Category: Reviews

By Jacob Cordery

That was the most beautifully delicate film I have ever seen. I do not really know how to put into words how I feel about that film. The beginning was slow and I was afraid to eat my popcorn. It was so quiet, and I am quite loud. God bless the casting agent – Buckley and Mescal gave two of the best performances I have ever seen grace a screen. The rawness, the pain – I am sure I have never felt such pain. The cinematography alone was wonderful, the coupling of silent and perfectly still wide shots with shaky and personal and painful close-ups brought us into an England that doesn’t exist anymore. We saw the colours of Spring, we saw the black of death, and the red that exists in between those two things. The carefully crafted narrative, and the lack of focus on the work of Shakespeare, was phenomenal. We see him as absent, frustrating, and at times aggressive. We are with Agnes wholly until the play and then, like her, we are united once again – we see Shakespeare’s grief on stage. And we get to stare into the eyes of a mother losing her child once again. And suddenly everything I knew about Hamlet is unwritten, everything I thought I understood of the play, nay, the world, is undone. I once wrote in an essay that Hamlet is “a passive canvas on which the world around paints”. I think I still agree – but for a different reason. Hamlet is our grief, Hamnet is theirs. In the film the child chooses to give his life for his sister’s. The viewer is put in the position of death – we gaze at the boy, who gazes back at us – perhaps mirroring the idea that Hamlet is aware that he is merely playing a part in a play. Hamnet never got to live, but his parents refuse to believe he is gone, or in heaven. William wonders where he is: Anne sees only nothing. Death is presented as inevitable – Shakespeare’s mother lost three girls, and Anne has a vision of dying surrounded by two of her children. We know death must come, as we do in Hamlet, we just hope it will not. Regardless, death is projected onto Hamnet and Hamlet alike. We see the illness shake Hamnet, paralleled in Claudius’ writhing as he drinks his poison. We see Agnes’ pain, her shocking pain, watching her child die once more on stage. It is almost too much to bear. Shakespeare, who, as he states at the beginning of the film, struggles to put feelings into words, redeems himself for being the absentee father – or perhaps, he at least finds a way to show his wife his own grief, his own pain. I will be shocked and outraged if Jessie Buckley does not win an Oscar – she truly suspended my disbelief. Like in Hamlet, we hope that little sweet child who sacrifices himself will not die. We pray to a God we don’t believe in; we bury our head in popcorn; we cover our eyes with tears. But the boy dies and in his final moments, he is cradled: Hamnet by his mother, Hamlet by the audience, and we, in the cinema, are left alive, but alone. We almost feel envy, for one who is truly loved. I was waiting for Horatio’s famous last couple of lines, but we did not need to be told ‘Goodnight, my sweet prince’ for we saw the farewell. Some things are better felt than said.

Featured Image: Focus Features

By Ollie Cochran

Even if you have never heard of the Durham Revue, you most likely have heard from them. Modern-day British comedy has an odd habit of churning out, ad nauseam, future stars from a single sketch comedy troupe in the North East. Ed Gamble, Nish Kumar, and Stevie Martin – all ex-Taskmaster contestants, yes, but also esteemed alumni of the Revue. Add in Jeremy Vine and Ambika Mod for a smattering of extra sweetness, and you have yourself a tasty dessert made entirely of successful comedians, whipped up by Durham’s premier sketch troupe. 

Founded in 1974, the Revue have put together a troupe of writer/performers for the last 52 years that form a tight-knit group, developing and finetuning sketch material throughout the year before a month-long run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. A place in the troupe is hard to come by: they operate an annual three-round audition process, assessing not only candidates’ skill at performing comedy, but also writing it. And with only seven or eight troupe members every year – and only five or six of them as performers – it is an illustrious gig within the student theatre scene. 

It was with all this in mind that I headed to the Collingwood Arts Centre on Sunday the 18th January to catch the Revue’s first show of the year: A Day at the Durham ReZoo. Co-president duo Samuel Bentley and Jude Battersby open the show to sinister music, recounting the aftermath of their Fringe run last year: critical acclaim (the troupe’s Derek Award on full display), but a bank balance that suggests otherwise. The solution? The troupe are now working as part-time zookeepers to get some extra cash. Makes sense.

Cue the introductions. Bentley and Battersby return alongside Alice Barr and Nat Pryke, joined on stage by newcomers Ollie Painter, Miranda Pharaoh and Bea Pescott-Khan, with Isaac Slater joining Pryke as a writer. In typical Revue style, they introduce themselves one-by-one, displaying a touch of their individual comedic styles, before Battersby rousingly instructs us to give them a big round of applause after every sketch, whether they “deserve it or not”. Before the sketches even begin, I am struck by the troupe’s rapport; for their first show, they seem immensely comfortable together, and the humorous asides and awkward interjections are a testament to their tight-knit quality. 

And the sketches are no different. Battersby and Bentley have electrifying chemistry, the former’s energetic facial expressions and command of physical comedy complementing the latter’s supremely dry wit and fantastic control of comic timing. This was on full display in one of the night’s standout sketches – a humorous take on ‘Noah’s Ark’ which provides several laugh-out-loud moments from the duo’s antithetical dynamic before the gag even lands. Together they also parody the randomness of the term “knee-slapper” in a sketch full of dad jokes that pits homoeroticism against maternal resurrection.  

Likewise, in a sketch that satirises drama teachers taking a school production all too seriously, Bentley pairs well with Painter. The production in question: Beckett’s classic Waiting for Godot – here, performed by their Year 3 class. It is a sketch that drives forward with its joke from the beginning, each comment funnier than the next. Painter, throughout the evening, is fantastic with his naturalistic approach, his delivery uncompromisingly measured to extract full comedic punch. 

Alice Barr has some excellent intensity throughout and great diction – her lively characters in ‘Parakeet’ and ‘Gender Reveal Party’ are among the highlights of sketches where the gags don’t always land. Her best moment of the night is in the ‘Ides of March’ sketch where Caesar and his (ex)comrades are transposed into the modern world on a ‘girlies’ night; Barr’s commitment and characterisation are sustained brilliantly. Pharaoh is equally good here as Brutus, delivering one of the central one-liners, “You know you’re my ride… or die”, fabulously. 

Indeed, Pharaoh establishes herself as a talented performer – balancing sombre, dry delivery with self-aware wit. She is part of some of the evening’s more experimental sketches, exhibiting a masterful command of awkward humour in a meta sketch where she gets stage fright and messes up her line as she sits in a hot tub and in a particularly peculiar anti-joke vignette involving a glass of milkshake (or is it Gaviscon?). 

Bea Pescott-Khan has some similarly memorable moments: as prisoner 24602 in a Les Miserablés parody that delighted the theatre-loving audience, she is fabulously quippy and utterly deadpan, ensuring that the momentum of the joke resounds throughout; whilst in one of the evening’s simplest, but best sketches involving a forgetful goldfish instructor, her wit is razor-sharp – a notable gag despite its brevity. 

Some other highlights include Battersby dropping a rhyming Lin-Manuel Miranda – (malfunctioning) fake goatee and all – into the Chernobyl disaster and letting the cultural mismatch deal the comedic punches, and a succinct homophonic gag involving not ‘Mock the Week’ but ‘Mock the Weak’. 

Still, it doesn’t all work. Painter’s deliberate, faux-sincere delivery of a sermon whilst chomping down on corn doesn’t quite land (though his corpsing does provide some entertainment – it is as if he feels as silly as he looks), nor does a sketch involving a doctor’s checkup where the patient has soiled himself, a premise that outstays its welcome long before the punchline does. At times, diction falters, even in the contained venue; the impact of sketches involving wordplay or quick delivery, therefore, is diminished. 

On the whole, many of the sketches are just too long – though, I concede, it is best to trial their material in this context before some of the upcoming shows. But look, as a first show, this is an immense achievement for the new troupe. (A special mention, of course, must go to Pryke and Slater for their writing achievements, despite not being featured on stage.) The Revue are clearly veering off in new directions this year, developing sketches in the realm of the absurd or abstract – eager to diverge some of their material from their orthodox gags. 

