Student Life
Something wicked this way comes: ‘Macbeth’ previewed
Arriving at Somerville College in its full summer pomp, Stanley Toyne and Cameron Spruce, the codirectors of Cross Keys Productions’ Macbeth, walked over with me to the college chapel as we discussed the ephemeral bother of collections and the issues of trying to work amidst glorious sunshine.
Once sat in the space, with the fitting set-up of three grand thrones in the middle of the chapel’s walkway, it was easy to understand why the two have decided to stage their modern, mafia-set take on Macbeth here. There is an otherworldly feel to the chapel, a non-denominational space, shorn of ornate religious trappings yet clearly somewhere to be treated with reverence. Everyone knows the basic story beats of Macbeth – duty, pride, betrayal, downfall – but the use of a chapel was key in protecting the core of the story in a new modern setting.
Discussing the setting, Stan highlighted that, as with the mafia context, the use of the chapel was a deliberate choice, and had in fact been the cause of some difficulties in securing a location for the production, with several chapels either being too expensive or unwilling to host a mafia-themed production. He highlighted the similarities in power relations between the feudal system of medieval Scotland, where the original play occurred, and the mafia – a veneration of violence, an emphasis on family and religiosity – that allowed the play to transpose well. Chiming in, Cameron highlighted that the transverse staging of the chapel with nave, transepts, and chancel offered not just a fluid feel to the play, but an interactive feeling, placing the audience in and among the drama.
The mafioso setting of the play raised questions – how would some of the main characters, particularly Lady Macbeth and her husband, Malcolm, Duncan, and the witches, translate into this 20th-century setting? They both talked at length about how Malcolm, rather than merely being the hapless heir to the amiable Duncan, was to be portrayed as an actor in his own right, capable and willing to manipulate those around him in advancement of his own goals, particularly the vulnerable MacDuff, when news of his family’s murder reaches him. The three witches each aspire to capture an element of mob life and also allude to the Greek mythology of the Fates. Each represents something Macbeth lacks and wants at certain points in the play: authority, love, and excess, capturing the cycle of Macbeth’s character without denying him the agency of his choices. In this production, Macbeth is not solely the unwilling tool of fate – though elements of the fantastical do endure in this plot – but rather an independent agent, influenced not just by his surroundings but also by himself, and so too is Lady Macbeth.
Of note should be the ease with which the two directors bounced off each other, and how the arrival of two cast members, playing Lady Macbeth and Macbeth, did not prompt any great change of character or slip into a new persona. Instead, they genially integrated their cast into the interview, allowing me to enquire about how they found the role, the directorial approach, and their approach to the characters. Working within the setting dictated by the directors, both felt a range to explore the emotional depth of the characters, particularly with Macbeth stylised as more of a bruiser in this play, substituting swords and rapiers for pistols and knives, and Lady Macbeth made to be more than the particularly reductive versions produced in certain modern adaptations, like the Patrick Stewart-led modern take on Macbeth. They both lean into the stereotypical mob depictions of their roles, but Lady Macbeth uses it far more knowingly as a public facade, with her ability to occupy a sweeping veranda of opinion towards her emotionally complex, yet explosive, husband a core part of this rendition’s characterisation.
Both Cameron and Stanley have acted in OUDS productions before, with Cameron giving an excellent turn as Wriothesley in last year’s production of Wolf Hall at Christchurch. They spoke candidly of how their experience on the other side of the dynamic influenced their open, approachable attitude towards the actors, and how an unexpected delay over the spring vac allowed the actors to further develop their characterisations. The play’s newly composed organ score, courtesy of Peter Hardistry, functions as what Cameron described as “motivic glue”, highlighting the changing power relations and positions of the character as the play moves towards its ultimate conclusion. The production effortlessly combines the old with the new to produce what promises to be a thrilling rendition of the Scottish Play.
Dating apps are no longer just tools for finding a partner. For many young people, they are spaces to test identity and see how others respond. This shift is clear among Gen Z, who often treat dating as part of self-discovery.
Data from Tinder reports that 54% of users first came out on a dating app. These patterns suggest a deeper change. Niche platforms now meet needs linked to safety, identity, and belonging, not just romance.
