Anyone who’s seen both a musical and the BT studio would be interested to see how the two could possibly intersect. Tradition dictates the former lend itself to grandiose shows of emotion, toe-tapping choruses, jazz hands and climactic anthems, while the latter sees more sombre, intimate affairs of theatre.

The Dummy Tree is exactly where these ideas meet. Restrained, nuanced, subtle – it’s thoroughly contemporary. The piece is a highly modern fairytale, with strong elements of the Romantic about it. Everyday characters (a mother; a bridegroom; the best man and wedding party) enact two threads that become increasingly intertwined, initially linked by the unifying theme of transience. The Mother (Kathryn Armstrong) coaxes her child, Jack, to move on and develop, giving up his dependency on his pacifier, while Paul (Chris Morgan), 17, frets over his impending wedding. Is he ready for this? Neither sees the other beneath the Dummy Tree, a warped kind of Faraway Tree in a twisted sort of Wonderland.

The set is simple but daring, its crowning pieces a bench and a tree. This is an immense tree, one which will sweep the studio ceiling, festooned with the various litter of unwanted addictions. With no space for choreography, a great degree of intricacy in movement and expression, not to mention oodles of atmosphere, will be called for if the audience is to keep engaged. Luckily, tension abounds, broken only briefly for sensitive and funny interjections by the supporting cast of watcher cameraman and self involved bridesmaids.

This is the first production of the musical since its YMT debut. From the very little I heard of the piece, MD Ben Holder has certainly been successful in drilling a tricky, tripping score into his talented cast and they have overcome the unexpected difficulty of a last minute replacement (welcome, Elspeth Cumber).

With only a simple piano accompaniment, you might mistake this for a simple sing – you’d be wrong. Voices are laid bare and the piano contends as much as it supports the performers; it’s definitely a complex production. The piece is reminiscent of Jason Robert Brown, of Sondheim. There’s something vaguely operatic about it, too, with the disconcerting, discordant motifs (‘Underneath the Dummy Tree…’). Its music is well-matched with its themes.

If Kathryn Armstrong’s opening gambit was in any way representative of what’s to come, there’s no doubt your aural thirst will be slaked. Her tone is sweet but wonderfully fraught, conveying well the sense of something not being quite right. The enunciation is pleasing, especially her vowel formation, heightening the terse efforts to maintain control, normalcy.

The only doubt for me is over the acoustics – the preview that I saw took place in a similar sized room to the BT space and I found the piano to be somewhat overpowering of Armstrong’s voice, surmounted only in the group number that followed (which made me shiver).

If anything’s going to pique your interest this term, it’s this. And if there’s anyone you can trust to pull off such a wacky musical creation, it’s the creative team behind Oxford’s last big hit, Spring Awakening. Book your tickets now, folks. I’m excited.

4 STARS

“This is fucking great. This is hilarious!” Max Fletcher is opening a package on Exeter’s front quad, tearing at the paper and giggling like some giant profane toddler. Inside are the costumes for his and Nick Davies’ new show, Failure, and How to Achieve it. “I just love the idea of two people doing a sketch show, A) in bathrobes, and B) in bathrobes with their names on,” he tells me, with an intensity of wild delight. He describes the new show as “frenetic and fast-moving” – which also serves to characterise his demeanour – and “character-based”, which also serves to characterise his character. Likewise, Davies is “one of those things that seems scattershot at first, but then as it evolves you see how well it comes together”, and that is also how he describes the show.

Failure; and How to Achieve it is the latest act to emerge from the Oxford Revue, the University’s longest established comedy group, but Davies, who will be heading the Revue this year as co-President alongside Imogen West-Knights (“We call her The Spitting Imogen”), does not view it as a branching out, and insists it does not represent a departure: “I mean for me it’s really not a branching out and I don’t think it really represents a departure”, he insists. “Our show takes some of [the Revue’s] absurdity and pushes it quite a bit further.” Fletcher maintains that the show is “totally reasonable throughout,” although cautions, “don’t necessarily not be expecting to be climbed over at some point.”

