The Real Inspector Hound is an odd, yet humorous and enjoyable experience. Tom Stoppard’s play-within-a-play satirises two egotistical theatre critics: Moon (Ed Barr-Sim), a bitter and obsessive second-stringer for his rival Higgs, and Birdboot (Sam Carter), a dashing, charismatic womaniser who is constantly defending his devotion to his wife.

Carter and Barr-Sim make a strong pair. Their rapport extends well beyond the dialogue, which won’t disappoint Stoppard fans. The intimate space of the Burton Taylor is skilfully transformed into the claustrophobic country retreat of Muldoon Manor, the setting for this Christie-esque whodunit. The characters are portrayed at the height of farce, with enough sharp head-turns and intakes of breath to keep the audience tittering for most of the hour. But it is Mrs Drudge (Phoebe Hames), the Essex housekeeper, who really steals the show. Hames’s hilarious background acting, overly vigorous eyebrows, docile smile and fine accent, together lend themselves to a perfect characterization of the wily domestic servant.  

Yet in the fitting words of Moon, “the second half fails to live up to the promise of the first”. Compared to the perfect pitching of the first act, the second could have benefited from a few more rehearsals. This dip in quality could be attributable to the central role falling squarely on Moon. While confusion is inherent to his character, Barr-Sim struggles to grasp the audience’s attention or sympathy to the same extent as Carter, who fits his philandering role as well as he does his suit. When he breaks the fourth wall to answer a stage telephone call from his wife, his dry reply – “I told you never to ring me at work” – is hilarious, a credit to his strong performance.  

The costumes and props are excellent, although possibly too authentic. The major’s wooden wheelchair, for example, is prone to collapse, but this only adds to the humour and the actors recovered well with a quick replacement.

On the whole, no actor is ever lost in Stoppard’s dialogue – no mean feat – and the audience are kept constantly laughing or enthralled in the melodramatic action. With dead bodies and double identities galore, The Real Inspector Hound is a well-acted treat for fans of murder mystery.

FOUR STARS

Hidden away in Cowley’s Pegasus Theatre, five comedians entered into a comedy battle. In spite of their best intentions, It’s a Knockout Comedy Improv Show was more school drama lesson than hilarious comedy show. The problems started early on when Kevin Tomlinson declared to his fellow actors “I don’t want anything too wacky or interesting,” a real issue when your medium requires absurdity to amuse. This was, however, surpassed by his later assertion that he was “not trying to be funny.”

 Despite the occasional worrying signs, such as the moment when Tomlinson asked an audience member about her parents’ divorce, there were some genuinely funny moments.  A sketch that involved reading out song lyrics was reminiscent of hilarious games of consequences played on  school trips. Perhaps the funniest moment was when an audience member, who volunteered to participate in a flirting scene, was told to “F*** off” by Tomlinson. Rather remorsefully, Tomlinson, who was playing a frumpy female, then suggested they should not “end it like this”, to which the audience member replied “lots of people have.”

 Overall, the show lacked the spontaneity and free movement necessary for successful comedy improvisation. Unaided by Tomlinson, who redirected the other cast members whenever a sketch started to go down a route which he did not approve, the actors failed to produce many laughs in the first half. The interference from Tomlinson and his compulsion to alert the audience to the meaning of technical theatrical terms made the show look unifinished and gave the slightly uncomfortable feeling of butting in on a rehearsal. The show did improve in the second half, but the ending felt bizarre and distinctly unamusing. Dressed up as his grandfather, complete with wig and mask, Tomlinson recapped the sketches that had come before. This final sketch was overly long and slightly irritating to an audience who had already witnessed all these humorous snippets within the past hour.

 All in all, It’s a Knockout Comedy Improv Show was clunky and slow. Not a bad way to spend eight pounds if you want to learn about the theory behind comedy improvisation, but an evening down the bar would probably be far funnier. That said, many audience members seemed to enjoy the warm atmosphere and occasional laughs. The show is performed once a month, so perhaps with  another four weeks to prepare there could be some marked improvement.

