An ongoing review of politics and culture

Infinite Manic Sadness: DFW's Universal Inner Child

If you’re a fan, you’ll probably find some interest in the interview transcripts with David Foster Wallace that David Lipsky published under the title Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself. You’ll probably also find it frustrating that, over several days of taped conversations that would yield a 300-page book/transcription, Lipsky spent most of his time prompting poor self-consuming DFW to stew in the heat of his own building fame – the interviews were done during Wallace’s 1996 tour for Infinite Jest – and almost no time engaging him on substantive matters of literature and aesthetics. I know these interviews were for a profile (never published), and I know it was to be for Rolling Stone, but, still, you’d think just by chance they’d have drifted into at least one sustained discussion of, I dunno, books. Alas, if you want to get to literature from these interviews you almost have to do so via symptomology. For example, this curious snippet of Wallace talking, the sole excerpt printed on the book’s back jacket, left on its own, without comment, as if patently exemplary:

If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it’s probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do it. I know that sounds a little pious.

I know that sounds like the sort of apotheosis of the self as a therapeutic object that is widely and mostly well-derided around these parts. It even seems to flirt with something so kitschy as an injunction for us to unforget and then be nice to our inner children. When I first read it, I’ll admit I winced, too. I thought, of all the things to pick out for back-jacket immortality…. And maybe Lipsky or the publisher thought that such an apparently middlebrow and bathetic sentiment would make the recondite author more approachable. But fairly quickly I changed my mind and decided it actually gets at what made Wallace such a curiously potent modernist writer: the combination of generosity and solipsism – a sort of megalomania of the heart – that informed his outsized technical skills.

Here you have a guy who – as of 1996 – has established himself as an extreme outlier in both intellectual achievement and, well, depression. He’s been lauded as a genius in both literature and academic philosophy, and he’s done a stint at McClean Hospital – a history that might convince a person his is a uniquely grand and challenging predicament, especially when he’s in the midst of a huge literary ego-stroke. But throughout the Lipsky interviews, you see Wallace insisting on how unexceptional he is. Part of it sounds of false modesty, and part of it sounds of fear. But then you read the seemingly cornball quote above and you have to concede that at least some of it is sincere. He’s speaking in the first person plural – throwing down something like a moral injunction – but what “we” are enjoined from doing is the sort of thing that mainly only people like David Foster Wallace need to be told not to do. You can hear him speaking as a seriously depressed person who, in his dark moments, succumbs to self-laceration and -recrimination, who inflicts terrible violence on his own spirit, who is not nice to himself at all. He has to know that not everyone is depressed like he is. But when he thinks of people in general, what he sees and worries about is their vulnerability to the kind of extreme pain he lives with.

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Progressive Feminism At Work In Europe

As frequent readers of The American Scene might now, a subject I hold very dear is the advancement of women in the 21st century, although I sometimes have weird views on the subject.

One of the key problems in helping women “get ahead” is the thorny problem of reconciling motherhood and professional prospects equal to those of men. While discrimination plays a role, I think the evidence is now well accepted that we need to look beyond this simplistic explanation to come up with ideas and policies that truly enable women to have children without feeling like they’re sacrificing their career, or vice versa.

Many American progressive feminists glance longingly at European countries’ policies vis-à-vis women, but I unsurprisingly think that in many cases these policies fail, or at least have unintended consequences that work against their stated objectives.

And as in many cases, culture matters a great deal. I was reminded of this last week when I went to the offices of a large financial firm to sign the lease for our new apartment.

By way of background, my wife has decided to “keep her name” after our wedding — a misnomer in and of itself, because since 1804 the French Civil Code plainly states that women keep their names throughout their lives and that women changing their last names to their husband’s is merely a tolerated tradition.

Anyway, I get to the office to look over the lease, and notice that the contract is in the name of “Monsieur Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry and Mademoiselle Marie-Laure Herold.” The following conversation with the (very kind) lady from the real estate firm follows (hereinafter using “Mrs” for “Madame”):

Me: “It’s ‘Mrs’.”

Her: “Ah, so you two are married?”

Me: “Yes.”

Her: “So we’ll put in… ‘Mr and Mrs Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry’.”

Me: “No, just put in ‘Mrs Marie-Laure Herold’.”

Her: “Oh, all right. So, ‘Mrs Marie-Laure Gobry, née Herold’.”

Me: “No, her name is Mrs Marie-Laure Herold.”

Her: “Oh, ok. So, you two aren’t married.”

Me (resisting urge to break something, waving my wedding band in front of her face): “Yes, we are!”

Her: “I…”

Me (enunciating): “My wife has decided to keep her name.”

Her: “Ah! …Ah.”

(A few seconds silence.)

And here comes the kicker — Her (kindly): “I’m sorry, it’s just that we’ve never had this situation before.”

This floored me. This woman who deals with renters all the time, and who by the way works on her firm’s “prestige” condominiums, i.e. rented out to people in higher in the educational/income buckets and therefore more (?) likely to not change their names, had never encountered a married female renter who hadn’t changed her name. Even though the law actually forbids women from legally changing their names to their husbands’, unbeknownst to most of the population and, apparently, someone who drafts and signs civil contracts for a living.

The reason the above conversation didn’t involve my wife is because she was at the time in Germany for work. My feminist wife (God I love her) inquired about the situation for women in Germany. Germany is generally not a good place to be a working mother. The school day ends at noon (German pupils graduate high school at 19 as a result), and creches and day care centers are very rare. What’s more, my wife was told, eine gute Deutsche Mutter doesn’t put her children in day care.

Germany has very generous parental leave policies. Women get a full year of paid maternal leave, which they can extend to three years of “educational” leave. Employers are mandated to retake these working mothers in the same position after they leave. And my wife was told that German mothers are culturally strongly encouraged to take the full three years’ leave — if you don’t, you are likely to be frowned upon.

This points to the conclusion that the lack of day care centers are not (just) due to a lack of subsidies or policy encouragement, but also due to lack of demand because of strong cultural norms, although of course it can be convincingly argued that more ambitious policies would over time alter these cultural norms.

The results are not hard to fathom. I have no data but I suspect these strong pro-early maternity policies discourage hiring women. My feminist wife herself exclaimed over dinner after returning from Germany: “If I was a German employer, I probably wouldn’t hire a woman for an important job!” A lot of working mothers, if it’s possible, will not in fact return to the work force at the end of their three years leave. A lot more will work only in the morning, and fetch their kids from school at lunchtime. By the end of their first three years leave, many German mothers are understandably pregnant again: childrearing happens late in Europe, and if you start having kids in your 30s and you want more than one, you’re going to have them close together. After 6 years out of the workforce, women will be loth to return and/or find their career prospects tragically but logically damaged.

In the Mittlestand company where my wife worked, only one — childless — woman held a high-level managerial role. Meanwhile Germany suffers from a very low birthrate which now threatens the very existence of their highly successful welfare state.

What lessons to draw from this? Well, it’s hard. After 50 years of various countries trying to help the cause in various ways, the results are both impressive and disappointing.

I dream of a world where child-rearing is easily combined with meaningful careers.

But I believe that active government policies, in this area as in many others, often work against their intended goals.

I also believe that the current structure of large corporations also works against women because of its expectations of a linear career path with highest commitment at the ages where women are most inclined to have children. (For more on this topic, see here.)

Here are some of the things I envision as pushing things in the right direction:

- Smart government policies at the margins as proposed in e.g. Grand New Party that recognize the economic and moral value of women’s work in the home and in the workplace, and the value of marriage and family as providing the strongest basis for human flourishing.

- The exponential growth of small-scale, global-reach entrepreneurship, enabled by globalization and new technologies. I dream of a world where risk-averse men will work quiet lives of desperation at BigCo while their business owner wives will take care of the kids from 4 to 8 and run their global internet businesses from their laptop (tablet?) from 8 to 10. Part of me thinks women won’t be able to craft their own career paths until the traditional big corporation dies or is changed radically. Shop-class-as-soulcraft type education/skills also plays a big role here.

