At 8pm on Saturday, a motley crew of thesps, budding directors and writers, met up in the White Rabbit pub to begin their mission: crafting, rehearsing and putting on a play, all in twenty-four hours. The brainstorming began with thoughts of a Shakespeare medley – but this seemed to carry on too much from last year’s expedited version of the Comedy of Errors. Eventually discussions turned to the idea of villains, getting under their skin and seeing stories from their point of view for a change. Rehearsals started in the morning on Sunday and the result was performed in Brasenose College at 8pm the next day.

I’m told the play, in its initial stages, was meant to be “a lot darker”; this surprises me as the whole thing was laugh-out-loud funny. Cruella DeVille (Ella Waldman) is first introduced on video, adding a high-tech edge to the production. She explains the main premise of the plot: villains are invited to join De Ville’s Villain Rehabilitation Centre, learning what they had done wrong in order to get killed the first time round. Invited to rehab sessions at “The Satanic Mill, Gingerbread Street, Mordor”, classic Gaston, Captain Hook, Ursula, the Evil Queen and Scar congregate in an Alcoholics-Anonymous-style circle of chairs, and hilarity ensues as each of them tells their story of failed villainy.

Twenty-four hours – “more like 5 hours” of rehearsing proper, retorts Waldman – is clearly long enough for this improvised team of thesps to produce some seriously funny parodies. Captain Hook (Tim Gibson) is made incredibly camp and excitable, Gaston (Nick Lyons) is hugely confident with a tendency to burst into song at several intervals, and Scar is delightfully bitter and twisted about his failure to “kill the kid!” Cruella’s advice to them is to avoid high places (this is especially relevant to the Evil Queen, played by Ellie Page, from Snow White) and never trust anyone.

Katie Ebner-Landy, president of OUDS, said this year was the first time video was incorporated. The technological element is likely to develop more year by year, and special effects are surely not that far off in the future.
Griffith Rees doubles up as director and the charming and frighteningly accurate voice-over of Mickey Mouse, whom Cruella phones during a break to consider the villains’ propensities to appear in a sequel. The more profound element of the play is discovered here: a commentary on two-faced corporatism and how it uses personalities for the entertainment of the masses. This comes back to bite Cruella as her rehab patients rebel at the end, refusing to sign contracts for Disney sequels, following her very own villain lessons: number 2 “Don’t trust anyone”.

The writing was fresh, perhaps because of its immediacy and rapid inception, and the stock characters provided by Disney provided a good base for original comedy. In a drama scene where improvisation is the realm of just one comedy group – the Imps – fast-paced improvisational initiatives such as the 24-hour play should be encouraged and rewarded.

The Oxford Revue made their first steps on the way to the Ed­inburgh Free Fringe with a lo­cal showcase of their material.

The Oxford Revue is well known for its witty works and its latest concoction, Desperate Liaisons, did not disappoint. The audience was primed by the skilful self-depreca­tion of compère Alex Fox. Although the act began with two somewhat stock sketches, involving superhe­roes and sexual health issues, these were a gateway to their distinctive brand of comedy, with increasingly nuanced sketches. The group incor­porated ingredients of deadpan, farce and parody to produce a come­dy cocktail that goes down a treat for even the most implacable audience. Garnished with self-conscious melo­drama and risky boundary-pushing, the pieces were served with a char­acteristic kick. The group was apt at contrasting the subject matter of their sketches with the responses of their characters, particularly effec­tively in the deliciously inappropri­ate ‘parents’ evening’ scene.

What was especially striking about this act was their abil­ity to exploit the audience’s expectations to their co­medic ends. Again and again they would lull the crowd into assump­tions, only to masterfully subvert them and instead lead them down the absurd passages of their alterna­tives. This was combined with mim­icry of generic dramatic narratives, such as picking up a street-walker, whereby they played on the phrase ‘it’s my birthday’, taking it literally.

The attention to detail was like­wise impressive. They made innova­tive use of the curtain, transforming it into bed clothes at one moment and encasing themselves within it at the next to become ‘floating’ heads. The underground of the stage was used to create portals through which characters could pop up, cre­ating a sense of off-stage action.

The movement of the actors them­selves was similarly impressive, as they managed to differentiate their characters between sketches alter­ing their posture and gestures, as well as their voices. They made equal­ly inventive use of sound in their performance, using it to introduce transitions of mood. It was clear that there was a structure to the perfor­mance as a whole, as a short scene in­volving hats recurred several times forming a recognisable motif which was exploited in the closing scene to make a hilarious ending. Such origi­nality and ingenuity certainly left me tempted to make a trip to Edin­burgh this summer.

