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·21st November 2025

Under Milk Wood: A comfort play

Emily Cunnington

This November, Cartesian productions brings to life Dylan Thomas’ 1954 Welsh radio drama, inviting us to tune into the dreams and personalities of the small fictional Welsh town, Llaregubb (which humorously reads ‘bugger all’ backwards.) In the Keble O’Reilly Theatre, the audience is transported into the night as drapes hung low overhead create an intimate atmosphere riddled with anticipation. Yet, this night transitions to day, with the sky appearing to rise – a credit to the fantastic stagecraft. The audience is introduced one by one to the quirky characters and enjoys a celebration of human warmth and folly through Thomas’ uniquely musical use of language.

·6th November 2025

A View from the Bridge, or a study in tension

Sophie Harrison

A View from the Bridge opens with an orchestral swell and a premonition of crime. Over the music, a lawyer’s voice replaces the Greek chorus of old, commenting on the tragedy to come. From the outset there’s a familiar sense of inevitability. Surely, this won’t end well; someone will die. Yet there are glimmers, here and there, of an escape route – compromises and warnings that the protagonist fails to heed. It’s an old formula, but the play feels modern, anchored in the 20th century and resonating in the 21st. Directed by Rosie Morgan-Males, Labyrinth Productions brings Arthur Miller’s masterclass in tension to the Oxford stage.

·23rd October 2025

New take on Chekhov’s classic drama ‘Uncle Vanya’ comes to the Keble O’Reilly

Hannah Stewart

‘There’s a dark, demon thing – desperate to destroy – lurking in all of you. Nothing is spared. Not trees,...

·15th October 2025

Man and his double: The Talented Mr. Ripley at the Oxford Playhouse

Sophie Harrison

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) is one of those films whose iconic scenes stay with you: green shorts, a rowboat, the opera... Adapted and directed by Mark Leipacher, the stage adaptation reimagines the iconic film featuring Matt Damon and Jude Law. Following on from the 2024 Netflix series starring Andrew Scott, The Crown’s Ed McVey proves himself worthy of filling some big shoes. His performance offers a portrait of a man who is erratic, explosive, whiny, desperate, violent, clever and lonely.

·11th October 2025

The enigma of Alan Turing: Breaking the Code at the Oxford Playhouse

Sophie Harrison

In 2014, Benedict Cumberbatch delivered an outstanding performance as Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, capturing his pivotal role in deciphering the Enigma code. Before that, there was Breaking the Code. Since 1986, Hugh Whitemore’s play (based, like the film, on Andrew Hodges’ biography) has staged the life of the brilliant, troubled mathematician. Its latest iteration, directed by Jesse Jones, now comes to the Oxford Playhouse.

·4th August 2025

‘Every time we kiss / we confirm the new world coming’: A review of This Bitter Earth and a defence of black apathy

Lauren Lisk

What makes Rivers’ play brilliant is that he breaks down so-called black apathy. This rageful vignette resists a reduction of Jesse to someone who doesn’t care about the BLM movement: a predication that everyone, even his own boyfriend, seems intent on making. It isn’t that Jesse doesn’t care, it is that Jesse is tired. It isn’t that Jesse is ‘doing nothing’ but rather that every action he does, from breathing to writing to loving is a political act.

·10th June 2025

Review: CRUSH by Hannah Eggleton

Meira Lee

Teenagers are strange creatures. I don’t know about you, but I was certainly a bit of an awkward, insecure mess in school. That turbulent, in-between phase of adolescence forms the heart of CRUSH – Hannah Eggleton’s debut full-length play. Set against the familiar backdrop of classrooms, homework and extracurriculars, the play captures the volatility of teenage emotion, packaging desire, angst and confusion into one riveting tale.

·5th June 2025

“Shall we give o’er and drown?”: The Tempest in Magdalen Grove Auditorium

Ivett Berenyi

The Magdalen Players set out to bring William Shakespeare’s The Tempest under the “cloud-capp’d towers” of Magdalen College. After five days of performances, co-directors Aidan Lazarou and Seb Carrington could have hardly been surprised that May (or indeed Prospero herself) would unleash the power capable of wrecking this garden play: rain.

·26th May 2025

Fiddler on the Roof at The Queen’s College: Review

Meira Lee

Since its premiere in 1964, Fiddler on the Roof has enjoyed widespread success, spawning countless iterations and a film adaptation....

·23rd May 2025

Cupid and Psyche: Love in the Time of Thunderbolts

Ava Doherty

Somewhere between myth and melodrama, drawing-room farce and divine fiasco, this year’s Cupid and Psyche lands in Christ Church Gardens with a winged smirk and a perfectly timed sigh. This original romantic comedy delivers Greek myth via British satire, Wildean wit through whimsical meta-theatre, and more theatrical coughing fits than an Edwardian novel with a tuberculosis subplot.