- A different cultural and educational outlook. Somehow. I wish leadership, risk-taking and even aggressiveness audacity were viewed as female qualities. I wish girls were taught martial arts from age 3 (and, why not, horseback riding and archery). I believe that college can often be the best time to get married and have kids before jumping into the workforce. I believe that the best education for kids is mostly to just leave them alone and that helicopter parents should get a damn job. For those last two, society is fast moving in the opposite direction: for reasons of illusory personal convenience, kids are being had much later, and children are treasured and coddled ever more, since they are now, let’s face it, luxury goods. A kid has agency; a Ferrari needs to be handled and protected. (Giving kids the vote, my delenda est carthago, would play a role here.) I also believe fathers should be more involved in the home and in educating kids. Surprisingly, I’m actually not hostile to the idea of mandatory paternal leave, so that dads would be incented to change diapers and women would be less disadvantaged in the traditional career path.

- Radically transforming and unbundling education, in particular ending that most inhuman institution, the school, as we know it, while a good in and of itself, would also play a positive role here.

- No doubt hair-tearingly for some, I’m convinced a pro-life society would also be a more feminist (or “choice-feminist”) society as it would have to be more open to childbearing and do more to encourage it. If having kids is a choice and only a choice, then why should we make accomodations for that choice? If you decide to have kids, you know the tradeoff you’re making vis-à-vis your career, so why should we help you? A lot of people, particularly young men, believe this. But if kids are societally viewed not as something akin to a McMansion but as a wonderful gift and investment in the future, the society will have to change to accomodate their mothers’ prospects better.

These are a few ideas I’m throwing around, but I realize they don’t really amount to a cohesive policy, much less one that is politically envisageable (giving kids the vote and outlawing abortion and mandatory paternity leave? Yeah, Congressmen will line up to draft that bill.) I mostly believe that this shit is very complicated, that there are no easy solutions and that we need to approach these questions with humility as well as ambition. I also believe we need to look outside traditional policy features and framework. The European policies that American progressive feminists pine for have, I believe, largely failed. But the American status quo, though it gets some important things right (particularly vis à vis the labor market), also fails at many other ones. And I think this is something we need to have a good faith discussion with people with many different perspectives and sensibilities.

I haven’t even begun to discuss the tremendously important role women must play in lifting the Third World out of poverty (another hobby horse of mine).

Sorry for the long post. But you’re not done hearing about it.

Nice Day For White Wellies

I’ll end my series of Stratford Shakespeare Festival reviews for this year with the show that opened the Festival: As You Like It.

As You Like It has always been a funny one for me. I’ve always felt like it was a collection of great bits rather than a great play – Jaques’ “seven ages of man” speech, Touchstone’s discourse on the virtues of “if,” Rosalind’s declaration that “men have died, from time to time, and the worms have eaten them – but not for love.” But I was always bothered by the huge setup – the whole business with the court and Duke Frederick’s paranoia and so on- that just melts away in Act Five with only the most cursory explanation (from a character we’ve never even met before – the otherwise superfluous middle brother of the de Boys clan). And I never entirely “got” the central plot of the play: the courtship of Rosalind by Orlando, under Rosalind’s tutelage. It always seemed to me that Orlando was ludicrously overmatched, intellectually at least, and that therefore what we were watching was simply Rosalind showing off.

I don’t whether I can entirely credit this production, but this year, for the first time, I got it: the Rosalind-Orlando romance, the structure of the play, the whole thing.

Let me quote a couple of bits of banter between Rosalind (disguised as Ganymede) and Orlando.

ROSALIND But come, now
I will be your Rosalind in a more coming-on
disposition, and ask me what you will. I will grant
it.

ORLANDO
Then love me, Rosalind.

ROSALIND
Yes, faith, will I, Fridays and Saturdays and all.

ORLANDO
And wilt thou have me?

ROSALIND
Ay, and twenty such.

ORLANDO
What sayest thou?

ROSALIND
Are you not good?

ORLANDO
I hope so.

ROSALIND
Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing?

And here’s the second bit:

ROSALIND
Now tell me how long you would have her after you
have possessed her.

ORLANDO
For ever and a day.

ROSALIND
Say ‘a day,’ without the ‘ever.’ No, no, Orlando;
men are April when they woo, December when they wed:
maids are May when they are maids, but the sky
changes when they are wives. I will be more jealous
of thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen,
more clamorous than a parrot against rain, more
new-fangled than an ape, more giddy in my desires
than a monkey: I will weep for nothing, like Diana
in the fountain, and I will do that when you are
disposed to be merry; I will laugh like a hyen, and
that when thou art inclined to sleep.

ORLANDO
But will my Rosalind do so?

ROSALIND
By my life, she will do as I do.

ORLANDO
O, but she is wise.

ROSALIND
Or else she could not have the wit to do this: the
wiser, the waywarder: make the doors upon a woman’s
wit and it will out at the casement; shut that and
‘twill out at the key-hole; stop that, ‘twill fly
with the smoke out at the chimney.

ORLANDO
A man that had a wife with such a wit, he might say
‘Wit, whither wilt?’

ROSALIND
Nay, you might keep that cheque for it till you met
your wife’s wit going to your neighbour’s bed.

ORLANDO
And what wit could wit have to excuse that?

ROSALIND
Marry, to say she came to seek you there. You shall
never take her without her answer, unless you take
her without her tongue. O, that woman that cannot
make her fault her husband’s occasion, let her
never nurse her child herself, for she will breed
it like a fool!

Orlando then protests he must go attend on the Duke, Rosalind protests his leaving, he goes, and Celia chastises her: “You have simply misused our sex in your love-prate: we must have your doublet and hose plucked over your head, and show the world what the bird hath done to her own nest.”

Well, she has, hasn’t she? And why? In the dialogues themselves, Rosalind presents herself (in disguise as Ganymede) as a tutor: someone who’ll teach Orlando how to woo his Rosalind properly. But Orlando gets precious little opportunity to do any wooing – Rosalind is constantly cutting in with her own quips. Moreover, this dialogue doesn’t sound at all like teaching Orlando how to woo – rather, it’s a series of warnings of what Rosalind is actually going to be like if he wins her.

So perhaps Rosalind is following her initial self-described mission, to “cure” Orlando of his love. This is what she says she’ll do when she first meets him in disguise as Ganymede. Since Rosalind is deeply in love herself, and doesn’t actually want to lose Orlando, that’s presumably not her real mission. So it’s a test, then: if she can “cure” Orlando of his love for her, then he’s not worthy of her, but if she can’t then his love is true, and he passes. Right?

But what’s the test? When Macduff comes to England to seek Malcolm, to woo him back up north to fight for the throne of Scotland, Malcolm tries to put him off with similar disclaimers of his unworthiness. He’ll be a worse tyrant than Macbeth ever was. And for a while Macduff perseveres in his efforts to persuade, but finally the litany of Malcolm’s monstrosities grows to long, and Macduff gives up, crying woe for Scotland. At which point Malcolm reveals that it’s all been a test – he wanted to make sure Macduff wasn’t actually Macbeth’s agent, trying to lure Malcolm back to Scotland to be killed. By giving up his suit, Macduff proved that he truly loved Scotland, and now Malcolm can trust him.

Rosalind seems to be playing a somewhat analogous game here, testing Orlando by saying all these terrible things about herself – specifically, that she’ll be unfaithful to him. This is a very peculiar love-test, though, isn’t it? The usual love-test in Shakespeare involves a ring given to be worn as a token; if the lover is true, he’ll never part with it. The woman then goes in disguise and tries to get the ring back; if she gets it, she knows her lover has been false. Of course, she invariably gets the ring back – the men are never true – but she winds up taking him back anyway. In other words, the usual love-test is a test of the (male) lover’s fidelity. Rosalind’s version of this is to demand that Orlando arrive with precise punctuality for his interviews; the heart of her dialogue, though, is to test him (supposedly) by saying that she will be unfaithful to him. How would one pass this test? Is Orlando supposed to protest that Rosalind wouldn’t do such a thing? He does, but Rosalind says: oh, yes she will. Is he supposed to say, like Macduff, then woe Orlando, cursed to love a woman who can’t be true?

Based on the way the play actually proceeds, it appears that “passing” the test involves refusing to play the game any longer:

ORLANDO
I can live no longer by thinking.

ROSALIND
I will weary you then no longer with idle talking.

