Thursday 28th May 2026

Culture

‘Would you mind if I asked you a troubling question?’:  ‘Ulster American’ in review

Arun Lewis reviews Grá Productions' staging of David Ireland's 'Ulster American', and finds fault in an otherwise fascinating performance.

Subs, dubs, and AI flubs: Lost in film translation

How hard could it be to watch an entire film in German when I could not even introduce myself in the language? Quite hard, it turns out.

Barker & Co. Booksellers: Oxford’s newest independent bookshop

A new secondhand bookstore opened in Oxford city centre last week. Located in the Golden Cross shopping centre, just off Cornmarket Street, the bookstore stocks hundreds of secondhand books, ranging from accessibly priced paperbacks to rare and expensive antiquarian first-editions.

‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ in review

The Harris Manchester Players immersed Oxford’s inhabitants in the delightful world of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest this May.

#Cancelled: Disillusionment in the age of Twitter #MeToo

Watching Weinstein movies like Pulp Fiction, or as more recently discussed, listening to music by R Kelly, in a way are acts of undue forgiveness.

Review: House of Improv presents: I’m an Improviser Get Me Out of Here! – ‘relentlessly silly’

House of Improv presents an improvised hour of moon shoes, jacuzzis, and reckless fun

Satiating Sá-Carneiro

Exploring the life and work of an acclaimed Portuguese writer, at the heart of which lies the desire to discover.

Review: Gods are Fallen and All Safety Gone – ‘a relationship fraying at the edges’

Rose on a Rail's latest production provides a touching and intimate look into a complex mother-daughter relationship.

The Forgiveness Arc

Here are some of the best musical theatre songs centred around forgiveness

Resisting bodily urges: extreme asceticism in medieval female saints’ lives

The modern-day 'anorexia memoir' has its origin in the genre of medieval saints' lives

Mary Queen of Scots review: ‘artistic licence breathes life into history’

Rourke brings a fresh take on the fraught relationship between two women ruling in a man’s world.

Jenny Holzer at the Tate: An Exhibition for Instagram

Olya Makarova reviews Jenny Holzer's exhibition at the Tate Modern.

Pictures in the sandcastles

The artist as revolutionary is a wonderful image, and perhaps one that is forced upon creatives of our day. However, it is imperative to recall both the political power of artistic media, and the inherent ideology of created works.

Review: Frog’s Legs – ‘light-hearted façade with a dark core’

Shepherd-Cross' new play treads a fine line between offensiveness and good taste - is it all the better for it?

The Pitchfork Disney Preview – ‘a play of delight and disgust’

The Pitchfork Disney shows at the BT Studio this week

Create and destroy

“The urge to destroy is also a creative urge” Mikhail Bakunin

The Human Impulse

Investigating the social and biological imperatives behind art

Sexualisation in music: liberation or objectification?

Art and creative expression have always made up our social and sensitive nature, from telling stories, to performing primal dances, to painting scenes of human experience on cave walls.

Why do we write?

We write for ourselves, for the reader, and for wider society.  And I think that’s probably a good enough reason to write an article for Cherwell.

Enron Preview – ‘financial collapse made tangible’

A preview of the Theatre Goose and Sour Peach Productions' play at the Oxford Playhouse this week.

Projections of time: film and fashion

The importance of costumes in heralding new trends and evoking the past

Art, Intimacy and the Avant-Garde

The Barbican displays different kinds of ‘modern couples’ in an immersive blend of love and art

Beautiful Boy review: powerful, painful, poignant

Beautiful Boy is unlikely to have an unintentional glamorising effect. We witness the oblivion of being high before the inevitable crash down to a deeper and darker place.

Review: Antony and Cleopatra – a star-studded Shakespeare

Lawrence Li is impressed by the National Theatre’s opulent imagining of a Shakespearean classic

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