Wednesday 23rd July 2025
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Review: The Oxford Revue Newcomers’ Show ‘Scrapped’ – ‘ridiculous, witty, and hilarious’

Reem Ahmed
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Review: The Oxford Revue Newcomers’ Show ‘Scrapped’ – ‘ridiculous, witty, and hilarious’

Having somehow reached my third year at Oxford without watching a single performance by the Oxford Revue, I was completely in the dark as to what I should expect from the Oxford Revue Newcomers’ Show, Scrapped, which premiered last night at the Burton Taylor Studio. What the show promised was intriguing, albeit vague – a brand new sketch comedy performed by a cast of ‘7 hand-selected comedy virgins’, who had been ‘trained up by an experienced team of Revue old-hands’.

I now realise that no description, no plot summary can do justice to this highly eclectic and wonderfully unpredictable piece of theatre. Beginning with a parody of Dragon’s den, the show takes its audience through a whistle-stop series of disconnected skits – skits which are partly ridiculous, partly witty, and completely hilarious. Our protagonist and aspiring inventor, Maurice, having faced the contempt of Deborah Meaden (distinguished by her garish blonde wig), seeks inspiration from the curator of the ‘Museum of Worst Inventions’. The curator takes Maurice on a tour of the museum’s artefacts, offering a ‘History of the World in 100 rejects’
– and thus the framework for the rest of the show is constructed.

From a useless dating service, to the 16th annual session of the ‘Bird UN’ (in which a group of birds bicker and end up going to Nando’s), to the ancient Roman ‘dick pic’ (Verginius, with the help of a messenger, sends sculptures of his penis to the women of Rome), to a Barbie which comes to life (she turns out to be an AI government spy), and to a pregnant cave woman who wants to give her baby the unconventional name ‘Gregory’, the show leaves no stone unturned in its quest to showcase the most outrageous scenarios in the most amusing way possible. Indeed, the audience’s raucous laughter rarely subsided, proving that the Newcomers’ Show had succeeded in its attempt.  

Due to the sheer variety and number of the skits, as well as the innumerable jokes and gags throughout, it would be impossible to offer a detailed analysis of the show in a single review; nevertheless, I do feel that some aspects of the show in particular demand individual praise and comment. In terms of skits, the Greggs ‘Pasty Emporium’ stood out to me as one of the most amusing. Zach Burns plays a French pasty expert who greets a baffled customer with a passionate declaration of his craft. It turns out, in the final punchline of the skit, that he is actually from Bradford and has a strange tendency to adopt this hilarious persona. Though Burns occasionally broke out of character in this skit (and who can blame him), this did not diminish audience’s reaction to this particularly ridiculous sketch.

Whilst the Greggs skit delivered hilarity, at times some skits did not have the same impact. Though the rapidity of the sketches is an attractive feature of the show, one sketch near the end of the performance was so short and swift that I’m still not sure what it was about. Furthermore, in a couple of others, I felt the jokes fell flat due to poor delivery of punchlines from the actors, such as in a skit where Prince Albert is being photographed. In terms of the structure and themes of the show, I enjoyed the contrast of randomness and continuity – though the show is essentially an amalgamation of random hilarious scenarios (including a surprise musical number at the very end), the ring composition of the performance (we return to Dragon’s den at the end, with Deborah Meaden making an investment), as well as the running penis motif throughout, brought the entire performance together.

Ultimately, The Oxford Revue Newcomers’ Show, Scrapped, delivers a healthy dose of slapstick and puerile comedy, puns and dry humour. No prior knowledge is assumed or expected, and the brilliance of the show lies in its accessibility – I dare anyone to watch this show and not crack a smile. That the actors were ‘newcomers’ was barely perceptible and I commend them for delivering quality entertainment.

Review: Pirandello’s Henry IV – ‘earnest production let down by a dull script’

Thomas Player
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Review: Pirandello’s Henry IV – ‘earnest production let down by a dull script’

You will be pleased (or dismayed) to hear that this Henry IV is not one of Shakespeare’s ones. Turns out Henry Bolingbroke of England didn’t have a monopoly on that name, and that this play instead concerns a Holy Roman Emperor from 300 years prior.