“Last year, at Edinburgh, we maybe got a bit of criticism for playing some of our comedy a little bit safe,” remarks Bentley, chatting to me after the show. “I think we wanted to include stuff here that started working towards a creativity that appealed to that kind of comedy-going crowd that you see in Edinburgh.” I agree with him. But for student sketch comedy, especially, the question of creative risk is nowadays inseparable from the financial realities of getting work seen.

The climate of student sketch comedy at the moment is a tense one – with the cost of living meaning that month-long stints at Edinburgh are becoming harder and harder to fund. Just last year, the Revue had to fundraise £7000 to afford their Fringe run, a number that was achievable partly thanks to generous alumni donations. For groups without such a rich history, the financial shortfall is impossible to overcome. 

This is precisely why it is so important to go and support these groups. Sketch comedy remains a unique space where student voices can be rough, ambitious, and occasionally wrong, but also unique and utterly original. Go and support it; you won’t regret it. 

The Durham Revue are performing ComedyFest at the Gala Theatre on Saturday 7  February 2026, alongside The Oxford Revue and Leeds Tealights. Tickets are available here.  

Featured Image: The Durham Revue

By Freyja Hollington

‘Well, I cannot watch a drama in an agitated manner.’

When Oscar Wilde took up the charge of presenting the social, he did so through the lens of satiric enjoyment. The unnecessary niceties and rules of manners that Wilde saw as both hypocrisy and absurdity poured forth into his characters and have created a drama that continues to hold resonance. Whatever distance we so wishfully place between ourselves and contemporary nineteenth century audiences, it is undeniable that the tangled web of silent social scriptures that Wilde exposed remains steadfast and unshakeable today. English hypocrisy need only be observed in the unspoken rigidity of orderly queueing everywhere except the pub, where the chaotic push toward the bartender seems to acknowledge how easily we forget ourselves in the pursuit of pleasure.

This essence of Oscar Wilde, his smirking dialogue and satirized stage, are so perfectly encapsulated by Sam Bentley’s direction of The Importance of Being Earnest with the Durham University Classical Theatre Company. The usual anxieties that accompany any theatregoer upon taking the stairs to their small – and not always too comfortable – seat melt away, as the world of Wilde unravels before them. The sword of dread which hovers at the inhale of a performance is swiftly lost, replaced by the thrill of anticipation that this will be brilliant. From the very moment the curtain lifts, the company achieves precision in the balance between the comic and the biting.

Opening the performance as perhaps the clearest mouthpiece for Wilde himself, the hedonistic bachelor and gad-about Algernon Moncrieff is central to the establishment of tone. In the hands of the talented Cillian Knowles, Algernon, and indeed the play itself, comes to life. Knowles’ first steps onto the stage are masterful, as his physicality conveys that which we have yet to learn but begin already to know. Amplified by the brilliance of costuming, Knowles as Algernon epitomises the freedom of carelessness in a system built upon self-criticism and self-regulation. Undone, almost naked, and embellished with the wisps of a lavish silk gown, Knowles saunters through the set toward audiences. In a striking moment of dramatic vision, the production utilises a transition into diegetic sound, as the playful music accenting Knowles’ appearance becomes the jovial and light-hearted melody of his own playing. The piano, as a recognisable symbol of higher social class and elevation, under the blithe and undisciplined hands of Algernon, becomes the image of social subversion that is definitive of the wider play. 

As his counterpart, the polarised figure of Jack (Earnest) Worthing enters the stage from the opposite wing and is, from the first, the antithesis of Algernon. Introduced in perfection of style, speech and posture, Jack, played by the sensational Edward Clark, illuminates the extent of Algernon’s individualism, whilst also conveying the sheer impossibilities of upholding social expectation. Dressed likewise in perfect costume, Clark enters in a sensible tweed three-piece suit, standing stately and self-possessed, in the shadow of his friend’s previous exposure. Where Knowles’ physicality is instrumental to his characterisation, Clark’s performance of Jack is centred in his control of voice. Always elegantly and clearly spoken, Clark’s Jack presents the nearest facsimile to respectability that Wilde, and indeed any individual, could achieve. 

It is not an uncommon critique of Wilde that his construction of character falls slightly in his presentation of women, and while The Importance of Being Earnest perhaps weakens itself by the balance of genders in the play, the central women of this production are unmissable. As the intended ‘Jack’ of the women set, Miranda Pharoah’s Gwendolen Fairfax emerges as a personification of contradiction itself. Emulating the sincere self-importance and charming arrogance of Gwendolen, Pharoah’s performance is perfection. Upstanding, self-possessed, and decisive, Pharoah’s Gwendolen returns something of autonomy to the women of Wilde, as the production teases out their greater conflicts of desire and duty, past and present. Pharoah is joined on stage by the entertaining and evocative performance of Roxy Rayward as Cecily Cardew. Rayward is expression itself, alert and receptive in every moment of stage presence, speaking or silent. The brilliance of the wider company to play off one another is epitomised in Rayward, who never parts from Cecily for a single moment throughout. 

In the character of Lady Bracknell, Molly Bell transforms, speaking as the old voice of England and the origins of etiquette and decorum. Likewise enhanced by the genuine thought and construction of costume within the production, Bell presents the tenuous and flitting grasp that social expectation holds upon itself – never quite solidified, but always conscious of its indispensability. Bell, as Lady Bracknell, becomes intriguingly paralleled in the supporting character of Miss Prism, richly characterised by Olivia Fancourt. Where Lady Bracknell esteems the system through her own superiority therein, Miss Prism’s unflinching dedication to the same notions of order and behaviour interrogate the (dis)advantages of obedience. In her implicit and tactfully conveyed love for the Reverend Canon Chasuble, vividly realised by Noah Lazarides, Fancourt’s Miss Prism questions the benefits for those that adhere to the system; further explored in Henry Skinner’s persuasive performance as the servant figures of Lane and Merriman. 

What the Durham University Classical Theatre Company has achieved in their production of The Importance of Being Earnest is nothing short of remarkable. There is a fine attention to detail and finesse of set, costume and sound, which only intensifies the brilliance of the cast. The dedication of the company to this creation is evident in every element, and the love and loyalty of DUCT to their performance is palpable. As one of the strongest student performances held in Durham, The Importance of Being Earnest  will be remembered and treasured fondly and often by audiences for years. 

Image Credit – Durham University Classical Theatre

By Matty Timmis

The Mocking Stars has arrived, seemingly out of the blue, and as I write this I am wondering if I am even capable of lauding this new album the way I did its predecessor The Girl, the Cat and the Tree. 

For the uninitiated, LAUSSE THE CAT is the character inhabited by an anonymous rapper,  spinning tales of a semi-fantasy life from Hyde Park, Leeds. The maestro of rippling velvet and head-fucking instrumentals he raps, sings, and orates in both English and French, conjuring strange yarns of louche living; both its pleasures and its consequences. Much like The Girl, the Cat and the Tree, The Mocking Stars is a concept album in the strongest possible terms, one that blurs boundaries of language, instrumentation and genre into something almost reminiscent of a theatre production. This second production drops us into a more adult world, ornamented with far richer, indulgent details and plaintive, mature anxieties. LAUSSE has descended into madness again, this time concerned less with the hedonism and toll of being a student than the reluctant transition from student to functioning member of society. Across 12 tracks our narrator pops up, much as he did in his prior work, to marshal us through the dusk like a ring master in a midnight musical circus. This circus is not concerned with hedonism anymore, but the freakshow of anxiety that makes up post-grad aimlessness. 