But, if that’s the case, for whose benefit is the game being played?

My sense of the dialogue is that this whole game isn’t for Orlando’s benefit at all: it’s for Rosalind’s. Yes, she’s incredibly smart and witty – but she’s also very young. Her father abandoned her (perforce) at a delicate moment in her emotional development; her uncle is no use as a guide; and her mother is, presumably, dead. She has no Prospero to arrange for a match to be marooned with her. She must teach herself. She meets Orlando, falls in love at first sight – and panics. Not just because he doesn’t know what to do either (he’s also completely untutored) but because she is terrified of the strength of her feelings, feelings she’s never had before. I mean, the next scene after meeting him she’s scandalizing her cousin by saying how she’s just met the father of her child.

In disguise as Ganymede, Rosalind can give voice to all the fears she has about herself, about the consequences of the incredible intensity of feeling she has. She never knew she could feel this kind of passion – what’s going to happen once she gets married? Will it last? If it doesn’t, won’t she go off looking for that feeling again, even if that takes her into her neighbor’s bed? All this business about a woman’s “wit” has a double meaning – “wit” means both intelligence and sexuality, and Rosalind herself has a sudden comprehension of the connection between the two, a sense that her intelligence, which she’s always been aware of, far from protecting her from her passion will inevitably find an outlet for it. For a time, that outlet – the frank talk while in disguise as a boy – does indeed provide protection, but it can’t last. Eventually her beloved will grow weary of the game, and demand a return to reality.

It must be that Rosalind is doing this for herself, because she has no practical reason to remain in disguise. Once she has reached the forest, all she has to do is go see her father and everything will be settled. She can trust him both to protect her and to be a good judge of Orlando’s character, and she already knows Orlando is his attendant. But she can’t trust him to protect her from herself. She needs this time in disguise, to say everything she’s feeling, just to get it out into the air. It barely matters what Orlando says in response, so long as he stays.

As I said, I’m not sure I can give full credit to this production for bringing me around to this conclusion; I was starting to muse in this vein before opening night. But at least some of the credit must go to the amazing team of Andrea Runge and Paul Nolan as Rosalind and Orlando. This is either my fifth or my sixth As You Like It and without question these two had the best chemistry of any pair of leads in these roles that I’ve yet seen. And, moreover, they were the best-matched in terms of emotional stature. I found Ms. Runge a bit shaky in the early court scenes, never becoming entirely convinced that she was in the peril the play was saying she was in, but as soon as she put on Ganymede’s suit she was transformed utterly. What was most winning about her Rosalind was the sense the sense of youth and vulnerability that she projected. Too often I’ve seen Rosalind portrayed as totally in command, tutoring Orlando and arranging matches and putting both Jaques and Touchstone in their places. But you could see this Rosalind in the process of improvisation, her wit a desperate whirl that she must keep spinning to keep herself from throwing herself at her Orlando with abandon. And Paul Nolan was a much stronger and more self-possessed Orlando than we usually get, a man who doesn’t know much how things are rightly done, but who knows his mind – who has a mind, and a keen one, even if he doesn’t have the wit to write good verse. And when he finally says he can live no longer by thinking, the scene plays beautifully: he has not graduated from Rosalind’s school; rather, he’s pushing Ganymede to graduate, and turn back into Rosalind. Which is exactly right.

Amazingly, though, these two do not stand out, this is a production with an exceptionally strong cast all around. Pride of mention must go to Ben Carlson and Lucy Peacock as Touchstone and Audrey. Carlson gives us a sour and glib Touchstone unimpressed by Rosalind or anybody . . . until he meets Audrey and, without ever planning it, actually falls in love. It’s remarkable – their romance is usually played entirely as a joke (as, indeed, Touchstone initially intends it), and I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen it taken at all seriously. And that works wonderfully. And we know the precise moment when his attitude changes for good – when, in the middle of “It Was A Lover And His Lass” (the best number in a show with excellent music all around, much of it composed by Justin Ellington) Ben Carlson grabs the bass away from the band on stage and just cuts loose. On opening night, this completely unexpected move brought the house down. It really was lovely to see a Touchstone with an actual character arc. And Audrey! The way Lucy Peacock wrings meaning out of a series of dumb looks is a marvel to behold. You actually understand what Touchstone might see in this dim-witted rustic. And she has her own bring-down the house moment at the final wedding scene. From her first appearance, Audrey wears wellington boots continually – she even manages to do the charleston in them. Well, in the final scene of the play all four nuptial couples arrive in wedding white, and there’s Audrey . . . wearing white wellies. Fantastic.

I’ve dwelt so long on Carlson and Peacock because I’ve never seen the Touchstone-Audrey story portrayed with such love. But amazingly, they don’t stand out either! Brent Carver makes an exceptional Jaques, less sardonic and bitter than wistful and nursing some deep wound. When he begs Duke Senior for a coat of motley and a fool’s license, we see how desperate his is to run from his proper state and station. If the classical melancholic is afflicted with a sense of his inevitable failure in the world, and the romantic melancholic with a sense of the world’s inevitable failure of him (and Hamlet partakes of both), then this Jaques, when he protests of a melancholy all his own, is avowing a melancholy of the classical type, the simples and objects that led him to it equally his own. It’s a deeply touching portrait, and Jaques decision to stay in the forest at the end of the play, and not return to civilization with the rest of the company not an expression of disgust at the “country copulatives” but a final melancholic admission of his own unworthiness, a recognition of himself in the figure of the penitent Duke Frederick whom in the end he seeks.

Tom Rooney plays both Dukes; Senior is the blandly genial exile that he inevitably is, but his Frederick rises above the unfortunate fascist trappings of the court; this Duke Frederick is, first and foremost, a failure as a father. His concern for Celia, and his inability to assuage that concern, forms the basis of his tyrannical paranoia. Mike Shara, as Oliver, Orlando’s hateful eldest brother, accomplishes the difficult task of being plausibly the same person before and after his conversion – it’s a minor role, but a vital one; we don’t see Duke Frederick’s own repentance, and so Oliver must carry the emotional weight of both transformations. Earlier, Shara’s Oliver is a man eaten up by resentment – sure both of his own superiority and of its universal misprision. After, it’s as if a great weight has been lifted from him, and his naturally winning qualities are finally allowed to shine on their own (and win Celia’s love at first sight). Brian Tree rounds out the de Boys household with a touching portrait of Old Adam (a role initiated, supposedly, by Shakespeare himself). I’m going on too long, but I can’t end without offering some praise to Ian Lake as the very sweet sylvan wooer Sylvius, and to Randy Hughson as the shepherd and natural philosopher, Corin.

I’ve gone on and on about the acting because, really, that’s what I go to the theatre for. But this is a show with a great deal of design as well. The overall concept is, in keeping with the setting in the 1920s to 1930s, and the many references to the arts in the script, to fill the stage with references to surrealism. Thus: the fascist court (very reminiscent of the court of the Fire Lord in Avatar: The Last Airbender) is guarded by uniformed men without faces – or with dog’s heads in place of those of men – and Magritte’s sky-irised eye watches in all directions like the eye of Sauron. In the woods, the Magritte theme continues; the forest lords feast on green apples (a larger green apple hovers overhead) and Jaques is dressed as the man in the bowler hat. As love blooms, Orlando’s head becomes a bouquet of flowers, and when Hymen enters to bless the wedding, he is attended by the lioness and the deer who figured so prominently in the story, predator and prey dancing together if not lying together. I thought all this worked surprisingly well, supporting the verse rather than distracting from it. The forest of Arden is a very Bruno Bettelheim-y place, so filling it with art self-consciously devoted to the exploration of the unconscious is singularly appropriate. And the music! As already noted, the show features lovely original music by Justin Ellington within a larger musical structure organized by Michael Roth, but the show is blessed as well with much of the cast of Jacques Brel to lead the singing, most particularly Mike Nadajewski and Jewelle Blackman.

