Reviews by Heather Kay
Every Brilliant Thing
Heather Kay
This is the month when audience participation runs wild across the country, with children, parents and grandparents singing silly songs at the tops of their voices and crying out “Oh yes you did” ...
7 days ago
Every Brilliant Thing
"Absent Friends" by Alan Ayckbourn
Heather Kay
I sometimes wonder whether the Bartholomew Players will ever stage Ibsen’s The Master Builder – not so much for its content but for its title, which is so appropriately descriptive. It really ...
a month ago
"Absent Friends" by Alan Ayckbourn
A Raisin in the Sun
Heather Kay
I cannot imagine a better start to Black History Month than this production of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. The title is drawn from a poem by Langston Hughes: “What happens to a ...
3 months ago
A Raisin in the Sun
Frankenstein (On A Budget)
Heather Kay
Imagine an adolescent Just William recreating Mary Shelley’s novel as a one-man drama in the barn for his friends, and I think you will have a pretty vivid picture of the kind of production this ...
3 months ago
Frankenstein (On A Budget)
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Heather Kay
Like so many of the audience, I have loved the film version of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for decades, as one of a cluster of truly magical children’s musical films, including Mary Poppins and Willy ...
3 months ago
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
The Spooky Men’s Chorale
Heather Kay
The Spooky Men Chorale was the brainchild of “Spookmeister” Stephen Taberner.He sums up its genesis in a sentence: “I called up every guy I knew who could sing and seemed to be a tolerable ...
6 months ago
The Spooky Men’s Chorale
"Pack of Lies" by Hugh Whitemore
Heather Kay
This is a powerful and utterly engrossing piece of theatre. A compelling mystery/spy thriller storyline draws the audience into a moving 360° examination of the moral and emotional dilemmas ...
8 months ago
"Pack of Lies" by Hugh Whitemore
Oxfordshire Artweeks: Pam Fyvie
Heather Kay
It is amazing what a wealth of talent and invention lies behind some of the most ordinary front doors on the most ordinary streets in this area! Artweeks provides the "Open, Sesame!" which – like ...
8 months ago
Oxfordshire Artweeks: Pam Fyvie
Silver Lining
Heather Kay
Most people after the age of 30, wrote George Orwell, “abandon individual ambition – in many cases, indeed, they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all – and live chiefly for ...
a year ago
Silver Lining
Splash Test Dummies
Heather Kay
Cornerstone puts together such an exciting and eclectic programme, with an imaginative selection of diverse offerings – and the same goes for its latest show, Splash Test Dummies.This trio of ...
a year ago
Splash Test Dummies
Graffiti Classics
Heather Kay
“I know which String Quartet I would choose on the Titanic …” What image do the words “string quartet” usually evoke for you? Four worthy individuals seated formally in a semicircle round ...
a year ago
Graffiti Classics
A Bunch of Amateurs
Heather Kay
Jefferson Steel is a Hollywood actor whose movie career is on the wane. How better to revitalise it than by crossing the Atlantic and taking to the stage, starting with the lead role in King Lear at ...
2 years ago
A Bunch of Amateurs
A Servant To Two Masters
Heather Kay
There are no auditions for 17-25 year olds who wish to join the Oxford Playhouse Young Company.All that is required is “a real enthusiasm to experiment” – and that enthusiasm really shone ...
2 years ago
A Servant To Two Masters
Fermat's Last Tango
Heather Kay
A man hides away in his attic grappling with a maths problem he thought he had solved but hadn’t, until he finds the answer. Does that sound like promising subject matter for theatre? And … an ...
2 years ago
Fermat's Last Tango
Rutherford & Son by Githa Sowerby
Heather Kay
There can be few villages the size of Eynsham able to boast an amateur theatre company of the quality of its Bartholomew Players. Year after year they offer up one production after another of ...
2 years ago
Rutherford & Son by Githa Sowerby
Offbeat Festival 2022
Heather Kay
Energetic, dynamic, intense and larger-than-life – am I describing Yasmin Sidhwar or her youth company’s latest production, Rhinoceros? Well, both. First performed in 1959, Rhinoceros tells the ...
2 years ago
Offbeat Festival 2022
Morgan & West present: The Three Musketeers
Heather Kay
What a wonderful way to start the summer theatre season! It was glorious to bask outdoors in the balmy evening air on the warm stone amphitheatre steps, under the bluest of skies.Seating was so ...
