Reviews by Andrew Bell
Half Baked
Andrew Bell
Lockdown loosening has The North Wall hosting on stage this week an all-female cast in Half Baked, kneaded and glazed with jack-in-the-box speed by 00 Productions.
I'd half-forgotten what a stage ...
3 months ago
Half Baked
Blink by Phil Porter
Andrew Bell
Frangipane Productions, in what one hopes is the last throes of lockdown 2, has fastened on a deceptively simple love story by British playwright Phil Porter. The tale of two neighbours who become ...
3 months ago
Blink by Phil Porter
The Black Horse in Thame - Festive Giveaway Competition!
Andrew Bell
It's my unbirthday dinner. Humpty Dumpty and I toy with our scrambled
turkey eggs astride the Black Horse car park wall. No social distancing worries,
no struggling to squeeze Humpty through the ...
9 months ago
The Black Horse in Thame - Festive Giveaway Competition!
Wavelengths - an online radio play
Andrew Bell
Half Rhyme Productions point out in the coda to their 35-min docu-drama Wavelengths that the material is based on the true story of 'someone who did call into a radio show when on the brink of taking ...
11 months ago
Wavelengths - an online radio play
Virtual Coffee Concerts
Andrew Bell
Coffee Concert supremo, Chris Windass, is putting on a series of virtual concerts in the time-hallowed Holywell Music Room on Holywell St. The latest went live on Sunday and featured cellist Alice ...
12 months ago
Virtual Coffee Concerts
'OSJ Unlocked' An Early Evening Concert on Our YouTube Channel
Andrew Bell
Robert and Caroline Jackson, for charity and in association with Oxfordshire music groups, have for the last 15 years hosted three concerts a year at their New House home in Southmoor, South-West of ...
a year ago
'OSJ Unlocked' An Early Evening Concert on Our YouTube Channel
The Last Five Years - Online Musical!
Andrew Bell
The Last Five Years explores the relationship between soon-to-be-published young author Jamie and hopeful actress Cathy, employing an unusual front-to-back/back-to-front structure structure whereby ...
a year ago
The Last Five Years - Online Musical!
Shakespeare's Richard II - A Virtual Show
Andrew Bell
In assessing Not the Way Forward Productions' virtual Richard II in these straitened times, there's a case for just being both grateful and beguiled that it's being done at all. But after all, they ...
a year ago
Shakespeare's Richard II - A Virtual Show
Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra: Sibelius
Andrew Bell
Oxford Philharmonic had had a sell-out concert
on their hands until the wrecking ball known as COVID-19 discouraged a fair few
concertgoers from showing up on the night. In the circumstances, I ...
a year ago
Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra: Sibelius
Frost/Nixon
Andrew Bell
I remember Watergate as if it were yesterday; reading the reporting of Simon Winchester and Jonathan Steele in The Guardian through 1973-74 as every single day a new circumstance would dribble out, ...
a year ago
Frost/Nixon
RENT
Andrew Bell
RENT, like Puccini's opera La Bohème, is loosely based on Scenes de la Vie Bohème by Henry Murger, short stories describing the impoverished and peripatetic life of Parisian fringe artists. Murger ...
a year ago
RENT
Abingdon & District Musical Society Orchestral Concert
Andrew Bell
St Helen's Church houses dozens and dozens of interior monuments and tablets, more than I think I've ever come across in an English parish church. The most elaborate of them is a 1782 memorial ...
a year ago
Abingdon & District Musical Society Orchestral Concert
Doctor Faustus
Andrew Bell
Doctor Faustus is in essence a drama about that familiar figure in literature, an over-reacher; a man consumed by overweening ambition to break free of the enduring moral laws of the universe. This ...
a year ago
Doctor Faustus
Old Fashioned
Andrew Bell
'Can money really buy you happiness?' is the question posed by writer/director Felix Westcott in this début outing by Half Rhyme Productions. We're at a hotel bar furnished with a couple of ...
a year ago
Old Fashioned
Russian State Ballet of Siberia
Andrew Bell
The Sleeping Beauty, Tuesday 25th February 2020
In Oxford this week is the Krasnoyarsk Ballet Company, known on tour in Britain as the Russian State Ballet of Siberia. Krasnoyarsk is plumb north of ...
a year ago
Russian State Ballet of Siberia
Oxford University Orchestra - Mahler Symphony No 9
Andrew Bell
With Storm Dennis raging outside the Sheldonian, what would be more appropriate inside than a spot of Mahler to accompany the tempest? And indeed the composer's instruction for the second movement: ...
a year ago
Oxford University Orchestra - Mahler Symphony No 9
Nell Gwynn
Andrew Bell
Jennifer Swale's Nell Gwynn is a combination of rags-to-riches-to uncertainty adventure, costume drama, biographical entertainment or pop history, retro-restoration comedy, and yet part social ...
a year ago
Nell Gwynn
Aylesbury Symphony Orchestra
Andrew Bell
The scene of the concert was St Mary's Church, in theory a Perpendicular Gothic creation from the 14th Century, but heavily re-modelled in the 1850s by Sir G.G. Scott (very active in Oxford, notably ...
a year ago
Aylesbury Symphony Orchestra
Moscow City Ballet: The Sleeping Beauty
Andrew Bell
The Brexit parallel was inescapable: a princess, warned off from the dangers of sharp objects, nevertheless contrives to prick her finger with a spindle and falls down in a 100 year swoon. Her ...
a year ago
Moscow City Ballet: The Sleeping Beauty
Peter Bassano conducts Gabrieli, Mozart and Beethoven
Andrew Bell
It’s a fair way from a chilly, damp winter evening on Oxford's High Street to perhaps a spring morning at St Mark's Basilica, Venice. But in both churches, music was and is fundamental, even ...
2 years ago
Peter Bassano conducts Gabrieli, Mozart and Beethoven
Viennese New Year Concert
Andrew Bell
We opened the 47th Viennese New Year concert from City of Oxford Orchestra with Mozart's overture to The Marriage of Figaro, not wholly felicitously since this was a rather thumping rendering, the ...
2 years ago
Viennese New Year Concert
Handel Messiah
Andrew Bell
There's a sign on the wall outside the main door of Dorchester Abbey reading: 'Worship has been offered on this site to God for over 1300 years'. So entrenched is Handel's Messiah in the cultural ...
2 years ago
Handel Messiah
Motown the Musical
Andrew Bell
Tamla Motown founder and dynamo Berry Gordy turned 90 just three weeks ago, and his story is playing as the New Theatre's Christmas show, a restoring alternative to the tide of glass slippers and ...
2 years ago
Motown the Musical
Macbeth
Andrew Bell
Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's shortest plays (40%
shorter than
Hamlet, the longest). Yet Collarbone Productions' time and
space machine has, via director Tom Runciman, slashed it down to just ...
2 years ago
Macbeth
Chicago
Andrew Bell
Four giant Chicago Daily Tribune front pages greeted us, an inspired amalgam by set designer Cosette Pin of genuine 1919 news, with inserted headlines pertinent to our story of jazz-glitz and murder. ...
2 years ago
Chicago
The Oxford Beatles at the Sheldonian-Abbey Road is 50!
Andrew Bell
50 years on from Abbey Road, on Saturday morning the Abbey Road, North London webcam revealed the immemorial gaggle of Beatle fans treading and re-treading the hallowed crossing, all stiff-legged in ...
2 years ago
The Oxford Beatles at the Sheldonian-Abbey Road is 50!
The Crucible
Andrew Bell
The arrival of Rose on a Rail's production of The Crucible feels perfectly timed, in its material's clear link to politicians trafficking in fear of outsiders and the encouraging of divisive ...
2 years ago
The Crucible
Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra: The Enlightened Trumpet
Andrew Bell
Thursday's Haydn and Mozart from the Oxford Philharmonic was notable not only for the presence of trumpeter Paul Merkelo, but for the unusual featuring of a work from Mozart père. The two movements ...
2 years ago
Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra: The Enlightened Trumpet
Hamlet
Andrew Bell
Any production of Hamlet is burdened with having to grapple with Shakespeare's magisterial writing (the sheer number of quotations now embedded in the English language is extraordinary), the weight ...
2 years ago
Hamlet
Things I Know To Be True
Andrew Bell
Six members of one Australian family have reached a turning-point in their life, with future progress set to be mired in uncertainty. After the opening long monologue from younger daughter Rosie ...
2 years ago
Things I Know To Be True
Three Sisters
Andrew Bell
Three Sisters opens as preparations limp along for the youngest sister Irina's 22nd birthday party at an estate outside a town that's seemingly – to the siblings – a million miles from the bright ...
2 years ago
Three Sisters
It’s True, It’s True, It’s True
Andrew Bell
Artemesia Gentileschi, the daughter of an artist father and possessing more talent than him, works in his studio in 1612 Rome. When his colleague Agostino Tassi rapes her, father and daughter take ...
2 years ago
It’s True, It’s True, It’s True
Unplanned-ersnatch: a choose your own improv-enture
Andrew Bell
Mad Scientist Betty Bubbleworth, Late Night Nigel and TJ Thornbury, boasting a Ph.D. in Molluscs (or was it Surfboard Technology?), were among the eccentrics strutting their stuff at the Michael ...
2 years ago
Unplanned-ersnatch: a choose your own improv-enture
Yes Prime Minister
Andrew Bell
I'm a Yes, Minister/Yes, Prime Minister virgin; an anomalous status, of course, akin to going along to see Fake That or The Rolling Clones while wholly ignorant of the real thing.
The pitch for ...
2 years ago
Yes Prime Minister
Oxford Coffee Concerts 2019
Andrew Bell
Leonore Piano Trio, 22nd Sep 2019
Early Autumn, post-drought rain just spattering the Holywell St pavements as we flooded into the Music Room. Beethoven in the drizzle? A slightly gloomy thought. ...
2 years ago
Oxford Coffee Concerts 2019
Oxford Coffee Concerts 2019
Andrew Bell
Carducci Piano Trio, 25th August 2019 Haydn wrote his Piano Trio no 39 in G major ('Gypsy Rondo') during his second foray to Britain in 1795; four years after he had appeared at The Sheldonian ...
2 years ago
Oxford Coffee Concerts 2019
A Chorus Line
Andrew Bell
A Chorus Line is 120 minutes of musical theatre marrow-bone. It examines its own genre by shining a glaring light on both the yearned-for glitz of performing on the big stage and on the sweat and ...
2 years ago
A Chorus Line
Contractions
Andrew Bell
At the heart of Mike Bartlett's Contractions lies a fiercely jaundiced view of the contemporary workplace. Office salesperson Emma (Nicki Rochford) finds herself gradually entwined in a net, its ...
2 years ago
Contractions
The Chrysalids
Andrew Bell
David
Harrower's National Theatre adaptation of John Wyndham's
The Chrysalids
has been around for 20 years, and the novel itself for nigh-on 65 years now. A group of children is forced to ...
2 years ago
The Chrysalids
The Three Musketeers
Andrew Bell
The story follows the basic outline of the classic picaresque adventure: young D'Artagnan heads to Paris in the hope of recruitment into the famed company of Musketeers, the King's bodyguard. These ...
2 years ago
The Three Musketeers
Mozart Requiem - Oxford Pro Musica Singers
Andrew Bell
This was one of those summer evenings at The Sheldonian where the setting sun angles its rays through the occluded glass of the elongated windows, bathing parts of the interior in a light of ...
2 years ago
Mozart Requiem - Oxford Pro Musica Singers
Steven Osborne: Stravinski, Shostakovich, Ravel, Bizet
Andrew Bell
I was struck by the coincidence, or perhaps planned homage, that Friday night's Oxford Philharmonic concert, a Russian and French programme, reproduced precisely one I'd heard the Scottish Chamber ...
