Pity the Freshers.

Sure, they’ve made their offers, gawked at reading lists, googled ‘Sub Fusc’, and had Aunty Barbara in Auckland cooing congratulations down the phone line. But they’re currently staring into an Oxford-shaped abyss, and as with any abyss, it’s a disconcerting feeling. They have no idea what lies ahead. Doom? Gloom? Twats-in-red-trousers, wantonly discriminating against anyone without a private income and a public school education? Sobrani-smoking, silk-dressing-gown-toting, self-described ‘eccentrics’? Or is it all with ancient manuscripts, moth-eaten cardigans, and stony-faced silence?

My advice is not to turn to literature for help.

Before arriving here, impressions of the city tend to be constructed of a hazy mixture of terrified interview memories and media stereotypes. It’s tempting to turn to the multitude of novels set in Oxford for clarity, to paint a coherent picture of what life here will be like. Don’t do this. They lie. Every author’s rose-tinted image of punting and port is just waiting to be shattered when you realise that, actually, life in Oxford is mostly normal. Give or take a gown or two.

So here’s an anti-reading list of the most dangerous examples of fictionalised Oxford – the books definitely not to read before your arrival.

 Brideshead Revisited (1945) by Evelyn Waugh

‘“I’ve got a motor-car and a basket of strawberries and a bottle of Chateau Peyraguey – which isn’t a wine you’ve ever tasted, so don’t pretend. It’s heaven with strawberries.”’

Let’s get the cliché out of the way. Evelyn Waugh’s magnum opus is the quintessential image of Oxford decadence, telling the tale of Charles Ryder’s embroilment with the Catholic, aristocratic Marchmain family, whom he meets through their Oxford undergraduate son, Sebastian. Though only the first part of the novel is set in Oxford, Ryder’s relationship with the fabulously wealthy, fabulously camp, fabulously alcoholic Sebastian has become a byword for the kind of champagne-quaffing hedonism that, even in darkest Christ Church, is rarely found in reality. Anyone caught carrying a pretentiously-named teddy bear is guaranteed a black eye by the end of Freshers.  

Jude the Obscure (1895) by Thomas Hardy

‘New Doctors emerged, their red and black gowned forms passing across Jude’s vision like inaccessible planets across and object glass’

Oxford’s access problem is, rightly, well documented. Even though only 7% of UK pupils attend private schools, 42.5% of Oxford’s 2012 Freshers were independently educated. In spite of all efforts to the contrary – and efforts are being made – its undergraduates are still almost universally upper-middle class. But read Jude the Obscure and realise how far we’ve come from Thomas Hardy’s day. His story of thwarted ambition and social prejudice centres around a working class Wessex lad, Jude Fawley, whose dreams of studying at Christminister (Oxford) are frustrated by his lack of fortune and formal education. It’s the novel that contains the most heart-wrenching misspelling in the English language – the ‘Done because we are to menny’ of Jude’s son’s suicide note – and even for a miserable bugger like Hardy, it’s very bleak. Avoid or you’ll arrive in Oxford feeling incurably resentful on Jude’s behalf. Just visit the Jericho pub named after it instead.

Northern Lights (1995) by Philip Pullman

‘Jordan College was the grandest and richest of all the colleges in Oxford… It had never been planned; it had grown piecemeal, with past and present overlapping at every spot, and the final effect was one of jumbled and squalid grandeur.’

To put it bluntly, real Oxford isn’t like Philip Pullman’s Oxford because Pullman’s Oxford is set in a parallel universe. Sorry. Unlike the one from which his protagonist Lyra sets out, we have no daemons, witches or armoured bears. We are not ruled over by a shadowy theocratic ‘Magisterium’ and there is no Final Honours School in Experimental Theology. We’ve got plenty of dust, sure, but no Dust. Start jabbering about General Oblation Boards and Miltonian conspiracy and find yourself quick-marched to the college counselling service and sternly instructed to stop with the substance abuse.

And these are only the three worst offenders. From Martin Amis to Alan Bennett, Inspector Morse to Zuleika Dobson, English literature is littered with depictions of Oxford’s ‘dreaming spires’. But spires don’t dream. They just attract flocks of tourists. As you sit on the pavement after your first Jaeger-sticky night at Bridge, trying to smoke a cigarette the wrong way round and crying because you dropped your cheesy chips, you’ll realise that the Oxford of fiction is precisely that – fictitious.

