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Twilight has a lot to answer for. Whatever you think of its literary merits, bloodsuckers have taken a firm hold on our collective imagination. When a serious-faced figure in Georgian costume standing at the front of the Burton Taylor's small stage asked the audience for a topic "that you might tell a story about", a collective silence fell. Eventually, someone piped up with "vampires"- and so kicked off an entirely improvised play, set in a small villa on the shores of Lake Geneva, 1816, where two of the foremost poets of the age (and their doctor and boatman) trapped by weather, wrote Frankenstein and The Vampyre, two stories that gave birth to the modern horror genre. So much for facts. Fortunately, history, and with it, structure and logic, were quickly discarded, as Jim Grant's Byron and Andy Murray's Shelley invited us into a gloriously anarchic, bewilderingly imaginative and cheerfully bizarre world of rain-collecting Swiss, Byronic homoeroticism and anarcho-socialist vampires ("Your family's been sucking the blood of the working classes for generations, Byron! Don't you think it's time they got to suck back?"). Sly period in-jokes abounded, helpfully allowing the audience to pinpoint the English Literature students: they were the ones groaning at the references to the "awful story" that Mary Shelley was writing. However, the performers never chose to just be clever when they could funny as well, and joyful anachronisms were everywhere. After mentioning that he's been developing some photographs in the greenhouse (don't ask), Joseph Morpurgo's John Polidori adds "But of course you won't know what those are" without missing a beat. Sometimes, I feel improvised comedians take refuge in spontaneity, emphasising 'improvised' to cover a lack of 'comedy'. Fortunately, the cast- all seasoned comedians and former members of the Oxford Imps- managed to avoid this. They were genuinely funny, and part of the fun was seeing the brilliant skill of performers using the freedom of improv to best effect. As Shelley earnestly proclaimed, "True art is never predictable". The performers were able to build up to an obvious punchline, and then smack you in the funnybone with an unexpected subversion. When Polidori learns that the daily routine of Maurice, Byron's Swiss valet, consists of dropping from his sleeping pole, exterminating garlic plants and sanding the sharp bits off wooden fences, he reacts with horror: "My God! You're a Jesuit!" The one-liners were certainly great, but you could get those from any improv act. What really set Byron and Shelley apart was having a whole hour to play with, which allowed for running jokes and character development. I particularly enjoyed Joseph Morpurgo's endearingly pathetic (and historically accurate) John Polidori, obsessed with the twin muses of Hair and Ceilings, and Andy Murray's firebrand vampire Shelley, with a habit of cheating at mind games ("Chess is a non-contact sport, Shelley!"). Craig Holmes and Jim Grant were excellent as well, but seemed more content to play the straight man and the plot mover, respectively. However, on occasion, and especially in earlier scenes, I felt the cast were still finding their feet. A few uncomfortably long pauses seemed to mark a collective failure of imagination from the cast, and at times the whole thing felt surprisingly hesitant. However, as the hour progressed, all four performers became more confident and spontaneous. Pretty soon, they were trading quips and gloriously building on each new flight of fancy to form a brilliant, surreal pastiche of Romanticism. I understood the desire to have scenes with only two characters riffing off each other, but I felt the performances were strongest when all four actors were onstage together. That gave them the chance to really build off of each other’s performances, throwing jokes, bizarre improvisations and funny call-backs to earlier scenes at each other with wild abandon. More ensemble scenes might help get the performance buzzing earlier. Also, it felt faintly odd that the invented character of Maurice was substituted for the real Mary Shelley, despite Murray getting some good lines about her absence. This isn't in any way faulting the all-male cast, every one of whom were excellent- but still. Surely there can't be a lack of female improv talent to draw on in Oxford? Inevitably, the plot was a fairly loose and sketchy affair, serving more as a contrivance to move us from one good scene to another rather than as the main driving force of the play. Nevertheless, I was impressed at the surprisingly compelling (and funny) story the performers managed to pull together. Later scenes flowed very naturally into one another, and it was easy to forget that no-one in the room had the faintest idea where things were going. That enhanced my enjoyment: it’s one thing to see a play well acted, and another to see it being well imagined and well written right in front of you. It was quite obvious, for example, that until Polidori pointed out Byron's "halo" in the last scene, Jim Grant had no idea his character had been an angel all along- but he responded magnificently. Protests of "But you slept with your half-sister!" were met with an imperturbable "I'm a flawed angel." It's very liberating for a reviewer to be able to spoil all the best jokes and reveal the twist ending to a play while at the same time encouraging a reader to go and see the damn thing. I couldn't possibly convey how much fun Byron and Shelley is, not even if I told you every joke I heard last night. The real joy came from seeing four expert improv performers at the top of their game, spinning one throwaway suggestion and improvised line after improvised line into a funny, intelligent and surprisingly coherent comedy. Byron and Shelley is only an hour long, it's excellently performed, and it's a bloody good deal: £5 for non-students. I'd pay that much just to know what tonight's theme is going to be, let alone see an entirely new and unique comedy created in front of me. You'd have to be mad, bad, and dangerous to know not to go. Alwyn Collinson (DI Staff), 22/10/09 |
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