The record’s opener, “Blue Bossa”, immerses us in LAUSSE’s sanguine anguish, establishing beneath a muted bebop trumpet and hazy xylophones the insomnia that will lead him through these dashing, and at times uncouth, visions. We meet the ‘mad hatters round sainos’, who seem to offer some company, and an outline of Lausse’s journey begins to take shape. The track ends with increasingly frantic screams of ‘slay bitch’, as consumer items seemingly drive him to hysteria through both their unattainability and gaudyness. The maddening cries of ‘slay bitch’ further move LAUSSE into the delirium of adult life as he realises the only praise he will receive for his capitalist endeavors is an over-used internet speak of the apathetic generation he finds himself in, the anxiety of their situation unable to produce originality. This little squib leads aptly to early album highlight ‘I.D.W.G.A.J’, standing for I Don’t Wanna Get A Job, Lausse articulates the anxieties of the moment between graduation and fully fledged adulthood. He is concerned with getting a driving license and buying a car, all the things that employment and being grown up precipitate. The tension lies in his inability to afford any of this, and as his musings grow the fantasy expands to a life of dripping, idle wealth that seems all the more seductive for its distance, as Lausse saunters off into something starting to resemble a dream.

“The Midnight Hour” then is a more gentle affair, as LAUSSE drifts away from his forlorn reality to the clave pulse of a lounge-samba backing. Here he switches for the first time into a melodic French refrain, and navigates amiably his twilight sinking. A dour sun then operates like an amusing and harmonious bridge of A capella layering, pleading to be spared from the doldrums of employment.

All this builds to our title track, “The Mocking Stars”,  an expansive and apocalyptic epic that sees biblical floods sweeping through Hyde Park, cannibalism running rife, and our LAUSSE beset by a river of tears. There is an undeniable mania to this 10 minute song, dancing through genres and emotions with phantasmagoric ardor. This is an odyssey, warbled through smoke rings and desire, in much the same sense as “Redstripe Rhapsody” was. This however is a far darker affair, the scope of lyrical ambition and musical prowess far exceeding its predecessor’s journey through a Leeds house party as our protagonist sails away, with a rizla for a flag, into a chimerical world. 

“Space Cadet Cat” floats far from the tax payer funded rhythm of the relentless days, providing a rest-bite from the drama with a chirpy dose of the absurd. Similarly the opening chords of “Tea Party”, played on an echoing piano, almost call to mind a Debussy song. LAUSSE updates the surreal imagery of childhood, taking Alice in Wonderland and dreams of astronauts into our current world of angst. Here he reaches furthest from objective reality on his journey, delving into a debauched collective psyche with a naive escapism. Repurposing the fairy tales and space stories of more innocent childhood have certainly been done before, but here our youthful dreams are subverted with such striking precision and such dense interweaving that it is hard not to reflect upon our journey into our current selves.

“Keep Walking” walks us down from the inebriation of our own becoming with a heady kind of lullaby that sees LAUSSE shake loose the timbre of Hades evensong. He stumbles away from his mad hatters, away from his twisted fantasy and reflects upon how he found himself here. “Keep Walking” seems to pull us away from Leeds to potentially explain his absence for the last seven years, falling in and out of love and bars in London, the south of France and Berlin.

LAUSSE seemingly awakens as “Keep Walking” concludes, and finds himself grappling with the consequences of his actions and the destruction they wrought in “Moonlight Waltz”. Redemption creeps in as we are serenaded with a descending progression of vocals that take stock of the voyage we are finishing. A girl appears that offers the tenderness and romance that sustains our feline friend on the penultimate track, another highlight, “Peonies for Breakfast”. Beckoning to us with a welcome reprieve of brass and chorus it is a cathartic evocation of the charms of being loved that add a delicate and heartfelt charm to an album of high strung concepts and questions.

The album’s conclusory track, “Lotus Blossom”, is a more confusing affair, playing like a stoned Kanye song from his Yeezus era. That is not to say it is not energetic, it fizzes with the beeps of a childlike beat over which layered vocals and cultural references welcome LAUSSE back to a reality that seems more palatable. It is a fitting end to a record that sees LAUSSE grown up, still grappling with the same demons and still spinning them off in his languorous, enigmatic drawl, but now with the creeping onus of responsibility. This is a far broader canvas, and whilst still rooted in Leeds it is no longer the flow of a debauched student, but someone pondering where they are going and where they have been.

The first time I heard The Cat the Tree and the Girl it was quite a formative experience for me, bunking off of college, smoking a spliff in a mirror maze with a strange bloke who used a kettle as a book-bag. Then I was enraptured in my mildly miscreant youth, and I thought I saw it yawn out eternal in front of me in LAUSSE’s strange world. Then I was caught up in the vibrancy of living, of smoking a spliff with the boys and trying to pull at a house party. Now as I approach adulthood and consequences turn from abstracts to concrete, self perception grows some facets and the future begins to warble, The Mocking Stars appears ripe to guide me through my newest chapter of living.

As a footnote it is of the utmost importance that you roll a fathead and stick this record on your headphones looking out at the twilight.

Featured Image: LAUSSE THE CAT on Spotify

By Raphael Henrion

I had the privilege to watch DULOG’s production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street twice during their impressive run of six sold out performances. Stephen Sondheim’s musical adaptation is a classic that has been revived professionally, amateurly and somewhere in between since its opening on Broadway in 1979 and in the West End in 1980. It is no surprise that DULOG, Durham’s grandest music theatre company, took on this beloved story and musical. What I experienced in both performances was a striking, polished, and deeply impressive production with passion and energy oozing from every actor, musician and technician. Co-directors Amanda Cross-Court and Lauren Williams, assisted by Rio Patel, should be incredibly proud of creating a show with greatly deserved high praise.

The Performers

Right from his introduction, Sweeney Todd was played by Tom Carroll as a man full of confidence, purpose and power. Carroll’s ability to shift from sinister and vengeful to gracious and charming was very impressive, and was something he did especially well through his wonderfully sung lines. Todd’s partner in crime, Mrs Lovett, was played by Connie Richardson, who I must say was the standout performer both times I watched. Richardson managed to balance the extremely frantic energy in her physical and vocal performance while maintaining such clarity and strength in her singing and line delivery. Indeed, I scribbled in my notebook that Richardson ‘would not need to speak any lines’ given how much the audience gained from her facial expressions and physicality. Despite being a somewhat villainous character, I could not help but feel like I wanted to be on Richardson’s side.

Perhaps a more conventional romantic pairing, the actors for Johanna – played by Mathilda Ketterer – and Anthony – played by Joe Butler-Smith – demonstrated wonderful chemistry and embodied the hope of a more peaceful conclusion to the tale. Their voices were softer and brightly toned, helping set them apart from the other corrupted characters. A key moment of their interaction that stands out to me was that of Butler-Smith’s starstruck demeanour when he first sees Ketterer’s character. Followed by a timed spotlight, Butler-Smith was so eager to get closer that he descended the auditorium stairs quicker than the light could keep up. Intentional or not, I loved this detail.

Michael Nevin as Judge Turpin and Bede Capstick as Beadle Bamford worked very well together as the main antagonistic duo. Nevin’s highlight moment was his fantastic solo where, despite the uncomfortable motivation behind it, the audience could not help but be captivated by such a powerful performance – full of desperation, guilt and determination. As Turpin’s assistant, Beadle Bamford was embodied fantastically by Capstick, whose slimy yet charismatic portrayal made his character frustratingly likeable. 

Midun Odunaiya’s performance as Tobias was full of energy and this physicality was well suited to his character’s young age, making it far more believable. Pirelli, Tobias’s original employer and guardian (before he is ‘dealt with’ by Todd), was played by Will Simpson, who performed the faux Italian accent and flamboyant mannerisms very well and garnered many laughs from the audience. Simpson and Odunaiya appeared to have a lot of fun playing their roles, and the audience received all the benefits. Elena Pesciarelli sang excellently as the Beggar Woman, with great strength and desperation in her voice as she cries for ‘alms’, though I would have liked to see a greater sense of confusion and insanity in her characterisation.

