by Sam Hardaker Subtitled a ‘time bending rom-com’, the student-run Sisyphus House touched a nostalgic and sentimental nerve. Written by Abbie Nott and Megan Bruton, the new play had a unique and fresh voice, both loving and honest, truthful and fantastical, and Sisyphus House was able to transform a rather grey Thursday and my rather […]
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by Jerric Chong We at Oriel are quite privileged indeed to be able to listen to an extraordinarily broad range of live music. Even discounting the superb ensembles and performers of every genre who can be heard across the city and university, Oriel is fortunate to be able to put on a wide array of […]
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by Sam Hardaker As a fan of the show, with the Broadway album etched permanently into my brain, it is difficult to decide to see another version of something I love, knowing it will be different. But boy am I glad to have witnessed Pelican Productions’ Spring Awakening this Hilary term. From the first note […]
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by Jerric Chong For most of us, I suppose, the words ‘maths’ and ‘humour’ will rarely appear in the same sentence, let alone alongside each other. But not after attending Fermat’s Last Tango, performed by a cast and crew of Oxford students at the Mathematical Institute, which despite its niche subject matter succeeds in providing […]
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by Jerric Chong and Evie Sharp Paris has just been liberated from its Nazi occupiers. Legions of American veterans begin departing on their way home across the Atlantic. But not so for youthful Jerry Mulligan, an artistic dilettante smitten with a young ballerina he encounters on the Parisian streets. He soon meets the composer and […]
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by Sam Hardaker This past Tuesday, 31 January, Oriel’s dining hall opened its doors to a new type of formal dinner: a multicultural formal. After careful organisation and advertisement by our very own JCR Equalities and Access Officer, Shubh Kumar, the dinner featured four courses, featuring a Greek meze platter, a Moroccan sorbet, Tandoori chicken […]
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by Siddiq Islam ‘What?! … like … Jesus!’ ‘Yes, exactly like Jesus!’ It’s wonderful to see Oxford’s theatre scene thriving again post-COVID. Opportunities to see fantastic productions like this were not regularly available a year ago. Dead Man’s Suitcase posits the following question – is it possible for your life to have a reset button? […]
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by S. Hardaker Troy Story: Age of the Hero is an adventurous and ambitious tale of the Battle of Troy, told through the personal stories of the gods, Achilles (played by Jak Spencer) and Patroclus (Alex Rawnsley), as well as Hector (Gillian Konko) and Andromache (Erin Malinowski). Marketed as a night of myth, a journey […]
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by Jerric Chong Of the many celebrated musicals penned by the late Stephen Sondheim (1930–2021), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street doubtless stands out with its lurid and gritty depiction of 19th-century London. Inspired by Victorian ‘penny dreadfuls’, it tells the story of the convicted barber’s return and thirst for vengeance against Judge […]
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by Monim Wains [CW: mentions of mental illness, sexual violence, and miscarriage] A classic tale rewritten with lucid modern lyrics, sung fantastically throughout. That was a fun evening. Persephone is a story that has probably brought many a classicist to tears, with origins far back in Ancient Greece. But Emma Hawkins’s writing brings the story […]
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by M. Davies (College Porter) Postponed due to the pandemic from the 7th to the 31st of October, a new play, Into Battle, is to make its first stage appearance at the Greenwich Theatre, London. Written by Hugh Salmon, Into Battle tells the true story of a student feud that took place within Balliol College, […]
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by Raghav Arora and Samanwita Sen Spring Awakening is a bold take on teenage sexuality. It follows the experiences of various adolescents,’ sexuality coming to full bloom, with a major focus on Wendla Bergmann as she forays into the unfamiliar territory of lustful passion in her relationship with Melchior Gabor. The play strikes a fine […]
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by Samanwita Sen When walking away after watching a performance of My Mother Runs in Zig-Zags, perhaps the most lasting impression one is left with is how seamlessly and intricately the play has been put together. It’s no secret that, when watching the play, every note that is struck, every movement that is executed, and every […]
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by Michael Angerer The self-described dark comedy You Are Frogs, put on by Practically Peter Productions, is above all a baffling play: perhaps the most baffling theatrical experience to come out of this term. Having ascended the steps up to the Burton Taylor studio, the unsuspecting playgoer intrudes into the depressingly bright-coloured kitchen of two frogs, […]