Micro-Communities Over Mass Matching
Large dating apps often group many identities into broad labels. This can lead to identity dilution. Users may feel reduced to a few tags. As a result, their full identity is not seen or understood. Many start to look for smaller spaces where nuance matters more. This shift is clear as interest grows, with many users searching for bisexual dating sites to find more accurate matches. People using these platforms often want more than access to profiles.
They look for spaces where bisexual identity is not questioned or treated as a phase. On many large apps, bisexual users report being filtered out or misunderstood by both straight and gay users. Niche platforms respond by setting clearer identity categories and allowing users to state preferences without pressure. This reduces misinterpretation and repeated explanations.
Niche apps also build matching systems that reflect these needs. They sort users based on layered identity traits, not just gender. This helps people feel seen in a more accurate way.
Identity Exploration Happens Faster in Controlled Spaces
Recent data from online dating news points to rapid change. There has been a 30% increase in listed gender identities. Non-binary users have risen by 104%. These figures suggest that more people are testing and naming their identity through apps.
Niche platforms support this process in a more controlled setting. Social pressure is lower, as users expect openness from others. There are fewer heteronormative assumptions built into profiles and matching systems. This reduces friction during early stages of self-definition.
Many users treat these apps as identity rehearsal spaces. They test labels, pronouns, and boundaries before sharing them offline. This allows for quicker self-understanding, with less risk of negative response.
Reframing the Problems with Online Dating
Many discussions about the problems focus on ghosting or shallow chats. Yet a deeper issue is identity compression. Users are reduced to short bios and a few images. This creates a form of market-style comparison, where people are judged quickly and often unfairly. Critics link this to swipe culture and the wider commodification of dating.
Niche apps respond by limiting scale and slowing interaction. They use more detailed profiles and specific matching rules. This shifts focus from quick choice to clearer identity signals. As a result, users face less pressure to fit into narrow categories.
Platform Specialisation vs. Generalisation
Specialisation improves relevance. Users receive matches that reflect more precise identity markers. This reduces noise and unwanted interactions. It also supports clearer communication from the start.
| Feature | Mainstream Apps | Niche LGBTQ+ Apps |
| Matching logic | Broad filters | Identity-specific filters |
| User intent | Mixed | More defined |
| Safety tools | Standard moderation | Community-driven safety |
| Identity expression | Limited depth | Expanded options |
As a result, connections are based on shared context, not just general attraction.
Why Women-Focused Queer Apps Are Growing
Interest in lesbian dating apps and gay dating apps for women is rising for clear reasons. One key factor is the reduced presence of male gaze dynamics. Users report fewer unsolicited messages and less pressure to present themselves in a certain way. This changes how profiles are written and read.
Communication styles also differ. Messages tend to be more intentional, with clearer context and tone. Many platforms set norms that favour consent and mutual interest before contact. Community moderation plays a strong role here. Users often report issues and shape acceptable behaviour together. These patterns create more predictable interactions and stronger trust between users.
Conclusion
The focus is no longer on scale, but on accuracy and trust. Smaller platforms offer clearer signals and more control over interaction. This supports both self-definition and safer communication. As expectations change, users are likely to keep moving towards spaces that reflect their identity with greater precision.
It is undeniable that LGBTQ+ representation in the media has become more positive in recent years. One may assume this trend extends across genres, forms, and time, allowing previously unacknowledged LGBTQ+ historical figures to receive recognition. The popular series Bridgerton, for example, deviates from the books to feature two LGBTQ+ main characters. However, the majority of media with LGBTQ+ main characters is contemporary and does not explore the existence of LGBTQ+ identities in previous centuries. It seems historical literature has indeed fallen behind in LGBTQ+ representation. If this is true, then why, and how can this issue be solved?
There are a few reasons to think that this could be the case. For instance, a recent talk at the Oxford Literary Festival, entitled ‘Gender-Fluid Georgians’, saw Carolyn Kirby and Anthony Delaney in discussion on their work about LGBTQ+ Georgians. They discussed the many issues surrounding the writing of texts, both fiction and non-fiction, about historical LGBTQ+ figures. There remains a legacy of concealment that many appear hesitant to deviate from, noticeable archival scarcity (meaning criminal records are the widest body of evidence remaining), and moral discomfort surrounding revealing identities that were so carefully kept hidden.
