Samuel Barnett’s impression of Oxford is understandably rose-tinted. Some of his History Boys incarnation’s idealising enthusiasm has undoubtedly rubbed off: “It was quite magical for me. Actually going there, seeing where my character would end up, was really special for me. I remember walking around the colleges thinking that it was more like itself than I imagined it would be. I’d seen pictures and films, but there was a kind of hush. I don’t really have the words.

“I went to school in Whitby in North Yorkshire; there was one girl trying for Oxbridge from the school. I remember thinking that I would have loved to go. If I hadn’t gone to drama school I would have wanted to try.  One of my favourite pictures is of me, Jamie Parker and Dominic Cooper on the steps of one of the colleges. It’s almost like the life I didn’t quite have.”

 It hasn’t turned out too badly, though, for Barnett or any of his History Boys contemporaries. In fact it’s really quite disarming just how well the cast have done since those first roles, with James Corden’s litany of plaudits for  Gavin and Stacey and One Man, Two Guvnors; Matt Smith’s success in Doctor Who; Jamie Parker’s run as Henry V at the Globe; and Dominic Cooper in, well, Mamma Mia amongst other things. I question whether Barnett thinks that this astonishingly consistent success is due to some savvy casting from the History Boys directors, or whether it was the production and film itself that gave them all a platform for success.

“That’s a very interesting question. They say part of being a good director is casting. They did cast it well. We were all very much at the beginning of our careers. It can’t have been that they thought ‘this person’s going somewhere.’ I think it’s the play itself that set us up. It just put us in the public eye.”

Barnett’s most recent roles have been in two acclaimed Globe productions: “queening it up”, as he puts it, as Elizabeth in Richard III and playing Sebastian in Twelfth Night. I ask him about how he approached playing a woman. “It was very difficult to start with. I think one of the main things I worried about was other women coming to see the show, given that I’m supposed to be a monarch, a queen who has four children, and then three of her children get killed. Even now when I do that, there is a little bit of me going, ‘I bet people don’t believe this. Women especially. Parents don’t believe this.’ I also didn’t want to try to be a woman. It’s so obviously men in women’s clothing. So I played it for status, rather than gender.”

With Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female production of Julius Caesar on at the Donmar, the practice of putting on an all-male play has come under some attack. “A lot of people have had an issue with this all-male cast. A lot of people who haven’t seen the show. For the most part – especially any women who have talked to me afterwards – people have said, ‘I forgot you were a guy. It’s devastating when you lose your children.’ I’m not really bothered with it myself. I see it as a concept piece of theatre. We play the people, not the gender.”

Playing at the Globe alongside Mark Rylance has been a new experience for Barnett. “It’s like learning a different language. It takes more energy. You have to be muscular. You can be incredibly subtle, but your level of energy has to be such that it carries to the 1500 people sitting around you. Richard becomes much darker in the Apollo. It feels more claustrophobic, it’s a smaller stage. I felt at the Globe it was more of a comedy than a tragedy sometimes, because in a way that’s what the Globe audience are responding to. It’s such a live atmosphere; there are so many things you can’t account for. I love that Mark Rylance has found so much comedy in Richard. When the darkness comes now, it’s like a real kick in the guts.

“I’ve never worked with anyone like Mark. It’s like a competition on stage, and you either enter into it and get the rewards or you can be back-footed and you won’t take off at all. He never has off days. He can take whatever is going on with him and put it into the play. It’s made me more confident. It’s brought me up as an actor to trust my instincts, to do things differently.”

Despite Barnett’s ostensible success, things haven’t always been without concern. Actors are often anxious that audiences will only remember them for one particular role, but it was the other way around for Barnett. “I was worried I couldn’t do anything else, that everything sounded like Posner, like I had always sounded. When I finished I was nearly 27 – I’m not your method actor, I’m really not, but I did feel like there was something about me as a person that had been stunted. And I suddenly grew up more, and found that I wasn’t capable of or interested in playing that kind of young role anymore.”

It’s not common for people to go straight to drama school after sixth form. Barnett is very frank when he admits that it wasn’t the right decision for him. “I was not ready. I had a very sheltered upbringing, and to move to London at the age of 18, I was beyond green. I had no idea about anything. It was a real shock, and I really didn’t get what I was doing there. I hated it; I really did want to leave. I do think that had I gone away to university for three years I would have got more out of it, I would have been more mature, I would have known how to study: I would have been hungrier for what they had on offer. Some people are ready, but I wasn’t.

