Fresh off the back of Our House and Macbeth, Cross Key Productions presents an original three-hander focused on the complexities of grief and young love. Produced by Madi Boutcha and Adam Peterson, the show is Louis Bennyworth’s first dalliance with the art of writing musicals. The show offers a heartfelt premise and a talented cast, and is set to move to the Edinburgh Fringe once its run in Oxford is complete.

In Oxford’s Michael Pilch black box theatre, we meet Euan in the midst of his grief, faced with the mammoth task of preparing a eulogy for Helen, his mother. The stage is set with a wooden set of ladders, mugs dotted, and half finished notes fanned across the floor in piles, the result of Euan’s inner turmoil. His girlfriend, Isla, seeks to aid him in this journey, but struggles to meet his needs whilst remembering her own. Over the course of the play, we learn more about Euan’s relationship with Helen, and in turn her relationship with Isla. We find a complex woman, at times too independent and brusque, who has raised Euan to be a man of great moral strength but also great anxiety. 

The show’s greatest credit is undoubtedly the earnestness with which it portrays grief. Thomas Perry’s performance captured the simultaneous pain, anxiety and guilt that characterises loss, and provided an engaging centre for the show. As a character, Euan seems lost, turned young again by his mother’s death. We also get to see Isla’s grief (portrayed by Katie Gill), a more subtle and shared pain, both at the death of a woman she once knew, and the impact that had on the man she loves. The most thoughtful performance of grief, however, was that of Helen herself. Nicole Palka’s astute portrayal of Helen’s willful ignorance of her own ill-health, and her decision to keep that from Euan and Isla for as long as possible is one of the heavier points of the musical, and arguably the one that stays with you the longest after curtain call. 

The production flourished in its depiction of childhood wonder and lent the play an added element of thoughtfulness. The prop department offered a visual display that invited us into the mind of Euan as he visualised his mother’s stories. As he shares these tales with Isla, the production does well to exaggerate the contrast between Euan’s childlike ignorance and Isla’s increasing discontent with the story’s overall message. 

The use of shadow, though underutilised, was effective in reminding us of the looming figure of Euan’s mother in his life, for better or for worse. It also served well in displaying the nature of memory, as her stories invaded his brain and sailed through, whilst conversations and moments carry on in real time. 

Bennyworth’s first foray into the musical genre is commendable. The ending polyphony in particular serves to show the beauty of the three-hander, with Perry, Gill and Palka offering emotive harmonies for a fitting final flourish. Yet, the lyrics themselves demand a more thoughtful reconsideration. Some lyrics felt clumsy (“we focus on it superfluously”), whilst others leant too heavily on overused metaphors that cheapened the emotive meanings behind them (“like a kite flying high on the evening breeze”).

This thought should be extended to the story more broadly – in part, it felt unfinished. Whilst the eulogy is finally delivered, and conversations are had, the denouement feels surface level, and largely a pretence. Strings of plot that were pulled out over the course of the show were left unaddressed. Isla’s critique of Euan’s mother triggers a collapse in their relationship: but only for five minutes. By the next scene the issue remains unresolved and yet the characters have moved on – Isla’s comments feel pointless, offering no real material change to the way Euan views his mother. What could have been a tale of coming to terms with the reality of inconsistent parenting and its legacy, ended up uncertain where it stood.Similarly, the mother’s character remains underdone. So intense is Euan’s mythologising of her, and so little time is devoted to her character, that she feels more like a plot device than a character in her own right. 

By far the most fleshed out character, Isla, does not receive a fitting ending either. Working at an internship during the day, she is uncertain where her life will lead, and the role Euan will play in it. At times unlikeable, her character feels most realistic out of the three. Euan’s grief places her in the position of carer, and though she loves him and wants to support him, she fears the relationship will swallow up her life, leaving her with nothing that is her own. The conflicted feelings are captured beautifully by Gill. Still, the play sets a perfect grounding for a study into how to handle the grief of a loved one, and how it interacts with relationship dynamics, and yet offers only a surface level commentary on both its difficulties and its solutions. 

Through the course of an evening the relationship ebbs and flows from places of safety to places of real distress and uncertainty. The extent of the disharmony between them at times makes the ending unbelievable. Though they both sing of a new certainty and hope, little has been done to address their resounding fears. In the final few moments, the ending felt like one of forced hope, where really there were deep wounds temporarily glued together. 

I wasn’t too sure what to expect when I went to see Wide Eyes Productions’ The Slip last week (written and directed by Orla Wyatt and produced by Milo Ghiandai). In two years at Oxford, I had somehow never made it to a piece of original student writing, and I arrived armed with all the usual, slightly cynical expectations: clunky, over-earnest monologues, low-budget visuals straining under ambition, and an audience politely disengaged. 