I’m going against the critical consensus in praising the design, which many others found over-stuffed. And, indeed, it can be problematic. Supposedly there’s no clock in the forest – yet there one is, ticking away all through the production. And the forest floor is represented as a kaleidoscope of butterflies and other insects that, while beautiful, is very hard on the eyes, especially when viewed from the balcony seats. And I could find fault with some of the acting as well. Cara Ricketts still, to my mind, delivers her lines in too much of an iambic sing-song; Dalal Badr’s Phoebe was rather generic (then again, as Rosalind says, she’s not for all markets); and, as noted earlier, Andrea Runge herself only really comes into her own when she puts on her Ganymede disguise; her court scenes were far less emotionally convincing. But I rather like kaleidoscopes, and all the little details, all the ancillary stories that this production was stuffed with didn’t distract me; they charmed me. It’s a wonderfully entertaining, and deeply soulful production. And while the critics have heaped praised on the much sparer and more-focused Tempest, for me it was this show that turned me around on Des McAnuff as a director of Shakespeare. And I’m keenly interested indeed to see what he does with much of the same cast next year when he tackles Twelfth Night.

Super-Mayor!

Early last year, I wrote a short post here at TAS noting what I argued was a vaguely liberaltarian influence in Brian K. Vaughan’s superb politics-n-superpowers series, Ex Machina. Last week, the series, which I highly recommend, reached its conclusion. And today, I’ve got a piece up at Reason looking at the series and its politics that will probably seem somewhat familiar to some TAS readers.

Fit As a Fiddle and Ready For Love

The distribution of plays among Stratford’s four theatres is pretty straightforward, and this season is fairly typical. The Festival Stage gets four or five “meatball” plays: a couple of Shakespeares, generally either more popular plays or, if less popular, presented in a manner designed to appeal to a somewhat wider audience; one or two other classics of similarly wide appeal; and one musical. The Avon Theatre gets two or three long-run shows, at least one being appropriate for kids, at least one being a musical. The Patterson Theatre gets three or four shows that are more challenging or designed for more mature audiences, but that require some scope to work – not works that belong in a small space. And the Studio Theatre gets the one-man or one-woman shows, the little-produced classics, the new Canadian plays, and some more experimental fare.

Until this year, Shakespeare, the heart and soul of the Festival, has never been on the Studio’s program. This year that changed, with The Two Gentlemen of Verona directed by Assistant Artistic Director Dean Gabourie. Of course, Two Gents isn’t King Lear – although by Shakespeare, it itself is a little-produced classic, generally considered Shakespeare’s worst play and often assumed to be his first (unless the lost “ur-Hamlet” was also by Shakespeare himself). The last time Stratford offered the play was in 1998, before the opening of the Studio Theatre, in a crowd-pleasing production on the Festival Stage set among turn-of-the-(last)-century hockey players (who performed on roller skates). It’s a good choice for the Studio’s first foray into Shakespeare, because you can do with it what you like without fear of offense against the sensibilities of bardolators – indeed, you’ve got to do something with this play, because on its face it’s ludicrous, or at least it has a ludicrous ending.

The “big concept” for this year’s Two Gents was quite promising: since the plot can’t really be taken seriously, and since the play is a kind of buddy movie, do it as a vaudeville. Make Valentine and Proteus into Bob and Bing and we’ll all know where we are, and we’ll have a great time on the road trip.

Like I said: it’s a promising route into the play. But in execution, the production runs into a problem: the language gets in the way. There are individual bits – particularly with the two clowns, Speed and Launce – that sound an awful lot like comedy bits inserted between numbers; these work extremely well with the vaudeville conceit. But the serious and, particularly, the introspective bits don’t play that way. It’s not the substance of these moments that’s a problem – Proteus’s musing on how he can’t be true to his friend without being false to himself, and so he must be false to be true, and would be false if he were true – well, it’s a sentiment worthy of Gilbert and Sullivan (and, indeed, Proteus’s lineal descendant is Dick Dauntless of the G&S operetta, Ruddygore). But if Shakespeare was writing a satire, he was doing it very deadpan. It sure sounds like he intends us to be fully with the characters in these moments of introspection, and that pulls the actors to perform these scenes with an earnestness that jars with the vaudeville theme.

And so the result is a production with a marked inconsistency in tone and a persistent confusion about what, precisely, is the reality we’re in. Is the whole play a vaudeville? Or are the four lovers all vaudeville players, and only individual bits actually on stage, while other bits are backstage? Are the characters themselves aware that they are, in fact, onstage at the Studio Theatre even when we’re seeing “backstage” scenes? Is the plot a ridiculous melodrama or something we’re supposed to take seriously? We’re never sure. John Vickery does a deliciously ripe turn as the “Duke” of the vaudeville circuit, and Stephen Russell is charming playing Sir Eglamour as an aging Erroll Flynn type, but Sophia Walker appears to be playing her part entirely straight, and Claire Lautier’s Sylvia (played as a star of the silent screen) moves in and out of mode as a given scene requires, playing her scene with Ms. Walker (when Ms. Walker is in disguise as the page, Sebastian) as if she were in a totally straight production, while playing her scenes with Mr. Russell as campy melodrama. In each case, the reading makes sense, but we are left ever more confused about how to actually take this play.

In terms of the reality of the play, I suspect what was intended was something along the lines of: Valentine and Proteus are vaudeville players, as are Sylvia and Julia, but over the course of the play their offstage lives get progressively infected with the tropes and themes of vaudeville and melodrama. But there isn’t any clear progression, and besides, we don’t know what this infection is intended to mean – what the audience is supposed to come to understand about love, or friendship, or theatricality, or anything.

And then there’s the climax, the impossible scene where Valentine confronts Proteus as the latter attempts the rape of Sylvia, the girl they both adore. Proteus apologizes; Valentine says, well, if you repent then I forgive you – in fact, I can’t deny a friend anything, so why don’t you take Sylvia; Julia, still disguised as Sebastian, faints; Proteus revives her, discovers who she is, and suddenly loves her again; the Duke forgives Valentine for his capture by the band of outlaws, and gives Sylvia to him; and all live happily ever after. How on earth is this sequence to be played? If any sequence in the whole play should have been done as some kind of parody of a Shakespearean comedy, this would be it. But Dion Johnstone has been playing Valentine very well but absolutely straight all through – even when he becomes the improbable king of the outlaws (dressed like Vladimir and Estragon but played like the Keystone Kops). So Valentine looks at Sylvia, who nods assent, and he magnanimously forgives and offers her to his friend. And the scene just dies. Only minutes earlier, Sylvia and Sir Eglamour are being chased through a sandbag-and-rope forest to flickering lights and the tinkling of pianos, by bandits who bang into each other and fall down in heaps on cue, and now we’re supposed to be taking this ludicrous ending seriously?

The show is still fun. Bruce Dow and Robert Persichini do fine work as Speed and Launce, the two clowns, Dow the quick-witted and exasperated one and Persichini the slower and sadder (though I was puzzled that one of their dialogues was replaced by a monologue for Persichini lifted from A Comedy Of Errors). They even manage to hold their own when they share the stage with Launce’s dog, Crab, played by Persichini’s real-life dog, Otto, who inevitably steals most of the audience’s attention. Gareth Potter gives Proteus a surprising degree of interiority, which would be fascinating if it weren’t undercut so often by the vaudeville concept, and Claire Lautier manifests real glamor as Sylvia. But other bits – particularly the outlaws – fall flat, and the abrupt shifts in tone eventually get to be too much.

If Politics Is The Art Of The Possible, I Suppose Art Must Be The Politics Of the Impossible

I’ve never seen Evita before, and, apart from the unavoidable familiarity with the signature tune, I was unfamiliar with the music until I saw Stratford’s current production Saturday. My prior experience with Andrew Lloyd Webber has not been particularly felicitous – I was scarred by Cats at an early age – and I went to see Evita mostly because I was seeing everything else and wanted to complete the season and because I think Chilina Kennedy is a really formidable talent and wanted to see what she did.

