I am that rarest of dichotomies: a theatre reviewer and a CompSci. Scientists like me make up 48% of the undergrad population (don’t worry, that’s the last statistic you’ll see here), so why am I the only one regularly reviewing for Varsity?

Some would assume my kind get scared and confused by something so lacking in numbers and equations as a play – a scientist couldn’t possibly evaluate a medium so imprecise, with all the emotions and subtext. Fair point, as these concepts even seem to trip up the professionals. I’ve heard many a horror story of English supervisors asking “What do you think this means?” closely followed by “Well, no, you’re wrong.” Science students may not have been trained to immediately grasp the more abstract meanings of a phrase but, to use an old joke, when someone says “The curtains were blue” more often than not I’d guess they just have nice curtains.

You can’t get into Cambridge without learning how to write vaguely coherently, but, as a scientist, do I know what I’m talking about? This term I reviewed Betrayal by Harold Pinter. Pinter won a Nobel Prize for Literature, was awarded a CBE for his work and is generally considered to be one of the most influential English writers of the 20th century. To cut a long review short, while the acting was top-notch, I did not care for the script. The first three responses to my review on Facebook all happened to be from Englings, and read “this review is hilarious”; “at first I thought this was a joke”; and “Really?” The fourth was a little more eloquent and pointed out that my criticism wasn’t one of a bad play specifically but of the Pinter style. Were I an Engling, I could have accounted for this; maybe I would have enjoyed the play a lot more if I had been able to view it in context.

But the point of a review is not to gaze in awe at the author’s name. Perhaps science students fundamentally lack the mindset to appreciate artistic works of a more avant-garde nature. Take that 'modern art' urinal that re-emerged a few years ago. If I tried to sell that to a museum I doubt I’d get through the door, but slap Marcel Duchamp’s name on it and suddenly it’s worth $3.6million. The same can be true of theatre. I saw a production of Endgame in Cambridge a couple of years ago and thought it was one of the most sinfully boring experiences of my life; but since it was by Samuel Beckett it wasn’t 'dull', it “successfully communicated that sense of pervading ennui” (according to the Tab review).

Needing to read an author’s entire collected works for the sake of context is a bit more commitment than I, and I assume the average theatre-goer, look for from an evening of theatrical entertainment. My degree does not require, and indeed doesn’t allow time for, reading a wide range of literary works before a play, so I enter every production without preconceptions.  As an ‘ignorant’ science student my criticism is not blinded, or bound, by reputations. At the very least, we have a more realistic idea of how much a toilet is worth.