The Pin 

Having seen Alex Owen carry the Cambridge Footlights a couple of years ago, I was quite excited to see him given control of his own double act – in tandem with Ben Ashenden. These two have already had breaks on BBC3 and ITV, and it is easy to see why; with Owen as the taking-himself-too-seriously straight man, and Ashenden as the nerdy, awkward foil, these two have a natural comedic chemistry that allows them to get the audience roaring with belly-laughs with only a minimum of traditional “sketch material”. The bits, genuinely amusing in their own right (Frank Lampard the thespian, over-politically correct exam questions); but it is the in-character fillers, with Owen venting his frustration at his partner’s Mr Bean-like incompetence, that really drive the laughs. A very funny show, and worth seeing.

 The Pin will be performing at Pleasance Courtyard until 26^th August. Tickets cost £10. 

BEASTS

I was only able to catch this group for a 20 minute slot at a late night revue, but it is one of my regrets of the 2013 Fringe that I wasn’t able to see their full 60 minutes. These three had a very successful debut run in 2012, and return this year with plenty of buzz about their new material. The trio have a strong chemistry, with each of the rotating the high and low status roles, in what is perhaps a more traditional style of sketch comedy that The Pin. A lot of the material relies on slightly warped reproductions of childhood classics – an oikish pig geezer explaining his building nous to a big bad wolf, sullen Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles – sandwiched between quick one-line bits. The formula is not ground-breaking, but it is highly entertaining.

 BEASTS will be performing at Pleasance Courtyard until 26^th August. Tickets cost £9.

Lead Pencil

Lead Pencil generated fantastic reviews for their debut show in 2012, and equally promising feedback from this year’s piece; I was understandably a bit surprised to find a few spare seats at the back of their Underbelly venue. The only possible reason I can conceive for this is that their show runs during the 1-2pm death slot, in which most of their target audience (i.e. anyone familiar with late 1990s mass culture) will still be conked out from a late night before. If you are feeling a bit muggy of an early afternoon, go and watch Lead Pencil; the sketches, which focus mainly on the fruits of our youth (Art Attack, crappy Nokias and the Fresh Prince), will tickle your nostalgic nerve as well as your sense of humour, and the whole show is performed with such incredible energy that you will leave the room feeling buoyed ahead of the rest of your day.

Lead Pencil will be performing at Underbelly, Bristo Square until 26^th August. Tickets cost £9.50.

Cambridge Footlights

The Footlights have had a long and and happy relationship with the Fringe, and have become one of the best-known acts at the Festival. This year has seen them return once again to Pleasance’s Ace Dome, though I can safely say that their sell-out audiences are thanks to the strength of the 2013 material, and not trading on the Footlights history. This was probably the strongest sketch show that I saw at this year’s Fringe, with a fantastic mix of experimental sketches (“Press this button when the sketch should end”, “Here is a sketch menu” etc) and amusing running jokes; Matilda Wnek’s death machine saga carried the show. Wnek was just one of a core trio of brilliant actresses (alongside Rosa Robson and Emma Sidi) who, alongside the lovable Matty Bradley, provided a whole host of meomrable characters and scenarios.

 Cambridge Footlights will be performing at Pleasance Dome until 26^th August. Tickets cost £9.50.

Oxford Revue

This year’s Revue was right at the other end of the spectrum from The Pin and the Footlights in terms of its presentation; no white back drop and plain uniforms, but a wonderfully cluttered set and eccentric outfits. The skits were equally quirky, and managed to extract the maximum laughter from a given scenario without ever taking it too far: a World War I soldier with cramp, a rather difficult birds and bees slideshow, a brilliantly honest primary school teacher. Perhaps the finest thing about this show is the quality of the transitions, with sketches fading into one another with a smoothness and precision that indicates an enormous amount of thought and hard-work in rehearsal. Watch out also for the running jokes, one of which concludes with a rather spectacular bang. Also, check out The Oxford Revue Presents: Toby Mather, for the best comic poetry this side of Tim Key.