“You have to really want it. It has to be the only thing you want to do. If not, don’t bother.”

All this and more, including our group photostream, can be found on Cherwell Flickr!

[mm-hide-text]%%IMG_ORIGINAL%%6680%%[/mm-hide-text]

[mm-hide-text]%%IMG_ORIGINAL%%6681%%[/mm-hide-text]

[mm-hide-text]%%IMG_ORIGINAL%%6682%%[/mm-hide-text]

[mm-hide-text]%%IMG_ORIGINAL%%6683%%[/mm-hide-text]

[mm-hide-text]%%IMG_ORIGINAL%%6684%%[/mm-hide-text]

[mm-hide-text]%%IMG_ORIGINAL%%6685%%[/mm-hide-text]

[mm-hide-text]%%IMG_ORIGINAL%%6686%%[/mm-hide-text]

Huge congratulations to Heather Dixon, the winner of our first week Photo Competition on the theme of ‘Beginnings.’ Here’s the winning shot: 

 [mm-hide-text]%%IMG_ORIGINAL%%6679%%[/mm-hide-text]

From Heather: “For me, this really represents beginnings. The sun goes down and the party starts!”

Next theme is ‘Black and White‘ so send you monochromatic pics to [email protected] by Wednesday of 2nd week.

All winners will also be featured on our Flickr page!

Cherwell’s Verdict
‘Still needs whipping into shape’

With a remake of the classic Yes Prime Minister shortly on our screens, this may be the perfect time to bring political comedy Whipping It Up to Oxford.   It falls into the same vein of political comedy, all backroom deals, complex plots and naked cynicism. This is the kind of play that must be carried by its cast; when the audience have nothing to hold their attention but actors and office furniture, the standard has to be consistent and strong.

Unfortunately, the cast of Whipping It Up don’t seem to be quite there yet. Their performances are, granted, competent, and there are even a few gems amongst them.  Josh Dolphin puts in a solid performance as a deputy whip, although doesn’t quite gel with his main partner in the previewed scenes.  Many of the roles are filled with simple caricatures that don’t do the script justice – the senior Tories hammed up and blustery, the junior ones theatrically nervous, without either ever being believable.   

That, of course, could simply be a case of more rehearsal. What is more worrying is a distinct lack of energy across the cast. British political comedy runs the gamut from the sedentary Yes Minister of the eighties to the frenetic The Thick of It of the noughties, and this production falls firmly in the former’s camp.  The general pace and staging are far too sedate to expect any laughs from some the genuinely funny lines; actors are always seated, the conversation slow and steady, with no emotion, flair or dynamism thrown in.
The actresses of the piece, however, offer some respite from the rather staid male performances.  Their scenes genuinely command attention – Siwan Clark brings a real feeling of suspense into her scene with Dolphin, while Emily Troup’s energy makes her scenes a pleasure to watch. However, even these scenes seem somewhat marred by the directors somewhat inexplicable choice to lay on the sexual tension with a trowel, to the point you wonder if there’s something else going on you don’t know about it.

This play still has a chance to get better: it is mediocre rather than bad, and many of its weaknesses will improve in time for its second week debut. One can only hope the better members of the cast will left their colleagues up, to help bring out the humour in what is a genuinely very funny play.

Iffley Road is not obviously interesting, certainly not when compared with the buzz of its sister roads, Cowley and St. Clement’s. But go far enough down, and nestled among the staid elegance of three storey red-bricks, a dark-gleaming box-like building emerges. It is the Pegasus Theatre.

But to call it a Theatre diminishes its uniqueness. Certainly, Pegasus does theatre, but not like anywhere else in Oxford.

The driving force behind Pegasus is to get young people into theatre. “All our projects aim to work on self-esteem, building confidence, inspiring people to be creative,” explained Angharad Phillips, Youth Arts Leader at Pegasus.

The range of projects Pegasus involves young people in is impressive in and of itself. There’s dance, drama, music technology, technical theatre work, creative writing, and the occasional course on filming, all of which end in performances. Most of the classes are based in the theatre itself, but a lot of the time Pegasus takes drama elsewhere, to schools and community centres across Oxford and Oxfordshire. The aim is to help those who would not, otherwise, be able to access theatre, whether because of socio-economic disadvantages, or because of living in the depths of the country.

