Week One
‘Current affairs’ has become a pretty big deal. Whether it’s endlessly refreshing your chosen news website, staring blankly at News 24 until you can recite the headlines verbatim (something which the ever-hilarious newscasters are yet to master), or sitting through yet another painful 30 minutes of ‘Mock the Week’, everyone has their own way of staying rooted to the ongoing events of the world. And it all matters. Only today, figures were released that show scooter ownership has risen by 12% in the last calendar year. And Victoria Beckham has been sighted at a five-star hotel with daughter Harper. This is vital information.
If we care about it, there’s theatre about it. Mike Bartlett’s recent NT play, 13, feeds off all aspects of our news culture. It’s got a virally virtuous YouTube preacher, constant political scrutiny, a celebrity atheist and the threat of a war with Iran. Protesters meet politicians in a fierce battle for righteous economic and foreign policies. All that’s missing is a vacuous weather report.
Bartlett’s got past history of such topical shenanigans. His previous play, Earthquakes in London, on at the Oxford Playhouse last term dealt with the prospects of encroaching climate change. He is the man of the zeitgeist, and he knows it.
This type of politicising has had quite a measure of success in Oxford of late, with Simon Stevens’ Pornography packing out the Burton Taylor Studio (not hard, admittedly) last term. Perhaps less topical now than when it premiered in Edinburgh in 2008, the play shows us that strange week in July that saw both London winning the right to host the 2012 Olympics and the 7/7 bombings, from the perspective of Londoners, some ordinary, some extraordinary, and one who climbs onto a bus to detonate a bomb.
In a world where we have instant access to every breaking news story, why is this kind of drama important still? Aren’t we already saturated by newspapers, Twitter feeds bearing 140-character missives, and little perpetually scrolling news feeds?
Perhaps, but in a world where news comes thick and fast, with each new story breaking before the last, what is lost is nuance. It is easy to forget, sometimes, that every story affects different people in different ways; drama such as Bartlett’s or Stevens’ reminds us of this.
Take, for example, the London riots in the summer of last year. Whether you read opinion pieces that held the rioters up as a prime example of marginalised youths, merely in need of a hug and a cuppa, or that the perpetrators of such vile deeds deserved to be flayed alive and covered from head to toe in salt, what you read was a generalisation: many thousands of individuals turned into a stereotype.
Plays such as 13 or Pornography resist this trend to generalise by their very nature: rather, they explore different peoples’ different responses to these events, and remind us that behind every news story onto which you flick whilst you procrastinate are real people. They bring these unreal headlines, and reports, and reporters back to a level that we can understand on human terms. Now that’s vital.
Week Two
The Playhouse is a wonderful place. They show plays. Not only do they show plays, but they have a bar. Two, in fact: one on each floor. Twice the fun. And they also have intervals, in which you can visit said bars. And you can take your drinks into the auditorium with you. So, all things considered, pretty wonderful.
The question is, though, what to drink? Chances are, if you’re reading a student newspaper, then you are a student yourself and so are over eighteen. You may even have been eighteen for quite some time. This means that you can legally purchase alcohol. So that means no lemonade or J20. You’ve got to do it properly.
So, what to drink? Beer and cider are, quite obviously, off the cards. Alcohol is a diuretic and that pint that you chugged will need to come out sooner rather than later, leaving you with an unpleasant choice. Do you scramble to get out and rush to the loo, annoying people and missing half the second act, or do you sit there, growing increasingly more uncomfortable as what feels like the upstream contents of the Hoover Dam attempts to force its way out of your bladder? Clearly, this is not the way to go. Neither, however, is wine. When considering the interval drink, one needs to bear in mind that alcohol is often just as important in improving the dramatic climax of the second act as anything that actually happens on stage. Wine is simply not strong enough to do this to a satisfying extent. Moreover, red wine is warming and makes you drowsy; likewise, whisky is a no-go. Whilst it is strong enough, a malty warmth combined with the hot and stuffy environs of any theatre will, inevitably, send one snoring. So, what are we left with? Rum and coke? Classy. Jaegerbomb? Where do you think we are? Bridge?
Clearly, there is only one drink equipped for the task at hand, and that is the gin and tonic: cold enough to refresh and awaken, without leaving you with caffeine jitters; large enough to quench your thirst, yet not enough to send you rushing off to the toilet; alcoholic enough to make the second act that little bit better, yet not so strong that it blurs into a vague mess. Clearly, the gin and tonic has it all.
