Reviews by Deirdre Ruane
Malcolm Middleton
Deirdre Ruane
It's cold and it's raining and the weekend is nearly over. The upstairs room at the Jericho Tavern is full of slightly damp people waiting to see Malcolm Middleton, late of Arab Strap, who sings his ...
14 years ago
Malcolm Middleton
Fantastic Mr Fox [PG]
Deirdre Ruane
We’ve all seen children's films sprinkled with self-consciously sophisticated jokes and asides designed to amuse parents and go sailing over children's heads. At times it seems as if the kids and ...
15 years ago
Fantastic Mr Fox [PG]
Susurrus
Deirdre Ruane
Susurrus is a different kind of play, brought to us by the brilliantly inventive Oxford Playhouse Plays Out series which also gave us Etiquette, a play for an audience of two at a table in G&D's ...
15 years ago
Susurrus
2 Many DJs + Riton
Deirdre Ruane
2ManyDJs are the kings of the mashup. Belgian brothers David and Stephen Dewaele say they grew up in a house filled with dusty old records from all genres. They're also in indie band Soulwax, but ...
15 years ago
2 Many DJs + Riton
Squirrels by David Mamet
Deirdre Ruane
Squirrels, now showing at the Burton Taylor, is a one-act, three-handed play by David Mamet. It's about writers at work, the philosophical knots intellectuals can tie themselves in, and the nature of ...
15 years ago
Squirrels by David Mamet
The Free Beer Show - 2007 Season
Deirdre Ruane
Josie Long, Mon 3rd December 2007The Free Beer Show is an Edinburgh Fringe institution which has settled in Oxford, showcasing a very impressive selection of comedians on Monday nights at the ...
16 years ago
The Free Beer Show - 2007 Season
Terry Pratchett: Making Money
Deirdre Ruane
It's hard to make economics funny. They don't call it the dismal science for nothing. Terry Pratchett just about managed it with his book Making Money. The Studio Theatre Club, with Stephen Briggs' ...
16 years ago
Terry Pratchett: Making Money
The Oxford Passion Play
Deirdre Ruane
I was raised Irish Catholic on a diet of more film and stage versions of the life of Jesus than you could shake a bishop's crozier at. Mostly they tried for spiritual glories and just ended up with ...
17 years ago
The Oxford Passion Play
Arcadia
Deirdre Ruane
It's hard to know where to begin with Arcadia, Tom Stoppard's time-shifting play about science, art, maths, chaos and love set in an English country house and staged in Christ Church Cathedral ...
17 years ago
Arcadia
Canterbury Tales
Deirdre Ruane
Getting to the performance space for Canterbury Tales is a pilgrimage in itself. It's a quarter-hour walk through the grounds of Magdalen College, following helpful signs reading "To Canterbury" and ...
17 years ago
Canterbury Tales
Richard III
Deirdre Ruane
"Magnetic, repulsive, attractive, intriguing, vicious," the programme calls Richard III, the subject of the current OFS show. It's a tall order, but Brian McMahon's Richard manages to be all those ...
17 years ago
Richard III
Matthew Barley
Deirdre Ruane
The things Matthew Barley does to a cello are possibly wrong (at least if you're the sort of classical music lover who likes it stiff, prim and unmixed with other kinds of music) but they feel so ...
17 years ago
Matthew Barley
Carousel
Deirdre Ruane
"A musical? At the Old Fire Station?" was my companion's reaction when I asked him along to last night's show. "How would it fit?" But yes, they've managed to cram an orchestra, including snare drums ...
17 years ago
Carousel
A Night at the Grand-Guignol
Deirdre Ruane
A Night At The Grand Guignol, "an evening of ghoulish and forbidden delights" based on a form of theatre popular until the mid-1900s, is made up of four short plays translated by Merton students Tom ...
18 years ago
A Night at the Grand-Guignol
Popcorn
Deirdre Ruane
"I stand before you on legs of fire!" proclaims Ashley Harvey from the spotlit balcony of the Old Fire Station, as director Bruce Delamitri, accepting his Oscar for the Natural Born Killers-style ...
18 years ago
Popcorn
Robin Hood
Deirdre Ruane
Watching Creation Theatre's summer lineup of shows go by on the sides of buses for the past couple of months, I've wondered how Robin Hood's writer Darren Ormandy felt, with his brand-new play ...
18 years ago
Robin Hood
Universus Symphania
Deirdre Ruane
Universus Symphania
Pegasus Theatre
June 17th 2006
This show was the result of months of work by several local community dance groups for both children and adults. Making Traxx Dance Company, ...
18 years ago
Universus Symphania
Henry V
Deirdre Ruane
"Can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France?" demands the Chorus (Tommy Seddon*) in this play's opening lines. Within a half-circle of chairs on the lawns of Worcester College, can Buskins ...
18 years ago
Henry V
X-Men 3: The Last Stand [12A]
Deirdre Ruane
Can I shoot the scriptwriters? Please?
X-Men: The Last Stand finds the mutant world in turmoil over a "cure" which has been developed to turn mutants into ordinary human beings. I'm sure there was ...
18 years ago
X-Men 3: The Last Stand [12A]