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by Monim Wains Bandages is not a play that covers up or protects. It is designed to rip off the mask and question you directly. With an intense and emotional exploration of control, image, abuse and violence, Bandages will leave you genuinely disturbed and uncomfortable, which is exactly what it wants to do. The clearly heartfelt issues […]
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by Michael Angerer As you step into the small dark space of the Burton Taylor Studio to watch Selma Dimitrijevic’s Gods Are Fallen And All Safety Gone, you enter a strangely surreal place: a place in which all eyes rest on two similar figures who sit facing each other, silently staring each other down. The […]
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by Zad El Bacha I was cold and tired, searching for Saint Antony’s music room, when a vibrant singing called to me from across the quad. I stepped into the room, and the energy of the cast and the rich, vivid music overwhelmed me. This is how I was introduced to a preview of Talaash, […]
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by Christopher Hill As I walk into the Jesus College lodge to ask where to go for the play, I notice the porter flag down a student who I would later find out to be part of the backstage crew. I didn’t catch the whole conversation but it went something along the lines of: ‘I’m […]
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by Michael Angerer A kitchen in the west of Ireland, home to two ill-compatible brothers, haunted by the alcoholic parish priest and supplied with booze by an enterprising schoolgirl: such is the scene that unfolds to the audience in the current production of The Lonesome West at the Burton Taylor Studio. The atmosphere of this […]
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Review by Amanda Higgin Photos by Luke Wintour A Romanian, an Irishman, a Russian and an Englishman walk into a public library in 1917 Zurich. What ensues is a beautifully crafted work, skilfully derived from complex and challenging source material. The design is fascinating, the performances are superb, but most of all my respect must […]
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Poignant, dark, and fun – Ishtar is proof that age does not matter, and that some stories are timeless. Bringing to life of one of the oldest poems in the world from Ancient Mesopotamia, Ishtar tells the story of the eponymous Goddess of Love and War (Leela Jadhav) as she ventures into the underworld to […]
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by Chloe Whitehead ‘Let the Bride awake!’ Intrigue and betrayal reigns in this adaptation of Federico García Lorca’s 1930s classic, Blood Wedding. The Burton Taylor Studio provides an intimate and compelling venue for the drama, with only two rows of seats before the scandal-riven world of rural Spain encroaches upon the audience. Despite only watching […]
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Review by Amanda Higgin Photos by Georgia Crowther Oriel’s College’s own Poor Print had the first set of eyes on this much-anticipated Playhouse production in dress rehearsal. Even without making allowances for the adjustments and polishing that will take place before opening night, Hedda was excellent. A carefully curated, visually stunning, compelling masterwork – it […]
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by Chloe Whitehead Five English students, a medic and some wholesome Shakespeare – a day out made in heaven? We thought so. On a rainy Thursday in January we went to see Twelfth Night at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, and on the whole witnessed a brilliant performance. Despite being an English student, I’d […]
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by Amanda Higgin It is often said that simple things are beautiful, and this show was certainly a Beautiful Thing. This straightforward but delicately told story brings its audience to three neighbouring flats in a London council estate. Jamie lives with his mother, Sandra, and her boyfriend, Tony. On one side lives Leah, who has […]
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Clickbait Investigative journalism by Alex Waygood. Featured image by Out Of The Blue. Out Of The Blue’s recent Christmas single, ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, is as fun, frivolous and festive as ever. And yet, watching it, I couldn’t help feel as though there were something missing. Namely: where did the gay go? Out Of The Blue’s music videos […]
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by Teofil Camarasu Upon arriving to watch a dress rehearsal of the The Lieutenant of Inishmore, I was told that I would be watching the first run of the show with genuine fake blood (until then they had used water instead). The first row of seats had provisionally been designated a splash-zone, and was covered in […]
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by Sophie Barnes The Poor Print’s definitive Coffee Map of Oxford is downloadable here!
