Written by award winning poet and English student Caroline Bird, this piece of new writing promises to entertain. Set in a downmarket hairdressing salon in North London, it centres around the dysfunctional lives of the children of a broken home; protagonist Tansy (Madelaine Dodd) is left to care for and support her younger brother Aiden, who has special needs.

Dodd is utterly convincing: her compassionate yet compulsive portrayal demonstrating the difficulty of her position, as older sister, best friend and stand-in mother.

When Aiden is invited on a date by the most popular girl in school, only to be stood up as a practical joke, Tansy takes it upon herself to wreak revenge upon Constance Barnwell’s effectively portrayed fifteen-year-old ‘fashionista’.

The elevation of modern ‘’family values’ is called into question as we follow Tansy’s struggle and come to realise how utterly alone she is. Characters who should be there – mother, father, police and teachers – are referred to, but are absent from the action.

The only problem with this is that the individuals tend to veer towards stereotype. Whilst this helps to embellish the social satire, it does so at the expense of fuller sincerity.

This is especially noticeable in the way that the play tackles disability. A notoriously difficult subject, it is rather vaguely portrayed; one is left wondering exactly what Theo Whitworth’s tentative Aiden actually suffers from. The play evokes sympathy, certainly, but by sticking firmly to the boundaries of political correctness, rather than by engaging with depth of character or experience.

This, however, does not detract from Caroline Bird’s insightful, witty writing or from the acting that skilfully brings it to life. It is ultimately a play of our time.

The Winter’s Tale is a difficult play to pull off. The sudden changes in tone, the fractured storyline, and the notoriously problematic stage direction “Exeunt, pursued by a bear” are but a few of the challenges facing the intrepid director.

This production, directed by Ellen Davnall, is essentially strong, but doesn’t have quite enough vitality to make it a truly magical experience.

The action begins in Sicilia, where King Leontes (Edwin Thomas), together with his wife Hermione (Roseanna Frascona), is persuading childhood friend Polixenes (Nicholas Pullen), the king of Bohemia, to extend his stay at their palace. Within the first few lines, Leontes mistakenly decides that Polixenes and his wife are having an affair, and it is here where the play takes its tragic turn.

From the beginning, Thomas seems at home in the lead role of the tormented king; his stage presence and focus is superb. With a bittersweet quality to his delivery, Thomas lures the audience into a false and unsettling sense of security.

But what the first half of the production lacks is the intense build-up in tragic overtones that the play itself demands. Overall, Thomas comes across as too reasonable in his ‘’outrage’ at the fantasy affair; Even the line “The covering sky is nothing; Bohemia nothing; My wife is nothing.” is without truly tragic passion.

The drama is instead made up by two excellent performances by Frascona as Queen Hermione and Kate Wilkins as Paulina. In the court scene Frascona captures the resilience of Hermione, but also her knowing misery of what is to come.

Wilkins is suitably dogged as Paulina, one of Shakespeare’s most powerful women: when Leontes snarls “I’ll ha’ thee burnt”, she replies quickly and sharply, “I care not.”

The production picks up in the second half of the play, where the action moves to Bohemia and tragedy is replaced by comedy. This is partly due to the overacting of Jeff Howard as the Clown, who grants a helpful energy boost to the second.

Joe Eyre’s depiction of Polixenes’ son Florizel effectively makes something of a dreary part. Pullen, though, could do more as the Bohemian king himself; he lacks the regal air and stage presence needed for the role.

I was uncertain of the validity of some of the directorial decisions. The actors wait on the sides of the stage when not performing, behaving as audience members – this is to emphasise the theme of storytelling in the play. The decision is not a detrimental one, but I did fail to see what it adds to the production.

There are some nice touches though, such as when, towards the end of the bear scene, the Clown comes onstage with a teddy bear whilst describing the actual life-size bear’s attack.

