"The Pact". Burton Taylor Studio

You know how most musicals start with a big, catchy number to hook the audience in and get them in the mood?

Well, The Pact doesn’t do that.

In fact it does the complete opposite. It starts with a somewhat mournful bit of exposition, which is then repeated, word for word, in a dirge-like recitative, by the entire cast. The energy feels low, the on-stage presence static. After five minutes the audience was shifty and nervous. Is this going to be ninety minutes of slow-motion soul-searching?

No need for alarm.

The sombre start is in fact a bold decision to go against tradition, and that boldness sets the tone for what is to come. The Pact follows the journey of two high-school Oxbridge candidates, Ava and Maxwell, as they prepare for their applications and interviews, and it reverses expectations all the way through. The English teacher Maurice (played by Ollie Carter) who at first seems unbearably smug and unsympathetic, turns out to be sensitive and committed. The two students, who seem initially to be almost pigeonhole stereotypes, are revealed to be complex, unpredictable characters with whom it is impossible not to identify – in fact by half-way through the audience loved them. The plot twists with surprises which, in retrospect, make sense. Writer, composer and director Adrienne Knight is not afraid of teasing you with scenes which look like they are destined for disaster but develop into moments of emotional depth. There is even one sequence in an English lesson where an essay on The Picture of Dorian Gray is turned into a ten-minute song. That’s brave. And what’s more, it’s riveting.

At the heart of the musical is the developing bond between Ava and Maxwell, played with moving sincerity and skill by Iona Blair and Geena Morris. It’s a relationship many will recognise. Ava is the perfect school student: hard-working, conscientious, always has her hand up… but is she an independent thinker? Maxwell is quite the reverse: a loner, uncooperative, outwardly lazy, but with a rebellious intelligence that marks out a unique mind. Initially they are sworn enemies, but, as their teacher senses, they have much to learn from each other. Knight’s lyrics are sinewy with repeated rhymes that take you into each character’s hidden depths. The fact that they fall in love is both surprising and inevitable. It’s like Stephen Sondheim meets Booksmart.

The scenario seems at first sight to be utterly insulated from the real world: what could be more Oxford-y than two potential students fretting about the horrors of having to go to Bristol instead? But actually ‘Oxford’ is really a symbol here for human potential. The Pact shows you that potential at work. And it’s truly touching. Every part of it is brimming with sincerity and the honesty of real-life experience. When Ava’s lifelong friend Sarah, played by Caroline Young, reveals the shame of being accused of picking her nose in front of her friends at primary school, the pain is real.

To be fair, the very end (no spoilers) feels like something of a rushed cop-out, almost on a par with ‘and then she woke up – it had all been a dream’. In fact it was so out of character that I initially thought the final scene was a dream. I appreciate the urge to portray toxic femininity in combination with burgeoning sexual attraction. But the Heathers vibe is too much of a switch here. It’s a small disappointment at the end of an otherwise utterly seductive show.

The Pact is a perfect example of why Oxford so desperately needs a properly equipped theatre space for student drama. The Burton Taylor, for all its black box adaptability, lends itself too easily to productions that focus entirely on script and performance. A show like this would benefit hugely from proper sets and genuine stagecraft – areas of theatre that are currently largely ignored because there is no real stage on which to put them. The Pact shows that the talent is there. It needs somewhere to flourish.