The President's Husband's Drama Reviews

Breaking Bad finished – finished – ten years ago. But such is its cultural impact that it feels fresh, relevant and a go-to text for students who were still at primary school when Walter White was machine-gunning Nazis from the boot of his car. Molly Dineley and Evie Holloway have tapped into this rich seam of referentiality to create a high-concept hybrid which sounded so beguiling when I read its blurb (‘When Chemistry PhD Walter White is threatened with expulsion over unpaid fees, he turns to drastic measures…’) that in a toss-up between Hamlet at the Keble O’Reilly and Breaking Bod at the Pilch, there was really no contest. And I wasn’t the only one. I’ve never seen the Pilch so full. We were packed in literally like pilchards. I counted 75 in the audience. And since the tickets were for some reason about a third more expensive than usual shows at this venue, The Mollys production company will be making a profit, if not of Heisenbergian proportions, then at least enough to fund...

In English folk-tales, whenever a supernatural being appears, it’s an enemy. Dragons fighting St George, giants fighting Sir Gawain, giants living up beanstalks, giants being killed by Jack. (There are a lot of giants.) They all have to be defeated, in symbolic tales of English supremacy. Irish folklore takes a very different approach. The supernatural beings are part of the earth, spirits rising up to guide and protect the people: the giant Finn MacCool is there to defend Ireland; Niamh of Tír na nÓg gifts Oisin with everlasting youth; granted, those bloody leprechauns can be tricksy, but they aren’t invading, they’re just protecting their realm, guardians of Ireland’s natural beauty. English stories link the listener with their liege-lord. Irish stories link you with the land. And so it is with Cathleen ni Houlihan: feminine figure, mythical symbol and emblem of Irish nationalism. W. B. Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory got together to bring her to life in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin in 1...

Noël Coward is famously summed up by the title of Sheridan Morley’s biography, ‘A Talent to Amuse’. But as the years go by, his talent seems to grow deeper and more significant. He didn’t just amuse. He explored the boundaries of theatre while remaining forever an establishment figure at its very heart. And his plays, romantic comedies of the upper-middle classes, now resonate powerfully as gay-coded texts by a homosexual man working at a time when the core of his being was both illegal and repugnant to the vast majority of English society. Still Life is a perfect example of Coward the master of stagecraft. He conceived it originally as part of a cycle of ten one-act plays collectively entitled Tonight at 8.30 , which were performed across three evenings. What a brilliant idea! At a time when the West End was creaking with full evenings of frothy pap like Glamorous Night , O Mistress Mine and This’ll Make You Whistle , Coward’s unique production was like a patchwork quilt of origina...

The Burton Taylor Studio can do many things. It can host musicals, classical plays, stand-up comedy and annual drama competitions. But if there’s one thing that underscores its very reason for existence, it’s to provide a small, intimate space where dramatists, actors and directors can just try things out . Create some characters, have them say stuff to each other, see how they react, watch where it takes you. This is the lifeblood of theatre. Without it, how can the playwrights of tomorrow hone their art, and discover the alchemy that happens when words move from page to stage? Of course I love watching great, finely-tuned masterpieces of theatre. Sampi isn’t that, nor does it have the slightest pretension to being so. There’s a different thrill to witnessing committed and talented people explore the edges of dialogue. It’s like watching someone starting to carve a musical instrument out of a lump of wood, rather than perform Beethoven’s violin concerto on a Stradivarius. Sampi pres...

Food For Thought is a pioneering theatre company that mounts productions in unconventional venues around Oxford. Going to see their plays is not just a dramatic experience but a historically illuminating one too. Last year they became the first theatre company ever to use the Pitt Rivers Museum as a performance space with their brilliantly creative reworking of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde . For Scaramouche Jones they’ve turned to St Barnabas Church in Jericho, and it’s a breathtaking location: perhaps the most spectacular church in Oxford. Arts and Crafts murals in cut glass gaze down on the Italianate mouldings of a Tardis-like Basilica. It’s a place that has always been supportive of local arts, and it makes a fantastic theatre. Justin Butcher’s one-man play started life as a radio piece in 2001, before the late, great Pete Postlethwaite took it on tour. It’s a truly beguiling concept: a hundred-year-old clown, on the last night of his life, 31 st December 1999, recounts his story, as he...

Oxford is on a cusp at this time of year. The tourist town is giving way to the student town. The bright clothes of summer are turning to the sub-fusc of fall, and academics drift around the streets like autumn leaves. I think Mozart would have been happy here. Oxford opens its arms to welcome the neuro-diverse and the hyper-fixated. It loves super-talented nerds. Mozart would have fitted right in – and he was the same age as a fresher when he wrote the centrepiece of tonight’s concert. The 25th anniversary year of the Oxford Philharmonic has been a triumph so far, and tonight was no exception. Entitled ‘Mozart Masterpieces’ it featured the Overture to Die Entführung aus dem Serail , the third Violin Concerto, and the 39 th Symphony. As ever the venue was the Sheldonian Theatre. No matter where you sit in that building, the acoustics are fantastic, and the music is crystal clear. However I suspect that Christopher Wren designed it with the joy of the ears in mind, not the buttocks. I ...