This evening’s entertainment at the Old Fire Station, was once again brought to us by Oxford Platforms, a programme that supports new playwriting by showcasing rehearsed readings of plays by emerging artists.

Van Gogh and Me was written by John Retallack, also director of this performance, and perhaps not quite befitting of the ‘emerging artist’ label, due to his extensive efforts across and within the creative world; Retallack has written several other plays and adaptations for theatre and radio and is an award-winning director, as well as being an Artistic Director for several theatre companies since the late 1970s.

Van Gogh and Me is a one-man play performed by the excellent Jack Ellis, British theatre and TV actor probably most recognisable from roles in Prime Suspect during the 1990s, and his performance in A Few Good Men onstage in the West End, more recently in 2005.

While the Oxford Platforms performances I have previously been fortunately enough to see have been staged readings and although this was also advertised as such, Ellis did not have a script during the performance. He instead had Retallack as a prompt throughout, but as Retallack informed the sold-out audience during his introduction, Ellis performed ‘bareback’ (sans script) for reasons that became obvious immediately.

Although the show has been written as a one-man play, that one man has his work cut out playing three roles – Van Gogh, Paul Gaugin and himself. Seemingly written with Ellis in mind (Retallack and Ellis first worked together between 1978 and 1983) the play centres around a very specific time in Van Gogh’s life –when he and Gaugin shared a small house in Arles (Provence, France) for nine weeks in 1888.

The staging of the show is simple yet quite remarkable, with twelve folding chairs dotted around the space, each one containing one or two differently sized canvas, with the back of the canvas initially facing the audience; remarkable mainly due to the fantastically rendered reproductions of the pieces discussed and shown to the audience during the performance, mainly works by Van Gogh, but pointedly some of Gaugin’s creations too. Particular commendations must go to Designer Rachel Marston, an artist and set designer based in Glasgow, for these incredible recreations of art from masters of their time. I was genuinely quite blown away by them, each one carefully hung at the back of the stage by Ellis throughout the performance, and lit to ensure the audience is always aware of one of the central themes.

With subtle musical interludes created by Joseph Weisberg (a composer, also based in Glasgow), the show is mainly a feat of character, with Ellis switching easily between a conflicted, tortured and chaotic Van Gogh as his relationship with a sober, neat and somewhat condescending Gaugin develops, falters and eventually fails with devastating effect - all of this as well as performing as himself, Jack Ellis, and reminiscing about his own important relationship with Van Gogh.

Overall, I was transfixed throughout. Coming to the performance with minimal knowledge of both Van Gogh and Gaugin, let alone the specific situation in Arles, 1888, I was fascinated and completely drawn in by Retallack and Ellis’ portrayal of the artists’ love affair/obsession with art, with each other as well as with Ellis’ own love affair with Van Gogh.