Finally, I could not close my discussion of the acting performances without giving enormous credit to the nine members of the ensemble. This talented group of actors gave full commitment throughout the show, making a massive difference. A particularly impressive demonstration of the group’s brilliance was in the asylum scene, where each member of the ensemble played a uniquely ‘insane’ resident circling around the room – a scene that no doubt requires the crediting of Movement Directors Amelie Symmons and Jobe Hart. Their great work in choreographing this and many other moments of great synergy and synchroneity was integral.

The band, led by Musical Director Sammy Cormack-Repath, played full of character and emotion. I was impressed by the seeming shifts of motivation in their playing, their performance going beyond simply what they were playing and into how they played. In the first act, for example, the energy in their playing felt like they were on board with Mrs Lovett and Sweeney Todd’s plan, egging them on. After the interval, however, their playing felt more sinister, acting as more of a warning against rather than for Sweeney Todd. 

The Production

Production Manager George Murray and Assistant Production Manager Jonathon Wilson-Downs headed the design of a show that looked and sounded incredible. Deserving an entirely separate article reviewing their work alone, I will do my best to touch on every technical element that made Sweeney Todd so remarkable. 

The set was designed and constructed by Libby Simpson and her team. The two-tiered stage made it very easy to discern between Mrs Lovett’s pie shop downstairs and Sweeney Todd’s barber shop upstairs. Masking the height difference between the two floors were flats with painted grey brickwork. Sections of this brickwork were on hinges which could be opened to reveal different designs beneath, either red brick for symbolic emphasis, or the oven and signage of Mrs Lovett’s shop. I found this to be a very well-thought-out design that was used effectively throughout the show. The beautiful skyline drawing on the flat at the very back of the stage was gorgeously detailed yet subtle in colour, helping immerse us into Victorian London. The set and its various intricacies could not have been revealed without the excellent work of Stage Manager Evie Collins and her team (including Assistant Grace Mathews and Deputy Thea Jupe), who facilitated smooth, well-rehearsed transitions. I found that throughout these transitions, the stage crew moved with purpose, fitting into rather than clashing with the context and intensity of the play.

Co-Lighting Designers Leyla Aysan Montoya and Rory Collins delivered visuals that sincerely elevated the quality of the show. The flickering and dimming of the house lights at the beginning of the show was an effective choice I enjoyed; not even the ‘normal’ lights could provide the audience with familiarity and comfort as the show began. Additionally, the LED baton lights on the elevated platform (the upstairs) were a wonderful, dynamic choice that helped emphasise moments of violence, shifting motivations and more.

The sound for this production was some of the best I’ve experienced in Durham. Designer Carlos Davies, Isabella Broxis and Aniket Garg delivered the highest quality: very well balanced and mixed right from the beginning. All the sound effects that were used were well-timed and contributed meaningfully. Overall, I could hear and understand every line spoken or sung in this play, a feat I previously thought impossible. Indeed, one patron said to me that the amplification was potentially the best they ever heard in this venue.

Finally, I must commend the costume and makeup team, led by designer Harriet Miller, who ensured that every character was uniquely and effectively costumed to fit the bleak, Victorian context. One of my favourite details was that of changing Sweeney Todd’s waistcoat to red for the second act, matching the outfit of the Judge Turpin who he had sworn revenge upon. To reference Obi-Wan Kenobi, he had become what he swore to destroy.

Conclusion

All in all, this was a cast and crew brimming with talent and passion, making it an excellent show I am grateful I had the opportunity to enjoy (twice).

Featured Image: DULOG

By Sam Bentley

I have always loved Oscar Wilde. His wit and satire remains timeless, and his celebration of joy and absurdity feels fitting in a modern age defined by crisis. His refusal to treat seriousness as the only rational tone transcends his era. Wilde endures because his precision and irony has never required updating; his comedy lands because the behaviour he exposes remains constantly recognisable to a contemporary audience. 

There is no text where this rings truer than his most famous: The Importance of Being Earnest, which I have had the good fortune to direct this term with Durham University Classical Theatre (DUCT). Earnest is one of the great comedies in the canon of English literature. To call it just a witty and subversive Victorian comedy, however, would be to mistreat it as an old relic that ought to be admired and unchanged. Though still attached to its Victorian roots, I was committed to making Earnest feel fresh and contemporary. So often it is done with fully period-appropriate set and costume and RP accents lacking in variation – in these productions, too much focus is put on the idea that Wilde is writing about his own time. I wanted a production of Earnest which demonstrates that his satire is not nostalgic, but diagnostic; that he is talking about human behaviour far more than he is talking about Victorian England. Earnest is a play that speaks fluently to our modern contradictions, modern performativity, and contemporary romantic idealism. It is just as current as it was in 1895, and it was my intent to demonstrate this to our audience. 

Sincerity was at the heart of my creative vision. Wilde’s emphasis on absurdity is channelled through the sincerity of his characters in such absurd situations. My neo-Victorian production design allowed for me to emphasise the absurdity through set and costume, using bright colours such as vivid oranges and pinks and marrying them with classic Victorian style. Through this, absurdity is duly emphasised, allowing for the characters to be fully sincere in their performance and comedic style. It is easy with Victorian comedy, particularly with characters like Algernon and Lady Bracknell, to descend into a pantomime-like comedic style which undermines the integrity of the text and makes the comedy feel lazy. The emphasis I placed on sincerity was primarily to make the comedy of the text feel organic and not manufactured. All the comedy in Earnest is in the text and dialogue, so it was critical for me not to undermine that with cheap gags, but to let it grow naturally in the rehearsal process. 

Understanding the character relationships is the key to making Wilde feel fresh to a contemporary audience. The brilliance of Algernon’s wit comes through his comfortability with his counterpart Jack, and their ability to play with the music of Wilde’s text with one another. That relationship was constantly about emphasising to the performers that Algernon sets the tempo and rhythm to allow for Jack to play the melody, giving the audience the impression of genuine repartee rather than rehearsed punchlines. For a contemporary audience, the emphasis on their relationship makes the comedy feel familiar and engaging, arising from dynamics they recognise. The same can be said for Cecily and Gwendolen: their snarky, acerbic relationship and interactions are just as common now as they were in the 19^th century. Therefore, in the rehearsal process, real intent was put on building those characters based on their human feelings, and not on archetypal stereotypes of young Victorian women. Indeed, whether it is making Lady Bracknell as much a suffering socialite as she is a matriarchal demagogue or making the bedrock of Miss Prism and Chasuble’s relationship their sexual repression for one another, every character was carefully crafted to feel authentic rather than a recycled archetype. 

The experience in the rehearsal room has been joyful. I cannot thank the cast enough for the hard work and dedication they have put into this project. Building on my initial visions for them they have transformed their characters to feel delightfully alive. It’s been such a pleasure to watch them discover the comedy within their roles and in the truth of the characters intentions, interactions and reactions. Their willingness to experiment and play with spontaneity has allowed the play to feel rich in comedy and unpredictability. Watching them do this has been a pleasant reminder that comedy will always thrive on authenticity. Working with this cast to do this has undoubtedly been my best university experience. 

Productions are never possible without swathes of support; it would be remiss of me not to thank this play’s Producer and Production Manager: Evie Trueman and Rory Collins. They are simply the best in the business. Furthermore, I would like to thank my Assistant Director, Harriet Miller. She is excellent in all departments, a joy to work with, and her insight and support has been invaluable. It is a joy to bring Earnest to life in a way that is both true to Wilde and alive for its audience. 

The Importance of Being Earnest will play in the Assembly Rooms Theatre from the 27-29^th of November.

Featured Image: DUCT

By Robin Reinders

‘I have a very childlike rage, and a very childlike loneliness.’ – Richey Edwards

‘Little Lamb who made thee / Dost thou know who made thee’
‘Did he smile his work to see? / Did he who made the Lamb make thee?’
– William Blake

‘The sun is life.’

You are Victor Frankenstein; your ego is stored in your Adam’s apple and your scrupulous hand and the wound of your father’s apathy festering in the marrow of your bones. You fancy yourself a Maker in the making. A sedulous corps(e)man who deals with what is dead more than any doctor ought to. When you dream in the lavish bedroom not ten paces from the laboratory, it is not pleasant. You dream of dashed hopes. You dream of the body inert and shining on the slab. You dream of failure.

