Everything about the pre-show experience for Beats is hipster.  On entry I was given the ‘Beats EP’ burnt on to a CD, the people behind the polaroid photo covered ticket desk were wearing sunglasses indoors, and the show opened 20 minutes late leaving me wondering if it was just too cool to start on time. However when it did eventually begin the themes of mental disorder, familial tension and self-worth in this piece of new writing came into focus.

There is a great amount of attention to detail in this production. This is reflected both in the realism of Emily Warren’s script, the subtleties of emotion conveyed in the majority of the actors’ performances, and above all, the set. Whilst this created a believable and interesting performance space, the amount of different props meant that the scene changes, which were far too regular, went on for too long. In one instance the set changes were longer than the scene into and from which they were transitioning. This broke up the flow of the narrative and made it difficult for the script to achieve its full emotional impact, regardless of how well it was acted. A lack of consistency between the scene changes – some were accompanied by music whilst others were undertaken in complete silence – only emphasised this.

Phoebe Hames performance as Cecelia really was the highlight of this production. Her acting was of a consistently outstanding quality as she weaved her way through an array of emotions, moving swiftly from a performance that was utterly hilarious to one that was incredibly moving. The performances of Lauren Magee as Jean and Nick Fanthorpe as Oscar were also commendable, with both, for the most part, effectively portraying the difficult subject matter of the play. I was a little confused by the role of Oscar due to a slightly bewildering plot twist at the end. However, this is a problem with the script, not the acting ability of the cast. The supporting characters of Martha and Chris were less convincing. The artistic lothario character of Chris, played by Douglas Grant, was too much a parody of a well-known British rom-com actor and Oxford alumnus who shares the same surname, which seemed out of place against the performances of the rest of the cast.

One cannot question the dedication of the team who have worked on Beats. This is certainly more of a project than simply a play, with great care having been taken over the short films, music and art work that accompanies this production. This is a good piece of new writing, brought to life by good, and some excellent, performances. If you have the time, I would recommend seeing Beats, but at the very least I would urge everyone to explore the film making, composition and other artistic processes that have been an integral part of this project. 

THREE STARS

I love musicals. Unfortunately, A Little Night Music does not make my top five in terms of catchy numbers or plot, but this was an absolutely beautiful production. The musical itself is a turn-of-the-century society romp set in Sweden, dancing from extra-marital love affair to extra-marital love affair. As entertainment, it’s light: the main theme is definitely sex, but it’s always addressed through petticoats and innuendo.

The plot has a few kitsch flourishes (Magic wine? Magical waltz?) and the characters are not overly developed, but it never takes itself too seriously – you are always Being Entertained. I did find that the dirty jokes wore thin about halfway through, and the score was perhaps stronger than the script. The orchestra added atmosphere and a layer of seamlessness to proceedings, with no jarring between talking and singing. The Oxford Playhouse gives productions a lot more scope for lighting and scenery than we would usually expect from student drama: visually, A Little Night Music was absolutely stunning. The technical side of things accented already strong performances rather than threatening to overpower them – lighting designers Graham Cook and Jay Anslow deserve a special mention for their work.

Performances were stylish and meticulously directed. Georgina Hellier is assured and uncompromising as Desiree Armfeldt, and her voice never falters – ‘Send in the Clowns’ is the show’s the best-known song, and Hellier does it perfectly. Natasha Heliotis plays her ascerbic mother, whose flawless timing and dry asides had the audience on-side from the first scene. Claire Parry is Charlotte, a cynical housewife who has been disillusioned by her husband’s infidelity. Both Heliotis and Parry deliver their lines with effortless wit.  The two main heroes, Fredrik (Richard Hill) and Count Carl-Magnus (Aleksandar Cvetkovic), ooze machismo. Cvetkovic’s voice is particularly strong as he gyrates around the stage like a Swedish Lord Flashheart.