Essentially, Davnall is playing it safe. In a sense, this is why, whilst definitely powerful and entertaining, the production is not as good as it could be: at the crucial moments it holds back, fearful of being called histrionic, and thus renders a tremendously moving play simply enjoyable.

The story of Sweeney Todd is strange and confusing. In Dave Moore’s brilliant 2006 adaptation for the BBC, where Ray Winstone does his business on an 18th century Fleet Street, Mrs. Lovett’s hot meat pies are more than tempting.

Watching Winstone slice up his customers, packing their flesh into dense pastry, I’m sure I’m not the only viewer who began to feel genuinely hungry. It is from this central, visceral unease – a glitch in the unholy trinity of sex, death and meat – that the story derives its energy.

Half-displacing the tale into a sterile, medical modernity, Emily Lim (Alice Through the Looking Glass, Under Milk Wood) frames this problem in an altogether new way, as Todd’s beloved razors become surgical scalpels, customers are shaved in wheel-chairs, and ale is dispensed from an IV drip. This is not simply a cheap analogy (Todd remains an 18th century barber), but rather a deliberate juxtaposition and re-negotiation of story and setting.

Questionable mockney accent aside, Jonathan Webb carries the tension well in the title role, his growing madness and blood-lust visible in the contortions of his face.

Harriet Madeley is rather less convincing as Mrs. Lovett, performing a little too much in the shadow of Helen Bonham Carter. Indeed, there is more irony than intended in Todd’s contention that, unlike pork or beef, an actor pie “always arrives overdone”.

She is held up by well-choreographed action, and a more than competent supporting cast, along with a strong 14-piece band under the direction of Tom Brady (“The Last Five Years”).

In a production where Mrs. Lovett’s pies are about as tempting as supermarket sausages, some of the queasy energy of the original is inevitably sacrificed – reminded constantly of blood, bile and hospital food, one is more likely to vomit than to experience the strange hunger that has always marked this story’s best adaptations. Even so, it is admirably fresh and entertaining, and certainly deserves to be seen. Just make sure to eat dinner beforehand.

KEBLE O’REILLY
Wednesday – Saturday 7th Week

Three Stars

As I sat awaiting the start of this brand new play, I was informed about its genesis. Fusing the quirky humour styles of two students, the production team told me, they had strived to create something that they saw as missing from Oxford’s stage scene. Having endured only three scenes, I can see manifold reasons for such a play’s hitherto absence.

Neighbourhood Watch is a bizarre exposition of gratuitous idiocy with all the wit of the Chuckle Brothers, all the humour of hepatitis, and all the acting skills of a slug’s understudy. The play – a pointless montage of archaic knob-gags, tired slapstick, and apalling French accents – apparently has a plot somewhere, involving robberies, paranoia and a neighbourhood-watch type scenario, but its presence was distorted beyond all recognition by the infuriating indulgence in pointless caricature and ubiquitous shouting.

Attempts at ironic self-parody, such as a one character telling the other he is “confusing, irritating and not funny”, fall hopelessly flat due to the play’s embarrassing lack of anything remotely resembling comedy. I did laugh once, but when an actor forgetting his lines gets a bigger reponse than any of the jokes in a so-called comedy, one knows one is observing something truly, chronically, shockingly dire.

I actually struggle to envisage what possible enjoyment anybody could derive from this thing, to the point where I ask myself: is it trying to be unfunny? Is the joke really on the poor, paying members of the audience? If so, God help us all.

Towards the end of the preview, the gormless Albert is seen sweeping bits of paper, sending them rolling slowly over the centre stage. Perhaps tumbleweed would have been more apt.

With Cuppers still fresh in our minds, surely we should celebrate student theatre: the hard-hitting relevance, the satirical splendour, the witty and the wonderful drama of which we know our eminent body of students so capable.
So, please, do not waste an hour of your life. Do something more enjoyable – staple your earlobes, perhaps. Or see something else.

BT LATE SLOT
Tuesday – Saturday 7th Week

No stars