I probably found her the way most things are found i.e. through the Youtube recommendation box. I likely typed in something crap, say ‘inspirational poetry,’ which would’ve taken me on one of those epic Youtube journeys. Using my bare wits, I’d calculate if videos were worthy of their eduroam buffering time, steering my way between the Charybdis of 30 second ads and Scylla’s lyric videos (composed entirely in comic-sans) all whilst avoiding the Siren call of the oh-so appetizing thumbnail which, inevitably, turns out to be the same image doing a 2001-powerpoint-turn for ten minutes. It was probably after this that I came across Kate Tempest performing one of her poems. Her signature style is to meld the old myths with the modern (and she does it far better than I ever could).

Following the mandatory Youtube binge I found her magnum opus, Brand New Ancients. It is the tale of two families, with the simple message that we are still as godly and great as the heroes of old. Among the myriad awards received for Brand New Ancients, Tempest won the Ted Hughes Poetry Award for innovation in 2013. So after finding that the show was sold out over the christmas vac, I visited the Royal Court’s bookshop to pick up a print copy of the poem, hoping that it would work as a surrogate for the live performance. But, as I did so, the bespectacled screenplay-typing cashier immediately emerged from his reams of knitwear. He minimized Jane’s monologue to give his own soliloquy on just how great Tempest was live, that the text doesn’t do it justice, and that I should see it on tour (all in the time it took me to type in my pin). But he was right.

Despite the awards for poetry, Brand New Ancients is made for performance.  Having read it, it is a great poem. Yet although I read it with Kate’s cadences, with her accent, I found it frustrating when the page didn’t fetch me the full voice which I knew was there. The text is more like a play than a poem: a monologue tailored to Tempest’s unique skills. Her voice works as a Rosetta Stone to unlock the full poetic power of the piece. It gives her poetry a sense of transience and individuality, an effect that only enhances its message. Fortunately the work is gradually being filmed bit by bit (bit.ly/1bBdPOf) so Brand New Ancient’s poetic legacy will endure in all its multifaceted glory.

I did finally see her in a shiver-inducing sold-out performance at the North Wall.  Accompanied by a mini four-piece orchestra, there’s a real sense of the power of the old forms of oral story-telling. At times the tale was comic, then sentimental, with intermingled scenes – from attempted rape to waking lovers – all sketched in a few lines or a knowing shrug of the shoulders. When Tempest took (seemingly unneeded) moments of breath from her speaking/rapping/rhyming, she allowed the musicians to breath another layer of life into the story. The music, the pace and even the lighting fetched those twists, turns and rib-wrenching emotions that are just not in the text. Again, this is not a critique but an endorsement of just how much it is work to be seen in the flesh. Tempest is at the top of her craft, Brand New Ancients is a wonderful experience, and I suggest that you catch the production (touring the UK for the next year) whilst you still can. 

Nicky Silver’s absurdist black comedy Pterodactyls excavates to the bare bones the nuclear American family. In this Fudge Baldwin production of the play the dissecting of familial politics is accompanied by the gradual construction of a hanging papier-mâché dinosaur skeleton; Calum Suggett’s set design makes clear the symbolic extinction of Philadelphian high society. As Todd obsessively rebuilds this impressive set piece the Duncan family disintegrates, tensions mount and the façade flakes away to leave each character burning with postmodern angst. 

The simple props and setting effectively emphasise the dinosaur in the room, while the shifting coloured lighting that accompanies the character monologues casts interesting and eerie shadows around the intimate theatre.  Even from the back row of the Burton Taylor Studio I feel close and personal to the action, as though I’m another member of the Duncan family; hearing their confessions, party to their secrets which are by turn dark, shocking, and hilarious. Tom Dowling, playing the part of the brother and black sheep of the family, Todd, navigates these monologues with great success. His dead-pan tone and brooding looks deliver Todd’s explicit recounts of joyless sexual escapades with poetic fervency. 

The opening scenes are full of unexpected humour, as the usual meet-the-inlaws awkwardness is made strange by mother Grace’s insistence that her prospective son-in-law Tommy take up the role of household cleaner. Kaiya Stone plays the part with a kind of nervous energy and an excellent upperclass American accent which suggests Desperate Housewives and one too many Xanax. Only too compliant, Tommy takes up cross-dressing, appearing on-stage in a comically skimpy French maid outfit. Ali Leverett in the role is attune to the audience’s amusement, camping it up to reel in the laughter. The dialogues between the betrothed Tommy and Emma, played by Ellie Lowenthal, are full of a farcical inexperience as the characters struggle to understand their sexuality. Ellie delivers her line that ‘There’s nothing to know. My breast’ll make milk.’ with a wide-eyed and girlish innocence which takes human nature back to its essentials. The characters’ naivety and their sense of displacement in their own household effectively captures Silver’s own comment that the play is about ‘systems of denial and the price they carry in the world today.’

A polished and compelling adaption, this production of Pterodactyls reveals with each satiric layer these ‘systems of denial’ and the taut emotional turmoil bubbling underneath. 

“Do you believe in the perfect murder?” “…Absolutely, on paper”

Frederick Knott’s intensely charged thriller, Dial M for Murder (famously adapted by Alfred Hitchcock) tells the story of one man’s resentment, jealousy, and greed and how quickly they escalate into murderous intentions.

Behind the seemingly smooth facade and ordinariness of the lives of a married couple lies a web of deceit and mistrust. Believing that his wife is having an affair, Tony, an ex-professional tennis player (skillfully played by Daniel Betts), meticulously plans to kill his wife, calling on the help an old school friend to commit the deed. The skill of Knott’s writing deliberately takes the audience straight into the mind of the man and his motives for killing his wife. This is not a typical ‘whodunnit’ murder mystery, instead we are given the plans behind Tony’s plotted murder from the outset and left simply to watch the chaos and lies play out helplessly.