2 years ago
Steven Osborne: Stravinski, Shostakovich, Ravel, Bizet
Three Sisters
Andrew Bell
Three grown-up sisters live near a provincial Russian town, their parents dead. Olga is a schoolteacher, Masha is unhappily married, while the youngest, Irina, is desperate to work and be useful. All ...
2 years ago
Three Sisters
A View from the Bridge
Andrew Bell
Eddie Carbone (Caleb Barron), a docker from 1950s Brooklyn, has worked long and manfully to provide for his wife Beatrice (Martha Berkmann) and his comely niece, Catherine (Philomena Wills), now 17. ...
2 years ago
A View from the Bridge
Oxford Chamber Orchestra
Andrew Bell
The Bartered Bride, the most celebrated of Smetana's eight operas, involves a young man bartering away his love interest for the princely-ish sum of 700 florins and comprises an unfeasible dollop of ...
2 years ago
Oxford Chamber Orchestra
Four Men in their Respective Cells
Andrew Bell
Doubt greeted us as we took our seats. Was this a squat, or a cramped student house? An immigration holding facility, maybe? A pinboard bears a medley of photos, subject unknown; a figure stands ...
2 years ago
Four Men in their Respective Cells
Anglo-German Friendship Concerts of the Youth Chamber Orchestra Hamburg
Andrew Bell
Hamburg Chamber Orchestra, Hamburg's premier youth band, was in town for music-making at Wolfson College and then on Sunday at the Holywell Music Room, where I heard them. Anglo-German Friendship was ...
2 years ago
Anglo-German Friendship Concerts of the Youth Chamber Orchestra Hamburg
Wheatley Singers: From Agnus Dei to Zadok
Andrew Bell
The surrounds of St Mary's Church, Wheatley, mostly an extensive graveyard bright with aquilegia, oxalis and perennial wallflowers, were looking a picture on this clear Saturday evening in mid-May. ...
2 years ago
Wheatley Singers: From Agnus Dei to Zadok
Love/Sick
Andrew Bell
Trouble-laden love at first sight, crushing rejection, cold feet over a marriage proposal, the tedium of being stuck in a rut, twin-fold two-timing in the lunch hour, the biological clock count-down: ...
2 years ago
Love/Sick
Bull
Andrew Bell
We're in the Plaza de Toros in Córdoba or Mexico City as the trumpets sound and the castanets click. The company's downsizing: three into two won't go, and our trio of sales people await with ...
2 years ago
Bull
Pirandello’s Henry IV
Andrew Bell
The plot,
such as it is, of Tom Stoppard's version of Pirandello's 1921 Henry IV (
running time c. 85 mins without interval) centres around the title character –
or rather a nameless, rich ...
2 years ago
Pirandello’s Henry IV
The Oxford Beatles at the Sheldonian
Andrew Bell
The Beatles
at the Sheldonian Theatre? Psychedelic-acid music at Christopher Wren's first
work of architecture? Next thing they'll be putting on Haydn at the Moth Club,
Hackney or Beethoven at the ...
3 years ago
The Oxford Beatles at the Sheldonian
I'm an Improviser: Get Me Out Here!
Andrew Bell
The House of Improv rose in the wintry sky again this week on Jowett Walk – this was my third taste of them – and the mixture was something of the same: seven brave folk of the comedy guild, with ...
3 years ago
I'm an Improviser: Get Me Out Here!
Gods Are Fallen and All Safety Gone
Andrew Bell
Gods Are Fallen and All Safety Gone (the title comes from John Steinbeck's East of Eden) reminded me of how one can take up a photo album of one's own past days and, starting at page one, continue by ...
3 years ago
Gods Are Fallen and All Safety Gone
Viennese New Year Concert
Andrew Bell
There has been a continuous tradition of concerts
on New Year's Day in Vienna
from 1838, becoming predominantly Strauss family affairs in 1939 and assuming a
standard character of the best-known ...
3 years ago
Viennese New Year Concert
Handel's Messiah
Andrew Bell
In late Victorian times The Messiah was regularly performed at the Crystal Palace by a chorus of 3,000 and an orchestra of several hundred, leading GB Shaw to remark years later: 'Only a law making ...
3 years ago
Handel's Messiah
Snowflake
Andrew Bell
As an addendum to Peter Tickler's very good review, I wasn't quite so keen on Snowflake as was he. The Old Fire Station blurb describes it as 'a major new premiere'. Well no, not really. I'd call it ...
3 years ago
Snowflake
The Lady's Mad
Andrew Bell
The choice
of Wallingford's Corn Exchange Theatre by Thistledown Theatre for its
production of Rebekah King's new Civil War drama The Lady's Mad was full
of local associations given that the King ...
3 years ago
The Lady's Mad
Handel: Messiah
Andrew Bell
Neither
Bach's Passions nor Haydn's Creation has ever rivalled The Messiah
in popularity. Of all Handel's oratorios, The Messiah gives the most
scope for choir rather than soloists, and I think ...
3 years ago
Handel: Messiah
One Night of Queen
Andrew Bell
New Theatre, Sunday 2nd December 2018
Like Julius Caesar and his entourage, Gary Mullen and The Works came to the New Theatre on a one-night stand, saw a huge crowd awaiting them and conquered ...
3 years ago
One Night of Queen
The Winter's Tale
Andrew Bell
The jealous King Leontes falsely accuses his wife Hermione of infidelity with King Polixenes, his best friend, and she dies. Leontes condemns to death by exposure his newborn daughter Perdita, who is ...
3 years ago
The Winter's Tale
The Admirable Crichton
Andrew Bell
Alan Milburn's last annual report for the Social Mobility Commission found the dice loaded against the child born into a disadvantaged family. It is the language used in the home, diet, the capacity ...
3 years ago
The Admirable Crichton
Anna Karenina
Andrew Bell
Performed in Covent Garden, London, on Sat 24th November 2018 St Paul's is the 'Actor's Church', being around the
corner from Shaftesbury Avenue's
Theatreland and associated with the theatre almost ...
3 years ago
Anna Karenina
BRINK
Andrew Bell
Alastair
Curtis' Brink wants to offer an insight into the lives of six people in London who live in their
own space but also interact with others; but in emotional terms predominantly
in the ...
3 years ago
BRINK
Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Four
Andrew Bell
There are
difficulties in adapting for the stage three of the four Sherlock Holmes
stories, including this The Sign of Four, since as novels they have a
quite a primitive structure. Each runs a ...
3 years ago
Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Four
Abingdon & District Musical Society Choral & Orchestral Concert
Andrew Bell
We started with Brahms in the form of his Symphony No. 1, composed over a period of 14 years (1862 to 1876). Both outer movements of the work have slow intros, and into this one we launched, the ...
3 years ago
Abingdon & District Musical Society Choral & Orchestral Concert
OUP Orchestra: Autumn Concert 2018
Andrew Bell
St Barnabas was the setting (opulent for a city parish church) for the OUP Orchestra's autumn concert. Smetana's got us going, the best-known of the six little works that make up Smetana's ...
3 years ago
OUP Orchestra: Autumn Concert 2018
Mojo
Andrew Bell
From the first moments of Jez
Butterworth's
Mojo we knew the amphetamines were Speed, given the
red-hot force with which a door flew open and the drum-pounding irruption of
singer Silver Johnny ...
3 years ago
Mojo
MCS Drama Presents Reflections
Andrew Bell
Before the start of Reflections, on sale
in the Dining Hall of Magdalen College School were copies of Mr Brownrigg's
Boys, an account by David Bebbington, a teacher at the School, of its ...
3 years ago
MCS Drama Presents Reflections
Journey's End
Andrew Bell
Cosmic Arts' set occupied the North end of St Mary Magdalen Church, an awkward space here transformed into a Western Front dugout near St. Quentin in 1918. This makeshift, underground officers' ...
3 years ago
Journey's End
The Cement Garden
Andrew Bell
The synopsis of The Cement Garden put
me in mind of two predecessors: Richard Hughes' A High Wind in Jamaica from 1929 – children are
captured by modern pirates who drift aimlessly in the ...
3 years ago
The Cement Garden
Oxford University Orchestra Michaelmas Term Concert
Andrew Bell
The Michaelmas concert from Oxford University Orchestra betokened a heartening snapshot of the state of student music in Oxford. Roughly 95% of the players are undergraduates, it looked not far off a ...
3 years ago
Oxford University Orchestra Michaelmas Term Concert
Election
Andrew Bell
As we took our seats we found the cast of five already on stage, seated on the floor. Two of them had head bowed while the other three looked into our space but by impressive self-control contrived ...
3 years ago
Election
Top Girls
Andrew Bell
Caryl Churchill's Top Girls with its characters all women was in 1982 pretty daring in form – overlapping dialogue, especially in the opening dinner-party scene, and with its back-to-front ...
3 years ago
Top Girls
Vadim Repin
Andrew Bell
Oxford Philharmonic's Thursday concert programme was predominantly Russian, from the twin giants of its 20th century music, and with a Saint-Saëns bon-bon thrown in as light relief in the middle. ...
3 years ago
Vadim Repin
Nice Guy
Andrew Bell
Nice Guy is not the first mention or examination of domestic violence in music, but it is an intriguingly bold change of direction for the partnership of scriptwriter and producer Sam Norman and ...
3 years ago
Nice Guy
House of Improv Presents: Family Secrets
Andrew Bell
In 2009 financier Bernie Madoff was sentenced in New York to 150 years in gaol for having nicked a small matter of $46.6 billion. It was reassuring to find Bernie's indomitable spirit living on in ...
3 years ago
House of Improv Presents: Family Secrets
The Threepenny Opera
Andrew Bell
Simon Stephens' version of Brecht/Weill's The Threepenny Opera suggests that lust, shiny self-confidence and piles of cash (the going rate in Mack the Knife's London for a man's head to be prised ...
3 years ago
The Threepenny Opera
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
Andrew Bell
Robert Tressell's novel of 1914 possesses bitterness and real anger at the misery of his house painters' lives and the grinding inequality of the sharing out of the economic cake. The tragedy and ...
3 years ago
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
Didcot Concert Orchestra
Andrew Bell
This was the second concert programme from the Didcot Concert Orchestra, the brainchild of Jackie and Geoff Bushell, two of the seven pillars of wisdom of Oxford amateur music (who are the other ...
3 years ago
Didcot Concert Orchestra
Narek Hakhnazaryan
Andrew Bell
While Oxford cowered away from a miserable October day and evening, Prague has been enjoying an Indian Summer this week, and a little of that Czech sunshine somehow managed to filter itself our way ...
3 years ago
Narek Hakhnazaryan
An Enemy Of The People
Andrew Bell
As we waited for the start, the acid yellow-and-steel chairs forming the opening dining room set were framed by figures lurking in the rear penumbra, and I was unsure of the nature of this ...
3 years ago
An Enemy Of The People
Castalian Quartet and Daniel Lebhardt (piano)
Andrew Bell
By now, piano aficionados know that Daniel Lebhardt's arrival to play in Oxford is the signal for pubs to empty, sports fields to clear, shop shutters to come down and college librarians to be ...
3 years ago
Castalian Quartet and Daniel Lebhardt (piano)
Viv McLean, Piano With Orchestra of St John's
Andrew Bell
Sunday night's SJE Arts concert at St John the Evangelist Church was something of a benefit night for the 65th birthday of Michèle Smith, the SJE Arts Artistic Director, with her dining guests ...
3 years ago
Viv McLean, Piano With Orchestra of St John's
King Charles III
Andrew Bell
Mike Bartlett's King Charles III at the Wesley Memorial Church on Monday put me in mind of a couple of the plays of Jean Anouilh, now a half-forgotten dramatist but in his heyday (1940s to 1960s) a ...
3 years ago
King Charles III
Swing Heil!
Andrew Bell
The high explosive and incendiary bombs from British Lancasters are raining down from the night skies onto 1943 Hamburg while the inhabitants cower in their shelters and the security police scour the ...
3 years ago
Swing Heil!
