It’s great to see that Ros Adler’s hilarious black comedy Jubilate! is returning to play at Oxfringe. Last year this one-woman show had audiences both laughing out loud and dabbing away at sad tears as her characters took us through their interwoven tales, which are often hilarious, sometimes desperately poignant but always gripping and insightful.
This is because Adler is a superb storyteller with a genius for switching lightly from one very different character to another without missing a beat.
Use of a simple set and small but significant props make this a very smartly delivered piece of theatre. The show tells the stories of four women belonging to a church congregation who are suffering from a variety of life’s challenges, some of them quite dark and disturbing.
They belong to the coterie surrounding the vicar’s ghastly wife Anna, an egotistical, unintuitive, control freak who heartlessly rules the roost over the needy women of her husband’s parish.
Her monstrous charisma enables her to dish out smug advice and cruelty while professing Christian love. But though it pains me to admit it, she is actually rather magnificent in her awesome self-ignorance. Jubilate! crams a lot into its one-hour playing time and it’s an hour well spent. It’s on at Copa Upstairs on June 22 and 23.
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