A World Elsewhere

Before it monopolised all the money, houses and hope that might have gone to us, the babyboomer generation had problems of its own; problems that take centre stage in this understated drama from Times journalist Alan Franks.

Set in an 1968 Oxford University both immersed in and removed from the febrile events outside – war in Vietnam, protests in Paris, strikes at home – ‘A World Elsewhere’ follows unworldly students Toby (Steffan Donnelly) and Pippa (Sophia Sivan) as their attempts to get her shoplifter brother pardoned bring them into contact with a wider world.

The wider world substantially manifests in the form of Michael Swatton’s Elliott, a Rhodes scholar with a complicated past and an understanding of world politics exponentially greater than that of Toby and Pippa.

‘A World Elsewhere’ is a modest but likeable piece of writing, that evokes a time when the dreaming spires crunched into forcible contact with the immediate now. Its greatest strength is that it does so without undue flashiness or melodrama: for the most part this is just a play about three people having a chat in a living room.

Unfortunately Sally Knyvette’s production doesn’t really help it along. The casting is pretty ropey, with Swatton verging on charisma-free as the supposedly exotic older American, while Donnelly and Sivan’s hyper-RP deliveries are alienatingly excessive. While one can relate to the ideas, it’s difficult to relate to any of the people: as a human drama, this production feels locked in its own ivory tower.

By Andrzej Lukowski