OWs in the News (continued)
those living on the frontier. In the words of one reviewer it was a “rich reworking that probes the ugly underbelly of Wild West mythology. There’s all the flouncing gingham and cowboy beefcake anyone could crave in this exuberant staging of the 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, yet bracingly, it’s much more tough than twee. Jeremy Sams’s production never lets us forget that frontier life is lived at gunpoint”. It has been a productive time: as well as Oklahoma! Jeremy Sams is the book writer for Amour, a musical fantasy produced in London and on Broadway, tinged with “love, longing and imagination” and requiring magic on stage. In addition, he has translated Le Prénom (What’s in a Name?), a comedy from 2010 by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patellière where a group of friends argue over the naming of a child. The play, which Jeremy Sams also directed, opened at the Richmond Theatre in November 2019. Mark Lawson’s Guardian interview with Jeremy on 23 March 2020 looked at how television comedies are inspiring the theatre. Adaptations include a musical version of Only Fools and Horses and a reworking of The Good Life by Sams, who explained how he had approached his work – “I sat down to construct it as a play, but it seems to be in the DNA of sitcom that it falls into half-hour chunks. So I effectively now have four halfhour acts, with an interval after two, that lead into each other and form a single story.” He has substantially redeployed three episodes from the series – including those in which Tom and Barbara first decide to go green, a baby pig is born and Margot sings in an amateur production of The Sound of Music – and shaped a storyline of his own around two dinner parties.
18
S tuart N unn (2006-12) has made his third appearance at the National Theatre in The Visit, starring Lesley Manville and adapted by Tony Kushner from the play by Friedrich Dürrenmatt.
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A ugust 2019,
Australian cricketer Steve Smith’s concussion lead to the first ever use of a concussion substitution in international test cricket, The Times looked to Dr Sam Barke (2000-05), Medical Director of Return2Play, for comment as to whether he had been properly managed on the field of play. Sam said: “There will, rightly, be people questioning whether the decision for Smith to continue on Saturday was the right call. Certainly for the casual observer watching on TV it looked like Smith had sustained a head injury but he went on to satisfy his medical team, who would have used a barrage of tests, that he was well. Unfortunately we know that in some cases players appear well and then go on to develop signs and symptoms later. That is why it is crucially important that, even if players return to play, they are monitored closely as has been done with Smith. It should be noted that outside of professional sport there is no place for pitch-side “Head Injury Assessment”. Players with a suspected head injury should be removed from play and not be returned on the day of injury and until they have received medical attention.”