4 years ago
Morgan & West present: The Three Musketeers
Comedy Night at the Movies
Heather Kay
Despite the challenges of Covid-19, Jericho Comedy has continued undaunted on its mission to seek out new comedy formats and venues. This summer has seen them branch out into new ventures, such as ...
4 years ago
Comedy Night at the Movies
Numbers
Heather Kay
In Numbers, Mercury Theatre Productions have carefully crafted a convincing portrayal of a young man struggling with mental health issues. Jack is a likeable character, a fresh-faced young man who ...
5 years ago
Numbers
Full Moon Swim
Heather Kay
Lolling in the warm shallows, gazing up at the stars twinkling in the cloudless deep velvet night sky, the water illuminated by the bright light of a perfect full moon... where was I? Spain? Crete? ...
5 years ago
Full Moon Swim
Piracy! Comedy on the High C's
Heather Kay
Questing Vole has dusted off its 2013 Piracy show, polished it up with some topical humour and, on Friday evening, offered it up as a pay-what-it’s-worth preview of its second outing to the ...
5 years ago
Piracy! Comedy on the High C's
Everything Wrong With You Is Beautiful
Heather Kay
I was attracted by the title of this performance piece and chiefly by its synopsis: “As her father descends into Alzheimer’s, Tina tries to uncover the facts behind a family story that never rang ...
6 years ago
Everything Wrong With You Is Beautiful
Unmythable - Theatre
Heather Kay
What a winning formula! Out of Chaos have done for Greek mythology what the Reduced Shakespeare Company have done for Shakespeare and the Bible – compressed practically the entire canon into an ...
6 years ago
Unmythable - Theatre
Famelab Heats
Heather Kay
'Hello.I’m Amber and I give people typhoid.' Competitors in the annual international science communication challenge, FameLab, have to know how to grab an audience’s attention and keep it for ...
6 years ago
Famelab Heats
Outliars Presented by QED Comedy Lab
Heather Kay
If you are looking for something to do, Outliars is a cosy, convivial way to spend a cold winter evening. It is organised by QED Comedy Lab, a small team which strives to create a little comedy ...
6 years ago
Outliars Presented by QED Comedy Lab
Amahl & The Night Visitors
Heather Kay
Amahl and the Night Visitors was a revelation to me. I don’t know how I have survived so many decades without once seeing this charming one-act children’s opera, which is performed about 500 ...
6 years ago
Amahl & The Night Visitors
The Wipers Times
Heather Kay
You really couldn’t make it up. Ian Hislop really did unearth a newspaper which could almost have been a blueprint for Private Eye - but was in fact produced some 35 years before the Eye was born, ...
6 years ago
The Wipers Times
The Nature of Forgetting
Heather Kay
Sophie is helping Tom into his socks. He is waiting for his mother to bring him a birthday cake. But Tom is not a toddler. He is 55 today and he has dementia. Sophie cannot see what is going on ...
7 years ago
The Nature of Forgetting
Macbeth: A Tale of Sound and Fury
Heather Kay
If you locked three high-spirited, creative, irreverent drama students in a primary school store cupboard with the junk modelling materials, an old dressing up box, toys, musical instruments and the ...
7 years ago
Macbeth: A Tale of Sound and Fury
I'd Be Lost Without It
Heather Kay
"I’d Be Lost Without It explores our 21st century addiction to technology... Using headphones, binaural sound and immersive theatre, Wet Picnic create an interactive experience which explores the ...
7 years ago
I'd Be Lost Without It
Nathan & Ida's Hot-Dog Stand
Heather Kay
Half a century of hard work on a hot dog stand is a highly unusual subject for a one hour comedy. It might not sound promising but believe me this punchy production packs a lifetime’s worth of ...
7 years ago
Nathan & Ida's Hot-Dog Stand
Sleeping Beauty
Heather Kay
It seems there has been hyperinflation in Fairyland: Sleeping Beauty has slept not just for one hundred years, but for four centuries. Having fallen asleep in Tudor England, she wakes up to find ...
7 years ago
Sleeping Beauty
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Heather Kay
The problem about staging Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is that we all know the punchline. Robert Louis Stevenson’s original text was cleverly constructed as a mystery, the truth only hinted at, until the ...
