Author: Katrina Gaffney

This family drama turned dystopia is a four star performance for Katrina Gaffney. Arriving at the Burton Taylor for the opening night of the second ever production of ‘In the Republic of Happiness’ I did not quite know what I was getting myself in to. Greeted by the familiar scene of a family settling down […]

This production of ‘Jealous of Herself’ is a nuanced exploration of the male gaze that manages to both poignant and comic. Sarah Grunnah’s adaptation brings the first English language performance of Tirso de Molina’s ‘Jealous of Herself’ to the stage. This would be a daunting theatrical venture for many, but the combination of Grunnah’s script […]

Stage writer Katrina Gaffney finds The Last Five Years to be a five star performance. Beautiful, charming and at the same time heart-wrenching, The Last Five Years is a musical for anyone who has ever fallen in or out of love. This two-person musical is seemingly simple but requires perfect execution in order to deliver […]

The Skriker, a play about a baby-snatching ancient fairy, was always set to be bizarre. Yet, Blank Canvas Production’s performance of this play was absolutely magnificent in its wild peculiarities. It is difficult to make such a play so rooted in surreality feel natural and effortless in its performance, which is exactly what The Skriker […]

The gentle sound of bird wings flapping, gradually increasing in pace towards a frenzied panic that suddenly stops. The death of a pigeon is our introduction to It Felt Empty, in which the unsettling and comic take turns to tug at the audience’s emotions. This opening scene sets the timbre of the play as one […]

This production of Tennessee William’s ‘Summer & Smoke’, the first in the UK in ten years, is tastefully executed and does due justice to the work of a true master. The play charts the tumultuous relationship between Alma, a preacher’s daughter with a heart of gold, and John, a charming but morally ambiguous young doctor. […]

Adapted from P. G. Wodehouse’s The Code of The Woosters, Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense is the perfectly frivolous antidote to long November nights and the melancholic morale left in fifth week’s wake. Actors who refuse to take themselves too seriously, a script which turns a phrase on a sixpence and playfully draws it […]

Albert Herring, Britten’s comic masterpiece, gleefully revels in an operatic middle ground. A whimsical plot that is set against a surprisingly complex score, Britten’s provincial chamber piece teases the lines between comedy and tragedy, sympathy and satire and the clashing authorities of nearly seventy years of critical opinion. Directors Peter Thickett and Frederick Waxman’s production […]

In just 45 minutes, Death Grip manages to give a humorous, but honest, insight into depression in a gay relationship. Adam has lived in his boyfriend Jay’s bedroom for, what is later revealed, to be an entire year. It is a highly dysfunctional relationship, but though it is strained, it doesn’t lack love. Adam is […]

As I walked into the midst of this rehearsal for Guys and Dolls the energy in the room was palpable. Everyone seemed to hold an intense enthusiasm for the show and I knew that I was about to see something special. Guys and Dolls is a big-time musical set in depression-era New York City, following […]

Copenhagen is a dense, and bizarre play. It centres around the reflection on the truth of a past conversation between two old friends, and major players in the nuclear science of World War II, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. Set between ‘heaven and an atom’, it explores the complexities of truth in narrative, reality in […]

The National Theatre’s production of Terrence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea is an emotionally overwhelming and thought-provoking play. Set in London during the 1950s, it follows the love triangle of Hester Collyer, her husband Lord Collyer and boyish war hero, her ‘darling Freddie’. On the surface, the play follows the turmoil of a toxic relationship […]

For many students August was an exuberant month spent at the sprawling Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Oxford brought fifteen shows to the Fringe, and with them around 120 students who held their own against seasoned professionals — showing the range of dramatic and musical talent that the university has to offer. The Oxford Student talked to […]

Even in the small Denis Arnold Hall of the Oxford Music Faculty, even during a warm-up fondly nicknamed ‘Hairspray Hell’, the cast for Anything Goes absolutely buzz with energy. Co-director Naomi Morris Omori explained that they wanted their cast to ‘show the diverse talent of Oxford’, and she delivers on this promise. It is a […]

The Canterbury Shakespeare Festival’s As You Like It – performed on a paved circle surrounded by patches of grass and an uneven wooden fence – offered a basic stage. While, at times this production directed by Sam Gaffney and James Nash surpassed its setting, often it matched it in terms of its lacklustre execution. Unfortunately, this […]