vulpine

Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- London's latest ``Macbeth'' is a wild ride full of the ``sound and fury'' of Shakespeare's text.

Patrick Stewart, giving his fourth accomplished Shakespearean performance in 12 months, presides over butchery, lashings of blood, and casual sadism. Rupert Goold, the director, has a Stalinist take on the play, backed by an ominous hum throughout.

Fine though Stewart was in ``Twelfth Night,'' a Goold- directed ``Tempest'' and, particularly, ``Antony and Cleopatra,'' none of those compare with the unbridled ferocity of ``Macbeth'' at the Gielgud. This is director's theater writ large, with Stewart along for every manic step of the way.

There are times when Lorna Heavey's video and projections combine well with composer Adam Cork's disturbing soundscape. At other points, the showy production becomes merely show-offy.

It does reawaken the visceral alarm of Shakespeare's play, which clocks the murderous freefall of a couple who come adrift in a world of witches, prophecies and severely disordered natures.

Goold's witches emerge as nurses first seen attending none too compassionately to the bloodied sergeant. While snatches of video suggest a militaristic Soviet regime on the march outside, the three share a subterranean, tiled space that is kitchen, slaughterhouse and prison. (The design is by Anthony Ward.)

Goold must be drawn to the lower depths: His recent London revival of ``The Glass Menagerie,'' starring Jessica Lange, put the Wingfield family at the bottom of a long, deep fire escape.

This ``Macbeth'' is three hours, an hour more than customary stagings of Shakespeare's tragedy. Goold needs the time to let his stagecraft land. The banquet scene with Banquo's ghost is staged twice in different ways, before and after the intermission.

Kate Fleetwood's Lady Macbeth, resembling a vulpine 1940s film star, all but makes a mini-aria out of the single word ``sleep'' -- the very thing she is deprived of.

Stewart's Macbeth is so attuned to the heart of darkness that it consumes his life. Goold has an obvious career ahead of him directing opera or slasher movies -- whichever comes first.

Beckett Fragments

It's not unusual for directors to play fast and loose with Shakespeare, who is capable of withstanding whatever conceits come his way. The late Samuel Beckett is another matter, not least because the Irish Nobel laureate has an estate that keeps a careful eye on productions of his work.

How surprising, then, to see the liberties taken in the Young Vic/Theatre des Bouffes du Nord coproduction of ``Fragments,'' five Beckett pieces in one hour. Surprising, that is, until you note that the director is Peter Brook, the Paris-based Englishman who nearly rivals Beckett in the theatrical legend sweepstakes.

Beckett's celebrated solo ``Rockaby'' is spoken by the always arresting Kathryn Hunter, whereas the text dictates that the performer is listening to a recording. The two-person mime ``Act Without Words II'' calls for a goad to be wheeled on. On this occasion it drops from above like some sort of outsized pencil.

Do the plays add up? The whole seems less than the sum of its parts, and Brook's tinkering doesn't do much to tease fresh meanings from the text. The title, ``Fragments,'' says it all.

NEW YORK (AP) ― On "Desperate Housewives," John Slattery plays a wily politician.

On "Mad Men," he's an advertising agency magnate.

"A friend said to me, `You have a suit on all the time.' And I said, `Yeah, well, nobody's offering me a part in a dress.'"

Maybe not. But whatever his costume, Slattery manifests a remarkable range. His lean, vulpine good looks, crowned by that prematurely snowy head of hair, can convey rectitude, menace, arrogance, vulnerability.

An actor clearly in demand, Slattery, 45, has stayed busy for more than two decades in theater and in films (including "City Hall," "Mona Lisa Smile," "Traffic," "Flags of Our Fathers" and the forthcoming "Charlie Wilson's War"). His past TV series have included "Homefront," "Feds," "Jack & Bobby" and "K Street," as well as recurring roles on "Judging Amy" and "Ed."

This isn't to say he's a household name, or that, even on the streets of Manhattan, where he lives, people typically recognize him as a star.

"They think I went to high school with them," Slattery says, "which is just about the perfect level of celebrity for me. Being on `Desperate Housewives' has kind of bumped it up a little, and I'm not sure how much I like that."

On the hit ABC soap (back with its season premiere 9 p.m. EDT Sunday), Slattery resumes his role as the calculating Victor Lang, who, having caught Gabby (Eva Longoria) on the rebound from her marriage to Carlos, has less-than-romantic plans for his attractive bride. He figures she can fetch him the Latino vote in his impending run for governor.

On "Mad Men" (which airs 10 p.m. Thursdays on AMC), Slattery plays a different game. He's Roger Sterling, the cool, sardonic boss of a Manhattan ad agency in 1960.

A gin-soaked product of that bygone era, Sterling is a charmer, a manipulator, a skirt-chaser, but also, intermittently, a family man who's apt to toss off a wistful crack like: "One minute you're drinking in a bar and they come and tell you your kid's been born. Next thing you know, they're heading off to college."

