Clowns are physical, funny, sad and even sometimes sinister. These two highly trained and talented clowns were all of these things in this non-stop riot of a show that is wonderfully directed by John Nicholson. Slapstick follows mime, follows pathos, follows audience participation, and even a puppet show. Nothing goes on for too long and the pace is remarkable. You can only wonder at the inventiveness of it all.
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The evening commenced with Musical Youth Company Oxford (MYCO), dressed in black with huge smiles, giving a rousing Another Op’nin’, Another Show from the musical, Kiss Me Kate. This is a teenage musical theatre group who perform at The Oxford Playhouse and other professional venues in Oxford and always maintain very high standards. Then we were straight in to sonnets and poems . . .
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The script is erudite and varied. Like Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, this play was originally written for radio, but the presence of the double bass adds a whole other character. The exploration of a man frustrated in his career, his physical and his social life set in a soundproof room with a sack proof job is completely convincingly portrayed by Paul Currier.
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Heads Will Roll brings together a South American jungle exploration conducted by a Spanish conquistador, a modern-day classroom, El Dorado the myth, and “El Dorado” the short-lived BBC soap opera. Experimental and tangential, the show’s thematic problem is almost covered by its charming delivery, but its whiplash style means that narrative cohesion becomes beyond reach.
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Nearly fifty years after Enoch Powell delivered what he referred to as his Birmingham speech – what most of us know as the “Rivers of Blood” speech – Ian McDiarmid takes the stage of the Birmingham Repertory to recite it. That the high point of What Shadows is this recitation demonstrates the longstanding power some words hold, and betrays how this production struggles to respond to them . . . The message? At best it was confused. Finding ways to communicate across great divides is important, of course . . .
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This play is every bit as good as any of the author’s other works and is beautifully written and observed. It has quite rightly been revived several times in the past twenty years consequent to Priestley’s reappraisal following the triumph of the National’s An Inspector Calls. When We Are Married examines social conventions and morals and tells us just as much about human relationships as later, so-called realist writers ever did . . .
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