Top form Ockham’s Razor bring circus physicality to Thomas Hardy’s Tess

Coming to Newbury on Tuesday, the fabulous Ockham’s Razor bring their adaption of Hardy’s classic novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles, weaving together acrobatics, aerial, physical theatre, spoken word and an inventive, evocative set. We sent our reviewer to see the show at Oxford to give you the heads-up

Ockham’s Razor: Tess

at the Oxford Playhouse

from Tuesday, March 4, to Thursday, March 6

Review by JON LEWIS

THERE’S a lot of construction in Alex Harvey and Charlotte Mooney’s visually arresting Ockham’s Razor production of Tess at the Oxford Playhouse.

Characters carry planks of wood to construct, and deconstruct Dorsetshire hillsides, barns, homes and stiles, even a tiny baby’s coffin, that create the rustic landscapes and events described in Thomas Hardy’s 1891 novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

The cast uses impressive circus skills to scamper, climb, slide and jump on these structures.

They are tossed into the air and caught by other actors holding planks.

It gives the show a sense of journeying and movement, and that country life is a continual cycle of building and rebuilding.

Tess’s story is similarly constructed, but out of disparate memories as the young woman recalls her life before she is hanged for the murder of her lover Alec D’Urberville (Joshua Frazer).

The play is seen through Tess’s eyes, powerfully narrated by Anna Crichlow. Intriguingly, her alter ego Tess, performed by Lila Naruse, enacts Tess’s corporeal life.

Tess the narrator contextualises the events that shape her, both happy and tragic, while the other Tess exists naively in the moment, every twist and turn a surprise.

The production brings a fluid Shared Experience-like physicality to its scenes. It’s magical when Tess and her farm girl friends warily cross a river, each girl balancing precariously on the side of a rickety walkway.

They spy the handsome figure of Angel Clare (Nat Whittingham) by the riverbank – think Colin Firth’s wet shirt scene in Pride and Prejudice – and each girl in turn, full of suggestive giggles, cadges a list, contorting themselves sexually around Clare’s torso, broadcasting their lust.

However, when it’s Tess’s turn, she acts demurely, suggesting to Clare an innocence that fatefully attracts her to him. He proposes soon after.

Each scene is given titles on a video projection (designer Daniel Denton) as if they are phases of the Moon, a potent symbol of female power.

There’s also a superb soundtrack by Holly Khan’s that alternates from folk to horror-film doom as Tess’s adventures unfold.

It’s a captivating production from a company in top form.

Tess tours to the Corn Exchange, Newbury, on Tuesday (March 18).