Culture

In the maelstrom of reinterpretations of misunderstood Homeric women and Greek tragedy revivals, the show’s lyrics stand out for consistently centring the core themes and questions asked by the ancient texts themselves.

Netflix’s popular and influential show Sex Education has received great acclaim for its honest portrayal of sexual interactions between secondary school teens. However, its...

COP26 has brought forth a multitude of images which embody the climate crisis: koalas clinging to rescue workers in Australian forest fires, polar bears...

Out of the Blue, an Oxford University a cappella group, has released its Christmas charity single for 2021. This year, the group is supporting...

There is a certain magic in the escapism that art offers, in our ability as humans to completely fall into worlds and emotions that...

Beth Simcock’s bright and colourful large-scale work The Zodiac lights up the exhibition space at Oxford’s Modern Art Gallery. A recent Ruskin graduate and one of...

Kid A and its sister album Amnesiac helped introduce electronic instruments to alternative rock, and were a risky sonic departure from Radiohead’s guitar-based and immensely successful OK Computer....

A shock decision by Spotify has fundamentally shaped the concept of the album in the digital age. Adele’s new album, 30, can no longer be shuffled as...

'I didn’t know how to articulate this at the time, but watching West Side Story I encountered for the first time a quality I’ve come to look for in great musical theatre: the distillation of complex emotion into song in a rounded yet deceptively simple manner. Here was a prime example of showtunes’ unique ability to bring human feeling to a higher plane.'

CW: Body image When I learnt that a new Barbie film is coming out in 2023, my first reaction was excitement. The batch of...

"Yet the message carried in this little soap opera bubble is nonetheless heartening: that the queer community is supportive and inclusive, and that for the very vulnerable, it’s often more loving and nourishing than the institutions and relatives that have failed to accept them."

"[...] it is these painfully truthful human relationships that elevate it from an evocatively written commentary on medical ethics to a truly perceptive piece of art."

2nd May 1997 manages to use a pivotal moment in political history to explore three very different relationships and the difficulties they face. It is performed with grace and humour, using the political events as a mirror that reflects the difficulties of each pair’s situation.

"We’ve got 19, 21, and 25 to hear Adele sing about growing up, breaking your heart, and the power of belonging. 30 is another project personal to a stage in her life, and regardless of whether it’s for everyone, it is a simply brilliant listen."

"Clocking in at just under thirty minutes, this cycle was so absorbing that I nearly forgot the other songs with which the concert began."

Thursday, November 11, 2:00 pm, picture this: bustling isles, shuttering cameras, and sales of thousands of dollars happening on the spot. A promising opening...

"In 2017, two of the most popular singles in America were bilingual: ‘Despacito’ and J Balvin’s club classic ‘Mi Gente’ which gained incendiary power thanks to a Beyoncé cameo. In both cases, the English-speaking singers made notable effort to acknowledge the dominance of Spanish-language pop by singing in Spanish. Indeed, despite the commercial benefits that these artists certainly received perhaps the most important outcome of their success is their cultural impact."

"The lyric ‘you took my weed and two years of my precious time’ makes me laugh each time I hear it in the song ‘leave my mind’ – ironically, the song can quite easily leave my mind as soon as I’ve finished listening to it."

I wrote Quartet over a year and a half ago in early 2020, sitting down for an hour every morning to chip away at it as my way of getting through a term in lockdown. Having handed over my script to the trusted hands of Alex Foster (director) and our stunning actors, I was itching to find out how Quartet has developed.

As a show with only two characters, the use of four actors in this production was truly innovative. It was able to showcase their talent in the best possible way, highlighting the actors’ strengths while elevating the characters to a level above how they have been traditionally interpreted on stage.