sanders, a UK top-50 player, and Aloysius Lip, another England squad alumnus. Balliol and St Hilda’s were also threatening contenders, with highly rated captains Filip Mihov and Richard Zhu. The tournament featured five rounds of ‘blitz’ in which each player had only ten minutes to make all their moves, far faster than multi-hour ‘standard’ games. The result was many exciting and heated finishes.
Early round pairings were a slaughterhouse. Magdalen I took an emphatic 4-0 win against Lincoln; Balliol demolished Magdalen II; St Hilda’s showed no mercy against Christ Church III; and Christ Church I stole a confident 3-1 against Linacre. Magdalen I progressed with two more clean sweeps against St Hilda’s and Pembroke gaining an all-important lead. Christ Church I, Worcester, Lady Margaret Hall, and St Hilda’s chased narrowly behind, all drawing their Round Three matches.
The drama peaked in Round Four with the long-awaited clash between Christ Church I and Magdalen I. The Magdalen skipper on Board Three set the tone with a quick win, and it was followed soon by flawlessly commanding games by Magdalen Boards Two and Four to claim the match. Magdalen I were only denied a clean sweep in the face-off between the tournament’s two strongest players, Sanders and Abbas. Both clocks ticked down to two seconds apiece in a highly-tactical endgame, before Abbas snatched a last-gasp draw, sealing a 3.5-0.5 Magdalen win.
The final round cleared up the score table. LMH yearned for a last-minute steal for the title; Magdalen cruelly crushed their hopes in Round Five with a 3-1 putdown. They did, however, score a notable upset win of Luke Herlihy against Foo, and the team finished third, edging out St Peter’s I and Christ Church I on tiebreak. Pembroke took second place with an admirable four wins. The “best second team” title was awarded to St Peter’s II, slipping past a hard-battling Christ Church II. The overall champions were inevitably Magdalen I. The team’s performance was hugely impressive: they claimed a victory in all five rounds and conceded only a single loss and a draw on game points. Many congratulations to Daniel Abbas, Ben Foo, Alexander Hardwick, and Christopher Finn for an unassailable performance.
In the end, all agreed that the tournament was thrilling to play in for relative beginners and experienced competitors alike and ran seamlessly. The seamless organisation of the tournament by the Oxford University Chess Club night was certainly a credit to them, and if the hotly-contested competition this year has been anything to go by, who knows who will be fighting to take the title in Chess Cuppers 2020.
Oxford University Chess Club meets every Wednesday in Christ Church College at 7pm.
“Be not afeard; the
isle is full of noises, / Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt
not.” So announces Caliban in Act Three Scene Two of The Tempest, whose
words are particularly apt given the setting of RJ Productions’ rendition of
Shakespeare’s 1611 play: the gardens of Worcester College, verdant and
sprawling, doubtless help to transport spectators to the lush realm that is
Prospero’s island.
Staging a Shakespearean
play, particularly one so intricate and multi-layered as The Tempest, is
not an easy task: first, there are lines to learn (and lots of them); second,
there is the question of Shakespeare’s shifts between prose and blank verse,
not to mention scene changes and shifts within characters as the play
progresses. RJ Productions rise to the task admirably, with both cast and crew
working to deliver an entertaining and solid performance that emphasises The
Tempest’s elements of comedy.
To recap briefly the plot: Prospero, formerly Duke of Milan, has been exiled to an island, where he lives with his daughter, Miranda, his slave, Caliban, and his spritely assistant, Ariel. At his master’s command, Ariel orchestrates a storm that brings the Italian noblemen, some of whom conspired to oust Prospero and some of whom remained loyal to him, ashore. By the play’s end, Prospero has reunited Alonso with his son, announced to the group the imminent marriage of his daughter to Ferdinand, and freed Ariel and reluctantly acknowledged Caliban as his own. The last words are given over to Prospero, who some have read as a stand-in for the playwright himself, who asks the audience to “set [him] free”.
As such, the play
offers any number of possibilities to those staging it: to what extent will
love, revenge, power dynamics, family relations, the play’s more sinister
aspects or light-hearted moments be spotlighted? RJ Productions seem to have
opted to exploit the comic potential in Shakespeare’s verse, and theirs is an
approach that works. Caliban’s movement and speech provoke laughter among
spectators, and Gemma Daubeney gives a very good performance as a drunk, though
never absent-minded, Trinculo; indeed, as a pair, Daubeney and Gavin Fleming
(Caliban) suit each other. Miranda, played by Grace Albery, in awe of the
‘brave new world’ of men she discovers near the play’s end, is also a source of
comedy throughout.
