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Where you read it first | Friday, December 5, 2025
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Spring LaRose

HAMNET
Arts

‘Hamnet’ breathes new life into Shakespeare

By Spring LaRose | November 24

William Shakespeare is, arguably, the most influential writer in history, with lines that have been parroted both in and out of the context of his plays for centuries. “Hamnet” is a testament to the timeless power of Shakespeare — for the long-cliched words “To be, or not to be,” somehow feel as fresh onscreen in 2025 as they must have onstage at the start of the 17th century. “Hamnet” is the newest film from director Chloé Zhao, based on the novel of the same name by Maggie O’Farrell. It is a work of historical fiction about the life of Shakespeare, focusing on his wife and children rather than his work.

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Arts

‘Lizard Boy’ upholds and reimagines the hero’s story

By Spring LaRose | November 5

The Roberts Studio Theatre feels like an underground rock club. The stage is set minimally, with panels of graffiti, black boxes, a piano and other musical instruments lit by hazy, colorful lights. The audience is still murmuring when the three characters that make up the cast of “Lizard Boy” casually walk onstage to tune their various instruments. It’s as if a concert is about to start, rather than a musical. The opening display is very intentionally alternative. “Lizard Boy” is a story about an outsider, and the show itself is situated on the boundaries between sci-fi and myth, and between the quirky and the cliché.

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Arts

The 24-Hour musical irreverently romps through Oz

By Spring LaRose | October 3

The 24-hour musical: where silence on the Cohen Auditorium stage is rewarded with raucous laughter and applause from the audience. We’re not in some polished, rehearsed Kansas anymore — we have landed in a raucous, occasionally ad-libbed Oz.

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Arts

‘The Hills of California’ is a tortured and beautiful dream

By Spring LaRose | September 25

A play is isolated from reality, forever fixed in its own little pocket of space and time. “The Hills of California” is distinctly aware of this fact, presenting the house the story unfolds in as both a sanctuary and a prison, where dreams are expressed and reminisced on but never able to come to fruition. 

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Arts

‘Together’ bends body horror into romance

By Spring LaRose | September 2

When love rears its head, it’s not always a pretty sight. “Together” embraces this truth and stretches it to its most grotesque limit. Michael Shanks’ new film is not only a supernatural body horror, but also a comedy and a relationship drama. The fusion of genres is literalized in the fusion of flesh — a process that is terrifying, ugly, funny and erotic all at once.

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Arts

Erin Zhu and the evolution of an artist

By Spring LaRose | May 15

“To be a fly on the wall, basically, is the dream,” graduating senior Erin Zhu said, smiling. In the background, there was the quiet hum of students in the Mayer Campus Center. Zhu, an experienced college journalist, was finally on the other side of the interview.

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Arts

DREAMGLOW’s ‘Photoplay’ is a synesthetic experience

By Spring LaRose | April 15

The colors on the screen rise and fall, nearly bursting from the borders of the geometric shapes.Walter Ruttmann’s 1921 short film “Lichtspiel Opus I”is oil paint on glass, but tonight in The Rockwell,the film is also sound and touch on sight. There is the seesaw of violin and song. Voices slip in and out of harmony. Triangles stab downward, and the voices become gasps and whistles. The dancer moves in front of the screen. Her arms roll over her body, which is enveloped in lime green. Aural crescendos match the swelling of shape and color.

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Arts

‘Parade’ puts America on trial

By Spring LaRose | March 25

“Parade” opens with a drumbeat for soldiers to march to and hearts to keep rhythm with. It is the American Civil War’s lethal metronome, keeping time that has been lost in carnage. For now, the year is 1863,and the place is Marietta,Ga. A young man kisses his love goodbye to head into battle, answering that rat-a-tat call to self-sacrifice. A Confederate flag is raised proudly, its stars and stripes beaming under the stage lights. The parade has begun.

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Arts

‘The Grove’ bears the fruits, burdens of family

By Spring LaRose | February 24

Here in “The Grove,” language takes on a deeper shade of reality. Words are lived and breathed on the stage of theCalderwood Pavilion more fully than they ever can be in the waking world. There is a cacophony of English and Ibibio, with each tongue insisting upon itself. Shadow becomes substance, and substance slips into the sublime.

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Arts

A Tuesday evening in Comedy Hell

By Spring LaRose | January 28

“This is kind of where it starts,” Jack Hall says, “This is the first rung of the ladder.” He is seated on an inflatable couch, in a bright little room that contrasts starkly with the loud, dim comedy club on the other side of the door. Time is occupying that liminal, anticipatory space it so often does before a show begins.

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