Christopher Gray finds Secret Theatre’s set sparse, casting without boundaries and the results excellent

Listen, do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell? I promised, so I won’t tell — yet. But skip forward a paragraph or three and all will be laid bare concerning Show 2 from the Secret Theatre Company at Oxford Playhouse.

In the city till Saturday, the team from the Lyric Hammersmith has brought five productions, at various venues, for which prospective patrons are invited to book with no idea what they’ll be seeing. Call this idea bold or barmy — I incline to the latter — it perhaps explains why the audience was on the thinnish side as Show 2 opened last Thursday.

No matter. This major offering of the collection is performed again tomorrow and on Saturday. My strong advice would be on no account to miss it.

With spoiler alert now flashing — beware! beware!! — potential audience members should turn the page while others remain to learn that the play is arguably the best from the man who would be judged America’s finest playwright but for the existence of Eugene O’Neill.

The company’s take on Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire also prompts the bold-or-barmy? question. I shall boldly go this time.

“I don’t want realism. I want magic.” Director Sean Holmes has clearly taken heed of what is said by Blanche DuBois (Nadia Albina), the central figure in this shattering Deep South drama, after her carefully constructed fabric of deceit has been ripped apart and this refined teacher (supposed) is revealed as something very different.

Casting is both accent-deaf and colour-blind, with all on stage sounding English and Adelle Leonce (St Lucia/Yorkshire) as Stella, sister to the fading Southern belle. Holmes insists we must be disability blind, too, since this Blanche’s right arm ends at her elbow, with no attempt to disguise the fact.

Such is the magic of theatre that our disbelief remains suspended, even faced with a New Orleans apartment (designer Hyemi Shin) presented in unadorned white slab walls and the all-important bathroom — where Blanche signally fails to wash away her sins — just a wooden cupboard on wheels.

Fiercely physical, the acting is all top-class, with Sergo Vares delivering the star turn as Stanley, Stella’s beefcake husband, unforgiving at Blanche’s clumsy intrusion into their household and devastating in his punishment of it.

Leo Bill is outstanding as Blanche’s deceived wooer, Mitch.

The soulful soundtrack is stunning. A CD please.

Secret Theatre: Show 2
Oxford Playhouse
Until Saturday
01865 305305 or oxfordplayhouse.com