Well, not quite: in fact, this play is about an Italian aristocrat who suffers a blow to the head and wakes up believing he is Henry IV – the Holy Roman one, that is. For some inconceivable reason his family neglects to relieve him of this notion and instead encourages it for the following 20 years, decking out his home in 11th century fixtures and employing a cast of actors to play various members of his court. We meet him on the day a doctor comes to see what can be done about this identity confusion. Quite why the doctor wasn’t called two decades earlier I don’t know.

This little-known Italian work, here translated by Tom Stoppard, sees the delusional aristocrat visited not just by the doctor but also by Matilda, the woman he loved, her daughter, and her lover, all of whom are forced to double up as pretend courtiers to keep the illusion going. Plenty of opportunity, then, for a farcical study of madness: delusions, complicated family relationships, mistaken identity… plus there’s a love triangle of sorts, and even a decent twist in the second half. Sadly, precious little is made of the opportunities for laughs, and we have to endure this tragicomedy as plain old tragic.

The convoluted character structure necessitates a decent prior knowledge of the main players in 11th century central European history: something I, for one, was lacking. It did strike me that the story may be easier to grapple with if the fantasy element had a more familiar set of characters – the court of Henry VIII perhaps?

The cast handled this confusing and sometimes dry material well, although a somewhat hammy style pervaded. Some of this will have been first night jitters, but some was just plain old overacting. Not every line need be deep and profound, and this heavy style didn’t fit well on the intimate stage of the BT Studio.

The role of ‘Henry IV’ was gender-swapped but played as written, something that takes a large suspension of disbelief from an audience. Gender-as-performance can and should be engaged with more explicitly by productions that choose to do this, but sadly it wasn’t here. In any case, King Henry was marvellously portrayed with bubbling-over intensity and mania by Kathryn Cussons (ironically with more than a little of the Queen of Hearts about her performance) and special mention must also go to Lucy Mae Humphries who was poised and acerbic as his unrequited sweetheart Matilda.

The production itself was simple but effective, in the style of all good student plays. Costume choices left me a bit confused about when the piece was meant to be set, although since it was mostly pretend 11th century I suppose it doesn’t matter too much. I enjoyed the little pieces of music between acts, which included a clever cuckoo call motif, but the most memorable moment was one specific use of the house lights that evoked being jerked out of your doze on a late-night Oxford Tube as it stops at the Park and Ride…possibly not the intention.

This is an earnest production of an interesting idea for a play, let down by a dull script. Coming in at less than 90 minutes (half the length of one of Stoppard’s other yawn-making hits Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead), it can be forgiven some of its drier moments for its solid acting and intriguing ideas.

Review: How to Make Friends and then Kill Them – ‘brilliantly toes the line between laughing and crying’

Evie Atmore
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Review: How to Make Friends and then Kill Them – ‘brilliantly toes the line between laughing and crying’

“That was intense,” says the person behind me, as the lights go up on the opening night of this punchy, vaguely traumatic, three-woman show. Following the lives of three young co-dependent women, this dark comedy brilliantly toes the line between laughing and crying. By the second half every laugh is forced out of the audience as the dark themes ultimately overwhelm the humour of the first. This is a show about obsession, manipulation, co-dependence, and just a touch of alcoholism, and Coningsby Productions pull it off staggeringly well.

‘How to Make Friends and then Kill Them’ is a play that demands much of its cast. With scene changes depicting the passage of time between childhood to adulthood, Simone Norowzian (Ada), Imogen Front (Sam), and Saraniya Tharmarajah (Dorrie) do well to keep up with the pace asked of them by director Charlie Rogers. The speed of the show is one of its greatest strengths – it is relentless in its movement through the lives of our ‘protagonists’, and this pace is encouraged by the incessant repetition of lines and leitmotifs throughout the play. All three actresses place ample emphasis on these moments of déjà vu, with the return of the words of Sam and Ada’s alcoholic mother being a salient, chilling example. The last scene of the first half, in which Imogen Front (Sam) is equal parts flawless and terrifying, ends with a bang. She leaves the audience both unsettled and desperate to see where the stories of these three broken women will lead.

Simone Norowzian’s role as Ada, the beautiful, self-obsessed elder sister of Sam, is possibly the most difficult – as the impetus and crux of the tension between Sam and Dorrie, she supports their obsessions as well as her own dreams of being someone that people adore. Simone’s delivery of the line: “I’ll be stuck in this house with no one to love me” is gut-wrenching, and amply illustrates the core drive of Ada’s character. Simone’s performance reaches its height with Ada’s monologue, a pay-off which the audience wait for from the opening scene, and her ability to portray both an intensely unlikable and critically vulnerable character is remarkable.