The Pin will be performing at Underbelly, Cowgate until 25^th August. Tickets cost £9.

★★★☆☆

3 stars

Written in 1956 John Osborne’s Look Back In Anger is generally thought to have given birth to the literary model of the ‘angry young man’, depicting a generation left feeling cold in a post-war, post-hope England. The harsh realism of the play, set entirely in a sitting room, also came as a breath of fresh air after years of forced drawing-room comedies being the favored dramatic form. Bringing a play which is very much of its time to the Edinburgh Fringe stage in 2013 may seem a bit of a struggle, but it is what Macaroons, an Oxford company have attempted to do, and for the most part successfully.

The chosen tagline for the play, ‘Let’s pretend we’re human beings and we’re actually alive’ sums up the plot which sees Jimmy Porter, the angry young man in question played by Tom Hilton, embrace highly volatile relationships with all the other characters, particularly his wife, Alison, played by Artemis Fitzalan Howard. This volatility is captured well, largely down to an excellently visceral performance from Hilton. This is complemented by the stage set-up which convincingly recreates the claustrophobia of the 1950’s sitting room, making his performance all the more effective. However, there are flaws.

The directors’ decision to cut out the character of Colonel Redfern, Alison’s father, removes from the play the physical presence of the old order, standing for imperialism and class. While this choice may possibly have been made to lift the play from it’s 1950’s context, if so it is not clear, and the result is that it at times made Jimmy’s anger seem unfocused, and more irrational than it should have done. There were also moments in which the play’s realism was undermined by the actors’ timings coming onto the stage; an off-stage character would be called and then they would suddenly appear from the wings, with little to no time between the two events. Although this only happened a handful of times, it did make the production as a whole feel less slick.

Despite these problems the cast as a whole are strong; Fitzalan Howard plays Jimmy’s downtrodden wife with the quiet depth necessary to prevent Hilton from dominating the stage anymore than his character is meant to. Conor Kennedy should not go without mention either for his steadfast performance as Cliff.

All in all this production of Osborne’s classic is good and worth seeing for the actor’s performances, but for any fans of the play it may fall short of expectations. 

Look Back in Anger will run at C-too, Edinburgh, till 26th August

★★★☆☆

Three Stars

Masterchef is back again. It may be a revamped show, but it does feel like this new version has been going forever. Not much seems to have changed either. There’s the same dramatic music, the same dramatic voiceover, the same dramatic credit sequence. This time, though, John says “Cooking doesn’t get tougher than this!” in the intro. Greg just smiles and says “Hey, that’s my line!”. So, the same awkward banter then.

This time it’s the celebrity kind. The first week it’s all girls (Heidi Range, Jo Wood, Janet Street-Porter and Katy Brand) or, as Greg tends to call them, the “gehls”. Actually, he doesn’t say that in the first episode. In fact, he seems on the whole more reserved than in previous series. He’s a bit of a TV personality now, seen shouting for an hour in a BBC documentary recently, so maybe he’s worn himself out. He does claim at one point that he’d like to “munch the living daylights” out of a pudding if he were left alone with it, but you can tell he doesn’t really mean it. He’s just going through the motions for the cameras.

John also goes through the motions, those mainly being the motion of walking around the kitchen, peering at everyone. He can be a little leery at times. He likes to stand close to the contestants and watch them, smiling but not talking, like he’s just farted and he’s waiting for them to notice.

Janet looks at him like he has, snarling at his and Greg’s every comment. She doesn’t like being told what to do does Janet, not by John and Greg anyway. As she says, “I’ve edited a national newspaper, I can make a bread and butter pudding!” This seems like flawed logic to me. As John says, Heidi Range has played (in the Sugababes) in front of 90,000 people, but she’s still shaking when she tries to fillet fish. Still, she manages it, and pretty impressively too.

They all seem pretty good this time actually. None of them are disasters, no-one slices their finger off; they all just serve relatively good food. It’s a bit boring really. Masterchef is a bit boring when everyone’s just average, and the celebrities don’t add much.

