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"The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals". Keble O'Reilly. Review by Anuj Mishra

The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals is a bit of a clunky name, but it is usefully descriptive. But musical haters beware, this show is very much a musical, and a fabulously joyful one at that.  The show tells the story of Paul, a small-town guy who doesn’t like musicals, who bumbles around his office (which has an array of The Office style co-workers) and punctuates his days with visits to the coffee shop for a glimpse of his ‘latt-ay hott-ay’ love interest, Emma. On the night a touring production of Mamma Mia! comes to town, a meteor strikes, infecting the townspeople with a singing-dancing-murdering hivemind. It is up to Paul and Emma (and Paul’s co-workers) to save themselves from the existential threat of joining the inescapable chorus line – for nobody can stop the beat.  By the ending, the musical-virus reveals itself as a code for a sort of Trumpian jingoism that infects this slice of Nowhereville, America. As we stand at the edge of a second term, this felt as timely as when th
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"Moth". Pilch

This is Alec Tiffou’s second play. The first, Daddy Longlegs , was showered with praise, and Moth proves that Tiffou is no one-hit wonder. What a privilege to witness such prodigious talent at such a formative stage! Moth casts a spell over the riveted, focussed audience in the Pilch. Caught in its power we are helpless, like pinned moths ourselves. We laugh, we cry; we are by turns shocked, touched, bemused and horrified. Moth reveals its secrets with masterfully-controlled pace, so there will be no spoilers here. But it’s an incredibly intense four-hander, following a problem-ridden family through difficult times. Careering from outrageous confessions to superficially humdrum statements, it almost feels like the play is beating you up emotionally. I found myself bursting unexpectedly into tears at a moment of heart-piercing honesty one moment, then seconds later laughing out loud at an adroit piece of incongruity. The theatre is barricaded with content warnings for this show, so I
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"The Red Shoes". Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

There are some plays where you can’t help feeling that the majority of the audience is missing the point, and this is one of them. It’s not their fault. The Royal Shakespeare Company is marketing The Red Shoes as a Christmas treat for all the family. There were under-10s in the auditorium of the Swan Theatre this evening, and they were watching something that might best be described as a fairytale staged by Angela Carter in partnership with Tim Burton. There were boiled-sweet-chomping, red-faced couples laughing with uproarious determination every time the psychopathic Clive swung his axe at a cat. There was even one man behind me who, in what has to rank as the evening’s most disturbing moment, responded to the sight of the heroine Karen being viciously slapped across the face by shouting out, ‘Do it again!’ Meanwhile, the more sensitive members of the audience weren’t entirely sure how to react to what we were watching. This adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s phenomenally distu
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"Othello". University College Dining Hall

The current production of Othello by the Royal Shakespeare Company is stolidly professional but has at its core a total and utter lack of interest in the play - and that sentiment bleeds through to the audience. This production, in the magnificent, medieval Dining Hall of University College, is the diametric opposite: it effervesces with enthusiasm, love, fascination for and original thoughts about the play, while being honestly and charmingly ‘anti-professional’. Anti-professional how? you may ask. Well, on the night I was there, half-way through the show they actually managed to lose the handkerchief - yes, the prop on which the entire plot turns. Characters were desperately producing rings and napkins to stand in for it. And here’s the thing: it didn't matter one jot . This wasn’t supposed to be as slick as a scene-change in the Olivier Theatre. It was a company of creative, cooperative, mutually supportive students exploring a dramatic masterpiece, and their passion was irres
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"Les Liaisons Dangereuses". Oxford Playhouse

What’s the difference between Les Liaisons Dangereuses and the Oxford Union? One is an expensively costumed display of decadent sexuality, political manipulation and ruthless battles for power, and the other, yes, you guessed it, is Les Liaisons Dangereuses . Except, in Clarendon Productions’ interpretation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ perilously pre-revolutionary novel at the Oxford Playhouse, that’s not entirely true. This is no conventional eighteenth-century reenactment, but a bold, ambitious and imaginative liaison between modern technology and Baroque style. Director Lucas Angeli has taken the unprecedented step of turning Christopher Hampton’s script into a theatre-cum-live-cinema, multimedia experiment. The apparent politesse of high society is undermined throughout by telling details on the giant screen above the stage. So, for instance, while we see the scheming Vicomte de Valmont and his co-conspirator the Marquise de Merteuil affably chatting on stage, the cameras pick
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"Endgame". Pilch. Review by Anuj Mishra

“Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished.” Not the play’s closing remark, but its opening gambit: Samuel Beckett’s Endgame makes no attempt at exposition or climax, the play is constantly and loudly conscious of its movement towards an “end”. One of Beckett’s more celebrated plays, though less known than Waiting for Godot , Endgame was first performed in 1957. The one-act play focuses upon the blind and senile Hamm – who, unable to stand, is confined to an armchair on wheels set in the exact centre-stage – alongside his used and abused manservant Clov – who, unable to sit, walks with a pronounced limp. Like Lear , Endgame presents itself as a play about agedness and disability. It differs, disconcertingly, by only showing disabled bodies: Hamm and Clov are joined by Hamm’s even more senile parents, Nell and Nagg, who are confined (and at most points, enclosed) in large bins and relegated to a state of infantility. Director Killian King successfully exploits the layout of the P
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"Nuts". Burton Taylor Studio

I have no idea if Coco Cottam will go on to become a famous, successful playwright. The only famous, successful playwright I know didn’t write so much as a line of dialogue until ten years after graduating. The future’s not ours to see. But in so far as it’s possible to measure these things, Cottam seems to be going about it the right way. Nuts is her third play (the third I’ve seen anyway), and not only is each of them a gem, but they get better each time. Her previous works, Wishbone and Bedbugs (click on the titles to read my reviews), were more theme- than plot-driven, as non-linear and intriguing as they were funny and moving. With Nuts , Cottam has come down to earth, and created a piece of true narrative drama. It's a concentrated, character-driven scenario that reveals dark secrets from the past even as it moves forwards in time. Friends, business-partners and flat-sharers Eve and Nina need a new co-tenant, and it arrives in the shape of ‘hot male’ Liberty. But the appea
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