Last year, F Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age classic of flappers and bootleggers hit the mainstream, first through Baz Luhrmann’s flamboyant film production and then though the staged 8-hour retelling of the novel itself, Gatz. Now it has come to Oxford. Jay Gatsby is played by Percy Stubbs, who has nailed the art of staring into the distance. He acts convincingly as the mysterious millionaire, though perhaps the copious amounts of stage make-up are a bit unnecessary in the cosy setting of LMH’s Simpkins Lee Theatre.

The role of Nick is divided in two: older Nick, the narrator (Henry van Oosterom) and younger Nick, the actor (Keelan Kember). Both act well and the narration of Fitzgerald’s florid prose is particularly engaging. This reminiscing narrator occasionally melts into the audience when he perches on a second-row
seat, puffing away on his e-cigarette. During the climactic confrontation between Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby, the poignant performance of Daisy (Hannah Schofield) particularly stands out. If anything she is too likeable as the heroine whose ‘voice is full of money’.

Jordan, superbly played by Kimberly Sadovich fits my vision of the character perfectly and Colm Britchfield, though he only makes sporadic appearances on stage as the minor roles of Michaelis and Mr McKee, is very amusing. Unfortunately, though, this staging of the twenties is not quite as roaring as one might have hoped. This is the fault of the limits on rehearsal time and budget inherent to a student production. The occasional slips of accent and memory lapses can be attributed to first-night jitters. What can’t be excused by first-night jitters is the length of the play, which, at a running time of two hours, is a little long. Gatsby it certainly is. Great, almost.

In a cosy, wood-panelled nook of Magdalen College, five people move slowly around on the orders of director Kieron Ahem. Under his instruction, they gradually transform into the five members of the dysfunctional family whose interactions are plotted in Nicky Silver’s quirkily named production Pterodactyls. There’s something rather therapeutic about party group warm-ups, so I’m feeling pretty open-minded towards the small company when the acting starts. 

For a while, it’s unclear where small, flying dinosaurs come in. I watch a snippet of a scene in which daughter Emma (Ellie Lowenthal), introduces her new fiancé Tommy (Ali Leveret) to her mother Grace (Kaiya Stone). The two young lovers are full of fantastically mushy star-struckness: “Sometimes I say your name over and over again – no one can hear me but I don’t care”. They are saved only by their equally insistent status as hypochondriacs: “I’ve got this terrible toothache!”/“I’ve lost sensation in my hip”, which takes their mutual egocentricity by the hand and drags it into the realms of cynical humour.

The end of the scene is slightly flat, as he three sit in chairs and converse as though in a waiting room; I’m not sure what they might be waiting for, but a few more stage directions will iron this flaw in time for the opening night. The second scene, between father Arthur (Josh Dolphin) and son Todd (Tom Dowling), or “Buzzy” as his father insists on calling him, is more powerful. Arthur attempts to reminisce fondly about Todd’s young acting career in a school play – but it transpires that said play was Pinter’s The Birthday Party, and Todd played the rapist.For all Arthur’s insistence that Todd is “the most important person in the whole world”, there’s a tragic lack of communication between the two of them, probably not helped by the fact that Todd spends the majority of the scene on hands and knees messing around with a bag of bones.

That’s where the dinosaur comes in, by the way. As the household paraphernalia disappears throughout the play, Todd will apparently construct a dinosaur on stage. I daren’t ask what the dinosaur “means”, but I don’t think I need to. It’s probably one of those hugely symbolic structures best seen
first-hand.

The OUDS New Writing Festival is an opportunity for the latest and greatest
student playwriting talents to get their works performed at a professional working theatre (The Burton Taylor Studio). Each Hilary any current student can submit a script, the best four of which are picked out by world-leading playwrights, including in the past Michael Frayn and Meera Syal, and are produced for a live audience. Recently I caught up with some of the nominated
playwrights, and their student directors, to find out more about their experience of the competition and production process.

