‘No nativity has ever gone well or to plan’ says Flint Street Nativity director

If you are beginning to tire of the season of goodwill before it has even started, then what you need is a good dose of BMH’s latest offering The Flint Street Nativity.

The perfect alternative to the family-friendly panto/musical, this is a grown-ups only nativity that goes horribly wrong, providing some well needed chuckles between Christmas shopping trips.

Director Ed Blagrove, who plays the innkeeper, is enormously excited about finding the play by the writer of Calendar Girls, having been invited by the OFS to fill a December slot with something funny.

So is it a farce? “Not in the classical sense of grown-ups knowing what they want and getting it wrong,” he says, “because we are playing seven-year-old’s hopelessly and naively unaware of the chaos and panic unfolding around them, which is a big challenge because it’s quite hard being 30 and playing a seven-year-old.

“Luckily I have lots of nephews and nieces to study, and it ensures that there is always a nice subplot going on somewhere. Because no nativity has ever gone well, or had everything going according to plan,” he says.

As for taking on the big Christmas shows, Ed remains distinctly unperturbed: “Christmas is always busy in Oxford because it is so culturally diverse and active, which is why I love it here. But we are confident, that we have the same high standards as everyone else and are able to put on a good show to help ease the rigours of the year and the end of the school term with some light entertainment.

“Because at Christmas, more than any other time of year, people like a good laugh and prefer something like this to a Shakespearian tragedy.”

Local theatrical company BMH does those too. If you ventured down to Oxford Castle this summer you may have caught its adaption of As You Like It which then aired at Stratford and Dorchester Abbey.

In fact, BMH’s founding production was Macbeth in 2006, staged at the JdP Theatre thanks to a £20 donation from each of its three members. Popcorn came next at the old OFS, then the Full Monty “which was quite daring, and hard to find local actors willing to get naked,” Ed tells me. Sherlock Holmes at the new OFS followed in 2012 and a WW1 Armistice Day piece commissioned specially.

“We don’t want to be pigeon-holed so we just put on plays that we quite fancy, not stuff that’s safe but drama that is different and quirky. We like to take risks and experience different things and after 10 years we think we have done enough for people to know who BMH are,” Ed says.

Ed is also heavily involved in MYCO (Musical Youth Company of Oxford), where the BMH founders met, as well as directing Les Miserables for Oxford Operatics in the Spring, and jumping back on the BMH bandwagon for the summer’s Oxford Castle Shakespeare offering, “We put in the hard work and BMH is a tight knit group who knows each other well. It’s great fun but we are very productive, so we are delighted to be invited back to OFS,” Ed confirms.

“It seems a fitting end to our 10th anniversary.”

Where and when
The Flint Street Nativity
OFS
Tonight and tomorrow
www.ticketsoxford.com or 01865 305305.