OUDS takes the Fringe
Former OUDS President and current Peach Productions producer James Newbery walks us through the process of taking a show to the Edinburgh Fringe in the first part of an ongoing series. So, you want to take a show to the Edinburgh Fringe? The prospect of taking a production to the world’s largest p
The Act You’ve Known for All These Years
“John Lennon came into the NME [New Musical Express] to see me in disguise. He’d got a false beard and he was dressed in the most ragged clothes you’ve ever seen. He said, ‘I don’t want to be recognised by anybody. Let’s go and have a cup of tea.’ We went to Julie’s and sat
Anarchic Humanism: Alice Neel at the Barbican Art Gallery
Alice Neel sits naked in front of me. In oil-paint form, that is, but the effect is no less striking for it. The artist’s first self-portrait, created when she was in her 80s, epitomises the irreverence, the subversion and the brash humanity that pulses within her work. These urges are somewhat te
A Fantastic Alchemy: In Conversation with Composer Rachel Portman
There’s a video circulating on the internet, of Lord Voldemort’s return in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, where Ralph Fiennes holds aloft a reptilian skull, eye sockets sunken like trenches. Except Patrick Doyle’s sinister, sweeping score has been replaced by the synthesised tickle of Sp
Review: Bark Bark
Vasco Faria stands centre-stage, his dog leash fixed to the floor, and quips about post-war industrial action. But we are not looking at him. We are looking at Shaw Worth. The assistant director is standing stage right, barking into a microphone. Somehow, it all makes perfect sense. It all makes sen
A Million Miles from Marvel
People study comics at Oxford. Postgraduates, doing research on everything from Holocaust literature to the influence of Gothic texts on teenage girls, pore over the ever-expanding world of graphic literature, and get DPhils for it. Undergraduates reading English or Modern Languages frequently choos
Review: Blue Dragon
Those of you who have been to Oxford’s Burton Taylor Studio know how cramped it can be. For most productions, this is a problem that they must work around, but for Blue Dragon, a new dark comedy written by Oisin Byrne and directed by Harry Brook, it’s an asset. The play unfolds on a single
The Age of the ‘Subversive’ Great Gatsby
Sometimes it seems our epoch is slowly running out of ideas. First came the slew of remakes – Disney films, old Hollywood classics, all went under Netflix’s dollar-bloated hammer. Now, when adapting the classics for the screen or for the stage, there seems to be a desire to find some unique angl
A Cannes Diary
Attending the Cannes Film Festival has long been a dream of mine, and became a particular goal of my year abroad, so much so that I craftily positioned myself in the South of France for the second half of my year, just twenty minutes from Cannes. So, when I was finally walking along La Croisette [&h