Reviews by Debbie Sims
The Sessions [15]
Debbie Sims
The Sessions tells the true story of Mark O’Brien (brilliantly played by John Hawkes, virtually unrecognisable from his roles in Winter’s Bone and Martha Marcy May Marlene), a poet and ...
12 years ago
The Sessions [15]
Quartet [12A]
Debbie Sims
It would be easy to dismiss a film like Quartet on hearing a brief synopsis: pensioners try to save their retirement home by putting on a show. It’s a bit like the most recent Muppets ...
12 years ago
Quartet [12A]
Radio Times
Debbie Sims
It is the midst of the Blitz and morale needs boosting. Where better to look than the Variety Bandwagon, a light entertainment radio show recorded live in front of a theatre audience, where ...
12 years ago
Radio Times
Educating Rita
Debbie Sims
Educating Rita, or, as it should henceforth be known, the play of the thousand cardigans, brings its towering bookshelves to the Oxford Playhouse this week.
Twinkly-eyed Matthew Kelly plays Frank, ...
12 years ago
Educating Rita
A Royal Affair [15]
Debbie Sims
What does the average non-Danish person know about Danish history? Aside from there having once been something rotten in the state of Denmark, and assuming we are not allowed to include the ...
13 years ago
A Royal Affair [15]
Thoroughly Modern Millie
Debbie Sims
A thoroughly marvellous time is in store for anyone with tickets to see Oxford Operatic Society’s Thoroughly Modern Millie at the New Theatre. It is impossible not to have a grin on your face ...
13 years ago
Thoroughly Modern Millie
John Sergeant
Debbie Sims
John Sergeant has a highly successful journalism career spanning more than 30 years. He has spent time with Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher, and the George Bushes. So, of course, the first ...
13 years ago
John Sergeant
Blood Wedding
Debbie Sims
Oxford Theatre Guild cordially invites you to the Oxford Playhouse to witness the performance of Blood Wedding, Lorca’s tale of passion and betrayal set under the burning Spanish sun. ...
13 years ago
Blood Wedding
Michael Pennington's Sweet William
Debbie Sims
If it takes ten thousand hours of practice to make a virtuoso then I’m not sure what that makes Michael Pennington - as stated in the subtitle to his show (and accompanying book) Sweet William he ...
13 years ago
Michael Pennington's Sweet William
Latin! or Tobacco and Boys
Debbie Sims
In the days before Stephen Fry was a national treasure and generally beloved know-it-all, when he was still a student at Cambridge, he wrote the comedy two-hander Latin! Or: Tobacco and Boys. And, as ...
13 years ago
Latin! or Tobacco and Boys
Carmen
Debbie Sims
Carmen is a tale of passion and jealousy, among gypsies, smugglers, and soldiers, set in the oppressive heat of Seville. The atmosphere created by the Oxford Operatic Society feels a little more like ...
13 years ago
Carmen
Earthquakes in London
Debbie Sims
Earthquakes in London is unlike any play I have seen before. It’s An Inconvenient Truth, by way of Top of the Pops and Chekov’s Three Sisters, with some apparently naked ukulele playing thrown in ...
13 years ago
Earthquakes in London
Sister Act
Debbie Sims
90s San Francisco is swapped for 70s Philadelphia as the musical version of the Whoopi Goldberg film Sister Act comes to Oxford. I say musical version of the film, but this is perhaps misleading. The ...
13 years ago
Sister Act
Melancholia [15]
Debbie Sims
With Melancholia as a title, and Lars Von Trier as a director, it’s pretty clear that this isn’t going to be a light-hearted romp of a film. It’s an examination of depression and anxiety; it ...
13 years ago
Melancholia [15]
Swimming and Flying
Debbie Sims
Mark Haddon was at the Oxford Playhouse on Friday performing a talk/essay especially written for the occasion, in support of the Playhouse‘s fundraising appeal. Haddon was alone on a stage set up ...
13 years ago
Swimming and Flying
Beautiful Lies [12A]
Debbie Sims
If you’re looking for a bit of mindless escape for a couple of hours, you can do much worse than Beautiful Lies. You can probably do quite a lot better too, but in terms of undemanding, frothy ...
13 years ago
Beautiful Lies [12A]
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Debbie Sims
After ten years, and a staggering one thousand one hundred and seventy eight minutes worth of film, it all ends. Harry Potter climaxes with the exciting, scary, emotional, and ultimately very ...
13 years ago
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Communicating Doors
Debbie Sims
One hotel suite. One old fashioned, camp villain. Three women, in three different points in time. But sometimes two are in the same time. And at one point all three are, but one doesn’t belong. Or ...
14 years ago
Communicating Doors
A Row of Parked Cars
Debbie Sims
As I was waiting in the queue for my ticket to A Row of Parked Cars in the Burton Taylor Studio, I overheard someone describe it as ‘an examination of the human condition.’ Oh joy, thought I. An ...
14 years ago
A Row of Parked Cars
Love Like Poison [15]
Debbie Sims
We learn many lessons as we move from childhood to adulthood, about love, and sex, and guilt, and death. But we’ll come to that later. Another, perhaps less soaring, but nonetheless important, ...
