Little Shop of Horrors is perhaps the craziest musical in existence. It’s so ridiculous, in fact, that one feels slightly awkward when guffawing at its characters. Walking in to Nun’s Garden of The Queen’s College, the location of the musical, you’ll be confronted with an audience of contented family and friends, drinking wine, eating cookies, and chatting away merrily. For the first half an hour of action, this agreeable atmosphere is maintained on stage, but from then on it takes you to the limits of schadenfreude. The first lines of Audrey’s ‘Somewhere that’s green’, ‘I know Seymour’s the greatest, But I’m dating a semi-sadist’, perfectly encapsulate the ludicrous nature of this finely crafted production.

Little Shop of Horrors certainly conforms to the conception of humour as something slightly inappropriate and uncomfortable, but it is precisely this interplay of the psychopathic and the side-splitting that renders the musical so devilishly enjoyable. The highlights of the production are Orin Scrivello, Audrey’s abusive boyfriend, and the voice of Audrey II, the carnivorous plant. Orin’s rendition of the song ‘Dentist!’ is over-the-top, bizarre, but totally brilliant. Blending comedy and pain, his performance is riveting, and I almost wanted to give him a standing ovation just for that number. The voice of Audrey II, equally, is brash and booming, filling the garden atmosphere with its honeyed tones as it seduces both the characters and the audience.

The chemistry between Audrey and Seymour is not always quite there, and the singing of Mr. Mushnik is sometimes dodgy, but one forgives these minor setbacks because the experience of watching the musical is just so fun. Tom Nichols, the musical director, conducts exceptionally well, the band are well-drilled, sharp, and precise, and you will undoubtedly leave the play humming some of their most memorable songs. One fear I had before attending ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ was whether the music would fit together within a garden play, but I was pleasantly surprised. Occasionally the instruments drown out the singers, to such an extent that, if you’re sitting at the back of the garden, it can be difficult to make out all the words. However, all things considered this is a well organized and hugely pleasing musical that will make you laugh out loud.

Owen Jones’ Chavs explores the differences between the disappearance of middle class Madeleine McCann, and the kidnapping of Shannon Matthews by her working class mother Karen Matthews. The stark differences between Daily Mail headlines, between public levels of suspicion and sympathy, make for an uncomfortable read: it is precisely this discomfort that Carla Kingham hopes to translate to the stage in her new play Middle England.

Paul (Francis Thomas) is a paediatrician whose stay-at-home wife Mai (Claire Bowman) finds herself caught in the middle of a media storm after their six-year-old daughter Jessica is taken. The two live comfortably in what we assume is a London townhouse. Charlie (Phoebe Hames) is a working class mother who lives on an estate just round the corner from Mai, and whose daughter Grace was taken at the same time. Charlie and her wife Dan (Ed Price) assume working class accents which come less naturally than Thomas and Bowman’s cut-glass intonation. However, this became less obvious as the preview went on, and this trend will certainly continue through rehearsals.  

I was shown three short sections at a preview last Saturday. The first section opens with both couples speaking in stereo as they each discover their child has disappeared. The actions takes place within the audience’s seating area: there is no stage to speak of and so the audience is very, very close to the action. Technically, four people conducting two conversations at the same time is difficult to implement, and still needs a little tightening up. However, the scene I saw with just the two mothers speaking was moving and confidently executed.

There are a few cast members who sit in the audience’s chairs and offer a sympathetic ear or a cynical laugh to the parents every now and then. This is especially intriguing when the couples are separated to give their individual statements to the police: each parent does this simultaneously but without their interlocutors saying a word.

The effect is creepy: each parent describes what his or her daughter was wearing, why they turned their back for ‘just a moment’, who the last person to see her was; the audience watch on with critical faculties engaged, waiting for them to slip up. The cast member they are speaking to stares back. Kingham says that these cast members represent the community and the media: unlike real-life missing child cases, they remain silent and we must guess the claustrophobic effect they will come to have on the parents.

The audience is torn between sympathy and suspicion, and the hemmed-in atmosphere of the BT will make it impossible to do exactly what we would like to do once we’ve made up our mind about a couple on a TV appeal: switch it off and go about our lives. Middle England examines our prejudices at close quarters and the confrontational nature of drama means that for the audience, as for the parents, there is no escape. 

Look Back in Anger, John Osborne’s seminal 1956 work, captured the imagination of a generation. While this hackneyed phrase can be applied to almost every book or play that is any good, Look Back in Anger really did spawn a new era in Brit­ish drama: Alan Sillitoe, one of the playwrights who wrote in the years after Look Back in Anger said Osborne “didn’t contribute to British theatre, he set off a landmine and blew most of it up”. Just like you remember where you were when the twin tow­ers fell or, for a slightly older audi­ence, when JFK was shot, theatre crit­ics who grew up post-war remember their young selves pre- and post-Look Back in Anger.

