Tom Stoppard’s name is all over Oxford. There’s simply no escaping it. OUDS finished their rendition of the kooky whodunit spoof only last Saturday, and here we are again, watching The Real Inspector Hound come alive as part of a Cuppers performance – and by Trinity Freshers, no less. Add Exeter’s stab at the same murder mystery to the mix, a murder conveniently scheduled for Thursday, and we’ve got a positive shrine to the guy behind the Hound.  And thankfully, Trinity paid him all the right respects. 

It’s always hard cutting and pasting bits of an original play to cater for a 30 minute production, but this adaption was succinct as well as funny – no mean feat for the pressed for time script editor. Walking into the crammed, slightly stuffy studio space, my attention was instantly drawn to the disheveled mannequin on the floor – the corpse – it would seem, and the impetus for theatre critics Moon and Birdboot to begin their dialogue. Rimmed eyed, overinflated Moon was cast perfectly, and the actor succeeded in tickling out roars of laughter from his (albeit Trinity dominated) audience. The exchanges between Birdboot and Moon confidently anchored the play-within-a-play conceit, and we watched as an outright groaner of an Agatha Christie knockoff unfolded on the makeshift stage before us.

Because the murder mystery was terrible, worse than terrible if we’re judging by Agatha’s high standards. But that’s what makes Stoppard’s production so brilliant, and Trinity’s realization of the play the enjoyable experience it was. Set in the fog-cloaked environ of Muldoon Manor, the play-within-a-play got rolling into action when the housekeeper, Mrs Drudge, discovered of an escaped madman on the loose. And although the actress had a tendency to ‘speak’ the lines rather than perform in character, I found this didn’t matter, and if anything, added to the hilarity of a piece intended to be bad. That’s not to say all the actors suffered from delving in and out of character at regular intervals. Indeed, ‘Cynthia Muldoon’ was a notable performance, the actress propelling the piece forwards with her high energy and tittering ‘posh gal’ performance.

So the radio may have broken half way, and some of the cast may have been stronger actors than others, but this didn’t detract from the overall effectiveness of this brief play. The faulty radio, if anything, was flawlessly integrated into the script and ‘Simon Gascoyne’ revealed his superb ability to adapt to unforeseen circumstances, with his ‘I appear to have found a newspaper,’ line. It was an entertaining romp that made my Tuesday evening so much more the brighter, and is a play I want to see more of, despite Oxford’s already inundated Stoppard fan club. 

When handed the program to Rough Justice, I sat down amongst a rather elderly audience in the Playhouse feeling skeptical about what was about to occur. Featuring a small but experienced cast, such as Tom Conti, a.k.a Miranda Hart’s dad, and David Michaels, a.k.a Jon Welch off Coronation Street, one might question how they would cope with Terrence Frisby’s gritty court drama of a well-loved television journalist (Conti) on trial for the murder of his severely brain-damaged son, Cabby. Highland admits to manslaughter but claims he suffocated the child on “impulse”. Throw in the fact that Highland chooses to be his own defense against a prolific and sharp-tongued lawyer (Liz Payne) and that he is merely covering up for his wife (Carol Starks…Holby City) who is the real killer, you’re looking at a script that is rich, textured, and darkly humorous.

In terms of performances, the real star of Rough Justice was prosecution lawyer Elizabeth Payne. She maintained a sharp delivery and revealed a number of levels to her character through her flirtatious interchanges with the judge and her seemingly genuine sympathy for Highwood. Conti’s performance as James Highwood was good but did not live up to expectations; his one-liners were badly-timed and although his nervous breakdown at the end of the first half was more convincing, the relationship between him and Carol Starks was detached and awkward to watch. The judge and the Highwood’s legal advisor (David Michaels) fulfilled the comedic action particularly well, Michael’s reactions to every legal faux pas made by Highland were impeccably timed and often drew a laugh from the audience.

The setting was impressive but unnecessary – although it was successful in transforming a large stage into what felt like more intimate court room, the scene changes from the courtroom to the cell-like back room were noisy and distracting. The nature of the setting limited movement throughout the performance; all bar prosecution lawyer Margaret Casely seemed incapable of movement once they were assigned their designated box or bench. Effective use is made of the upper balcony in the playhouse as a public gallery implement the feeling that the audience were a part of the jury. 

