Oxford's oldest student newspaper

Independent since 1920

Theatre

Review: Moth – ‘An unabashed, piercing piece of theatre’  

An acute attention to detail marks Moth as a standout in the world of student theatre.

Review: Endgame – ‘Nothing is funnier than unhappiness’

The play invites us to laugh at our powerlessness in the face of an apocalyptic fate.

Review: NUTS – ‘a harrowing portrait of deceit and desire’

NUTS works in its ability to keep the audience on edge, waiting for the delicately thin emotional facades the characters have built to come crashing down. 

Ovid meets modern identities in Sap

This will certainly be a loose retelling of Ovid’s Daphne and Apollo, but a dutiful one nonetheless.

“A piece of theatre that feels incredibly close and genuine”

Nina Crisp finds much to praise in 'I Know You', Sam Moore's postmodernist piece of new writing

“The play-text should never have been selected for performance”

Will Austin finds 'Five Women Wearing the Same Dress' to be outdated and hackneyed at the Michael Pilch Studio

“A tense and deeply disturbing piece”

Emily Lawford is left shaken by 'Orca', an award-winning drama about sacrifice and redemption

“Fun, thoroughly amusing and worth watching”

Freya Thorpe praises Ambriel Productions’ musical ensemble

A day in the life of… a lighting director

I came to Oxford with very little backstage experience. It’s really easy to get into the scene—TAFF (the University network of backstage crew) is...

“If you’d told me a year ago I would never have believed it”

Katie Sayer chats to Callum Cameron, the writer and star of They Built It, No One Came – coming to Oxford following a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe and a sell-out week in London

An odd mix of Sophocles, Stoppard and Wilde

Katie Sayer gives four stars to Simon Callow's revival of a 1970s classic

A day in the life of… an assistant director

Rebekah King describes her role assistant directing Brontë, Polly Teale’s successful 2005 period drama

“An aspirational first performance”

Jacob Greenhouse is impressed by 'Blatavsky's Tower', the first production from newly founded company

“A little-known gem”

Thomas Player gives four stars to 'Dear Brutus', an underrated classic

“Sharp humour with profound philosophical underpinnings”

Giovanni Musella looks ahead at a new production of Blavatsky's Tower

“Elegant, witty, sophisticated, remarkable”: The ‘Philanthropist’

Katie Sayer and Emily Lawford meet the all-star cast of Simon Callow's production of 'The Philanthropist'

“Injections of humour amidst the Beckettian existential angst”

Emily Lawford is impressed by Leveaux’s revival of Tom Stoppard's meta-theatrical tragicomedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Love and humanity scattered amid the horror”

Emily Lawford enjoys a genuinely frightening production of Macbeth

A word from the stalls

Miriam Nemmaoui speaks to a tipsy audience member at Suzy Cripps’ 'The Optimists'

“Even while expecting an hour of postmodernist drama, I couldn’t have been more unprepared”

Katie Sayer recovers from the gripping and disturbing 'Marat/Sade' at the Keble O'Reilly

A disturbing worldview undercut by patchy acting

Olivia Cormack finds that it's not just the costumes in Contractions that need ironing out

“More gentle slap than sucker punch”

Katheryn Thompson finds Made in Dagenham lacking in political grit

“A bold and unapologetic production”

Surya Bowyer is frustrated by a powerful production of 'Suspiria' which comes so close to greatness

Anything but a simple fairy-tale

Ebere Nweze is impressed by this unnerving and sharp new adaptation of Wilde’s short story

Follow us