However, opening night of The Slip immediately dispelled all those assumptions. From the moment I entered the Burton Taylor Studio, I was gripped. It is not a large space, but its intimacy only heightened the emotional stakes of Wyatt’s story, bringing the audience uncomfortably close to every revelation, accusation, and fracture in the group’s relationships. 

Based on a true story once heard by the writer-director, The Slip centres around a fatal car accident on a country road. The premise is deceptively simple: Archie (Callum Beardmore) is driving friends Christina (Maisie Lambert), Billy (Sam Drury), and Daniel (Alex Smith) back from a house party during the early hours, when they hit a woman walking by the side of the road. As police questioning unfolds under the scrutiny of Inspector (Cait Kremenstein), the truth emerges piece by piece. What initially appears to be a tragic accident is gradually revealed to be something darker: Billy, drunk and reckless in the passenger seat, had grabbed the wheel and swerved towards a pedestrian with the chilling joke: “ten points for a pedestrian”. 

The strength of Wyatt’s script lies not in this final revelation, but in the moral fallout that follows. Rather than constructing a conventional whodunnit, The Slip asks what happens when a group of friends become bound together by a secret. That a fox crossing the road had caused the car to suddenly swerve. The tension comes not from discovering who is responsible, but from watching each character negotiate guilt, loyalty, and self-preservation, all complicated by alcohol-fuelled uncertainty and a tangled web of personal relationships.

Callum Beardmore’s Archie carries much of this emotional burden. While the police investigation provides the play’s structural framework, Archie’s simmering resentment towards Billy provides its emotional core. As layers of their shared history are stripped away, we learn that Billy has long occupied the role of the charismatic golden boy: more popular, more confident, always seemingly one step ahead. Archie, by contrast, is left wondering why he has remained in Billy’s orbit for so many years, even after leaving university. Beardmore impressively navigated this transition from controlled anxiety to explosive anger, culminating in a final act that felt genuinely unsettling. 

Sam Drury’s performance was equally compelling. While it would be easy to play Billy as a straightforward villain, the performance avoided this generalising caricature. Billy’s recklessness is undeniable, yet the play also exposes his insecurity and self-destructive tendencies. Drury excels at capturing the contradictions at the heart of the character: the effortless charisma that draws others into his orbit, alongside a deep immaturity that ultimately proves destructive both to himself and those around him. As his confidence is gradually stripped away, moments of vulnerability begin to emerge, complicating the audience’s response to him without ever excusing his actions. The result is a character who remains frustratingly human even as the audience’s sympathy evaporates, embodying the play’s wider exploration of toxic friendship, masculine insecurity, and the devastating consequences of thoughtless cruelty. 

Caught at the centre of these tangled loyalties is Christina (Maisie Lambert), perhaps Wyatt’s most tragic figure. Blackout drunk at the time of the accident, she is kept in the dark by the others for much of the narrative. As a result, she becomes a focal point for the group’s collective dishonesty. Chrstina’s complicated relationships with both Billy (her ex-boyfriend) and Archie (who she has been sleeping with) contribute to this, adding another layer of messiness to the group’s dynamic. Whether her involvement with Archie is genuine affection or an unconscious attempt by him to wound Billy remains unresolved, and the play is stronger in its refusal to provide a definitive answer. Lambert brought real depth to the role, conveying Christina’s mounting moral unease as she gradually realises that those closest to her may be concealing the truth about the accident. 

Meanwhile, Alex Smith’s Daniel functioned as the uneasy mediator of the group, caught between competing loyalties and increasingly aware of the moral cost of silence. His constant back and forth between truth and lies provides an important counterpoint to Archie and Billy’s increasingly volatile rivalry, grounding the play’s larger questions of guilt and accountability. As an ensemble, the cast succeeded in creating a web of friendships that felt genuinely lived-in long before the audience’s arrival. Their interactions carried the easy familiarity, private jokes, and unspoken tensions of relationships forged over years, making the gradual disintegration of those bonds all the more compelling to watch. By the play’s conclusion, not only the mystery had been unravelled, but also the friendships themselves. 

The technical elements of the production deserve equal praise. Juliet Taub’s lighting design made particularly effective use of the Burton Taylor’s intimate space, helping to delineate shifts between police interviews the night before and the present moment. At key points in plot, changes in lighting and colour subtly heightened the sense of unease without ever becoming distracting. Ice Dob’s sound design complimented the production’s visuals, building tension and underscoring the emotional weight of the play’s most dramatic revelations. Together, these elements elevated the play from an Agatha Christie-like whodunnit to a psychologically-charged thriller.

