Theatre

THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR

The Theatre, Chipping Norton

Sunday, September 29 at 7.45pm, and touring, see below

www.flintstocktheatre.com

A sell-out success in Oxford in 2012, Flintlock Theatre’s production of the classic comedy The Government Inspector is about to embark on a tour, starting at Chipping Norton, with other dates around the county (Friday, October 4 at The Neighbours Hall, Great Milton; Saturday, October 5 at Cassington Village Hall; Friday and Saturday, October 18 and 19 at the Old Fire Station). Flintstock is an Artist in Residence company at the Oxford Playhouse, and their trademark dance and mad-cap physical storytelling style creates a hilarious experience, punctuated by a fast and furious ‘klezmer’ (Jewish folk music) soundtrack, which also doubles as the interval entertainment. The story tells the tale of Anton Antonovich, a mayor in small-town Russia, who is in the midst of a crisis. A government official is on his way to inspect his district, but the streets haven’t been swept for months, there are chickens in the courthouse and Anton himself has been somewhat liberal with the mayoral accounts. The inspector is only too willing to overlook these misdemeanours in exchange for the odd generous bribe. But is he quite who he says he is, or will Anton and his band of buffoons finally get what’s coming to them?

Art

A FANTASTICAL ANIMAL ALPHABET

Compton Verney, near Banbury

October 5 to December 15, Tuesday to Sunday, 11am-5pm.

Admission: £11.80 (£13 with Gift Aid)

www.comptonverney.org.uk

This exhibition draws inspiration from Animal Alphabet, a set of linocuts created in 1979 by British artist and designer Enid Marx (1902-1998). Fantastical Animal Alphabet is a set of new original prints by artists from Leicester Print Workshop. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to visit a pop-up printing studio within the exhibition. Here they can find out more about various printing techniques and meet artist-in-residence Kate Da’Casto who will be producing work throughout the exhibition in response to the Curious Beasts exhibition, which explores our enduring curiosity about the animal world through beautiful and bizarre imagery found in prints of the 15th to the early 19th centuries in the British Museum’s collection.

Theatre

THE MOUSETRAP

New Theatre, Oxford

October 8-12 at 7.30pm, plus 2.30pm matinees Wed and Sat

Box office: 0844 871 3020 or www.atgtickets.com

The Mousetrap is famous around the world for being the longest-running show in the history of British theatre — with over 25,000 performances during its 60-year history. And to celebrate its Diamond Jubilee the play is going on tour (away from London’s St Martin’s Theatre, its home of the last 39 years), for the first time. The play begins with a group of people gathered in a country house cut off by the snow discover, to their horror, that there is a murderer in their midst. Who can it be? One by one the suspicious characters reveal their sordid pasts until at the last, nerve-shredding moment the identity and the motive are finally revealed. In her own inimitable style, Dame Agatha Christie has created an atmosphere of shuddering suspense and a brilliantly intricate plot, where murder lurks around every corner.