Fundamentally, the G&T is a very simple drink, with four crucial elements. Gin, tonic, ice and lime. And it has to be a lime. Simply nothing else will do. Because we say so. There has to be enough ice, or else the whole thing turns into a warm, sticky mess, and that completely defeats the point. Tonic is a very simple matter: you will be given a tiny bottle of tonic water (always Schweppes), and be invited to add it to taste. Chances are you’ll pour it all in regardless: you paid for the whole bottle, didn’t you? Then, we come to the main event. The gin. More often than not, unless you get a choice, it’ll be Gordon’s. Everywhere has Gordon’s. An ad campaign from a few years back explains their position rather well. Ill-advised flirtation with Gordon Ramsey’s inexplicably creased mug aside, their tagline was excellent: “The G in G&T”. How good is that? They’ve commandeered half of a two-letter acronym, ampersand notwithstanding. Tanqueray doesn’t stand a chance; T&T sounds like an investment bank. Bombay Sapphire pretends to be blue, which, once out of the bottle, it isn’t. Which is disappointing.
Enough of our blather. The best way to experience this king among beverages is to have one for yourself, and we urge you to do so the next time you are making interval chit-chat at the Playhouse. And the quinine in the tonic will stop you from getting malaria. Need we say more?
Week Three
Theatre reviews are missing something. At this week’s production of Spamalot, there was far more to the theatrical experience than what was happening on stage. Many of the comedy gems of the evening came not from King Arthur and his motley retinue, but from the audience members themselves. Some comments were revelatory. “I can’t believe it. He’s, like, one of my favourite people in the whole world, and I’m going to be in the same room as him!” announced the boy sitting behind me to his father. I’m pretty sure he was talking about star Marcus Brigstocke, but I’m willing to entertain the idea that he was indiscreetly referring to me. He must have just been too overwhelmed to ask for an autograph. The boy was simply star struck. Pity. I carry around a stack of photos of myself for that very purpose.
There’s a fun little skit in the play where Arthur and his men attempt to gain access to a French castle by means of a Trojan rabbit. “But,” the man sitting next to me commented to his partner, scratching his head and looking quite befuddled, “They haven’t hidden themselves inside it. It won’t work.” I’m so glad he was there to help out. It’s a shame he couldn’t tell the actors on stage, because they got themselves into quite a pickle from their negligent actions. It would have made all the difference.
You might dismiss all this as supercilious snobbery. And you’d probably be right. But there’s more value to this type of analysis than there first seems. Reviewers are often on the cusp of it – how many times do you see lines referring to the ‘continual laughing’ of an audience, or their ‘uncomfortably shifting in their seats’. It’s an opinion poll, an affirmation that the reviewer’s judgements are shared by others, and therefore more reliable. But more can be made of this. After a performance of The Habit of Art at the NT a couple of years ago, one enthusiastic punter gently sauntered over to the bank of the Thames, set himself, and screamed across the waters “ALAN. BENNETT. IS. GOD!” I kid you not. In an age where the opinion of the masses holds such a premium, these little nuggets can be just as relevant and as lucidly articulated as whatever Billington or Purves has to say.
Isn’t that what it’s all about, though? Nobody puts on a play for the reviewers. Nobody acts because they want a passing mention in the culture pages of The Telegraph. A play is put on for its audience. This might sound simplistic, patronising even, but it is worth saying. It’s very easy to lose sight of this, in a world of press previews, star ratings and sound-bite quips on posters. Certainly, this is all useful: it’s hard to underestimate the importance of all this in terms of marketing the production. However, a play us not put on for the person sitting in the back with a notepad and five hundred words to rattle off by Tuesday. It’s done for the boy with the Marcus Brigstocke obsession, for the man thoroughly confused by the Trojan bunny-rabbit. It’s for the audience.
Week Four
It’s really very cold. People are lolloping around in so many jumpers that they can’t move their arms, packs of huskies have been seen padding around Radcliffe Square, and the rowers have replaced their oars with ice picks. I even saw a frozen cow in Christ Church Meadow yesterday. It was that or a yeti. Honest. We’re convinced that this is all just a sensational marketing ploy from The Hothouse. Is there nothing to which the astronomical limits (about which we’re constantly being reminded) of their budget will not extend? I’m going this evening, just on the off chance that their set designers have gone for a literal rendering of the title and thumped up the thermostat.
