by Lakshmi Krishnan

This National Theatre production showcases new writing: ‘Chatroom’ by Irish writer Enda Walsh and ‘Citizenship’ by Mark Ravenhill. Both fall under the auspices of the NT’s ‘Connections’ programme, which attempts to fill the need for ‘the best plays from the best writers around for young people to perform’. The goal is ambitious, and a bit over-stated, but I doubt many would dispute its relevance.

Adolescence is the focus of the evening: its peaks and nadirs, passionate pain and moments of euphoric joy. Both writers have admirably captured teenage angst while avoiding cliché, realising that adolescent despair is not static, but rather in flux, interspersed with moments of deep happiness and profound awareness.

Walsh’s ‘Chatroom’ examines the anonymous banter and strange, artificial closeness found on internet chat sites. It opens with a heated conversation between William (George Rainsford) and Jack (Akemnji Ndifornyen), in which William boldly claims that J.K. Rowling ought to be ‘eliminated’. Adults, he says, write silly fiction for teenagers to keep youth dumb and subjugated. Across the stage, Emily (Jaimi Barbakoff) and Eva (Jade Williams) discuss how they feel let down by their former idol, Britney Spears. This amusingly facile dialogue comes alive through excellent timing and well-chosen exaggeration. The young actors do most of the work through their voices; physicality is restricted as they spend most of the play sitting in plastic chairs, inactive bodies in contrast to snappy talk. Rainsford, in particular, shines as the wicked, yet fascinating, rogue William. His gleeful malice peaks when the unsuspecting Jim (Steven Webb) wanders into their chatroom. Jim has real problems: his dad left, his mum hates him, and he thinks he wants to commit suicide. But when William and Eva decide to take him on as their ‘cause’, ‘Chatroom’ takes a turn. Webb’s sweet, self-deprecatory Jim evokes genuine compassion. Here is a character that could easily be over-played as emo and drippy, but Webb avoids this through long moments of direct audience contact. His monologues, delivered as if to a friend, bring a touch of tenderness to Walsh’s otherwise snappy piece. Without giving anything away, I must confess disappointment at the denouement of Jim’s crisis. The tension that built over the course of the production suddenly and unaccountably evaporates. ‘Chatroom’ does, however, pose interesting questions. Is it Jim who has real problems, or the bored teenagers who would instigate him merely to make a point?

In contrast to ‘Chatroom’, physicality is a driving force in ‘Citizenship’. Actors bounce over balconies, dance, smoke, rattle on and off the stage. Slang is used with forceful vigour and great relish. If internet chat was the structure of Walsh’s piece, then the potential anonymity of daily ‘chat’ is the basis of Ravenhill’s. Talk has little meaning as teenagers snog and shag and call each other ‘gay’ and ‘bi’ with slight attention to the significance of these terms. The relationship between Amy (Michelle Tate) and Tom (Ashley Rolfe) is our focus. Tate’s refreshingly brusque, yet tender Amy was the highlight of this production. Her love for a man she knows cannot love her properly is conveyed with just the right measure of self-disgust and nervousness. Rolfe’s conflicted Tom is also strong, and there is a particularly cracking scene between him and the teacher (Richard Dempsey) he suspects might be gay.

‘Chatroom’ and ‘Citizenship’ complement each other well, and although the double-bill might not fulfil all of the NT’s ambitious goals, it is certainly a strong effort in the right direction, showcasing some sparkling talent and providing a fast, witty, sometimes touching evening of theatre.

Chatroom/Citizenship runs through November 3rd at the Playhouse (7:30 pm). 

by Marley Morris

In Edward Albee’s ‘The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?' Martin (Will Robertson), an intelligent, wealthy New Yorker with a wife and son (Stevie and Billy, played respectively by Sarah Nerger and Tom Coates), falls in love with a goat. Somewhat surprisingly, however, this is perhaps not the most shocking revelation that Albee has in store for us, in what becomes a play that discusses most of the major taboos, including incest, pedophilia, and, of course, bestiality.

