I’m very old. In the VandA is a pallet with 950 new musicals which I’ve handled through quests and prizes, and I’ve been on the judging panel for the National Alliance for Musical Theatre festival in New York, but my memory is failing, and I sat watching A Theory of Justice trying desperately to remember who wrote it, when it had played in a New York Festival, who published it. Only on leaving and meeting a member of the cast did I realise this is a wholly new, original work from a group of Oxford undergraduates. I was even more impressed to learn this, and I also relaxed my grey cells and realised why I didn’t remember it. Its new dummy. And the packed house (me included) at C venues really enjoyed it. A romp through 2,500 years of philosophy with some cracking songs, a mass of our favourite characters, and enough inner wit to make many of the students around me laugh and nod knowingly. I learned loads and [pet hate coming up} I would have learned even more if there had been a programme !!! Ahhh. But there is a website http://www.demproductions.org/#!characters/c1bl4 and my congratulations to the whole company. I hope the writers will keep working on the show and then submit it to NAMT or NYMF – I think it has a great life in New York and in the University circuit of the USA. Bit of tightening to help with the episodic nature (which is inevitable) and something to kick us forward a little way in. And then hopefully they will keep writing new works.
Book by Eylon Aslan-Levy, Ramin Sabi & Tommy Peto; Music by Ramin Sabi & Toby Huelin with Eylon Aslan-Levy, Tommy Peto & Illias Thoms Produced by DEM Productions