7 years ago
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Victoriocity
Heather Kay
How many ingredients does it take to make a spellbinding podcast? Victoriocity is a mixture of so many genres, one might describe it as a hilarious comedy detective historic science-fiction steampunk ...
7 years ago
Victoriocity
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Heather Kay
Three cheers for the Watermill Theatre! And three cheers for the three-strong cast who have brought The Picture of Dorian Gray to life so vividly, not only at the Watermill but also at schools and ...
7 years ago
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Heather Kay
Sweeney Todd is the wronged barber sentenced to a lifetime of penal servitude in the colonies on a trumped-up charge by a lascivious judge who has taken a fancy to the barber’s young pretty wife. ...
7 years ago
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
All's Well That Ends As You Like It
Heather Kay
It’s that time of year again, when if you want a night out at the theatre in Oxford you have the choice of Shakespeare, Shakespeare or more Shakespeare. Or you could go and have a really good ...
7 years ago
All's Well That Ends As You Like It
The Runner
Heather Kay
The Runner is a lovely piece of new writing by Francesca Murray-Fuentes (currently Resident Director at the Oxford Playhouse). It tells the sadly familiar tale of a brother (Jago Wainwright) and ...
7 years ago
The Runner
Nesting
Heather Kay
Linda’s life is a mess. Her home is piled high with clutter – collections of broken brollies to match every outfit, shoes that don’t fit her feet or her lifestyle, books to be read one day, ...
7 years ago
Nesting
Manouche Etcetera
Heather Kay
"Manouche Etcetera" describe themselves as a band on a quest to discover what their name means. OK, the "Manouche" refers to a style of gypsy jazz originating from France; but the "Etcetera" leaves ...
8 years ago
Manouche Etcetera
The Hired Man
Heather Kay
The Hired Man was an unusual choice for this year's Musical Youth Company of Oxford (MYCO) musical. To be honest, if it hadn't been MYCO performing it, I'm not sure I would have been tempted out to ...
8 years ago
The Hired Man
Every You Every Me
Heather Kay
As the parent of two teenagers, one in Year 13, I was looking forward to seeing what Barney Norris made of 'young people's sense of place in society in relation to mental health, rebellion and ...
8 years ago
Every You Every Me
Kiss Me Kate
Heather Kay
The Welsh National Opera is marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death with its Shakespeare400 tour, which includes Verdi's MacBeth, Tchaikowsky's Merchant of Venice and this, Cole Porter's ...
8 years ago
Kiss Me Kate
In Our Hands
Heather Kay
In Our Hands is an unusual piece of theatre. Smoking Apple have set themselves the challenge of using puppetry but no spoken dialogue to tell the tale of a Cornish fisherman's struggle for survival. ...
8 years ago
In Our Hands
Nature: The Authorised Biography
Heather Kay
What a brilliant title for a show in the Natural History Museum! The poster was excellent, too: an assemblage of creatures dressed and posed as for a Victorian family portrait. However, I still ...
8 years ago
Nature: The Authorised Biography
Charles Simonyi Annual Lecture: Autism and Minds Wired for Science
Heather Kay
Autism is a hot topic. The Playhouse was packed for this year's Annual Lecture in the Public Understanding of Science. Marcus de Sautoy, Oxford's much-loved Professor of PUS (unfortunate acronym), ...
8 years ago
Charles Simonyi Annual Lecture: Autism and Minds Wired for Science
Ex Libris Live with Robert Llewellyn
Heather Kay
Ex Libris* is a game devised by Oxford Games in 1991, which is now presented from time to time in Blackwell's Oxford Bookshop as a panel game something like a cross between "Call My Bluff" and "The ...
8 years ago
Ex Libris Live with Robert Llewellyn
London's Burning
Heather Kay
Generations of Science Oxford devotees have been spellbound over the years by Natalie Ford's deft and striking displays of combustion in all its glory, as part of the Fire Show which has been a ...
8 years ago
London's Burning
Perfect
Heather Kay
'I love having OCD,' Michelle Mone, now Baroness of Mayfair, told Good Morning Britain on 13th October 2015, during OCD Awareness Week. This elicited a torrent of protest from UK OCD charities and ...
9 years ago
Perfect
Forget Me Not
Heather Kay
When Elsie Barson is found dead on the hospital floor, who should be surprised, or even care? 'It's probably a blessing,' says the ward manager. Elsie was one of thirty late stage dementia patients ...
