Three Plays

I recently had a three-week period in which I saw one play each weekend (in addition to other performances, which I'll discuss later).

The first was The Rivals, a play by Richard Sheridan. I previously read it in my 10th grade English class. (By the way, this play is where words like "malaprop" originated.) I saw some humor in reading it, but seeing it performed was unsurprisingly greatly superior. The Oxford student newspapers complained that the performance was "traditional," but I was quite pleased with that. I liked it a lot.

I then saw a very non-traditional theatrical version of Alice - Through the Looking Glass. It was enjoyable (and it worked, in spite of its unusual way of presenting things) and some of the ideas were very clever, but I think I would have preferred a traditional version. Also, I was disappointed by a absence of the Cheshire Cat, the absence of the caterpillar + bong, and the minimized role of the Mad Hatter.

Finally, I saw a version of Sheridan's A Trip to Scarbarough that seemed to be based pretty much on the 1982 revival version. It had a couple of very clever ideas, but unlike Alice this one pretty much failed to work. I was a bit disappointed overall.


During the third of those three weekends plus the following Monday, I also saw Alison Moyet in concert (more on that in another blog entry) and a stand-up comedian named Mark Watson (who was ok but nothing special).