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✮✮✮✮ I laughed and laughed and as I cycled home I was still laughing. Kvetch, on at the Burton Taylor Studio until Saturday, is hilarious. The word is of Yiddish origin and means to complain or whine (a lot); it can also be used as a noun. Steven Berkoff’s 1987 short play, set in Brooklyn, […]
Continue Reading✮✮✮✮ The Keble O’Reilly filled up pretty well for the opening night of Aladdin, and it soon became clear why. Aladdin is not, admittedly, the most novel choice for a pantomime. But this was the only regard in which the Oxford Revue were unoriginal. From the outset, it was clear that much fun had been […]
Continue Reading✮✮✮ In 1629, no less a critic than Ben Jonson decried Pericles as “stale”. Despite the valiant attempts of cast and director, the first half of the play still seems long, dull and turgid. As Pericles travels from place to place, there are brief moments of quality, but the first episode of real drama (as […]
Continue Reading✮✮✮ St John the Evangelist’s feels like a strangely appropriate setting to host a piece of musical theatre in which the son of a god dies in agony, betrayed by one that he thought loved him. It is difficult not to be unsettled by the figure of Christ gazing down upon both the audience and […]
Continue Reading“It’s not exactly festive fare, no”. Carla Kingham, director of Kellogg College’s upcoming production of Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down, is as understated about her new project as she is passionate. Richard Cameron’s dark, harrowing one act-er is certainly a far cry from the all-singing all-dancing Christmas offerings being rehearsed all over the city […]
Continue Reading✮✮✮ Engimatic, Beckettian, intriguing – Shells received excellent previews. Certainly, the set is impeccable: a beachcomber’s paradise, strewn with sand, flotsam and jetsam. Subtle lighting suggests the shift from dawn to day to dusk, complementing the theme of transience. Set in a dystopian future of coastal erosion, the beach is a lawless frontier, populated by […]
Continue Reading‘There’s a humanity in Endgame,’ director Will Felton tells me, ‘which is often overlooked.’ This is a bold claim to make – and if I hadn’t already seen what this production’s cast of four were capable of, I’d probably have scoffed. This Fools and Kings production of Endgame is every bit as unsettling as the best Beckett […]
Continue Reading✮✮✮ There’s a certain breed of musical that manages to strike a chord deeper than just a nice tune and sharp dancing—think Julie Andrews prancing around the Swiss Alps, Harold Hill organising the River City Boys’ Band, and so on. For nearly sixty years, West Side Story has rightfully reigned from its place in this […]
Continue Reading✮✮ So here’s purgatory: four members of the recently deceased find themselves engulfed in sheets billowing from all sides. The Carol Vorderman from Hell gives them a 100-minute countdown, in which they have to choose a memory they wish to relive on loop for all eternity. Navel-gazing taken to another level. The godforsaken gang reflects […]
Continue Reading✮✮✮✮✮ The Buttless Chaps are back: four performers, 18 sketches, and a touch of oddly hilarious German musical to finish. Given the success of their show Some Funny earlier this year, the company had a tough job in making their return as entertaining with More Funny, but judging by the audience’s warm reception they’ve managed […]
Continue ReadingRichard II is shadowed by a crushing and overwhelming feeling of loss. Ethereal sopranos sing a chilling lament, the widowed Duchess of Gloucester howls from behind tear-stained cheeks, and the members of the court march in funereally. It is this sense of grief and decline that hangs like a spectre over the rest of the […]
Continue ReadingUnless you’re a student of (French) literature and history, the poet, duellist and nobleman Cyrano de Bergerac will be amongst the unlikely historical characters that have crossed your path. But fear not: Attending the St. Hilda’s College Drama Society’s production of the homonymous play, translated by the Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess, will provide an […]
Continue Reading✮✮✮✮ “Anal vetting.” It is fitting that the above phrase, funny in almost any context, is pronounced within 30 seconds of the start of Milk and Two Sugars’ utterly ridiculous and rollicking production of The Hypochondriac, Richard Bean’s 2004 adaptation of Molière’s last play. Spoken by an inspired Kieran Ahern as Argan, the play’s titular […]
Continue Reading✮✮✮✮ The stage for Tarell Alvin McCraney’s production of Antony and Cleopatra looks like a typical antiquated space: creamy-toned Corinthian columns, white marble on the floor, a blue sea suggested at the back of the stage … However, McCraney instead set the play in 1790s Haiti during the Revolutionary period. Cleopatra and her Egyptian subjects […]
Continue Reading✮✮✮✮ With the prizes and prestige of the original show combined with gritty themes of human existence and value, it takes a brave group to take on the play 100. But it is safe to say that is production is not going to disappoint. The plot initially seems simple – you must choose a memory […]
Continue Reading✮✮✮✮ “Shepherd’s pie peppered with actual shepherd on top.” Probably the best line in any musical ever. It actually sums up the plot pretty neatly: Sweeney Todd, hard-done-by barber, finds a way with his landlord (hard-up purveyor of pies Mrs Lovett) to have his cake – perhaps pie here – and eat it too. Cannibalistic […]
Continue ReadingThe cast of Judgement at Nuremberg were absolutely clear on one thing. This was not to be a play about Nazis. That seemed a difficult goal, given the script (about Nazis). But the production nonetheless manages to avoid trope and cliché in its depiction of their trials: the entire point is that we do not know whom […]
Continue ReadingIt’s all very well extolling the virtues of sitting in a theatre – but what happens when we want to go further? Adriano Graziani, Welsh tenor and graduate of the RCM/Cardiff International Academy of Voice, is here with a rather exciting type of careers advice. The news is, at first, bad. Adriano’s current workdays start […]
Continue ReadingOpera. Etymological roots in ‘work’. Something all Oxonians – nay, all students – can at least feign passing familiarity with. Yet still the vast majority of us (read: at least three of my friends, I asked them) tend to balk at the thought of taking an evening off to sample some Puccini. When it comes […]
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