Theatre

New Paintings, Rock Stars In London and “Buried Child”

Posted on by Nick Lewis

Painting progress: I feel a bit like I’ve lost my mojo when it comes to painting. It seems like I’ve been doing it less. I’ve been working on three things: (1) a portrait of my Uncle Bill, where I am having trouble capturing his smile and the twinkle in his eye, (2) a painting of a tennis player that I’ve been meaning to do for a while but now that I am doing it, I’m wondering why and (3) a landscape vaguely based on a painting I saw at a museum in Paris, using gouache paints that Karen Fried gave me a year ago. It’s been fun trying a new medium, but it is taking a while for me to figure out how it works. I’m actually closing in on completing all three of them.

As it turns out, since drafting this, I did finish the portrait of Bill. He and his wife Marie were very close to my parents and in a lot of ways, he was like a second father for us. He was an amazing guy. He could walk into a room or a bar and within 20 minutes would be friends with everyone in the room. A quick Bill story (there are so many): We showed up at my parent’s house for Thanksgiving or some other Mahoney family reunion and it was a big Mahoney turnout. Judie had never met any of them and was understandably nervous. Bill picked up on this instantly and took us around, introducing us as “Judie and her boyfriend Nick”, a cute juxtaposition that relaxed everyone. Here is the painting. I still did not capture the twinkle in his eye or his mischievous grin, but it’s close (and probably as good as I can do).

uncle-bill

Frideric and Jimi: On the last day that Peter and Andrea were in London, we went to the Handel and Hendrix Museum. Frideric Handel lived in this house on Brook Street in Mayfair from 1723 to his death in 1759. This was the period of Handel’s greatest popularity and power. He really was the rock star of the period. His house has been restored and decorated with period paintings and furniture and some lovely musical instruments. They occasionally have concerts there, as Handel certainly did during his lifetime. You can see where his bedroom was and where he entertained notables of the day and rehearsed with singers.

A little over 200 years after his death, Jimi Hendrix rented a third floor flat in the same building (different entrance) shortly after arriving in England to become incredibly famous. A museum celebrating all of this opened a year ago immediately above the Handel one. Hendrix lived there with his girlfriend for a couple of years, composing, playing and partying. He actually became interested in Handel and bought some albums of his music. All sorts of famous musicians visited him there to jam, hang out and sometimes crash in a spare room. They have recreated his bedroom, based on photos from the time. Hendrix was interested in design and spent a fair amount of time shopping for rugs and other things to decorate the flat. His girlfriend, who left him in about 1969, possibly upset by his drug use, has lived the last 40 something years in Australia, but has come back and donated a few items. There are videos, music, what purports to be Jimi’s record collection, some guitars, etc.

It is a wonderful coincidence that these two superstar musicians lived in the same place. Little things like this are what make London so much fun.

“Buried Child”: We went with Peter and Andrea to see “Buried Child”, a play by Sam Shepard, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979, catapulting his career into the stratosphere. The play is largely centered around the character Dodge, played by (the) Ed Harris, in what I understand is his first London appearance. When you enter the theater, Dodge is already on the couch in a run-down house, coughing and having sips of whiskey. He stays on that couch for entire play, except for times when he ends up on the floor. He is sitting in Middle America waiting to die, his sons are disappointments, his farm is not productive (and hasn’t been for years), he has dark secrets that haunt him and his wife no longer loves him (and hasn’t for years). It’s quite a part and Ed Harris is quite brilliant in the role. His real-life wife, Amy Madigan, plays his wife in the play. She is the strongest figure in a family of men who have been broken one way or another. In the first act, you think at least one person in this family (her) isn’t crazy. In the last act, you find out you are wrong. Upsetting this disturbing apple cart is the surprise visit of Dodge’s grandson Vince, who comes with his girl friend Shelly and then leaves her there when he ostensibly goes to buy whiskey for Dodge but does not return. Shelly, ferociously portrayed by Charlotte Hope, proceeds to expose the dark secrets that have tormented Doge and his family for many years. You eventually discover that Dodges wife had a child with Tilden, Dodge’s now demented son, and that Dodge eventually killed the baby and buried it (thus the title), driving Tilden over the edge.By the end of the play, Dodge has died (but is still next to the couch), Vince is back and is going to stay (but Shelly has enough sense to leave) and Tilden has dug up the baby. This is a powerful and deeply disturbing play that is very well written and sublimely acted and produced. It was not exactly fun to watch, but I won’t forget it. Although it is set in the malaise of the Ford-Carter years on the 1970s, I think the sort of desperation and sense of failure and loss that permeates the play should have resonance in these days of Trump and Brexit. This was once a functioning family with a working business and dreams. Now that is all gone. They may not be a Trump/Brexit voters, but they fits the caricature.

