P.Viktor

Oxford Social Diary Relaunch

For the time being I have decided to bring my Oxford Social Diary blog to an end. Unfortunately the time commitment involved as proved too great to sustain. Although it seems rather glamorous to attend all sorts of premières and press nights, it does take a lot of work to write up my reviews and articles, and after too many weekends faced with the prospect of working the whole time, I have decided to scale things back, for now. However, I have really enjoyed the experience, and it has given me a lot of food for thought and many useful contacts. What Oxford really lacks is an edgy, youthful arts magazine dedicated to all the cultural events going on in the city, so I am hoping to launch a new webzine in the New Year. It will take a lot of time and planning, and I have to be really sure that it will be worth it, but I'm really hopeful that I can put together something by early spring - say March 2010, with a printed magazine launch much later in the year. I love writing about culture, and I love experiencing new things in Oxford, so I am very hopeful that I could create something that people will really want to engage with. I will no doubt keep people up-to-date on this blog for the time being, so watch this space. If any writers / designers / photographers would like to get involved, please email me.

The Randolph Hotel Spa

The Randolph Hotel have been extending their reach in terms of the services they offer their customers, and their Spa and gym facilities are part of that expansion. Tucked away in the basement of the hotel, you might be mistaken for thinking you have entered a completely different world. The fact that there are no windows might have some coming out in a cold sweat, but the effect is really one of relaxation - removing oneself entirely from the frenetic pace of the city. The spa is all dark wood, mood lighting, and the kind of music often reserved for elevators or greeting cards stores (think panpipes). The main walkway of the spa is lit by lanterns leading into the Thermal Suite and gym with elegant changing rooms leading off it that provide all the privacy you require. There is a range of products available to use in the changing room, plus deluxe showers and sizeable lockers with a comfortable robe and slippers to wear around the facility.

The Thermal Suite is one of the best features of the Spa. It contains two steam rooms, two saunas, a large jacuzzi, an ice fountain, and sensation shower. The first steam room is set at 45 degrees, designed perhaps for those who can't really stomach heat. The second steam room, set at 65 degrees, also has eucalyptus, and for those with respiratory problems such as asthma, or just a horrible head cold, this room is bliss, really allowing the airways and pores of the skin to open up and breathe. The next dry sauna is okay, again for those who do not like too much heat, but the last sauna, at 85 degrees, is a treat. Fifteen minutes in there (there is a helpful timer) allows the sweat to literally pour out of the body, removing nasty toxins from the skin. The ice fountain is nothing more than a small refrigerated room to help close the pores, and the ‘sensation shower’ simply a fancy shower with three options (drench, drizzle, fragrance).


The heated Jacuzzi really is wonderful, with powerful jets easing the muscles of the body, though ideally it can only fit about two people at a time (though it is supposed to cater for around four). Sitting in here with water effervescing about you is rather wonderful, especially after the heat of the sauna. The gym features top of the range, high tech equipment, and although rather small, it perfectly caters for those people who want a workout as well as relaxation. Lastly, the relaxation room has comfortable seats to put the feet up, sip bottled water or ginger tea, and read a magazine (or have a doze). During one's stay, there is an option to have a treatment, such as the 'Aroma Back Relief Treatment', a deep massage in one of the pleasant treatment rooms. The massage specialists undo all the stress and tension in the body, after which going back to the Thermal Suite allows a deeper relaxation than before. For half a day at around £60, the Randolph Hotel Spa is a wonderful oasis in the centre of the city to hide away in.


