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West Ox Arts: The Gallery, Bampton

8:00am Thursday 17th May 2012

High standards, skill and imagination are here in abundance in the Gallery in Bampton. Printmaker Susan Wheeler brings out beautifully the underlying structure of Wittenham Clumps, from Castle Hill, in linocut, a medium that lends itself to linear forms. She, in common with many artists like Paul Nash, captures a moment in time of this changing landscape.

Oxfordshire Artweeks show by Belinda Ellis, St Mary's Lodge, Bloxham

10:00am Thursday 10th May 2012

Belinda Ellis is exhibiting her paintings in her house and studio, which she describes as “the perfect studio”. It is here that she creates her abstract pieces. Often they are very large ones.

Artweeks show: The Big Book, Magdalen Road Studios, Oxford

10:00am Thursday 10th May 2012

The photograph on the right of The Big Book beside its sculptor, Diana Bell, demonstrates well the magnitude of the work itself and makes reference to the scale of the interactive project that Bell has created via the book. The book is beautifully executed and its old-fashioned binding is adorned by just one word: Imagine. The book’s binding opens to reveal canvas pages on which the public have been invited to write what they do or want to imagine. The universal appeal of the project is testified to by Bell’s estimate that the book contains entries in 64 languages.

Oxfordshire Artweeks show Love is... at Worton Park, Cassington

9:50am Thursday 10th May 2012

This exhibition brings together 12 artists each exploring what love means to them. Kay Jamieson takes as her theme the Oxford Canal, where indeed she met love. Working in acrylics she captures the gentle pace of both the canal itself and the boats and barges that use it.

Henry V: Oxford Playhouse

8:50am Thursday 10th May 2012

This is a very appropriate time to bring a production of Shakespeare’s Henry V to Oxfordshire. With the repatriation of fallen troops returning to RAF Brize Norton, the whole question of whether we should be fighting a war in Afghanistan at all seems closer to home. Shakespeare’s Henry, too, worries about mounting casualties as he fights his campaign in France — a campaign that has begun in flag-waving fashion with a blaze of cannon balls, drawn swords, and the famous speech: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more”.

The story of the four-minute mile: Iffley Road running track, Oxford

8:40am Thursday 10th May 2012

In May 1954, Roger Bannister became the first person on record to run a mile in under four minutes, right here in Oxford on the Iffley Road Running Track. As part of their PlaysOut series, Oxford Playhouse have produced this retrospective and reflection on the event and its effect on those involved, and those who have been inspired by it.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona: Christ Church, Oxford

11:59am Friday 4th May 2012

In a season set to see an abundance of Shakespeare in many forms, Oxford University’s Barbarian Productions is staging one of the Bard’s less frequently performed plays — The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Once more unto the breach

8:30am Thursday 3rd May 2012

Jamie Parker’s wife went into labour on opening night of his last play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Dangerous Liaisons: Oxford Playhouse

1:35pm Wednesday 2nd May 2012

‘Anyone could do it,” says the Vicomte in bored tones. The Marquise de Merteuil has suggested that her former lover the Vicomte should relieve innocent young Cécile of her virginity, now that she has left convent school. The Vicomte rejects the idea, not because he has any moral scruples but because he is determined to concentrate on bagging and bedding the highly religious Madame de Tourvel, a famously chaste judge’s wife.