Closing words: Last Sunday, I did the reading at New Unity. It was poem called “”If You Could”by Danny Bryck. I thought it was timely and powerful. Follow this link: if-you-could

Visitors, “Art” and News from London

Posted on by Nick Lewis

Our friends Peter and Andrea Rothberg are visiting (since Thursday). They are back for a second time and we have just returned from a wonderful long weekend in Lisbon. (More about that in a different post.) We went to the Tate Modern to see the Sir Elton John photography exhibit which I wrote about earlier. We also had time to see some of the other permanent exhibits. We were in the Rothko Room, full of paintings that were originally painted for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York, when the museum closed and we were asked to leave. (Rothko cancelled the commissions and gave the works to the Tate. He committed suicide the week after they were installed.) I also discovered that the new wing of Tate Modern has a great view-point of London. See below.

london-tate-view

“Art”: On the Friday after Andrea and Peter arrived, we went to the Old Vic to see “Art”, a play by the French playwright, Yazmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton. It is the 20th anniversary of its first production in London. (We saw it on Broadway with Alan Alda, Joe Morton and George Wendt sometime around 1999.) It is a play that is really about the relationships between three men. One of the three friends, Serge, has purchased an expensive, large painting that is entirely white. Serge, played by Rufus Sewall (probably best known for his recent portrayal of Lord M in the TV series “Victoria”) is a fan of this minimalist modern style and loves his painting. He invites his best friend, Marc (played by Paul Ritter), over and proudly shows it to him. Marc immediately hates it and is aghast that Serge bought it. He cannot conceal his alarm, anger and disgust. The rest of the play is about how their friendship is almost destroyed by the purchase of the painting. Marc feels betrayed and furious that Serge could have bought such a thing. And Serge is equally furious at what he sees as Marc’s condescending attitude and rigidity. Along the way, their other friend, Yvan (hysterically played by Tim West), finds himself in the middle of the argument. He tries to like the painting (even though he doesn’t really), which infuriates Marc and then infuriates Serge when he admits he doesn’t really like it that much. He becomes their punching bag as they fight with each other. It is a fascinating look at the nature of male friendship, as the rift caused by the disagreement about art escalates into increasingly hurtful statements about other, more personal subjects. And you could say that it is about men’s lack of empathy and the inability of individuals with strongly held beliefs to admit that someone with equally strong opposing beliefs may not be a fool. As the director’s notes point out, this second underlying theme has a great resonance today, in an England divided by Brexit and a world divided by Trump, where the opposing camps cannot bring themselves to even talk civilly to each other. It is wonderful and cleverly written in a style that is reminiscent of Stoppard. It takes a simple concept and creates a parable about life and friendship. And it manages the seemingly impossible by coming up with a resolution that does not seem contrived and is somehow satisfying. Another thing I’m going to miss about London: The Old Vic.

art

It Looks Like We Will Avoid Deportation: You may recall that we were somewhat concerned that our visas are scheduled to expire on the 9th of February, but we intend to keep living here until early April. We were concerned that Judie might be closely questioned upon our return from Lisbon and she had letters from the law firm explaining that she was now officially working in the New York office (and therefore no longer needs anything more than a visitor’s visa). The immigration law specialist hired by the firm seemed to think that there was a possibility that it would not work and we would have to leave or something. But, as it turned out, the Immigration person had no interest in Judie’s letters and just let us in on visitor’s visas with virtually no fuss at all. It was a relief for us, as this particular detail of our repatriation has been worrying us for weeks.