Saraniya Tharmarajah’s character Dorrie, who becomes attached to the two sisters, is a breath of fresh air in a play that could quickly become oppressively dark. Her facial expressions are a true delight, along with her ‘meditation’, and by the end of the show my allegiances are firmly aligned with her. In the final scenes Saraniya’s ability to capture Dorrie’s innocence without lapsing into being childish is truly impressive, and instrumental in carrying the piece to its dark, gripping conclusion.

Lastly, Imogen Front’s portrayal of Sam, the meek, quiet younger sister of Ada, is going to stay with me for a while. Sam is the character who grows (or mutates) the most over the course of the play, and my initial opinion of her from the opening scene was later viciously torn away. Imogen manages to capture brilliantly the nuances of, possibly, one of the most messed up characters I’ve seen on stage, and she should be immensely proud of her performance.  

The opening night show ran without a hitch, and credit must be given to those backstage and in the technical area, who ensured that the actors on stage had no obstacles to their admirable performances. The uncluttered, slightly dilapidated set design by Deshna Shah perfectly reflects the internal decay of the characters, without bashing the audience around the head screaming “This is a Theme!”.

This is a slick, well-rehearsed play, and Rogers’ eye for detail shines through in the seamless blocking of the characters (especially in the final scene) and direction of his actors. My only criticism is a slight tendency towards overacting, particularly in the first few scenes – however, one can understand this direction as the characters are, at this point in the narrative, children. Whilst not for the faint of heart, Coningsby Production’s offering of ‘How to Make Friends and then Kill Them’ is an effective, chilling piece of drama.

Union Librarian Brendan McGrath avoids impeachment

Christopher Sinnott
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Union Librarian Brendan McGrath avoids impeachment

Brendan McGrath, against whom a motion for impeachment was filed on Thursday 7th, has won his vote not to be impeached by 400 votes to 189.

A notice has been pinned on the Oxford Union noticeboard that reads “The Librarian remains in office. The Motion of Impeachment is unsuccessful”.

The 68% vote in favour of McGrath comes after the 12 hours of deliberation that an impeachment motion in the Oxford Union entails. On the day of the vote supporters and allies of McGrath mobilised a “Vote No” campaign on Facebook, posting social statuses that presented McGrath’s potential impeachment as symptomatic of ‘toxic politics’.

More on this story is expected to follow.

Skin a Cat Review – ‘rethinks simplistic sexual narratives’

Lucy Mcilgorm
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Skin a Cat Review – ‘rethinks simplistic sexual narratives’

In the era of sex-positive successes such as the most recent Netflix obsession Sex Education, we might feel as though our yearnings for more diverse narratives about sex have been fully satisfied. Britomart Productions’ performance of Skin a Cat by Isley Lynn proves otherwise. The setting is familiar: the bedroom of a teenage girl (beautifully designed by Flora Clark). Her quest? To achieve ultimate sexual knowledge by losing her virginity. However, the outcome is entirely new, and the production dextrously and humorously articulates all the nuances of a far more complicated sexual awakening than the one we bargained for.

The play tells the story of Alana’s (Millie Tupper) journey towards self-acceptance – a journey which begins, crucially, at the instance of her first period. This opening immediately sets the tone for the production, with direct address to audience working wonders here as Alana’s mother (Martha Harlan) urgently enquires after a sanitary pad to the amusement of people in the front row. However, this uncomfortable beginning also constituted the small but painful seed that births much of the confusion and shame running through later parts of the play. Harlan wonderfully portrays the concerned yet evasive, even angry mother who by attempting an explanation of this experience to her nine-year-old daughter only instils further confusion, concluding curtly with “no more swimming” and “I’ll buy you a book.”

Such moments of shameful inarticulacy are immediately extinguished by the exhilarating frankness of the production itself. The actors revel in the vulgarity of the language which ranges from descriptions of period blood like “stringy aliens” to “trimmed cocks” and “peen in vagine.” The lack of self-consciousness and constant playfulness on stage is worthy of high praise for both the actors, and co-directors Kitty Low and Martha West. The sex scenes are portrayed with zero embarrassment (no, seriously, none), and skilfully towe the line between what seems to be genuine enjoyment and heightened teenage sexual performativity. This comfortability on stage allowed the audience to laugh freely and joyously.

