Author: Frankie Goodway

Frankie Goodway reviews the opening night of Contractions at the Burton Taylor studio. The first night of Contractions at the Burton Taylor was rather excellent, when all is said and done – and all was said and done at a terrific pace, both actresses ploughing through the script so quickly that a fifty minute performance […]

Frankie Goodway reviews She Stoops to Conquer at the Keble O’Reilly Theatre. The Trinity Players have chosen a cracking script for their garden play. She Stoops to Conquer is an eighteenth century comedy that invites an audience to chuckle at the misfortunes of two London dandies when they mistake the house they’ve been invited to for an […]

When I’m told that The Rain Starts A-Fallin’ turns on the remembered conversations of five sixth-formers I have a horrible feeling I’ve seen this play before. Comparisons to The History Boys seem unavoidable, despite the fact that one of them is a girl. Indeed, the first few minutes, filled with ‘banter’ over Wilfred Owen poetry, […]

Nicolas Kent has worked as a director for over forty years, including five years at the Oxford Playhouse before this paper existed (the revelation of the Oxford Student leads to a wonderful moment where he asks if Cherwell still exists.) He has been the Artistic Director of the Tricycle Theatre in London for almost thirty […]

It was Shakespeare’s birthday on Monday, or so Twitter thought (though the controversy over christening dates blah blah etc. is probably as well known as the date itself.). Still, who cares about that? Or, as my editor so astutely put it ‘YAWN… oooh, a lolcat!’ before wandering off. Yet for a while my Twitter feed […]

The phrase ‘theatrical experience’ is frequently misused, often deployed when a reviewer is incapable of describing that they have just seen.I shall therefore refrain from describing The Bomb as an experience, in an attempt to conserve perceptions of my own intelligence. It was instead a series of 10 short plays, brought together into two performances, […]

Louisa Thompson asks whether it is fair to judge student shows by their professional peers.

James Carroll reviews Matilda The Musical, on at the Cambridge Theatre until October

Alexandra Christy previews Othello, on at the Corpus Christi Auditorium in 7th week

Megan Lynch previews Lars Sorken, showing at the Burton Taylor Studio in 6th Week

They’re ruthlessly stereotyped as insular, self-involved and just a little bit arty, and most of them apparently look like posters, but there remains something fascinating about the Oxford thespians that makes them easily one of the most attractive and identifiable groups of the Oxford scene. Night after night they put bums on seats, and they […]

We are making a Facebook group for the event, our first potentially useful work as marketing directors. We are deciding on a picture and Polly is leering at photos of Claire. Because Polly was inappropriate and slimy at the shoot, Claire comprises most of the album, interspersed with a few inexplicable ‘struggle shots’ and some […]

Freshwoman is a narrative sketch show that Tom Skelton and I wrote together over long summer evenings at his house off Cowley Road. We would talk very academically over a drink and a sunset about what was going to happen in a scene and then, with the help of Tom’s trusty dictaphone, record a number […]

Phosile Mashinkila previews Gormenghast, on in 6th week at the MBI Al Jaber Auditorium, Corpus Christi College.

Rachel Lovibond previews Mephisto, showing at the Oxford Playhouse in 6th week

Ayesha Jhunjhunwala previews The Good Body on at the Moser Theatre in 6th week.

Humanitas is a series of Visiting Professorships at Oxford and Cambridge intended to bring leading practitioners and scholars to both universities to address major themes in the arts, social sciences and humanities. One of the fields included is Drama and after Athol Fugard’s inaugural stretch last year, Vanessa Redgrave has become the second Visiting Professor in […]