“You can’t start with a pause” remarks one of the critics Birdboot and Moon seated in the audience as the Exeter performance of their adaptation of The Real Inspector Hound opens. Luckily, he was one of Stoppard’s overblown affected critics and their antics had the audience tickled from the start. Not only did they begin by throwing chocolates around the auditorium – never a bad way to start – but succeeded in rooting us in the play-within-a-play idea even before the real drama began.

The critics captured well a pretentious disinterestedness in what was unfolding before them. In a way, however, you can’t really blame them. The meat and bones of the whodunit are sadly lacking, judging by any standards, let alone Agatha Christie’s. But this is part of the beauty of Stoppard’s production and Exeter played into this, never taking themselves or the action too seriously. 

The murder mystery all begins when the housekeeper of Muldoon Manor discovers the news that a madman is on the loose. Naturally we are reminded by Birdboot to watch out for the ‘outsider’ (of which there are plenty to choose from) and so the play begins. The love triangle between Simon Gascoyne and the two friends – Cynthia Muldoon and Felicity Cunningham – was well played and Cynthia’s insistence that she still loved Albert coming straight after her passionate embrace with Gascoyne brought much laughter from the audience.

Not all the actors were equally strong, some struggling to really get into character but one notable performance was that of Mrs Drudge – witty yet practical, she gave us the breath of fresh air we need among the chaos of a murder mystery where the victim lies unnoticed throughout the majority of the play. She used her comical script to full advantage, in particular reminding us frequently that the fog was coming in more and more flowery terms as the play came towards its climax.

It’s never easy going last – Trinity performed an adaptation of the same Stoppard play just two days before – especially with such a precedent as Stoppard’s. But Exeter weren’t intimidated and I thoroughly enjoyed their interpretation. (Plus, I got a chocolate into the bargain – what more could you want?)

Christopher Durang’s The Actor’s Nightmare poses the question of what would happen if a man should wake up on stage and inexplicably be informed that he is expected to understudy an actor he has never met, in a play he has never heard of. Brasenose’s Cuppers team (one of two entered this year by the college) provided us with the answer: thoroughly entertaining comedy.

With one character continually present on stage, the challenge of The Actor’s Nightmare is that it relies on being carried by a lead with the energy and variety of performance to keep the audience engaged during a frantically-paced journey that encompasses Noel Coward, William Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett and Robert Bolt. Fortunately, here Brasenose did not disappoint. Armed with impeccable comic timing and a perpetual expression of bewilderment, Harley Viveash dominated the production with his central performance as the accountant-cum-actor George Spelvin, whilst simultaneously succeeding at the unenviable task of making a cuppers audience laugh at 2.15 in the afternoon.

Whilst the supporting cast had a far less prominent onstage presence than that of the blundering Spelvin, they were by no means simply playing the ‘stooge’ to his antics, and the double acts that emerged were consistently entertaining. The set and lighting were minimal, yet tactfully employed, with a sudden descending spotlight on the hapless Spelvin proving a particularly effective moment in what was a production full of brilliant touches, and one that provided this reviewer with a reminder of the wealth of untapped talent in oxford drama that the cuppers competition helps to shine a light upon.

Apparently, Google doesn’t just know I like to image search “cupcake” every now and again. The Googleplex knows my name! My age! Where I live! And, judging from some crafty chalk-on-pavement guerrilla advertising, the fact I cross St. Giles every morning. I was impressed by the publicity for this original St. John’s piece, but the lack of plot, clumsy dialogue and bizarre casting choices meant it didn’t quite manage to live up to its own hype.

Google knows where you live portrays the search engine as a present day Big Brother, and it’s pretty much all 1984 from thereon out. We opened with “Julia” riffling through various documents in an official manner, to the sweet revolutionary sound of Muse’s “Uprising”, and interrogating (invisible) “comrades”. I spent some time considering whether she was a schizophrenic, partly due to the “dialogue” and partly her odd costume- probably supposed invoke Moneypenny but in reality giving a more Confused Emo vibe. I was relieved from my pondering by a bit of audience interaction- fervid whisperings from a guy in the front row wearing a Russian bear hat and conferring the extent to which we were all controlled by the Googleplex. Eventually, “Julia” and “Guy” acknowledged that they were the only two actors in the play and began to discuss their reasons for hating “the machine”, which climaxed in Guy’s monologue calling for a revolution of new drsm codes and comparing life without Google to Fairtrade chocolate.

This was actually quite funny, but the subsequent debate over whether or not Google’s manipulation of reality was to blame for the fact we and Guy couldn’t see the “comrades” pushed the audience too far. Casting your invisible friends is rarely a sensible artistic choice, and unfortunately this was no exception.