When Tony’s carefully mapped-out intentions go awry, the tension builds to a harrowing struggle between the hired murderer and Tony’s wife. Whilst this is deliberately dramatic, it was a very overacted passage, which interrupted the fluidity between the other scenes.  Despite the play’s dark undertones there were brilliantly executed moments of humour as Max (played by Philip Cares), who writes murder mystery scripts for a living, accidentally unravels the exact process by which the husband had plotted and carried out the intended murder casually dropping in “I’ve been writing this stuff for years”. Sheila’s character seemed to be simply a puzzle piece amongst the other characters, Kelly Hotten’s portrayal was solid throughout if not lacking in a little force and energy at times.

Whilst the Oxford Playhouse’s stage naturally lends itself to large-scale productions, the set’s aesthetics were particularly well executed. The blood red saturated setting was immersive and illuminating, oscillating between plush luxurious sitting room and mysterious murderous backdrop. Such a closed environment was seemingly stifling yet the revolving stage felt intensely voyeuristic.

The play was carried off with skill and ease placing us, the viewers, in a position to examine the psychology of a man driven to plot an act of extreme violence. Anchored in a skillful cast of five and coupled with the brilliance of Knott’s writing Dial M for Murder is a celebration of thriller-cum-murder mystery.

It wasn’t an auspicious start to The Curious Case of the Improvised Musical when the on-stage costume rail collapsed before the show had even begun. However, the Imps’ ‘Musical’ took off from this point keeping the audience enthralled and laughing for the entire performance.

The premise of The Curious Case of the Improvised Musical is that Agatha Christie, recovered from her “almost permanent state of, well, death!” has been commissioned to write a musical for the BBC. However, due to the distractions of Twitter she has run out of time and needs to improvise a story. The audience had to suggest various aspects of the plot before the show began, including the murder weapon, the location, character names and song title suggestions. The running motif in our production was the winter sport Curling, which provided much amusement for the audience, as the Imps had to weave not only the murder weapon of a curling broom into their plot but also keep the curling theme running throughout the production!

There were some stellar performances in the Imps cast last night. Vicky Hawley’s Agatha Christie delivered some fantastic one-liners and was able to mould her humour to the natural mishaps of improvised comedy. Her sardonic comments were brilliant compliments to the absurd yet hilarious action of the Musical and were proof of the genuine improvisation of the performance. For example, her reminder to her fellow Imps that they had named a character ‘Figglesworth Bigglesmith’ and then promptly forgotten this name. The men of the cast stole the show: Dom O’Keefe was fantastic as the “stupid Curling champion” Tallulah. He had fun reminding his fellow Imp, Tanner Efinger, of his occasionally moments of forgetfulness, however this added to the humorous atmosphere of the night. Their repartee was an integral part of the humour of the night.

My only caveat would be that the musical side took a backseat; you should not go to this performance expecting much that is in the musical genre. However, this is probably to be expected when characters have to improvise all the lyrics of their songs and the comedy undoubtedly should and did take centre stage. The on-stage band, however, should be applauded for their accompanying music. Overall, The Curious Case of the Improvised Musical was a thoroughly entertaining performance which will keep you enraptured all evening. 

Here’s a fun game you can play anywhere in Oxford: infiltrate a crowd of arts & humanities types and say the words “devised theatre”. Watch their faces contort as they tamp down oceans of bile, desperate to remain open-minded. Drink every time one of them explodes from the effort of suppressing his or her instinct to mistrust non-traditional art forms.

 Wisecracks aside, it’s easy to hate Devised Play One: Fear when you assume that terms like “devised” are just shorthand for “sophomorically daft and contrived to alienate”. Watch me: tripe! Self-indulgence! Not enough vised plays done well in this reviewer’s opinion! Easy like Sunday morning — but give yourself some credit, if only so you have some to give Fear. Yes, the title makes you think atonal soundscapes and actors writhing in dance bags, but unclench. The reality is more like a Python sketch-cum-episode of Black Mirror, loosely arranged around one family’s ordinary and extraordinary unhappinesses.

Fear’s six-headed mother is a cast blessed with mutant strength, their only weakness a tendency to tilt the filters of their mime-cigarettes downwards and mime-light their trousers on mime-fire (and even that’s really more of a charming foible). Phoebe Hames and Sam Ward are skilled shaders, balancing the dark and the darkly comic beautifully, and Cameron Abery’s tetris-loving teen who falls down a rabbit hole of online child pornography that should pull the heartstrings of anyone who lost their innocence to 4chan. Lamorna Ash does a commendable job as his mother, her vindictive glee by turns funny and unsettlingly relatable — ditto Nick Finerty’s sadistic gameshow host, who captures the voice of social anxiety so well that, every night, fifty people’s sphincters retract simultaneously into their bodies. Special mention, though, must go to Emma D’Arcy, for an aching and mesmeric final monologue.

 In developing Fear, Rough-Hewn Theatre have taken only the finest 100% organic vulnerability from human actors, distilled via improvisation and writer Emma Levinkind’s quill nib into something performable. Their product is unpolished: it lacks structure, there are no proper characters, it’s not set anywhere, lighting and sound are minimal, the stage doesn’t transform into a car. Instead, for 45 minutes, some strangers with giant balls will let you wander around their inner lives like open houses, in the hope that you might see something there that makes you feel less alone. Even if it fell down onstage, Fear would deserve props for exploring theatre’s potential to create these kinds of actor/audience relationships. Personally, I’m psyched for Devised Play II: The Fearing.