Drama
'Laughter is a serious business," said Joe Orton, "and comedy a more dangerous weapon than tragedy." With this award-winning black comedy he seems to have proved his own adage - be warned, you may laugh so hard it hurts.
The play follows the fortunes of two young thieves, Dennis and Hal, who have a (very) close relationship, but whose life of crime is hindered by Hal's unfortunate inability to lie. As the play opens they have robbed a bank, and hidden the loot in Hal's home, where preparations are underway for his mother's funeral.
The money is soon transferred to the coffin for safekeeping, while the corpse keeps turning up around the house. Meanwhile, the late Mrs McLeavy's nurse is planning to marry the new widower herself, then dispose of him as she did his wife to double her inheritance. With the undercover entrance of the somewhat unethical Inspector Truscott the scene is set for total mayhem.
A few years ago, Guinness ran an advert that claimed 82% of convent girls became strippers. Loot shows that some us will go even further than that: as Nurse Fay McMahon, Joanna McGinley steals the show, scheming round the stage like Joan Cusack's 'Black Widow' in The Addams Family Values.
Ironically, given the plot revolves around murder, sex and bank-robbery, Loot is pervaded by Catholic guilt. At one point Hal contemplates going to confession - "in order to purge my soul of this afternoon's events." But this is no Magdalene Sisters-like wallow in oppressive guilt; rather a satirical look at people still trying to play to a set of rules having long abandoned the morality behind them.
But smoothly executed and well performed, Loot remains above all a damn good laugh.
Oh, god, what do I say about this? There's a lot of things - a lot - that I don't like in 3 Fat Virgins. The play describes itself as 'modern day women freeing themselves from society's expectations': not convinced. I didn't see any freedom. I was left with a residue of discomfort at the sheer bluntness of it all, which just cut far too close to the bone.
3 Fat Virgins: you don't have to be fat, you don't have to be a virgin, you just have to be a woman. This is only the second production on British soil of Singapore's favourite play, a series of vignettes about the identity of women by Ovidia Yu, famous Singaporean playwright and novelist. Why fat virgins? Because it's a comment on what soeciety thinks women should be.
It was the acting that threw it for me. In particular Virgin C. All his talk about food, and eating, and FAT, played by a horrifc cross-dressing caricature: it taps directly into the female psyche. I'm not sure men should see this play. But I think maybe every woman should.
Not for the first time this term the BT plays host to an American import that claims relevance for what is, in fact, a rather silly play. A lecture given by the eponymous bride of God seeks to explain the idiosyncrasies of Catholic dogma, using only well-rehearsed logic, a flip chart, and a small boy who is catechised with cookies. We learn of the mortal sins ("hijacking a plane; masturbation") and those condemned to eternal damnation (amongst them myself).
Sister Mary is not an opaque satire. Thomas, the teacher's pet, learns only by being bribed with cookies. In the ludicrous nativity play, written by one of Sister Mary's finest pupils ("when she was in the seventh year, she didn't get her period, she got a stigmata") the crucial message is rehearsed: "I understand that I am not supposed to understand."
The heart-wrenching soliloquy at the play's close, in which a former pupil seeks an explanation for her many and excruciating woes, only serves to dampen what would otherwise have been a bad but cogent comedy. The message is hammered home with excessive force. Which is a shame, because there's a genuine humour to Jo Johnson's Sister Mary, and the production contains some nice touches, of which the dancing camel was my favourite.
Director Dan Mallory revels in the controversy that has surrounded Sister Mary (provoking bomb threats in America's holier-than-thou southern states), but this is not Saint Louis, this is Oxford, and we liberal minded British know better than to find puerile Catholic bashing offensive - what else did we have a Reformation for? Yes, Catholic doctrine contains many paradoxes and contradictions: tell me something I don't know.
College based drama can usually be divided simply into two categories: poor and mediocre. But to truly capture the genius of Ed Wethered's production of Dr Faustus, you would be hard pressed not to call for another: outstanding. Set in the medieval trappings of Christ Church Cathedral, this play breaks through the traditional barriers of pretension one might expect from a play so complicated and so insightful into the exigencies of human nature.
It is impossible not to get drawn into the stage (the stage being most of the Cathedral) as the audience is met with an orgy of exposed writhing bodies depicting the seven deadly sins, vying for Faustus' soul. Particularly refreshing was the playing of Mephistophilis by Freyja Cox Jensen, who managed to perfectly capture her character's struggle between the tempter and the beginnings of human emotion. Applause must, of course, also be extended to Oxford's new dramatic sensation, fresher Harry Lloyd, whose portrayal of Faustus' arrogance is sheer brilliance; he manages not only to wrestle with the intricacy of the many facets of his character's pride ("I am pride") but also captures his torment between good and evil in a way which can only command respect.
So you've heard the intellectual bit and there is only one thing left for me to say: you must go and see this play. If it's for the grandeur of the Cathedral, the excellence of the first class acting, the attractiveness of the cast or the semi-nudity, Faustus is one play this term that you cannot afford to miss.
27th Feb 2003