Review: COLLOQUIUM by Katherine Stockton at The Hen & Chickens Theatre 1 – 4 August 2022

‘The characterisation was nowhere near as clear or detailed as the esoteric arguments’ ★★★

The most prestigious institutes of learning in Britain are the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. They are extremely hard to get into, make you work phenomenally hard writing a myriad recondite essays, let you eat in time-hallowed halls where linear descendants of Boris Johnson pelt you with bread rolls, and when you leave you wait six years, send your college a tenner, and convert your BA to an MA without additional fuss. Then you're ready to run the country.

Colloquium is an examination of the wavy ways an Oxford college selects its students. There are fiercely contested views on method, on direct or indirect questions, there is a battle for legacy between the retiring old school don of the English department and his jackal-like successor, there is a nervous girl from Wales and an unbearably smug boy from (probably) Berkshire. She doesn’t think she’ll get in; he knows he will. There are also two interpolated monologues, one by a research student comparing Oxford clever with pub-quiz clever, and the other by a woman seeking funding for a study of art galleries.

The characterisation was nowhere near as clear or detailed as the esoteric arguments over admissions standards, and those arguments were hard to follow. The scanty characterisation made it hard to care, apart from the generation of visceral and violent antipathy to the successful applicant, which was the play’s intention and a fine piece of acting by an uncredited actor. The monologue by a boy unsure whether the knowledge he has acquired at Oxford transfers into the actual world felt like the set-up for a play that dealt with stuff that matters to people other than Oxbridge applicants and their interviewers.

In the interests of full disclosure, John Osborne might have described my university as 'not even red brick, but white tile.' So, what do I know?

COLLOQUIUM  

The Hen & Chickens Theatre 1 – 4 August 2022 7.30pm / Camden Fringe Show

Box Office: https://camden.ssboxoffice.com/events/colloquium/

Golden Goose in Camberwell

5 & 6 August

Box Office https://www.goldengoosetheatre.co.uk/colloquium

Written by Katherine Stockton, and directed by Steven Bowyer, with a cast of six.

Reviewed by Chris Lilly

Chris Lilly read Drama at Hull University in the 70s, stage-managed a bit, spent 8 years as a community arts worker in Tower Hamlets, did the occasional tech job, then taught in East London and participated in shedloads of community theatre. Since retiring from teaching, he has acquired an MA in 'Theatre' from the University of Surrey and indulged a passion for live performance anywhere in London courtesy of his Freedom Pass.