And wake now to a sound: small, inconceivable. A feeble inhalation, and another, and the world rearranges itself around what it has made. It is standing. Fragile and immense all at once. The skin gleams unnervingly, a milky sheen over bruised blue veins. The stitched geometry of the sutures glisten, fresh and pink. Its breath rasps raw through a new throat. Its head tilts as an infant’s. You are terrified. 

It takes a trembling step, the motion itself carrying a bone-weary ache both ancient and nascent. It is coming towards you. One red-gloved palm shoots out, No, please— and it lifts its mirrored hand in neonatal mimicry. This is Adam considering God; creation is watching you with wide, wet eyes. 

You could fall to your knees from it. The most significant thing is that you do not.  

The veil which frames the canopy bed conceals the countenance of its lacerated face; through the gauze, you glimpse it watching you, staggered, breathing in tiny, animal pulses. And suddenly the gloves are unbearable, and so you strip them off with that sigh of sumptuous leather (bought and paid for by the blood of the Tsardom and Sardinia). Look, you whisper, holding out your bare palms. Same. Slow and balletic, those long fingers unfurl. Pale instruments writhing delicately in the dim glow of the late light. You circle its distracted figure, eyes devouring the impossible architecture of it – the alabaster chest, the striations of its shoulders, the stutter of bated breath. The sound that leaves your mouth is quiet, awed.

When you draw the curtains the daylight is violent. And it flinches with all its prodigious body; the sore, strangled sound of a child escapes its mouth; its wrists flail useless and instinctive about its face. This tall, jigsaw-limbed thing cowering at the morning: it is pitiful in its grace, almost feminine in its frailty. Sun, you say, as though naming could console. Your gentle reorientation of it by its great, albatrossian shoulder blades. Light! The sun is… the sun is life. You bid it face it, though only when you turn bare-chested to do so yourself does it dutifully follow your example. It mimics your posture, your sigh, the fluttered closing of your eyes. You watch its marmoreal body haloed in gold; you think its scars are so much like filigree. 

Peeling away the bandage shrouding its mouth feels like something you have the authority to perform. Its lips are an insipid, pallid blue. You gesture to yourself with open, benign hands: Victor. Its spindly arms fold clumsily inwards, its fingers tapping at its pronounced sternum. This weak, parroted exhalation of your name is its first word. You laugh then: a cracked, manic sound too full to contain. Yes! you bark, the syllable collapsing into whispered litany. Yes, yes, yes – of course you are. Your fingers trace the pulse beneath its jaw, the miracle of it. It leans infinitesimally forward, and slowly you lower your head, press your ear to its chest and hear that petrifying, preternatural throb of its heart. You are Victor Frankenstein; your ego is stored in your glorious creation. 

---

The son is life.

Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025) is about hands: the hands that stitch, the hands that strike, the hands that fail to cradle what they have conjured. Whereas Mary Shelley’s creature is the child of scientific hubris, del Toro’s is the orphan of affection – the casualty of emotional cowardice. Victor’s failure is this: he cannot sustain the intimacy his creation demands. ‘You have to see the purity of the moment when Victor touches his cheek,’ del Toro remarks, ‘and understand that there could be a happy ending – but there won’t be.’ The wretched, essential fatality of creation is compressed into that very gesture: it is the fleeting, fugitive instant when God and creation encounter tête-à-tête, when Adam is still precious and prized and darling and dear – before shame and fear set their miserable precedent. Del Toro makes raw the ruin latent in tender regard: this is the crux of the film. 

Jacob Elordi’s embodied performance of the Creature communicates this brilliantly. Ache is privileged over shock. The infant fury of an unloved child over the stupid, square-jawed, bolt-studded zombie we may be accustomed to. Through Elordi, the Creature’s anatomy becomes a palimpsest of failed affections. Each tendon and tremor inscribes the trauma of lost intimacy: a virgin sorrow, a betrayed commitment, a nascent rage. When we are first met with del Toro’s vision of the Creature, he is slack-jawed, his limbs unsure, his torso enormous yet quivering. Each gesture seems borrowed, as though he must study himself in order to move. The Creature’s entire education is conducted through this oscillation between contact and withdrawal. His physicality, as Elordi constructs it, is a grammar of approach. When he moves, it is always toward; the great sorrow is his misplaced faith in reciprocity. One senses in this rendering of the character the raw metaphysics of want in its most primitive state – a desire unmoralised and unnamed, simply occurring. 

Andreas Vesalius, Male écorché (1556) / Anterior view of dissected muscle man, suspended (1556)

Young Elordi came into the project a mere nine weeks before filming began. Del Toro found his first Creature in the far more seasoned Andrew Garfield – who no doubt would have succeeded in realising the apposite affective register and mild demeanour demanded by such a character of the director’s vision – though this favoured casting was controversially scrapped due to scheduling conflicts at the time of the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strikes. Makeup artist Mike Hill was forced to discard nine months of painstaking effort in order to begin anew on Elordi’s lofty 1.96m canvas. While the swap kindled a small yet mighty outcry from internet cinephiles eager for this iteration, del Toro refused to see the matter as a derailment or departure from his intended design: ‘Anything that goes “wrong” in this movie is going to go right. I’m going to listen to the movie’ (Frankenstein: The Anatomy Lesson, Netflix). Hill shared this sentiment, describing an attraction to Elordi’s ‘gangliness and his wrists’. ‘It was this looseness,’ he says, ‘Then he has these real sombre moments where he watches you really deftly, and his eyelids are low, with the long lashes like Karloff.’ Eyes are of particular interest to del Toro. He describes a distinct openness in Elordi’s gaze: ‘an innocence and a purity … that was completely disarming’ – but, crucially, also a rage. 

The great narrative weight of the somatic and the sensory in this film cannot be overstated. The cadaver Victor animates must necessarily be of a certain scale, and must carry his awkward frame with a candid unwieldiness so earnest as to be endearing. The Creature must be sublime. ‘I don’t know who else you could get with a physicality like this,’ Hill said, and echoed by del Toro: ‘[Elordi] looks like an anatomical [drawing] … He looks like The Human … You can see his body in a Vesalius anatomical engraving. Very diagrammatic.’ He moves on coltish legs, buckling and knock-kneed, towards his Maker. Limbs long and lithe and reaching out in visceral inborn instinct. He doesn’t know what to do with himself. 

‘I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam.’ / Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam (1512)

If Elordi’s portrayal of the Creature is one marked by reaction and response, it is also marked in consequence by movement. His manner of gesture is informed by the hypnotic, uncanny cadence of Japanese butoh, as well as the doggish behaviours of his beloved retriever and faithful set-companion Layla. In this simple, unselfconscious, animal humility there is a virtue and an innocence of religious quality. ‘He reacts to love with love … to hatred with hatred,’ del Toro explains – an ethics of basic reciprocity which engenders purity. This unhurried curiosity of interaction counters with stark contrast Oscar Isaac’s taut and fevered Victor. He is intellect void of commitment, perpetually at odds with the irregular impulse of his own weak solicitude; he creates for the sake of saying he has done so. His creation, instinct shot through with affection, is the resultant victim.

The bond between del Toro’s Frankenstein and the Creature unfolds like an inverted Pietà: the sentient son pleading to be held by the recoiling father. The first chapter of the film, ‘Victor’s Tale’, begins in his own tragic, operatic childhood. ‘He begins with his father,’ del Toro expounds. He must tell the Captain, and by extension the audience, the origins of his own creation before he can divulge the details of his own creation: ‘“I must tell you how it got there. And that’s with my own father.”’ The act of creation is staged by del Toro as an attempted act of psychic compensation, performed by the son unable to metabolise the grief of his father’s absence. The Creature, then, becomes a monument to the father’s repression: a body stitched from the detritus of his unloved self (‘Yes, of course you are’). Victor succeeds only in reproducing, with the frightful exactitude of the deluded surgeon, the very same pattern of abandonment that made him. ‘Say one word. One word more. Anything. Make me save you.’ He leers at his creation as the gloves come back on. ‘Victor.’ And the strike of the match.

