Reviews by Peter Tickler
Two Trains Running
Peter Tickler
The setting for August Wilson’s play Two Trains Running is Pittsburgh in 1969. Martin Luther King is dead, but the civil rights movement and Black Power are alive. The play takes place entirely in ...
5 years ago
Two Trains Running
Snowflake
Peter Tickler
Oxford’s Old Fire Station Christmas show is no traditional story. I would not expect it to be so. The building prides itself on being both a centre for the arts and a place where the homeless can ...
5 years ago
Snowflake
Agatha Christie’s A Murder Is Announced
Peter Tickler
It is 70 years since the Sinodun Players was founded and the company is still going very strong. Its best known president was Agatha Christie herself, and it is therefore no surprise to find them ...
6 years ago
Agatha Christie’s A Murder Is Announced
Sherlock Holmes: The Final Curtain
Peter Tickler
Any play about Sherlock Holmes will draw an audience. Simon Reade’s latest one, being performed at the Oxford Playhouse this week, is a respectful, fun and at times sad tale, which draws cleverly ...
6 years ago
Sherlock Holmes: The Final Curtain
Travesties
Peter Tickler
Tom Stoppard’s Travesties takes as its theme three major historical and literary figures, James Joyce, the Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara, and Lenin, and weaves them all into an extraordinary whirlpool ...
6 years ago
Travesties
Love From a Stranger
Peter Tickler
Agatha Christie’s Love from A Stranger started life as short story called – rather unexcitingly - Philomel Cottage. Later she dramatized it as The Stranger, but it was never performed on stage. ...
6 years ago
Love From a Stranger
Julius Caesar
Peter Tickler
Julius Caesar may be a play written over 400 years ago about events which took place over 2000 years ago, but it is still very modern in its main themes. The Studio Theatre Club’s production in ...
6 years ago
Julius Caesar
A Judgement in Stone
Peter Tickler
Ruth Rendell’s novel A Judgement in Stone is generally reckoned to be one of her finest achievements. This is all the more remarkable because on the first page of the book, the writer tells us who ...
7 years ago
A Judgement in Stone
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Peter Tickler
Creation Theatre is well established as a staple of Oxford’s summer entertainment. Now in its twenty-first year, it shows no sign of growing old gracefully (thank goodness). A Midsummer Night’s ...
7 years ago
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Dare Devil Rides To Jarama
Peter Tickler
The Dare Devil of this new play by Neil Gore is Clem Beckett, a famed dirt track rider in the 1930s. Jarama is the battlefield of the Spanish Civil War on which he and his fellow Briton Chris ...
7 years ago
Dare Devil Rides To Jarama
Circleville, Circlevalley
Peter Tickler
Playwright Lamorna Ash has been making a name for herself at Oxford University and her latest work reinforces her reputation. Circleville, Circlevalley is a claustrophobic one-hour piece, set within ...
8 years ago
Circleville, Circlevalley
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Peter Tickler
There are few more explosively intense and claustrophobic plays than Edward Albee's classic
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. It is a drama which places a considerable burden on its four actors, but ...
8 years ago
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Trumbo [15]
Peter Tickler
The witch hunt conducted against writers, actors and others working in the Hollywood in the 1950s is one that needs to be told. It is only surprising that it is Jay Loach, best known for the ...
8 years ago
Trumbo [15]
Learning How To Die
Peter Tickler
The publicity for Learning How to Die tells us not to be put off by the title. That is perhaps understandable. Although death is less of a taboo subject than it once was, a recent poll found that the ...
8 years ago
Learning How To Die
Season's Greetings
Peter Tickler
Alan Ayckbourn’s recreation of a family Christmas in his play Season's Greetings is both very funny and appalling. The Oxford Theatre Guild chose it as the climax of its 60th year, and they carried ...
8 years ago
Season's Greetings
Witness for the Prosecution
Peter Tickler
125 years after Agatha Christie’s birth, BreakaLeg Productions have brought Witness for the Prosecution to life again in the wonderful Unicorn Theatre’s Abbey buildings. Courtroom dramas are not ...