The cast is clearly talented, but the occasional dud song or unremarkable exchange left the audience’s attention wandering. I was looking for satire but realised halfway through that the male characters really did think it was fine for them to sleep with whoever they wanted, as well as demanding fidelity from their mistresses. At one point Frederik draws attention to this double standard, but it’s forgotten by the end when Charlotte takes back her cheating ‘dragoon’. The show presents a range of female characters, but spends rather too long on the superficial ones. It’s not very flattering about women, but it’s down on men too: as Petra the promiscuous maid puts it, marriage is just ‘Five fat babies and lots of security’. But hey, which musical represents relationships realistically? The staging was a triumph, the cast’s chemistry was tangible and they were having a brilliant time. A very strong performance of a less strong show.

A Country Doctor is a play which prompts questions. But mostly, given that this is an adaptation of the Kafka short story, the question is why?, or, more accurately, what the hell is going on? The plot itself – far though it is from being able to convey what exactly the play involves – consists of a doctor trying to treat a sick boy, first in his attempt to find horses to reach him, then in his increasingly strange and dark meeting with the boy and his family.

Perhaps it is strange, given the remarkably un-theatrical nature of the original – a six-page short story with very little dialogue or concrete characterisation – that the play even seems to find a home onstage. But this is largely a result of the confident writing of Henry Little and the work of John Evans and Nathaniel Whitfield on lighting, sound and set design. The bareness of the staging has a curiously complementary relationship with the richness of the language, as exemplified by the doctor’s amazed description of the apparently monstrous horses as he gazes on a shadow puppet projected on the wall by a handheld torch. What might otherwise have seemed the mark of the standard under-budgeted student production, feels eerie and disconcerting in the unadorned and intimate black space of the Burton Taylor.

Things take a turn for the darker when the doctor reaches the sick boy’s home. A crate which had been a carriage is upturned and becomes the boy’s bed, and there is a real sense of the play turning inside out as it meanders its way through the odd and basically insensible dialogue and action. Characters chant, they laugh hysterically, they scream, they attack each other, they collapse, and the play plays on. Rum is drunk, blood is split, prayers are said, and the play plays on.

‘The play plays on’ might well sum up the play: of course the audience can have no idea what’s going on, and neither does the eponymous doctor. Alex Wilson does a solid job of portraying his attempts, along with the audience, to keep up with what is happening around him, despite apparently not expecting any of it. A few stumbles, and some problems reflecting the striking metres of the dialogue, are slight, though frequently noticeable, blemishes on otherwise good performances. The characters are all largely stock-figures, and the cast on the whole do a fine job of treading the line between the real and the meaningless. The abrupt changes from dialogue to more ‘atmospheric’ interludes – all whispered chants and fevered poking –  are particularly well executed, sweeping the viewer along in a frenzy or a lull.

 The promotional material of A Country Doctor promised great things: a ‘unique and vivid experience’ that would ‘stretch the studio open.’ Does it deliver on its promises? Largely, yes. Weaknesses in technicalities are readily subsumed by the overall experience of watching the play, which is certainly an experience, however hard to pin down and follow.

THREE AND A HALF STARS

Immortality? What a pretentious topic for a student play, you would think. Well, the playwright James Carragher seems to have had the same concerns, because he does anything but bombard the audience with a serious philosophical investigation. Rather, Life Sentence manages to combine comic elements with a touch of absurdity that make the potentially heavy topic suitably light-hearted for the stage.

The play starts off with Theo, the hypochondriac main character played by Nick Lyons, being diagnosed with immortality. Theo, instead of showing relief over his total immunity against all diseases, complains that he is now under pressure to achieve greatness. On the advice of his friends, he organises his own fake funeral, which obviously ends in a fiasco. Then it turns out that he will die after all, and what is more, in only a few months’ time.

Confused? The development of the plot is indeed slightly arbitrary, but that is not the point of the play. The crux of Life Sentence are its dialogues – fast-paced, witty, a real pleasure. While the long sequences of speech are certainly entertaining and captivating, the physical enactment, which sets theatre apart from other disciplines and defines its singularity, was lacking at times.