Dinner by Moira Buffini
Andrew Bell
Oxford University Press' MaDSoc has staged Moira Buffini's 2002 play Dinner in the huge Walton Street quad, its spacious lawns surrounded by plain, almost dour George IV-period ranges. The grassy ...
3 years ago
Dinner by Moira Buffini
Viv McLean (piano)
Andrew Bell
On a
damp, dull Sunday morning, Holywell St was illuminated by an alternative source
to that of the sun; a Chopin recital by Oxfordshire's Viv McLean, a cornucopia
containing a Prelude, three ...
3 years ago
Viv McLean (piano)
Adderbury Ensemble With Viv McLean
Andrew Bell
Franz Schubert was on his holidays in the Austrian town of Steyr, mid-way between Salzburg and Vienna, when he composed his Piano Quintet in A ('The Trout') in July 1819. Just 199 years later, many ...
3 years ago
Adderbury Ensemble With Viv McLean
Kiss Me Kate
Andrew Bell
Cole
Porter's
Kiss Me Kate is one of the two
foremost musical adaptations of Shakespeare -
West Side Story is the other – and in a sense this is the more
tricky of the two for a youth ...
3 years ago
Kiss Me Kate
Pretty Polly's Dead
Andrew Bell
Pretty Polly is a ballad antedating the 18th
century that comes in a myriad of versions but in essence tells of Polly, a
young pregnant woman, lured into the forest (or onto the beach) by a ...
3 years ago
Pretty Polly's Dead
Treasure Island
Andrew Bell
Last year's Love's Labour's Lost in Trinity College's gardens was staged on the
grassy sward just inside the Parks Road wrought iron gates from 1713 whereas
this
Treasure Island on a warm ...
3 years ago
Treasure Island
Woodstock Music Society Summer Concert: Classic Vienna
Andrew Bell
Donald Trump is due to visit Blenheim Palace on 12th July for a lavish black tie dinner hosted by Theresa May, no doubt keen to flee
London and its protesters. The village was surprisingly tranquil, ...
3 years ago
Woodstock Music Society Summer Concert: Classic Vienna
Flare Path
Andrew Bell
This
was a stiflingly sultry evening at the Unicorn Theatre – and heaven help the
poor actors, some of whom were buttoned up in RAF service dress – for the
production by Abingdon Drama Club of ...
3 years ago
Flare Path
St Giles Orchestra Concert
Andrew Bell
There was interesting programme from the St Giles Orchestra on Saturday where the late Romanticism of Edvard Grieg was coupled with the altogether more cerebral Jean Sibelius. The In Autumn overture ...
3 years ago
St Giles Orchestra Concert
Oxford Symphony Orchestra
Andrew Bell
There
was all-German music programmed at the Sheldonian on Saturday, with music
students from the Royal Academy of Music and Japan of the day before being
replaced by the older (and possibly ...
3 years ago
Oxford Symphony Orchestra
Royal Academy of Music Chamber Orchestra plus players from Tokyo Geidai
Andrew Bell
Friday's
international concert at the Sheldonian featured students from the Royal
Academy of Music teaming up with visiting music students from Japan's
Tokyo
Gedai, a.k.a. University of the ...
3 years ago
Royal Academy of Music Chamber Orchestra plus players from Tokyo Geidai
And Then There Were None
Andrew Bell
And Then There Were None was originally an Agatha
Christie novel written in 1939, was re-written by her in 1943 and since then has
been adapted and filmed three times, notably by French
metteur ...
3 years ago
And Then There Were None
Choir Concert
Andrew Bell
On
the first page of his
Missa Solemnis
Beethoven wrote: 'From the heart, may it go to the heart'. It's a sprawling,
challenging work that's not heard as often as its tremendous quality would ...
3 years ago
Choir Concert
How to Use a Washing Machine
Andrew Bell
On
its dinky little 15 x 10cms programme, the good folk responsible for
How to Use a Washing Machine had kindly included a link to advice on operating a
washing machine (suspecting a spoof, I ...
3 years ago
How to Use a Washing Machine
Giffords Circus: My Beautiful Circus
Andrew Bell
British circus was born in 1768, 250 years ago this year, near Waterloo Bridge in London when, on 9th January, entrepreneur Philip Astley drew out a 42-foot circle and filled it with jugglers, ...
3 years ago
Giffords Circus: My Beautiful Circus
No Man Ever
Andrew Bell
Those who believe that the prime study for men and women is man and woman him/herself, will have found material aplenty in Jonny Wiles' No Man Ever at the Old Fire Station on Tuesday evening. Jonny ...
3 years ago
No Man Ever
Oxford Studio Orchestra with Ashwin Tennant (piano)
Andrew Bell
The sun in the form of the God Helios was in the ascendancy in Summertown on Sunday afternoon, and the new south-facing vestibule of St Michael and All Angels Church, only just completed, has flooded ...
3 years ago
Oxford Studio Orchestra with Ashwin Tennant (piano)
Romeo And Juliet
Andrew Bell
This
was a key example of a student drama company thinking up and developing an
individual concept for its chosen play and then pressing it home to
the end. Director Conky Kampfner's staging of ...
3 years ago
Romeo And Juliet
Coffee Concert: Daniel Lebhardt (piano)
Andrew Bell
Daniel Lebhardt returned to Oxford at the Holywell
Music Room on Sunday morning, and those words are these days, for the piano
aficianado, a guarantee of excitement. He likes to slip in a piece of ...
3 years ago
Coffee Concert: Daniel Lebhardt (piano)
The Importance of Being Earnest
Andrew Bell
Split Second Productions have bitten off a
fair old mouthful of Victoria sponge in putting on their touring
The Importance of Being Earnest. In part
this was intended as an exercise by directors ...
3 years ago
The Importance of Being Earnest
Kafka's Der Process - The Oxford German Play
Andrew Bell
Josef
K. is suddenly arrested in his room at his lodging house on the morning of
his birthday. Two police stooges inform him of the fact: 'It's the law. How could there be any
mistake?' they ...
3 years ago
Kafka's Der Process - The Oxford German Play
NSFW
Andrew Bell
The beauty of Lucy Kirkwood's NSFW [Not Safe For Work] is that it's far from occupying a box marked: 'polemic amounting to rant'. The polemic was present, sure, but we came at it sideways rather than ...
3 years ago
NSFW
The Damned United
Andrew Bell
As a
fan of a number of sports – professional cycling, rugby, cricket, even boxing -
other than football, I've never quite understood the commanding place football
occupies in the collective ...
3 years ago
The Damned United
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Andrew Bell
The
Corn Exchange at Wallingford seems to be something of a model for what a town
amateur theatre should be. Standing on the spacious Market Square, built in
1856 of local stone in a restrained ...
3 years ago
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Nell Gwynn
Andrew Bell
At
University College, by tradition there stalks a ghost in the guise of Obadiah Walker,
a late Master of the College and a contemporary of Nell Gwynn. Probably the
evening performance of the play ...
3 years ago
Nell Gwynn
Steven Isserlis (cello)
Andrew Bell
Saturday's
Oxford Philharmonic concert at the Sheldonian on this day of sold-out public
events in Windsor and at Wembley was a notable sell-out of its own, Dvorák and
Elgar replacing Windsor's ...
3 years ago
Steven Isserlis (cello)
The Actor's Nightmare
Andrew Bell
The
late comedy offering of the evening at the BT Studio this week is The
Actor's Nightmare from Mercury Theatre Productions. It illustrates the age-old ordeal that we are told is the experiential ...
3 years ago
The Actor's Nightmare
Confusions
Andrew Bell
Alan
Ayckbourn's Confusions at the BT
Studio offers its audience variations on the vagaries and difficulties
of communication. Although it dates only from 1974, the intervening
years have seen ...
3 years ago
Confusions
Brave New World
Andrew Bell
Brave New World gets off to a strong start with The Director announcing from on high the aims and objectives of the Brave New World of Central London Conditioning Centre: the key slogan of 'No social ...
3 years ago
Brave New World
Lysistrata
Andrew Bell
Oriel College's
Classics Society has, all unknowingly but with impeccable timing, chosen to
stage its
Lysistrata in the very week that Messrs Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in met
on 38th parallel ...
3 years ago
Lysistrata
Yuri Temirkanov
Andrew Bell
Thursday's
Oxford Philharmonic concert was an all-Russian affair in three senses. The
programme of Russian music was interpreted by conductor and piano soloist from
that country, and the ...
3 years ago
Yuri Temirkanov
Death by Murder
Andrew Bell
I've heard Bill Murray say how the unscripted format is the thing that really does get him out of bed in the morning with a spring in his step and a ditty on his lips. Our six brave folk from The ...
3 years ago
Death by Murder
A More Perfect World
Andrew Bell
On
11th April 1918 the Western Front was in the throes of the series of
German Spring offensives designed to smash through the Allied line, reach the
coast and win the war. The very next day ...
3 years ago
A More Perfect World
The Life of Galileo
Andrew Bell
Bertolt
Brecht's
The Life of Galileo explores
the life of the founder of modern science and the conflict between reason and
faith. The audience is led through the key events and decisions of ...
3 years ago
The Life of Galileo
OUP Orchestra Spring Concert
Andrew Bell
St
Barnabas Church, with its Italianesque tower that presides from a great height
over Jericho, is an excellent concert venue; it's spacious, cosy on a cold
evening, with good acoustics and clear ...
3 years ago
OUP Orchestra Spring Concert
Strangers on a Train
Andrew Bell
Strangers on a Train (1950) was Pamela Highsmith's first novel, and it was picked up immediately by Alfred Hitchcock. Aylesbury's Waterside Theatre is the penultimate stop for this theatrical ...
3 years ago
Strangers on a Train
Piano Recital
Andrew Bell
Chiao-Ying Chang, together with her two colleagues who make up the Fournier Trio, has a residency at Wolfson College, meaning that they give there two or three recitals each year. On this occasion, ...
3 years ago
Piano Recital
Stephen Hough, SJE Arts International Piano Series 2018
Andrew Bell
I wonder that Stephen Hough has time to practise and play in public the piano. In music, he's also a conductor and a composer (including of a cello concerto and chamber music). He writes poetry, his ...
3 years ago
Stephen Hough, SJE Arts International Piano Series 2018
The Mikado
Andrew Bell
It was a pity for the OU Gilbert & Sullivan
Society that owing to venue non-availability, they could manage just two
performances of
The Mikado - any show
surely deserves more exposure than ...
3 years ago
The Mikado
The Flick
Andrew Bell
As you walk into The Michael Pilch Studio this week for Annie Baker's 2013 American play The Flick, there's a scrawled notice announcing the play contains racism, sex references etc. But it's the ...
3 years ago
The Flick
No Exit
Andrew Bell
María Ordovás-Montañes in her excellent review has already referred to the setting of New Road Baptist Church having doubtless been chosen for symbolic value: the huge wall cross and the fact of ...
3 years ago
No Exit
Oxfordshire Concerto Competition Final
Andrew Bell
Three of the last four winners of the Oxfordshire Concerto Competition have been violinists, and we had two of them in Saturday's line-up in the long, white-stuccoed gallery space of Oxford Town ...
3 years ago
Oxfordshire Concerto Competition Final
The Crocodile
Andrew Bell
In his novels Fyodor Dostoyevsky was attracted by the grotesque – in Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, for instance - and this element is the glue that binds together the substance ...
3 years ago
The Crocodile
Oxford University Philharmonia
Andrew Bell
Had the wraith of Sergei Rachmaninov from his estate SE of Moscow or forebears of Gustav Host from Latvia descended upon Broad St on Wednesday to oversee the Lent Term concert from the Oxford ...
3 years ago
Oxford University Philharmonia
The History Boys
Andrew Bell
The Claus Moser Theatre has been employed in recent years for lecture and other purposes and I'd forgotten what a stark, utilitarian aspect it presents for drama with its magnolia-and-black colour ...
