Spring is a deputy arts editor for the Daily. Spring is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major and can be reached at Spring.LaRose@tufts.edu.
Whose body is more polarizing than that of Sydney Sweeney? The “Euphoria” actress and entrepreneur has strategically capitalized on her looks through infamous, sexualized ad campaigns with Dr. Squatch and American Eagle. She has become the bane of feminists’ existence and the apple of the conservative eye.
The podcast is a hot topic among media forms — an infinite, on-demand radio ecosystem of entertainment and indoctrination. Given its rather recent climb into the mainstream, the podcast remains mostly untrodden ground as far as film goes — and that makes it very fertile ground. “Undertone” is a bold experiment with the podcast in film, using it as a conduit of psychological and supernatural terror.
A man walks out in pink spandex and a pig nose, and the crowd bursts into laughter that is both stifled and uproarious. The dim, purple lights of The Rockwell cast him in both shadow and spotlight. Soon, the stage is filled with a whole cast of barn animals, a farmer’s daughter and, of course, a sexed-up song set to the tune of “Belle.” This is the grand finale – and it’s been a real good time.
This abridged production of the musical “The Cloud Collector” is part of The Rockwell’s Work-in-Progress Showcase, a series that allows artists to workshop pieces for a live audience. The show tells the story of Hazel (Robin Elmer), a young transgender playwright who reconnects with his lost girlhood in a fantasy dreamworld.
The finale of the global phenomenon “Stranger Things” has been prophesied as one of the biggest television events of the 21st century. With five seasons spanning nine years, the show has grown both its audience and the scope of its story, tapping into, and in turn creating, a cultural zeitgeist. Now, the last episode is here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