·21st November 2025

SQUAT, reviewed

Ananya Parakh

SQUAT follows five friends as they navigate the inebriation and the post club-night, startling sobriety of young life when one (or many!) of them has committed a murder. Over an hour or so, the play unravels their inner tensions, well-locked secrets, and endearment towards each other. Don’t be fooled by the intensity of the synopsis. This play is cool.

·4th November 2025

In Praise of Love, reviewed

Emily Cunnington

Almost 115 years after infamous playwright Terence Rattigan’s birth, 2046 Productions performs his play In Praise of Love in Oxford’s smallest theatre space, the Burton Taylor Studio. We witness Lydia (Nicole Palka), diagnosed with a terminal illness, hiding her condition from husband Sebastian (Samual Gosmore) in order to protect him, unaware that he is already aware of her situation. The domestic drama escalates as we see the characters choosing deception over love in an attempt to spare each other distress. Through witty, biting dialogue, the couple reveal their deep but inarticulate affection.

·22nd October 2025

“Faultless in spite of all her faults”: Emma, reviewed

Ivett Berényi

It has been nearly 250 years since the creator of Emma Woodhouse was born in Hampshire. Jane Austen’s novel Emma was published almost 210 years ago and the Theatre Royal Bath brought Ryan Craig’s romance-heavy adaptation to the Oxford Playhouse this week. We follow as the eponymous heroine – whom “no one but myself will much like”, as Austen put it – embarks on a journey of matchmaking, portraiture, and an imminent romance of her own, all ridden with mishaps and mystique.

·11th October 2025

The Queen of the Night at Oxford: The Bodyguard, reviewed

Ivett Berényi

Oxford has “nothing, nothing, nothing” if it does not have The Bodyguard playing in New Theatre this week. Directed by Thea Sharrock, The Bodyguard interrogates what ‘showstopper’ means for the superstar, her bodyguard and the obsessive stalker seeking to end not only the Oscars show but the showstopper herself. Based on Mick Jackson and Lawrence Kasdan’s 1992 film of the same title, starring the spectacular Whitney Houston, the musical brings us glitz, glamour, and a night that makes you think summer has never ended.

·16th August 2025

The Oxford Revue Presents: For Revue Dollars More at the Edinburgh Fringe – Reviewed

Hannah Stewart

The Oxford Revue has returned to the Edinburgh Fringe to offer a new sketch comedy show, ‘For Revue Dollars More’....

·18th June 2025

BABYMETAL at the O2 Arena: Japan’s Musical Breakthrough

Stephan Nitu

On a little-known Japanese TV program in 2013, the three girls comprising BABYMETAL unrolled a banner announcing sekai seifuku: world domination. Aged 15, 13, and 13, their infectious blend of cute idol pop and heavy metal was, at the time, still consigned to the deep underground. Now, they have planted that banner squarely over London’s O2 Arena, becoming the first Japanese artist to headline – and sell out – the UK’s most famous music venue.

·9th June 2025

Boats Against the Current: The Great Gatsby at Trinity College

Sihao Feng

One encounters in the President’s Garden a cloistered theatrical stage – part lavish dreamscape, part Anglo-American hybrid – that transposes Fitzgerald's Jazz Age tragedy for contemporary British sensibilities. The production achieves sustained luminosity through the cast's tour de force, buoyed by a spectacle of couture and choreography. Yet, its conceptual framework is not one of faithful adaptation. Rather, it deliberately refracts Fitzgerald's raw American romanticism through the critical lens of a self-aware British theatrical tradition first hinted at by the actors’ British accents punctuated by occasional Northeastern notes.

·5th June 2025

Art: In review

Meira Lee

Serge has bought a painting. A modern painting. In fact, it’s completely white, save for a few white lines that pop up from the canvas, if you look hard enough. Marc, his long-time friend, can’t understand why Serge has spent 200,000 francs on something that, by his lights, hardly qualifies as art. “A piece of white shit,” he calls it. Yvan, the third member in this trio, is caught in the middle of the conflict, attempting to placate both sides. What starts as a disagreement over modern art soon dredges up uncomfortable revelations which spiral into bitter confrontations, threatening the very basis of their friendship.

·24th May 2025

The Final Salomé review – Wilde and Weary

Esme Thomson

When I first sat down in the TS Eliot Theatre to watch The Final Salomé, I wasn’t expecting much. The staging was a scattering of mid-century furniture, draped with a sheer white cloth that reminded me of Home Bargain’s Halloween section. Merton College’s logo was left barely obscured. I skimmed through a wordy programme (essay and a show!), finding the list of historical inaccuracies particularly hilarious. Before the lights had even dimmed, I felt passion dripping from every word.