The use of multi-roling was highly effective in portraying the different figures orbiting around Alana, our central focus, as she evolves and matures. Martha West and Harold Serero are particularly noteworthy for their transformations and the humour they brought to each role, yet both never slipping into caricature. Hannah Taylor delivered two standout monologues as Pete, which brought considerable depth and pathos to a role which could have read only superficially as an awkward-teenage-boy. The production in general plays on our fondness for the familiar tropes of teenage sexuality, like Alana’s frantic questioning “Where’s the DIAGRAM?” as she tries to insert a tampon or Pete and Alana hiring a hotel room for their “first time” because they “wanted it to be, you know, American.” However, all these expectations of sex are broken down by the idiosyncrasies of sexual experience and the unattainability of that elusive common denominator – “normal.”

Achieving ‘normality’ is Alana’s quest after she discovers her difficulty with penetrative sex is due to a psychosexual condition called vaginismus. Millie Tupper excellently portrays Alana’s increasingly shameful frustration – and this is not the dorky sexual frustration typical of our favourite high-school movies, but the genuine, tear-inducing, gut-wrenching frustration of reaching a milestone which is supposedly some universal moment – losing your virginity – and….it doesn’t work. According to Alana, her “cunt is broken”.

Low and West’s production, amidst much hilarity, cuts right through to the most vulnerable of feelings, and asks us to rethink the ways we contort ourselves to fit the simplistic sexual narratives we have been ingesting for so long.

Today’s Union impeachment vote: what you need to know

Angus Brown and Libby Cherry
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Today’s Union impeachment vote: what you need to know

Today Union members will be able to vote to impeach the Librarian, Brendan McGrath. The poll will be open until 8.30pm.

The ballot reads: “We the undersigned hereby wish to impeach the Officer, Brendan McGrath (Librarian, Oriel College) on the following grounds: abuse of office, and the deliberate subversion of the expressed will of the Membership and the Rules of the Society, for his own electoral benefit and contrary to the fundamental principles of democracy upon which the Oxford Union was founded.”

The motion to impeach McGrath, which was brought following the resignation of Ray Williams as the Union’s Chief of Staff last Thursday, concerns McGrath’s decision to ask the Returning Officer, Liam Frahm, to review the validity of last term’s “Trial Slate Ban”. Frahm subsequently ruled the ban invalid, triggering Williams’ resignation.

In his resignation speech, given at the end of the debate “This House Believes that Margaret Thatcher was a Hero to the Working Class”, Williams said: “it had shocked me that our Librarian had seeked [sic] to subvert the express will of the membership, conning potentially dozens of other candidates to satisfy his desire for the presidency. I cannot continue to serve as Chief of Staff in these circumstances.

“I thus support the impeachment of the Librarian which is being brought before the Standing Committee as I speak.”

This triggered the impeachment process, beginning with a petition requiring the signatures of 150 members to move forward to a vote of the Union’s membership. The petition received the requisite number of signatures amongst allegations by McGrath that a number of signatures had been acquired through improper means.

McGrath now stands accused of having both abused his office in order to further his own ambitions within the society and of having sought to subvert the will of the membership in overturning the trial slate ban.  

The Union’s Senior Access Officer, Brian Wong, resigned earlier today on the grounds that the overturning of the slate ban was “yet another attempt to subvert the expressed will of the Members.”

In his resignation letter, he wrote: “Today, Members will be going to the Poll to reject the self-serving and undemocratic behaviours that have characterised the Society’s Elections for too long. They are our constituents, and should always have the final say. That’s the only fair solution. That’s the only fair procedure in line with the ethos of the Union – but perhaps incongruent with the zeitgeist of our times.”

In an open letter posted on Facebook, McGrath said: “Last term, a motion was debated to impose a trial ban on slates. Some rules, however, such as those governing slates, are entrenched such that they need to be debated at greater length and with more publicity than usual. The motion didn’t do this, so was procedurally invalid.

“This issue first came to my attention when one of last term’s Officers bragged to me about knowing that the slate ban was invalid, and, after significant research, I approached the Returning Officer, Liam Frahm, to request clarification.