9 years ago
Witness for the Prosecution
Comedy of Errors
Peter Tickler
One of the pleasures of Oxford summer evenings is the proliferation of outdoor Shakespeare on show for the tourist and the residents. The Comedy of Errors is one of the most accessible of the ...
9 years ago
Comedy of Errors
Dial M For Murder
Peter Tickler
Frederick Knott’s Dial M for Murder started life as play on the BBC in 1952, before transferring to the London stage and then to Broadway to great acclaim. But it is, of course, best known now ...
10 years ago
Dial M For Murder
Enough Said [12A]
Peter Tickler
Enough Said is a delightful, funny and sobering film about the problems of human relationships. Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Albert (James Gandolfini) take centre stage as two divorcees ...
10 years ago
Enough Said [12A]
The Happiest Days Of Your Life
Peter Tickler
Perhaps the first thing to say about John Dighton’s play The Happiest Days of Your Life is how much fun it remains more than 60 years after its creation. A boys’ school finds ...
12 years ago
The Happiest Days Of Your Life
The Man Who Was Thursday
Peter Tickler
The Studio Theatre Club’s decision to stage of G K Chesterton’s The Man who was Thursday: A Nightmare was a bold choice for an amateur company. The subject matter is a dazzling and at time ...
13 years ago
The Man Who Was Thursday
Kindertransport
Peter Tickler
On the day that cuts to the arts hit the headlines, it was a refreshing delight to go to the Unicorn theatre in Abingdon and see an intriguing play in an improbable setting. While the big boys on the ...
13 years ago
Kindertransport
The Importance Of Being Earnest
Peter Tickler
What a delight it was to leave the freezing night outside and enter into the warmth of The North Wall arts centre in Summertown. There we were able to enjoy Tomahawk’s (www.tomahawktheatre.co.uk) ...
14 years ago
The Importance Of Being Earnest
The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band) [15]
Peter Tickler
[WARNING: SOME HAVE DESCRIBED THIS REVIEW AS CONTAINING "SPOILERS". READ AT YOUR OWN RISK -ED.]
Austrian director Michael Haneke has said that his ideal viewer is "one who leaves with questions". ...
14 years ago
The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band) [15]
Harry Brown [18]
Peter Tickler
Anything Clint Eastwood can do in Gran Torino, Michael Caine does almost as well in Harry Brown, facing down the punks who are threatening to destroy his community. In fact, as a piece of ...
14 years ago
Harry Brown [18]
Is That A Bolt In Your Neck?
Peter Tickler
There was no bolt in anyone’s neck as far as I could spot in this highly entertaining spoof horror comedy, but there was plenty else. Inspired by above all the 1930s horror films of James Whales ...
15 years ago
Is That A Bolt In Your Neck?
Oxford United: The Complete Record
Peter Tickler
To call your book The Complete Record isn’t exactly underselling your product, but in the case of Martin Brodetsky’s new book on Oxford United, it is as near as damn it true, and no true fan ...
15 years ago
Oxford United: The Complete Record
A Family Affair
Peter Tickler
An evening with Timothy West, Prunella Scales and their son Samuel West. How could it go wrong? Well it's hard to imagine, short of them not turning up - and turn up they did. Timothy has only just ...
15 years ago
A Family Affair
Gaslight
Peter Tickler
Tomahawk, an Oxford based company that seeks to combine the talents of Town and Gown, have produced a thoroughly entertaining version of the Victorian thriller Gaslight. It was written in 1938 by ...
15 years ago
Gaslight
A Study In Scarlet
Peter Tickler
Performed by the Domino Players at Lains Barn, near Wantage Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet introduced to the public of Victorian Britain a man who would become the iconic detective of ...
15 years ago
A Study In Scarlet
Gertrude's Secret
Peter Tickler
Anyone who dares, as Benedick West has, to put a collection of monologues on stage runs the risk of being compared - and almost by default compared unfavourably - with Alan Bennet's "Talking Heads". ...
16 years ago
Gertrude's Secret
