Friday 7th November 2025

Culture

Sin and nectar: Behind the scenes of ‘Women Beware Women’

I arrived at a rehearsal of Women Beware Women and found Hippolito (Kit Parsons) and Isabella (Céline Mathilda), uncle and niece, embracing and sharing an incestous kiss flavoured by...

Well-managed complexity: ‘In Praise of Love’ 

In Praise of Love by Terence Rattigan was a play well-chosen in today’s political...

Fashion around Oxford – Iggy Clarke

Iggy Clarke, the president of the 2025 Oxford Fashion Gala, shares her style secrets and where she’s shopping right now.

Look up! Statues and gargoyles in Oxford

Walking around Oxford you often feel like you’re part of the city’s tourist attraction....

First Night Review: Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell

Rosalyn Johnston-Flint finds herself in a late 1980s Soho pub, engulfed by an anti-hero's drunken memories

Review: The Nihilists

Drawn in by a love of Wilde, Fiamma Mazzocchi Alemanni investigates the merits of the playwright's first failure

Review: The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek

May Anderson is provoked and challenged by a brave production of Naomi Wallace's haunting play. At the O'Reilly from Wednesday 3rd week.

Review: Starf**ker Reptilians

Simon Torracinta reviews the third effort from this Portland synthpop quartet and discovers the perfect summer soundtrack

Review: Antlers Burst Apart

Simon Torracinta looks at the wonderful parts of Burst Apart

Review: Pygmalion – The Magdalen Garden Show

Rosalind Stone finds that elaborate characterisation is all the sugar-coating an audience needs

The Edgar Wind Society

Joe Funnell introduces the University's new and blooming Art society

First Night Review: Call of the Wild

The Oxford Playhouse goes to the dogs with this masterful student adaptation of Jack London's famous novel

Damian Lewis: Cherwell salutes you

Francesca Wade speaks to the Band of Brothers star about his acting career, his American personality, and the trials and tribulations of the film industry

Review: The Courting of Claire

A ‘gritty kitchen-sink drama’, a comedy of manners, a rom-com and a horror; The Courting of Claire by student playwright Matt Fuller is on at the Burton Taylor in 3rd week

Review: Arcadia

A challenging drama with a bit of bawdy comedy; Tom Stoppard's masterful work delivers a difficult pleasure

The Play of Colour

May Anderson takes part in an intense rehearsal for She was Yellow, coming to the Burton Taylor in 3rd week, and briefly loses the boundary between reality and fiction

Review: Little White Lies

Guillaume Canet fails to depart from the clichéd with a film in which the characters smoke a lot, swear a lot and break things when they get angry, without getting up to much

Déjà view: Seen it all before?

Antz and A Bug's Life, Deep Impact and Armageddon, Kick-Ass and Hanna: similarities in themes and plot demonstrate Hollywood's inability to go beyond trends

Review: Shostakovich by Florestan Trio and Susan Gritton

One of the most exciting ensembles on the British classical music scene's final recording is a difficult yet fascinating listen

Review: w h o k i l l by tUnE-yArDs

Singer-songwriter Merrill Garbus' solo project tUnE-yArDs yields another album of sonic potpourri; jarring yet irresistible

What Doherty did next…

Cherwell saw Pete Doherty of Pete Doherty infamy at the O2 Academy, and was pleasantly surprised by both his punctuality and his performance

Diving in at the shallow end

Is the short story a lesser genre? Ella Sands recommends some conveniently brief gems.

First past the postmodern

The latest round-up of contemporary British art, In the Days of the Comet, proposes to show us ‘alternative ways of thinking about the here and now’ yet only seems to confuse and irritate

Aphra

Harriet Baker reveals all about this pioneering female playwright

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