It is clear from the start that Guy Levin’s production seeks to highlight the contrast between Martin’s secret and the otherwise normal, settled lives of his family. We watch as Martin’s pleasant home life is brutally destroyed by his inability to set firm boundaries on his idea of love. The stage – set up originally in the style of a tidy, unexceptional family home – is slowly torn apart by Stevie’s reaction to her husband’s sordid explanations, culminating in the final bloody tragedy of the play. And although on many occasions the situation is laughable – at one point Martin recounts his experience of going to a meeting equivalent to Alcoholics Anonymous, but for people who commit bestiality – it is rarely light-hearted; a strong feeling of discontent runs through the entire play.

Robertson’s performance, however, is not one that lends much sympathy to Martin’s character. His speech is disjointed and faltering throughout, clearly in an attempt to show that Martin seems to be on a different plane of thinking when compared with his friend Ross’ (Max Seddon) steady realism. Although this works on some level, it can be a little frustrating for the audience (as well as Stevie), and it is hard not to feel that more could be done with the role. Seddon, too, is not quite able to pull off his character’s hard-headed nature, making his betrayal of Martin feel a little out of the blue. With Nerger, on the other hand, we see a much more believable performance: in particular, her scream of agony after being confronted with another detail of Martin’s secret, followed by the casual remark “go on”, works wonderfully.

In fact, for the most part this production brings across the key ideas of the play successfully: we are not just treated to a barrage of taboos, but are asked to question whether certain kinds of love should be permitted or prohibited. The word play is also delivered nicely – when Martin describes the first time he met Sylvia, at the “top of a hill”, both Ross and Stevie separately correct it to “crest”, each in an inappropriately pedantic manner. Yet at times the pace of the production slows, and the rhythm of the dialogue can feel a little artificial. There are some scenes which could do with a little more energy, particularly in a play that is fairly static as a whole. Overall, however, the production is a successful one, which gives the audience a lot to be shocked at, as well as much to think about.

The Goat runs at the OFS through November 3rd at 7:30 pm, with a 2:30 pm Saturday matinee. 

Name a city in the Midlands.  Birmingham.  Well done.  Now name another one.  Err… Having trouble?  You’re probably not the only one.  A friend of mine certainly did when I asked him to think beyond Birmingham, and he lives with two Midlanders.  He wrinkled his brow and said I should give him time to think, so I left the room to make some coffee.  His brow was still wrinkled when I came back in and he was staring at a fixed point in deep concentration.  I drank my coffee.  “Nottingham?”  He eventually ventured.  Finally! It was a bit of a shame that it took him so long when one of his housemates actually lives in Nottingham I thought, but then I realised that he hadn’t finished yet.  I waited expectantly.  “Isn’t Nottingham really in the North though?” he asked.  

Sigh.  Why do people find it so difficult to accept that there is such a place as the Midlands?  Ok, they find it pretty hard to ignore Birmingham – it is England’s second city after all, so most people can vaguely point to it on a map.  But, Brummies aside, the rest of us have to jostle for position in the varying arguments about where the north/south divide is and try and plead that we are most definitely on one side or the other. 

I’m not just blaming people from outside the Midlands for this.  In fact, the worst culprits are those of us who actually live there and still pretend that it doesn’t exist.  I’ll admit it: I was one of the offenders when I first came to Oxford.  I came from Derbyshire and I thought that made me northern.  I liked brown sauce, I expected gravy with my chips and I was certain that the word ‘bath’ didn’t have an ‘r’ in it.  As a scared first year surrounded by so many Londoners, I felt it safest to ally myself with the northerners.  They seemed cool. 

But where was the gang of friendly Midlanders?  Why couldn’t I stand there during the inevitable North vs. South debate and say, hang on, the Midlands is clearly the best place to live?  Why was I so sure that if I said that, no-one would be on my side?  