Brexit Update: May Wins, Labour in Disarray: This week the entire Breixt process leading to the UK leaving the EU became officially irreversible (although it has seemed like an unstoppable lava flow for months). In response to the High Court’s ruling that the Article 50 notice (beginning the process of leaving the EU) had to be approved by Parliament, the Conservative submitted a very short bill that gives Theresa May a blank check. The Tories were solidly behind it (except for Kenneth Clark, a voice crying out in the darkness that has become the Conservative Party) and beat back efforts by some MPS to amend the bill. The Scottish National Party was opposed. Corbyn and Labour found themselves in a difficult spot. Many of the traditional Labour constituencies in the Midlands and elsewhere voted heavily to leave and they were justifiably concerned that voting against the triggering of Article 50 might lead to an electoral rout. So Corbyn decided that Labour had to support the bill and ordered a “Three-line whip” be issued. (This is a message to the Labour MPs about an upcoming vote. If the message is underlined once, the members are urged to come and vote, underlined twice and the members are told that this is a very important matter. If it is underlined three times, the MPs are told that they must vote and are instructed on how they must vote.) About 50 Labour MPs defied Corbyn (and the three-line whip) and voted against the bill. They were from places that voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU and really had to oppose it. But this is simply not done in Parliament and this sort of rebelliousness is unusual. Several front-benchers in the shadow cabinet voted against the bill and therefore had to resign their positions. Why Corbyn couldn’t have given his members a “free vote”, avoiding the inevitable resistance is beyond me. It all just reinforces the pre-existing story line that he doesn’t know what he is doing and that Labour is in disarray. So May wins overwhelmingly (so overwhelmingly that there is no chance of the House of Lords doing anything) and the Brexit process will start in the next six weeks. The two-year negotiations are unlikely to go well or even be completed, so this could turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory for her.

A Brief Political Rant: We are living in such a weird time. A few hundred thousand votes and Hillary is President, there might be a Democratic majority in the Senate and all the pundits would be writing about the dismal future of the GOP. But for whatever reason, those votes did not materialize and we are faced with Trump, which would be bad enough for one lifetime, but also a Republican Party whose awful partisanship and refusal to govern has been rewarded. With Republicans in charge, one would expect all sorts of terrible things–giveaways to the rich, attempts to shred the safety net as much as possible, attacks on the EPA, the CFPB and Dodd-Frank. Elections have consequences and at least some of these horrible things will inevitably happen. I’m not sure that we can fight all of them. And I don’t know where Democrats would get by being simply the party of “No”, as the GOP was for six years, especially since they are in the minority. There has to be resistance, but it has to be smart and constructive resistance, with apositive message underlying it. And there are lines in the sand that must be drawn that will lead to bloody fights.

Trump is a sort of different matter. It is important to call him out on his endless false statements and the fact that his administration is utterly feckless and incompetent. I  personally have no real hope that the Republicans will impeach him, but I think he can and will be weakened. But to obsess on every stupid tweet and crazy statement seems also to be self-defeating. It is important to make some distinctions over the merely idiotic and venal things he says and the things he says that threaten tyranny. There really is a difference between complaining about Nordstom’s and threatening the judiciary. We are teetering on the edge of an abyss. It is not hard to envision a situation in which the USA slips into tyrrany. What we do as a country over the next several months and years will have an inordinate impact on the future of the world. This is all frightening in a way that Reagan or W were not.

