Well, on the one hand my review didn’t exactly go down brilliantly.
But on the other hand, this has been a very controversial week for student journalism all round, so hopefully nobody noticed.
It didn’t start well. First of all, I couldn’t find the theatre – I mean, why call it the Keble O’Reilly if the entrance isn’t actually at the Keble lodge? – and then, when I did find it, half-way through, I seemed to be watching completely the wrong play.
I had been expecting to review Aeschylus’s Oristeia (directed by the bitch from last week) so imagine my surprise to find it was the Oralstya instead, an erotic ballet about the relationship between Clytenmnestra and Orestes, with incest personified by an interpretive dance to ABBA’s ‘Does Your Mother Know?’
I couldn’t use any of the pre-made insults I’d come up with, (‘the only way to describe it was “tragic“‘, ‘Clytemnestra was more wooden than the Trojan horse’, ‘save your money and don’t make an Aeschy-loss’). So I had to come up with a completely new review in less than ten minutes, as I had forgotten my deadline, and spent most of the evening watching Gossip Girl. Consequently, I did what any self-respecting reviewer would do and copied and pasted a template off the internet and changed the adjectives.
I have to say, I thought the stage editor was quite unreasonable. Even though I’d only used it five times in a 300-word review, I was told off for over-using ‘heinous’ as my adjective of choice, and apparently the title I had suggested (‘Orestes’ Heinous Anus’) wasn’t witty, and just read like shit journalism and fake news. As a result, it has been suggested that perhaps I should write for Cherwell instead.
I have decided to give stage reviewing one last try, and then perhaps try out pole dancing.