★★★★☆
Four Stars

According to Cameron Cook, who directs Dealer’s Choice as well as playing Mugsy, the bril­liance of the script is that “the words are very funny”. This sums up the ap­peal of the play, which is being per­formed at the Burton Taylor in 8th week.

There is something ineffably pleas­ing about the dialogue Patrick Mar­ber has written. Marber is, like Cook, an ex-Revue man, and the script is clearly the product of a mind used to fast-paced sketch humour. The scenes I saw did not contain con­trived set pieces, absurd slapstick or even many laugh-out-loud lines. Rather, as a motley crowd of huck­sters, shysters and gamblers gather in London’s East End for a poker game, there is a constant flow of con­versation as the cast rattle through a script which doesn’t waste its words.

As an audience member, it is a strangely soothing experience. We are privy to the private conversa­tions of characters who are clearly very close, exchanging insults and one-liners in (often questionable) Cockney accents. It is like being amongst friends; the experience is curiously restful whilst also provid­ing a chuckle on almost every line. That said, the actors face an uphill struggle to make a low-key play set around kitchen tables and bat­tered sofas visually engaging, and the scenes I saw would benefit from stronger direction.

A delightfully sardonic vocal performance from Markian Mysko von Schultze as Sweeney, for exam­ple, was marred by weak physical interpretation — despite playing a chef, there was no need for him to mime vegetable preparation for ten minutes. Cook himself sometimes slipped into clichéd use of gesture. In general, the onus is on the di­rector to add dynamism to scenes which are currently well-rehearsed but lack vitality.

The action develops significantly from the relatively light-hearted opening, as themes of gambling, avarice and sexual tension come up throughout the play. Of the three ac­tors I saw perform, Andy Laithwaite as Frankie appears to have best in­corporated these subtleties into his character, with his wisecracks tem­pered by an undercurrent of brood­ing arrogance. The well-delivered lines with Cook attempting to co­erce von Schultze into playing in the pivotal poker game exposed themes of addiction, and showcased the complex emotions in the play.

The play hinges on quick-fire hu­mour but also on relationships, as we realise these men are “all losers” in life, not just at the poker table. Cook has done well to assemble a competent and engaging cast who can handle the darker side of this blackly comic piece as well as the jokes.

Cook described the script as “tight” in its quickfire humour. What is required now is innovative and assertive direction to ensure the play is equally tight in perfor­mance. I am confident this impres­sive cast will, come opening night, find the effervescence and pace the play needs to come alive.

★★★★☆
Four Stars

Dealer’s Choice is a witty and blackly comic production. In the basement of an empty London restaurant, a weekly staff poker game is in full swing; quick-handed, straight-faced, keen to gain the upper hand, the play is fuelled not only by shifting money but shifting power in the midst of a tangled web of relationships.

Mugsy, a cockney geezer addicted to losing, has big plans for converting a supposedly ‘spacious’ public toilet block into a fancy French restaurant. Played by Cameron Cook, who skilfully negotiates both actor and director of the play, Mugsy’s character provides the laughs. Playfully mocked and belittled by his sardonic boss Steven (Alexander Stutt) a ‘semi’ successful owner of the restaurant, is skeptical of Mugsey’s pursuits as well as those of his son Carl, who is heavily in debt and to his mind a grave disappointment. The cast displayed cohesion and the ability to rebound effortlessly off one another, creating the comfortable, family-like relationship where insults are interlaced with sarcasm: these were well-received on the night by the audience.

Patrick Marber’s writing has elements of light-hearted banter, which suddenly escalate into scenes of tension and rage. The actors hone in on the precariousness of this balance. Kitchen scenes were particularly effective in providing rapid exchanges strewn with a wit: Markian Mysko von Schultze’s performance of Sweeny was particularly memorable.

The intimate space of the Burton Taylor theatre was split in two but the set lacked a keen attention to aesthetics. Lighting distinguished conversations carried out in the cluttered kitchen from those in the slick front of house. 

The second half saw a transformation in the set and a turn in events as the poker game played out. When executed well, the fast-paced passages of the game reached their peak as the stakes were upped, only to be brought down with flashes of bathos injected by Mugsy. Occasionally, timing was off and the performance lacked direction.

Dealer’s Choice is an engaging production with a wicked sense of humour. It had the audience in stitches and successfully handled the themes of power, manipulation and fate underpinned by a masculine obsession for the game of poker. It is a sure bet that we will see much more of Cook in future, since he dealt the audience a very good hand indeed. 

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Image: Hobbes