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Director Edward Hall is best known for creating the all-male theatre company, Propeller, who perform Shakespeare plays, re-imagined to relate to a contemporary audience. However when I ask him about it he describes the iconic Propeller as an “accidental theatre company”. Having initially approached the works of the ‘bard’ with trepidation and “a degree of […]
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Lucy Prebble’s show Enron premiered at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2009, and later transferred to The Royal Court due to popular demand. She wrote the screenplay for Secret Diary of a Call Girl, starring Billie Piper, which ran from 2007 to 2011 on ITV2. Her more recent work The Effect won the Critic’s Circle […]
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Any poor soul who has tried to coordinate their cast and crew’s timetables will, through the haze of google docs and doodle polls, almost definitely have screamed, ‘WHY?!’ Between this ‘non-negotiable’ class and that ‘compulsory’ lecture, we might start to think that putting on a play was nearly impossible at university. Yet, each term, tens […]
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✮✮✮ An uproarious and self-aware comedy, The Doctor in Spite of Himself puts together an admirable performance, despite the difficult material. The first problem to overcome with Moliere’s comedy is translating the gags, by which I mean taking the innately French humour and making it palatable to an ignorant Anglophone audience (such as yours truly). […]
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✮✮✮ The Futurists, it should be noted, were by and large a nasty piece of work. An artistic movement born in Italy in the early twentieth century, their work is generally characterised by an embrace of speed violence- as the program notes, “They championed an art of action.” Or, in the words of artist Mike […]
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“In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing.” And, indeed, St Hilda’s Drama Society brought style to their production of Oscar Wilde’s 1895 The Importance of being Earnest. Wilde’s play is a tale of deception, social obligation, and farce, that lies somewhere between self-parody and deceptively flippant commentary on society and […]
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“The music.” Producer Katie Jeffries-Harris’ immediate answer to the question of why choose The Coronation of Poppea may be short and sweet, but her enthusiasm is almost tangible. Choosing to run an abridged concert performance of Monteverdi’s opera, rather than the full staged alternative, means that Poppea will be focused almost entirely on its musical […]
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Emily Holman ✮✮✮ Adaptations are no easy feat. When the text in question is being adapted for stage, rather than the screen, when its subject matter is life in Heian-period Japan, and when it is being adapted from the Japanese, the task, though not impossible, is very difficult indeed. This production does not quite pull it […]
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The main problem with The Architect is the play. Ostensibly, it focuses on the life of the has-been architect, Leo Black (Dom Applewhite), who is stuck building car-parks as his marriage collapses around him. The playwright claims the play to be a comment on the tragic naivety of architects of the 60s whose motives and […]
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✮✮✮✮ Dealing with a plethora of present-day issues in an Edwardian context is The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs, this week’s offering at the B-T Studio. The play sees the story of a woman – Albert Nobbs – whose only means of finding work in Edwardian Dublin is to dress as a man. In a […]
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Preposterous, outlandish, and ludicrously absurd, Oxford University’s Gilbert & Sullivan Society’s production of the comic opera Iolanthe is a hilariously entertaining show that will keep audiences in stitches from start to finish. Masterfully directed by Zoe Firth, the performance is a rollicking musical romp among the dimwitted and incompetent ruling class. Poking fun at British […]
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Improvisation comes from the Oxford Imps, sketch shows come from the Revue, but where is Oxford’s stand-up comedy scene? To fill this gap, two student comics Harry Househam and Alex Faroe have started touring college comedy nights, which bring stand-up comedy to different college bars throughout the term. We spoke to them about setting up […]
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“Think of all the tales you’re going to discover…” Arriving on the B-T stage this 7th week is ‘As I Crossed A Bridge of Dreams’, a new adaptation of an 11th century Japanese text. This play includes the elements of what student drama does best: it has an original score, a new script and includes […]
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“When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools”, declares the Fool, garbed in the trappings of a mental patient. He positions the cast—all wearing animal masks—around the dimly-lit stage, and, after tip-toeing around the unsettling figures and adjusting their posture, clicks his fingers to throw us into […]
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✮✮✮ Who is responsible for murder? It’s unclear if this was the foremost question in John Webster’s heart as he penned The Duchess of Malfi, one of England’s best-known and most macabre dramas of the Early Modern period but this version of the play sets issues of responsibility, duty and coercion starkly at its heart. Directed […]
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Ahead of Atomos coming to Oxford next month we spoke to Wayne McGregor, the choreographer behind it. Though just 44, McGregor has had an impressive career so far. He is not only resident choreographer for the Royal Ballet but has also been a Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, has done a TED talk, […]
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✮✮✮ Captain Amazing is perhaps best described as Alan Moore by way of Mark Evans. Touching, clever and frequently hilarious, this new one man show provides an excellent showcase for actor Andrew Dickinson.
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✮✮✮✮ Too often, 5th week can become a graveyard shift for Oxford’s events circuit. The B-T struggles to shift whatever’s on that week, clubs empty out earlier, and those who do venture out at night can have the distinct whiff of people drowning their sorrows rather than the enthusiasm of the 1st week revellers who […]
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✮✮✮✮½ Lily Slater’s rendition of Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, expounds upon the anxiety, fears, and grief permeating Salem, Massachusetts during the witch trials. The sense of realism the actors manage to achieve often allows them to transcend their fictional roles and permits their indignation towards the cruelty and injustice endured during those trials to […]
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