3 years ago
The History Boys
The Genius of Mozart
Andrew Bell
I had eagerly anticipated this Genius of Mozart concert since the day the Oxford Philharmonic's 2018 programme was announced last year. Piano Concerto No. 10 for Two Pianos is heard far less ...
3 years ago
The Genius of Mozart
The Cherry Orchard
Andrew Bell
Anton
Chekhov's
The Cherry Orchard from
1903, his last play, shows us a family on the edge of ruin on the eve of the
Russian Revolution. Landowner Ranevskaya has overspent her income while on ...
3 years ago
The Cherry Orchard
Lars Vogt
Andrew Bell
The February weather gods seem not to have heard that Schumann's 'Spring' Symphony was on the Oxford Philharmonic's programme, given the bitter, driving rain that swept Oxford all day. This was the ...
3 years ago
Lars Vogt
This Much I Know
Andrew Bell
This Much I Know from postgraduate student Hannah Greenstreet has as its subject-matter the perils of raising children in a relentlessly competitive environment. On stage we come to learn of an ...
3 years ago
This Much I Know
The 39 Steps
Andrew Bell
For
its The 39 Steps at the O'Reilly
Theatre, Inspired Productions has got away from John Buchan's original 1915
novel in favour of the Hitchcockian film treatment of 1935, and stretched the ...
4 years ago
The 39 Steps
The Psychic Project - A Mind-reading Show Based on a True Story
Andrew Bell
In 1975, the Cold War took an unusual turn when the CIA learned that
the USSR was experimenting with mind-control research and supposedly achieving
some remarkable results. In best "never knowingly ...
4 years ago
The Psychic Project - A Mind-reading Show Based on a True Story
Hush-a-Bye
Andrew Bell
Taken down by Andrew Bell to Isabella's dictation I took my grandfather on Saturday to Hush-a-Bye in the BT Studio tree-tops. The
Oily Cart folk had thoughtfully prepared little tables, painted with ...
4 years ago
Hush-a-Bye
The Nutcracker
Andrew Bell
The 1892
premiere of
The Nutcracker, as per
time-honoured ballet and symphonic tradition, was a tepid success at best, with
complaints that among other things the prima ballerina hardly ...
4 years ago
The Nutcracker
The Snow Maiden
Andrew Bell
The origins of the Russian folk tale The Snow
Maiden
are obscure and perhaps go back to a time out of mind, and
when Tchaikovsky was asked by his friend Alexandr Ostrovsky, a pre-Chekovian ...
4 years ago
The Snow Maiden
Candlelit Christmas Concert
Andrew Bell
Parks Road was eerily quiet as I walked down it on Saturday evening towards Wadham College. Neither shepherd nor wise man - nor even wise woman - in sight, and even the benches outside the King's ...
4 years ago
Candlelit Christmas Concert
Daniel Lebhardt
Andrew Bell
Daniel Lebhardt came to play in Holywell St on Sunday morning; an event of significance for those who knew his playing, and of dramatic epiphany to those who did not. He strode with long strides onto ...
4 years ago
Daniel Lebhardt
Handel’s Messiah with the Cathedral Singers of Christ Church & Oxybaroxy
Andrew Bell
The
evening began inauspiciously in that while the cathedral's website and booking
sites had been urging audience members to arrive early, the doors remained resolutely
shut until just after ...
4 years ago
Handel’s Messiah with the Cathedral Singers of Christ Church & Oxybaroxy
Murder Mystery Evening – Murder at the Playhouse
Andrew Bell
By
the entrance gates to Braziers Park there's a signpost pointing to the left to
Quiet Lane, and once you're in the house I spotted a note scrawled on a
blackboard saying "cows now in garden ...
4 years ago
Murder Mystery Evening – Murder at the Playhouse
Fournier Trio: Recital
Andrew Bell
It
was happy eighth birthday for the Fournier Trio on Sunday. Eight years to the
day since their foundation, and the sixth year of their Wolfson College association
which rolls on for at least ...
4 years ago
Fournier Trio: Recital
Messiah
Andrew Bell
We
read that Georg Friedrich Handel himself, contracted to produce an Easter
oratorio in Dublin, conducted on 13th April 1742 from the harpsichord
his small choir of maybe 15 men and 15 boys for ...
4 years ago
Messiah
Volpone
Andrew Bell
Ben Jonson
was a slightly younger contemporary of Shakespeare's and wrote his Volpone in c. 1605, as Shakespeare was
writing King Lear. Volpone, childless
and rich by ill-gotten gains, and his ...
4 years ago
Volpone
The Winter's Tale
Andrew Bell
The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's final plays and something of a genre-defying one; tragi-comedy, perhaps. Shakespeare hurls aside unity of time, place and action, and the earlier warning of ...
4 years ago
The Winter's Tale
The Sgt Pepper Show
Andrew Bell
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
Band
was
the Beatles' 8
th studio album. In May 1967 I was about to take my
'O' Levels when the news hit the school like a bull on the rampage: The Beatles' ...
4 years ago
The Sgt Pepper Show
Oxford Chamber Orchestra
Andrew Bell
I had
assumed that Oxford Chamber Orchestra's choice of Brahms' Tragic Overture was to tie in with Remembrance Day, but conductor
John Warner told me this was not so. The overture – a ...
4 years ago
Oxford Chamber Orchestra
We Are the Lions, Mr. Manager!
Andrew Bell
Grunwick
Film Processing Laboratory in NW London was riven by a strike by 150 of its
workforce in August 1976. The strikers, mainly Indian women and men, walked out
in protest at exploitative and ...
4 years ago
We Are the Lions, Mr. Manager!
Candide
Andrew Bell
The
100th anniversary of musical polymath Leonard Bernstein arrives next
August, and Barricade Productions have honoured the great man with a week's run
of his Candide. His constant
tinkering ...
4 years ago
Candide
Kindertransport
Andrew Bell
Madeleine Herbert's already given a perceptive
review of Kindertransport which I'd
endorse. The phenomenon of the kindertransport is one of which succeeding
generations should be aware. 10,000 ...
4 years ago
Kindertransport
Khatia Buniatishvili (Piano)
Andrew Bell
On Wednesday Khatia Buniatishvili, with her sister and manager Gvantsa, blew in to Britain on the Eurostar from her home in Paris, rehearsed with the Oxford Philharmonic on Thursday afternoon and was ...
4 years ago
Khatia Buniatishvili (Piano)
Cyrano de Bergerac
Andrew Bell
France, 1640, and Cyrano de Bergerac, a romantic poet and deadly swordsman, brave, eloquent and a cherisher of honour and ideals, puts aside his burning desire to woo his cousin, Roxane, in his ...
4 years ago
Cyrano de Bergerac
Crime And Punishment
Andrew Bell
My dog-eared Penguin Classics edition of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment runs to 541 pages, so when I saw Corpus Christ Owlets' bold publicity claim that their "award-winning adaptation ...
4 years ago
Crime And Punishment
Beethoven and Bruch
Andrew Bell
The
Orchestra of St John's and its tireless founder and conductor John Lubbock are
celebrating their 50th birthday this year, and this was one of its 'Music
in the Abbey' autumn festival dates. ...
4 years ago
Beethoven and Bruch
Three Parallel Places
Andrew Bell
One
of the strengths of writer and director Hannah Chilver-Vaughan's Three Parallel Places from Iridal
Productions is that here we have no message play. The publicity material tells
us "it follows ...
4 years ago
Three Parallel Places
Mahler 4 and Beethoven Piano Conc. 3
Andrew Bell
St Peter's College is on a musical roll at present,
and both conductor and soloist spring from that source for the autumn concert
from The Ripieno Players (the name (Italian; 'stuffing') refers to ...
4 years ago
Mahler 4 and Beethoven Piano Conc. 3
Valery Gergiev
Andrew Bell
Owing to the cancellation last season of this Valery
Gergiev concert and the unavailability of the Sheldonian Theatre for its
re-arranged date, Oxford Philharmonic's opening shot at the Town Hall ...
4 years ago
Valery Gergiev
Julius Caesar
Andrew Bell
The Michaelmas Term got off to a classical start
this week with Shakespeare's
Julius
Caesar
from Cosmic Arts. In addition to the gender-blind casting – almost the
norm in Oxford these days ...
4 years ago
Julius Caesar
A Hungarian Rhapsody
Andrew Bell
Daniel Lebhardt last played in Oxford on June 24th this year, and my expectations were high, given the quality of his performances then and on the three other times I've heard him play. Here at St ...
4 years ago
A Hungarian Rhapsody
The Isimsiz Ensemble
Andrew Bell
Gaspar
Cassado was a Catalan composer, a contemporary of Maurice Ravel who, though of
course French, was a native of the Basque Country, what might be termed Catalunya's
regional counterpart at ...
4 years ago
The Isimsiz Ensemble
Summer Serenade
Andrew Bell
With
the Bierfest 2017's drinking songs, leather shorts and beer mugs the size of bazookas
dominating its west end, and W.A. Mozart serenading its east end, the Broad St strolling
and paying ...
4 years ago
Summer Serenade
Oxford Proms - Romantic Classics
Andrew Bell
Ms Freeman began with Rachmaninov's Prelude
No 1 in C sharp minor, composed when Rachmaninov was just 19, and the first of 24 such preludes.
It was so popular at Rachmaninov's concert tours that ...
4 years ago
Oxford Proms - Romantic Classics
Yefim Bronfman and the Oxford Philharmonic
Andrew Bell
At
the Sheldonian on Sunday evening it was a German programme of music, the bread
and butter of the Oxford Philharmonic; and this was the concluding event of
this year's Oxford Piano Festival. In ...
4 years ago
Yefim Bronfman and the Oxford Philharmonic
Richard Goode
Andrew Bell
The interior of Merton College is so replete
with furnishings and monuments of interest that one's eye is wont to wander
away from the matter in hand – here a solo piano recital by Richard Goode, ...
4 years ago
Richard Goode
Outbursts!
Andrew Bell
If getting on with other people (or an android) is one of the most difficult things in life, then one of its pre-conditions is being able to communicate with others. This latter ability, or ...
4 years ago
Outbursts!
Stop
Andrew Bell
A
social comment drama in musical guise is not encountered every day of the week,
so I was intrigued to see whether the material and form of STOP worked effectively in tandem. This student show ...
4 years ago
Stop
Love's Labour's Lost
Andrew Bell
How fitting that Oxford Theatre
Guild's Love's Labour's Lost should be gracing the lawns and long
borders of Trinity College. Director Simon Tavener has set the play in Oxford
in 1895, in the ...
4 years ago
Love's Labour's Lost
A Chopin Journey: Warsaw To Paris
Andrew Bell
Jack Gibbons has been playing at the
Holywell Music Room since November 1977 when as a 15 year old schoolboy he
happened upon auditions for Oxford students taking place there, passed the test
and ...
4 years ago
A Chopin Journey: Warsaw To Paris
Adderbury Ensemble with Viv McLean (piano)
Andrew Bell
Sunday's coffee concert on an
airless, sultry morning on Holywell St was an all-Mozart programme, first a
string quartet and then one of his piano concertos scored a quattro – ie
for piano ...
4 years ago
Adderbury Ensemble with Viv McLean (piano)
Summer Nostalgia
Andrew Bell
The Oxford Philharmonic likes to move out of its
Sheldonian base at least once every summer. On Saturday, south of the High
St at Merton College chapel, its strings section played a programme that ...
4 years ago
Summer Nostalgia
The St Nazaire Raid - Talk by Nick Beattie
Andrew Bell
In the dark early days of 1942, German U-boats
were sinking Allied merchantmen faster than they could be replaced, and to this
threat was added the lurking menace of German surface raiders. The ...
4 years ago
The St Nazaire Raid - Talk by Nick Beattie
Capriccio Veneziano
Andrew Bell
Charivari Agreable translates as something
like "pleasant tumult", derived from an early 18th century
treatise on musical accompaniment; on the face of it an odd description of a
style of music we ...