And yet, comedy aside, this production also does well in registering the play’s more sinister moments. Take, for example, Act Two Scene One, where, with Alonso and his two advisers having fallen asleep, Antonio plants the seed of murder into Sebastian’s ear. The trio are awoken by Ariel just before the pair put their plan into action, and this scene is very well choreographed, making it quite clear to us who, in Prospero’s eyes, is in the wrong.
The opening scene of The
Tempest is always a difficult one. We are on-board the ship with the crew
as they attempt to stop the vessel from crashing or sinking or both, so it is
important to convey a certain panic and intensity. But, in this case, such
panic is conveyed at the expense of enunciation. Linked to this is the dialogue
in the opening scenes of the play, which is slightly rushed: this enunciation,
however, does improve better as the play moves on.
The acting is solid,
but the stand-out elements of this production prove to be the subtlest: the
fact that Ariel sits with the audience, watching on as the crew struggle to
keep control of their ship in the storm; Prospero’s broach, speaking to his
position as the all-seeing I/eye of the island; and, later, Prospero sitting
with the audience as Miranda and Ferdinand get to know each other better.
Granted, these gestures do not form the crux of the play, but they go a long
way in distinguishing this production from previous interpretations.
Entertaining and engaging, RJ Productions has delivered a well-constructed rendition of Shakespeare’s play, with live music and the setting of Worcester College Gardens complementing the dramatic action.
When I first read the premise of Ordinary Days, a song-cycle composed by Adam Dwon, I found myself a little uninspired. The musical of nineteen songs follows four characters who try to negotiate their way through New York, building meaningful connections along the way – their ‘ordinary lives’ can interweave in unexpected ways. This storyline seemed all too familiar. However, upon viewing it at the BT, I found myself pleasantly surprised at how refreshing and relatable this jazz and Bernstein-esque style musical is. Although the plot of the play may seem ‘ordinary’, the cast – through the direction of Mackay-Champion – bring Gwon’s score to life in quite an extraordinary way.
This is a play which requires a strong group of actors in order to convey its multi-faceted characters and we need look no further than in this cast composed of Ruby Nicholson, Máth Roberts, Fifi Zanabi and JJ Gibbs. The play opens with an injection of energy when Roberts, as Warren, bursts onto the scene and immediately grabs the audience’s attention. Warren’s costume works well to enhance Roberts’ superb acting of the youthful, naive and enthusiastic Warren, as he wears a rucksack and Converse shoes. We are attracted to his full-hearted personality but also worry for him in such an unforgiving city.
Enter Deb. Nicholson has a gift of a part in the spunky, sarcastic cynic Deb but she more than fulfils expectations and her comic timing is perfect. Deb’s solo number ‘Dear Professor Thompson’ sticks in the memory and the panic-email to a tutor when handing in an essay late is certainly relatable for the average Oxford student. The ending of the email to her professor with “Love, smiley face” is sure to get a laugh from the audience, as well as the comedic typing on her laptop to the rhythm of the music.
The friendship that develops between Warren and Deb creates an interesting dynamic. It is amusing to watch these apparent polar opposites initially interact in the song ‘Sort-of Fairy Tale’, with Roberts’ energy well portrayed in his grand movements across the stage, while Nicholson shoots him down and moves away on the beat. Their growing friendship in the latter part of the play is endearing, as the characters’ various vulnerabilities are exposed in the solos ‘Calm’ and ‘Life Story (Reprise)’. Roberts and Nicholson demonstrate their versatility as actors as they convey that there is more to the naive Warren and standoffish Deb than meets the eye, singing in brilliant fashion.
Special mention must also go to Gibbs as Jason who really comes into his own in his solos, a highlight being ‘Favourite Places’ which demonstrates his impressive vocal range. Gibbs plays the romantic who can sense a distance between himself and his girlfriend Claire, tenderly lamenting in his solo that he hasn’t “found a way inside her heart”. The duets between Gibbs as Jason and Zanabi as Claire come across as honest and relatable with the bickering of ‘I’m Trying’ and ‘Fine’ exhibiting well the everyday struggles of relationships.