Last year they ran an international arts festival called Mesh, “where we had young people coming from Croatia, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Russia, Thailand, Iran, and they all came together and they worked together for ten days to produce a full scale production using music, drama and dance and lots of languages,” said Phillips, with a chuckle at the end of the sentence, as if having so many languages all under one roof might have been a logistical nightmare. “We worked mainly in English, though we had translators, and in the final show we tried to represent the different languages.”

Pegasus’ youth projects tend to be grouped under themes, this year’s being Food and Justice. “We’re looking at themes of how our decisions impact others, and global themes of waste and food miles and asking lots of questions around the ethics of food,” said Phillips. The groups then interpret the theme as suits them best; “one of our groups is taking inspiration from the King Midas story of the golden touch, of wanting everything but then that not actually being everything it’s cracked up to be.”

Pegasus gets results, too. Young people from their courses tend to come back for more; some even end up working for the theatre, like Phillips herself. A member’s committee, comprised of young people, takes part in the governance of Pegasus, helping with sub-committees and sending representatives to the Board of Trustees.

The building was “redesigned” just a couple of years ago, though it was actually more of a slash, burn and rebuild – the only original part is the shell of the theatre proper. The architects consulted both the staff and the young people, one of the results of which is the floor’s colour scheme; “the young people commented… that Pegasus was like an enchanted forest where you never knew quite what was round the corner – so the dappling on the floor is to reflect sunlight coming through dappled leaves.”

Theatre that makes young people think, where the courses are not run merely for them, but also partly by them, all housed in a stunning new structure – it should make for a pleasant change from underfunded and understaffed pretentious drivel. And if you don’t want to pay to see their shows, their numerous volunteering opportunities include ushering.

Cinephilia (n): Not a nasty virus or a particularly niche sex-crime (although it can be either. Or both.), cinephilia is a love of cinema, and this Oscars season you too can join the fun: 

1. Master the Jargon: The key to sounding like a cinephile – your best bet is calling everything “Interesting”. With a capital ‘I’. Yes it’s totally without meaning, but it sounds analytical. Also try “meta/pastiche/derivative” or a combination of all three, with prefixes like “proto/post/psuedo”. You could even go for “aspect-ratio” or “sound-mixing” if you’re feeling ambitious. If you get really stuck just talk about the phalanges.
2. Have more impressive favourite films: Put the BFI ‘Sight and Sound’ Top 20 List in hat. Pick out four. Wikipedia the plots. These are now four of your five favourite films. Be sure to instagram well-worn DVD covers of these four with bowls of popcorn with caption along the lines of: ‘Just Me and Battleship Potempkin again. #Director’sCut.’
3. Get a bit meta: Speaking of favourite movies: Cinema Paradiso. It’s now your ‘omfgfavouritemovieofalltimeever’. You know how Harry Potter is all wise because his greatest fear is dementors, and they embody fear itself? Cinema Paradiso is a film about loving cinema. It’s your new equivalent: a film of the cinephile, by the cinephile, for the cinephile. Pseudo-Meta-Interesting.
4. Lead (dominate) the Conversation: Never be content to talk about the actual film in discussion. Make constant reference to earlier work/short films/that one that was only shown that one time in one cinema in a bunker in St Petersburg in 1923.
5. For actual info we heart IMDb/Empire Magazine/Rotten Tomatoes. Or watch some films and have some thoughts. Your call.

★★★★☆

Four Stars

Nominated for eight Oscars, this adaptation of the stage classic is directed by Tom Hooper and stars an ensemble cast led by Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, and Amanda Seyfried. The film tells the story of Jean Valjean, a former prisoner who becomes mayor of a town in France. Valjean agrees to take care of Cosette, the illegitimate daughter of Fantine, and must avoid being captured again by Javert, a police inspector. This blockbuster cost an estimated $61 million to make, but has already broken the record for opening weekend box office sales for a musical.

I can’t act. And I certainly can’t sing. So for me, at least, the magic of musicals is that some people can. They really can. And, if you’re lucky enough to be sitting in a theatre, these people are belting out those songs right before your very eyes. 

I can vividly recall seeing Les Mis in the West End, but it isn’t the faces of the characters which I recall but the spine-tingling ohdear-lord-I-think-I’m-going-to-cry moment as they start to sing ‘One Day More!’ Never have I wanted to be able to sing more than at that moment. And never have I been more relieved to be sitting in a darkened room where no-one can see me sneakily weeping.