Maybe it’s because that ruins the whole point of the debate.  If there isn’t a definite line between North and South, if it is possible to be something ‘in the middle’, then things become much more ambiguous.  In the southerner’s imagination, ‘bloody northerners’ live practically at the north pole, not just a couple of miles away in the next county.  And for northerners, the south is practically France.  It’s an alien nation, not t’other side o’ hill.  

Someone from the middle is left to feel a bit like a pariah.  We complicate matters and thus are ignored.  The worst thing though, is that we don’t have our own identity.  I was keen to be one of the northerners because they are seen as being down to earth, tougher than southern ‘pansies’ and good for a laugh, but what are Midlanders?  Well, we’ve got Robin Hood, the birthplace of rugby, lots of ex-coal fields and the Peak District.  I’m not seeing a unifying theme here.  Maybe it is false to look for one, but, dammit, our region is just as good as any other! 

Until more of us Midlanders start thinking like this though, we might as well not exist.  We can’t expect northerners or southerners to do it for us.  Sticking up for the Midlands would be the first step on the slippery slope to admitting that the north/south divide isn’t such a big deal.  So we have to start doing it for ourselves. 

Picture: Birmingham Bull Ring

http://www.flickr.com/photos/59303791@N00/465924531/

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In a series of further crackdowns on illegal cyclists in Oxford, police have been issuing fines to any rider caught without lights on their bicycle.During a road safety campaign, 55 cyclists were caught without lights on High Street and were issued with £30 fixed penalties.The road safety campaign, which earlier this month saw cyclists being fined for ignoring bans on riding down Cornmarket and Queen's Street, is part of a month-long awareness scheme run by Oxfordshire County Council.

A giant 25ft effigy is being created for Bonfire Night in a bid to raise money for charity.The wooden Guy Fawkes is being made by Dan Barton and his friends from Southmoor in the hope that they will be able to auction off the statue and raise money for the Poppy's Appeal charity, which hopes to raise £250000 to build a new building for Southmoor pre-school.For those looking for organised Bonfire Night events, South Park's annual Round Table charity fireworks display will take place on Saturday, November 3rd, with gates opening from 5pm, with the fireworks display at 6.30pm, followed by a bonfire (tickets £5).If you're willing to travel further afield, the largest fireworks display in the county will take place in Abingdon, with £6000 worth invested in the show.

I recommend this story from The Times. It'll have you, er, rolling with laughter.
 
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by Benjamin LeongUglier Than a Monkey’s Armpit falls unashamedly into the category of Books To Be Read On The Toilet, to fit behind the loo paper next to Crap Towns and Where’s Wally. Dr Robert Vanderplank has sifted through over forty languages in the hunt to find the planet’s most colourful insults, and compiled the best ones for our enjoyment. From the delightful “You’ll eat a turd before I will” of Ancient Greece to Japanese children’s favourite “Your mother’s navel is an outie!”, one is astounded at the extraordinarily diverse and expressive ways in which the various peoples of the world have found to insult one another.

Blasphemy is taken to the limit with the Catalan curse “I shit on God, on the cross, on the carpenter who made it and the son of a whore who planted the pine”, while the Igbo communties of West Africa opt for the amusingly specific “May you die of uncontrollable running stomach”. What insults and curses tell us about a culture is undoubtedly a wide ranging and fascinating question, but one which Vanderplank does not answer in sufficient depth. The most interesting bits of the book are where the author gives analysis of the culture behind a language’s insults. Who could fail to be captivated by the knowledge that in the topsy-turvy world of Italian politics, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was frequently derided as ‘Premier Pinochio’ for his lies and outsized nose? Or that in Spain, while the equivalents of ‘cunt’ and ‘fuck’ are not particularly offensive, a mere joke about someone’s mother might spark off a brawl? Unfortunately these sections are all too brief. The dictionary-style entries which make up most of the book can too often be mundane. Learning how to say ‘bastard’ and ‘fuck’ in other languages may have been fun in Year 9, but it fails to excite now. We also get the sensation of an academic uncomfortable about writing in an informal, chatty style. When Vanderplank quotes NWA’s ‘Fuck Tha Police’, for example, it is impossible not to feel a twinge of embarrassment. It’s like your tutor turning up in Converse and skinny jeans. However, despite these drawbacks, it will provide a pleasant diversion for those spare five minutes and will equip you with an arsenal for insulting your mates in new and ingenious ways.