Well, I was both pleasantly surprised and mildly disappointed. What I was pleasantly surprised by was the score, which was cohesive and generally tuneful. The program compared the show to a concept album, and that’s an analogy that made a great deal of sense to me listening to the show. Indeed, the more I thought of Evita as a kind of album-length music video, the better it seemed – not as inventive as the movie “Tommy,” but less oppressively obvious than “The Wall.” I was also pleasantly surprised by Josh Young, who was superb as Che, the narrator/commentator, singing clearly and beautifully and, more, making this glib cartoon into a character with some actual pathos. What I was mildly disappointed by were the set and the lead. The set is quite sterile and industrial, all steel girders, and did not evoke Argentina for me in any way. And as for Ms. Kennedy, her voice is superb, but the show all too often asks her to scratch her opponents’ eyes out with it rather than use it to seduce us. And there’s virtually no dancing, and what little there is Ms. Kennedy barely gets to participate in. And, most important, while she showed me how much she wanted to escape from her apparent destiny, how badly she wanted “it” – while never knowing exactly what “it” ultimately was, whether “it” was something she’d already grasped – she never showed me what it was about her that everybody else wanted so badly.

What didn’t surprise me at all was what the show essentially is, which is a politically stupid biopic with no particular insight into the central character, written with painfully on-the-nose lyrics and without the slightest trace of a sense of humor. Obviously, a great percentage of the theatre-going public doesn’t agree with me, or doesn’t care, because it enjoys being overwhelmed by the spectacle. Notwithstanding the ostensible subject matter of this seminal rock musical, I can’t bring myself to call that ironic.

if you want to see an interesting meditation on the interrelation in the modern world between celebrity and politics, rent The Queen, about Queen Elizabeth II, Prime Minister Tony Blair, and the crisis engendered by the death of Princess Diana. But if you don’t take it at all as seriously as it takes itself, there are certainly pleasures to be had at Evita.

Los Descamisados

Yesterday, I saw a musical at Stratford starring Chilina Kennedy as a crass but ambitious showgirl shamelessly sleeping her way to the top, a musical containing the famous scene in which the workers, oppressed by the heat and frustrated by the endless bickering of the bosses, pull off their shirts and vent their frustrations in song.

I’m referring, of course, to Kiss Me, Kate.

There are any number of reasons to see this production, in spite of a variety of reservations that I have about it, but somewhere high on the list has to be that they have no intention of waiting until “Too Darn Hot” comes around to take off their clothes. Much of the cast spends much of the play in various states of undress, and Chilina Kennedy in particular doesn’t appear to have been given a complete costume at all – and the scraps that have been provided are dropped repeatedly with no provocation. That’s reason enough to go right there.

Kiss Me, Kate has never been my favorite among the classic musicals. It has its virtues, of course. The music is gorgeous, a cavalcade of standards, and the lyrics deliciously naughty. And the book is packed with zingers that still zing. But, for me, the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

A large part of my objection is structural. We know from the instant that Fred Graham and Lilli Vanessi show up that they will inevitably wind up together. Within the first twenty minutes, we know she still loves him, even after all he did to her (and she to him). So: something’s going to keep them apart (a letter intended for Lois delivered to Lilli) and something’s going to finally bring them together. And when we hear Lilli’s big final song, we . . . well, we have no idea what it is, because whatever it is happened off stage. What we get is Shakespeare’s wonderfully over-the-top ode to wifely obedience, sung to a tune that almost makes you forget the absurdity of the text – and the exceptional absurdity in the mouth of Lilli Vanessi. But how she came to want to sing such words, and mean them? We’ll just have to guess.

And then there’s the Shakespeare “issue.” Adaptations of Shakespeare necessarily take liberties with the original – they should, or they’d never work. West Side Story makes a great deal more of the feud than of the love story that is at the center of Romeo and Juliet, with wide-ranging repercussions for both Romeo’s and Juliet’s characters. My Own Private Idaho is a take on the story of Falstaff and Hal told from the perspective of an invented character who is half Poins and half Falstaff’s boy page from Henry IV Part 2 and Henry V. Naturally enough, Hal lacks the complexity of Shakespeare’s creation, and the movie takes Falstaff’s side completely; naturally as well, the entire political plot drops out of view. But both of these works are true to their source material even as they necessarily change it. I don’t really feel the same way about Kiss Me, Kate and The Taming of the Shrew. The Shakespeare we are given in the play-within-a-play – and we get quite a bit of it – is not merely generic (as, say, the Hamlet presented in Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead must be) but caricatured, and the heart of the show is cut out, because it is impossible to believe that the Petruchio who appears in Kate actually loves his Katherine, and without that love the play is simply monstrous. Of course, the play-within-a-play doesn’t really matter except as a vehicle for Fred and Lilli to express their own true feelings – but that’s the point. I can see how the actual Shrew might bring these two together. But this farce?

I can buy, of course, that work brings them together, in spite of everything. I’ve seen, and loved, His Girl Friday. But I need to see it, as I do in that film, and in Cole Porter’s musical I just don’t. Whereas The Taming of the Shrew appears to be a nasty story that actually has a deeply loving heart, Kiss Me, Kate appears to be a classic love story in the “comedy of remarriage” mode, but its heart is cold.

This year’s production is true to the actual nature of this musical, and that is its achievement and its biggest problem. The musical itself butchers the Shrew – so this production butchers it further, putting on an absurdly bad production, in costumes that are a parody of Beauty and the Beast, with actors missing their cues, mugging shamelessly, mangling the verse in accents last heard in a summer stock production of Guys and Dolls and, in one case, forgetting to take off his work gloves before going on stage. The big “turns” in the lives of the principals – particularly Lilli’s decision to return – happen offstage? Well, let’s stage nearly all of the arguments between the principals offstage – what you’ll see onstage, as often as not, is a crowd of backstage types and actors in minor roles rushing from one end of the stage to the other to hear the offstage argument. Doyle takes it so far as to have Chilina Kennedy’s Lois Lane shout the chorus of “Always True To You In My Fashion” to Mike Jackson’s Bill Calhoun, who keeps stalking off into the wings or the voms. The “outer” story – the story of Lilli and Fred – doesn’t actually come to climax and resolve – it just ends? Okay: in this production, the “inner” story – the play Fred Graham is desperately trying to put on in the face of absurd obstacles – won;t end either. Once Lilli’s man of destiny arrives, she never gets back on stage, and neither does anybody else – the final number is, inexplicably, delivered backstage, in civvies, and everybody packs up and goes. She’s come back to Fred, supposedly because she can’t actually leave the theatre, but she’s too late to save this show, so where are they going now? Well, isn’t that what we ought to be wondering, given that we never actually see what turns her around?

John Doyle has basically underlined everything that doesn’t work about Kate in thick marker, so that it absolutely can’t be missed, and said: okay, now what do we do? Well, this is the backstage musical par excellence, and what Doyle has done is shift focus away from the principals and their unconvincing love stories and onto all the little people who make the show actually happen: the stagehands and dressers and all the rest. They are the animating spirit of the opening number (or, rather, the opening opening number – the play-within-a-play has to get its own, far inferior opener), and they, collectively, are the real star of this production, and the question of the play is: what’s in it for them? And the answer turns out to be, mostly: they want to be part of the show, and the behavior of the stars backstage is as much “the show” as what’s going on onstage.

Their avatar is a backstage type of unclear function who winds up onstage for most of the play-within-a-play scenes, but not in costume, and not obviously playing a specific part. In one number, I caught him mouthing all the words to the song that Petruchio is singing, not remotely paying attention to the fact that he’s onstage and supposed to be in some kind of character (what that might be I have no idea), he’s so enraptured merely to be there, to be part of what’s happening. It’s actually quite marvelous – and the role is played marvelously by Jordan Bell. When I saw him doing that, I thought: okay: that’s the play, at least in this production. It’s not about Shrew and it’s not about love and it’s not about these showbiz characters. It’s about the theatre itself, and the incredible allure it has for people, even in productions that are terrible, as the Shrew these people are putting on is.