Unfortunately, there was no surreptitious sniffling from me in the cinema. Some of the magic was missing. Whether it was actually being able to see Anne Hathaway’s face (daubed in something amusingly akin to plaster of Paris) as Fantine lies dying, or seeing the revolutionaries’ barricade put in perspective amidst the backdrop of the city, blocking merely a side street instead of dominating the whole of the stage: something just wasn’t quite as powerful.

Despite some dramatic helicopter-shots across the French alps as Valjean makes his penitential pilgrimage homewards, and scenes swooping through the labyrinthine streets of 19th century Paris, somehow the grandeur is missing; and against such a backdrop, the characters struggle to assume the epic proportions of the stage.

Nevertheless, there are moments which are all the better on the silver screen. Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter are fantastic as the swindling innkeepers; The ‘Master of the House’ scene is a jaunty cacophony of trickery. Madame Thernadier spins from table to table, nabbing hats, purses and even the odd glass eye, whilst the Master cheerily serves up a pint of piss. Their reappearance at the wedding – Cohen in a fetching pin-striped yellow suit – is a welcome relief from the focus on the semi-boring Marius and Cosette.

Focus on the solos is occasionally tedious (Russell Crowe’s voice is plain boring, even if he is teetering on the precipice of a tower for ‘Stars’);however, Eponine’s ‘Little Fall of Rain’ and ’On My Own’ are touching, even if a little bit of a soggy sentimentalist cliché (girl is sad; cue rain).

Hugh Jackman as Valjean makes a miraculous transformation from a mangy inmate to a rather dapper, high-collared gentleman (I would), and Gavroche has all the chipper, alright gu’vnor gumption of the Artful Dodger. I’ll let you in on a little secret, though. I might have welled up at ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’. Both times.

★☆☆☆☆
One Star

After the hysteria of the Olympics passed, it seems that many an athlete found themselves flung to the summit of Mount Celebrity. Bright-eyed and able-bodied they may be, but rarely are they blessed with that sparkling charisma which is required to navigate the rocky path to media personality, before the country’s attention switches to the next batch of lobotomised karaoke stars.

Come 2016 there will be no contorted, gurning, slightly terrifying cartoons plastered across the underground to remind us that we’re (apparently) really into sports. In order to strike while the iron’s hot, PR teams have mobilised faster than Britney’s post-Vegas annulment and have carved TV careers out of toned bodies, good bone structure, and little else.

We have gawked at the abs on display in the swimming pool, but as US gold medallist Ryan Lochte demonstrated when grunting his way through a 90210 cameo (then commenting on the difficulty of “memorizing lines and trying to, like, say them and still, like, do movement”), Olympians should stick to what they do best: running, jumping, and looking good in lycra.

No exception to the rule is Tom Daley, British diving bronze medallist and tween heartthrob whose autocue-reading skills are about as natural as a GCSE French Oral. Olympian hero-worship is second only to fawning over K-Mid’s royal foetus in the list of things that make me want to emigrate to the Siberian tundra. Combine it with a ‘Celebrity’ reality show, however, and you have another thing altogether. It’s a peculiar vein of schadenfreude that’s brought out by watching those desperately clinging onto the outer fringes of the D-list undergo all manner of demeaning rituals on national television.

I’ve sat through them regurgitating animal entrails on I’m a Celebrity, felt kind of weird watching them go cold turkey on Celebrity Rehab and still can’t shake the image of Rebecca Loos’ porcine masturbation on The Farm. ITV, in all its infinite wisdom, has a particular knack for taking slightly more respectable competitions and adding in the potential for serious bodily harm (see Dancing on Ice; like Strictly Come Dancing, but everyone’s waiting for the inevitable ice-skate to the jugular).

In the Daley-fest that is Splash!, not only are contestants forced to endure Chirpy Northerner Vernon Kay, but they must also throw themselves off a diving board higher than two double-decker buses. Just in case the promise of seeing celebrities hurtling towards possible injury doesn’t grab your attention (which, for those of us who saw Jade Ewen as the final nail in the Sugababes coffin, is more than enough), producers have added dubstep and glitzy set-pieces.

There are also tarted-up swimming costumes which wouldn’t look out of place in a strip joint and a dive/dance opening number strangely reminiscent of the final pageant routine in Miss Congeniality. Oh, and Jo Brand is one of the judges.