Here you’ll find some quotes from reviews of my previous work.
The Scotsman – “ Oates writes with lively poetic flourishes and a good comic ear”
Broadway Baby – “ this is a fascinating, bittersweet story. Through the vivid personal experience of Bruce Blakemore, the faceless Silk Road is humanised,”
Three Weeks – “Like a hybrid of ‘Snatch’ and ‘Starter for Ten’, this is both an adolescent adventure and a grotesque, criminal caper. Gritty and very well written by Old Vic New Voices playwright Alex Oates, ‘Silk Road’ is the best thing to come from its namesake”
Quotidian Times – “Alex Oates has provided Baxter an excellent script to work with: imaginative, well constructed combined with well thought out and provocative dialogue. The setting is minimal but this only adds to the plethora of talent and energy seething from the stage. I would recommend this show to anyone and in a year when I have yet to see a disappointing piece of drama and the standards are high ‘Silk Road’ is the best yet by quite some way.”
Postscript Journal – “Alex Oates has created something very modern with this play, which allows the dialectical dialogue to press occasionally into the poetic with the delicacy of Jim Cartwright or Dylan Thomas. As well as being extremely funny, the text is perfectly balanced, with cleverly woven recurring motifs that draw the whole thing together in satisfying unity.
Despite being a play about an abstract online space, Silk Road is a completely human story, light on the jargon and heavy on the heart-strings. The show is elegant and well-composed, but with an honest, unpretentious charm, and is an absolute must-see for this festival.”
The Public Reviews – “This is new writing at its best, well-staged and brilliantly acted, if only more festival shows were like this.”
Fringe Guru – “It’s a long time since I have been quite so enthralled by a piece of theatre. This is theatre at its very best. The writing by Alex Oates is smart, humorous and in places powerfully touching, and it truly was so good that I would cheerfully click the refresh button and start watching it all over again. If you are looking for a powerful and entertaining play this Fringe, then search no further.”
Festival Journal – “The story struck the perfect balance between humour and tragedy. Relationships, stereotypes, and tropes are all played for laughs, whilst difficulty, unfairness, cruelness, and absurdity are all treated with genuine pathos and humanity.”
A Younger Theatre – “While it may be tempting to think simplicity is the key to success in such tight time pressures, Alex Oates’s remarkable Zombie Nation proves the opposite to be true. Using the dilapidated The Playboy of the Western World set to create an eerie, tense atmosphere, this thriller turns out to be an achingly funny and devastatingly sad encounter between old school friends, who are still struggling with the baggage of their youth. One minute Ben Stott is tugging at our heartstrings with a tale of unrequited love, the next he is playing a Backstreet Boys song on a ukulele – the complexity of Zombie Nation stands out for showing what brilliance can be achieved in such tough conditions.”
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