Opening night of The Slip demonstrated an impressive confidence from Wyatt, who serves as both writer and director. The play as a whole had a remarkable command of both character and atmosphere. The result was a tense and morally complex drama that explores not only the consequences of a moment’s recklessness, but also the fragility of friendship, the corrosive effects of guilt, and the stories we tell ourselves to avoid confronting the truth. 

Wyatt’s script handled the pacing of these weighty themes and gradual revelations with remarkable assurance. This was no mean feat given the play’s fragmented structure, which moves fluidly between interrogations on night of the accident, its aftermath, while also shifting between competing perspectives and imperfect recollections.

As the lights came up, I found myself still turning over the production’s questions – perhaps the strongest endorsement a piece of theatre can receive. The Slip is proof of the calibre of Oxford’s original student writing and theatre, as what could have been a simple mystery became a compelling study of guilt, friendship, and the consequences of a single reckless decision. Sharp, unsettling, and emotionally intelligent, The Slip is a striking showcase of the ambition and talent behind Wide Eyes Productions, while establishing Wyatt as a writer-director to watch.

The market for AI creative tools has gone from a handful of options to an overwhelming buffet in a remarkably short space of time. New products launch almost weekly, each promising to be the one that transforms your marketing, and for a small business owner or a marketer trying to make a sensible choice, the sheer number of options is more paralysing than helpful. Cutting through the noise starts not with the marketing claims but with understanding what actually separates one tool from another.

Look Past The Brand Name

The first thing to understand is that the brand on the box often matters less than what is inside it. Many creative tools are powered by the same handful of underlying AI engines, which means two products with very different names and price tags can produce surprisingly similar results, while two that look alike can perform completely differently. The quality of your output depends heavily on which engine is actually doing the work.

Tools that expose a selection of Adobe Firefly partner models give marketers room to test which engine produces the cleanest product shots before committing budget to a particular workflow. Understanding this saves you from chasing brand names and marketing hype, and lets you focus on what really matters, which is the quality of the output you can actually achieve for the jobs you actually need done.

Match The Tool To The Task

There is no single best tool, only the best tool for a given job, and grasping that will save you a lot of wasted money. An engine that produces gorgeous, atmospheric lifestyle imagery may be surprisingly weak at clean, simple product visuals, and one that excels at illustration may struggle with anything photorealistic. Performance varies enormously by task.

So be clear with yourself about what you actually need most. Is it social media graphics, product imagery, illustrations for blog content, or something else entirely? Identify your primary use case, then judge every tool against that specific need rather than against a general impression or an impressive demo built around someone else’s requirements.

Test Before You Commit

Most tools offer a free trial or a limited free tier, and you should always make full use of it before paying for anything. The best test is a simple one. Run the same realistic brief, ideally one drawn from your actual work, through every option on your shortlist and compare the results honestly, side by side.

The differences are usually obvious once you see them laid out next to each other, and a short, structured test like this prevents an expensive mistake. It is far better to spend an afternoon comparing tools than to commit to a subscription and discover three months in that it cannot do the one thing you most need.

Factor In The Practicalities

Output quality is important, but it is not the only thing that should drive your decision. Think hard about ease of use, because a slightly weaker tool that your whole team can operate comfortably often beats a powerful one that only you can drive. Consider how well it fits into your existing workflow, the licensing terms for commercial use, which genuinely matter for a business, and the ongoing cost as you scale up your usage.

The Content Marketing Institute has long argued that consistency and a good fit with your wider strategy matter more than any individual piece of software, and that wisdom applies neatly to AI tools. The best choice is the one that supports your overall marketing plan and that you will actually use, not the one with the most impressive feature list or the flashiest launch video.

Keep Your Brand Front Of Mind

Whichever tool you ultimately settle on, the goal is content that looks like you, not generic AI output that could belong to anyone. This is where a lot of businesses go wrong, producing technically impressive images that have no connection to their brand. Establish your style, your colour palette, and your tone of voice, then apply them consistently across everything you generate. The technology is the means, and your brand identity is the end it should serve.

A Simple Way Forward

If you feel paralysed by the sheer variety of choices on offer, the answer is to simplify rather than to keep researching endlessly. Pick one realistic task that you do often, test two or three options against it properly, and commit to the best fit for now. You can always reassess later as your needs grow and the tools evolve, which they will, quickly.

The marketers who win with these tools are not the ones who chase every shiny new release or agonise over finding the theoretical best option. They are the ones who choose deliberately, based on their actual needs, and then get on with using their choice well. Clarity about what you need beats endless comparison every time.