Overall, although the power of the script surpassed the quality of what simply was an unpolished performance, this play challenges who holds the power, the judge or the jury? Can common sense appeal in a court of law? A nice touch at the curtain was when the cast asked us to vote on whether we would have judged Highland as guilty or not guilty. Thought-provoking, impeccably constructed and not just for the law students. I recommend.

Let me call everyone’s attention to David Todd’s The Oxford Arts Stream. Here is a new, weekly arts festival which brings with it fresh air. It is fusion cuisine, stirring variously spiced drama, poetry, music and dance all together in one delectable show. And the latest instalment – its second – made for an appetising evening. Most performers proved very capable. Their strongest merit was intimacy. One felt bathed in warming lamplight, rather than bonfire blaze.

This worked especially well with the two feelingly sung settings of ‘Drop, drop, slow tears’. I hesitate, then, in urging the organisers of The Stream to add weight and muscle to their project: intimacy is a difficult virtue to transfer onto a grander scale. But I would like to, trusting they will manage. Like most fusion food, The Stream pleases, but falls short of being haute cuisine. The only solution is to establish a standard and tradition of its own. Give it an imposing name too, if needs be, like Gesamtkunstwerk. For this one requires a more lucid display of the show’s structure and dramatic purpose, to whet the blunt knife sharp.

There is also want of lengthier, more substantial pieces, to boast impressive feats outwards as well as cursive retreats inwards. Then The Stream may truly leave its mark on the Oxford arts scene. One last proposal, since I always try to be constructive: the venue ought perhaps to move away from College chapels, not least because the readings of Gillian Clarke and Wordsworth were perilously close to sounding more like lessons from the Gospel of St Matthew.

We are The Awkward Silence, a comedy sketch double-act based in Oxford but clambering up to London whenever possible. We are Ralph Jones (me) and Vyvyan Almond (him); I write all of our material but Vyvyan makes up for this by being a better actor. We run and host two monthly nights, both of which are ruddy great: one’s in Oxford, called Laughter Track, and the other’s in London, called The Awkward Silence + Special Guests. At the last Laughter Track Vyvyan smashed one of the venue’s lights with a tennis racquet; he’s a passionate performer.

At our Special Guests night, which has been running for almost two years, we have hosted performers like Isy Suttie, Paul Foot, Simon Munnery, The Pajama Men, and The Penny Dreadfuls. We began at the Etcetera Theatre but are now at the Wilmington Arms, a fantastic venue in Clerkenwell. Our next night there is November 28.

Laughter Track takes place monthly at the Port Mahon on St. Clement’s, and the next two are scheduled to be on November 19 and December 12. On November 19 we are commemorating the 412th birthday of Charles 1 and on December 12 – well, we all know what December 12 is. It’s Bill Nighy’s birthday. So, we’ll be raising a toast to Bill and the evening’s entertainment will revolve exclusively around him (not literally). Our Oxford night is very dear to us because we are able to showcase some of the wonderful talent that Oxford has to offer: a poet named George Chopping, for example, or Paul Fung, a sickeningly good stand-up. 

As a sketch group, people often ask what kind of thing we do, which is a curious thing: I can’t imagine stand-ups being asked the same question very often. I therefore find myself using the words ‘surreal’, ‘weird’, and ‘lots of different characters’ far too often, none of which sells the product to the person asking. Prominent reference points are also hard to find, so I find myself comparing us to Little Britain or Monty Python simply because they are well-known, not because we are particularly alike. (Some people say they haven’t heard of Monty Python, at which point I just slice off their legs with a chainsaw.) What I mean is that we are at our strongest when we are inhabiting strange and wonderful worlds with strange and wonderful characters; I believe our strength lies in portraying a range of accents, ages, weirdos etc. Mind you, we also have a sketch in which we just make hideously orgasmic noises while playing tennis.

