That fine Oxford institution The Turl Street Arts Festival is rapidly approaching (fifth week if you were wondering) and let me tell you they have a treat for us this year in the form of the newly written play You Maverick. Written by a Turl Street-veteran Matt Parvin, whose previous successes at the festival include The Players and A Row of Parked Cars. Expectation is high, but this powerful piece is shaping up nicely to set the bar even higher.
Set in an Oxford college under an instance of plagiarism, it is admittedly not the most instantly fascinating of situations, however in this case we are not so much absorbed in the details of the plot, as in the seething tension between the three characters. The key to this tension are issues of bisexuality and an associated thread of bullying. Tension, threat, fragility, tension, manipulation, and tension (yes, this is a highly-wrought piece) define the mood, while character traits are fluid and chameleon-like. The play is preoccupied with the idea of people writing their own characters to suit their purposes – an interesting bit of trivia is that the working title was originally The Writers to foreground this concept. Indeed, the psychological theories that are thrown around (Freud’s continuum of sexuality…etc) seem at times more appropriate for the lecture theatre, though this intellectualising is a guilty pleasure of student theatre we’ve come to expect and secretly delight in. Likewise, though I’m loath to criticise the script which has its poetic moments, the dialogue can sometimes seem a bit self-consciously grand and emotive – “flagrant” and quite a different “f-word” in a sentence , anyone?
I’ve been rather vague when it comes to the knitty-gritty of the plot, but having been asked to reserve some of what I’ve seen, since it leads, so I’m told, to a shattering revelation , and I wouldn’t want to spoil that for anyone. The play is to be performed in the round and with an immersive feel as the actors come face to face with the audience during their heated interchanges, in which Tim Drummond gives a particularly engaging performance as Casper, the dark horse of the play.
Having seen just a snippet of You Maverick, I am keen to catch it in its polished form in a week’s time. My recommendation to you: give it a go too.