Davies and Fletcher are following in the footsteps of a number of lasting partnerships that started in the Revue. The creative affiliations behind Monty Python, Beyond the Fringe and Blackadder, to name just a few, can all trace their heritage, at least in part, to the Revue. Yet even those choice examples evoke the ugly shadow of The Other Place. Oxford comedy it seems is forever to be damned by comparison to the more established, and certainly better known, Cambridge Footlights. “When I told my friends in Canada,” admits Davies, “they were like, ‘Is that where John Cleese is from?’ ‘No, Cambridge.’ ‘Graham Chapman?’ ‘No, Cambridge.’ ‘Stephen Fry though, right?’”

Yet while the Revue might not have the prestige of their Cantab counterparts, they still labour under the weight of the Oxbridge tag. “You’re expected to be a certain way,” admits last year’s co-President, the beetle-browed Adam Lebovits, “People have an image of the Revue, or the Footlights, as frozen in time since the sixties. But it defines the audience more than the material. Nowadays, a sketch about Harold MacMillan wouldn’t go down well. If at all.” “All it means,” adds Lebovits’ former-Presidential partner, and current director, the beetle-browed Sophie Klimt, “is that sometimes when get reviewed at the Fringe people turn up and say, ‘IS THERE ANY PROMISE OF THERE BEING A FAMOUS COMEDIAN IN THIS LOT? NO.’”

Journalistic pessimism notwithstanding, the future is looking bright, both for the Revue as an institution and for its current members. In addition to Davies and Fletcher’s Failure – And How to Achieve it, which she is directing, Klimt will be continuing to work with transatlantic Revue star Molly Hart, while simultaneously going into pre-production with a sitcom for Big Talk Productions, the company behind Black Books and Shaun of the Dead. Vyvyan Almond continues to put on regular sketch nights in Oxford and London with The Awkward Silence, while Karl Dando hopes this year to turn twenty-four while still completing his undergraduate degree.

The Revue is nothing if not busy; following successful shows in London and Edinburgh over the summer, the cast have been auditioning for new members in Oxford, with a regular night at the Glee Club in the works, as well as a feature in the popular local pornographic magazine, Cherwell. The Revue has also been steadily building its profile within the University and as a force for comedy. Under the Presidency of Klimt and Lebovits, links were made with old members, including Stewart Lee and founder Michael Palin, to archive old material, while the Revue continue to encourage the comedy scene in Oxford, welcoming submissions from outside the group (most notably from local self-publicist Steffan Blayney), and showcasing student talent in the termly Audrey shows, open to all comers.

“Make your own opportunities,” encourages Nick Davies, “If you missed the Revue auditions don’t think it’s been and gone,” adding, with unexpected equine imagery, “We’re just one horse in the stable.” Adam Lebovits similarly encourages persistence, citing his own route into student comedy: “I didn’t actually get into the Revue officially through auditions,” he confesses, “but I turned up to the first rehearsal and [then President] Ollie Mann was too polite to make me leave.” “It’s quite good to do this sort of thing while still at university,” advises Fletcher, the worst case scenario being that “your friends might not laugh at you.” “If you don’t, you won’t ever know, because you won’t have tried,” he adds, with unnerving logic.

Oxford is bursting with opportunities to write, perform, and see comedy, whether as an extra-curricular pastime or, like Fletcher and Davies, the springboard to new projects. “The Revue line-up is only fixed for a year,” explains Lebovits, “which in Oxford is only 3 terms of 8 weeks, plus Edinburgh. It can only really be seen as a starting point – which perhaps sounds a bit fatalistic – but it’s the best possible starting point.” Nick Davies agrees: “You shouldn’t really paint our show as breaking away from the Revue,” he insists, “As a comedian you have to do something different.” And if I know Max and Nick, Failure and How to Achieve It will certainly be different.

Failure, and How to Achieve it is on at the Burton Taylor Studio Tuesday-Saturday of 3^rd Week (25^th-29^th of October). Buy tickets (£6, £5 concessions) from www.oxfordplayhouse.com

On first impressions, it would be easy to write off Real Estate as flip-flop-clad copyists, all too happy to jump on the beach-pop bandwagon. The recent success of bands such as Girls and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart show how strongly audiences clamour for a musical summer holiday; unfortunately, ‘Days’ sometimes sounds more like being stuck on the M55 to Blackpool than a Venice Beach longboard tour.