It’s certainly got us talking. Not only do we all have to suffer the physical agony of the biting chill, but, worse, we are doomed to endure the perpetual conversational reminders that have become an obligatory opening to every new conversation. Lest we forget. Since Rupert Goold’s icy reimagining of The Tempest in 2006, very few plays have followed suit and experimented with the shift in dynamic that a temperature change can bring. So, this week, we thought we’d have a go. Just how crucial is heat to some of our favourite classics of the stage?
Cat on a Frosty Tin Roof
Tennessee Williams’ drama of sex, superficiality and death takes a refreshing twist, as the eponymous roof is covered by sheet ice. Maggie the Cat’s figurative feline feet are frozen. The fire brigade is nowhere in sight. The audience just sits there watching the hapless kitty, fixed to the spot, trapped, and only able to wait until things change for the better. Which, come to think of it, isn’t a bad metaphor at all. The script might need some work, though.
Waiting for Godot before Dying of Hypothermia
Vladimir and Estragon don’t wait for Godot for a very long time. Nor do they even consider taking off their boots. They get very, very cold, catch hypothermia and their icy corpses are found by Lucky and Pozzo in the morning. The dialogue, fretted with the constant chattering of teeth, renders Lucky’s speech the most understandable part of the play. With the protagonists incarcerated in frozen oblivion, it doesn’t really matter whether or not Godot turns up. Everyone’s favourite surrealist ruminations on death and memory and the fundamental alienation at the heart of the modern world become, if possible, even bleaker.
A Midwinter Night’s Dream
No prancing around enchanted forests for Lysander and the gang. Suddenly the burgeoning sensual desires of the Athenians don’t seem as pressing as they embark upon a fight for survival amidst the frost. They’re huddled up under innumerable blankets, unable to finish a line of iambic pentameter over the rattling of their teeth. Bottom would be pretty chuffed with the insulating layer of fur. Only he doesn’t get transformed, because all of the fairies are dead. Their fragile, delicate little bodies are destroyed by the powerful chill before Puck gets the opportunity to open his mouth. Shame.
Lady Windermere’s Electric Blanket
The subtle motif might become a bit clunkier, but functionality takes priority where the threat of frostbite is concerned. Instead of the pristine, delicate finery of the 1890s aristocracy, everyone just wears parkas. Lord Darlington, too miserably chilly to proffer his dandiacal witticisms, instead retires to a corner and sulks. But the real outrage comes when Lord Windermere discovers his wife’s treasured blanket in Darlington’s lodgings. Worse still, she’s left it on for far too long, and the whole house goes up in flames. Third degree burns all round.
Oedipus On Ice
If there’s one thing Sophocles’ incestuous, patricidal tragic hero lacks it’s a pair of ice skates. Classical Greece is transformed into an icy wonderland fit for a king. It all goes swimmingly well until Oedipus blinds himself, loses balance, and skids, flailing, into a terrified Theban chorus. All this set to the soundtrack of Boléro. Put simply, it’s the dramatic extravaganza of all time.
So there you have it. Five great plays as you’ve never seen them before. Our brains may be starved of warmth in these frosty days, but that’s no excuse to lack creative endeavour. Look at Chekhov. He was from Russia. A little bit of cold never hurt anyone.
Week Five
Remain calm. Fasten your safety belts. Life jackets are to be found underneath your seats. Exits are located here, here, and here. Josh has been left to write the brunt of this column on his own. It’s about politics. Expect severe turbulence, cabin depressurisation, and unexpected wing detachment. We’re in for one hell of a bumpy ride.
If you’ve been following Oxford’s drama scene, then you’ll have noticed that theatre has taken a turn for the political. Mephisto has its Nazis. Cabaret too. Singing Nazis. Singing Nazis wearing very little. But Nazis nonetheless. Vanessa Redgrave spent two days in Oxford, talking about the links between politics and theatre, culminating in a symposium with the playwright Simon Stevens, the Observer’s theatre critic, Michael Billington, and Ralph Fiennes. Yes, Voldemort. Also Amon Goeth, if we’re making the Nazi connection. But this column isn’t about Nazis or Nazism. Not directly at least. It’s about a seemingly irreconcilable meeting of two ostensibly separate spheres: theatre, which is for urbane, artsy, and lovely people; and politics, which is for… well… OUCA.