It livens up a bit when they go into professional kitchens though, and everyone goes to pot. Heidi takes half an hour per plate and Katy keeps forgetting to put the cashews in her dish. Which is called Chicken Cashew. The only one who isn’t a nervous wreck is Janet. Perhaps she was on to something after all.

All in all, the show appears, like Greg, to be just going through the motions. There’s decent cooking, terrible jokes and fake tension throughout. When they cook for Cirque Du Soleil, we’re portentously told that if the food’s not good enough the performers will have to nip out for sandwiches, delaying the show and disappointing the 4,000 expectant audience members! So, more than just a few grumpy acrobats at stake.

Janet and Jo do unwittingly up the tension, though, when they pour an alcoholic liqueur over their fruit salad. Which they then serve to acrobats about to go and perform. Hmm. Jo does put brown sugar on it, though, which is hilarious. Because she used to be married to Ronnie Wood. You know, from the Rolling Stones. Who had a song called “Brown Sugar”.

Well, it’s still funnier than anything John and Greg say. Still, everything about this new series suggests that Masterchef will continue to be around for a long time yet. It can be a bit overblown and silly, but it’s still solid entertainment, and the cooking can be genuinely impressive. Though it’s a lot more fun when it isn’t.

On a hot August evening, a friend and I found ourselves under Westway in West London. If you’ve ever taken the Oxford Tube, this is the bit which looks like the cross between a scrap yard and stables. We were supposed to be heading to an exhibition opening in Latimer Road, like the sophisticates that we are (or at least trying to be). Needless to say, we were desperately lost. Sweaty and miserable, we were looking at an evening which finished with a shared packet of quavers and a pepsi; the promise of free prosecco wafting away with the dusty rush hour traffic. However, magically, we finally got the map the right way up, asked a bemused staff at the sports’ centre for directions and sensibly got a little help from my phone and arrived at the Griffin Gallery.

Cool, clean and wonderfully white, it is, in short, everything that Westway is not. Their latest exhibition is perfectly suited to their plain, scientific décor. It is entitled “Insight Radical: Where Science Meets Art” and displays the work of 7 Australian artists who have responded to the work of chemists who are researching free radicals.

For those of you who don’t know, and I certainly didn’t until that evening, free radicals are molecules with unpaired electrons making them very reactive. To satisfy their need for paired electrons they will steal them from neighbouring molecules, turning those molecules into free radicals and creating a chemical chain reaction. This has engineered their reputation as molecular recalcitrants whose highly reactive nature can cause aging related illnesses and cardiovascular disease and some cancers. But, actually, we depend on them; amongst other things, we need free radicals to transfer oxygen from the air in our lungs into our blood stream.

The artists spent time in the lab of the scientists, bouncing off them in the same way that free radicals feed off other molecules (oh so clever) and producing work inspired by the science. Each artist has responded to the scientists and the scientific theory in different way and they also bring their own artistic education and interests to the project. Steve Lopes “UV Portrait” is the sobering oil painting which you meet first. It reproduces a photograph of the Australian adventurer Andrew McAuley who died trying to kayak the Tasman Sea in 2007. A memory stick containing photos and video that McAuley took during his trip was retrieved and the images show how his face and body were degraded by continuous exposure to the elements.

The aging process, caused by free radicals, was accelerated and the painting shows a man whose whole face has been eroded. With his cavernous cheeks, the whole skeletal structure has become visible. Lopes accepts that the effects of free radicals are not always positive and champions the science which develops our understanding of them so that we might harness their positive effects. His other portraits are of the scientists themselves, figured as curious, cheerful and sensitive. “Calculated, Figure III” is a women with hair dyed in an outrageous colours and a massive grin. This is a celebration of the discovery of knowledge.

For me, the best thing about this exhibition (apart from maybe the air con) was the fact that it reflects the work of Griffin Gallery itself. It is the exhibition space for ColArt – the company behind art materials such as Windsor and Newton and Conte pencils. Their offices are above the gallery. ColArt has an artist in residence who has a studio right next to the labs where the products are developed. The artist has ideas for potential products and trials them in the first stages of their manufacture. Upstairs is the mirror of downstairs, where science uses art (and artists) for inspiration.

Insight Radical: Where Science Meets Art runs at the Griffin Gallery until 31st August. Entry is free.