Oxford's biggest student newspaper, produced by and for members of the University of Oxford, since 1991.
‘Every bit of this is of enormous nostalgia for me’ Ivo Graham says. ‘At Oxford I read the OxStu, and I applied with my friend and roommate Matt to be music editors…we didn’t get it and we carried that bitterness with us.’ I assure him that since the OxStu let me loose on the music […]
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When a couple of years ago I heard that there had once been a musical focusing on the world’s most famous web-slinging superhero, I remember thinking it was a weird choice for a show subject, but then thought of it no further. This remained the case until I was contacted to review student writers Caleb […]
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How long have you been working on writing this play and how did it come about in the initial stages? I actually started writing Bandages in about 2016, when I was 17. My drama teacher had signed us up for the National Theatre New Views competition and a group of us would meet up occasionally […]
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Think back to your favorite childhood films–the ones you could always be caught watching in the living room, the ones you could quote by heart and see vividly in your mind before you went to sleep at night. Were they action-packed, fantastical, comedic? Why did you like them? Was there a point when you suddenly […]
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With the chills of British winter in full force, the cinema should have a prime position in your weekly schedule. Our love for the cinema has frequently translated into the worlds of movies themselves, with main characters attending the pictures during their journeys. The closed-off space has been utilised to create sinister, tense and foreboding […]
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As Oscar Wilde declared in his preface to The Picture of Dorian Grey, ‘All art is quite useless’. Wilde’s statement falls on deaf ears in Dan Gilroy’s tale of pretentious art dealers and material greed. After taking paintings from the apartment of a deceased artist, Josephina (Zawe Ashton) is cajoled by boss Rhodora (Rene Russo) […]
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In September 1980, 19-year-old Robert Shafran arrived for his freshman year at Sullivan County Community College in upstate New York. Immediately, he was greeted by classmates all around campus: “Hey, Eddy!” they said. “Glad to see you back, Eddy!” Shafran was baffled. “I’m like, my name’s not Eddy. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” […]
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CAKE Night, a brand new scratch night organised by Oxford students Anushka Chakravarti and Bea Udale-Smith, was an event that exuded cheerfulness and energy. Cocooned in Summertown’s North Wall Arts Centre, a rather miserable walk in the rain was well worth the intimate, relaxed geniality and entertainment. The sketch-show setup made for delightfully easy viewing […]
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When I first saw the trailer for the four-part Netflix original, Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, one sentence put me off. In Bundy’s own voice, “I am looking for an opportunity to tell the story as best I can” makes it ominously clear that this is Ted’s moment, his last chance at […]
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This should have been an excellent production. The sets were wonderful, the costumes spectacular and the cast gave it their all. But we just couldn’t hear them for most of the performance. In the first scene, I hoped it was a glitch that would be fixed but when the problem persisted into the second half, […]
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‘Fame’, conceived and developed by David de Silva and directed by Nick Winston, is on for four nights at the New Theatre on George Street. If musical theatre at its most explosive is your thing, definitely go: the show is a hyperactive extravaganza of dance and song, bounding through two hours of dynamic performance with […]
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Made in Dagenham is alive and, most prominently, relevant. At a time when theatre seems to lean towards the escapist, this musical provides us with a (true) story about the issue of equal, or unequal, pay. Everything in this production is well thought out. The musical itself, set in 1968 and concerning the troubling pay […]
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It’s a huge personal investment being both writer and director of a play. Do you feel this production to be very much your own or have there been other influences and voices? To be honest, if there were people who actually wanted to direct my writing I’d probably give it to them. If I had […]
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Pirandello’s Henry IV is student drama at its very best. At an hour long in the small, cosy bowels of the Burton Taylor Studio its unassuming scale allowed for a far greater depth and focus in what was probably only around three weeks of rehearsals. Packed with Stoppardian wit and uncomfortable, confrontational truths I really […]
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Frog’s Legs, by Hughie Shepherd-Cross, is not a play for everyone. Jokes about paying Egyptian slaves in cocaine while they build a pyramid for your wealthy, dead, French heiress wife are not for everyone. Nevertheless, this four-man play manages to walk a thin line between offensive and funny, resulting in an absurd but oddly endearing […]
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Warning: Spoilers ahead. The sequel is a difficult beast. Few directors manage to equal the quality of the original, let alone surpass it. There are some occasional cases of the former (The Godfather Part II, Toy Story 2), and even the latter (Austin Powers 2, The Dark Knight), though these examples are rare specimens. In […]
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We sat down to watch Eat Your Heart Out unsure of what to expect. We knew the play would be about eating disorders, and so it’s unexpectedly funny start was a pleasant surprise. The opening scene was clever, with the actors creating their own sound effects and swaying from side to side conveying the movement […]
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Alice Williams talks Omelette Productions about their upcoming performance of Pirandello’s Henry IV ‘I think it will be really memorable’ says Kathryn Cussons (Henry) ‘it’s the kind of play you’ll see and won’t forget, and that’s quite exciting. There are a lot of shows that you can go to that are enjoyable for that evening […]
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Netflix’s new seasonal special, The Christmas Wedding Planner, received almost universally dire online reviews, with one viewer writing, ‘I created an IMDd account just to warn people what a waste of time awful movie this is. Absolutely horrible’. It is so bad that there has even been speculation that Netflix commissioned it purely to lure […]
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