4 years ago
Capriccio Veneziano
Mahler 1 and Mozart Clarinet Concerto
Andrew Bell
Oxford Sinfonia's summer concert at St Mary the Virgin programmed Mozart with Mahler, an interesting combination, especially since the Mahler 1st Symphony came in a slimmed-down guise for a more ...
4 years ago
Mahler 1 and Mozart Clarinet Concerto
Romeo and Juliet
Andrew Bell
For
the best part of July Tomahawk Theatre's Romeo
and Juliet is occupying the courtyard of Oxford Castle, a huge
acting space
hemmed in on three sides by the grassy motte of 1071, the original ...
4 years ago
Romeo and Juliet
St Giles Orchestra Concert
Andrew Bell
St Andrew's Church in N. Oxford is the base for St Giles' Orchestra. It sits at a crossroads of four of the characteristically wide avenues of the area, is adorned by a pretty garden containing hardy ...
4 years ago
St Giles Orchestra Concert
Daniel Lebhardt
Andrew Bell
Expectations were running high at Sunday's Coffee Concert. Not solely mine, but also those of Luigi Thompson and Diana Bonakis Webster, two of the stalwarts who so generously give of their time for ...
4 years ago
Daniel Lebhardt
Oxford Symphony Orchestra
Andrew Bell
Broad St was buzzing with life on Saturday evening with the combination of the opening of the full tourist season, a warm night and Giffords Circus just down the road. Oxford Symphony Orchestra was ...
4 years ago
Oxford Symphony Orchestra
Thou Shalt Not Suffer...
Andrew Bell
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," advises the King James Bible, and call centre employee Anouska Lacox now stands in the dock for aggravated harassment of her work colleague. Alice Preston has ...
4 years ago
Thou Shalt Not Suffer...
HMS Pinafore
Andrew Bell
139 years ago Gilbert and Sullivan's new comic opera HMS Pinafore or The Lass that Loved a Sailor almost bombed on its premiere at the Opera Comique in Westminster owing to a heatwave having ...
4 years ago
HMS Pinafore
Skylight
Andrew Bell
Tom Sergeant – the name suggests authority and the imposition of will, as well as perhaps a certain lack of imagination – is a London businessman who has expanded his business to a chain of ...
4 years ago
Skylight
SPCO: Mahler 9 (Alpine Tour launch concert)
Andrew Bell
The St Peter's Chamber Orchestra, based at the eponymous college, is in its third year of life and will in early July make a five-date Alpine Tour of Slovenia, Austria and N. Italy to play Mahler's ...
4 years ago
SPCO: Mahler 9 (Alpine Tour launch concert)
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Andrew Bell
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra was at the Sheldonian on Friday evening, billed as being 'on tour' which is an odd term to use for a one-date foray outside Symphony Hall, Birmingham. No ...
4 years ago
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Viktoria Mullova & the Oxford Philharmonic
Andrew Bell
When I interviewed Oxford Philharmonic Musical Director Marios Papadopoulos last autumn and requested more Sibelius symphonies on the programme, the reply was more of a 'well, maybe' rather than a ...
4 years ago
Viktoria Mullova & the Oxford Philharmonic
Henry IV Part 1
Andrew Bell
How pleasant that the strength of Four Seven Two Productions' Henry IV part 1 is such that consideration of the relationship between Holinshed's Chronicles of England and Shakespeare's text, and that ...
4 years ago
Henry IV Part 1
Martyn Jackson (violin) and Peter Limonov (piano)
Andrew Bell
The habitual calm of Holywell St on a bright Sunday morning was transformed into something not far short of an upturned beehive with queues stretching down the road, a wholesale change of programme ...
4 years ago
Martyn Jackson (violin) and Peter Limonov (piano)
A Judgement in Stone
Andrew Bell
A Judgement in Stone is an adaptation of a classic crime novel from Ruth Rendell, one of the stand-alone chillers from the first half of her writing life. Writers Simon Brett and Antony Lampard have ...
4 years ago
A Judgement in Stone
Merlot and Royal: A New Original Musical
Andrew Bell
Merlot and Royal Bank, not quite a Barclays or a Lloyds but getting there, is rocked upon the death of its founder. Its board, horrified that the founder's womanizing son is now the controlling ...
4 years ago
Merlot and Royal: A New Original Musical
Spring Reign
Andrew Bell
We are plunged into the life-and-death struggle in Aleppo, N. Syria, during the long and bitter years of the struggle against the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. Rather than being compelled to view ...
4 years ago
Spring Reign
Sylar
Andrew Bell
In his publicity material, magician Sylar (a.k.a. Bogdan Mangu, originally from Romania) announces he can be booked for weddings, private parties, corporate events, theatre and world domination. This ...
4 years ago
Sylar
Five Women Wearing the Same Dress
Andrew Bell
At a smart wedding reception in Tennessee, five women escape the festivities for a period of sisterly bonding in the bride's sister's bedroom. As the evening wears on, the women get to know each ...
4 years ago
Five Women Wearing the Same Dress
Viv McLean and Tim Horton
Andrew Bell
A reminder of the preparatory hard graft that goes on in the background by the professional musician was vividly supplied by Sunday morning's coffee concert. Our musicians were Tim Horton, whom I ...
4 years ago
Viv McLean and Tim Horton
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Andrew Bell
Given the cult of celebrity that insinuates itself ever further onto our screens and in our headlines, a study of the nature and consequences of narcissism could not be more contemporary. As the ...
4 years ago
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Little Shop Of Horrors
Andrew Bell
When a third of the Oxford Playhouse's stage by degrees comes to be annexed by an emerald-green hybrid of a venus fly-trap, a basking shark and a ripe avocado, and when members of the cast are ...
4 years ago
Little Shop Of Horrors
St Giles Orchestra concert, Mary Pope soprano
Andrew Bell
The St Giles Orchestra programme informed us that conductor Geoffrey Bushell "is renowned for introducing players and audiences to lesser-known and unjustly neglected repertoire". I think ...
4 years ago
St Giles Orchestra concert, Mary Pope soprano
Blavaksky's Tower
Andrew Bell
In their 1964 Sanity, Madness and the Family, a radical polemic by psychiatrists RD Laing and Aaron Esterson, they describe a dozen case studies which in effect deny a biological basis for psychosis, ...
4 years ago
Blavaksky's Tower
Barry Douglas
Andrew Bell
St John the Evangelist on Iffley Rd hosted a Barry Douglas solo piano recital on Tuesday, commencing with Brahms' 8 Klavierstücke [piano pieces], Op. 76, little studies of c. three minutes each but ...
4 years ago
Barry Douglas
Maxim Vengerov (Violin)
Andrew Bell
The combination of WA Mozart, Beethoven and violinist Maxim Vengerov was an irresistible draw for a sell-out audience at the Sheldonian on Sunday evening. Yet the magnetic power of these three ...
4 years ago
Maxim Vengerov (Violin)
Maundy Thursday Concert
Andrew Bell
On his deathbed Frederic Chopin was reported as having said:
"Play Mozart in memory of me and I will hear you".
It's not known of what works he was particularly thinking, but those forming ...
4 years ago
Maundy Thursday Concert
Viva Vienna! Headington Singers Spring Concert
Andrew Bell
Thoughts of longevity and mortality were in the air at All Saints Church, Headington on Saturday evening. These Headington Singers' concerts have been on-going for 30 years or more, I think always in ...
4 years ago
Viva Vienna! Headington Singers Spring Concert
An Italian Evening
Andrew Bell
St Peter's Church, Steeple Aston was Sunday night's setting for the local choral society's Italian concert. The village is a handsome one, and when strolling round before the concert, I came upon ...
4 years ago
An Italian Evening
Free Walking Tour
Andrew Bell
"Don't judge a book by its cover" runs the sententious idiom, but we can safely ignore it in the case of Tom Worrallo, blossoming author and Footprints Tour host (and self-confessed "massive fan of ...
4 years ago
Free Walking Tour
Bradley Creswick, Claire Stirling, Sophie Renshaw
Andrew Bell
A brilliantly sunny morning on Holywell St, though a fair few of the musical folk trickling in at the doors ready for their Janacek and Brahms seemed to have a hurried tread. Had they been caught out ...
4 years ago
Bradley Creswick, Claire Stirling, Sophie Renshaw
Dido and Aeneas with 1689 Prologue
Andrew Bell
In his interesting historical performance note in the programme, Oxford Youth Choirs' musical director Richard Vendome says that "many productions of Dido and Aeneas lack structure because the ...
4 years ago
Dido and Aeneas with 1689 Prologue
Anne Sofie von Otter
Andrew Bell
Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter was the latest of the Oxford Philharmonic's famous names to appear at the Sheldonian on Saturday night, performing a short programme of six lieder with ...
4 years ago
Anne Sofie von Otter
The Salesman [12A]
Andrew Bell
A Teheran apartment block is seemingly on the point of collapse as the occupants are roused by furious banging on doors and voices urging them to get out and save their lives if not their ...
4 years ago
The Salesman [12A]
Blithe Spirit
Andrew Bell
Writer Charles Condomine gets more than he bargained for when he hosts a séance in the interests of research for his new book. He and his second wife Ruth invite local medium Madame Arcati to their ...
4 years ago
Blithe Spirit
Rossini's 'Petite Messe Solennelle' with Oxford University Chorus
Andrew Bell
It's akin to a cliche that Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle is neither little, solemn nor truly intended for liturgical use as a Mass. The overall tone is far from downbeat – anti-pompous, if you ...
4 years ago
Rossini's 'Petite Messe Solennelle' with Oxford University Chorus
Marat Sade
Andrew Bell
I was expecting a challenging evening as the opening night audience trooped down into the O'Reilly basement. And so it turned out, but for unexpected reasons. A gaggle of merry andrews were capering ...
4 years ago
Marat Sade
Contractions
Andrew Bell
Before Set Designer Linden Hogarth's backcloth of a high-rise office skyline, perhaps doubling as a sales figures graph, Emma's Manager, smart in an anonymous suit, sits on a swivel chair at a ...
4 years ago
Contractions
Academy of Ancient Music
Andrew Bell
The baroque orchestra on Friday was the Academy of Ancient Music, the creation of Christopher Hogwood who died in 2014. It numbered 15, and had played the identical programme in Bury St Edmunds the ...
4 years ago
Academy of Ancient Music
Oxford Studio Orchestra with Mami Shikimori (solo piano)
Andrew Bell
The last time I attended a concert at St Michael and All Angels, in November, the church was airy, light and warm. This time it was airy, light and cold, with a nagging draught blowing in from ...
4 years ago
Oxford Studio Orchestra with Mami Shikimori (solo piano)
The White Guard
Andrew Bell
The Albion Beatnik Bookshop on Walton St is the setting for performances by Poltergeist Theatre group production of Mikhail Bulgakov's The White Guard. From the 1920s, less than ten years after the ...
4 years ago
The White Guard
Adderbury Ensemble With Catrin Finch
Andrew Bell
Sunday saw an unusual coffee concert programme, with works ranging over 130 years and the presence of a harp, a very welcome addition to the venue repertoire. The opening Quartet in G for flute and ...
4 years ago
Adderbury Ensemble With Catrin Finch
The Vanishing Man
Andrew Bell
A magician, Hugo Cedar, known after his final performance – or should that read posthumously? – as The Vanishing Man, had apparently come up with the perfect trick. Very early on June 20th 1930 ...
4 years ago
The Vanishing Man
Anna Karenina
Andrew Bell
Eight years after finishing his War and Peace that ranged over the steppes of Mother Russia from Austerlitz to Borodino and on into the glittering drawing rooms of Moscow, Tolstoy has narrowed his ...
