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"The Red Shoes". Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

There are some plays where you can’t help feeling that the majority of the audience is missing the point, and this is one of them. It’s not their fault. The Royal Shakespeare Company is marketing The Red Shoes as a Christmas treat for all the family. There were under-10s in the auditorium of the Swan Theatre this evening, and they were watching something that might best be described as a fairytale staged by Angela Carter in partnership with Tim Burton. There were boiled-sweet-chomping, red-faced couples laughing with uproarious determination every time the psychopathic Clive swung his axe at a cat. There was even one man behind me who, in what has to rank as the evening’s most disturbing moment, responded to the sight of the heroine Karen being viciously slapped across the face by shouting out, ‘Do it again!’ Meanwhile, the more sensitive members of the audience weren’t entirely sure how to react to what we were watching. This adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s phenomenally distu
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"Othello". University College Dining Hall

The current production of Othello by the Royal Shakespeare Company is stolidly professional but has at its core a total and utter lack of interest in the play - and that sentiment bleeds through to the audience. This production, in the magnificent, medieval Dining Hall of University College, is the diametric opposite: it effervesces with enthusiasm, love, fascination for and original thoughts about the play, while being honestly and charmingly ‘anti-professional’. Anti-professional how? you may ask. Well, on the night I was there, half-way through the show they actually managed to lose the handkerchief - yes, the prop on which the entire plot turns. Characters were desperately producing rings and napkins to stand in for it. And here’s the thing: it didn't matter one jot . This wasn’t supposed to be as slick as a scene-change in the Olivier Theatre. It was a company of creative, cooperative, mutually supportive students exploring a dramatic masterpiece, and their passion was irres
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"Les Liaisons Dangereuses". Oxford Playhouse

What’s the difference between Les Liaisons Dangereuses and the Oxford Union? One is an expensively costumed display of decadent sexuality, political manipulation and ruthless battles for power, and the other, yes, you guessed it, is Les Liaisons Dangereuses . Except, in Clarendon Productions’ interpretation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ perilously pre-revolutionary novel at the Oxford Playhouse, that’s not entirely true. This is no conventional eighteenth-century reenactment, but a bold, ambitious and imaginative liaison between modern technology and Baroque style. Director Lucas Angeli has taken the unprecedented step of turning Christopher Hampton’s script into a theatre-cum-live-cinema, multimedia experiment. The apparent politesse of high society is undermined throughout by telling details on the giant screen above the stage. So, for instance, while we see the scheming Vicomte de Valmont and his co-conspirator the Marquise de Merteuil affably chatting on stage, the cameras pick
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"Endgame". Pilch. Review by Anuj Mishra

“Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished.” Not the play’s closing remark, but its opening gambit: Samuel Beckett’s Endgame makes no attempt at exposition or climax, the play is constantly and loudly conscious of its movement towards an “end”. One of Beckett’s more celebrated plays, though less known than Waiting for Godot , Endgame was first performed in 1957. The one-act play focuses upon the blind and senile Hamm – who, unable to stand, is confined to an armchair on wheels set in the exact centre-stage – alongside his used and abused manservant Clov – who, unable to sit, walks with a pronounced limp. Like Lear , Endgame presents itself as a play about agedness and disability. It differs, disconcertingly, by only showing disabled bodies: Hamm and Clov are joined by Hamm’s even more senile parents, Nell and Nagg, who are confined (and at most points, enclosed) in large bins and relegated to a state of infantility. Director Killian King successfully exploits the layout of the P
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"Nuts". Burton Taylor Studio

I have no idea if Coco Cottam will go on to become a famous, successful playwright. The only famous, successful playwright I know didn’t write so much as a line of dialogue until ten years after graduating. The future’s not ours to see. But in so far as it’s possible to measure these things, Cottam seems to be going about it the right way. Nuts is her third play (the third I’ve seen anyway), and not only is each of them a gem, but they get better each time. Her previous works, Wishbone and Bedbugs (click on the titles to read my reviews), were more theme- than plot-driven, as non-linear and intriguing as they were funny and moving. With Nuts , Cottam has come down to earth, and created a piece of true narrative drama. It's a concentrated, character-driven scenario that reveals dark secrets from the past even as it moves forwards in time. Friends, business-partners and flat-sharers Eve and Nina need a new co-tenant, and it arrives in the shape of ‘hot male’ Liberty. But the appea
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"Go Fish". Pilch

Go Fish started life as a 1994 ultra-low-budget American movie about women meeting women. Think Clerks but with heart instead of balls. It’s funny, honest, straight-talking, and heart-warmingly tactile – full of hands clasping, toes touching and lips brushing. Although it didn’t make much of a splash when set against 1994’s other big gay films ( Interview with the Vampire , Shallow Grave , Heavenly Creatures to name but three) it’s a milestone in that, unlike those movies, its sexuality was not buried in subtext, but presented openly as everyday life. Where other films were still smuggling homosexuality into their hetero audience’s heads under cover of metaphor, Go Fish had the courage to play its queerness absolutely… straight. Now, thirty years later, Charlotte Oswell has lovingly adapted Go Fish for the theatre, and it still feels rare to see the lesbian community depicted on stage. For that reason, this play is both welcome and vital. Oxford students, by the way, regularly depi
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"First Aid". Burton Taylor Studio. 29 October 2024

When people say ‘Musical’ the first thing that comes to mind is a big-budget production like Starlight Express or Wicked . You might think that the BT Studio, with its minuscule performing area and basic facilities, is the last place to mount such a massive venture. And you’d be right. But there is such a thing as parlour music. And First Aid is a ‘parlour musical’. It follows the gossamer-light story of Sophie and her new maybe-boyfriend Simon, as they go on a date and end up in hospital with a broken nose. Barnaby O’Brien’s girl-meets-boy-meets-A&E-dept rom-com is an insouciant, irrepressible, warm-hearted joy. Deep and meaningful this most definitely is not. It’s as light as a feather souffle and as witty as early Tim Rice. Although set very much in the present day, and replete with modern references, there’s something appealingly old-fashioned about the genre that O’Brien has tapped into here, harking back to Ivor Novello and P.G. Wodehouse. The rhymes and jokes are more impo
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