Our website, should you wish to peruse some of our material while stroking your face, is www.theawkwardsilence.co.uk.

At Oxford we’re pressed for time. So, if you decide to spend some hours reading, you want value for money. Sebastian Faulks’ A Possible Life gives you a five-in-one deal: five stories, each of which could stand on its own as a novella.

But the novel is not fragmentary. In a world in which machine-generated nonsense can pass as poetry on the internet and postmodernists keep winning the Nobel Prize, Faulks’ novel stands as a piece of good, solid literature. The stories are united around recurring, age-old themes: soul-mates, loss, and the moment of self-reflexive epiphany that comes shortly before death.

The attentive reader will notice ingenious connections between the novel’s five parts: places from someone’s dream recur in another’s reality, and a certain statuette of the Virgin Mary resurfaces a century later.

That said, A Possible Life is sometimes too well calculated. All stories are designed to fit the scheme of the whole book, and some seem more honest than others. The second one, whose main characters embody the two sides of the faith vs. science debate, felt a little flat. The cognitive scientist consumed by her work at the expense of true emotion was more a record of certain prejudices than a person. The story in which Faulks writes from the point of view of a working-class Londoner also raises some issues. William the dockyards worker says “we was” not “we were”, but his outlook on life is not much different to the aforementioned brain scientist. Does that show respect or condescension? I’m not sure.

Faulks has set out to write a book that defines our shared humanity across time periods, nations, and social classes. For those modern souls among us who are used to random code-generated poetry, this might seem like a bit too much. How much structure can you have before your writing begins to seem rather academic? But, for all the hopes and doubts it leaves you with, reading it you will dream of love and travel; you will reflect about where your life is going. Faulks gives you all these things that literature was invented for in the first place. 

THREE STARS

Power pervades Peter Ackroyd’s Tudors. With a focus on sedition, peril, war and plot, Tudors focuses heavily on a high political narrative.

This is a legitimate route to take, but anyone who has read Ackroyd’s novels – which bring figures like Milton, John Dee and Karl Marx (and a bevy of historical Londoners) to life – will be disappointed if they expect a book which brings the past back to life.

The focus is on the power play of princes, bishops and whispering advisers, rather than on the pain of reformation, or bustle and stench of London.

Tudors is engaging: Ackroyd’s style is highly readable. But he has created a narrative of the 16th century that is too standard.

One of Ackroyd’s greatest works is London: The Biography, a work that combines real life testimonies with his own curious insights into psycho-geography, connecting the prehistoric stone, fossils and murky druidical practices to the city we all know today.

That is what he does best. Ackroyd’s novels and non-fictional works bring the past to life, and make it relevant. He is aware that history lives and breathes in the world we inhabit, and that ghosts tend to wander our subconscious.

Therefore, it is unfortunate to read such a staid and two-dimensional work as Tudors, especially in the fortnight where Hillary Mantel’s Man Booker Prize-winning Bring Up The Bodies – the explosive account of the life of Thomas Cromwell – has achieved such a high profile.

There is no radical viewpoint on show here. Tudors is a fairly conventional retelling of a familiar tale, a good general survey of 16th century British political history.

Ackroyd’s Catholicism results in a melancholy take on the dissolution of the monasteries and stripping of churches in the Reformation, but it is combined with recognition of the genius of the court in selling the property to the middle and upper orders of society, which invested them irrevocably in the Reformation process. 

Ackroyd, who I do believe stands as one of the greatest living writers, also recognises the superb literary legacy that resulted from Protestantism’s emphasis on the written word over visual tradition: “this refashioned culture was to find its fruits in Milton and in Bunyan, in Blake and in Tennyson”, these idols of a literary world of which Ackroyd is a firm part.

It’s difficult to find anything particularly contentious in Tudors. Anyone who hasn’t read much on the period will find this a useful introduction. Indeed, Tudors’ fate may be to become a perfectly decent text to set as vacation reading for undergraduates.

Next up is the turbulent 17th century, which I expect Ackroyd is about to cover in his third volume: we can only wait and see if Ackroyd will continue his attempt to resist the partisan in his account of a world turned upside down. 

Three Stars