Out On The Town

Posted on by Nick Lewis

I was sitting at home last Thursday a little after 4:45, thinking I needed to get ready to leave to go to dinner and the theatre, when my phone buzzed and, when I looked at it, I was stunned to discover that we had a reservation for high tea at The Ritz at 5:30. This was a present from Judie’s sister, Linda, for Christmas and we had booked it some time ago and then completely forgotten about it. Thankfully, my phone hadn’t.

I called Judie and broke the news to her. She had a conference call scheduled for 5:00, so she called The Ritz to see if we could reschedule. We couldn’t, but they told her that we could be late. I went on line and cancelled our dinner reservations. As all that was going on, I was scrambling around to get dressed well enough that I could meet the dress code for tea. (We were going to the damn Ritz and they have standards.) I found our theatre tickets for the night and managed to get downstairs by 5:00. I hit the sidewalk and realized it was raining. No time to go back for an umbrella and by the time I had cut through the Old Spitalfield Market, the rain was beginning to mix with snow, the first I had seen in London. (The next morning it actually snowed less than an inch and London was almost paralyzed.) The one thing about London is that once you make it to the Tube, things move pretty quickly. The trains come every two or three minutes. So it didn’t take that long to get from Liverpool Street Station to Holborn and then switch to the Piccadilly line for Green Park. I got out of the station and there was The Ritz across the street. I had somehow managed to get there by 5:45 and Judie arrived just after 6:00.

Once we got there (and caught our breath), it really was great fun. The tea is served in a gilded dining room by waiters (all men) in tails and red vests and bow ties. It would have better if the all sounded like Jeeves. But, this being London in 2017, most of them had vaguely Eastern European accents. Linda had given us the Champagne tea, so we got to start with tea (from an extensive tea list) and flutes of their house bubbly. To eat, there were a variety of little crustless sandwiches (I was starving) and scones and clotted cream, and cakes and various little pastries. It was all very delicious, if ridiculously overpriced. But you are paying for the atmosphere and the feeling of being transported back to an earlier, simpler age, when rich people could meet in a golden room and entertain themselves with murmured conversation, while a piano tinkled in the background. A couple of photos follow.

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Love-Lost and Found: The Royal Shakespeare  Company are performing two plays in repertory at the Royal Haymarket Theatre (Samuel Foote’s theatre, if any of you recall me writing about the play “Mr. Foote’s Other Leg”). After tea at The Ritz, we walked over and saw “Love’s Labour’s Lost”. It is one of Shakespeare’s early comedies and is relatively rarely performed, possibly because its references to persons of the day and it literary allusions became less familiar to audiences. It is the story of the King of Navarre and three of his associates, who all agree to foreswear the company of women for three years of philosophical studies. As soon as they do so, of course, the beautiful Princess of France with three lovely members of her court appear. The four men meet them out of politeness, but refuse to let them into the house due to their vow, and are instantly smitten. The play has wonderful language (it is sometime accused of being overwritten, but I found the lines, often in rhyming couplets, to be lovely). It is quite funny. My favorite scene was one in which each of the men appear on the roof, working on their odes of love, hide as each one appears and finally discover each other and the fact that they each are violating their vows. There are a number of other very funny scenes including one in which the four men improbably disguise themselves as Russions to visit the women, who are not fooled in the slightest and end up fooling the men. The was particularly wonderful repartee between Lord Berowne (Edward Bennett) and Rosaline (Lisa Dillon, who we had seen earlier as the lead in Stoppard’s “Hapgood” at Hampstead Theatre). The play is set in pre-World War I England (you just have to ignore all of the French references), which is really more reflected in the overall look of the truly incredible set and the costumes, at least until the end. The end is a bit of a surprise. The women had been rather toying with these four men’s affections for much of the play, but at the end accept their love. But rather than marry on the spot, as would be the conclusion of most Shakespearean plays of this type, they tell the men that they must wait a year, since the King of France has just died. As the play ends, the four men appear in army uniforms and march off to war, leaving you to wonder if the love will ever be consummated or will be lost. It is kind of a bittersweet ending. I have to admit that I probably would have enjoyed this pay more if I had been more familiar with it. As it was, I had to work hard to follow the language and the twists and turns of the plot. Bennett and Dillon were delightful in the leading roles and Nick Haverson, in the comic role of Costard, the gardener, was a riot. Another memorable performance was John Hodgkinson as Don Armando.