When a BT theatre techie rushing shouting “Who are you? Get the hell off the stage!”, I couldn’t help but wonder how the actors had been allowed on there in the first place.

Okay, so before I start, I will begin by applauding the sheer foolhardiness of the Oriel cuppers. The decision to put on such an intense and fragmentary play as Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis is undeniably a bold move, let alone over a period of a few weeks. It is true that Kane’s name has carries a certain notoriety, and she is perhaps best known for the In-Yer-Face shock tactics of plays such as Blasted! and Crave all of which are infamous for their demands upon the acting troop.

Kane’s play delves into the mental world of the clinically depressed, it is a harsh uncompromising insight into the mind of a suicidal woman.  Kane herself suffered severely from depression and went on to commit suicide in 1999, meaning the play had to be performed posthumously. The play has no distinct characters, stage directions, or setting; rather, it is a collection of twenty-four scenes on the subject of clinical depression. Because of this, no two productions of the play are at all alike – there is so much scope for interpretation. In other words, it is easy to butcher.

First impressions of the Oriel play were striking, the theatre remained in complete darkness, cue the sound of a ticking clock, and someone, somewhere shouting seemingly random numbers into the audience. As the scenes of dialogue began, the actors used of torches to momentarily illuminate their faces in the darkness, using that moment to shout into the audience about how alone and sad they felt. Whilst I thought that the climatic movement of these torch lights across the 4 actors faces was nicely choreographed, it still reminded me of someone holding a torch to their face to tell a scary Halloween story. Overall, the staging was precise and relatively effective, 

The four actors onstage, purposefully masked to prevent individualisation, struggled to fully express any sense of inner anguish. In a play with no clear characters, characterization is so important, and I was left feeling that the actors were not aware of who they were, and what was going on. Instead, there was a lot of shouting at the audience. 

Here’s a play that came into being with no set outcome in mind, for a change. Born out of improvisation sessions, the comedy A Structured Panic  created by the four actors and their director from Linacre comes in bits and pieces, deals with a little bit of everything but makes sense if you enjoy a good laugh  and don’t take life nor drama too seriously.

When the lights are switched off, and some last chatters are still audible from the tiers, disharmonious notes from a guitar jingle to us, the audience, from somewhere in the darkness  and thus leave us from the start with a big question mark that will stay with us throughout the play. 

When the lights are switched on again, we are faced with four characters, each of them peculiar in their own right. They seem to be working in a perfume company, and take us through the ordinary odyssee of a business man or woman’s life: the secretary’s seductive advances towards her boss, the boss’ sleazy dispatch of the job applicant, the dreams and hopes of an employee in the lower third of the hierarchy all look familiar.

Then there’s another layer: the four stylised characters have, strangely enough, animal names, and as it dawns on the spectator after a while, the characters operating in the human structure of the company office are in fact animals that have survived the big Flood in the safety of the Arch, and have now gone on to normal life and work again.

The experience has been traumatizing for all of them, though, as they vividly manifest during various ‘meditative therapy’ sessions. As the secretary and ‘Peacock’, played by Philly Howarth, bursts out in tears declaring that make-up is her ‘real, unimaginery problem’, or as Samuel Elliott, acting exceptionally well as Lama a.k.a. unconfident job applicant, dreams of being a Zebra, or as Becky Hancock as the Hedgehog/employee feels unloved and all prickly, or, finally, as Aidan Robinson as the boss and Badger has a coming out when he confesses really being a skunk, it is clear that these guys know their acting.  

There were slips of the tongue, there was nervousness, but they may be blamed on the frequent changes to the play throughout its preparation (there have even been modifications a couple of hours before the staging of the play). There was the fragmentary, rather confusing structure of the play (a sequence of scenes interrupted by darkness and guitar playing), there was a jigsaw of issues tackled (such as identity and the professional world), but it’s not like they didn’t warn us from the start by calling their piece A Structured Panic. Splendid acting, engaging humour, and a variety of day-to-day aches and pains, but to come back to my initial advice: not to be taken too seriously. 

Two players, one game: getting a driver’s license. As simplistic as the plot was the stage setting of DMV Tyrant. A laptop on a table, a chair and a straightforward topic were more than enough for the two actresses from St Catz to keep an unfortunately tiny audience amused for an entertaining half hour. A smart but subtle critique of our everyday battles with an agonizingly slow bureaucracy and a refreshing reminder that sometimes less is more, especially in drama.

Well, there is, of course, a little bit more to it. To be precise, the young girl who wants to get her driver’s license has already passed her driving test but has come to the DMV office because she is desperately trying to renew her provisional license, and the draconic official who successfully avoids being helpful at all is reading a book while consistently ignoring the polite, then gradually less well-behaved customer in front of her. Add a good portion of humour and the expertise of a playwright, the critically acclaimed Christopher Durang, whose speciality is absurd comedy, and off you go.

