The Times - UK (2022-04-30)

the times | Saturday April 30 2022 2GMS1 7

News

A national trial of roadside “noise
cameras” is to be introduced to catch
and fine the antisocial drivers of exces-
sively loud cars and motorbikes.
Grant Shapps, the transport secre-
tary, will announce today that acoustic
cameras to detect when cars, motor-
bikes and other vehicles are breaking
legal noise limits will be installed in four
areas of England and Wales. A search
will be held to find the noisiest streets
that will most benefit from pilot
schemes this summer.
The cameras record the vehicle’s
noise level and capture its registration,
providing evidence that could be used

Noisy car show-offs face camera traps

Ben Clatworthy
Transport Correspondent
Rhys Blakely

by the police and local authorities to

issue £100 fines. Ministers hope the

cameras and the threat of fines will stop

motorists revving their engines unnec-

essarily or using illegal exhausts.

Shapps said: “For too long, rowdy

drivers have been able to get away with

disturbing our communities with illegal

noisy vehicles. It’s time we clamp down

on this nuisance, banish the boy racer

and restore peace and quiet to local

streets.

“We want those in Britain’s noisiest

streets, who are kept up at night by

unbearable revving engines and noisy

exhausts, to come forward with the

help of volunteer areas to test and per-

fect the latest innovative technology.”

The Department for Transport has

been working on the technology, in-

cluding testing an older version of the

device in Meon Valley, Hampshire, for

three years.

The legal limit for noise from a

vehicle is 74 decibels, about the same as

flushing a lavatory. Police can fine

drivers but have needed to rely on their

judgment. Noise cameras have already

been installed by the council in Ken-

sington and Chelsea, Britain’s richest

borough, where supercars are often

driven late at night. The devices caught

almost 10,000 cars between last June

and February, with 289 above 100

decibels. A Lamborghini hit 112.9 deci-

bels, louder than a crowd at a football

match.

Noise pollution can affect physical

and mental health. Research from Im-

perial College London has found that

traffic noise above 50 decibels, quieter

than human conversation, can increase

the risk of hypertension and heart dis-

ease. A study from Barts and the

London School of Medicine found a

link to type 2 diabetes. Noise pollution

can also disrupt sleep.

Trevor Cox, a professor of acoustic

engineering at the University of Sal-

ford, welcomed measures that reduced

noise nuisance but said most of the

damage to health was linked to chronic

traffic noise, rather than one-off events.

The noise detectors “could help with

occasional sleep disturbance caused by

particularly noisy vehicles, but this is a

very small percentage of the problem

that traffic noise creates,” he said.

Most health problems came from

living next to busy roads, he added. “For

[noise-related] stress to create things

like heart disease, it needs to be chronic

and not just an occasional thing,” he

said. “They need to tackle that kind of

general noise rather than the occasion-

al boy racer.

“If you do have a very noisy car, the

noise pollution goes a long way and it

does disturb a lot of people. So, I

wouldn’t say it’s a useless measure —

but it’s not tackling the main problem.”

In England, the annual social cost of

urban road noise was estimated to be up

to £10 billion a decade ago, according to

the government. The figure represents

the total economic cost of exposure to

noise pollution, including lost produc-

tivity from sleep disturbance and

health costs from heart attacks, strokes

and dementia.

Theatre Clive Davis

Daniel Craig plays Shakespeare’s murderous thane as stiff, self-conscious and very English, impressing with sheer physicality

Macbeth on Broadway

Longacre Theatre, New York

HHHHI

Craig swaps

his licence to

kill for thrill

of the boards

If theatre needs someone to drum up
publicity, who could be better than the
former James Bond? As you’d expect,
top prices for Daniel Craig’s 15-week
run are absurdly expensive (the best
seats are going for up to $500)
although a thousand free tickets are
set aside for high school and college
students. More to the point, Craig’s
decision to take on the play sends out
the signal that the stage is still where
it’s at, assuming you can afford to go.
Sam Gold, the director, gives us an
irrepressibly imaginative modern-
dress production that is constantly
pushing the envelope. If the ensemble
verse-speaking is relaxed, Craig’s king
is slightly stiff, a tad self-conscious in
his speech and very English. He’s
dressed smart-casual. His soliloquies
are blunt expressions of manhood and
ambition. This Macbeth impresses
with sheer physical power rather
than poetry.

It’s striking how much more

musicality and passion is to be found

in the flowing Irish accent of his

queen, superbly played by Ruth Negga.

Petite and feline, she is a magnetic

presence. There’s no mistaking the

couple’s physical bond. Toppling on to

a sofa, they seem ready to rut.

There’s lots to annoy traditionalists.

