Oxford PLAYHOUSE

★★★☆☆ Based on the Henry James 1898 novella, this version travels back and forth between an adult Flora confronting her former governess, to thirty years previously (1840) when The Governess went to look after...

★★★☆☆  Napoli, Brooklyn tells a story of an Italian-American immigrant family living in Brooklyn in the 1960s. The mother, Luda, is trying to bring up three daughters – Francesca, Tina, and Vita – with lov...

★★★☆☆  The shadow of the film looms large and is a hard act to follow even 25 years on. There is so much in this piece that is unsaid which is hard to convey onstage. However, this was a good ensemble performa...

★★★★★ This play from Frantic Assembly combines the stories of soldiers from 1918, 2013 and 2026, united by the fact that they are all coming home to Scarborough. ...

★★★★☆ This is the story of escaped criminal, Mitch Ruscitti, and his attempt to steal a priceless diamond from a bank in Minneapolis, the town where ‘everyone’s a crook’. He enlists the help of hapless p...

★★★★★ Dick Whittington is a gift to a pantomime writer when the main character's name has certain connotations and every mention gets a laugh. But Steve Marmion, the writer and director, also cleverly includes ...

★★★★☆ This is a joyous, bawdy romp which tackles some pretty unsavoury subjects. Blood is not always thicker than water and here, theatre often makes up for family dysfunction. Rice has put together a great e...

★★★★☆ Mathew Kelly is superb as Auden, suitably seedy, world weary and outrageous, with a penchant for rent boys. David Yelland's Britten is beautifully clipped and uptight, only relaxing when accompanying youn...

★★★☆☆ In many ways, this is a good play. The dialogue is sharp. The actors are given nowhere to hide – both are on stage and facing the audience for the length of the performance; there are few props and the...

★★★★★ The stars are Helene Hanff, played by Stefanie Powers and Frank Doel, played by Clive Francis. Hanff is a brusque, kind New Yorker – ‘a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books’ – who pref...

★★★★☆ We are introduced to the play by Peter Quince, the leader of the Mechanicals, who gives us a rundown of the play, pointing out any similarities to our contemporary lives (‘it’s set in Ancient Greece â...

★★★★★ Pericles, by William Shakespeare (and George Wilkins) is a play about a man on a journey. He finds love and new kingdoms, loses them and finally is reunited with them again. A lot of the action takes pl...