Oxford scientists have challenged the value of studies that try to calculate the effects of increased levels of carbon dioxide on the climate.
In this week’s ‘Science’ magazine, Dr Myles Allen and Dr Dave Frame argue that placing an upper limit on climate sensitivity is difficult and less relevant to environmental policy-making than is often assumed.
“No one denies that quantifying climate system feedbacks is a crucial part of our attempts to understand the climate change problem,” said Dr Myles Allen of Oxford University's Department of Physics, “but putting an upper bound on climate sensitivity has become something of a Holy Grail for climate researchers. What we are suggesting is that this may not be possible or very helpful.”
Drs Allen and Frame suggest that the biggest mistake would be to place a fixed limit on carbon dioxide levels too early on, without leaving room for adapting to new research. Dr Allen said, “Providing our descendants have the good sense to adapt their policies to the emerging climate change signal they probably won't care about how sensitive our climate is because they will have been smart enough to limit the damage.”

 Tool-use in animals is often equated with intelligence. But Maja Choma wonders that if even pigeons can learn to use them, what does it say about our high opinion of ourselves?

 “Tool use is the external employment of an unattached environmental object to alter more efficiently the form, position or condition of another object, organism or the user itself when the user holds or carries the tool during or just prior to use and is responsible for the proper and effective orientation of the tool”
(p10 Animal tool behavior by B. Beck. (1980)

Imagine getting up in the morning and not using a single tool all day long. No spoon or even a bowl for your cereal. No coffee from a machine on the way to lectures, no pen and paper for your notes. No phone calls, no iPod, no internet. Just nothing. 

It’s not until you imagine a world without tools that you realise how dependent we’ve become on them in every aspect of our lives. The influence of technology can be seen everywhere in modern society, but throughout evolution, tool-use has been our characteristic skill. We like using tools; a baby will play with them from a very early age, even if it just means banging one thing against another to make a fun noise.

It’s something we take pride in, imagining it requires a lot of intelligence and understanding, as something that sets us apart from other animals, something that helped us survive and become such a dominant species.  Being an extremely self-centred species, therefore, we find animals using tools fascinating. We’ve always thought that being able to use tools is a sign of some special ability, a human-like intelligence or logic. But is it? 

A crow can make a hook out of a twig and use it to extract snacks from holes. A chimpanzee can use a box to stand on or a stick to reach a banana. Even a snail can use small stones to shift its own balance in order to turn the right way up (yes, someone made an experiment to see what happens when you put a snail up side down on its shell.) Are these instances demonstrating special cognitive abilities? Why should tool manufacture and use be a good indicator of having them? Just because humans are smart (we tell ourselves) and use tools doesn’t mean that animals who use tools are smart. In fact to say so would be very naïve – if not plain stupid.

In 1917, Wolfgang Köhler reported some interesting instances of impressive problem-solving behaviour in a number of chimpanzees; a bunch of bananas was placed in a room, high enough to be out of easy reach of the 7 chimps present, and a small wooden box was placed in a far corner. All the chimps tried to obtain the food by jumping, but when it failed, they paced for some time when suddenly one individual ran to the box, pushed it under the bunch, climbed and reached the bananas. Köhler called this behaviour insightful, causing a great controversy. The problem-solving didn’t require trial-error learning or special training, yet the chimp did it; no-one taught the animal to push objects or to get on top of them in order to reach others, yet it did so in one smooth, error free way, straight to the success of eating the banana.