 THREE STARS

I know I risk accusations of sacrilege for saying this but there comes a time for every cinema-going female when the thought of another rom-com almost makes you want to stop procrastinating reading that textbook… ok, perhaps you wouldn’t go that far but the sense of uninterest is palpable. The latest from the institution that is James Bond is a prime example of why ladies should and indeed are filling cinema seats to listen to the sound of ricocheting gunfire rather than the reflections of high-pitched giggly singletons.

Bond isn’t all about chases, fights and complex weaponry, not this one anyway. There’s definitely been a conscious effort by the production team (including the ‘old school’ Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli) to make this film very ‘now’. We see the introduction of a female agent in the shape of Eve (played by Naomie Harris from Pirates of the Caribbean), we see an added emotional depth to the character of Bond including the shadows of his past and we get a clear sense of the context in which MI5 operate as expressed in true dramatic splendour by Judi Dench in M’s ‘How safe do you feel? Speech’. This is by no means a boy’s film, this is a film which is not only entertaining but it is a snapshot of ‘now’, of the changing nature of intelligence work complete with allusions to the culture of fear following 9/11. The days of Honey Ryder and villain’s lairs are long gone.

This film sees Bond rush to the rescue after the loss of data containing information about various agents leaves M in a rather sticky situation. Enter Javier Bardem as crazed ex-goldenboy agent ‘Silva’ who is out to make the Head of Intelligence ‘think on her sins’. This movie is definitely a more modern take on Bond and the quality of production absent in Quantum of Solace is restored to its former standard. Sam Mendes should be commended for his contribution in his first outing at the helm of the Bond machine; a second film would likely be in the offing, not to mention Naomie Harris’ seamless assimilation into the circle of secondary characters.

However, aside from my effusions of praise I must highlight there are some shortfalls. Due to the focus on the relationship between M and Bond this aspect of the films is heightened to the detriment of other classic Bond themes such as the often dramatic and unusual death of the main villain and the pursuit of a female interest. Obviously, times have moved on but the writers should take care to stay true to the writing and the spirit of the franchise. Whilst Berenice Marlohe does a good job of keeping the side up for the female actors as Severine, the writers limited use of her attenuates the potential for a sexy edge to the movie and makes it more ‘Hello, cocoa’ than ‘Hello James’. The centralisation of the plot around M makes the film feel more like a homage to a great actress in an iconic role than an intense couple of hours with an enigmatic MI5 agent. Another point would be that there is a danger, especially now that spy films are more prevalent, of doing things that have been done. For example the rooftop chase scene early on in Skyfall is very similar to that not only in Bourne but also in Total Recall and Taken 2 which have already been out this year. As the original innovators the onus is on the producers to lead the way under the prestige of the Bond title rather than emulate mediocrity.

But with anything that manages to reach its twenty-third outing and fiftieth year of existence there is bound to be high expectations, arguably expectations that are impossible to satisfy let alone exceed. This must be borne in mind and as a stand – alone film aside from the hype and expectation it does make for great viewing for everyone. So ladies do not be put off by the prospect of chases, fire-fights and exploding Aston Martins because there is far more to 007 than a licence to kill.

4 STARS

There are plays that reach the status of a rite of passage necessary to establish one’s talent. I have always told myself that as a director, I am an artist using human beings instead of paint or clay to craft my works. And what makes the performing arts thrilling is the fact that humans are never completely controllable, never static, and every audience witnesses a unique event. If performances change within the run of one production, what are we to say then when comparing different productions of a play, where all that remains are the words recorded by the script? The young British actor playing Hamlet or the mature French actress playing Phèdre – every culture has its own theatrical rites of passage – is aware of the long list of artists who performed that role before them. Some will want to research other takes on the character; others will avoid these to make sure that they are not influenced by anybody else. We all want to be original, and theatre leaves things open to the director and the actors’ interpretation… but then some interpretations can be just wrong. The Mountain Giants by Pirandello is one such play, but the person at test is not on stage.

