Burton Taylor

Tuesday 16th  - Saturday 20th Februrary; 9.30pm

“This is a wonderfully directed, cleverly written play that finds the perfect balance between silliness and sophistication.” Liv Edwards ★★★★★

“I knew I was going to be biased going to see The Aphorist but I wasn’t prepared for the nerves, the heart-stopping moments when the rhythm of a scene changed and I wondered if they would forget a line,” Olivia Reilly ★★★★★

The Aphorist is a piece of New Writing so Olivia Reilly has been going to rehearsals, interviewing writer and director Fred Sugarman-Warner and producer Joe Charlton. Click here to read the blogs, interview and Fred’s favourite scene.

The Aphorist ★★★★★

Review by Liv Edwards

Fred Sugarman-Warner’s production is a quirky, energetic, intelligent masterpiece.  At the start of the play, we find the Aphorist, Harry, wallowing in a state of self-imposed hermitage, doing what an aphorist does best – “It is better to be wanted for murder than not to be wanted at all” – reciting his own contrived maxims. Throughout the play, Harry is cajoled, caressed and entreated into acknowledging the world outside by his best friend, a performance poet called Rudolph and Rudolph’s doting plummy-lemongrass casserole baking-Hindu girlfriend Cynthia.  Harry’s world shrinks before our eyes as we realise the extent of his misery and that his aphorisms are not ridiculous but deeply depressing.

This is a wonderfully directed, cleverly written play that finds the perfect balance between silliness and sophistication. The home grown marrow that frequently takes centre-stage is both a ridiculous courgette-like appendage and poignantly one of Harry’s only comforts, the only object he holds on to when things get tough. The entire play glitters with hilariously absurd one-liners that I was frantically scribbling down throughout the performance. However, I have since realised that in listing my hoard of favourites I would be depriving all who read this review of the spontaneous laughter the lines invoke when heard first hand. So, I will only deign to mention one here that Rudolph says to Harry as he saunters around the room “If you think about it, people should naturally prefer performance poetry to clubbing”. Intrigued?

All three actors effortlessly carry off the play’s unique brand of humour, making each character seem more real than a mere parodic caricature. Agnes Meath Baker had honed Cynthia’s cut-glass voice to perfection, her mannerisms and expression oozed Cynthia’s proud self-assurance. Felix Legge as Harry’s doggedly loyal friend Rudolph has perfect comic timing and succeeds in making his character simultaneously endearing and irritating.  In particular, Felix’s delivery of the ‘Death poem’ was a triumph that had audience members roaring with laughter.  As the Aphorist himself, Matthew Monaghan carried the weight of the entire play on his shoulders and made it seem effortless. He captured the ridiculousness of Harry’s solitude in episodes like the chess game against himself and yet he was never far from suggesting the tragedy of Henry’s situation. By the end of the play, Matthew had the audience so firmly in the palm of his hand that he could make us laugh with a subtle sideways glance.  He was at his strongest in moments where the comedy and tension reach a climactic pitch and Harry is at his most exasperated, when he raises his voice to the rafters of the B.T., his face screwed up in frustration, his body rigid with tension.

This is a truly unique production, and my only reservation is that it is an acquired taste. There were plenty of audience members who were swept along in the play’s depiction of the hilarious dynamic between two eccentrics who consider themselves to be unacknowledged artistic geniuses, however, I couldn’t help but sense that there were audience members who were not quite so enamoured with the idea. But that, I suppose, is the nature of comedy – it can’t possibly please everyone.

Go and see this play, written and directed by an Oxford student, it is one of the most exciting plays I’ve seen all term.

The Aphorist ★★★★★

Review by Olivia Reilly

The Aphorist exceeded all my expectations, revealed in all its glory as an original, hilarious, tragi-comedy for our times (and not a little for our Oxford student lives). All the cast members raised the bar, Matthew Monaghan especially bringing more energy to the role than in any rehearsal I had seen, blending intense pathos and hysterical comedy with skilful ease, and holding our sympathies with his at times entirely unlikeable character. Our laughter was at times guilty, nervous giggles breaking out at times when we could equally have had tears in our eyes, as Harry’s character collapsed before us, and yet, through Fred Sugerman-Warner’s fine, perceptive writing, and the actors’ ease with each other and the script, the humour was irrepressible, the atmosphere full of it. Felix Legge proved with his exquisitely embarrassing, irrepressible zest and great comic timing that he truely has funny bones, while Agnes Meath Baker played Cynthia with deft and mannered superiority, skilfully concealing her natural need to laugh with a petulant drawl and self-conscious adulation of ‘Rudey darling’, which subsided with bitter realism in her cruel destruction of Harry’s fragile self-imagining as ‘the aphorist’.

Matthew and Felix managed to convey a genuine sense of a relationship between them that had depth of resonance as their mutual dependence was made painfully clear through moments of revealing tenderness and frustration, facilitated by intelligent direction. Hunted out in his solitude, where ‘nothing has happened, nothing ever will’, Harry’s aphorisms, his marrow, even his air piano and apostrophising of pawns, are gradually forced out into the open where the futility of his secret hobby is revealed for the meaningless trivia it is, concealing only his loneliness and struggle for purpose.

I knew I was going to be biased going to see The Aphorist but I wasn’t prepared for the nerves, the heart-stopping moments when the rhythm of a scene changed and I wondered if they would forget a line, moments too when I realised the unfairness of my insight, when I noticed a mistake that no one could have been aware of had they not seen the scene three times before! But surrounded by people in a well-filled theatre I knew my vested interest was not leading me astray. The applause at the end said it all if the unstoppable laughter hadn’t already – a triumph. Treat yourself to a visit to this absolute must-see.