Where this concept works, then, it works extremely well. So many of the minor roles – Kyle Golemba as Gremio, Jaz Sealey as Hortensio, Josh Young as Paul, even some of the “also appearing” folks – are played as actual characters, not merely as scenery. The gangsters, played by Steve Ross and Cliff Saunders, steal the show, as they inevitably do, but it seems exceptionally fitting that they do so in this production since even before they show up scenes in the Shrew are being stolen by folks who don’t even belong onstage. Where it doesn’t work is where the show is weak to begin with. Fred Graham is played and sung with gusto by Juan Chioran, and Lilli Vanessi with excellent comic timing by Monique Lund (who brought the house down by slinking off the stage on her back like a cartoon animal that had been flattened by a falling safe). But do I believe in these characters? Not really. I believe in Hattie the dressmaker, but Lilli and Fred are just putting on a show. Indeed, given the appalling quality of the play Fred is producing, and the utter lack of glamour (or ability to attract an audience) that Lilli manifests, I can’t really believe that they are in any way who they say they are. Mike Jackson has one really lovely moment as Bill Calhoun, playing the line “even Sanka, Bianca, for you” from his dreadful love song as an allusion to his gambling problem. But the only one of the four principals who reaches out and grabs us by the throat is Chilina Kennedy as Lois Lane – and she does this not just by prancing about in her scanties but by committing herself absolutely to her character, missing no opportunity for shameless self-promotion.

So what’s my recommendation? Personally, I enjoyed the ride. I better have, because I’ve now seen it three times. We keep going back because Kiss Me, Kate is running neck-and-neck with Peter Pan as my son’s favorite show this season.

I Am Never Merry When I Hear Sweet Music

This is a decidedly atypical year at Stratford in that there are four musicals on offer, one at each theatre (perhaps five, if you count As You Like It as a musical, which arguably you should). I don’t know if this is just an accident or reflects the taste of Des McAnuff, the artistic director, best known as the creator of Jersey Boys, but whatever the reason might be, this season’s a real toe-tapper.

The Patterson’s contribution to this choral cavalcade is Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris. Brel was the master of sweet sorrow, the song about loves failed and false that somehow makes you fall in love again, and any opportunity to hear his songs sung well is one that should be seized. The show isn’t exactly a musical, in that it has no book and no real story, but isn’t exactly a concert or review in that the individual songs are not merely sung but acted, and while there isn’t a story there is a structure to how the songs are arranged, and a faint through-line can be discerned for each of the singers as well.

I’m not a huge fan of the English translations; some songs have dated badly in English, some simply don’t translate well, and some of the resonances are downright bizarre (two allusions to “The Star Spangled Banner?”). But the music itself is marvelous, and some of the songs (“La Chanson de Jacky,” for example, or “La Fanette”) translate beautifully. And, most important, this is an opportunity to see the songs not merely sung but performed.

Performance, the creation of characters behind the songs, is executed best, and marvelously well, by the two men, Mike Nadajewski and of course Brent Carver. The two women have lovely voices (though in some songs I felt like Jewelle Blackman didn’t have quite the right kind of voice – a bit too full) and if the men hadn’t been so amazing I’d probably be shouting their praises, but I sometimes felt like they themselves were singing the songs, rather than a character they created, major exceptions being “You’re Not Alone,” “My Death” and “Ne Me Quitte Pas,” sung in the original French and interpolated into the musical for this production, a decision I cannot regret since the song is so fantastic but which doesn’t have any other particular warrant. (“Le Moribond” is, similarly, interpolated into Act I; I suppose it’s a Canadian thing, a nod to bilingualism?)

The only other liberty taken with the original show that I noticed was to turn “Marathon” into a kind of theme song for the production, sliced up and sung slowly in bits as transitions between other songs, rather than the opening number. I thought this was an interesting choice – it turns the whole production into the dance marathon in question. But I’d probably have objected more if I liked the song better; “Les Flamandes” is okay, but the translation turns it into something resembling Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” a litany of historical cliches. In any event, using “Marathon” this way gives the performers something to do as they transition from one song to another, a song that they can sing to each other as they do the hand-off, which both smoothed those transitions and added another dimension, particularly when the singers changed characters as part of the transition.

If you are a fan of Brel’s music, this is a wonderful opportunity to see it live again. And if you are unfamiliar with Brel’s music, this is a wonderful opportunity to invite it into your life.

They Say The Only Way To Get Rid Of Temptation Is To Give In To It, But I Had To Go Back For Seconds

This weekend we round out the rest of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s offerings, and I’ve been having way too much fun to keep up with reviewing everything I’ve seen – indeed, there are now shows I’ve seen twice that I haven’t yet reviewed. So the next batch may come out in a bit more of a hurry than I would ideally like.

That’s particularly the case for Dangerous Liaisons which surprised me by being one of the best shows on offer this year. That’s not because I didn’t expect great things from the superlative cast – led by Tom McCamus as Valmont, Seanna McKenna as Merteuil, and Sara Topham as Tourvel – but because I’m not that crazy about the play. Admittedly, I’d never seen the play staged before; I’d read the book and seen the movie. But an epistolary novel does not naturally adapt to the stage, and I was very worried that I’d be spending the evening at an extremely well-acted but overly wordy period piece.

No such worries need hinder you from rushing to see this show. First of all, the production does a magnificent job of dealing with the frequent problem of distancing in a period piece (not so much a problem in Shakespeare, who wrote timelessly, but often a problem for Restoration comedy, and for more modern pieces set in period like Amadeus or A Man For All Seasons). Both music and set are a wonderful baroque mashup: harpsichords and electric guitars, gleaming steel-tube carts and brushed steel doors joining ornate (and gigantic) ottomans and chaises, lounged on by a man in buckled shoes and hose and the body habitus of Mick Jagger. All this on a stage that has been transformed into a dark metal chess board. I felt like I was inside a music video in the absolutely best sense. (By the way, I’m the theatre-goer who was overheard referring to the “Sofia Coppola treatment” but Nestruck is right – it’s not exactly that, but something better, and I meant it as a compliment anyway).

Director Ethan McSweeny shows a sure hand in manipulating bodies around the Festival stage, especially the servants. The show opens with the stately lighting (and then inspection) of a giant chandelier that rises and hangs over the rest of the show, and at the outset the behavior of the servants generally is respectful and austere. But they get more rambunctious – and fleeter-footed – as the play progresses, to the point where, at the end, when the guillotine actually emerges, led by a few of the servants, to foretell the inevitable end of all these shenanigans, it feels not at all tacked on – we’ve all seen it coming.

And I must say, this production made me appreciate the original in a way I had not merely from reading it. The play isn’t perfect – the back-and-forth between Valmont and Merteuil gets a bit repetitive until the last couple of turns, and after an entire evening of double-entendres one does feel rather like one has had cake for appetizer, dinner and dessert. But that’s a fault in the story, honestly, and if anything I noticed it less on stage than I did in reading. And much of the depth that lies beneath the cold surface of this story came out, for me, only on seeing it with these performers. In particular, Tom McCamus’ vulpine Valmont brought home in a way that reading the book never did just what it was that was so appealing about this cad. Reading Laclos’s novel, I must admit, I found Valmont to be something of a braggart – I honestly didn’t believe his exploits, precisely because it didn’t seem to me like a man who was so intent on showing off how many conquests he’d made could possibly have actually made them. He came off as shallow and, honestly, not terribly interesting. But anyone – particularly any woman – who isn’t thrilled by McCamus’s leering slouch – well, she could probably use a visit from him.

(This seems as good a time as any for an aside about the trickiest bit in the play: Valmont’s rape of Cecile de Volanges. The text of the play makes it very clear that, from the perspective of the play, she wanted it, and only feels guilty that she didn’t resist harder, because now she’s a ruined woman. Once absolved by the Marquise de Merteuil, she takes lustily to her further education. This is, needless to say, a male fantasy, something out of Boccaccio – and, as such, it’s easier to take on the page than on the stage. Nonetheless, I’d say McCamus and Bethany Jillard do about as good a job as possible of making the whole scenario plausible. Valmont is terrifying – and determined – but not violent. Cecile is scared – but excited, too, not entirely sure what she’s scared of. Is it a good thing they made this male fantasy believable? I’ll leave that question to the moralists – suffice it to say that I wasn’t the only person in the audience on the edge of my seat with excitement, having entirely forgotten any morals I may once have had. And that’s the point of the scene, isn’t it?)

This play really belongs to the women, though, and each and every one of them was fantastic. Merteuil is a part that must have been written with Seanna McKenna in mind – and I hope she takes that as a compliment. Not only is she absolutely convincing as this woman with a heart like a steel trap, but at exactly the right point in the play she actually shows us that no, she isn’t – that the trap is but the cage for her heart, and inside, invisible to us but not to her, something red is still beating, furiously. Yanna McIntosh and Martha Henry do phenomenal work as Mme de Volanges and Mme de Rosemonde respectively – McIntosh with a couple of well-timed looks coyly revealing the truth of her long-ago history with Valmont (something he recounts to her daughter as part of his seduction), which considerably deepens a character who comes off as (I thought) a stock figure in the novel; and Henry, well, one ought at this point to expect miracles at every performance, and I got them. So much intelligence, so well-hidden, until just the moment when it must be revealed.

