Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia has a wide following that holds it up as one of the prime delights of contemporary dramatic writing, taking an innovative idea of juxtaposing two time periods within the same room of “Sidley Park” to think about ideas of causality and historical interpretation. This play will last, say the critics! So, with this pressure how does St. Hilda’s Drama Society latest theatrical offering fare? Pretty well, I believe.

The play is notable for its difficult combination of the intellectual and the human – theoretical physics and scandal in the same line, that kind of thing! – and the cast seem to have the right idea of how to deal with these different modes. It is to be “character-driven”, articulating the fraught emotional conflicts with the ideas as a kind of top layering to stimulate in a quite different way. This is all fine if the energy is high and the tension maintained, which it largely was, though in a particularly cerebral scene of talk about chaos theory and iteration, anyone could be forgiven for a slight lapse.

The opening scene was especially strong, as tutor Septimus explains to the naïve Thomasina the nature of “carnal embrace”. The witty repartee was carried by Jonnie Griffiths (Septimus) and Alice Gray (Thomasina) with ease, and the performance of Thomasina’s sharpness and liveliness was particularly engaging. On the other hand, the later entry of Ezra Chater to accuse Septimus of “carnally embracing” his wife (I wonder if that phrase ever really was used…?) in the gazebo (of all places). Chater was convincingly enraged, but the conflict seemed too quickly resolved as Chater and Septimus sit side-by-side – a certain bumbling susceptibility to manipulation did not come across, so the reasoning did not seem entirely there.

The overall aesthetic is to juxtapose lavish Victorian period costume and antique furniture with the simplicity of the modern day. Objects will accumulate from both periods on the central table of the set – as much a dialogue between the two periods as the historical investigations that dominate the modern day story and as the sudden flow of characters onto the stage during the last scene from both these different moments in time simultaneously.

As it is the play is reaching towards a polished state, promising both thought and laughter, should all go well before next week’s opening night – one to keep an eye on!

The New Writing Festival taking place in 7^th week at the Burton Taylor is set to showcase Oxford’s best writing talent from the twenty-nine entries received earlier this year. New Beginnings, Roost, Bad Faith and Closing Time are all written and directed by undergraduates, many of whom are freshers, looking to get original writing more attention than it has been awarded in recent years. New Writing? I hear you ask worriedly, not an established writer whose work has time and again been abused by Oxford’s thesps? Yes my friends.             

 “I think there’s much less interest in”, I am told by Isabella Anderson, Producer of the New Writing Festival, “which I think is quite unfair because it’s really exciting, and there’s so much scope for what you can do with it”. It is true, scope does not seem to be a problem amongst this year’s plays which have made it to the Burton Taylor; speaking to some of the writers and directors about what their plays are about, it quickly became apparent that none of them are lacking in ambition. Matthew Parvin, writer of Roost, which follows the story of an assistant director returning to his hometown, tells me that “there are chickens, there will be actual real chickens” on stage. While this is clearly risky, and I don’t know how it will ever work within the confines of the Burton Taylor, where under normal circumstances if you sit on the front row you are more than likely to get some thespian spit coming your way, the ambition is admirable. And perhaps this sense of ambition and willingness to try new things is something Oxford is missing. Charlotte Fraser, director of New Beginnings, would seem to think so: “there’s less experimental theatre [in Oxford]. That’s what I’ve found from working on New Beginnings, that it’s really quite different from a lot of established plays put on… it’s more interested in challenging the status quo”.

Whether this is true or not remains to be seen, but what is definitely true is that each play is very different to the next; New Beginnings is described by Fraser as a “funny portrait of the first day [of the main character’s] new school”, and the culmination of some sketches the writer, Dominic O’Keefe, began when he was fifteen and has since woven into a script. Closing Time, by Sam Ward, is about a midnight conversation had in an office one night and Bad Faith, by Matilda Curtis, is set in Oxford and charts the friendships and love affairs of it’s students “looking for something to believe in”. Whilst none of them sound outlandishly innovative, (chickens excepted), I can believe that there has been more emotional investment put into these productions than there would have been in re-workings of established scripts. Working with original writing also means that the director and writer are able to work together, and somewhat ironically puts “less sort of emphasis on the script, it’s not sacred”, according to Fraser.            

For those still cautious about splashing out £5 to see some new theatre, it may be worth noting that whilst there isn’t a lot, some of the original writing that does get to the Oxford theatres is pretty fantastic, such as They Will Be Red to name but one. What’s more, the four plays to be shown during the festival have been picked from a large number, and the best production will be judged by West End Producer Thelma Holt, so these scripts are likely to be the best Oxford’s new writers have to offer. Should you take a chance? Sure, just don’t sit too near the front row in Roost.