4 years ago
Anna Karenina
Daniel Lebhardt
Andrew Bell
Pianist Daniel Lebhardt, now from London but born and bred in Budapest, came, saw and conquered the numerous Holywell Music Room audience at Sunday morning's coffee concert. This is an experienced, ...
4 years ago
Daniel Lebhardt
Oxford University Orchestra Hilary Term Concert
Andrew Bell
Guest conductor Jamie Phillips was in Stoke-on-Trent on Friday, conducting Haydn, Mozart and Sibelius, and here he was on a cold Broad Street evening pursuing the peripatetic life of the professional ...
4 years ago
Oxford University Orchestra Hilary Term Concert
Oxfordshire Junior Concerto Competition Final
Andrew Bell
This was a Sheldonian concert with a difference, both a competition and a showcase. The Oxford Philharmonic and Oxfordshire County Music Service in partnership staged their annual Junior Concerto ...
4 years ago
Oxfordshire Junior Concerto Competition Final
London Road
Andrew Bell
London Road, Ipswich was at the heart of the neighbourhood in which five sex workers were murdered in 2006. Playwright Alecky Blythe travelled to Ipswich and recorded exhaustive, contemporaneous ...
5 years ago
London Road
Karina Canellakis (conductor) and Cédric Tiberghien (piano)
Andrew Bell
This was an all-French programme by Oxford Philharmonic at the Sheldonian, the piano soloist Cedric Tiberghien also originally hailing from NE France. The Camille Saint-Saens piano concerto selected ...
5 years ago
Karina Canellakis (conductor) and Cédric Tiberghien (piano)
Adderbury Ensemble
Andrew Bell
A grey, drizzly day on Holywell St but the welcome from the stalwarts manning and womanning the ticketing and seating arrangements at the Holywell Music Room was as cheery as ever. The programme was ...
5 years ago
Adderbury Ensemble
Martha Argerich (piano)
Andrew Bell
A full house at the Sheldonian on a freezing Saturday night saw the Argentinian-born Martha Argerich play Prokofiev's 3rd Piano Concerto with the Oxford Philharmonic in a Russian programme. Ms ...
5 years ago
Martha Argerich (piano)
Trio Isimsiz
Andrew Bell
A freezing Sunday morning saw the multi-national Trio Isimsiz ('no name' in Turkish) at the Holywell Music Room, playing an all-German programme to an audience of 200. First came a Haydn piano trio, ...
5 years ago
Trio Isimsiz
Adderbury Chamber Orchestra
Andrew Bell
Christmastide at St John the Evangelist, though you'd scarcely know it from the interior of the church, sans crib, sans star, sans tree or festive lights. When I enquired of the mince-pie seller at ...
5 years ago
Adderbury Chamber Orchestra
Laura van Heijden (cello) and Peter Limonov (piano)
Andrew Bell
A sunny Sunday morning on Holywell St, with the last bloom on the Fremontodendron, soggy from the day before's drenching rain, peeping in at one of the east windows, saw an out-of-the-way programme ...
5 years ago
Laura van Heijden (cello) and Peter Limonov (piano)
Handel's Messiah
Andrew Bell
The Messiah rolled into St John the Evangelist on Sunday evening, having been performed by the same orchestra, soloists and many in the choir on the preceding days in London and Dorchester Abbey. ...
5 years ago
Handel's Messiah
All My Sons
Andrew Bell
Family solidarity, guilt and the devastating consequences of greed. Arthur Miller's deceptively parochial dissection of the shifty morality of American capitalism in his play from 1947 focuses on an ...
5 years ago
All My Sons
Christmas Concert
Andrew Bell
A packed St Leonard's Church, Eynsham hosted the bi-annual concert of the Eynsham Choral Society on Saturday evening. They love their music in Eynsham - the choral society is thriving, and each time ...
5 years ago
Christmas Concert
Bang Bang You're Dead
Andrew Bell
The floor of the BT Studio was littered with cellophane-covered news reports of school and college killings as the audience of 48 entered. Sprawled upon the papers lay four dead bodies surmounted by ...
5 years ago
Bang Bang You're Dead
Oxford Millennium Orchestra
Andrew Bell
Along Broad St on a chilly November evening the far end twinkled with cheery Christmas lights while outside the Sheldonian Theatre glared a vast industrial steel container smothered in graffiti ...
5 years ago
Oxford Millennium Orchestra
Jealous of Herself
Andrew Bell
Asked once at a party why he was wearing a face of dejection, the Hollywood actor Cary Grant confided despairingly: "It's the constant strain of trying to be Cary Grant." Spanish monk/playwright ...
5 years ago
Jealous of Herself
Regulation 18B - No Free Man
Andrew Bell
A British citizen, Robert Liversidge, was arrested and imprisoned in Brixton Prison in wartime 1940 under Regulation 18B, one plank of sweeping security measures introduced as panic about German ...
5 years ago
Regulation 18B - No Free Man
Haydn: Harmonie Messe
Andrew Bell
The Oxford University Press has c.2170 employees working in Oxford. Of those, some 40 to 50 are active members of the non-auditioning OUP choir, attending weekly rehearsals for two public concerts a ...
5 years ago
Haydn: Harmonie Messe
Leonore Piano Trio
Andrew Bell
A chilly, damp November morning in Holywell St, but hot coffee in with the ticket price was served beforehand in the cosy King's Arms next door, so a numerous audience flooded in under the avuncular, ...
5 years ago
Leonore Piano Trio
Jane Eyre
Andrew Bell
Jane Eyre was the production on Saturday from Garsington and Cuddesdon Community Theatre Group, set in the chancel of St Mary's Church, Garsington. Though the space was heavy with church furniture, ...
5 years ago
Jane Eyre
Oxford Chamber Orchestra
Andrew Bell
An audience of 80 or so heard Weber, Sibelius and Brahms at the Wesley Memorial Church on Guy Fawkes Night as rockets and Catherine wheels fizzed on the Oxford skyline and shivering would-be ...
5 years ago
Oxford Chamber Orchestra
Guys and Dolls
Andrew Bell
As the 25-strong band, hidden away in a subterranean vault adjacent to the acting arena, launches into the overture, the company takes the stage against a background of giant-sized playing cards and ...
5 years ago
Guys and Dolls
Daniel Lebhardt (piano)
Andrew Bell
On a quiet autumnal morning on Holywell St, yellow sycamore leaves patterning the steps leading up to the hall, the 24 year old Hungarian pianist Daniel Lebhardt played three works from the 18th, ...
5 years ago
Daniel Lebhardt (piano)
Alison Balsom
Andrew Bell
The latest of a string of big-name soloists to grace the Sheldonian, Alison Balsom was the draw on Tuesday evening, playing with the Oxford Philharmonic one of the warhorses of the trumpet classical ...
5 years ago
Alison Balsom
Festen
Andrew Bell
On the very day that Prof Alexis Jay appeared before a House of Commons select committee answering questions about the problems of the huge child sexual abuse enquiry, Oxford Theatre Guild staged its ...
5 years ago
Festen
An evening of Mozart
Andrew Bell
St Michael's and All Angels Church in Summertown was the venue for this all-Mozart programme, and a first-class venue too - light and airy, with a very warm welcome at the door. On offer were three ...
5 years ago
An evening of Mozart
Coffee Concerts: Simon Crawford Phillips & Philip Moore (piano duet)
Andrew Bell
A bright early autumn Sunday morning on Holywell Street, the college entrances clogged with returning students, including apprehensive-looking first years with solicitous parents hovering. In the ...
5 years ago
Coffee Concerts: Simon Crawford Phillips & Philip Moore (piano duet)
Music in the Abbey 2016
Andrew Bell
Opera Gala This was the last date of Orchestra of St John's Music in the Abbey festival, and talk about going out with a bang! The programme was a cornucopia crammed with operatic gems, the delivery ...
5 years ago
Music in the Abbey 2016
Oxford Sinfonia
Andrew Bell
The Oxford Sinfonia was at St Mary the Virgin Church on Saturday night for one of their four concerts per year, this time playing a programme of German music. For the Beethoven Violin Concerto in D ...
5 years ago
Oxford Sinfonia
Oxford Proms - Concerto Classics
Andrew Bell
When the Sheldonian's full it buzzes like an upturned beehive, but when half empty it feels a little desolate; and there was a bit of an end-of-summer feel to the place on a wet and blustery Saturday ...
5 years ago
Oxford Proms - Concerto Classics
Pirates On Punts
Andrew Bell
Opera Anywhere, faithful to its name, popped up on Saturday evening at Wolfson College, spreading itself along the quayside and in punts on the water of the creek off the R. Cherwell. An audience of ...
5 years ago
Pirates On Punts
Menahem Pressler and the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra
Andrew Bell
Menahem Pressler, the 92-year old pianist, was at the Sheldonian on his annual Piano Festival visit on a sultry Wednesday evening, this time playing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23. It was unclear ...
5 years ago
Menahem Pressler and the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra
Emma
Andrew Bell
Jane Austen's Emma is the maiden show from Thistledown Theatre, a new drama venture in Oxford, attended by a numerous audience swelled by a large contingent from d'Overbroeck's College. This is of ...
5 years ago
Emma
Interview with Marios Papadopoulos
Andrew Bell
Until he was eight, Marios Papadopoulos lived in Cyprus with his parents, neither of whom were musicians. An uncle heard him tinkling on a toy piano, spotted a hint of talent and encouraged him to ...
5 years ago
Interview with Marios Papadopoulos
Adderbury Ensemble
Andrew Bell
A hot, sultry Sunday morning at the Holywell Music Room, with the Fremontodendron peeping in high at the east windows wearing a bit of a jaded look. On offer was Mozart and Dvorak, the players being ...
5 years ago
Adderbury Ensemble
Cult Screens Oxford - 2016
Andrew Bell
My Insight Guide Oxford says of St Hugh's College: The college grounds are said to be quite pleasant, but no one except St Hugh's students have actually seen them. This facetious claim was shattered ...
5 years ago
Cult Screens Oxford - 2016
Ventoux
Andrew Bell
Take a jumble of three cool boxes, two bunches of flowers, a half-bottle of cognac, a suspicious pile of beige powder, two road-racing bikes, a projection screen and two pro-bike riders. There in a ...
5 years ago
Ventoux
Festival Concert
Andrew Bell
This post-Brexit festival concert was something of a valedictory event for Daniel Hyde, the grandly-titled Informator Choristarum ('choirmaster' to everyone else) at Magdalen College who in September ...
5 years ago
Festival Concert
Coffee Concert with the San Marco Chamber Music Society
Andrew Bell
In April the Adderbury Ensemble toured Florida, and before you know it up pops the San Marco Chamber Music sextet from Jacksonville, Florida, on a 4-leg tour of Oxfordshire; two dates in Oxford, one ...
5 years ago
Coffee Concert with the San Marco Chamber Music Society
Sir András Schiff & Christ Church Cathedral Choir
Andrew Bell
The Sheldonian was abuzz on Thursday night for Sir Andras Schiff playing and conducting Haydn and Beethoven. In the 2nd half, after the piano had been trussed up like a Christmas turkey and wheeled ...
5 years ago
Sir András Schiff & Christ Church Cathedral Choir
Ghosts
Andrew Bell
Ibsen's Ghosts, in a stripped-down version by Richard Eyre that sweeps away the slightest vestige of Victorian fustiness, is here played out to a 45-seater Tuesday night full house, and packs an ...
5 years ago
Ghosts
Peter Limonov, Martyn Jackson, Laura van der Heijden
Andrew Bell
This was the '30th Anniversary + 3' Coffee Concert on a warm Holywell St on Sunday morning - the first day of summer, with the nascent flower buds visible on the rowan tree beyond the front door, and ...
5 years ago
Peter Limonov, Martyn Jackson, Laura van der Heijden
Fahrenheit 451
Andrew Bell
Drame Fatale's mounting of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (first a novel in 1953; then adapted for the stage by the author in the late '70s) has a certain topicality given the current debate in free ...