That’s not to say Real Estate haven’t tried to keep matters summery and joyous here; opener ‘Easy’ is all lilting guitars and buoyant lyrics (“Around the fields we run/ With love for everyone”) and you can’t help but feel a little less angst-ridden after the delight that is lead single ‘It’s Real.’ The sound is clearer-cut than that of their 2009 self-titled debut, although it is evident that the band have made no effort to shrug off any of their low-slung, surf-garage niceties – not that this is a particularly bad thing.

The songs that make up Days are undoubtedly cohesive and simplistically catchy, all with the requisite floaty atmospherics to boot; the first half of the album is particularly sun-kissed and soothing. Despite this, though, the songs occasionally feel odd/ There is a fine line between a musical hat-tipping and unoriginality, and while part of the charm of songs like ‘Out of Tune’ may be the way in which they feel so familiar on the first listen, the result can come across as more of an effort to remain zeitgeisty than any genuine sense of homage.

Ultimately, Real Estate have created an album which is laidback but bordering on lackadaisical; although it is a collection of well-crafted, cheery songs that will assist you in your struggle against Fifth week blues, Days is far from revolutionary.

Enough Thunder is the Little Chef of James Blake’s post-dubstep: a rather pointless little stop-off that serves only for Blake to indulge himself on (metaphorical) greasy chips and flaccid fish fingers. It is almost certainly a decision that he will come to vaguely regret, though fortunately one unlikely to stick in the memory.

Hitherto, Blake has harnessed the EP rather effectively, creating humming microcosms of sound that showcase his haunting vocals and quivering bass lines in tasty twenty-minute snippets. Enough Thunder sits heavily and awkwardly – a strange menagerie of bee-buzz and whale-wail – with an odd stiffness that has an almost formal quality. This venture into minimalism does make for a more intimate work – but also a rather boring one, with unsettling white noise playing in the background. It is a lonely, introspective work: a melancholy soundtrack to grey days on the M5. This is drizzle, rather than the bass-heavy lightning and thunder of earlier releases. It isn’t even really bad, just somewhat uninspiring.

Collaborative work between Blake and Bon Iver might be expected to be quite wonderful: while ‘Fall Creek Boys Choir’ is one of the stronger tracks on the release, it is nonetheless a bit of a plodder, punctuated by odd dolphin barks and that same unintelligible fuzz that characterizes the EP. Actually, the straightforward cover of Joni Mitchell’s ‘A Case of You’ is unexpectedly rather lovely, and perhaps the only place in the release where the minimalist vibe really shines.

 As ‘Not Long Now’ hits minute number four of five and a half, I cannot help but wonder if Blake is referring to the end of the EP. Listening to it in its entirety is a bit of a struggle: I am bored, and uninterested, and actually rather grumpy by the end of it. Hopefully, though, this is only an indigestible minor work – a service station on Blake’s artistic trajectory – and no indication of what is yet to come for an ordinarily extremely talented young man.

For an anarchist, Simon Critchley has a beautiful house. As professor of Philosophy at the New School (which he has called ‘a decidedly abnormal university’), he’s been in New York for eight years, but his English accent still seems out of place here in the middle of Brooklyn. Before this, he was at Essex. ‘It was a great place, but it was taken over by bureaucrats,’ and he reckons the rest of British academia is in the grip of the same vice. ‘There’s a vague sense of resentment about philosophy,’ he says. ‘They basically hate what we do.’

But Critchley hasn’t lost his connection to the UK. If he wasn’t here talking to me, he’d be round the corner at the local Liverpool FC bar. And, he says, if he’d been in London back in August, he would have been out on the streets rioting too (he’s been involved in the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement in New York). From his perch across the Atlantic, Critchley sees events this year in Europe and North Africa as part of the same broader movement. The Arab Spring has been ‘a wonderful confirmation of the way power can shift.’ It is, he believes, ‘an eruption of anarchist sensibility,’ which means people ‘trying to do things in common, non-violently, trying to get autonomy over the means of production.’ The consequences are ‘potentially really radical.’

