Culture

“What is a good life?”: The Standard of Living in review 

“What is a good life?” This axiological question, asked earnestly in the opening lines of James Graham’s The Standard of Living – playing at Theatre Royal Haymarket until December 12 – is often overlooked by the fractured and hyper-specialised discipline of economics.

Diverse voices: ‘Inshallah, Madonna, Inshallah’ by Miljenko Jergović 

‘When he created Earth and these lands upon it, when he divided people into...

Art as protest on university campuses

CW: rape. This week, Cornell University has made headlines as prosecutors reopened an investigation into...

Good grief! Why do we feel for the death of fictional people?

Whether it’s a mild sniffle or full-blown tears, I always end up feeling a bit ridiculous about the whole ordeal when it’s over. I mean, it’s not real, is it? Why do I waste my grief on things that haven’t happened, that will never happen?

Straight to Nairobi

Cherwell superstar Josh Lobes has found fame in foreign parts.

1968 and I’m Hitchhiking Through Europe by Joe Mack

We suggest you use this for kindling when you're hitch-hiking rather than attempt to read it

Invisible by Frank Egerton

We review a book with the least interesting cover art ever

Freedom of Speech: where are the boundaries?

'Write whatever you like', many people say. It's not that simple...

Watching ourselves

Alice Salvage looks at why people go to the theatre, and what its future is likely to be

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

A show from the Oxford Imps based on audience suggestions and home-brewed sound effects is audacious-and brilliant

S1l3nce

Our reviewer won't give too much away about this Derren Brownish magic show-except that it left her amazed.

The Truth

Four stars for this Discworld production, the latest in an Oxford tradition

Renegade

The latest offering from the Oxford Revue

The Ideas Man by Shed Simove

A book by the inventor of 'Clitoris Allsorts' fails to titillate or raise titters

Raphaël Zarka – Geometry Improved

We find French 'found forms' fail fundementally

The Class

Rees Arnott-Davies finds Palme d'Or winning French drama a lesson in expert film-making

Buried Child

Sam Shepard's pretentious, flawed play gets better acting than it deserves

Confusions

Dialogue isn't the only thing that's funny about this Aykbourn play

All the World’s a Stage: Shakespeare improved

How Shakespeare's admirers thought his work needed a few rewrites

The Recruiting Officer

This eighteenth-century play is entertaining, but the depth of characterisation got lost in the space of the Oxford Playhouse

A Clockwork Orange

Good acting in the central role can't redeem a confused adaption of Anthony Burgess's novel

Napoleon, complex?

Michael Docherty find The Shadow of Enlightenment's exciting style cannot mask its dull substance.

Viva Glasvegas!

Joseph Weir heads to the O2 Academy to talk to Glasvegas at this year's NME Tour

See no evil, hear no evil

Three Monkeys, Nuri Bilge Ceylan's most recent cinematic venture, is imbued with a mesmeric brilliance from start to finish.

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