9 years ago
Forget Me Not
The Birthday Party
Heather Kay
The Birthday Party. Sounds fun, doesn't it? In fact, it is more like a nightmare. The event is an unwanted and painful experience for Stanley, the unemployed long-term guest in a quiet seaside ...
9 years ago
The Birthday Party
Stones in his Pockets
Heather Kay
Stones in his Pockets, written in 1996 by Marie Jones, tells the story of how life in a rural Irish community is disrupted by the invasion of a huge film production crew, as experienced by two local ...
9 years ago
Stones in his Pockets
Eddie The Eagle [PG]
Heather Kay
If you want a wholesome, feel-good family film to instil the value of resilience in the next generation, Eddie the Eagle perfectly fits the bill. Michael "Eddie" Edwards is an unlikely hero. Having ...
9 years ago
Eddie The Eagle [PG]
Patience
Heather Kay
If you are ever going to see Patience, this is definitely the place to see it! The striking architecture and unconventional décor of St Barnabas Church, founded by two leading members of the ...
9 years ago
Patience
Why Do We Believe in the Unbelievable?
Heather Kay
Speakezee.org was conceived and created by Bruce Hood, former Royal Institution Christmas Lecturer 2011 ("Meet Your Brain") and currently Professor of Developmental Psychology in Society at the ...
9 years ago
Why Do We Believe in the Unbelievable?
Paradoxy
Heather Kay
Which is more to be feared: an unencrypted Big Brother world completely controlled by governments and corporations; or a hidden digital under world where, without the civilising constraints of social ...
9 years ago
Paradoxy
Showstopper!
Heather Kay
Last night, the Oxford audience rejected Parliament, the Kremlin, Ancient Rome and Martin's Department Store as the setting for its musical, and voted with its hands and lungs for ... an undertakers. ...
9 years ago
Showstopper!
In Good Taste: The Chemistry of Food
Heather Kay
We were treated to a fascinating evening of science served up with an assortment of sweet, savoury and spicy snacks when Andy Brunning presented 'The Chemistry of Food' in the Oxford Brookes ...
9 years ago
In Good Taste: The Chemistry of Food
Animal Farm
Heather Kay
If you (or your teenage children) have never read Animal Farm, you could do worse than visit the Old Fire Station this week to absorb George Orwell's book through the current RAFTA production. At the ...
9 years ago
Animal Farm
Distractingly Female
Heather Kay
The Saturday Matinee Company is a welcome addition to the Oxford theatre scene, creating no-frills lunchtime drama, accessible to everyone – entry is free of charge, audience members pay what they ...
9 years ago
Distractingly Female
Formidable Vegetable Sound System hit Oxford - Barracks Lane fundraiser
Heather Kay
Coming all the way from Australia to the Cowley Road, these guys brightened the dark black backroom of the “Bully” with a healthy dose of sunshine from the Outback last night, all in aid of the ...
9 years ago
Formidable Vegetable Sound System hit Oxford - Barracks Lane fundraiser
Alice
Heather Kay
It is hard to think of a more magical setting for a promenade performance of Alice than the glorious gardens of St Hugh’s College, and Creation Theatre’s production makes ingenious use of the ...
9 years ago
Alice
A Little History Of The World
Heather Kay
This is one of the most downright lovable and playful productions I have ever seen. It is well worth the journey to the Watermill Theatre (a beautiful scenic and historic destination in its own ...
9 years ago
A Little History Of The World
Mrs Warren's Profession
Heather Kay
Can Shaw’s play, written in 1893 by a man who had grown up in a Victorian world where married women had not yet acquired the right even to keep their own earnings, let alone vote, still have ...
9 years ago
Mrs Warren's Profession
Crazy For You
Heather Kay
Crazy for You clearly has its roots in the vaudeville/variety/music hall style of theatre which dominated popular entertainment at the beginning of the 20th century, before the rise of the cinema. It ...
10 years ago
Crazy For You
Timandra Harkness: Brainsex
Heather Kay
Timandra Harkness is one of a handful of female names and voices familiar to those Radio 4 listeners who do not retune or switch off when the science, maths & statistics programmes come on. Her ...