5 years ago
Fahrenheit 451
Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra: Chopin and Schumann
Andrew Bell
This was a concert of the contemporaries; Chopin and Schumann were acquaintances who dedicated a short work to each other. A packed Sheldonian in the second half gave a rousing reception to ...
5 years ago
Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra: Chopin and Schumann
Oxford University Orchestra
Andrew Bell
The Oxford University Orchestra's termly concerts are always fun and usually challenging. The challenge on Saturday was manifest: the unusual programming of Debussy's La Mer, probably the most ...
5 years ago
Oxford University Orchestra
We Will Not Fight
Andrew Bell
We Will Not Fight! The Old Courtroom at Oxford Town Hall ceased to operate as a court in 1969 (it now functions as a meeting room), but recently the clock was turned back as UnderConstruction Theatre ...
5 years ago
We Will Not Fight
Commotio Choir
Andrew Bell
Commotio, the Oxford choir, will be performing on two dates in June - Sat 11th June at St John the Evangelist Chuch on Iffley Road, and on Sat 23rd July at St Nicholas' Church in the village of ...
5 years ago
Commotio Choir
Adderbury Ensemble with Viv Mclean (piano)
Andrew Bell
Sunday at the Holywell Music Room saw the 30th Anniversary Coffee Concert, the brainchild chamber concert series of viola/violin player Chris Windass, also the co-founder of the Adderbury Ensemble, ...
5 years ago
Adderbury Ensemble with Viv Mclean (piano)
Oxfordshire and the Spanish Civil War
Andrew Bell
Liz Woolley, an Oxford-based local historian, with connections to the University Continuing Education Dept and the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum, came to the Museum on Wednesday to talk about the ...
5 years ago
Oxfordshire and the Spanish Civil War
Philharmonia Orchestra
Andrew Bell
The Philharmonia Orchestra from London's South Bank with conductor Edward Gardner came to the Sheldonian on a warm May evening, Broad St being as bustling as on a weekday afternoon. The main draw was ...
5 years ago
Philharmonia Orchestra
Dvořák: Stabat Mater
Andrew Bell
St John the Evangelist was buzzing with twin-town cultural camaraderie on this sultry May afternoon. The joint forces of the E. Oxford Community Choir and the Ensemble Vocal Interlude from the ...
5 years ago
Dvořák: Stabat Mater
Renée Fleming & Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra
Andrew Bell
This was a much-anticipated night on Broad St, long ago a sell-out, with the great American lyric soprano Renee Fleming in town for one of just two British dates. This was to fulfil an unavoidably ...
5 years ago
Renée Fleming & Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra
Haydn's 'Nelson' Mass
Andrew Bell
Sunday's Oakham School concert at the Sheldonian was an object lesson in ambition, programme planning and skilful execution, assembled by conductor Peter Davis, the school's Director of Music, and ...
5 years ago
Haydn's 'Nelson' Mass
Passiontide at Merton 2016
Andrew Bell
A cold night for a strong Passiontide at Merton programme, with not only a keen east wind nagging along Merton St, but also with a chilly and draughty chapel interior thrown into the bargain. The ...
5 years ago
Passiontide at Merton 2016
Oxfordshire Concerto Competition Final 2016
Andrew Bell
The Sheldonian was the grand setting for the 2016 final of one of the showpieces of the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra's work with grassroots music, the Concerto Competition for local young musicians. ...
5 years ago
Oxfordshire Concerto Competition Final 2016
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Andrew Bell
Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray bursts with themes relating to the place of aestheticism in a hard, practical world, and the core exchanges between the painter Basil Hallward, the ...
5 years ago
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Long Yu & Vera Tsu with Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra
Andrew Bell
Max Bruch and his 1st Violin Concerto have their being in much the same niche as Johann Pachelbel with his
Canon and Paul Dukas with his Sorcerer's Apprentice. That is to say, they are known for ...
5 years ago
Long Yu & Vera Tsu with Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra
The Snow Maiden
Andrew Bell
Last year was the 175th anniversary of the birth of Tchaikovsky (b.1840) and as a consequence, there's been a flicker of interest away from his 'big three' ballets towards the little-performed The ...
5 years ago
The Snow Maiden
Amadeus
Andrew Bell
Hailed the length and breadth of Europe as a prodigy, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was weaned on the pursuit of the sublime. As a young chap he's coarse and brash, given to boozing and womanizing, and yet ...
5 years ago
Amadeus
Noose
Andrew Bell
Oxford student Anthony Maskell's minimalist Noose is occupying the early slot at the Burton Taylor all this week. If in your mind you can graft say Samuel Beckett's Happy Days/Oh Les Beaux Jours, ...
6 years ago
Noose
Vadim Repin (violin) & Oxford Philharmonic
Andrew Bell
A damp January evening at the Sheldonian was ignited by the passionate violin of Vadim Repin from Novosibirsk by way of Brussels and Vienna, and once upon a time a protege of Yehudi Menuhin. ...
6 years ago
Vadim Repin (violin) & Oxford Philharmonic
Tom Poster (piano)
Andrew Bell
To hear Tom Poster performing in Oxford is always an event. It may be wishful thinking on my part, but Mr Poster's long association with the city - he was a pupil at Cherwell School, and on Sunday he ...
6 years ago
Tom Poster (piano)
Messiah
Andrew Bell
On the face of it, this Messiah had strong claims to be the crème de la crème of this Christmas season's clutch of Messiahs.Here was the Oxford Bach choir, 140 strong and of long and distinguished ...
6 years ago
Messiah
Oxford University Chorus
Andrew Bell
Handel himself, in Dublin at the first performance of
The Messiah on 13th April 1742, directed a choir made up of – accounts vary – either 14 men and 6 boys or 16 men and 16 boys. At the ...
6 years ago
Oxford University Chorus
Nicola Benedetti and Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra
Andrew Bell
Nicola Benedetti, the Scottish prodigy, came to the Sheldonian to play Beethoven on a blustery late November evening and did everything but actually play her fiddle upside down. Benedetti stood ...
6 years ago
Nicola Benedetti and Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra
Mozart Requiem & Vivaldi Gloria
Andrew Bell
On a blustery late autumn evening in Witney, a packed audience at St Mary's Church heard an all-choral concert from the local Lower Windrush Choral Society (the Windrush being one of the Cotswold ...
6 years ago
Mozart Requiem & Vivaldi Gloria
Ghost Tour with Bill Spectre
Andrew Bell
Bill Spectre's Ghost Trail, touring Christ Church College on a mild October early evening, is an upmarket affair from start to finish - let's say more MR James or The Canterville Ghost than the ghost ...
6 years ago
Ghost Tour with Bill Spectre
Adderbury Ensemble
Andrew Bell
The all-Schubert programme for Sunday's Coffee Concert in the Holywell Music Room could have been chosen with the weather in mind. There was some hot sunshine - rare in this cloudy summer - that was ...
6 years ago
Adderbury Ensemble
Oxford Philomusica: Mozart & Beethoven
Andrew Bell
The Sheldonian on a sultry Oxford evening was graced by the presence of the 91-year old Israeli-American concert pianist Menahem Pressler, seemingly fresh as paint after a six and a half hour ...
6 years ago
Oxford Philomusica: Mozart & Beethoven
The Pirates Of Penzance
Andrew Bell
As usual with these Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas, the plot of The Pirates of Penzance is wafer-thin, and when we learn that the initial premise revolves around a child, Frederic, being ...
6 years ago
The Pirates Of Penzance
Undisputed Masterpieces and 250 Reasons for 250 Years
Andrew Bell
It's an odd thing with Christ Church. The July streets of Oxford were swarming with tourists while the quads and Gallery were near-deserted, hardly surprising since the porters at the gate did their ...
6 years ago
Undisputed Masterpieces and 250 Reasons for 250 Years
Maxim Vengerov and Oxford Philomusica
Andrew Bell
It's a warm night at The Sheldonian on the last day of the University year. There are revellers thronging the streets, some of them audible at still moments within the venue. Maxim Vengerov, once ...
6 years ago
Maxim Vengerov and Oxford Philomusica
Angela Hewitt & Oxford Philomusica
Andrew Bell
A good turn-out for a Thursday at the Sheldonian. Mozart’s Concerto No. 25, until relatively recently, was one of the least performed of Mozart’s most inspired works for piano. Maybe that’s ...
6 years ago
Angela Hewitt & Oxford Philomusica
Handel's Messiah by Candlelight
Andrew Bell
In 1784, 25 years after Handel’s death, a Mr Bates directed from the organ a performance of The Messiah in Westminster Abbey at which the orchestra numbered 250 and there were 60 sopranos, 50 male ...
7 years ago
Handel's Messiah by Candlelight
Freiburg Baroque Orchestra
Andrew Bell
The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, one of Germany’s top chamber music ensembles, came to the Sheldonian on Friday. Director Gottfried von der Goltz told the Daily Info they were on a mini-tour taking ...
7 years ago
Freiburg Baroque Orchestra
Tchaikovsky, Ravel, Mussorgsky/Ravel, Pictures at an Exhibition
Andrew Bell
The slight frustration of Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition is that the works in question are now either lost or of dubious identity. Imagine a soiree in one of the ...
7 years ago
Tchaikovsky, Ravel, Mussorgsky/Ravel, Pictures at an Exhibition
An Ideal Husband
Andrew Bell
Oscar Wilde's 1895 dramatic comedy deals with political intrigue, blackmail and marriage. It raises questions about public and private honour, and whether a noble future and probable great ...
7 years ago
An Ideal Husband
South Pacific
Andrew Bell
On a seemingly idyllic tropical island - here beautifully and economically realised by a few palms and bamboos, a misty atmosphere and chiffon adorning the auditorium railings - are stationed a troop ...
7 years ago
South Pacific
The Mikado
Andrew Bell
The delights of a Gilbert and Sullivan experience will have been met again and again by many in an audience, while newcomers are wondering what all the fuss is about. Thus assumptions and ...
7 years ago
The Mikado
The Great Gatsby
Andrew Bell
The 1920s Jazz Age in East Coast America. The mysterious millionaire Gatsby (Percy Stubbs) has a huge mansion on Long Island and is known far and wide for his lavish, extravagant parties; a golden ...
7 years ago
The Great Gatsby
Mozart Requiem
Andrew Bell
The Oxford Philomusica programme hors d’oeuvre at an almost full Sheldonian Theatre was the premiere of Ithaca by Irish-born, Oxford postgraduate student Solfa Carlile, a short piece for ...
7 years ago
Mozart Requiem
Judgment at Nuremberg
Andrew Bell
Four judges on trial for their lives from March to December 1947 in one of the series of 13 tribunals held to bring to account the top Nazi war criminals. Judgment at Nuremberg playwright Abby Mann ...
8 years ago
Judgment at Nuremberg
Deathtrap
Andrew Bell
I wondered as I sat down in the half-full BT Studio, with two of the cast having got there early and started respectively to type on a battered Smith Corona and get in a horrid muddle with two ...
8 years ago
Deathtrap
An Inspector Calls
Andrew Bell
JB Priestly's critique of I'm-all-right-Jack individualism, in which a Northen industrialist and his smug family are forced to confront their complicity in the suicide of a destitute local ...
8 years ago
An Inspector Calls
The Cherry Orchard
Andrew Bell
The Cherry Orchard is a play about change. The owner of the Cherry Orchard estate, the fey, irresponsible Madame Ranevskya (Fiona Johnston, pleasingly histrionic), in order to stave off bankruptcy, ...
8 years ago
The Cherry Orchard
The Sleeping Beauty
Andrew Bell
Fairy tales offer us the tantalizing possibility of remaking the world in the image of desire, in tapping into a childlike wish for magic and a belief in impossibility. They also often give access to ...
