The President's Husband's Drama Reviews

The great and much-loved actor Timothy West died just three weeks before Twelfth Night opened in December, starring his son Samuel as Malvolio. Tim may not have been a Knight like Sir Ian, Sir Ken or (thank god) Sir Toby. But his talent, his experience and his benevolence elevated him to the status of a kind of theatrical favourite uncle to the nation. His loss hovers with a gentle and mournful smile above this beautiful production, like the deceased father whose passing has shut Olivia up in grief. Her eventual return to life and love feels like part of the healing process after this real-world bereavement. Maybe Tim’s spirit is watching over this show, and as a result it’s suffused with tenderness. Neither too funny nor too sad, it has plenty of moments of hilarity, tempered by scenes of pain, regret and cruelty. It’s the most balanced Twelfth Night I’ve ever seen, and perhaps the closest to what Shakespeare himself originally intended. As well as being one of our leading Shakespea...

Too many cooks, in the words of the great Arthur Smith, make shows on BBC2. Is there too much Shakespeare in Oxford? Since I started writing reviews just over two years ago, I've seen sixteen Shakespeare plays, and that represents considerably less than half the bard-based productions that go on in gardens, parks and castles around the town. Truly, he doth bestride the Radcliffe Camera like a colossus. As if to recognise this dramatic dominance, Chris Goodwin, Ali Khan and Tom Pavey, coralled like cats by directors Tom Freeman and Felix Westcott, have rebirthed the great post-Shakespeare improvalike comedy extravaganza that was, and is, The Complete Works (Abridged) . Appropriately enough, this show began life as an idea dreamt up by some students in the 1980s. They quickly formed a company called the RSC (Reduced Shakespeare Company) and their creation ran for years in the West End. They followed it up with lots of sequels, abridging everything from the story of Hollywood to Wagne...

How ironic that a play written by Sir John Vanbrugh, architect of Blenheim Palace, that most extravagant and baroque of all British buildings, should be mounted in the de Jager auditorium in Trinity College. It's a beautiful space, designed primarily for lectures and music. But it's restrained, cool, and unostentatiously modern. Putting on a Restoration Comedy in here is akin to holding a rock concert in an operating theatre. The acoustically-tuned, light oak woodwork crushes any illusion of another world, which meekly tries to stand its tiny ground, obscured by echoes of all the preceding day's powerpoints. This room shows you why lecture theatres are great for lectures, films, music and even stand-up comedy. But not for theatre. You either need to conquer the space (which means spending a huge amount on set decoration), or use a room which better reflects the style and mood of your play. Trinity's chapel is the first college chapel ever to be designed in the Baroque s...

If you thought Oxford University's recent election of a new Chancellor was a badly-run, drawn-out affair full of backbiting and skullduggery, well, just be grateful it wasn't a new Pope. If Conclave is to be believed, what those cardinals get up to would horrify even Peter Mandelson. Edward Berger's adaptation of Robert Harris's Vatican intrigue novel is a tense, twisty political thriller with one foot in 12 Angry Men and the other in The Da Vinci Code . The Pope is dead, and 108 naughty, squabbling, Catholic leaders assemble in Rome under the world-weary eye of Ralph Fiennes' Cardinal Lawrence, to decide, in the time-honoured fashion of forming secret alliances rather than holding a democratic debate, who should be the next Supreme Pontiff. The paper they burn to tell folks outside how far they've got in their decision-making is either black or white. But really it should be blue, because the process ignites an unholy ecclesiastical fireworks display of epic ...

After two years and six consecutive productions filled with war and gore, Jesus College’s project to perform all Shakespeare's plays in chronological order has finally moved into a new phase. This year is all about love and comedy, with A Midsummer Night's Dream , Romeo and Juliet , and, first of all, Love's Labour's Lost . Traditionally, this play is neither the most popular nor the most accessible of Shakespeare's comedies. The central concept (a group of young noblemen foreswearing the distractions of the fairer sex to coop themselves up in a castle and devote their lives to study) seems bizarre and remote. The minor characters - schoolteachers spouting convoluted Latin, dim-witted but amiable constables, Spanish swordsmen whose braggadocio thinly conceals a rich seam of gay subtext - can be confusing and hard to relate to. And the idea of a bunch of irresistible women happening to turn up and besiege the castle with romance, while the reclusive scholars instantl...

It's Autumn Incest Season at the Pilch, with last week's brother love-in Moth being followed by one of the most notorious sibling sex plays of all time, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore . They're very different. Where Moth is brand new, 'Tis Pity is nearly 400 years old. Where Moth is about coming to terms with one death, 'Tis Pity features multiple gruesome murders before our very eyes. Where Moth has scenes of eating breakfast cereal, 'Tis Pity has people literally eating each other's hearts. What unites these two plays is that they both have the courage to explore a taboo relationship, and make it the most innocent part of their story. That, and also these particular productions are both insanely brilliant pieces of theatre. I have seen 'Tis Pity a couple of times before, and it is a challenge for any director. The outrageous violence and over-the-top sex scenes usually produce at best titters and often brazen guffaws from the sceptical audienc...