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Working with a translated piece demands a degree of flexibility from the onset, but even so Director Connie Treves’s vision reaches further than simply grasping the text. Treves seems not only intent on an inventive re-imagining of Lorca’s play, but the director also has a remarkable approach which seeks to introduce Oxford drama to a […]
Continue Reading✮✮✮✮ An uproarious comedy about a loutish bet gone horribly right, Lads is a tautly-written, beautifully-acted, enormously funny piece of theatre, providing an excellent showcase for newcomer playwright Mallika Sood.
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The OUDS New Writing Festival was created to showcase the best of Oxford’s playwriting talent – and it has certainly achieved its aims in Adam Leonard’s new work, A Sense of Falling. Leonard has created a tightly-wrought script, full of nuance and wit. Tasha and Lawrence live an uneasy life in soggy Wales next to […]
Continue Reading✮✮✮✮ Even after a year of living in London, I still don’t feel at home. Each day, I spend just over two hours of my time in a rattling steel filthy train carriage, filled with people, like me, who, exhausted from work, show little interest of engaging with anyone around them. Unless of course a […]
Continue ReadingThis term brings a wealth of art and theatre to our doors in the form of three arts festival, TSAF (Turl Street Arts Festival), Somerville Arts Festival, and Keble Arts Festival. Coming up first is TSAF with its programme just officially released, which takes place in 5th week. The festival is a combined effort between […]
Continue ReadingIf you haven’t heard of Phoebe Fox already, you are guaranteed to be hearing a lot about her soon. Gracing our cinema screens this year, Phoebe Fox will be starring in The Woman in Black: Angel of Death, the sequel to the adaptation of Wilkie Collins’ novel, featuring Daniel Radcliffe. On the stage side of things, […]
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The Crucible is a particularly raw, tense – and almost claustrophic – play, with a tendency to moments of explosive drama, and this usually results in rather a lot of shouting. This is an understandable trap to fall into given the narrative follows the families involved in the Salem witch trials of the 1690s, a […]
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The annual New Writing Festival is back and will be held at the BT this 5th week. Consisting of four different hour-long shows written by students, the festival will be judged at the end of the week by none other than Olivier award winning playwright Lucy Kirkwood. Earlier this term OUDS President Florence Brady called […]
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“That’s farce, that’s the theatre, that’s life” – a distinction spoken perhaps a bit too soon in such a play as Noises Off. Michael Frayn’s intricate, monumental piece of farce performs the very ins and outs of putting on a performance, going behind the scenes of an increasingly chaotic dress rehearsal for the somewhat trashy […]
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Anthony Maskell – ✮✮✮✮ When you walk into Luke Howarth’s production of David Hare’s play at the Keble O’Reilly, you immediately find yourself stopping and – dare I say it – staring at the exposed scrotum of the unconscious naked man lying on the floor in front of you. It’s worth noting that, in the script, […]
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‘Was that the worst or best thing I have ever seen in Oxford?’ The George and Dragon, a devised sketch show, is endearingly shambolic. A series of sketches set in a pub during an imagined pandemic of the disease Jemima are illustrated riotously by the four member strong cast, who portray an eclectic range of […]
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Since 1993, opera director and producer Ellen Kent has been turning the tables on public perceptions of what opera is. Known and loved for their traditional staging, lavish sets and international cast, over six million people have now seen an Ellen Kentproduction. Each year, she tours three productions all around the UK and Ireland, and […]
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✮✮✮✮ Jack McNamara deftly adapts Von Trier’s The Boss Of It All, the hit Danish comedy of 2006, for stage in this witty and engaging production. The run time of just over an hour is dexterously handled and the piece never drags. Davies, Honey and McNamara have cultivated dynamic characters, which are ably portrayed by […]
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Have you ever considered becoming a director? How exactly would you go about it? Having just graduated last year OxStu spoke to Sian Davila, a Somerville alumna, who is currently on the StoneCrabs Young Directors programme.
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James Waddell – ✮✮✮✮✮ When I bumped into West Side Story’s marketing manager in the packed Playhouse foyer, he had the air of a man stepping back to admire his handiwork. “To be fair”, he contentedly remarked, “it wasn’t exactly a hard sell”. It certainly wasn’t – the guys and girls of this West Side weren’t […]
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✮✮✮ There is a fantastically bleached and clinical shine to the stage of Freya Judd’s commendable adaptation of The Effect, Lucy Prebble’s follow-up to the smash-hit Enron. The O’Reilly has been well and truly stripped down, creating a bleak and bare hospital miasma that you can almost smell when you take your seat. When the […]
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✮✮✮✮ This week St Peter’s Chapel has been transformed into a beautiful, enchanting, Ancient Greece for the production of Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. For anyone unconvinced about the suitability of a chapel for a staged opera please let me reassure you: the setting was absolutely stunning, and I cannot think of a better place […]
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In a stylised Japanese imperial court, a young woman stands. She is pouting. Rachel Cole’s Dido is clearly a woman who is used to being pandered to, and as her two friends attempt to persuade her to yield to her passion for Aeneas, her Trojan guest, we wonder whether anyone has spoken honestly to the […]
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With Top Hat The Musical coming to Oxford later this month, we caught up with actor Sebastien Torkia who plays fabulous fashion designer, Alberto Beddini, in the show. Based on the film starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, the production won the Olivier award for Best New Musical in 2013, and is now part-way through its national […]
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