But the biggest revelation to me was Sara Topham as the Presidente de Tourvel. This is a very tricky role, as we come into the play considerably later than we do in the novel, after she’s already fallen for Valmont. What we witness is the progressive collapse of her defenses; she’s already in love with him, but needs to come to know that this is so, and will not cease to be so, and then must surrender to the consequences. And you can see every bit of it playing out on her face. And when she finally surrenders, weeping, we weep too – with all the joy and pain that comes of surrendering to love to someone one really oughtn’t to. Topham was highly praised for her performance last year in The Importance of Being Earnest, which I believe she will be following to New York when it comes to the Roundabout Theatre next year, but while I thought she was good I found that performance a bit artificial. In my opinion, this is her breakout year. Both as Wendy in Peter Pan and as Tourvel in Dangerous Liaisons, she reaches emotional depths that I have never seen her explore before. I am more eager than ever to see her play Isabella in Measure for Measure – a part she was born to play but that, until this season, I feared she would avoid facing. Now she’s ready. I hope they’ll consider it for 2012. (And Martha Henry, who played the part many years ago, can direct. Please.)

I don’t have room to praise everyone in the cast; fine work is done by Paul Dunn as Valmont’s valet, by Michael Therriault as the Chevalier Danceny, by Martha Farrell as a lucious and lusty Emilie, and by a host of silent servants whose changing looks, as I noted above, speak volumes.

It’s a tour de force. Go see it.

A Sad Tale's Best For Summer, Too

Just came from a matinee performance of The Winter’s Tale which I reviewed earlier here. Today’s was my third attendance at this production, and I have to say, re-reading my review, I take back none of my own analysis of the play, which I only find more confirmed the more times I read or see it, but I take back every peevish word I uttered about the production. Yes, I gave the play a very positive review initially, but that review was also filled with back-handed compliments: “a faithful, traditional production,” “no overarching concept,” “I’m of two minds about the performance,” “a bit arch and knowing” – I take it all back. This production deepens every time I see it, and deepens for everyone from the central players to the spear-carriers. The Sicilians flat? Let me call out in particular Sean Arbuckle as Camillo and Skye Brandon as the Gaoler, but really everyone in Sicilia was vibrating with life. And the same was true of Bohemia: Ian Lake and Cara Ricketts have grown into entirely persuasive lovers, Lake in particular displaying a manly passion that fully convinced me of his hereditary nobility.

And, most important, Ben Carlson’s Leontes gets more and more powerful. I do believe the play is changing him – I have a hard time believing you can play this role and not be moved, and I see him moved, and he’s not talking about Hecuba. Those tears on Hermione’s cheeks in the final scene are real, and Yanna McIntosh wouldn’t be crying if she didn’t feel from Carlson what I felt in the audience. In particular, one quibble I made of his performance earlier in the season – that he rushed through the “what have I done” moment after his son dies – I have to retract. He’s slowed that moment down, and only after a bit begins to pour it out more and more quickly. And it’s a much more powerful moment in consequence.

This is a wonderful production. Go see it.

Where would China put the mosque?

Late last year, a former colleague and talented photographer, Andy Keller, chose to forsake the ratrace and, with a close friend, cycle around China. Ten months and nineteen provinces later, they are traversing the outskirts of the Tibetan plateau and circling back to Beijing.

Amidst thousands of miles of great stories behind awesome pictures, one recent propaganda poster in Xiahu, a popular Buddhist pilgrimage destination, typifies I think how many Chinese public institutions recognize and account for ethnic diversity.

Rough translation: “The Han are inseparable from ethnic minorities. Ethnic minorities are inseparable from the Han. All minorities are inseparable from each other.”

Ethnic Han comprise roughly 90% of China’s population, or 20% of all humans, and are concentrated in eastern and southern China, the geographic heartland of China’s recent economic growth. The other 10% of the country’s populations are comprised of more than fifty distinct ethnic groups that are often excluded from the prevailing political and economic establishment.

Nonetheless, the popular sentiment among the Han-dominated government is that ethnic minorities, such as Tibetan and Uyghur, are integral components of the broader Chinese national and cultural identity. The idea is to construct (or recognize) and impose a supra-culture — complete with an official language and official history — over existing diversity to foster national unity and patriotism.

This appeal to inclusivity must seem progressive to many; as if to say, “We recognize your ethnic identity as an indispensable brush stroke in our Chinese masterpiece.” But it strikes me as second-rate pluralism. And not so different from what Ross Douthat calls the wisdom of America that speaks English, promoting ‘unum’ over ‘e pluribus’ by appealing to a ‘real’ American cultural identity.

Because of my experiences living here, as a marked non-believer and cultural outsider, I have become hostile towards the suggestion that the U.S. should ever politically embrace or impose its ‘true’ Christian or American identity on citizens. I take pride in the idea that although I could never be Chinese, all of my Chinese friends and neighbors could be American. Real Americans. I take pride in the idea (however politically impossible) that someone could build a mosque at Ground Zero — and not just two blocks away.

I am eager to one day return to a country where the common narrative we tell about ourselves, as a people, has less to do with bloodlines and more to do with what’s possible. I hope that country will be there.

Another Boy Who Won't Grow Up, Not Even After He's Dead

Very short review. Yesterday we saw Geraint Wyn Davies impersonating Dylan Thomas in the one-man show, Do Not Go Gentle at the Studio Theatre.

If you like Dylan Thomas or if you like Geraint Wyn Davies, this is a very pleasurable hour and a half in both of their company. The show places Thomas in purgatory, doomed to walk his messy study for a time until he has “come to terms” with himself and his history, at which point he’ll be passed through the gates into Paradise. It’s very hard indeed for me to imagine Thomas ever submitting to such an Oprah-fied entry requirement and, indeed, my opinion was not altered by the show. Indeed, it’s not clear that the Thomas we are given is in any way engaged with a project of trying to get into heaven, which is a real problem for the conceit. Being trapped in a state of permanent unlife would indeed approximate a kind of nightmare for the poet, and his desperately futile efforts to escape from such a condition could make for an interesting drama and comment on the author’s own oeuvre. But that’s not what we’re given. Instead, we’re given a portrait of the artist as a garrulous drunk, regaling us with stories of his childhood and of his sexual exploits, much as, by report, he did in life.

All of which is fine, and, as I say, it’s an enjoyable hour and a half. I saw the show in New York and it is much more effectively staged at the Studio in Stratford, where the actor is surrounded by his audience. And Wyn Davies is clearly having fun playing the part. But it’s not really a play. And I admit, I found myself musing whether it wouldn’t have been more interesting to see Wyn Davies attempt a one-man Under Milk Wood.

(Though the literary outing I still most want Stratford to take me on is a production of the Nighttown chapter from Ulysses. . . )

Who Is The King of Thieves?

UPDATE: Revised revisions at the bottom

I’m not entirely sure the best way to review King of Thieves, which opened yesterday afternoon. This is a new play, based on Gay’s Beggar’s Opera (the same source that inspired Brecht’s Threepenny Opera), by George F. Walker, author of Zastrozzi Master of Discipline and Nothing Sacred among other works, and something of a wild man of Canadian theatre. The concept was highly topical: re-set in the 1920s, but very much intended to reflect on our own times, Mac is now married to Polly Peachum but still a thief, and gets embroiled in a plot hatched by a G-man and his despised father-in-law (grown from a fence into a legitimate businessman) to sting a trio of bankers out to sink the world economy. And his play was cast with absolutely top-notch talent: Evan Buliung as Mac, Sean Cullen as master of ceremonies, and a host of other excellent actors from the company. And it’s a musical, with an original jazzy score by John Roby. And it’s directed by the extremely talented Jennifer Tarver (who staged Krapp’s Last Tape in the same theatre a couple of years ago). The auguries could not have been more auspicious.

