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"Closer". Pilch. Review by Josie Stern.

When Patrick Marber sat down with the Independent in 1998, he outright rejected the notion that “Closer”, which follows a quartet of strangers stretching the fabric of infidelity to its fraying edges, “is about betrayal”. This, he maintained, is but a drop in the ocean. Marber directs his actors, above all, to “love each other”. When they fall short, it is not because they are callous, but because love never obeys the neat rules we delude ourselves into prescribing. Director Rosie Morgan-Males was under no illusions about the magnitude of her responsibility: to wade through flagrantly outrageous behaviour and emerge on the other side with something as sincere as Marber’s masterpiece. Indeed, in her own words, Morgan-Males set out to “peel back the layers and find something honest inside the mess”. It would have been all too easy to present a stylishly shallow replica of the 2004 movie, which, for all its defects, is a study in how much a perpetually pouting Jude Law can make a per...
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"The Tempest". Magdalen College Garden

Can I tell you a secret? I've always wanted to hear Caliban's ethereally beautiful 'The isle is full of noises' speech with Pink Floyd's Shine On You Crazy Diamond  in the background. David Gilmour's electric trills and sweet airs are a perfect complement to the fragile beauty of the verse. So thank you to Magdalen Players for (almost) making that midsummer dream come true. The music throughout this production of The Tempest  is gently overpowering, flowing with the natural rhythms of the island, while still providing a deep, electric thrum that crackles with pent-up magical power. And during that speech it becomes a gorgeous variation on Shine On . The full-colour programme looks wonderful, and sets the psychedelic tone for the evening, which is aurally expanded by Sound Designer Lucian Ng and composer/co-director Seb Carrington along with musicians Milo Holland, Kit Renshaw and Rei French. As Carrington readily admits, The Tempest  is an extremely tricky play ...
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"Bull". Pilch. Review by Victoria Tayler

 Bull is a funny play, which I mean in both senses. It’s out and out dark humour, and it’s finnicky, puzzling, delicate to balance. It shines a less than favourable light on the corporate world, reminding me all too well of the animalistic clamour of the University’s yearly law fair. And it’s Fight Club and American Psycho made British theatre, with a sharp light on classism and the airless world of feigned politeness. Riffing on the apparent dissimilarities, (actually similarities) between the allegedly civilized modern world and the violent prehistoric one, Bull depicts a world of money which is every bit as brutal and cutthroat as the imagined caveman past.  Our ‘leading man’ Thomas (Aidan Kane) is no Patrick Bateman, conspicuously lacking in the slickness or charm one expects the corporate world to radiate. In his oversized suit, sporting stains, stumbling over the social torments of his coworkers and self-consciously rubbing his face, Thomas is evidently set up for failur...
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"A Midsummer Night's Dream". Jesus College Shakespeare Project

Until now, the Jesus College Project has been strolling in the foothills of Shakespeare. With the exception of Romeo and Juliet  the works they've so far given us have been rarer mounted plays like Henry the Sixth Part Two  and Titus Andronicus . With A Midsummer Night's Dream  the stakes are raised. Not a summer passes without the gardens of stately homes and Oxford Colleges being awash with rampant fairies and translated Bottoms. Against competition like that, can Peter Sutton and his dedicated, ever-evolving company of actors keep up their astonishing record of mesmerising productions? Will this be a dream of a show or a Midsummer murder? Why would you even worry? Without a tree in sight, in a bare room illuminated by domestic ceiling lights, without wings (neither of the fairy nor stage-side variety), without even, frankly, a stage, this show creates a kind of magic rarely seen in more lavish productions. It's a magic that comes not from special effects, but from an i...
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"Troilus and Cressida". Burton Taylor Studio. Review by Victoria Tayler

  You can tell when a play is made with love. You can also tell when it is made with a healthy heaping of disdain.   Troilus and Cressida is somewhere in the middle: absurd, charming, incomprehensible, hilarious. Moribayassa Productions described the show as an 'anti-garden play.' I get the gripe. Oxford is literally crawling with summer Shakespeare chock full of melodrama and cliches, sometimes wonderful, sometimes all too familiar. Disdain for the stagnation of the genre gives this play its creative impetus and its charm. The creative liberties are extensive and the rewards are potentially great. The risks, well, they’re negligible.   It’s hard to say exactly what that charm is, only that I liked it. The play opens with Troilus (balaclava-clad) staring into the static on an old school, 32-inch TV, whilst Pandarus stares at the audience invasively from the corner, and Cressida waltzes around jaggedly. It’s pretty gripping. They follow up on that large aesthetic...
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"Death of a Salesman". Pilch. Review by Victoria Tayler

 Death of a Salesman, Pilch I thought I was done with Death of a Salesman. It was a relic of the past, a spectre of the English A-level specification. Drilling quotations into my memory over the long period of Covid lockdowns for exams which would never come just about did me in. As the play approached, those stagnant quotes were all I could think about. “Why must everyone conquer the world?” As graduation approached, I was thinking the same thing. “The jungle is dark but full of diamonds.” Much like the tumultuous OUDS scene, I thought wryly, (Spoiler alert: this is one of the diamonds). After imbibing quotations for two years, the characters in Death of a Salesman started to feel static, emblematic, unsurprising. The tragedy felt over-egged.  Tiptoe Productions saw a different vision. Their interpretation of Death of a Salesman, whilst true to Miller’s demanding and extensive stage directions, feels like discovering the play for the first time. Actually I’m quite jealous of ...
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"Jack". St Benet's Hall

It is a truth universally acknowledged that British serial killers make great entertainment. Whether it's Sweeney Todd and his demonic shaving techniques, John Christie the landlord from hell, or Burke and Hare with their unconventional approach to laboratory support services, there's something about that combination of antimacassars and psychopaths that makes audiences squirm with vicarious disgust and pleasure. And the king of them all is of course Jack the Ripper. Subject of countless books, films, podcasts and, even before this week, at least three musicals, his brief reign of terror heralded the end of the macabre caricatures of Dickensian London and the arrival of the societal traumas of the 20th Century. (Even the fictional stars of This Is Spinal Tap toy with making a rock opera out of him, entitled Saucy Jack .) What all these productions have in common is their determination to answer the question 'Who was he?' And it's a somewhat pointless crusade, becaus...
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