ROBERT J. MACNICHOLAS,
Sir, - While attending a wonderful production of Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen on Thursday night, I found my rapt concentration abruptly broken by the sounding of my young neighbour's mobile phone. To my surprise the young fellow did not deaden the offending object but merely drew his coat across his lap and allowed its electronic warbling to continue. Attending, as I was, a play that explores the uncertainties of human motivation against a backdrop of theoretical physics, I found myself confronting the question: "Why have Irish people allowed the mobile phone to remove the last quantum of their civility?" - Yours, etc.,
ROBERT J. MACNICHOLAS,
Sanford Road, Dublin 6.