‘To what extent’, a half-arsed essay title might read, ‘does politics play a part in theatre?’ This question was asked in the symposium. The debate, however, came unstuck when it became clear that nobody had asked the crucial question: in the context of the stage, what even is politics? Is a political play one that says “vote Tory” or “vote Labour” or “Viva la revolution”? Is political theatre merely agitprop, another way of proselyting? (I said it would be bumpy.) Who wants to see these plays? We’re all displeased when Oxford’s budding MPs post fliers in our pidges en masse. Why would anyone bother going to the theatre to listen to a talking pamphlet? Brecht certainly wouldn’t. For him, theatre was an inherently political art form, but to immerse the audience in grandstanding and hackery was not the way to go about it. Key to his theory of epic theatre is the alienation of the audience: political thought is an intellectual, not emotional affair, and so rather than being swept away by high rhetoric, the audience must be kept at a remove from the play’s action in order to be able to take a critical perspective, to be able to actively recognise political and social injustices.
Early on in the symposium, Simon Stevens explained that he belonged to a school of thought that considers theatre to be an inherently political art form. Politics is the totality of all interaction between the individual and society at large, Stevens believes, taking a cue from Aristotle, who wrote that man is, by nature, a political animal. Watching the histrionic melodrama of PMQs, it’s probably fair to say that our politicians, in turn, are by nature theatrical animals. And their production is not really very entertaining, judging by the number of sleeping backbenchers.
This isn’t a topic that allows for easy conclusion. But perhaps that’s the point. When you’re watching the Bolshevik escapades of the characters in Mephisto, or reflecting upon last week’s caustic kicking in the Kit Kat Klub, the debate just won’t go away.
Week Six
Hold the phone, Africa Aid. A tortuous famine is sweeping throughout Oxford. A shortage so great that it makes the Ten Plagues of Egypt seem like a minor irritation. Topical eczema, if you will. The slaughter of every first-born was nothing. Angel of Death, where is thy sting? Thou hast no dominion over this greater evil that devastates our city. For upon this 6th week, this potent climax of Hilary, a horror has struck. Plays are going unreviewed.
My lousy attempts at highfalutin melodrama aside, things are in a bit of a pickle. The drama sections of Cherwell and OxStu, as well as their online sister, OTR, are all struggling to keep up with the deluge of plays with which Oxford is seemingly awash this week. Whether this is because of the sheer volume of productions, a mid-year apathy towards reviewing, or simply the all too restrictive pressures of a heavy workload, this problem must been resolved. And promptly. Never fear: if this alluring job advertisement doesn’t make you want to race to your computer and sign up to be a reviewer, nothing will.
Essential Criteria:
Undaunted by Lack of Friends: You can’t have friends as a reviewer. It’s simply not allowed. Not only will your harsh and cutting comments render you utterly reprehensible to the people around whom you will actually be spending most of your time, but you can’t review plays that have people you know in them. It’s that old ‘conflict of interest’ chestnut.
Concupiscence for Sweeping Statements: Nobody wants to hear a measured critical judgement. A fine-tuned, deft and nuanced analysis is of no interest. Reviewers must have the ability to brand a show an unbridled triumph or a miserable waste of their precious time.
Unaffected by Editorial Butchering: You mustn’t be attached to anything you’ve written. Half of it will get cut. Just to give the editors a sense of self-worth and to justify their roles to themselves. They’ll also mess with your punctuation. Not because it’ll make your prose better, but because they can.
Desirable Criteria:
Tendency for Inappropriately Symbolic Readings of Sets: After your snappy first line, sharp précis of the content, and paragraph about how breathtaking/dismal the leads were, inspiration often begins to run dry. It really helps here if you can simply whop in a stock paragraph describing the set in great detail, whilst ascribing visionary significance to each aspect of the design. A wall is never just a wall.
A Complete Lack of Knowledge About Theatre: This really will do wonders for your writing. It’ll be so much more informative for your readers if you can point out that Shakespeare’s language is really good, or Wilde is really funny. And who cares how the productions are put together? Directors are just responsible for scene changes, right?
If this sounds at all like you: what are you waiting for? Sign up today for free tickets, an easy topic of conversation with interested grandparents, and a perpetuation of a student reviewing system that exists not for its readership or the improvement of theatre, but to indulge the self-satisfied musings of the most important person: you!