Unfortunately, the play wasn’t ready. Though every single member of the cast does excellent work – especial call-outs to the entire Peachum family, Laura Condlln as Polly and Jay Brazeau and Nora McLellan as her parents – and though the music is very strong – and one song in particular, “Am I Who I Am Right Now” by the elder Peachums, is a real killer number – and there are individual bits of the play that work well, the whole doesn’t congeal, in part because the plot doesn’t make sense, in part because Mac’s arc isn’t properly worked out, and in part because I don’t think Walker yet knows what it is he’s trying to say beyond that bankers are the real thieves, and that one point isn’t effectively dramatized.

So in lieu of giving a detailed review of the play, which I’d still say is worth seeing if your expectations are for a phenomenally polished production of a play that really should still be in workshop, I’m going to offer some free advice on where to go with the next revision.

- The two big questions of the play are: what will Mac stand for, if anything, and who is the king of thieves? It seems to me like Mac’s arc needs to take him from being a confident small-timer, to an awareness of a wider world (in terms of larger ideals and bigger-time thieves), to disillusion with the wider world and the successful determination to beat it at its own game. That’s very broadly the arc you’ve got now, but it’s muddied because Mac’s sudden idealism comes from nowhere and because the financial plot doesn’t really build to anything but just comes crashing down in a heap. The “who is the king of thieves” question is muddied because it’s not clear what the basis of the rivalry between Mac and anybody else might be on that score.

- To clarify both questions, I suggest giving Mac a mentor who explicitly awakens him to new ideals, a mentor to contrast with the complacent Peachum who wants to be his mentor but who has long since been rejected, and who can then be exposed as a fraud.

- Peachum is Mac’s first rival for the title of king of thieves. What is the meaning of that rivalry? You’ve given Mac a line about needing to spread the wealth around in order to keep the economy going – and a kind of half-developed notion that theft actually makes everyone wealthier. This idea should be attributed to Peachum, not Mac. Peachum is the fence. He’s the one that puts stolen goods into circulation. If he’s going to represent an idea, it should be a satire of Keynesian economic thinking. He should be making the argument that theft benefits society by putting “dead” wealth back into circulation, and himself as playing the key role – the heart to the underground economy’s circulatory system. Give Peachum a song/lecture to that effect, on the nature of the economy and his vital role in it, with actual call-outs to Keynes, which Mac can fall asleep during. To Mac, the “king of thieves” is the guy working against the system, but to Peachum, the “king of thieves” is the guy who actually makes the system work. This is very close to Gay’s original Peachum, by the way.

- Your other contender needs to be the bankers, collectively. Their plot needs considerable work. The whole “sting” operation involving the FBI guy isn’t very persuasive. The FBI doesn’t really need Peachum to put the sting together, and the bankers don’t really need Peachum to concoct the scheme, and the idea that the FBI is trying to get the bankers before they destroy the economy is also a bit weak. Plus the bankers come off as idiots for getting involved in a simple Ponzi scheme. And I should think the FBI and the bankers would be on the same side at the start. So, first differentiate the bankers. You’ve got three right now, but they don’t really have individual personalities. Make one the crafty old miser, one the self-important heir to an old family, and one the young gun. (Analogy: like Octavius/Lepidus/Antony, except Octavius is the old one rather than Antony, and Antony is the young one rather than Octavius.) You’re part-way there in that you’ve already got a young one, but since he doesn’t have any fire in the belly his relationship with Mac isn’t very interesting. Now that you’ve differentiated them, you can make the old miser parallel to Peachum, and the young gun parallel to Mac.

- What are the bankers plotting? I like the idea that they are planning on putting on the “big short.” They are going to pump up the market enormously, then short it, and win big from everybody else’s loss. The idea they represent contrasts nicely with Peachum’s: Peachum’s notion of the economy is positive-sum while theirs is zero-sum; on the other hand, Peachum is involved in outright theft while they can defend themselves by saying that they aren’t breaking any laws nor are they actually taking anything from anybody; if other people are gullible enough to participate in a ludicrous market bubble, so much the worse for them.

So how does Ponzi get into it? And the FBI? And what kicks Mac off on his journey?

This is just a thought, but:

- The Ponzi scheme isn’t a way to trap the bankers; it’s a threat to the bankers, because it’s actually making it harder for them to pump up the market and put on their big short. The old miser banker is the one who brings the FBI in to bust the scheme and save their much bigger scheme.

- But the genius behind the Ponzi scheme is actually the young gun banker, who’s operating in disguise as a simple Italian immigrant. It’s in this disguise that he meets Mac, who’s busy burgling his house (but he can’t reveal that since it would break the disguise). He distracts Mac with ideology, describing his Ponzi scheme is something more akin to a communitarian initiative, a way for the workers to build wealth without being in thrall to the bankers. For the first time, Mac is awakened to something bigger than himself. But, of course, it’s a con.

- The FBI puts the screws on Mac because he’s involved with the Ponzi scheme. They want him to become the mole. Meanwhile, Mac finds out the real plans of the old miser banker to pump and dump the entire market, and how the Ponzi scheme is a threat to this plan, and he’s the one who reveals this to the FBI. This info is what causes the FBI guy to turn rogue, and use first blackmail, then outright violence to get some for himself, killing the young gun banker not realizing who he is. Which sets up a big tussle for the ill-gotten Ponzi scheme assets which Mac makes off with in the end.

- So Mac’s arc is from small-time big-shot pretty pleased with himself, to awakening to a wider world, to disillusion with the wider world, to confidence that he can beat the wider world at its own game and be bigger than he ever was.

You’ve also got two love stories: Mac-Polly and Mr. and Mrs. Peachum.

- I love Mr. and Mrs. Peachum, but I feel like their story needs forward momentum. So: Peachum’s gone respectable, and this has caused Mrs. Peachum to go cold. He’s worried about losing her. So he goes for one more big score – providing distribution for the Ponzi scheme (since he’s got the relevant clientele) which he knows is crooked (though he doesn’t know who’s really running it). This puts passion back into his marriage but gets him killed (by the FBI guy after he goes rogue). This isn’t too big a fix from what you’ve already got.

- Mac-Polly is a little more complicated to fix, because right now all you’ve got is a rivalry with a nightclub singer who’s kind of a watered-down version of the original Jenny. Make Jenny the doll of the young gun banker – in his true identity, not his disguise – and make Mac have a real thing for her, and be jealous. So Mac can have a romantic rivalry with the guy who, in disguise, is acting as his mentor, and there’s also a more substantial basis for some tension in his own marriage. (And we make Mac a sexier character, which he really needs to be.)

Have I made the whole thing way too complicated? Maybe. So you figure it out. But a few broad things I’m pretty sure of. The bankers need to be differentiated and at least one of them needs to be an interesting villain rather than an idiot. Mac is too much of a goody-two-shoes right now for the king of thieves; he needs to be darker and more complex, and if you want him to start spouting off about the working classes he needs a mentor to teach him that language, and that mentor needs to be exposed as a fraud. And there needs to be some more meat on the question: who is the king of thieves?

UPDATE: Hold the phone! A mentor character? MacHeath needs a mentor? I don’t think so. Reading over the above, I see I’ve drained all the interest out of Mac and given it to the young banker. So: Mac is the young banker. And Ponzi. And Mac. He’s a shape-shifting chameleon simultaneously infiltrating the upper echelons of society and plumbing the depths of the underworld, and in between conning the working classes into believing in a social welfare scheme that is nothing but a Ponzi.

Keep the plot pretty much as I’ve described it, including the FBI getting involved to get Mac to be a mole infiltrating the Ponzi scheme so as to save the bankers who really want to wreck the market for their own gain. Except now the FBI is, unbeknownst to them, trying to get Mac to spy on himself! And when Mac is jealous of Jenny’s new banker guy, he’s jealous of himself!

The audience, seeing the same actor playing all three parts, will naturally assume that this is cross-casting. So it’ll still pack a whallop when it’s revealed that all three are one person. Our own theatrical savvy used against us! What a perfect con!

And as for his motivation for such a complicated multiply-self-double-crossing plot, well, the answer couldn’t be simpler. To prove he’s the king of thieves!

Mr. Walker, you can get my contact info from the Festival office.