“After his own independent investigation, the Returning Officer deemed the ban to be invalid, thereby overturning it.

“I have been shocked by the tactics the supporters of the motion have employed over this last week. I have seen a lot in my time at the Union, but never imagined that I would be subjected to personal attacks, humiliation and abuse for the sake of a student society.”

The entirety of the letter can be viewed on Facebook.

Students have come out in support of Brendan on Facebook, asking peers to “Stand up to Toxic Politics: Vote No.”

The results of the poll are expected to be announced this evening.

Restaurant Review: Peppers

Darius Parvizi-Wayne
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Restaurant Review: Peppers

I’ve come to realise that a common trope in my reviews is a tendency to praise the simple, traditional, and altogether not overly obnoxious aspects of food in this city. Throw out your quinoa salad, deconstructed oysters, and tahini that you swear you got from Borough Market because you are just that cool. Ok, I may be going a bit over the top: I like Borough Market; quinoa doesn’t deserve its own Instagram page but it’s surprisingly tasty; and I can stomach oysters. But the attitude cultivated by social media seems to suggest that this is all we, so-called generation Z, eat: avocado, sourdough and maybe an egg if you’re really pushing the boat out. Not true: sometimes I, a guy as Z as it gets (is that right?), just fancy a really fucking big burger. There truly is only one place in Oxford such a desire can be fulfilled: Peppers.

Minus the heroin and Ewan McGregor’s hallucinogenic dreams, Peppers looks like something out of Trainspotting. Or perhaps more 1980s Brick Lane. Anyway, it’s a bruttish building, with ugly, red block letters emblazoned on the front. Good. No mood lighting designed for bloggers to peer over their meticulously constructed food is a welcome relief. The crowd is also different in Peppers. No yummy mummies – they’ll surely be in Opera Café having a latte with extra soy milk. Also there are few families – the homeliness of Mamma Mia or Branca will be far more suitable for them. Instead, Peppers attracts those with little time on their hands and big appetites. 

At this point you may be envisioning Peppers to be a sort of prison, beyond the realms of normal society. Well you’d be wrong. Peppers, in fact, embodies everything great about this little, funny city. Perhaps the finest thing is the level of owner-to-customer trust. In a time where turnover is paramount and communication is mostly virtual, nothing beats a genuine smile and a friendly exchange. In this respect, Peppers is in a different league compared to most restaurants in Oxford. Don’t have the immediate cash on you? Feel free to pop to a cash point while your burger is on the grill. Ordered a drink with your food? Slide beyond the counter and take your pick. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were allowed to grill the burger yourself. 

Peppers harks back to a lost era. An era when chefs would see their food eaten and could take real pride in the gratitude of the eater. Now, their work is probably manipulated into a ‘spread’ for an ‘influencer’s’ page, with 90% of the food left untouched, ordered solely for aesthetic motivations. Don’t get me wrong – food is art, and the visual element is certainly important. But when the foundation of the art appeals to the eyes more than the nose and tongue, something has gone seriously wrong.

No such problem here. Peppers couldn’t care less about presentation. Peppers probably doesn’t even know what presentation is. Instead, the first hint of upcoming delight comes from a smell of meat, vinegar and salt that smacks you upon entry, and then wafts among customers who squeeze into tiny chairs, often chatting amongst one another. Think school common room, with far superior food and less BO.

Then the food arrives and you know when it arrives because every element is gargantuan and comes wrapped up in paper in a rudimentary manner that no modern restaurant would dareto replicate. Indeed, you have to come to Peppers hungry. Really hungry. Think Five Guys offers a lot of chips? Think again. Then you bite into it and everything is perfect. Juicy, tender meat, a soft bun and crunchy lettuce and onions – fantastic. You can also choose any sauce you wish. I like sweet chilli and mint and yoghurt. Weird, I know. Nonetheless, it works: everything balances out and sets the stage for that enormous slab of meat. All this, with chips, and a drink, for £7.50 at lunch is beyond a steal.

So there you are, sauce dripping down your hands, surrounded by psychedelic posters, smiling because you forgot that in this strange, strange world, simple pleasure can still be found in a place like Peppers. 

