Peoples Republic of South Devon

Richard III - review

Greetings People’s Republicans. Phig Billy here. Last night I had the privilege of attending the latest Shakespeare in the Gardens, a fine tradition established by the Northcott more than a decade ago and always a highlight of the Exeter Festival. This event creates its stage and auditorium in the picturesque wooded moat of Rougemont Castle.

The play undertaken this year is Richard III. Interesting choice, perhaps, for a feelgood festival event, but it guarantees at least one laugh when Richard recalls “When last I was at Exeter/ The mayor in courtesy showed me the castle/ And called it Rougemont”. As a part of the Exeter Festival, Shakespeare in the Gardens understandably aspires to be an upbeat and fun night out, and this production therefore plays down the the truly chilling and sinister elements of the play. It pitches its protagonist more as a deliciously super-evil pantomime villain, who lurches melodramatically across the stage and showers the audience with knowing winks as he so entirely manipulates and bamboozles everyone on his rise to power.

The success of such an interpretation depends on the performance of its lead actor, and fortunately John Killoran proves a magnetic and wickedly charismatic hunch-backed usurper. Looking remarkably like Napoleon Bonaparte, he captivates and effortlessly renders the ol’ iambic pentameter immediate and understandable. He should do: he is an actor of proven Shakespearean pedigree, having spent eight seasons at the RSC. Unfortunately some of the other actors struggle at times not to sound a little flat and uninspired, but to be honest I think the fault lies rather in the writing than the performance. Richard III was written early in Shakespeare’s career, and despite how wonderfully he realized the titular despot, the rest of the characters are a little one-dimensional, and so blind to Richard’s blatant Machiavellian manoeuvrings as to be hard to sympathize with. In terms of engaging with the audience, Richard is also the only character really permitted to speak directly to us, which again restricts our capacity to empathize with the others. This production is at its most successful in the first half, when we are in on Richard’s diabolical double-dealings and laughing with him at how unbelievably stupid everyone else is.

But heaven forbid that I should belittle the obvious talent of the rest of the cast. The supporting cast is called upon to play numerous roles and the actors switch between them effortlessly, skillfully creating easily distinguishable personae through the accents and cadence of their speech as well as their costumes and hairstyles. Furthermore, they are also called upon to provide the play’s soundtrack: they constitute the orchestra as well as the actors, and when not involved in the action they are seated onstage with their instruments furthering the ambience of suspense, horror or melodrama as appropriate. The soundtrack was very prominent in this production, and I found it to be very powerful. But it was mainly so impressive to see them flit between roles of musician and actor, and as an actor flit between parts… No time to be precious and “get into character”; I’m sure Daniel Day-Lewis couldn’t cope!

Finally, the set was simple, well designed and efficient with the choreography. It wasn’t really integrated with the setting of the gardens, but rather used them as a frame for the action. The costumes were also great: lavish and apparently Napoleonic, in keeping with Killoran’s presentation of Richard himself. All in all, it was a really nice occasion, it was immensely enjoyable, and as the latest instalment in a fantastic tradition it deserves your support. This isn’t elitist, academic Shakespeare; this is fun and accessible, superbly crafted but never taking itself too seriously. Go along tonight!

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July 18th, 2008

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Hackers –The Good Guys

The weekly technology column from those good people at Plymouth’s
Orange Crate

If you have read our article from last week, you may be left thinking that hackers are all cyber-criminals waiting for the chance to steal your credit card details, hack into your office networks, and bring down national security. Although it is true that the media has hyped the existence of these individuals and their nefarious activities, there is another less frightening side to the story.

‘White hat’ hackers are, if you will, the superheroes of the IT universe. There are two types of white hat - those who use a clearly defined code of ethics to break into security systems in order to improve them, and those who work to create open source, free codes for improving and developing software and operating systems. Both kinds have been very valuable to the evolution of computing, but it is the second group whose names are often revered in online communities to this day.

One such individual is Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux. Most people these days have heard of Linux – an open-source operating system which has been developing in various forms for almost two decades now Torvalds claims: “I just want to have fun making the best damn operating system I can.” And it seems that many agree with him. Thousands of people contribute to Linux today, and 17 years after he began, Torvalds is still responsible for 2 per cent of the programming and most of the coordination (trust me – that’s a lot). Often seen as the ‘good guy’ in the battle against the ‘evil Microsoft corporation’, he even has an asteroid named after him!

It could be argued that you wouldn’t be reading this article if it wasn’t for this next guy. While studying at Oxford University, and after soldering together his first pc, Tim Berners-Lee was caught hacking a friend and banned from all university computers. Unsurprisingly his exploits didn’t end there – while developing an internal sharing and coordination system at the CERN research laboratories in Switzerland, he had the great idea of combining existing ideas with his own system to create… the World Wide Web! He has since founded the World Wide Web consortium to distribute ideas and standards freely, without patents and royalties. What a great guy!

Although many other great names exist in the field of free source programming (Richard Stallman and Steve Wozniak to name just two), what about the other kind of white hat hackers? Last week I wrote about the much publicized police case which led to the arrest of ‘computer outlaw’ Kevin Mitnick. What I didn’t mention was that it took another hacker to catch him.

Tsutomu Shimomura had his home security system hacked by Mitnick, then promptly threw all of his efforts into digitally tracking him down and bringing him to justice. With the aid of journalist John Markoff, they eventually succeeded in aiding the FBI in Mitnick’s capture and testified at his trial (the movie ‘Takedown’ charts this side of the story if you’re interested…). However that is only one side of the story. A self-proclaimed hacker himself, it has often been argued that Shimomura’s ethics were as hazy, possibly even moreso than Mitnick’s. The evidence for this claim culminates with the fact that he openly hacked his own mobile phone in front of a full court in order to monitor phone calls outside the court room.

He was never investigated himself though – I guess his gall, coupled with the fact that he turned up to court wearing surfing shorts and a t-shirt, stunned everyone into submission…
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July 18th, 2008

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