Official Website

Oxford Playhouse – The Browning Version and Swansong, Review

Oxford Playhouse’s summer season might be drawing to a close, but that doesn’t mean that they are resting on their laurels any time soon. Rather than bring things down a notch or two, they are currently staging two plays an evening  - Terence Rattigan’s The Browning Version and Anton Chekhov’s Swansong. The linchpin of these two different plays is renowned film and television actor Peter Bowles (To the Manor Born, Rumpole of the Bailey, The Avengers) who displays enviable stamina in both his performances. The Chekhov play Swansong is no longer than twenty-five minutes, a one act play in which Bowle’s plays Svetlovidov, an aging actor drunkenly reminiscing about his past glories on the stage and ruminating on the horrors of old age and death. Almost unrecognisable in wig and toga, apart from his distinctive voice, he ambles onto the stage with nought but a candle, and for the next twenty minutes, accompanied only intermittently by James Laurenson as Nikita, wails and shouts and gives renditions of Hamlet, King Lear, and The Agamemmon.

The longer than usual interval gave the set dresses enough time to completely transform the stage into a beautiful Edwardian drawing room. Ostensibly this play could not be farther removed from Chekhov’s Swansong, but scratch a little deeper and the similarities emerge. Terrence Rattigan’s play tells the story of a classics teacher, Andrew Crocker-Harris, during his last few days at an unnamed public boy’s school. His academic career is coming to a close as his health is failing him, leaving the school for a place at a much less prestigious establishment. The brilliance of this play is that Rattigan manages to tell the lives of his characters through one sunny afternoon in a series of mishaps and revelations that bring buried emotions to the fore, piercing the stiff-upper-lip guard of the protagonists. There is exceptional ensemble work by Candida Gubbins as Crocker-Harris’s wife, a mean spirited and vengeful flirt, Charles Edwards as Frank Hunter, who is having an affair with Mrs. Crocker-Harris, and James Musgrave as Taplow, an affable student who gets some of the funniest lines in the play and duly relishes them.

The real praise must be reserved for Peter Bowles’ superb performance, brilliantly understated and yet masterful at the same time. His Crocker-Harris is stoic yet tragic, impenetrable but vulnerable too. When he hears that the headmaster refers to him as the ‘Himmler of the lower-fifth’ his shock and hurt is palpable. As the same headmaster hits him with the double blow of not being awarded a pension and having to make way in a speeches ceremony for a more popular sports master, his resignation and politeness are wrought with great pathos. When Taplow gives his respected teacher a copy of The Agammenon in verse, a sincere gesture of gratitude, the elder man is moved to heart wrenching tears. Peter Bowles proves that he is still one of the finest British actors alive today, effortlessly taking on two roles in one evening and giving his all to both.

Official Website

Oxford Playhouse – The BFG, Review

Adapting books for stage can often be a tricky business. Where imagination can bring any prose to life, playwrights and directors are frequently left with a headache as to how to bring the impossible to the stage. This is the problem facing the production team behind Roald Dahl’s The BFG, which is currently playing at the Oxford Playhouse. The central problem is that of scale – how to depict a giant playing amongst ‘human beans’. It is a quandary that the team try to solve with great vigour, though they don’t quite manage to pull it off successfully. A greater budget might have allowed for spectacular special effects to get over the trickier elements of the story, but the solutions used in this production are not always successful. The truth is The BFG asks a lot from its audience (both children and adults) who may find it difficult to make the imaginative leap necessary to fully invest in the play.

Having said this, there are some clever elements, such as the use of shadow puppetry to depict the capture of the flesh-eating giants, as well as their rather grisly masks, the use of props like the doll’s house doubling up as Sophie’s orphanage and Buckingham Palace, and an ingenious use of lighting and dry ice. What hinders the imagination however is the rather clunky narrative device at the beginning the play, where a group of ‘children’ at a birthday party decide to re-enact the birthday girl’s favourite book, The BFG, so that the production becomes a play within a play. This device is a little contrived, and often has the detrimental effect of pulling the audience out of the story. It also gave the company a rather convenient get-out clause in terms of certain parts of the story that may have been too difficult to stage due to financial constraints. Whenever the birthday girl, also called Sophie, narrated parts of the action, it felt flat and a little uninspired, seeking to remind the audience that these are actors playing parts rather than appearing as real characters.