Michelangelo’s Madonna della Pietà (1498-9)

Del Toro’s Frankenstein strays with great purpose and intent from Shelley’s modern Prometheus. He tells a very old story, lights it in Caravaggesque chiaroscuro: the father who cannot bring himself to touch, the son who starves of his abstinence. Blood in fathomless amount coats the hands that tilt your face toward the light – but they cradled you, did they not? 

Featured Image: Netflix

By Edward Clark

Danny Brown is on an all-time run. For a veteran rapper with over twenty years of experience behind him, Brown shows no sign of stopping, and even less sign of becoming out of touch. Stardust is stuffed with head-turning features. Although he has worked with cult artists Jane Remover and Quadeca before, collaborations with underground artists like 8485, ta Ukrainka, and NNAMDÏ is something unparalleled by any of Brown’s hip-hop contemporaries. As his collaborators frequently express online and in interviews, ‘he’s so tapped into the scene’ (underscores to The Face magazine); Brown’s assimilation of so many up-and-coming artists makes Stardust shine.

This album is Brown’s first ever made completely sober. As he worried to the Guardian in 2023, “I’ve seen so many artists get sober and their music sucks”. His concerns were unfounded: from the album’s first single, Danny Brown showed that he was not letting sobriety hinder his out-of-the-box style. If anything, ‘Starburst’ is one of Brown’s most inventive songs to date. Over a hypnotic beat produced by Holly – a collaborator on Brown’s previous album Quaranta – Brown displays his everlasting ability to rap over seemingly anything. Still as genuinely funny as ever, Brown comes in swinging from the first, wielding ridiculously inventive and memorable one liners. “Better shape up and get them squares up out ya circle” he demands in his first moments, his delivery so potent that you’ll probably consider it. Fantastically confusing songs like ‘Starburst’ are plentiful here. ‘1999’ with JOHNNASCUS is an overstimulating cacophony of glitchy synths and punk-rap; ‘Whatever the Case’ sees Brown and ISSBROKIE take a braggadocious approach over a syncopated, bubbling beat.

However, these outlandish alt-rap bangers are accompanied in equal measure by songs that would not be out of place at a pop club night. ‘Copycats’ features a mesmerising hook by underscores, an artist leading the wave of forward-thinking pop. Her mantra of ‘Rap star, pop star, rock star / Gimme that, gimme that’ is both an earworm and a reflection of Danny Brown’s career trajectory at this point. Stardust is an absolute refusal to be bound by genre. ‘Flowers’ features 8485 singing the chorus with ease, making a welcome accompaniment to Brown’s flora-related punchlines – all over an EDM instrumental which seems to have been sent into your speakers first-class from 2009. This is not to say that Brown relies on features to achieve this new sound. ‘Lift You Up’, a solo cut which functions as the album’s centrepiece, is a head-bopping banger, Brown fitting seamlessly into a Y2K pop-rap hit. 

Whilst this blend of hyperpop and experimental rap may seem like a novelty, Stardust is far too refined to be a gimmick. Indeed, a recognition of the ‘terminally online’ nature of hyperpop is a running theme through the LP. Angel Prost, one half of pop duo Frost Children, provides narration throughout the album, which leans knowingly into online slang. “I essencemaxxed on half-severe vibe casts” she declares, merging the album’s message of self-betterment and optimism with an ironic recognition of the genre’s reputation. Building on Danny Brown’s reflections on his own career, she directly addresses him, and by proxy the listener: “To lighten the jealousy, you compare your star power to others / You jot down all the reasons you’re goated”. As the album develops, the use of internet slang blends with Brown’s actual self-doubt, suggesting that his being ‘terminally online’ is negatively affecting his sense of self. Prost’s narration functions as an embodiment of online criticism. In his sobriety, he’s forced to face his imposter syndrome head on.

Danny Brown ended his breakout album XXX on the line “Doin’ all these drugs, hope an OD ain’t next, triple X’. Thirteen years on, Stardust is an explosive meditation on his career; of all the colour on the album, his gratitude for his success and sobriety glows the brightest. ‘The End’, oddly the penultimate track, is a nearly-nine minute behemoth of a song, combining production from Rye Mann, Cynthoni (better known under her previous alias Sewerslvt), and Quadeca. Over Rye Mann’s mystical beat Brown reflects on his experience with alcohol and drug abuse: ‘Addiction had me by the throat, I couldn’t breathe, just choke’ he admits. The track is broken up by Polish indie-pop artist ta Ukrainka, who sings in Ukrainian and Polish, providing a satisfying balance to Brown’s frantic delivery; as Cynthoni’s overstimulating breakbeat production takes over, Brown is optimistic as ever. “It’s better days, my life got saved, I’m focused on the future”. Sobriety is where Brown is most stable, and as he brags on the album’s final moments, “I’ma keep goin’ ‘til my life is over’. If he keeps going at this standard, the future of experimental hip-hop is in good hands.

Featured Image: genius

By Bel Radford

To Rest Our Minds and Bodies is an incredibly yielding book. Its contents are tender and vulnerable, falling clean off the bone and seeping hot into my palms — my fingerprints were stained for hours after, marking everything I touched. Yet there’s weight to it too, a pressure that finds old bruises I’d almost forgotten — ah yes, we’ve been here before.

Harriet Armstrong’s book is, at its simplest, a reckoning with intense feeling: it weaves through the debris of unrequited love, the attempt to contextualise oneself within the world, self-destruction, redundancy, and mundanity. I am ashamed to admit I did entirely judge the book by its cover — it shows a Yoshimoto Nara-esque girl, pale and lying (or perhaps floating) in an oaken abyss. Her arms are crossed, the mark-making is gentle and roundish — the girl appears acutely peaceful in a way that made me envious. I recall being curled over, kneeling on the bookshop floor and finding myself enjoying the front cover — it anointed my scorched retinas, a cruel aftereffect of the pervasive LED shop lighting. I was also particularly frayed that day. Oh book so small and gentle, if you look like a lullaby, will you read like one too?!

It doesn’t exactly. It’s not necessarily a happy nor uplifting story — in fact, a great many bad things happen. It bleeds out slowly and hums along with the low timbre of humiliation thick in the everyday negotiations of awkwardly aged semi-adults. We are ripe with shame! The narrative engages with themes of redundancy and mundanity within these hangnail years; one hand turns over these old stones, the other hand holds your own — guiding you through an exacting jaunt across the minefield of your own souring youth. I found great comfort in its deep recognition; the novel really is good, compassionate company. Just a few pages in, I typed into my Notes app: “somebody appeared to be taking minutes in my brain a few years ago. they’ve since gone, gathered their findings, and returned it back to me bound in paper. harriet armstrong … who are u….”

The plot is as follows: the nameless protagonist begins her final year at university studying psychology. The book spans the entirety of the academic year. She meets her flatmate, Luke, one afternoon in the kitchen. He is a postgraduate student doing a vaguely defined degree in computer science. Luke is a kind boy, though some might categorise him as the manic-pixie-dream type — he introduces the protagonist to The Microphones, he wears guyliner, his presence is soundtracked by breathy, incomprehensible, and highly distorted music that fills the kitchen he cooks in, and he vaguely resembles Tilda Swinton. In one of their first encounters, Luke kicks a loose wooden board beneath the stove, making a soft, punctuated staccato that he remarks sounds like that of a heartbeat. He then feeds her spoonfuls of his curry.

“As he laughed he passed me a teaspoon of his curry and I couldn’t even taste the curry because I was thinking about how his fingers had touched each piece of onion, each piece of potato, some of the lentils, some of the mustard seeds — all of these things which were now inside my mouth.”