14 years ago
Love Like Poison [15]
Source Code [12A]
Debbie Sims
Source Code is an extremely engaging, entertaining, and ultimately surprisingly moving sci-fi thriller. To try and write a summary of it, however, takes all the fun out of it. Breaking it ...
14 years ago
Source Code [12A]
Brontë
Debbie Sims
Considering the Brontë sisters’ lives were devoid of much ‘living’ as such, it is astonishing how much vitality Polly Teale extracts from the story of the family in the new run of her play ...
14 years ago
Brontë
Sweeney Todd
Debbie Sims
I went into Pembroke College to see Sweeney Todd with low expectations. I was sure that a student production of Stephen Sondheim’s complex musical, the notoriously gory story of the demon barber of ...
14 years ago
Sweeney Todd
The Tempest [PG]
Debbie Sims
The Tempest. Most of us know at least the basic story: Duke Prospero is usurped, he and his daughter get exiled from his kingdom and end up on an island; twelve years later he conjures a tempest and ...
14 years ago
The Tempest [PG]
Of Gods and Men [15]
Debbie Sims
Of Gods and Men opens in a monastery in Algeria in the 1990s, with a small group of French monks quietly and methodically going to prayer. Everything is symmetrical, orderly, and peaceful. They live ...
14 years ago
Of Gods and Men [15]
My Afternoons with Margueritte [15] (La Tete En Friche)
Debbie Sims
My Afternoons with Margueritte is not exactly a film full of high-octane thrills and spills. But you can probably tell that from the poster: Gerard Depardieu and an old lady sit on a bench, feeding ...
14 years ago
My Afternoons with Margueritte [15] (La Tete En Friche)
Oxford Poets
Debbie Sims
Encompassing Geoffrey Chaucer and Michael Rosen, and taking in Ancient Greece and the shops of Oxford High Street along the way, Live Canon really impressed at the Oxford Playhouse on Friday. They ...
14 years ago
Oxford Poets
Journey's End
Debbie Sims
Set entirely in an officers’ dugout close to the front line towards the end of World War I, Journey’s End tells the moving story of a small group of officers as they wait to go over the top. We ...
14 years ago
Journey's End
The Royal Hunt Of The Sun
Debbie Sims
Royal Hunt of the Sun, on at the Playhouse this week, is a little performed play by Peter Shaffer. After seeing it, it becomes clear why. This is a play in which gold is a main character, in which ...
14 years ago
The Royal Hunt Of The Sun
Will Self
Debbie Sims
Near the beginning of his talk, Will Self said something to us along the lines of ‘in a couple of hours you’ll look back at this and think it was all some sort of surreal dream’ (though he ...
14 years ago
Will Self
Hairspray The Musical
Debbie Sims
Hairspray is without doubt the most fun that you can have with Brian Conley in drag and Les Dennis in ill-fitting trousers. If inane grins and tapping toes amongst the audience are a measure of ...
14 years ago
Hairspray The Musical
Spend Spend Spend!
Debbie Sims
Spend Spend Spend!, on at the Oxford Playhouse all this week, is a musical of two halves. Two utterly entertaining, equally terrific halves, but two halves nonetheless. It is based on the true story ...
14 years ago
Spend Spend Spend!
Gainsbourg [15]
Debbie Sims
Biopics are a tricky genre. The challenge is to engage someone who knows all the facts already, and someone else who knows none. I fell into the latter category. The only things I knew about Serge ...
14 years ago
Gainsbourg [15]
Heartbreaker [15]
Debbie Sims
Heartbreaker (L'Arnacoeur) is the perfect antidote to the below par romantic comedies that have been offered up in recent months. Sex and the City 2? Letters to Juliet? Non, merci. This is so far ...
15 years ago
Heartbreaker [15]
Apples
Debbie Sims
Heartbreaking, and brutal, and funny, and shocking, the stage adaptation of Richard Milward's novel Apples is brilliant. A group of six teenagers are growing up and trying to cope with life the only ...
15 years ago
Apples
Titus Andronicus
Debbie Sims
Titus Andronicus, on this week at Corpus Christi College, is hilarious. Trouble is, I still haven’t worked out if it’s supposed to be. The story is extremely gruesome, and includes murder, rape, ...
15 years ago
Titus Andronicus
Dangerous Liaisons
Debbie Sims
Sex, manipulation, and revenge are the unholy trinity of players in Trinity Players' Dangerous Liaisons, performed in the beautiful setting of Trinity Lawns this week. (Apologies - I am slightly ...
15 years ago
Dangerous Liaisons
Much Ado About Nothing
Debbie Sims
Shakespeare meets Allo Allo in Oxford Triptych Theatre’s production of Much Ado About Nothing. Sicily is replaced with post-war France, signified by a long rendition of 'La Marseillaise', some ...
15 years ago
Much Ado About Nothing
Bad Lieutenant [18]
Debbie Sims
'It feels like we're working for some kind of greater good,' says Xzibit's gang boss to Nicholas Cage's eponymous Bad Lieutenant as they make a business deal, whilst in the background his two ...
15 years ago
Bad Lieutenant [18]