At first glance the shortlist seems like a who’s who of our very own ‘Know Your Thesp’. Although OUDS portray this as a competition of raw talent, these people are hardly complete novices in student theatre terms. Take Jamie Biondi, who already has a burgeoning list of plays on a curious range of subjects: “I’ve written a play about salmon, a play about a dead dog, a play about a storm, a play about gods interacting with men, a play that puts Orpheus and Eurydice in a hospital in Manhattan, and this one about a lovers’ suicide”. 

Having studied in the United States under renowned playwrights Donald Margulies and Deb Margolin, Jamie is now reading for a MA on the works of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. Despite this academic grounding, Lovers’
Suicide is his fi rst play put into production, and this experience he describes as both terrifying and exciting. “It’s a scary thing to hear your own thoughts in other people’s mouths… But I’ve tried to be as involved with the rehearsal
process as possible.” 

The input of his chosen director Holly Isard has been particularly powerful, and often hilarious: “I’ve really learned a ton about the play from Holly’s input and that of the actors, and I’m incredibly grateful for being so openly welcomed into the rehearsal room to be a part of the creation of this strange piece of text. “One particular highlight was in one of the many flirtatious scenes between Gabe and Anna when Holly was trying to teach our actors
how to flirt and ended up revealing that her own style of flirtation involves a frightening amount of getting down on one knee, rolling round on the floor, and shimmying her shoulders”.

Asking Biondi to sum up his play reveals a self-deprecating sense of humour which refreshingly shows that he doesn’t take himself  too seriously. “This is a play about suicide that isn’t really about suicide. It’s more about love. It’s about trying to reconcile the disconnect between the solitary nature of dying (and especially suicide) and the necessarily interpersonal nature of love.”

Sami Ibrahim is best known for his directing, most recently in Normal and last year’s You Maverick. He also directed a new piece in last year’s festival. Although he’s written comedy sketches, Man Who Loses is his first attempt
at a full-length drama. He describes his style, influenced by Peter Barnes and Peter Greenaway, as, “Anything that mixes puerile humour with something nice and dark.” As a director himself, Sami has tried as much as possible to
keep out of the production process: “I’ve directed new writing before… and, every time the writer came to rehearsals, I always felt a bit on edge, like I was trampling all over his work, so I didn’t want the director, Livi Dunlop, to feel
the same pressure.”

Livi seems not to feel any pressure, however. For her the Festival is so valuable because it allows a relatively inexperienced director to develop their own rehearsal technique without having to focus on any of the administration that comes along with putting a production on. She admits to some surprise when I ask about her thoughts on Ibrahim. Her first impression was that of “a soft-spoken guy in a white cardigan,” which contrasted sharply with the content of his writing. This content is readily admitted by Sami as part of his preferred genre: “I guess the gist of it is I like things that are cruel, cold and fi lled with portent, with a crude sense of humour. I did his [Peter Barnes’]
play ‘Laughter!’ for Cuppers last year: it’s a farce about Nazi bureaucracy and the holocaust – it’s brilliant.”

Building on this dark comedy idea, “Man who Loses” is based on the true story of George Price, a geneticist who converts to Christianity before committing suicide. It has apparently been a learning experience for the cast as well. According to Dunlop, “the play is quite… graphic in parts, and my actress for whom English is her second language has had her vocabulary broadened quite significantly!” Helena Jackson, another Festival director, has been wowed by the diversity of the writing talent. “We’ve got one very naturalistic play, one slightly less so, another surrealist and mine is quite stylized with a hint of physical theatre,” she says.

One of the perks of the festival has been “the opportunity work with a writer to hand and not simply from a script, because you can see and feel the characters developing around you; for instance, a character in mine who started out calm and sympathetic has developed into a sarcastic and terribly unfunny person who is staunchly resisting any of our moves to convert him back.’ 

It’s been a marathon, not a sprint, but Jackson has stuck with it to the end. “The script has changed so much since the start; sadly I sort of naively decided to print out the entirety of each draft; my printing bill has soared to about £30 and I could wallpaper my room with the abandoned drafts, but it’s all part of the process”.