The highlight of the show, however, has to be Zanabi’s rendition of ‘I’ll Be Here’, which adds a new dynamic of poignancy to the witty musical. I saw at least four audience members tearing up as we discover the real motivation behind Claire’s distance from Jason. The song was exquisitely sung and the staging – as directed by Appin Mackay-Champion and Mimi Pattinson – was emotionally wrought, with Zanabi standing in the spotlight with Gibbs watching on from a distance in the darkness.
Mackay-Champion and Pattinson deserve
great credit for their tight choreography and scene transitions. The beginning of the play revolves around
solos followed by blackouts, but as the characters become more interconnected
so do the scene transitions. It suffices
to say that Emma Wood’s work on the piano is an impressive feat as she plays
right from the moment of the audience’s arrival to the end applause with
perfect flair, managing to capture the varying moods of the songs well.
All in all, this is a very clever production, which cleverly balances humour with insecurity and tragedy as these endearing characters seek connections. The laugher and tears present on the night I saw it seem to say one thing: the whole team must be doing something special.
Coming off the success of their last show Talaash, Coriander Theatre returns with another all-BAME cast and crew production. Written and directed by Simran Uppal and Abu Leila, My Mother Runs in Zig-Zags incorporates elements of Leila’s previous play, On Death Etcetera.
My Mother Runs in Zig-Zags centres
on a conversation between two friends (Iqra Mohamed and Shekinah Opara) in a
kitchen which has an incessant leaky pipe. After they both call their mothers
to figure out how best to deal with this issue, the narrative then expands to recollections
of the Lebanese Civil War. When recalling these memories, the boundaries
between physical space and time collapse, as we are transported to a war-torn
Beirut at the height of the civil war.
Though this was a clever narrative arrangement,
at times it felt disjointed and difficult to follow; as a result, when Mohamed
announced at the end of the play that she was in fact going back home for Eid,
this decision felt rather abrupt. Nevertheless, the play succeeded in its
exploration of themes, particularly intergenerational trauma. This underpinned
the play and it was clear that both daughters had been affected by and bore the
weight of inherited trauma. I found the discussion of how migrant families can
often romanticise painful stories as a way of dealing with that trauma
particularly compelling.
Given the extraordinary lasting
effects of both the Lebanese and Nigerian Civil War, I could not help but think
that there was more that could have been explored within these narratives. This
was mostly true for the development of the narrative of Opara’s character, who merely
stated her parents’ inability to speak about the Biafran War. Although it may
have been a pointed decision of the directors to only mention the Biafran War
in passing, as someone whose parents lived through it, the lack of development
felt to me like a massive oversight within the script. Mohamed’s dialogue, on
the other hand, was more developed, and she effortlessly explored her grandmother
and mother’s memories and anecdotes of the Lebanese Civil War.
Considering the fact that for both Opara and Mohamed these were their first major acting roles, their confidence and instinct on stage was incredible to watch. With their naturalistic style of delivery, they involved the audience in the story and I couldn’t help but laugh during some of the exchanges between the two friends. The staging helped to reinforce this intimate atmosphere, with Mohamed and Opara often facing and speaking directly to the audience, thus blurring the line between the actors and audience. This production also made great use of the space at The North Wall, with luggage, hanging car bumpers and a fridge strewn across the stage. The set conveyed the two worlds the characters were straddling, effectively capturing the domestic life of many immigrant families with a visual illustration of how two distinct cultures can coexist.
The highlight of this play was undoubtedly its merging of music and contemporary dance, which showcased the diverse range of talents within the cast. Dancers and choreographers Esther Agbolade, Kalyna El Kettas and Jesryna Patel were particularly captivating, and they powerfully explored the hardening effects of war by rapidly switching between the roles of playful children and armed soldiers. Joliff Seville’s original music score also nicely complemented Leila’s and Uppal’s lyrical writing. Admittedly, however, the mixture of the live music, movement from the chorus, dance and spoken word was at times overpowering, and sometimes it was difficult to hear the evocative spoken word (delivered melodically by Michael Akodeji-Johnson).
All in all, My Mother Runs in Zig-Zags is an incredibly refreshing and ambitious piece of theatre. A year on from Medea (Oxford’s first all BAME cast and crew production) and as the first show funded by the Oxford BAME Drama Society, it is heart-warming to know that a clear legacy has now been established when it comes to Oxford student productions promoting diversity.
