On Election Day, Judie and went to see “King Lear” at the Old Vic, with Glenda Jackson in the title role. There seemed to be something appropriate about going to the play on the day when it appeared that America would elect its first female President. In any event, it would be better than sitting around all evening obsessing about the election when nothing would actually happen here until after midnight. Little did we realize that we were going from a theatrical study of madness and tragedy to a real life experience of madness and tragedy.

It all seemed to be going well at first. Clinton leading in the first reported votes. States like Georgia and South Carolina too close to call, when one would think they would be automatically for Trump. There seemed to be a possibility of going to bed before 3:00. But, as we all know now, it all inexorably shifted and the race became closer and then it all began to fall apart. It didn’t seem possible, but this narcissistic con artist was winning and by 4:30, I had to give up and go to bed. I couldn’t watch the end of this disaster, much less listen to the gloating of people like Giuliani and his ilk.

It all still seems like a bad dream. I have heard people say that maybe it won’t be so bad, but I don’t buy it. It is going to be awful and untold harm will be done to the planet and to the idea of American democracy. A type of visceral hatred has been released by Trump and it is not something you can get back into the bottle easily. I know that we, the majority of the country that actually voted for Clinton, will have to band together to fight this, but there will be a lot of losses along the way. I also know that demographics is destiny and the rule of the angry white men has to end at some point. But by then the rock will be back at the bottom of the damn hill and we will have to start pushing it up all over again. I truly believe that “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”. It is distressing when it gets bent back the other way, but I guess that has to make us pull harder on the bar.

“King Lear”: I imagine that actors all over England rushed to audition for parts in this. There is something truly epic about Glenda Jackson deciding to play Lear. And it isn’t simply the obvious parallel to Hillary and what seemed like the Year of the Woman until Tuesday, when it turned into the Year of the Sexual Predator. This was her first performance in 25 years, since she left acting to become a member of Parliament from 1992 to 2015. The woman is 80, for God’s sake and she took on an incredibly demanding role. Despite all that, it was not surprising that she was wonderful. Her Lear was a bit old and frail but had her wits about her at the outset, as she made the fateful errors in dividing her kingdom among her daughters. She then moved through anger into fury as her daughters betrayed her, winding up as a mad king cursing the heavens. It was a memorable performance. the rest of the cast was brilliant. In particular, Rhys Ifans was wonderful as the Fool, who at one point launches into a Bob Dylan impersonation for one the Fool’s songs. Harry Melling (Dudley Dursley in Harry Potter) was impressive as Edgar. Jane Horrocks (as Regan) and Celia Imre (Goneril) were suitably evil as the two awful daughters. And Edmund’s first speech was done while he was working out, skipping rope and doing all sorts of physical things. It was amazing that Simon Manyonda could do it without even breathing hard. Finally, I wasn’t crazy about the modern dress costumes or the minimalist scenery, although the way they did the storm scene was sort of clever. In a way that focused everything on the acting, which was amazing.

“Julius Caesar” On the night after the election, we went to the Donmar Warehouse to see an all-woman production of “Julius Caesar”. It was good to get out of the flat or we would have just sat around being depressed about the election results. And “Julius Caesar” has a special resonance for me, since I was in possibly the worst production of all time in my first semester at Bowdoin. Miserably acted and directed, all I can say is that I had a very small part as a freshman and mainly watched in a combination of horror and hilarity behind my sword and shield at what transpired. I’d gone to college thinking that I wanted to be an actor and I realized about halfway through the rehearsals that Bowdoin was not going to teach me anything in that area. But I did make some lifetime friends standing and giggling with the Roman Legion upstage, as the “actors” declaimed downstage.

Once again, seeing an all-woman production of this play seemed like it would have a particular relevance on the evening after what we assumed would be Clinton’s election. In light of the reality of what happened, it seemed depressingly appropriate that the play was set in a woman’s prison. It was a fabulous production, fast-moving and well acted. The women were dressed pretty androgynously (since they were in a prison, they were mostly in gray), so the fact that they were woman was not really made a point of. The amazing actor, Harriet Walter, who played Brutus, was one of the creators of the trilogy of which “Julius Caesar” was a part. She was riveting in the role and, in some ways carried the production. I thought that Jackie Clune also stood out playing Caesar. She had a certain charisma and confidence that made her seem like the kind of leader that people would follow and want to make their dictator. (She also had reddish hair cut fairly short, which gave her a vague creepily Trumpian look.) I also liked the actor who played Casca. The staging of the play used the idea of the prison without letting it obscure the Shakespeare. It was sometimes very cleverly done. I was sort of lukewarm about the way that “Friends, Romans and Countrymen” was done, possibly because the woman playing Marc Anthony could not match the gravitas of Walter and be an effective counterpoint to her Brutus.

“Julius Caesar” is a tremendous study of politics and power. It has a number of familiar lines that are a part of the popular lexicon and one of the great speeches in any play. But I have always felt that the play actually becomes a bit dull after Marc Anthony’s speech, which unleashed “the dogs of war”. It kind of goes on and on as you wait for the conspirators to be killed on the battlefield. (When you think about it, Elizabeth I would not have been happy with a play that let regicide go unpunished, so Shakespeare had a point he was compelled to make there.) I suspect it is often edited down and, in this case, the end of the play is simply cut off by the prison guards, shortly after Brutus’ death (“This was the noblest Roman of them all.”), which was an interesting way to deal with the problem.