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Harry Hatwell reviews the German play, Der Process, at the Burton Taylor Studio I must confess that before watching Der Process (The Trial), my knowledge of Kafka was limited to seeing the launch of Kafka’s Motorbike in Bridget Jones’s Diary and a brief conversation about the life of caterpillars in Metamorphosis. Hence, this dark and […]
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(Spoilers ahead) Confusions… confusions? Sitting in the front row as the first of three one-act plays began to unfold in front of me, everyone on stage certainly seemed confused. Opening night nerves perhaps? Or more likely the beginning of a consistently engaging and hilarious portrayal of one of Alan Ayckbourn’s ‘greatest works’, or so I’m […]
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Five people sit in the Southern Baptist Convention Church of the Old Town of West Cicuta, South Carolina. They were attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting when the lake flooded, blocking them in. This is the premise of Josh Bourne’s new play, Down With My Demons, where flawed characters beset with troubles are forced to reflect […]
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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 […]
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Splendour is a play which delights in being enigmatic. Written by Abi Morgan, screenwriter of Suffragette and The Iron Lady, this claustrophobic character study manages to be disorientating, roundabout, and yet urgently compelling. Kathryn (Natalie Woodward), a photojournalist, is sent to the lavish house of a dictator and his wife, Micheline (Rosie Richards), in “a […]
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I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect upon arriving at one of the final rehearsals of Attempts on her Life before the run starts at the BT on Wednesday. The tantalising trailer and posters have given nothing away of the complexity of this performance of Martin Crimp’s play, which is often branded “in-yer-face” theatre. What […]
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✮✮✮✮ Imagine Life of Pi as written by Steven Moffat. Brutal, metafictional and hugely entertaining, Richard Parker balances a razor-sharp black comedy and a fascinating meditation on narrative and inevitability, the whole thing held together by a mesmerising pair of performances from Jake Boswall and Ieuan Perkins.
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How do we watch people? How much can we really see beneath the mask of a familiar scene? David Foster Wallace’s collection of sexual and darkly comic short stories does all it can to smash our preconceptions with painfully accurate pictures of vice. What we see in a book ‘possessed by a … vandalizing spirit […]
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The OxStu talks to audience members, casts and the judges about their experiences of Cuppers.
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✮✮✮✮ Ridley’s career may have been destroyed by negative reviews, but James P Mannion and George Varley have no reason to retire to the woodland cabin just yet. Mannion’s play explores the reality – and the fundamental unreality – of the isolation that many of us, at times, crave. The play opens with Ridley […]
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Director Jack Saville and writer James P Mannion, the duo behind last year’s Surprise, return with another seemingly familiar tale which plays fast and loose with the rules of reality. Cemented by impressive lead performances, Ridley’s Choice is a multi-layered experiment with the play’s format and is certain to challenge any preconceptions one might have […]
Continue Reading“Unforgettable! What was it?… Oh I remember…” A critic reviewing critics, in a play about plays – it doesn’t get much more pretentious than that. The set-up doesn’t bode well but, the surreal nature of The Real Inspector Hound transcends cliché and dashes expectations in this cleverly written, well-executed send-up of critics and Christie. For once, “Has […]
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