The pilot for the series (which premiered in July) was shot more than a year ago. Then, not long afterward, Slattery got asked to join "Housewives" for a story arc to begin in early 2007.

"I confess to not watching the show regularly before. But when I called friends, they were like, `Are you crazy? You gotta do it!' And I'm glad I did!"

Slattery, juggling the "Mad Men" season finale (airing October 18) with his affairs on Wisteria Lane, hastens to contrast the two gigs.

"On `Desperate Housewives,' I'm sort of a hired hand," he notes, "and for a finite amount of time. That show was wildly successful before, and will continue to be after I'm gone."

With "Mad Men," though, Slattery is a charter member. He's a key ingredient in this drama of modern society as viewed through the prism of a modern society unfolding nearly 50 years ago. (Happily for him along with "Mad Men" devotees, AMC this week announced the series' renewal for a second season.)

"It's great being on something like this from the start," says Slattery, and, invoking series creator Matthew Weiner, adds, "It's some of the best stuff I've ever gotten to do ― just as he said it would be."

This week's episode gives Slattery some extra-good stuff. Sterling and the agency's creative director, Don Draper (series star Jon Hamm), are at loose ends as Labor Day weekend begins, their respective families already headed to the shore for the long holiday. Greater-than-usual temptation looms on this fateful Friday afternoon.

"Between now and Monday," Sterling goads his comrade Draper, "we have to fall in love a dozen times."

But before the night is over, Sterling's glib veneer is stripped away.

"I've been living the last 20 years like I'm on shore leave," he says in a burst of painful self-awareness. "I wish I was going somewhere."

The Sterling character is a rich mix, full of contradictions and deceptions and surprises. And that means welcome surprises for the man who plays him, which hasn't always been Slattery's luck doing series TV.

"Television can be a scary thing," he says. "You open the script week to week, and sometimes you go: `Oh, NO! Really?!'

"Good writing doesn't come along so much."

On one of his previous series, there was no writing at all. "K Street" was an HBO drama hatched by George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh, a politically based mash-up of truth and fiction that threw actors (including Slattery as a Washington lobbyist) with real-life Beltway insiders for each on-the-fly episode.

"Nothing was ever written down," says Slattery, still marveling four years later. "It was really exciting. But I got shingles, I was so nervous."

No wonder. A veteran actor with plenty of credits, he had never done improv before.

"The way I got cast was, I got a call from Soderbergh. He said, `Come to D.C. ― and bring a dark suit.'" The Modern English "fox" is derived from Old English with the same spelling, the Old English word itself comes from the Proto-Germanic word "*fukh", compare German "Fuchs", Gothic "fauho", Old Norse "foa" and Dutch "vos", which corresponds to the Proto-Indo-European word "*puk" meaning "tail" (compare Sanskrit "puccha" meaning "tail" as well). The bushy tail is also the source of words for "fox" in Welsh ("llwynog", from "llwyn" meaning "bush").

Most foxes live 2 to 3 years but can survive for up to 10 years, or even longer, in captivity. Foxes are generally smaller than other members of the family Canidae such as wolves, jackals, and domestic dogs. Fox-like features typically include an acute muzzle (a "fox face") and bushy tail. Other physical characteristics vary according to their habitat. For example, the Desert Fox has large ears and short fur, whereas the Arctic Fox has small ears and thick, insulating fur. Another example is the Red Fox which has a typical auburn pelt ending normally with white marking.

Unlike many canids, foxes are usually not pack animals. Typically, they are solitary, opportunistic feeders that hunt live prey (especially rodents). Using a pouncing technique practiced from an early age, they are usually able to kill their prey quickly. Foxes also gather a wide variety of other foods ranging from grasshoppers to fruit and berries.

Foxes are normally extremely wary of humans and are not kept as pets (with the exception of the Fennec); however, the Silver Fox was successfully domesticated in Russia after a 45 year selective breeding program. This selective breeding also resulted in physical traits appearing that are frequently seen in domestic cats, dogs, and other animals: pigmentation changes, floppy ears, and curly tails.

Foxes do not come together in chorus like wolves or coyotes. Fox families, however, keep in contact with a wide array of different sounds. These sounds grade into one another and span five octaves; each fox has its own characteristically individual voice. Fox noises can be divided, with a few exceptions, into two different groups: contact sounds and interaction sounds. The former is used by foxes communicating over long distances, the latter in close quarters.

The best-known vulpine noise is a sort of barking that spans three to five syllables. "Conversations" made up of these noises often occur between widely spaced foxes. As their distance decreases, the sound becomes quieter. A cub is greeted with the quietest version of this sound.