The director Jack Herlihy, well aware of the potential motionlessness on stage, did his best to bring the tableaus to life with the help of more agitated interludes, which in some cases unfortunately overshot the mark and seemed out of place. On the other hand, you could argue that a madly shouting total maniac mourner is just as absurd as the concept of a fake funeral in itself, and thus served the purpose of deriding the awe-inspiring idea of immortality well.

Still, relying almost solely on the interaction of the characters means sacrificing the individuality of the characters themselves. Unfortunately, that is precisely what happened – neither the side-characters nor the protagonists were sufficiently developed. Naturally, a vague role handicaps the actor, too. William Hislop and Charlie Daniels, playing Theo’s friends Stan and Michelle, the two main characters alongside Theo, although performing convincingly, certainly had their difficulties with that lack of profile of their characters. Nick Lyons playing Theo struggled with the same problem, but also with comparatively lower competence in acting.

And yet – however many negative points we could grub out, we need not forget that Life Sentence is a student play. Written by and acted out by students. And although there are undeniably technical flaws, the brilliant dynamic dialogues, generally solid acting and audacious choice of topic are, quite frankly, awesome, and make Life Sentence, by student standards, a success.

 FOUR STARS

This year marks the tenth anniversary of The Cribs as a band. Many of Cherwell’s readers will no doubt find this a surprisingly long time given that the Wakefield trio have been something of a staple to us throughout our teenage years. Originally formed as a three-piece in late 2001, the Jarman brothers have been the soundtrack to many an adolescent rebellion. The fact they are now ten years old as a band only serves to highlight that we are no longer rebellious teens.

“Ten is a big number; it sounds pretty daunting”, observes Gary Jarman. Although a decade is undoubtedly a long time, The Cribs remain philosophical about it in the context of their own lives. “It’s funny,” says Jarvis, “because sometimes I think it can’t have been ten years, but before this band was in my life I hadn’t travelled, I hadn’t done anything really. So in some ways I can’t believe that I’ve only been as worldly as I am for ten years. It feels about right.”

The Cribs have been prolific in their album output and released their fifth record, In the Belly of the Brazen Bull, earlier this year. However, it was their fourth album, the more polished Ignore the Ignorant, which grabbed headlines owing to the fact that they became a four-piece, adding legendary Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr to their number. With his history of making pop rock, critics and fans alike presumed Marr’s influence was behind Ignore the Ignorant’s slicker sound.

This is something which the band, now without Marr, find slightly irritating. As Gary Jarman explains, “Johnny was encouraging us to be more punk because he wanted to be in a punk band. That’s why he joined us. I think that, if anything, he was trying to pull us towards that kind of stuff and I was trying to pull it in the other direction. It becomes a little bit frustrating for people to assume that we would kowtow to what someone else in the band wanted.”

After an amicable split with Marr, In the Belly of the Brazen Bull saw a return to the rawer sound of The Cribs’ pre-Marr albums and with it an almost audible sigh of relief from their more hardcore fans. Whilst the band members are slightly peeved that this is how they have been perceived, Ryan Jarman comments happily, “It seemed like people connected with this record. Almost like we were coming back.”

Now in their thirties, the question of how long The Cribs can credibly continue as an energetic punk rock band is becoming an increasingly pertinent one, as they “really can’t imagine being onstage doing it in the same way forever.” The formation of Ryan Jarman’s new band, Exclamation Pony, would suggest that the band wants to develop and vary its musical production. In Gary Jarman’s view, “Punk’s really limiting. Really incredibly limiting.”

Whilst Gary Jarman likes “the idea of the name continuing as a recording project” the end of The Cribs may happen sooner than later. Ryan Jarman reveals, “There are definitely plans to do some things next year, but as far as looking beyond that, we haven’t really done that.” If The Cribs do break up next year it will be something like the end of an era. They have matured from their early, raw rock records to producing more complex songs, just as their fans have grown from angst-fuelled teenagers into something resembling adults. Perhaps to end now would be fitting.