Even if there are limitations and worries surrounding the representation of historical LGBTQ+ figures, it is possible to make up for these oversights. If they have been long under-represented, Kirby and Delaney try to undo this in their work. Kirby discussed this in her novel, Ravenglass, which centres on the life of the protagonist, Kit, whose disruption of gender norms forces him to live a life of concealment. Kit must suppress an interest in feminine fashion, and later hides in a more literal sense by living as Stella, in a fascinating exploration of gender identity.
Delaney’s non-fiction book, Queer Georgians, explores silenced LGBTQ+ voices in the Georgian period. He details the lives of a variety of Georgian people, discussing figures mostly unknown, as well as revealing information from the archives about the undiscovered LGBTQ+ lives of better-known figures. He especially discussed archival gaps and how deep one must look to discover historical figures’ true lives, which is one possible explanation for the scarcity of LGBTQ+ historical texts. However, the existence of Kirby and Delaney’s books is evidence of the increasing recognition being given to LGBTQ+ figures of the past.
One admirable figure that Delaney discusses is Margaret Clap. Nicknamed Mother Clap, she provided a place of refuge for LGBTQ+ people. She ran a Molly House in Holborn, a “pub for homosexual men” and gender-nonconforming people, where they could socialise safely away from the rest of society without fearing the consequences of expressing themselves. Elsewhere, this fear was strong given that sexual activity between men was outlawed by the Buggery Act of 1533, which said that the “detestable and abominable Vice of Buggery committed with mankind or beast” was punishable by death.
Margaret Clap is a fascinating part of the history of Molly Houses due to her rebellion against law enforcement and being “actively involved in legal battles relating to sodomy charges”. Her aid was selfless; she put herself in danger to protect others and was eventually prosecuted. She was fined, made to stand in the pillory, and given two years’ imprisonment; it is unknown whether she survived her prison sentence. The records of Clap’s actions emblematise the issue of having criminal records as the main source for LGBTQ+ history. Not only does it limit understanding, but it is also reductive of the humanity of these people whose lives now must go unacknowledged outside of the record of their then-criminal activity.
Clap’s form of allyship to the LGBTQ+ community is one that clearly had a great positive effect. However, it is somewhat foreign to forms of allyship today in that it required her to hide those she aligned herself with, rather than championing them openly. In modern society, the latter form of activism is often more prominent because of the increasingly accepting attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people, at least in certain parts of the world. Perhaps it is this tradition, and the lack of source material that comes from this need to hide, which leads to fewer stories being told about LGBTQ+ people of the past, even whilst they are gradually gaining greater acknowledgement in contemporary pieces. We have inherited a legacy of both internal and external suppression, which has such power that it feels more natural to continue this than to break bounds.
Despite the excellent work of these authors, as well as others, there remain difficulties in countering the issue of LGBTQ+ under-representation. Perhaps it does not feel truly possible to celebrate these people, given the need for any author to place themselves in the same position as the law enforcement who cruelly exposed their identities.
Even with the best intentions and in a much more accepting climate, it may feel uncomfortable to profit off of revelations about identities that were kept so carefully hidden, and for such good reason. It is difficult to celebrate their humanity when LGBTQ+ figures of the past were not perceived (and therefore not documented in the archives) as such, and their stories rarely end happily. However, whilst this may be the case, the books written by Kirby and Delaney, as well as their invitations to speak at the Oxford Literary Festival, are proof of at least some forward movement.
Therefore, it is possible to overcome the struggles of writing about historical LGBTQ+ figures and responsibly represent them. It may be necessary to spend extra time searching the archives, but this is not an impossible activity. Delaney discussed the limitations of writing a non-fiction text about figures who are often seen solely through the lens of a criminal in the archives. If a piece of information has not been reported, if no humanity has been given to these figures in the records, then no humanity can be recorded in a history book about them. Such limitations do not, however, apply to a novel. A careful amalgamation of historical accuracy with the gift of humanity in a work of fiction could be the answer to this issue of responsible representation of lives once gone despised, who now have the retrospective opportunity to be celebrated.
CW: Disordered eating.