8 years ago
The Sleeping Beauty
Rope
Andrew Bell
The Macmillan Room in the Oxford Union with its plasterwork, barrel-vault ceiling and neo-Gothic fireplace makes a suitable and fun setting for Patrick Hamilton’s Rope from 1929, in that both ...
8 years ago
Rope
Kenton Theatre, Henley
Andrew Bell
The Kenton Theatre is a delight to visit. It’s centrally located on New Street and there's easy parking. I found the staff super-helpful, the auditorium is comfy and oozes olde worlde ...
9 years ago
Kenton Theatre, Henley
The Sleeping Beauty
Andrew Bell
On a chilly, damp night in Henley, Ballet Theatre UK’s The Sleeping Beauty at the Kenton Theatre on 4th April provided a warming entertainment for those with both casual and specialist interest ...
9 years ago
The Sleeping Beauty
The Browning Version
Andrew Bell
For this centenary of Terence Rattigan’s birth there comes his little masterpiece of realism, The Browning Version. Mr Crocker-Harris, a public school master of Classics about to retire early ...
10 years ago
The Browning Version
The Birthday Party
Andrew Bell
Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party, his first full-length play, opened in London in May 1958 on a Tuesday and closed on the Saturday. Just six people turned out for the Wednesday matinee, and the ...
10 years ago
The Birthday Party
Cinderella on Ice
Andrew Bell
The Russian Ice Stars are in town for their Cinderella on Ice on a mild November night. The last Cinderella ice show I saw (at the Albert Hall) dared in its misguided iconoclasm to dump mice, Ugly ...
10 years ago
Cinderella on Ice
Oxford Proms 2011
Andrew Bell
For this Summer Prom the interior of the Sheldonian, following the recent facelift to much of its seating, sparkled on this sultry August evening.The programme kicked off with Handel’s sinfonietta ...
10 years ago
Oxford Proms 2011
Mapping Wonderland
Andrew Bell
UnderConstruction is a small Oxford and London theatre company specialising in promenade theatre – or “devised, site-based performance” as it modishly prefers to call it.
Stepping out from ...
10 years ago
Mapping Wonderland
Great Expectations
Andrew Bell
Great Expectations is Charles Dickens’ penultimate completed novel and also, handily for the theatre company wanting to turn it into drama, one of his shortest. The challenge for the adapter is to ...
10 years ago
Great Expectations
Incendies [15]
Andrew Bell
Incendies obliquely chronicles the adult life of Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal), an Arab woman living in Canada whose death sends her two children to find the father they believed was dead and a brother ...
10 years ago
Incendies [15]
The Maharajah And The Kohinoor
Andrew Bell
This is a piece about the latter history of the Koh-i-Noor diamond, mined in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh back in mediaeval times and until recently the world’s biggest diamond. As we pick ...
10 years ago
The Maharajah And The Kohinoor
Glengarry Glen Ross
Andrew Bell
David Mamet's 1983 drama based on his own experiences as a salesman in sixties America examines a cut-throat commercial world devoid of humanity. It feels as immediate as it does unsettling for, I ...
10 years ago
Glengarry Glen Ross
The Government Inspector
Andrew Bell
Corrupt and self-serving officials in a small town in the middle of the Imperial Russian nowhere have for donkey’s years been making merry with the funds and handing out jobs for the boys. Out of ...
10 years ago
The Government Inspector
The Deep Blue Sea
Andrew Bell
The Deep Blue Sea is one of Terence Rattigan's most personal plays. A psycho-drama of unrequited love set in the early 1950s, it focuses on Hester Collyer (Fay Lomas), a deeply unhappy married woman ...
10 years ago
The Deep Blue Sea
Magic Thamed Returns!
Andrew Bell
This show was presented by two fresh-faced local magicians, Richard Young and Sam Strange, together with a 'special guest' Paul Megram ("25 years in the business") in the homely ...
10 years ago
Magic Thamed Returns!
The Graduate
Andrew Bell
There's no getting away from the fact that Half Full Theatre's staging of The Graduate, adapted by Terry Johnson from the 60s novel by Charles Webb, operates with the big shadow of the 1967 film ...
11 years ago
The Graduate
Not For The Faint Hearted
Andrew Bell
This walkabout play from Confused Productions is billed as a A Promenade Horror Comedy and fulfils wonderfully well that promise of a box of theatrical delights. Once one has grasped that the ...
11 years ago
Not For The Faint Hearted
The Silver Tassie
Andrew Bell
The Silver Tassie dates from 1929, after Sean O'Casey's creative star was already on the wane. Compared with O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock and The Shadow of a Gunman the play is rarely seen these ...
11 years ago
The Silver Tassie
The Australian Pink Floyd Show
Andrew Bell
It was as good as it possibly could have been. As the last flickers of light and clouds of dry ice drifted away, the audience rose to its feet in rapturous acclaim of... what, exactly? Curmudgeonly ...
11 years ago
The Australian Pink Floyd Show
Edward II
Andrew Bell
Despite being Marlowe's most consistently accomplished play, Edward II (c. 1592) is not often seen these days. Obviously Shakespeare has the market in history plays pretty much sewn up, and the ...
11 years ago
Edward II
Going Down
Andrew Bell
The 1960s are revisited by 4FRONT theatre company with their short (1 hour 20 mins, no interval) play Going Down, written and directed at the OFS studio by Darren Furniss. We have here three men and ...
12 years ago
Going Down
The Red Shoes [U]
Andrew Bell
Lermontov: Why do you want to dance? Vicky Page: Why do you want to live? Lermontov: I don't know exactly why, but.. I must.Vicky Page: That's my answer too. Here is the key exchange at the heart of ...
12 years ago
The Red Shoes [U]
Alice's Adventures Underground
Andrew Bell
Given the intimate association of Oxford with Alice, Tuesday night’s decent-sized OFS audience must have come in most cases not to meet but to renew acquaintance with Lewis Carroll’s larger than ...
12 years ago
Alice's Adventures Underground
Spring Awakening
Andrew Bell
Wedekind's play was written in 1891 but owing to its theme - a critical description of how the emotionally repressed German society of his day dealt with the sexuality of its young people - it was ...
12 years ago
Spring Awakening
Charles Dickens' Barnaby Rudge
Andrew Bell
Barnaby Rudge is an early Dickens' novel dealing with the private and public faces of the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots, published between The Old Curiosity Shop and Martin Chuzzlewit when Dickens was ...
12 years ago
Charles Dickens' Barnaby Rudge
Mesrine: Killer Instinct [15]
Andrew Bell
L'Instinct de Mort, together with its sequel L'Ennemi Public N°1, make up the two-part Jacques Mesrine gangster saga made by Jean-Francois Richet. This is a bio-pic set in the 1960s and 70s, and ...
12 years ago
Mesrine: Killer Instinct [15]
Notorious [U]
Andrew Bell
"Wonderful tosh". Tosh? Oh Miranda, how could you?This great b/w Hitchcock film from 1946 is a film in search of a category. Not a spy story, despite wearing the trappings of one - nor an ...
12 years ago
Notorious [U]
Sweeney Todd
Andrew Bell
Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a 1973 play by Christopher Bond, is given a rousing revival at The Old Fire Station by a cast of nine 17 and 18 year old students from the Oxford ...
12 years ago
Sweeney Todd
Fermat's Room [12A]
Andrew Bell
Sudoku, the mysterious stranger and the classic locked room puzzle all come together in this Spanish thriller.Little is what it seems as several Spanish mathematicians receive details of a puzzle on ...
12 years ago
Fermat's Room [12A]
Lady Windermere's Fan
Andrew Bell
Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) was Oscar Wilde’s first commercial success, and within four years his quartet of glittering comedies had appeared in the theatrical canon where they have remained ...
12 years ago
Lady Windermere's Fan
Doctor Faustus
Andrew Bell
A good production of Doctor Faustus, though unusually for a student production I thought the direction superior to the acting. Set design was imaginatively metallic, the mesh panels allowing for nice ...
12 years ago
Doctor Faustus
A Clockwork Orange (Theatre)
Andrew Bell
This playscript version by Anthony Burgess of his now-notorious novel comes in at 1 hour 30 mins and is played without an interval and in the round (or rather, square) in the subterranean O'Reilly ...
12 years ago
A Clockwork Orange (Theatre)
Confusions by Alan Ayckbourn
Andrew Bell
Alan Ayckbourn has written over 70 plays in a career that seems to be as long almost as that of old Methuselah himself, and I thought it quite odd that producer and director settled on these 5 ...
12 years ago
Confusions by Alan Ayckbourn
Playhouse Creatures
Andrew Bell
April De Angelis's rumbustious dark comedy explores behind the scenes of 17th century theatre life and finds a world where a woman must play as many parts offstage as on, if she is to survive at all. ...
13 years ago
Playhouse Creatures
Dracula
Andrew Bell
I am told that this project took 6 months from idea to fruition, the adaptation of the 1897 novel having been written by three of the "crew". Alas, I felt the play retained too many traces of its ...
13 years ago
Dracula
The Baader-Meinhof Complex [18]
Andrew Bell
Very disappointing. I believe the makers of this spent hundreds of hours exhaustively researching the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, but the problem is the director seems to want to put on screen most of ...
13 years ago
The Baader-Meinhof Complex [18]
Romeo & Juliet
Andrew Bell
The night I saw this, the threat of rain had changed the venue to St Columba's Church. Director and cast coped really well with the more cramped space (and intrusion of pulpit and altar!) and exits ...
13 years ago
Romeo & Juliet
Oklahoma!
Andrew Bell
I belatedly agree with the other two reviewers. This was a first-class show because, not for the first time with one of these student productions, I left the theatre feeling the cast had completely ...
13 years ago
Oklahoma!
Sense & Sensibility
Andrew Bell
Ultimately a disappointing evening. The damp atmosphere, mud underfoot and uncomfortable portable seating were of course outside the production's control, but the 20 mins delay in getting under way ...
13 years ago
Sense & Sensibility
Music on Mondays - Free Lunchtime Concert, With Tea or Coffee
Andrew Bell
The
latest edition of the Music on Mondays at St Michael at the Northgate featured
international pianist Yundi Xu, once of Beijing and now, after 10 years in
Paris, completing her studies at the ...
2 years ago
Music on Mondays - Free Lunchtime Concert, With Tea or Coffee
random
Andrew Bell
10-year-old Damilola Taylor had only been in Britain for three months when in November 2000 he was set upon by youths as he walked home from his after-school computer club at Peckham Public Library. ...
4 years ago
random
Merton College Choir
Andrew Bell
This
was a representative sample of Mozart's sacred music: for Vespers, the evening service in the Christian
churches, a brief Mass, a stand-alone Eucharistic meditation, a form of music ...
2 years ago
Merton College Choir
Oxford Bach Choir – Mozart Requiem, Bach Trauer-Ode
Andrew Bell
Human mortality was the theme of this first
concert of the year by the Oxford Bach Choir, looking back to winter rather
than ahead to spring. Before the interval we heard J.S. Bach's Trauer-Ode, a ...
2 years ago
Oxford Bach Choir – Mozart Requiem, Bach Trauer-Ode
Oxford Proms - Dance and Dramatics With Jocelyn Freeman, Piano
Andrew Bell
St Mary the Virgin Church puts on a hatful of concerts in the course of a year, of which the winter ones can be draughty. But on this close August evening it was so airless that women all around me ...
4 years ago
Oxford Proms - Dance and Dramatics With Jocelyn Freeman, Piano
The Dark by Nick Makoha
Andrew Bell
As we
entered the North Wall theatre space, writer Nick Makoha was already installed
stage left behind an object-scattered table, while in the gloom to stage right
lurked a couple of rows of ...
3 years ago
The Dark by Nick Makoha
The Great Austerity Debate
Andrew Bell
We
read that, on average, local council budgets have been cut by 26% since 2010.
Northamptonshire is bankrupt in all but name; it intends to close 21 of its 36
libraries. Somerset and Lancashire ...
3 years ago
The Great Austerity Debate