Banquo is a woman (Amber Gray is

excellent) and the young witches,

stirring pots at a table on one side of

the starkly furnished stage, are a dead

ringer for the hipsters who serve over-

priced artisan coffee on the Upper

West Side. There’s even a chatty

prologue in which Michael Patrick

Thornton, arriving in his wheelchair,

warms up the audience like some laid-

back stand-up comic.

But the playfulness doesn’t disguise

the authentic aura of menace. Actors

use smoke machines and torches to

summon up barren landscapes, while

Jane Cox’s bravura lighting sometimes

casts Craig in a haunting silhouette.

Gaelynn Lea’s Celtic-flavoured music

adds to the ghostly atmosphere.

The killing of Duncan (given a

touch of antic senility by Paul Lazar) is

brutal. Blood spurts across the stage

when the two guards are dispatched

afterwards. We also glimpse Craig’s

masked face when Lady Macduff and

her daughter are murdered. The fight

with Macduff (Grantham Coleman)

finds both men floundering, exhausted

and bloodied. At the very end, the cast

slump in a communal line to sit and

sup, as if they have just passed through

some mystic ritual.

Over the course of nearly two and a

half hours there are bound to be some

unwelcome distractions. Gold keeps

the Porter scene in, and has him

played by the recently murdered

Duncan, who rises from his bed,

removes his gore-stained fake belly

and stands inside of the lowered stage

curtain, chatting away like some

ancient vaudevillean. The doubling of

roles, especially in this stripped-down

setting, is occasionally confusing too.

But it doesn’t matter in the end: this is

a sleepless realm where faces and

illusions blur into one another.

The play is no preening star vehicle.

It’s Craig’s name that will attract the

crowds but he deserves praise for

putting himself to the test in such a

gifted group of players.

To July 10, macbethbroadway.com

Rylance mesmerises in one of the best plays you will ever see

Theatre Dominic Maxwell

Jerusalem

Apollo Theatre, W

HHHHH

There is something magical going on
in the Wiltshire woods as Jez
Butterworth’s modern masterpiece
returns in all its ragged glory. First
seen in 2009, often fêted (including in
The Times) as the play of the century,
with a larger-than-life lead turn by
Mark Rylance, its pricey, all-but-sold-
out comeback begs to be cut down to
size. No show can be that good, can
it?
Well, in its garrulous, unkempt,
warm-blooded way, it can. A
thousand playwrights try to write the

sort of Chekhovian

tragicomedy in which

characters in one location

chat over the course of a day

— St George’s Day in the

fictional village of Flintock in

this instance — until, whoops-

a-daisy, the story is done

and everyone’s lives are

changed for ever. Only

Butterworth and his

reunited team (the

director Ian Rickson,

the designer Ultz, and

a fine cast, including

an excellent

Mackenzie Crook

and some of the

other original actors)

has found a way to

make that format

vivid rather than

meandering.

The sharp juxtapositions start

straight away: an angelic teenager

(Eleanor Worthington-Cox) sings

an exquisite a cappella rendition

of the hymn Jerusalem that is

drowned out by a techno

knees-up at the rusty

caravan in the woods

of Johnny “Rooster”

Byron (Rylance).

Today is the day

the council is

evicting this

motorcycle

daredevil

turned ruffian,

small-time

drug-dealer,

part-time

corrupter of local youth and full-time

force of nature.

It’s an ensemble piece, full of

outsiders of all ages who come to

Rooster looking for more: more fun,

more focus, more freedom, more

drugs (Gerard Horan’s publican

particularly). Yet it’s driven by a star

turn as great as anything you will

ever see. Rylance holds court and

growls, bullshits and bamboozles like

a man who won’t be contained by

anyone else’s expectations. His

morning regimen of hangover cures

and handstands in his water trough is

pure music hall. And yet Rylance

makes all this extravagance feel flesh

and blood. Now in his early sixties, he

remains an imposing figure in his vest

and facial hair but also, this time, a

more paternal figure.

Rooster’s wild nature dictates the

shape of the show. Its realistic set of

earth, trees, live animals and bric-a-

brac dotted around feel like evidence

of a life lived, and not to be let go

lightly. He remains an ambiguous

hero: would you want him near your

home, your children? And yet the key

line comes as he spits at the council

officers, “What the f*** do you think

an English forest is for?” and he

might as well be saying, what do they

think life is for? Not, surely, just for

rules and regs.

Written long before Brexit,

Jerusalem nails an English bloody-

mindedness, a need to be free.

Rooster is too rich a character to be

merely emblematic, though. He ends

up hobbled, his situation hopeless, his

desires undimmed. And Rylance is

mesmerising. It’s not the neatest play

you’ll ever see, but it is one of the best

plays you’ll ever see.

To Aug 7, jerusalemtheplay.co.uk

Mark Rylance

returns as

“Rooster” Byron