Drama
What's in a name? In the name of Sir Tom Stoppard is this summer's highest-grossing student play at the Edinburgh Fringe. In Stoppard's name (and the 'world premiere' tag attached) is a bundle of press clippings from the national papers. In Stoppard's name is a big win for Oxford drama.
The only problem is that it isn't very good. I don't mean to spoil the fun: I mean, I actually like Stoppard very much, and I think at his best he's one of the best dramatists writing today. Sadly, this 1970 screenplay, never previously staged or filmed, is not Stoppard at his best. The jokes aren't his crispest (even the best ones are clever-clever puns that you sense he could write while asleep) and the whole affair lacks punch and energy.
Galileo is the story of a mathematician: but a mathematician who (unusually) risked his life to keep his integrity. In following the theories of Copernicus and flying in the face of accepted wisdom (in particular Aristotle's maxim that "there can be nothing new under the heavens"), he offended the establishment and the church.
As his theories advanced, so his offensiveness grew, until eventually he was forced to recant by Pope Urban VIII. Even more than usual then, Stoppard has picked up on an educated story for educated people. The script is littered with little historical in-jokes, charming if you get them.
Let's accentuate the positive. Himanshu Ojha gives a strong performance in the title role. Especially when alone and treating the audience as a lecture theatre full of astronomers and mathematicians, we get a sense of the dynamic, forceful, rebellious mind that was Galileo Galilei.
The intensity drops when he is reacting to his fellow actors; his relationship with his mistress Marina (Caroline Brown) doesn't ring true, and when teaching physics to his young pupil Cosimo di Medici (William Blair) it's unclear whether Galileo is supposed to be ineffectual and over-strenuous or not. But in general this is an impressive take on a difficult role.
The cast (somewhat changed from the Edinburgh run) contains some fine performances. Dan Cooper does a fun comic turn as the lecherous Ferdinand, Duke of Florence. On top of this, Rosie Leach announces her arrival in Oxford with a splendid performance as his long-suffering and haughty wife.
I don't know whether the amount of doubling up of actors was deliberate, but if so, it was a questionable decision: too often one cardinal seems much like another, and endless monks and heralds merge into one.
The central problem is that Galileo is a screenplay, and it doesn't work as a play - it feels fragmentary and cool. Jaspreet Boparai, the director and adaptor, says that adapting the screenplay took more drafts than it took Stoppard to write the play in the first place, and I believe him.
The evidence of his labour shows in every lighting change, every re-allocated line; the production bursts at the seams with intellectual effort. And yet once it's on the stage, Galileo feels directionless; rather than imbuing it with the frantic pace one might expect for such a narrative-based drama, Boparai has chosen a graver and more ponderous approach, which does little to disguise the flatness of the script.
It would be possible, at first glance, to mistake Desire Under the Elms for just another Steinbeck-style tale of poverty, death and farming in 19th-Century America. "I did GCSE English," you cry. "If you've read one, you've read them all." Do not.
It is much, much more than that. At the heart of O'Neill's play is the 2,500 year-old Hippolytus plot: Ephraim (Jack Merriott) brings home his young, pretty new bride Abbie (Pia Fitzgerald) to the family farm. Abbie, bored of her much older husband and greedy for the farm, seduces Ephraim's stepson Eben (Kane Sharpe) and gives birth to his son, which they pass off as Ephraim's. Soon, however, she realises that her feelings for Eben are stronger than she thinks, and she must choose between Eben and their son.
The key to the play's success is its variety. Director Holly Race has ensured that her actors show enormous depth of character, and each brings something different to the production; Fitzgerald's sinister, Iago-like manipulation is particularly impressive, cementing her reputation as one of Oxford's leading actresses.
An enormous spectrum of emotion is on display, from anger, greed, and lust to calm contemplation, all expertly portrayed by the talented cast. It is not easy to make O'Neill's sometimes stilted dialogue seem convincing, but this is achieved.
At the play's core is a powerful human struggle which poses very unsettling questions. Do not miss this.
Less surreal than Pinter's full-length plays, but still concerned with the nature of truth and its various interpretations, The Collection explores, among others, issues of trust, infidelity, and emotional control.
In her first production after a successful Cuppers entry last year, Pippa Needs' direction is inventive and unobtrusive, her actors promoting the atmosphere of awkward tension intrinsic to so many of Pinter's works.
The set fills the small stage of the BT effectively, with two halves of different living rooms joined together in mirror image to make a whole. This neat device, aided by a creative lighting design, allows the actors to move at the same time around the space while in separate scenes.
The four actors deal well with the sparse dialogue: Rob Hayward stands out as James, the husband obsessed with his wife's claim that she had a one-night stand at a hotel. What actually happened that night is never established, though what actually happened isn't really the point; Pinter is far more interested in the way different versions of the story develop as a result of his characters' various impulses and manipulations.
The 1960s language occasionally sounds dated, as in quite a few of Pinter's earlier works, but the darkly comic foibles of the middle classes are as recognisable as ever.
Overall this is a solid production of an intriguing play.
This week sees one of the University's flagship drama events taking place at the Burton-Taylor Theatre. Over 30 fresher teams from every college will perform a thirty-minute show each throughout the week, at the end of which ten will be chosen as finalists. The whole event will culminate in an Oscar awards type party, when awards such as 'Best Actor' will be announced.
This year the turnout is exceptionally varied, offering a mix of comedy, tragedy, satire, new writing and devised pieces. New College offer a devised performance of Some Fairytales, while on Friday Salome is performed after Oriel's presentation of Albee's The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?
At a mere £1 per show, it's definitely worth popping down to the BT.
18th Nov 2004