This monosyllabic sound is made by an adult to warn kits of danger. From far away it sounds like a sharp bark, but at closer range it resembles a muffled cough, like a football rattle or a stick along a picket fence.

This is a stuttering, throaty noise made at aggressive encounters. It is most frequently heard in the courting season, or when kits are at play.

This is a long, drawn-out, monosyllabic, and rather eerie wail most commonly made during the breeding season; it is widely thought that it is made by a vixen in heat summoning dog-foxes. Contrary to common belief, however, it is also made by the males, evidently serving some other purpose as well. This noise fits into neither the contact nor the interaction group.

Foxes are readily found in cities and cultivated areas and (depending upon species) seem to adapt reasonably well to human presence.

Red foxes have been introduced into Australia and some other countries for hunting. Australia lacks similar carnivores, and introduced foxes prey on native wildlife, some to the point of extinction. A similar introduction occurred in the 16-1700's in America, where European Reds (Vulpes vulpes) were brought to the colonies for fox hunting, where they decimated the American red fox (Vulpes veloxi) population through more aggressive hunting and breeding. Interbreeding with American Reds, European Red's traits eventually pervaded the genepool, leaving European and American foxes now virtually identical.

Other fox species do not adapt as well as the European red fox, and are endangered in their native environments. Key among these are the Crab-Eating fox and the African Bat-Eared fox. Other foxes such as fennecs, are not endangered, but will be if humans encroach further into their habitat.

Foxes can also be helpful for agricultural purposes. They have been successfully employed to control pests on fruit farms, where they leave the fruit intact.
Elsewhere on this page we learn that modern society began with a shift in sexual habits: that over the past few centuries affluent people left more descendants than the poor, so that their genes - and their way of life - took over.

The triumph of the rich and relaxed over the fierce and filthy led to a biological change, a national domestication that gave us today's enterprise culture.

As Professor Gregory Clark points out, Homo sapiens tamed the silver fox in just 30 generations by breeding from the most co-operative: why should he himself not have evolved at the same speed and for the same reason?

It's a diverting idea, but there are plenty of alternatives. It reminds me of the claim that girls prefer pink and boys blue because wives once picked berries while husbands brought home the bacon.

My own idea is that Mrs Ice Age glowed by the fire while her mate became blue with cold while hunting mammoths. Each explanation is plausible and each makes excellent food for speculation in the faculties of arts or economics but is no use to us in science without data to test it.

The foxes, though, say remarkable things about domestication. In the 1950s, Russian scientists began to breed from farmed animals which were most ready to accept humans.

Within a few generations, the creatures became calmer and friendlier. They wagged their tails and learnt to bark. Even their looks shifted, with piebald coats, curly hair and floppy ears.

They were no longer restricted to sex in the spring. Animals selected in the opposite direction - vulpine equivalents of the underclass - soon became savage.

The parallels with humans are not as close as economists might like. The famous foxes were already a long way from the wild for they had been bred to cope with fur farms when the experiment began.

Only one male in 30, and one female in 10, was allowed to breed (for us, that would sanction sex only for men with an annual income of more than ￡75,000, which excludes all academics and even some economists).

Most important, the animals showed inherited internal changes that simply do not apply to ourselves.

The transformed foxes are pups that never grew up. The breeders were chosen for lack of fear. Over the generations, that led to a drop in sex hormones and an increase in the nerve-transmitter serotonin.

For humans, a shortage of that stuff is associated with aggression, depression, anxiety and worse.

The genes involved in the new behaviour have not yet been tracked down (although a new map of fox DNA could change that). But geneticists have uncovered lots of other changes in all the caged animals compared to their wild ancestors.

The activity of thousands of brain genes has altered in domestic compared to wild animals, but there were almost no differences in such genes between the serene and ferocious subjects.

That proves most farmed fox evolution happened long before the Russian study. The difficulty was to become even slightly domestic in the first place. That crucial event happened on Prince Edward Island in Canada in the 19th century and it took years before the first captured foxes would reproduce.

Once that behavioural Rubicon was crossed the rest of the agenda followed. The same applies to pigs, cattle, and more: ancient domestications, followed later by selective breeding of our newly amenable friends for meat, milk, or wool.

Men and women, the most domestic of apes, do not fear their fellows but cooperate with them. Any biological shift tied to civilisation probably happened, not during the Industrial Revolution, but with the first modern humans, 100,000 years and more ago.

Like furry beasts, we do inherit individual differences in behaviour, in part because of inborn variation in how much of the serotonin tranquilliser we each make. That matters because it affects how people with depressive illness respond to particular drugs.

The poor and struggling may be sadder than the rich and placid, and their hormones may alter to match, but the drug response (and the gene behind it) has no fit with social position. For us, class drives chemicals, not the other way round. On the other hand, there must be some scientific explanation for the society that invented Big Brother.

? Steve Jones is professor of genetics at University College London