It would have been a walk-over to overact the madness of the DMV Tyrant in her silly but eloquent stubbornness or the (justified) fury of the poor girl, incredulous at such an obstinate lack of cooperation. But the actresses were well advised to avoid exaggeration for the sake of authenticity.

If Genevieve Hoeler, playing the DMV officer, convincingly adopted and rendered the all too well-known attitude and tone of those middle-aged civil servants, compensating their bitterness in life with smug self-righteousness at work, her partner, Megan Hughes, had no difficulty in slipping into the role of the outraged young woman either. Although her acting was at times slightly static and, when she was barking at the clerk (without effect, of course), perhaps over the top, the admittedly very scarce movement was nevertheless fully counterbalanced with a verbal sparring that ran like clockwork.

While common sense regrettably didn’t win over the absurd narrow-mindedness of bureaucracy in DMV Tyrant, the actresses, evidently enjoying themselves and obviously well-cast, certainly did win over their audience. 

It is somewhat hard to know what to expect while on your way to a play which involves a reference to the infamously revolting “two girls, one cup” internet phenomenon. Luckily this witty production put on by three Magdalen first year Literature students induces no such mucky traumas in the viewer. 

However, Three Guys, One Cuppers certainly deals with fetishes – Conor’s obsession with tea, Gabriel’s sexual arousement as a result of literature in the form of Barthes and Frank’s frantic despair as both of his fellow students procrastinate in their desperate attempt to put together a play for cuppers (presented in a sort of Matyoshka doll effect) all form part of a hilarious drama concoction. 

The play, written entirely by its cast and featuring Conor Robinson, Frank Lawton and Gabriel Rolfe Macculum seemed in many ways to mirror the more manic aspects of student life, with moments of awkward silence followed by intense screaming and argument – it was, in many senses, surreal; a bizarre caricature of student life.  

The success of these three guys lies in the fact that that their humour is young, fresh and student-oriented. We can all sympathise with the anguish at meeting essay deadlines while being constantly distracted by friends, tea and… spontaneous dancing. The characters developed for the stage are clearly based on the actor’s own experiences at Oxford, and thus strike an important chord among a student audience. 

As the 15 pounds worth of tea bags were thrown in the air in the midst of an insane finale, the audience left with a visible grin – and some, admittedly, with some free tea.

Robin Geddes directed the St John’s Cupper’s play, the exceedingly enjoyable Making a Scene. Starring Martin Urshel, Mayank Banerjee, Claudia Hill, William Law and Caitlin Farrar as actors making inter-rehearsal drama of their own in the theatre toilets, Making a Scene was an overall very well acted and at times, hilarious, look into the personal lives of these wonderfully manipulative characters. The scene was set by a toilet flush before the lights opened on a row of cubicles, cleverly represented by a use of chairs, cut out cardboard toilet seats and a large amount of well executed mime from the cast. An especial highlight of this invisible toilet door set up was when the character Sophie, a young 16-year old girl on her first foray into professional theatre, stuck her foot out from under it in order to signal for more toilet paper. The audience found this a greatly funny in its true-to-lifeness, as did I. More importantly however, the mimed cubicles let us see what was going on the toilets, whether it was Mayank snorting cocaine as failing Hollywood star Alex Riley, or Martin Urshel and William Law, as John Riley and Michael Aikley, using talk about their different styles of peeing to discuss the women characters in the play. This doubletalk was splendidly received by the audience with ripples of laugher as their “piss talk” got steadily more and more pointed and innuendo laden.

Performances of especial note would include Caitlin Farrar as cold hearted and manipulative actress Helen Archer. She placated, incited rage and generally played the whole cast with delicious ease in a strikingly naturalistic performance that was never forced, and used the different levels in her voice to great effect. Props also to her and William Law for really going for it in their snog scene, which, when not interrupted on cue, forced William to banter with the audience “It would be great if we were interrupted right now,” provoking giggles all round. Martin Urshcel was also magnificent in his camp rage as the clichéd, accented director despairing at the ways of actors, with proper force behind his throwing down of Michael in the final showdown. The finish with lines from Uncle Vanya was probably the weakest part as it could have been said with more finality, but in such a strong performance this is hardly a criticism. Overall a skilfully-acted play that left the audience with a feeling of quality. Well done John’s!

FOUR STARS

Naming a book Future Perfect is audacious to put it mildly but, with his compelling explanation of how collaboration can drive progress Steven Johnson just about gets away with it. Only through dispersed and diverse networks of action, Johnson argues, can we confront the more intractable challenges of the twenty-first century, such as broken government, the fading publishing industry and income inequality.