‘What the riots [in August] revealed is that exactly the same situation could arise in somewhere like England.’ The broader issue, Critchley contends, following Zygmunt Bauman, is a ‘set of increasing disjunctions’ between politics and power. ‘We still act as though [party] politics can transform conditions, but we also realise that power has shifted.’ On the one hand that means that power has shifted to corporations, individuals, and organisations with international reach and limited accountability. On the other, it’s on the streets, in demonstrations, riots, and revolutions like those of Tunisia and Egypt. 

‘Things aren’t going to get better,’ says Critchley. ‘Politicians are right to be afraid of the people they’re supposed to be ruling.’ When the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement erupted soon after I left New York, his remark started to seem all the more prescient.

It’s Critchley’s ‘endless optimism about human nature’ that allows him to offer such a sanguine assessment of this situation. The more the current system breaks down, the more opportunity there is for people and communities to make something better. In Infinitely Demanding (2007), Critchley argued for an anarchist ‘politics of resistance’ that emerges from an ethical perspective, something he called ‘the exhorbitant demand of infinite responsibility’ – a demand that we make of ourselves, and with which we cope through art’s power of catharsis and sublimation. 

So politics, ethics, and aesthetics are inseparable in Critchley’s philosophical work. But that’s a position he’s had to defend against prevailing academic practice, where walls of separation often seem to divide subfields and traditions. ‘Heidegger said that philosophy is the police force at the procession of the sciences, but today philosophy is its own police force,’ Critchley tells me. ‘We need more philosophical omnivores.’

Although he thinks there’s more room for the kind of work he wants to do in the US academic system than there is in the UK, still Critchley fears that ‘universities have become factories for producing degrees in business studies.’ One way of resisting that, for him, has been to move some of his activities into the art world. To his eye, art has a lot in common with philosophy; it deals with the same kinds of questions and problems, and comes out of the same feelings and desires. 

Montaigne wrote that ‘to philosophise is to learn how to die,’ an idea that Critchley explored in a 1997 book, Very Little… Almost Nothing. Two years later, he and the novelist Tom McCarthy launched a strange, semi-parodic organisation, the International Necronautical Society, declaring that ‘death is a type of space, which we intend to map, enter, colonise and, eventually, inhabit.’ There’s a provocativeness, not to mention a divisiveness, in Critchley’s writing that shares something with contemporary art. 

He tells me a story about a philosopher who was offered a prestigious post at Sydney. As soon as he was appointed, he withdrew most of his articles from publication; asked why, he said, ‘You have to make yourself as small a target as possible.’ That’s one way of being a philosopher. But Critchley self-deprecatingly prefers an alternate approach: ‘You throw as much shit at the wall as possible and watch it run down, and other people pick it up and play with it.’

All Souls philosopher Derek Parfit, choosing his path back in the 1970s, reckoned that Analytic philosophers wrote lucidly on very narrow, boring topics, and Continental philosophers wrote bewilderingly on what really mattered. Was it more likely that Analytics would become more relevant, or Continentals would become clearer? Parfit went for the former. To Critchley, the distinction between the two schools is a ‘profoundly uninteresting question.’ But in a way it has been central to his career. 

He wrote the Very Short Introduction to Continental Philosophy in 2001, and has acted as a kind of standard-bearer for English-speaking Continentalists. What’s more, his writing is actually readable. He’s even a little worried by it. ‘My writing has been most often described as “clear.” That’s fine, but I’d like it to also be deep!’ What Critchley really seems to be aiming for is a perfect philosophy, not just deep, or broad, or clear, but all three.

But where Analytic philosophers have a habit of thinking they can actually solve a problem, Critchley has always picked on the insoluble. ‘I’ve always been attracted to difficulty, just for the sake of it really.’ What animates his work is a continual pushing back against meaninglessness: what he calls the ‘problem of nihilism.’ 

Yet he’s hesitant to locate meaning in the political struggle he’s passionate and optimistic about. If anything, the most powerful theme in his work is death, disappointment, ‘almost nothing.’ Was he ever a nihilist? ‘Oh, all the time,’ he says. ‘That juvenile angst of living in an empty meaningless universe – it still gets me.’

Simon Critchley’s next book, Faith of the Faithless, will be published next year.