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by Jacob Warn Welcome to a world of music, of love, and of language. This is a world of drunken revelry and cross-gartered madness, overwriting a history inscribed with the vestiges of war, loss and social change. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is just a comedy. Some say. But it is this kind of thinking that results in the generic […]
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by Rebecca Leigh For its duration, the intimate chapel at Nuffield College will become your TARDIS, transporting you through time and space to the events on British and German soil that lead to the staging of one of the most daring plot of the German resistance in the Second World War. Sensitive direction and sound production, […]
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by Jacob Warn A Review of Oxford Unlocked: Object-Handling & Tour at The Ashmolean, an Oriel Arts Week 2015 event. During Oriel Arts Week 2015, two groups of Oriel students spent several hours in the Ashmolean Museum with Dr Mallica Kumbera Landrus. As part of an Oxford Unlocked series – designed to reveal the secrets of a […]
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by Jacob Warn WARNING: Contains plot details “The rendering is sublime: we watch in mounting and surmounting terror, during which the sole comfort is the divide between stage and pit, fiction and reality.” This is a play of love between friends. Of love getting between friends. But as a play – as a tragedy – […]
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by Rebecca Leigh Cinderella (2015, Kenneth Branagh) is just the kind of delicious live-action nostalgia-fest you could wish it to be. “The production value of Cinderella is sky-high” The plot follows closely the line of the 1950’s animation, which is to say the programmatic version of the fairytale that I for one grew up with, […]
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by Jacob Warn As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams is a story about stories. It is a work that enthrals, entrances, and most thoroughly entertains. Having the opportunity to witness a preview of this upcoming production, uncertain and unknowing as I was, has set me in a state of delighted anticipation. “Lady Sarashina is story and story-teller, and […]
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by Matthew Hull Maenads – or Bacchants, as they are often known – have for years captivated the very artists who have captivated us; their raw, unadulterated frenzy presents a vision of sheer human nature which is at once seductive and horrific. So as I sat in Exeter Chapel on Thursday evening for a double-bill […]
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by Salma Barma Wandering around Oxford always seems to yield some new discovery or other – an independent coffee shop perhaps, or a second hand bookshop. Walking down Pembroke Street on my way to Modern Art Oxford (which is itself worth a visit) a few days ago, I stumbled across the Oxford Story Museum and, […]
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by Chloe Cheung Readers are advised that this review makes details of the plot and production explicit. Not even Stewart Lee makes me laugh as much as I did at Christopher Luscombe’s new production of Love’s Labour’s Lost for the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). Hailed as ‘sparklingly funny’ (The Times) and brimming with ‘continual comic […]
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by Jacob Warn You should consider going here. It’s the Oxford International Art Fair. There is, of course, a wealth of exhibitions, museums and showcases across Oxford, so all I’m doing is offering another suggestion. I hope for you too it’s still Sunday afternoon. If not, you’ll be too late to enjoy this event, and […]
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by Jacob Warn It is a play that broaches broad and pertinent questions. It is a dramatic presentation of the debates that take place as we increasingly attempt to reconcile a global mental health epidemic with a tendency to extreme, pharmaceutical medicalisation. It asks persistently, what is love? At other times, is asks, what is […]
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by Matthew Hull William Butler Yeats once described Oxford in such terms: “So beautiful one almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking.” “It is like an opera,” he said, and on Wednesday evening (4th February) his words were realised somewhat with the St Peter’s Music Society production of Dido & Aeneas. St Peter’s […]
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The Poor Print 