Surprisingly for a nominally future-facing text, Johnson begins by persuasively asserting that things right now aren’t nearly as bad as they seem: the “if it bleeds it leads” ethos prevalent in modern media tends to distract us from some of the substantive social gains made in recent decades, from falling crime rates to rapidly improving airline safety.

This optimism underpins the rest of Johnson’s argument. Seeing past and present trends through rosier-tinted glasses allows him to wax hopeful about the future too. The most prominent example of such ‘networked thinking’ at present is of course the Internet, which accounts for many of the most positive recent developments in society. Wisely, however, Johnson doesn’t pretend that the Internet is a panacea, just that it is a “way of thinking” about today’s problems – thus avoiding the over-exuberant ‘cyber-utopianism’ of writers such as Clay Shirky.

Nonetheless, the ‘peer progressive’ philosophy Johnson espouses here does inspire its fair share of wide-eyed wackiness alongside some genuinely well-thought out ideas. In the section on democracy for instance, Johnson proposes that citizens be allowed to hand off votes in various elections to better-informed friends or experts to decide on their behalf. Quite how this would solve rather than exacerbate the problem of money in American politics isn’t very clear.

Overall however, Johnson’s peer progressive paradigm is a surprisingly perceptive way of explaining past success stories, like Wikipedia and Kickstarter, and predicting where future breakthroughs will come from, especially in the areas of urban development, corporate responsibility and the evolution of the media. A perfect future may be beyond our reach, but Johnson artfully argues that by using the collaborative technology of today, our best days might yet lie ahead of us.

With just a fortnight left of Oxford term, I’ve been looking through the concerts yet to come. One programme which I’m particularly looking forward to is that of the Oxford University Sinfonietta (29th November, Jacqueline Du Pré Music Building). This chamber orchestra typically blends music from the early classical period with more contemporary compositions, and this concert is no exception. Ranging from Mozart to Ligeti (with Prokofiev and Pärt for good measure), the eclectic programme promises an exciting evening.

First on the programme is one of Mozart’s most famous works, his Symphony No. 31 (‘Paris’). A three movement work which lasts barely 15 minutes, the symphony was Mozart’s first to introduce clarinets (albeit cautiously in the low register).  From the opening brass chords, the bright D major first movement exudes confidence with a flurry of scales and jaunty rhythms. The lyrical Andante glides between different key areas, the glossy veneer disturbed by various interuptions. The bustling string passagework of the first movement returns in the Allegro Finale, the dynamic energy carrying the music through minore digressions and chamber passages to the horn calls of the triumphant conclusion.

A jump from the 1770s to the 1960s takes us to Ligeti’s ‘Nouvelles Aventures’ and ‘Ramifications’. Both pieces are written for unusual combinations of instruments: the former for three singers and instrumental septet, the latter for a twelve-part string ensemble (seven violins, two violas, two cellos and a double bass).  Ligeti’s writing will certainly test the OU Sinfonietta performers. The wordless vocal part of ‘Nouvelles Aventures’ and the chaos of white noise in ‘Ramifications’ produce an unsettling atmosphere. ‘Ramifications’ is a tour de force of extended technique, with half of the strings tuned a quarter-tone above the other. Apocalyptic chaos follows sparse textures and vertiginous violin notes teeter before plunging into a deep registral chasm.

Arvo Pärt’s Symphony No. 1 comes as a shock to those familiar with the simplicity of Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten. A two movement assault beginning with a blaring trombone second, the first movement ’Canons’ is an exercise in contrapuntal rigour. Hurried woodwind staccato and rigid ostinati create a 10-minute kaleidoscope, exposing each and every player in the ensemble. ‘Prelude and Fugue’ opens with violin a capella meditations punctuated by the woodwind, before motoric rhythms drive piece onwards. The end is abrupt, the preceding frenzy followed by a sustained violin second which echoes in the ears of the listeners.

The final piece of the programme sees a return to more familiar territory with Prokofiev’s Symphony No.1 ‘Classical’. Harking back to Haydn in its traditional 4-movement form, Prokofiev imbues the work with his characteristic dry humour. The spiky harmony and jaunty rhythms of the work show the influence of Prokofiev’s time at the St Petersburg Conservatory. After a light-hearted Larghetto and the unpredictable tonal diversion of the Gavotte, the Finale brings the work (and the concert) to a virtuosic close.

This is certainly a programme which will test the mettle of the Oxford University Sinfonietta. With such a refreshing range of repertoire (the Pärt and Ligeti rarely heard), it’s definitely a date in my diary.