When I translated the script and added a last scene, I wrote my reading of Italy’s best-known Modernist’s last work. By directing his “myth of art” I am telling the audience what I think theatre is – because that is precisely what this play is about. Giorgio Strehler, a famous Italian director (1921-1997), directed ‘Giants’ twice: once at the beginning of his career and once at the end of it… because, indeed, artistic opinions will change over time. I am not Strehler. I am a young graduate doing theatre in her spare time. Should I not be worried? To be honest, right now I am having too much fun rehearsing and preparing the show to stop and wonder if I should be allowed to do this. That’s Oxford drama: people, venues and funds are available to us and we learn hands on. Sure we can make mistakes, but my experiences have made me far more confident than any theoretical course would have done. We’re not professionals, but theatre is actually something we do. And so it is with passion that we will be telling you the story of Cotrone’s villa and Ilse’s vagrant actors.

Mountain Giants is at the Keble O’Reilly in 4th week

When attempting to promote and stage the arts in Oxford, I learnt long ago that it is essential to come up with a different idea, to find the niche that is missing in so vast and colourful an artistic scene. The sheer variety of arts that Oxford University is host to is staggering, as no one who visited the most recent Freshers’ Fair needs reminding. We’re absolutely spoilt by the amount of people who for so long have nurtured their talents in so many different fields.

However until now, in my opinion, there has been no convenient place to mix these varied forms together, and to celebrate the sheer variety present. The Stream project we are pioneering aims to do just this; students can turn up, hear some of the university’s best actors reciting some poetry, then perhaps hear some of the finest choral singers present a piece of music, all based around a similar theme. To add to the mix, we hope to involve dancers, comedians, live bands… if it’s in the university we’d like to include it!

In order to emphasise our integration of the university, we have decided to stage our four weeks in different college chapels, moving around in order for students to visit the many beautiful chapels that our colleges offer. If the college allows, this also provides the opportunity to use the college bar at each place to socialise, another key part of The Stream’s appeal! By keeping each night only half an hour in length we hope to engage as wide an audience as possible. There will really be something here for everyone, and you never know, you might discover an exciting new art form you never knew existed.

I’ve been lucky enough to work with a fantastic core team of friends who’ve put lots of effort into making this exciting idea a reality. Coming from a choral music background, for me it’s been a delight to already learn about the different acts we are hoping to have to perform. With any event like this, there always comes the scary moment when we hand our hard work over to the audience, but I’m confident that with your help, this can be an event that can continue to flourish in the years to come!

Peter Brook, in his seminal work on theatre The Empty Space, argued that plays must first and foremost function dramatically, as plays, on the stage. It sounds obvious, but it does highlight one of the greatest pitfalls for theatre adaptations: like poems that are tainted with the unfortunate lilt of translationese, it is all too easy for the work to fall into a kind of limbo between two forms (as with Bryony Lavery’s adaptation of Angela Carter’s outrageously bad novel The Magic Toyshop, for example).

Why adapt in the first place? Arthur Miller writhed at the very thought, awkwardly protesting his virgin originality in the preface to his adaptation of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People. Others have been less coy, Hitchcock and Shakespeare notably. It seems to me that adaptation in any form is legitimate if source material is used as inspiration, a spark from which a new work with its own integrity results.

Kafka’s A Country Doctor, a short story which I adapted for the stage over the summer for my end of year project on the Creative Writing Mst., is a vivid, almost hallucinatory tale of a doctor’s search for a horse, and subsequent suffering in a cruel winter landscape where the people are as inhospitable as the climate. Odd and uncanny, there is a great well of conflict and darkness in the story, and in practical terms there is plenty of physical action that can readily be turned into essential movement on stage, while the almost complete absence of dialogue offers great freedom.
On the other hand, at only around six pages long the story is short, and though richly symbolist it defies easy interpretation. With its rural setting, a confusing world of darkness, snow and smoke, the mood is intensely dream-like and, told from the first-person perspective of the doctor, rather introspective.

I broke they story down into segments of action, removed those elements that were not dramatisable, and tied up the trailing ending, and then added dialogue. The original spoke to me in many ways, and I was at the outset tempted to use only sounds for the characters rather than words, but in the end the world of the story created itself through rhythm, syntax and language register. I hope the adaptation has found existence in its own right.