Recipe: Sweet Nachos

Emma Hawkins
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Recipe: Sweet Nachos

Ingredients
6 Small flour tortillas (diameter no more than
14cm)
2 tbsp Butter, melted
1 tsp Cinnamon
100g Caster sugar

For the toppings (all optional):
50g Mini marshmallows
50g Milk chocolate
50g White chocolate
35g Chopped hazelnuts
200g Double cream, whisked to soft peaks
50g Salted caramel sauce
200g Strawberries, hulled and chopped into
chunks
100g Raspberries
20g Popping candy

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 180˚C. Brush a baking
    tray lightly with the melted butter.
  2. Place one tortilla onto a chopping board and
    brush lightly with the melted butter. Place
    another tortilla on top of the buttered one
    and brush it with butter. Continue with the
    others until you have a stack of buttered
    tortillas.
  3. Take a large knife and cut the pile in half.
    Then cut each half in half again, and repeat
    twice more so you have 8 tortilla stacks.
  4. In a bowl mix the cinnamon and sugar.
    Separate the tortilla stacks so that each chip
    is a single layer and arrange the chips on the
    buttered tray. Sprinkle the chips with the
    cinnamon sugar so each one is evenly coated
  5. Put the chips in the oven for 6-10 minutes,
    until they’re crisp and slightly brown.
  6. To check if the chips are done test the edges
    to see if they are crisp and dry. The middle
    may be slightly softer, but they’ll crisp up as
    they dry. Once the crisps are done place them
    to one side and leave them to cool.
  7. Meanwhile, break up the two chocolates into
    chunks and put into two separate heatproof
    bowls. Place each over a pan of water on a
    medium, heat and leave to melt gently.
  8. Begin to assemble the nachos by scattering
    half the chips on a plate or baking tray lined
    with baking paper (whatever you want
    to serve it on). Drizzle with a little of the
    chocolate, and scatter with nuts, strawberries,
    caramel sauce and marshmallows. Pile the
    rest of the chips on top in a pyramid shaped
    pile. Top with the rest of the marshmallows
    and strawberries. Dollop the cream in blobs
    around the stack, drizzle with the rest of the
    caramel and chocolate and top with the rest
    of the hazelnuts and popping candy. Serve
    with any ice cream or sorbet you wish.

Alternatives:
Tropical – Make the nacho chips the same way
as above, but without the cinnamon. Then top
with chopped mango, pineapple, coconut chips,
whisked vanilla cream, dark chocolate and passion
fruit.
Banoffee – Top the cinnamon chips with maple
syrup, whipped cream, chopped banana, chocolate
chips and pecan praline (made by mixing pecans
with caramel and adding a pinch of salt. Leave to
cool on baking paper and then break up into small
pieces).

The Power of ‘No’ Make-up

Sarah Williams
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The Power of ‘No’ Make-up

Open up Instagram right now, and it isn’t necessarily clear that ‘no make-up make-up’ was the beauty trend of 2018.  From the ubiquitous summer festival panic over non-biodegradable glitter, to the classic ‘Love Island’ look –hair extensions, a tan,  and in some cases cosmetic surgery – looks that deviate from ‘natural’ are clearly here to stay.

So why have the mysterious phrases ‘glass skin’ and ‘serum layering’ crept into both our vocabularies and our feeds, to compete with the triple-cut-crease and the art of the contour? Why did designers from Brandon Maxwell to Tibi head for minimalist makeup on the Spring 2019 runways?

It could be a backlash against extensive, hour-long make-up routines. Not likely, though, when achieving the healthily-oily, luminescent ‘glass skin’ takes at least half an hour. Indeed, many skincare influencers, boasting cupboards overflowing with Mario Badescu, Glossier, and Egyptian Magic, have routines just as extravagant as many make-up gurus – Google ‘rose quartz facial roller’ for some simple evidence.

Some have suggested it’s about individuality –brands which sell the minimalist make-up look, such as Glossier and Flesh Beauty, both frequently refer to the consumer directly in their marketing: Glossier’s perfume is simply called ‘You,’ whilst Flesh Beauty, launched only in June 2018, boasts the tagline ‘Our favourite colour is you.’

In contrast to contouring kits and lip plumpers, these strategies promise us that we’re good enough just as we are. They help us not to build a new version of ourselves, but rather to make what we already are just that tiny bit better.

