A Review of Papillion Productions’ Such Entanglements and Carnage

Every deb dreams of marrying a gardener… but does every deb dream of accidentally inviting her fiancé and her students to a cabin on the same weekend and all of the students ending up dead? Honestly, it does not sound like my ideal romantic weekend. This was, however, the premise behind Savanna Leboff’s play which graced the Burton Taylor Studio a few weeks ago. As an audience we were transported back to the interwar period and there was undoubtedly the sense of entering the classical period of educated minds, leaving us with a nostalgia for the times of Virginia Woolf and Brideshead Revisited.

The first thing to strike audiences about the play was the set itself, with the sofa, coffee table and record player, there was the sense that we were truly entering a rustic cabin. It is perhaps not a typical decision to have such a highly furnished BT set and yet there was not the feeling of an overcrowded space, but rather just the right amount to properly immerse the audience into the scenes. This sense of immersion was wonderfully completed through a sequence of movement during a scene change. There was an impression that the characters were dancing through the changes just as they would dance through life, beautifully and more than a little carelessly. The action taking place in these moments took place gracefully in a sped up form. These were all of the moments which were both minor and imperative to the plot, somehow not getting lost despite their placement. This coming and going enabled the plot to progress more quickly towards the climax in a way which suited the time allocated to the production, tackling the guidelines of the performance slot through an innovative approach.

The world within which this setting placed us was one filled with dramatic irony, humour and the echoes of discussions familiar to most within the city. To contrast this elitist approach to education was the character of Castor, with his gardening vocation, aspirations of being a private detective and attempts to master the accent of his fiancé’s peers. Tom Freeman’s character was frankly hilarious, adding a witty spark to the academic setting and reminding us of the pretention that seeps from the very walls of the colleges. This is not to say that it was a comment upon the Oxbridge culture, but more some perfectly timed comic relief that managed to present Castor as down to earth rather than the clown of the performance. A gardener by trade, Castor takes on the charade of being a private detective amongst the chaos of his fiancé’s calendar mishap. While the success of this particular decision was perhaps questionable given the outcome of the evening, it certainly added an element of dramatic irony and tension upon the stage. Hoping to defuse some of this tension and merely get through the weekend without too much chaos ensuing was English professor Alma, played by the talented Esme Rhodes. Being both a debutante and a professor she appeared to belong to that wonderful world of the 1930s perfectly and Rhodes’ performance captured the nuances of this role. Being the matriarch of the group, Alma must navigate the politics while also encouraging their literary exploration. Such politics include Leopold’s declaration of love for her and Lance and Laurie’s mutual obsession with winning Daphne’s heart. Katie Rennie’s Daphne navigated the complications of the meeting through an apparent obliviousness to Lance and Laurie’s infatuation, leading to many interesting and amusing interactions not to mention her own death. Rennie brought a wonderful ease of grace to the performance, with both her movement and the believability of her facial expressions drawing us to fall in love with her just as the characters did.

Running as a theme through all of the characters was the sense that they were all (or the younger members of the party at the very least) ultimately drama queens. Without such a build up of madness and somewhat narcissistic behaviour, the absurd ending would not have worked quite so well as it did. The character of Leopold displayed this trait more than other, his penchant towards dramatic behaviour arguably lending a significant hand to the outcome of the play. Unfortunately, the declaration of love that the character makes was not wholly believable, with the impression before hand being that the character was in fact gay. Or perhaps that was rather the point. Believability and the suspension of disbelief was a boundary upon which the whole play appeared to teeter, occasionally like in the case of the ending leaning far more towards the surreal. That is not to say that I did not like the ending. In fact, looking back on it, I feel that it was by far the most suitable ending to the chaotic weekend which was beginning to unfold and certainly one of the tidiest ways through which the romantic weekend planned could recommence! Even if four dead bodies would have dampened the mood just a little.

My overwhelming impression of this play was one of chaos, a chaotic tangle of intentions played out in a wonderfully aesthetic manner. Packed with educated discussion and thoughts, this play was perfectly suited to its Oxford venue. This was perhaps not the Romeo and Juliet story that the characters had wished for, but the quirky and unexpected ending foreshadowed through the literary references was striking. With their blue dresses, Rennie and Rhodes brought us into a world of nostalgia with such ease and kept us enthralled until their parting of ways.