Drama
Romeo and Juliet needs no introduction; the story of two youthful lovers kept apart by their warring families is known and performed all over the world.
Although it's performed regularly, the director of its most famous recent incarnation, Baz Luhrmann, thought that the way for it to appeal to a modern audience was to have the cast prancing around on beaches wearing Hawaiian shirts.
So Holly Race's stated intention with this production, to strip away all the preconceptions and clichés and dumbing down which surround this greatest of all love stories and return us to the play and the words themselves, is a very welcome one indeed.
It's also a very ambitious one; Race is brave indeed to attempt to breathe new life into such a famous play without resorting to gimmickry. Her success lies in acute attention to detail combined with the sheer energy of the performances.
The Verona of this play is not a rose-tinted fairy-tale land but somewhere much more akin to the London of Shakespeare's own time. This contemporary setting is taken very seriously; from the music played at the ball to the weapons used by Tybalt to kill Mercutio, everything is historically plausible.
The actors, all of whom speak verse flawlessly, know what their lines mean and say them with genuine understanding and feeling. They accompany this with great energy, with movement and gestures appropriate to their words, and the meaning of the lines and the motives for the action become clear. They're also obviously having enormous fun, something which is very infectious.
The acting is superb and has real variety. Every actor has found their own style of speaking their lines.
Special praise must go to Amy Jackson, whose Juliet moves seamlessly from infatuated euphoria to grief and anger, and to the excellent Will Fysh for finding impressively different styles for his three roles. The actors can restrain themselves as well; only one character, Ben Carson's Capulet, shows anger with shouts and storming, and it is all the more effective there for its rarity elsewhere. In this way a large number of very assured, very individual performances come together to create a strong ensemble.
Race is not afraid to portray the darker side of the play either. The energy of the dance becomes the much more sinister energy of the sword fight, where Mercutio's (Jack Farthing) desperate cries of "a plague on both your houses" are all the more heart-rending for his previous joviality.
The rapid change of tone and atmosphere at Juliet's feigned death is almost shocking in its violence. All the darker aspects of the protagonists' very convincing love come to the forefront here as well: grief, uncertainty and fear as well as desire. The set and lighting design reflect this by being full of shadows and other places to hide.
This is Romeo and Juliet as it ought to be: authentic, thoughtful and understandable by anyone, however poorly acquainted with Shakespeare. It's also, very simply, great fun to watch and utterly engrossing; you will share the characters' feelings and travel with them from joy to despair.
This fast-paced musical revue takes its audience on an accelerated ride through the many stages of the clichéd modern relationship. For this, read dysfunctional and riddled with dilemmas.
We are presented with a series of tragi-comic scenarios which progress from a painfully awkward first date to divorce and the recommencing of the quest for partnership via desperate attempts of parental matchmaking, cold feet and marital tension.
With four actors portraying 30 characters, there is potential for confusion, but the numbers selected from the original score leave only a spattering of stereotypes, which are well within the cast's ability to portray.
All the performers, especially Kirsty Mann, provide a tremendous amount of vocal and physical energy. Laura Corcoran and Barry Gibney's portrayal of the pressurising middle-class parents gives the production one of its funniest moments. Having had their grand ambitions shattered by the revelation of their son's break-up, the duo effectively combine sentiments of insincere indifference with one-liner outbursts such as 'Future spinster!' and 'disappointment!'
Corcoran's performance as a Bridget Jones-style confessional dating video recording is beautifully controlled so that she wins our sympathy as well as our laughter.
As the lines intended to be funny are often on the tame side and can fall a little flat when not complemented by well-choreographed movement, the hilarity should be largely accredited to the direction, rather than slick delivery. The minimalist set and inventive use of props allows the scenes to flow into one another freely and enable easy transition into hyperbolic moments with an fantastical air to them.
Don't dismiss this just because you're not a fan of musicals. If it doesn't even bring a smile then you've never really dated.
There is something deeply in the spirit of this University to write and perform a play dramatising monologues first written in Latin a couple of millennia ago. And what a good thing that is. Ovid's Women is a charming and at times moving piece, the writing delicate and the acting deeply felt.
Kaffy Rice-Oxley, a Keble classics graduate, has taken the letters written in Ovid's Heroides and turned them into a short play consisting of interconnecting monologues. All five of the speakers are historical or mythological figures abandoned by the loves of their lives. Their names, Dido, Medea, Hypermnestra, Penelope and Helen, have a certain magic of their own. These figures have become remote character types - Rice-Oxley's script tries to bring them back to life.
It must be said at this stage that this production is in a state of some chaos, through no fault of its own: Rice-Oxley, who was due to play Hypermnestra and direct, is unwell. So whatever gets to the stage in 3rd week will be pulled together in the ten days after I write this review. Helen Brown and Luke Sandler, both of whom must now come into some kind of warhorse category among Oxford directors, have taken over the show, which has been partly re-cast.
If the two monologues shown at the press preview are indicative of the overall standard, however, this should be a thoroughly enjoyable show. Heather Oliver plays Dido as a queen fallen on hard times; there is a tragic dignity in her performance which is distinctly English and rather moving. Nanw Rowlands's Medea is an interesting interpretation, full of caustic humour and flashes of anger. Their different acting styles are a comment on the fact that all five actors rehearse separately with different directors: an intriguing idea which could lead to a certain unevenness in style and quality when spliced together.
Nevertheless, these timeless voices still resonate, and in the BT we cannot fail to become involved as these women tell us their stories.
27th Jan 2005