Other experiments include chimps using a series of gradually longer sticks to reach for other sticks, the final one being of the correct length to reach a reward. Again, no trial or error learning was present: the chimp simply sat for a while, contemplated, and then solved the problem smoothly and with minimal error.  Insightful indeed. But surely such flashes are only present in primates? Not true. Almost 70 years latter, a group of psychologists from Harvard University decided to have a closer look at this “special ability” – with pigeons. 

Epstein and colleagues trained 11 adult pigeons; some were trained to just push a small box around their cages towards a green spot, others were trained to climb a fixed box and peck on a picture of a banana (and not fly or jump towards it), still others were taught separately both of the actions. In their experiment, they placed a picture of a bout of reach, and a box away from it, than put a bird into the cage and observed and filmed its actions.

First three birds, all of which has been trained in both actions separately, behaved very similarly: each subject was at first “confused” –looked around, gazed back and forth at banana and box, but after a while and rather suddenly each one would go to the box and start pushing it towards the banana, then on reaching the right spot, climb the box and peck the picture. The birds that were taught only one part of the solution never volunteered the whole sequence, nor did the birds that were taught both actions but weren’t trained in pushing box in one direction – they pushed the box aimlessly for 14 minutes at a time without stopping. They seemed quite happy with their lot. 

Nevertheless, viewers of the resulting video were impressed and astounded by the pigeons’ apparent problem-solving abilities.  What can we conclude then? Epstein thought his study showed how easy it was to read too much into simple algorithms of behaviour. Humans are prone to project our own emotions and thoughts onto other creatures which show a similar behaviour pattern to our own, ascribing insight, logic, and reasoning to simple actions which may be nothing of the sort. The idea of ‘insight’ and any other special abilities could no longer be reliably derived from tool-related behaviour.  

But what does that say about ourselves and our infinitely complex tools? Do we really have flashes of insight, or are we just enacting aspects of conditioned behaviour in what appears to be a complicated and sophisticated way?

Or maybe, just maybe, we aren’t as clever as we think….

by Alexandra Paynter
 

The first Vertigo this term had been dogged by misfortune; acts had backed out and new bands had to be found and sorted out at the last minute. Luckily this disaster wasn’t evident and didn’t spoil the evening.

Jack Harris, an Imsoc regular, was the first to step up with his folk tune offerings. His songs dealt with topics ranging from bears to mountains to the flowers around him. They reminded one of stories heard as a child and soon he had a small group sitting around his feet, listening intently. Realising this he offered the rest of the cellar a chance to sit down, adding “Don’t just obey me; that’s fascism!” Much of his performance was of this rather surreal, delightful nature. His style was that of a storyteller and his soulful voice was comparable to the passion in David Gray’s “Babylon.” He kept the laughs going until he was ushered off stage for the next act.

Dave House was an earnest, likeable South Londoner with the ghetto-complex of Jamie T and the lyrics of Lily Allen. He also has much in common with Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly, to whose label he is signed. They both sing in American accents for no good reason – indeed, House’s voice is reminiscent more of Death Cab For Cutie‘s Ben Gibbard than Lily Allen‘s mockney gurnings. He was certainly fun, and very enjoyable, but his work is hardly groundbreaking. Many artists in London sing in exactly the same style and about the same things and House doesn’t exactly stand out from them. He certainly isn‘t bad, but he will need to step up his game if he is to be at the forefront of this new movement.

Francois and the Atlas Mountains, however, were exceptional. In the vein of Architecture in Helsinki they used a variety of different instruments to produce a very funky folk sound. Headed by the ridiculously good looking Francois, possessor of a wonderfully soft French accent, the songs instantly sounded beautiful on an almost mystical level, without bothering with silly things like lyrics. However, they held the audience’s attention best during their most energetic songs, which brought out their eccentric, fun side, whereas their slower tracks work best on record. If you get a chance to see them, this band is a must and they may just become an instant favourite in your record collection.

Photo of Francois and the Atlas Mountains by Alexandra Paynter.