Monday 15th June 2026

Theatre

Slow down, you crazy child: What Oxford student theatre can learn from garden plays

Student theatre strives to be as professional as possible, but the annual garden play offers something unique: permission to have fun.

‘Our House’ in the middle of Beaumont Street

'Our House' ultimately becomes not just a story about crime or morality, but about the vulnerability of growing up and the frightening uncertainty of trying to decide who you are.

Testing my patients: ‘The Effect’ at the BT Studio reviewed

Necessarily navigating the difference between ‘side effects’ and reality, the play strikes a fine balance between what one thinks and what one feels.

‘The Harrowing of Hell.26’ reviewed

Fundamentally, The Harrowing of Hell.26 is a finely acted, well-produced play which was enjoyable enough to watch, but its conclusion is unsatisfying.

An unhealthy obsession? The cult of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Cats’

I must confess – I am quite obsessed with Cats. Not the animal, of course, but Andrew Lloyd Webber’s seminal 1981 musical and the 2019 film...

Coriolanus: Review

Coriolanus is set in the early stages of the Roman republic, in the midst of plebeian revolts for grain. Caius Marcius (Tom Hiddleston), nicknamed...

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Interview

Video may have killed the radio star, but Jazz Hands Productions’ radio play A Midsummer Night’s Dream aims towards resurrection, encouraging audiences to “escape...

Review: The Globe’s Macbeth

Touted as one of their ‘relaxed performances’, the Globe’s Macbeth seeks to “break down walls to cultural access and empower teenagers to develop their...

“I don’t want realism, I want magic”: NT Live’s A Streetcar Named Desire

“Don’t you just love these long rainy afternoons when an hour isn’t just an hour—but a whole little piece of eternity dropped into your hands—and...

Being True to the Book

Adapting books for the stage or screen seems to be completely irresistible. We are compelled to take words on a page and transform them...

Are we blind to the need for blind casting?

Perhaps the biggest debate surrounding ‘gender-blind and colour-blind’ casting (with which actors are cast regardless of the traditional race/gender of their role) is the...

Bare derrieres for bums on seats? Shock value on stage

By the time Iqbal Khan’s Anthony and Cleopatra reached its dénouement at the RSC, we were almost three hours in and, despite the production...

Stage Adaptions: Midnight’s Children

Iconic, encyclopaedic, and kaleidoscopic, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children has garnered a healthy sense of both wariness and respect from critics and readers alike over...

A ‘Clean Break’ from crime?

After mastering the downward facing dog-chaturanga-upward facing dog transition, my isolation development peaked and it was time to do some work. I watched the Donmar Trilogy’s...

The Last Five Years: Review

00 Production’s performance of The Last Five Years pulls off the ambitious project with surprising grace. I say surprising because bringing a musical to the small screen,...

The Last Five Years- Preview

Having watched the preview, I am excited to see and listen to the full-length production of the musical. Both Maggie Moriarty as Cathy and...

Review: Richard II

Not Way Forward Productions has managed to put up a brilliant virtual version of ‘Richard II’ in pre-recorded video format. It is well-executed -...

Ralph Fiennes: from Hamlet… to Lear?

With his aquiline nose, translucent skin and deep pale eyes, Ralph Fiennes certainly makes an impression. And that is even before he speaks or emotes -...

NT Live’s Twelfth Night: Review

The French philosopher and moralist Jean de la Bruyère once remarked “life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those...

‘The Last Five Years’: discussing adaptation, distance and theatre’s survival

Imagine if you could see how your relationships would end as soon as you started them. In The Last Five Years, this premise is...

The intimacy of isolation: reflections on performing alone

“Lights up. The actor is alone” - type aspiring playwrights all over the world, unconsciously in unison. I anticipate reading this line (or something similar) over...

A Taste of Honey Today

A Taste of Honey, a play by the Salford-born writer Shelagh Delaney, debuted in 1958 and is widely considered to be a landmark work...

The era of digital drama

When you imagine ‘going to the theatre’, an image of you in your dressing gown, sitting on the sofa and eating popcorn probably doesn’t come to mind....

Richard II, coronavirus and creativity – in conversation with Dorothy McDowell

It seems like there’s enough drama happening in the real world to justify dark theatres and empty stages. The Edinburgh Fringe has been cancelled,...

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