10 years ago
Timandra Harkness: Brainsex
Lorraine & Alan
Heather Kay
Lorraine and Alan is a mesmerising modern re-telling of the ancient Selkie myth, in which a lonely Celtic fisherman steals and hides the skin of a selkie (sea-people who live as seals but can ...
10 years ago
Lorraine & Alan
Wind in the Willows
Heather Kay
This production was billed as a “brilliantly bouncy children’s musical” but would be better described as a summer pantomime. Like many a panto these days, it assumed that everyone already knew ...
10 years ago
Wind in the Willows
Dead Secrets Present...The Curiositorium
Heather Kay
The Curiositorium is a series of interconnected comedy sketches strung onto a narrative that takes intrepid explorer “Bygone” on a mission searching through a secret labyrinthine underground ...
10 years ago
Dead Secrets Present...The Curiositorium
Iolanthe
Heather Kay
The last OUGSS production of Iolanthe, in Magdalen Auditorium in November 2010, was one of their most accomplished and memorable. Who could forget the arty fairies, the Tory and Whig leaders ...
10 years ago
Iolanthe
Rock of Ages
Heather Kay
It must be a marvellous feeling to perform in a show like this, the adult rock panto of musicals. Tuesday’s first-night audience bustled into the theatre 100% confident that they were going to have ...
10 years ago
Rock of Ages
Kiss Me, Figaro!
Heather Kay
“The exact nature of Kiss Me, Figaro! is difficult to explain to people” – says its author, John Ramster. As the title hints, it is loosely reminiscent of Kiss Me, Kate, based ...
10 years ago
Kiss Me, Figaro!
The Grand Duke
Heather Kay
This is a rare treat for G&S aficionados. It is commonly felt that, after their infamous quarrel over payment for the Savoy Theatre carpet, WS Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan never completely ...
11 years ago
The Grand Duke
The Showstoppers Improvised Musical
Heather Kay
Q: Which amazing impresarios have created almost 500 unique stage musicals, in just eight years?
A: The ensemble of talented performers known as the “Showstoppers”, who share ...
11 years ago
The Showstoppers Improvised Musical
Is He A Bit Simon Jay?
Heather Kay
An autopsy of a strangely deformed body is delivered by an eccentric mortician, who peels back, onion-like, layer by layer, the life experiences of the dead man from death to birth: this is the ...
11 years ago
Is He A Bit Simon Jay?
Comedy Scratch Night
Heather Kay
A new showcase and testbase for local talent, this Oxford Comedy Scratch Night (to be held trimenstrually) is a new initiative from the Dead Secrets. Hosted by Ida Persson and Jen Sugden, ...
11 years ago
Comedy Scratch Night
Alarms and Excursions
Heather Kay
Has anyone coined the term “Fraynetic” before? What better way to describe this “farcical riot on all the gizmos, gadgets and grief that modem life serves up” – ...
11 years ago
Alarms and Excursions
Cinderella
Heather Kay
Abingdon Drama Club kicked off its 70th anniversary year last night with a splendid first night of its traditional family pantomime. What a breath of fresh air, to see a panto which remembers the ...
11 years ago
Cinderella
Emma
Heather Kay
There could hardly have been more difference between the two dramatisations of Jane Austen novels we have seen in Oxford this week. Whereas Two-Bit Classic’s rendition of ...
11 years ago
Emma
Mirthquake! A Sketch Show
Heather Kay
Oxford Comedy Deathmatch have attracted a loyal band of followers for their monthly comedy improvisation nights and annual improvised pantos. Mirthquake represented a new departure for them: ...
13 years ago
Mirthquake! A Sketch Show
Hot Mikado
Heather Kay
The cream of the Oxfordshire teenage musical theatre talent pool is largely divvied up between three organisations – OYMT, MYCO and Ric-Nic – and their annual productions are highlights of the ...
8 years ago
Hot Mikado
A Super Happy Story About Feeling Super Sad
Heather Kay
Hats off to Silent Uproar, for lifting the lid on this difficult subject, with their surprising and gripping musical cabaret presentation – you don’t normally expect glitter and ostrich feather ...
6 years ago
A Super Happy Story About Feeling Super Sad
Famelab 2019 Regional Final
Heather Kay
Could a woman in high heels outrun a dinosaur, and how would we know? Do the benefits of sulphur outweigh its stinkbomb smell? How might we cure a migraine? What is Graham’s Number? Should the ...
6 years ago
Famelab 2019 Regional Final