But there’s a catch. Sure, brands themselves are catering to diverse audiences – 40+ foundations is more the norm than the exception now, and I was overjoyed, as I expect many were, to finally find a drugstore foundation that actually matched my skin tone last summer.

I worry, though, about the nature of the minimalist make-up trend in general. Google is somewhat coy about what a trend actually is, defining it simply as a ‘fashion’, and the latter as’ a popular or the latest style of clothing, hair, decoration, or behaviour.’ But it seems to me that the defining feature of a trend is that it is something concrete, something we can point to and say ‘That’s it, that right there is what I want to have, to look like, or to do.’ There’s a sense in which this is always going to be exclusive.  A trend is necessarily one thing, not everything. And in the case of minimalist make-up, this trend is still encouraging us to look one particular way.

In the bigger picture, this is no better or worse than any other trend – simply, something that, for a time, if fashionable.  The minimalist make-up trend, just as much as the full face, is an invitation not so much to come as you are, but to come as you would rather be. That’s something which, in today’s perfection-demanding world, we ought to remember.

How To Make Friends and then Kill Them Preview – ‘promises to be entertaining and unsettling’

Jacob Ridley
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How To Make Friends and then Kill Them Preview – ‘promises to be entertaining and unsettling’

Perhaps the most refreshing thing about Coningsby Productions’ How to Make Friends and then Kill Them is that, unlike so much student theatre, it avoids political posturing and trains the spotlight squarely on its three characters. Asked why he chose Halley Feiffer’s 2013 play (which has never been performed in Europe before), director Charlie Rogers drew attention to Feiffer’s claim that the play is feminist because it depicts women behaving awfully and viciously onstage in a way which is often only the province of male characters. The focus is duly on the behaviour and the interpersonal dynamic of the central trio – not the overblown canvas of recent American politics, or the play-hijacking hijinks of Brexit. Written for performance in a black-box theatre, How to Make Friends and then Kill Them is a natural choice for the Michael Pilch Studio, as Rogers also points out – and suitable for the unfussy minimalist treatment it receives at his hands, and those of set-designer, Deshna Shah.

The black comedy covers, in ten-minute snapshots, the lives of sisters Ada and Sam, from age 9 to age 27. Ada is an ambitious self-proclaimed beauty, obsessed with musical theatre and with herself; Sam is sensitive and draws pictures. Their permanently offstage mother is an alcoholic, and the resultant rot has set into the two girls some time before the play begins; Ada casually asks Sam to bruise her arm, but has a horror of hugging, and the other kinds of physical interaction that her lonely, needy sister is pining for. They play childish games, in which Ada’s self-centred lust for performance and Sam’s craving for personal contact are run against each other – and exposed as mutually exclusive. Ada meets a new friend, Dorrie, and begins to torment Sam with her preference for the newcomer; then she fails to make it into college with Sam and Dorrie, and crumbles. Sam, exploiting her new dominance persuades her sister to drink, begins to turn the psychological tables on her, and things start growing fascinatingly unpleasant. The fast-paced succession of scenes ensures the sequence of episodes keeps its momentum – which for the girls onstage, as they age in leaps and bounds, increasingly comes to seem fatal.

In some ways the play’s exploration of dysfunctional sisters resembles Marilynne Robinson’s wonderful novel Housekeeping (1981) – except her sisters weren’t as dysfunctional as these, and Feiffer pulls no punches in condemning a recognisably contemporary malaise. Her foul-mouthed schoolchildren slip into the language of broken modernity – ‘Stop asking me to validate you!’ Ada shouts at her sister more than once – and Dorrie is given the vocabulary of child therapy to describe her very funny roll-call of mental and physical (and probably invented) problems. Saraniya Tharmarajah, as Dorrie, particularly excels here. Her array of marvellously grumpy expressions and strange ‘therapeutic’ breathing noises are a virtuosic comic performance. Imogen Front is ideally cast as Sam, her small, sorrowful face conveying first crippling self-doubt and then a disturbing hardness; as Ada – the play’s nearest to a Blanche Dubois figure – Simone Norowzian exhibits maturity and charisma, and the deepening sense of damage which is key to this dark three-hander.

Rogers and his committed cast present this unusual play (produced by Lewis Roberts) with a sense of urgency but without gimmicks, in what promises to be an entertaining and unsettling European premiere.

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