As an Oxford student, I often think it would be nice to have fewer screens in my life. No more phone, no more tablet – I’d rid myself of these pointless objects and live life to the fullest, rapturously taking in every note of birdsong, every tree, every tiny vein on every leaf of every tree. I’d be fully engaged with the world instead of aimlessly googling whatever happens to come to my mind at any moment of the day. Most importantly, I might even finish my degree. I’d become a productivity machine.
On the other hand, maybe it would be a kind of living hell. This is a possibility that Ben Lerner’s short new book, Transcription (2026), raises. The book opens with the unnamed narrator travelling to interview his academic mentor and 90-year-old intellectual superstar, Thomas, for a magazine. In the hotel he’s staying in, just before he’s due to meet Thomas, he knocks his phone into the sink. Cue lots of panicking about how he’s not going to be able to record the interview – FOMO of the very worst kind. And yet he’s too embarrassed to simply say, “I knocked my phone into the sink and so I can’t record you”, and instead thinks up a semi-elaborate lie as to why their first meeting should merely be a preparation for the real interview. Not only that, though, the narrator’s lack of a phone makes him less attentive, not more. “Shamefully unresponsive to the old media that surrounded me”, as he puts it. “Paintings, analogue photographs, a vinyl record spinning somewhere in my mentor’s house.” He has the opportunity to engage with all these things, but all he wants to do is check his emails. A bit like me when I’m ‘working’.
Lerner, who is somewhat of a literary superstar, at least in the US, is not afraid to take on the big themes. In Transcription, we find not only the question of “technologies of capture”, in the narrator’s words, but also, in no necessary order of importance: paternal abandonment, dementia, anorexia, suicide, Covid, the generation gap and euthanasia, often all mixed into the same page. It’s a lot to take on, and it’s not always entirely clear what each of these elements is doing, other than to add a certain seriousness to proceedings. And yet there’s something hypnotic about Lerner’s trim and often surprisingly hilarious prose, which keeps you reading on.
And the question the book raises is an interesting one, even if everybody has been asking it for a long time now. Are our screens good for us – an infinite source of knowledge which I’d once have had to traipse to the Radcam and read actual books to get – or are they gradually destroying our souls and our ability to connect with the world and even with each other? One of the strengths of Transcription is that it doesn’t give a definitive answer to this. It’s not a coincidence that Thomas’s anorexic granddaughter only finally starts to eat food once she has the distracting, soothing effect of as much screen time as she could possibly want. “Dad, I want you to cut me an apple”, she says one day as she is watching endless ASMR unboxing videos on YouTube. For her and also for her highly privileged parents, screen time is the greatest of blessings, far more so than books, a university education, and all the organic berries and grassfed beef their money brings them.
In complicating rather than answering the question, the book is very much a work of fiction, and indeed, fiction is another of Lerner’s themes. People experience different technologies in different ways, some good, some bad, some in between, but one idea the book raises is that there’s a parallel between our screen-dominated lives and fiction. When the narrator is accused of falsifying what becomes his famous interview with Thomas, the charge against him is that of turning the interview into fiction, as a “defence against the reality of losing” his mentor. Fiction as escape, fiction as a kind of reconstructed, mediated reality. Thought of in this way, it’s not clear how much difference there is between fiction and our permanently online world – or whether the one can really be that much worse than the other.
Not unrelatedly, the book also suggests that maybe there isn’t that much difference between a life which is mediated by screens and one which isn’t. Screens have constructed an alternate reality, one in which we quite literally live online, in the same digital house as millions of others, relating to each other in seemingly peculiar ways, hating them, loving them, completely misunderstanding them. But even when the people in Lerner’s book aren’t connected to one another via their phones or tablets, their world is a messy, incomprehensible place. People talk past each other, people forget who it is they’re talking to, people constantly worry about how others are perceiving them. In other words, the ‘real’ world isn’t any more appealing than the online world, precisely because it isn’t all that different. Where exactly this leaves us on the screen question is difficult to know. And what it means for my degree, I’ve got no idea. But I think that I’ll stick to my devices for now.
The post ‘Technologies of capture’: Ben Lerner’s ‘Transcription’ Reviewed appeared first on Cherwell.
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