But despite his charm, irreverence, and unavailability (as we later discover), it would probably be very wrong to call Luke a manic pixie dream boy. The term is mostly used to describe a Ramona-Flowers-adjacent character, defined by Oxford Languages as “a vivacious and appealingly quirky character whose main purpose within the narrative is to inspire a greater appreciation for life in the protagonist.” These characters often exist as a mechanism or catalyst for growth, lacking real depth, and are defined more by the effect they have on others as a force for optimistic change than by their own interior lives. Luke is not vapid, and his feelings do not synchronise with the protagonist’s to produce a neat arc of self-learning. The protagonist falls in love with him, but it is fraught with resistance — unlike a classic manic pixie dream scenario: a down-and-out protagonist meets a quirky, optimistic character, a chemical reaction occurs, and the protagonist emerges enlightened. Our protagonist arguably ends the novel even more down-and-out than she began: punching trees, vomiting in a gutter, and running drunkenly into a lake.

Throughout the book, Luke and the protagonist form a seismic connection. Though the novel gestures toward friendly coffees and catchups with a handful of other friends, none possess the same intimacy nor gravitational pull as theirs. They show each other music and talk and talk and talk and cook and sit and talk. Luke and his girlfriend break up, thus galvanising the protagonist — their connection is so deep, makes so much sense — they should surely be together! It is frustrating even to us, the reader, on some level. It feels so emotionally and practically right and inevitable. The protagonist describes a kind of vaginismus, or perhaps an emotional block that has only ever been transcended when Luke is thought about. As Harriet herself puts it, love and truth collapse into one another in the book — the desire is undeniable, yet fundamentally inaccessible. This impossibility is heeded early on in the novel, when the protagonist imagines the two of them living together.. Luke insists they never could; it wouldn’t work. They’d never have time, he says, “to rest their minds and bodies.”

It is fruitless, and so the story becomes an exercise in trying to exist alongside this unresolvable attachment. From Luke’s perspective, the intensity of their bond is unsustainable — alas! The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long! In the novel’s latter half, the protagonist spirals into a kind of blackly comic mode de la self-destruct: she seeks out sex with seedy men and runs until she shits herself or vomits, etc. etc.

It’s this specific trope I resonated with the most deeply — the pursuit of breaking through a period of murky bleakness with anything of dramatic consequence; provoking big feelings or big repercussions to bring you out of yourself and into the realm of consequence and danger. In To Rest Our Minds and Bodies, this translates for our protagonist as seeking out sexual relationships online. At one point, the protagonist meets an older comedian, Richard, on a dating app. She asks if he has any pets — he replies: “Only if you count this monster cock.” Richard is her first sexual experience, and the protagonist mentions the seediness of the encounter feeling appropriate, somewhat pleased when he reveals a gauche tattoo of some coyote on his upper arm. Her exploration of sex reads like an experiment with self-harm. I talked to Harriet about it:

BR: Does the protagonist seek out encounters with men like Richard as a craving for some kind of consequence — as if bad, awkward, degrading sex is still something to be felt? I sort of imagine she wants to get as close to the edge as possible, to provoke the universe into giving her big, intense feelings or repercussions as surrogate intense feelings that Luke gives her.

HA: That’s actually so moving to read because yes, I think that’s exactly what I wanted to get at! The protagonist is definitely seeking out intensity and extremity to try and find some kind of outlet for her intense and inexpressible feelings for Luke — and I think she’s also trying to prove to herself that she’s capable of causing intense, serious, “adult” things to happen, because she’s so unable to make anything “happen” with Luke. I honestly feel like your question puts it better than I can — she’s definitely trying to get closer to the edge and to access these extreme situations as surrogates for the intense way Luke makes her feel, I love the way you put it! I think she also perceives a kind of very binary split between Luke, who she loves, and other men, with whom she has these horrible encounters — and perhaps it feels easier, to her, to keep those two things so extremely separate. I couldn’t really imagine her having more pleasant or neutral “dating” experiences: I felt this character would be drawn to these more sort of degrading, unemotional situations because they reinstate Luke’s role as the only safe/special person. Also, I definitely remember having those sorts of sexual experiences at that age, and maybe not even seeing them as degrading or bad because I didn’t know what a more healthy, comfortable sexual experience might look like. So I think there is definitely an element of that too!

The vast difference between the tenderness she shares with Luke and the physical awkwardness, clinical detachment, and general unpleasantness of her encounters with these other men is really, truly palpable. Many might wonder where the comfort I found in reading this book really came from — it’s just good to know the self-destruct button has been as appealing to others as it has been to me.

As I’m sure is normal when reading, one tends to contextualise the story and situate it somewhere familiar within their own world. In café scenes I imagined them at Whitechurch; at the pub, under the heated lamps at the Swan. During the protagonist’s monologues, my mind surrendered to peculiar feelings; that which resonated in the book felt as if it came from some muddy dream. The closest comparison I can make is the act of trying to make out the shapes of your childhood bedroom in the dark — your carrot-lacking eyes squinting in an attempt to discern a dressing gown from some Slenderman figure at the foot of your bed. That’s how it felt. Sometimes, when the protagonist described her isolation, I imagined a waxed wooden floor — maybe a ballet studio — big mirrors in my periphery that I couldn’t quite look at, shame-bound and anchoring my gaze to my feet. It’s the same room I often find myself in when I’ve been alone too long and my feelings start to become physical sensations. Particle emotions rub against one another in my head, hot, volatile, and fast like a kettle about to boil. I feel it pressing against my temples. The protagonist’s thought process often brought me back to this room, particularly in moments when loneliness, or Luke, was discussed. When we are trapped in ourselves like this, and we feel (at last) a big feeling from something outside of ourselves — we feel as if we have found God.

The novel reaches its crescendo after a period of semi-estrangement between the protagonist and Luke, culminating in her invitation to Luke’s twentysomethingth birthday party. She arrives, knowing nobody else. When Luke quips that he “can’t spend the whole night just with her,” we see, paradoxically, both constraint and release. The protagonist then goes outside and watches the party through the great glass door. She sees Luke’s gangling limbs curl and twist around the faces and bodies of those he knows. His body fractured betwixt the rooms and people — the intimate yet dispersed birthday boy politely doing the rounds — his presence dispersed yet shared among many. How unfair: they get to be touched by him, feel him move past and through them with no consequence and in a way that’s not completely devastating. The protagonist is on her knees in Luke’s father’s vegetable patch. She proceeds to vomit in a gutter, send Luke an unelucidated unkind message, then run, drunk, into the lake they swam in just weeks before. The protagonist’s corporeal reactions are, of course, extreme; perhaps mental devastation becomes more tangible, more legible when translated into bodily experience. I also talked to Harriet about this.

BR: On the back of the book a guy called Luke B. Goebel describes the book as “the real truth about being too big for the container of the body of youth.” The protagonist’s obsession often manifests in extreme bodily acts — vomiting, running into the lake, punching trees. Do you see these gestures as the body attempting to articulate emotions or intensities that exceed the self’s capacity for containment?

HA: Yes!! Again — beautifully put!! I think the narrator is feeling such intense things emotionally, and cognitively even, but lacking a physical outlet for those things, and an understanding of how to gain that outlet. Even her sexual experiences feel so random and failed and don’t really allow her to express anything or even have a real experience — I think she finds them all so partial and unfulfilling, and totally unrelated to her real feelings and instincts. The book is quite concerned, I think, with her dis/connection from the physical world — and how, even through sex and her vaguely self-harming actions, she remains essentially insulated from the world. And I think she’s also having these feelings — like love, I guess — that feel huge and almost transcendent, but again, can’t be physically expressed or even expressed to Luke through language — and there’s definitely a claustrophobia in that, and a desire to try and break out of the self.

A final note I made whilst reading was the culturally referential breadcrumbs left along the way. When setting up her dating profile (to meet the aforementioned disappointing men), the protagonist includes a photo of herself dressed as Phoebe Bridgers from the Halloween before. She mentions listening to Mitski and “The Place Where He Inserted the Blade” by Black Country, New Road. Luke introduces her to The Microphones. Anyone familiar with these artists will immediately note their common denominator — a certain attentiveness to the emotionally fragile and generally soul-crushing. We spoke about this also.