Joining Bluebeard, the Oxford Revue and a mystery comedy act that the Revue will be taking along under their wing at the Edinburgh Fringe will be Eleanor Keel and Isa­bel Marr’s production of Look Back in Anger. Ellie Keel is a third year Italian and German student, who has sort­ed out a cast and crew for the show from her slightly inconvenient posi­tion as a primary teacher in North­ern Italy. Rehearsals will begin in mid-July, concluding with a two-week run in Edinburgh in August.

Walking down Edinburgh’s Royal Mile in mid-August with leaflets be­ing thrust at you from all directions, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Fringe is the single most im­portant event in any student’s exist­ence. So Ellie and Isabel’s unruffled approach is refreshing: “We’re not sure if it will be amazing. It’s a clas­sic play and it’s not as experimen­tal as some of the weirdest things the Fringe has to offer. But we hope that its simplicity will be a breath of fresh air in itself.”

Look Back in Anger was staged to great acclaim with Judi Dench and Kenneth Branagh in the classic 1989 production. Keel is keen that this not be a “carbon copy” of that produc­tion, as it is futile to try to replicate something as well-loved and cited.

They hope to capture the passion of the play in an abridged version, as the script is widely considered to be too long. It is easy to see similarities between playwright John Osborne’s life and views, and those of Jimmy. Their unhappy marriages are very similar, and Osborne was funda­mentally unafraid to speak the un­speakable: this led him to question without ceremony the existence of the British monarchy, but also per­haps left him short-sighted when it came to editing Jimmy’s hard-hit­ting but manifold tirades. Cuts have been made but adaptation would be futile, as the play is so deeply rooted in the mindset of the 50s.

The now-familiar contemptuous anti-hero who rants his way through the political wrongs of the age was done first and best by Jimmy, Os­borne’s ‘angry young man’ of the post-war Midlands. His tirades are full of delightful lyricism and un­comfortable violence: attacks on entrenched class divides are easy to nod along to, while the systematic and cruel undermining of his wife Alison is slightly more difficult to swallow.

Set in a small Derby flat which Ali­son and Jimmy share with their oth­er flatmate Cliff, who is in love with Alison, the love-square is complete with the addition of Alison’s upper-class best friend, Helena. Lines like Jimmy’s musing that “it’s pretty dreary living in the American Age — unless you’re an American of course” still ring true.

Look Back in Anger hasn’t lost its kick with age: Jimmy’s resentment remains difficult to watch for a gener­ation that has no shortage of ‘angry young men’ of its own. Here’s hoping this can be translated to the convert­ed church in Edinburgh where it’s set to be staged.

★★★★☆
Four Stars

The newest American-breakout band, Surfer Blood, are about to be massive! With a new album set for release on the 11th June, Pythons, and a new major record deal with Warner Bros. the four-piece from Florida are up for a successful summer. This is further supplemented by a current stint supporting Foals on the American stint of their tour before embarking on a festival-filled summer, taking in the likes of Best Kept Secret in Amsterdam and Reading and Leeds.

Whilst all of this inevitably leads to a sense of hype surrounding Pythons, for once they actually live up to it. If you used to like the Vaccines, before they sold their souls to Teeny-Boppers and Radio 1, you’ll love Surfer Blood. Their writing has a sense of earnestness comparable to Savages recent release Silence Yourself, and a rhythmic looseness last heard on Peace’s In Love. Although both of these comparisons are to British bands, Surfer Blood retain their American roots with a sense of ‘airiness’ and positive outlook that could only have come from across the pond.

The opening track ‘Demon Dance’ is simple surf-rock at its finest with its simple three chord structure and soaring slide guitar melody. Whilst this is an album built on simplicity, there is still a sense of depth, comparable to the current B-town scene here, and quite unlike anything American we’ve heard this year, detached from the mainstream but with the potential to go global.

With ‘Gravity’ comes a more urgent and driven offering, focusing the simple riffs and melody into a powerful offering, only to be outdone by the next track ‘Weird Shapes’ which becomes euphoric. Although Surfer Blood, and lead singer John Paul Pitts, are generally gentle in their musical efforts, this track is interjected with psychedelic screams which bring a sense of aggression to proceedings. Although only three tracks into the album, this is one of the best ‘three track streaks’ around and a clear indication of great things to come, both during the remainder of the album, and for Surfer Blood this summer. Watch out.

Track To Download: Demon Dance