"Burning Down the House". Schwarzman Centre
If the New Theatre is the equivalent of ITV1 on a Saturday night, all hot-dogs-while-you-watch musicals from the 80s, and the Playhouse is a mixture of BBC1 and BBC2, pivoting from Pirandello to panto at the drop of a stage weight, then the Schwarzman Theatre, in these early days, is more akin to BBC4: experimental, artistic, specialist. Their first production, Robota , addressed the ethics of AI, a subject at the core of the Schwarzman mind palace. The second, When the Blackbird Sings , was a re-examination of Oxford’s marginalised past. And now Burning Down the House is a theatrical adaptation of the research work of an Oxford academic. If there’s one city in the UK where that rarefied approach should guarantee packed houses, it’s Oxford. But out of term-time, with students in short supply, the Schwarzman may have to consider where its discerning audience is going to come from. Burning Down the House , an enjoyable and accessible romp through a little-known corner of Henrik Ibsen’s ...