BR: I really liked the musical references dotted along the way; it made a sort of soundtrack for the book in my head. Why was it important to include these musical references?

HA: I really liked the idea of the book feeling like an accurate depiction of life — or at least that narrator’s life — and to me that meant including lots of little daily details like music, just because those things are a big part of my day-to-day life, so it felt really natural and almost obvious to add those details into the book too. I also really liked the idea of exploring how the character is experiencing her own thoughts and feelings through music, as a way to make sense of them — I felt this fitted with her tendency to overanalyse things and try to understand their deeper “meaning.” Also, it was fun to explore the excitement of her connection with Luke — and the way it made her see herself in a new way — through her excitement about his favourite music. I wanted, also, to explore the way she uses music as a way of expressing how she feels when she speaks with Luke — I thought there was something sad and maybe interesting in the idea that she doesn’t know how to communicate her feelings to him except through other people’s art.

I think it’s particularly interesting that this impulse — to find resonance elsewhere — runs throughout the entire novel. The amorphous presence of identity is slippery and exceedingly difficult to pin down. It is hard to know who you are, what you like, what you mean, or what you give, and To Rest Our Minds and Bodies gently bears witness to this. It soothes the neurotic twenty-something heart with teeth worn down to the gum — and for that, it deserves to be held like a precious stone. Alongside its practical and emotional acuity, it is written with a compassionate beauty — a feat, considering that at the same time it kneels beside you, elbow-deep in your wretched guts, tugging out long-carried feelings that can finally be felt and made sense of.

By no means should you take my thoughts as universal truth; everyone I’ve lent my copy to has offered staunchly different emotional accounts of their experience. My mother read the second half over my shoulder on a long train ride, convinced the protagonist was chronically self-interested. My boyfriend was unsettled by her pursuit of unpleasant sexual encounters as a way to feel — a surrogate of sorts — even when he recognised it as a symptom of her desperate attempt to access her own emotions. He was particularly frustrated that the protagonist and Luke couldn’t end up together, though they inhabit the same orbit. These different responses fascinated me; it reminded me of the first time I watched 500 Days of Summer, labelling myself a passionate Tom sympathiser, then scrolling through the Letterboxd reviews of the majority. Safe to say, I learned something about myself that day. I think these varied reactions also illuminate the most profound facet of Armstrong’s writing: she accommodates the kaleidoscope of human feeling, offering complicated yet very real scenarios that each reader digests and responds to differently — a reflection of the ways we inhabit our own interior worlds. In all, To Rest Our Minds and Bodies is a truly beautiful book. Most readers will derive their own unique meanings from it, but I suspect that those in their twenties will find themselves recognising much of the prose — rehearsed, written, thought, and even cried — as their own.

Featured Image: Bel Radford

By Martha Thornycroft

Persevering through watching often-alternative German films on a 14-inch laptop screen in the name of my degree is a far cry from experiencing German cinema in a local Kino, surrounded by its intended audience; serendipitously stumbling upon a semi-premiere of a new German film was hardly how I had imagined my first visit to a cinema in Germany would unfold. Despite repeatedly standing up for Hamburg – the location of my first year abroad placement – and having to convince family and friends that it is, really, the second-largest city in Germany, I was still uncertain about the cultural opportunities on offer in this often-overlooked, maritime city in northern Germany. Within the first month of living here, however, my ardent defence of the city was validated and rewarded when I chanced upon the Hamburg film festival (Filmfest Hamburg), which turned out to be just one of the many cultural gems this city has to offer.

Filmfest Hamburg is an annual film festival that takes place at the end of September. It is by no means akin to the Venice or Cannes Film Festival; attendees do not have the opportunity to catch glimpses of star-studded celebrities and directors. But, like many modest film festivals that steer away from the exclusivity epitomising other renowned cinematic events, this humble film festival offers a pared-back, artistically focused showcase of films from around the world for cinephiles and part-time enthusiasts alike (myself included). In this vein, the ‘Tag des freien Eintritts’ (free entry day), introduced last year to coincide with the day of German reunification (3rd October), has made this event all the more accessible. Thanks to this new feature, I was able to attend free of charge – music to any student’s ears. The film in question was Dann passiert das Leben (2025), produced and written by Neele Leana Vollmar and featuring two prominent German actors, Anke Engelke and Ulrich Tukur. Unbeknownst to me, the film’s official premiere was set for two days later at the Zürich Film Festival, with its cinema release date scheduled for just over a month after that – meaning that I was essentially witnessing its very first public screening. What’s more, the cast and main crew were even in attendance and participated in a post-screening panel. 

The film foregrounds a seemingly unassuming couple: Hans, a freshly retired headmaster, and Rita, a care home worker. Their life in Bayern is governed by a ritualistic monotony that, on the surface, appears unremarkable and inevitable, but quickly reveals a deep-seated discontent at the root of the couple’s relationship and existence. As the title – roughly translated as “Then life happens” – suggests, life gets in the way, and their quiet day-to-day is rocked by an accident that has implications for them both.

Speaking during the panel, Vollmar explained how inspiration for the film came to her unexpectedly whilst she was staying at a hotel in Berlin. At the breakfast buffet, her attention was invariably drawn to a couple in their early sixties also seated in the restaurant. Watching the couple interact, Vollmar said she was mesmerised by their mutual consideration of one another. The notion of love enduring through time – remaining constant alongside life’s milestones – began to take shape in her mind. Ironically, when she asked the pair their secret to a successful relationship, they revealed, with a laugh, that they were actually brother and sister. This moment, however, does underline an important truth: the common assumption that romantic relationships enduring into later life will naturally continue to last. It is this assumption that Vollmar grapples with in her new film, where love is no longer taken for granted but depicted as a constant, and sometimes difficult, challenge to sustain. 

Although I am evidently far from the stage of life depicted in the film – that of empty-nesterhood and retirement – Vollmar’s commitment to realism managed to immerse me in the world of this hapless couple. The damp, chilly atmosphere of the film somehow transcended the boundaries of the screen, and despite the warmth of the cinema, I had to put my jumper back on, shielding myself from the imagined cold. The film’s arguably bleak depiction of life post-middle age leaves a strong impression, with Rita’s shutters serving as a fitting visual metaphor for the routinisation and mundanity that can accompany later life. One of the cast members admitted that rewatching the film made him feel compelled to call his parents. In this sense, Dann passiert das Leben seems to depict a ubiquitous fear held by adult children: that our parents might be slipping into a static and colourless existence rather than living their life to the fullest. This is a fact the film seems to be self-aware of, as just minutes before the defining watershed moment, Hans, during an argument, refutes Rita’s claim that he barely notices her, asserting instead that she lives her life as though she doesn’t want to be seen.

The film is visceral, which is testament to Engelke and Tukur’s acting, and slowly, as love starts to be rekindled, the ambiance becomes brighter and warmer. A not-quite-happy but more contented life starts to look possible, exemplified by a spontaneous dancing scene in a schnitzel restaurant (an undoubtedly German way of signalling that all is well). That is why the film’s ending feels like a clichéd cop-out. Vollmar goes to the trouble of carefully establishing parallels only to undercut the actors’ powerful performances with an ending that feels both jarring and incoherent. It remained unclear to me what Vollmar intended to convey. As a result, the film proved more thought-provoking for the questions it raises than for its narrative substance. Still, despite its disappointing conclusion, it managed to leave a lingering impression – an outcome I certainly hadn’t anticipated as I walked to the U-Bahn from my flat, unsure of what to expect from the cinema I had discovered by chance on a Hamburg cultural events poster. With this first experience behind me, I plan to happen upon as many of these cultural opportunities as I can before I have to return to watching German language films on my laptop screen – something I know will feel all the more tedious now. 

Featured Image: Claudia Hohne