I am a complete stranger to Chekhov, and to Russian literature in general. It was with some apprehension that I arrived in the Oxford Union to review The Cherry Orchard; I did not really know what to expect. Within minutes, however, I was perched on the edge of my seat, eagerly studying the spectacle that directors Melissa Purkiss and Aurora Dawson-Hunte had prepared for my viewing pleasure. Even as a work in progress, this is an extremely accomplished production, notable for an incredible attention to detail and performances of remarkable versatility.

The most striking feature of this staging of The Cherry Orchard is the density of emotion it crams into every moment. The theme of cultural futility of both the Russian bourgeoisie and aristocracy is at the core of Chekhov’s seminal work, and the audience is treated to a smorgasbord of diverse viewpoints and biases on that issue from each character. Every line spoken provoked a complex, sustained, and distinctive response from every other performer on stage. As the cast warmed up, they began to resemble a fascinating hydra, so that wherever one chose to cast one’s eyes, something interesting was always going on. I have never seen anything quite like it. As “eternal student” Trofimov (Ben Dawes) rants about the hypocrisy of the intelligentsia’s empty talk, witness genial landowner Lyubov’s (Fiona Johnston) embarrassed discomfort alongside the utter disinterest of the servant Firs (Luke Howarth), their mild reactions beautifully juxtaposed with the slightly exaggerated comic puzzlement of the elderly Gayev (Will Law). As I watched Purkiss and Dawson-Hunte deliver their notes after the press preview ended, I understood how such nuance was achieved – each of them has a clear directorial vision for the way they intend every second of every scene to play out, and instruct their actors accordingly so as to prevent any breaks in the audience’s reverie.

As a collective, The Cherry Orchard astounds, but this is not at the expense of individual showmanship. The pillar at the core of the entire production is Johnston’s matriarch, and what a pillar she is – I watched, riveted, as she went from doddering, clueless aristocrat to bereaved mother mourning her child all within the short span of one speech. Patrick Edmond’s Lopahkin manages the tricky task of juggling gravitas and absurdity, and the older characters as played by Law and Howarth shine as caricatures that also come across as completely convincing. The high standard of acting is definitely one of this play’s strongest points; almost every member of the cast is uniformly strong in their own right, and owns their time on stage with confidence and verve.

There were some slight hiccups that marred an otherwise excellent preview; at the beginning, pacing seemed a little patchy, and actors took a while before they began to properly bounce off each other. Nonetheless, for a play two weeks before opening night, this is a piece of art that already shows remarkable polish. I can’t guarantee that The Cherry Orchard will be a showstopper come seventh week. I would, however, be willing to wager a lot of money on it.

Theatre owes much of its beauty to its many possibilities and the power that each can hold. The Laramie Project seems to be one of those productions aiming to take full advantage of this beauty, and it certainly has the potential to. With more of a documentary feel to it than a piece of drama, the play follows the aftermath of the real-life 1998 murder of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, victim of a gay hate crime. The play’s writer, Moisés Kaufman, who features in it, travelled to the town of Laramie shortly after the killing with his theatre company, and together they recorded over two hundred interviews. The play consists of these interviews with Laramie residents, from the barista in the local coffee shop, to the Baptist minister who supported homophobic protests at Shepard’s funeral.

Most productions of The Laramie Project use a simple, almost non-existent, stage. Actors sit on stools and take it in turns to talk. Instead, the directors of this Oxford production seem keen to introduce more movement and character interaction into the play, along with some unusual ideas to make the audience feel more involved, and a plan to perform the play with “reverse staging” where it is the actors who occupy the raked seating.

Whether all this might just be the directors being overly keen to use artistic licence on a play which ordinarily gives little room for it remains to be seen, but one suspects that this two-hour performance will be carried by its actors regardless. The play features an incredible sixty characters being played by eight members, which would be a challenge for any thespian, yet the characterisation is impressive. Characters quickly came across as well-structured, multi-layered, and very believable. Nevertheless, distinguishing between individuals in a play where dialogue moves swiftly from one to another and the small-town accents are often similar may be difficult, and it will be interesting to see how the company will aid the audience in this, particularly visually.

Kaufman wrote the play in order to show the true values of the town of Laramie. Verbatim theatre can feel hectoring and overly dependent on direct address sometimes. If the actors perform with as much friendliness as they did in the preview, The Laramie Project will more likely feel like a discussion to which we are invited into. Make no mistake: it will be slick, well-performed, and intriguing; but this is an epic of a play and it is up to the cast and directors to ensure the audience remain involved and moved throughout.