ROUGH JUSTICE Oxford Playhouse November 5-10, 7.30pm, 8pm and 2.30pm 01865 305305/oxfordplayhouse.com Television journalist James Highwood has made his career out of challenging the British Justice System. Now it is Highwood who is challenged when he is brought to court on a charge of murder. Admitting the killing, but pleading manslaughter, he perversely chooses to defend himself, pushing the tolerance of the court to its limits. Tom Conti stars in this explosive courtroom drama, debating whether it can ever be morally or lawfully justified to take another person’s life. This gripping play, full of twists and turns, makes the audience judge and jury.

Music FROM STAGE AND SCREEN Sheldonian Theatre October 27, 8pm.

Box Office: 01865 980980 Mozart’s best-loved piano concerto, No. 21 in C Major (Elvira Madigan), forms the centrepiece of a concert in which the Oxford Philomusica, under its conductor Marios Papadopoulos, is joined by the outstanding Mozart interpreter and Sony classical artist David Greilsammer, hailed “a classical musician of exceptional probity and freshness” by the Telegraph. Also in the programme are Three Film Scores for String Orchestra by Takemitsu — a jazz-inflected score for Jose Torres, a desolate depiction of Black Rain and a waltz from Face of Another — and Richard Strauss’s neo-baroque suites Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.

Exhibition THREADS OF SILK AND GOLD: ORNAMENTAL TEXTILES FROM MEIJA JAPAN Ashmolean Museum November 9-January 27, Tues-Sun 10am-6pm Admission £6 (£4 concessions) While many are aware of the beauties of the Japanese kimono, this exhibition introduces the lesser known, but equally spectacular, ornamental textiles made for western homes during Japan’s Meija era (1868-1912). This is the first exhibition of Meija textiles – which influenced Impressionist painters – outside Japan. It has 40 examples from the new collection of the Kiyomizu-Sannenzaka Museum in Kyoto, and from the Ashmolean. Theatre THE REAL INSPECTOR HOUND Burton Taylor Studio October 30–November 3, 7.30pm Box office: 01865 305305 or oxfordplayhouse.com University of Oxford students present this classic Tom Stoppard play. Prepare to laugh hysterically as you watch two theatre critics — Moon and Birdboot — pontificate on the third-rate, country-house mystery unravelling before them. Farce and surrealism blend to hilarious consequence when the critics are drawn into the action. Theatre BEAUTY AND THE BEAST New Theatre, Oxford November 17–December 1, 7.30pm Box office: 0844 871 3020 atgtickets.com/oxford Oxford Operatic Society invites its audience to one of the most popular romantic stories, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. The production has a cast of more than 50 and is directed by Simon Tavener. Featuring Mrs Potts and Chip, double act Lumiere and Cogsworth, Gaston the town hero, the beautiful Belle and fearsome Beast, the musical goes from a provincial French town through shadow-filled woods to the Beast’s castle, backed by Alan Menken’s score.