The next night, we were back to see “Much Ado About Nothing”, which was set in England just after World War I. Bennett and Dillon, were back, this time playing the central couple, Benedict and Beatrice. Unlike the prior night’s play, we were familiar with the play (I’d guess that many people are, even if they get confused by the names of Shakespeare’s plays sometimes). We’d seen it back in the 1980s with Derek Jacobi and Sinead Cusack (see related story below) and many people have seen the movie version with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. I came away even more impressed with Edward Bennett than I had been the night before. He is utterly at ease with Shakespeare’s language and has a true gift for comic timing and was charming in both parts. He looked vaguely familiar and it turns out that we saw him playing one of the scientists opposite Nicole Kidman in “Photograph 51”. He might be best known for appearing in “Hamlet”, where he was the understudy for David Tennant about ten years ago and was called on to perform on opening night when Tennant injured his back and could not go on. “Much Ado” is a tremendously entertaining play that is terribly romantic. It was very clever for the Royal Shakespeare Company to pair it with “Love’s Labour’s Lost”, as there are a number of parallels between the two plots. This production really went for the laughs and had a good deal of slapstick staging. There were some really belly laugh moments. But I did find Haverson’s performance of Dogberry to be so over the top as to be almost painful, even if it was quite funny. The same set was still remarkable (see the photo below that I took before the play began), the cast was top notch and it was a completely satisfying evening of theatre.

set-lll-and-maan

Vaguely Related Story: The same time we saw Derek Jacobi in the Royal Shakespeare production of “Much Ado”, he was also performing in “Cyrano”. He was, as you would expect, just wonderful. We took my father to the show, since it was one of his favorite plays and his response after seeing it was “Yeah. He was good. But he’s no Jose Ferrer.”, which was kind of ridiculous, but reflected his feeling that he had seen the ultimate performance of the part that simply could not be topped. Actually, it seems to me, this sort of attitude interferes with the simple enjoyment and magic of theatre. “He’s no Jose Ferrer” subsequently became a recurring line that we would cite when we would see a play that was a re-staging of something we’d seen earlier (especially when we were with our friends Peter and Andrea). For example, we would see Jim Parsons in “Harvey” and say “He’s no Jimmy Stewart”, not as a criticism, but in recognition that there are many ways to interpret a role and to perform it and that what makes seeing a play again played by a great actor and/or troupe of actors is actually the thrill of seeing something interpreted differently.

A Painting, A Play and A Panto

Posted on by Nick Lewis

A New Painting: I feel like I have been working on this one forever. Of course, I actually had to redo the building completely at one point and I left it over the holidays for two weeks, so I really has been sitting in the kitchen for quite a while. The subject is yet another view from the Isle of Skye. I have lots of lovely subjects from there, but I need to find new subjects for landscapes, etc. I’m getting sick of the mainly green palette. I have had some problems with this one. First, the building wasn’t right and then the writing on it was crooked, so I had to start that part over. And I was never able to get the bottom left and center right. It is all very busy and the green algae on the stream coming out from under the distillery was impossible to capture. There are lots of layers down there. I finally decided that it finally looks OK and that I am really sick of it. Not one of my best efforts, but they can’t all turn out well, I guess. I’m sure that famous artists have had canvasses that they just throw away in disgust. (Probably not Picasso, who would just sell it for lots of money.) I’m not quite to that point with this one and it may be that I’ll go back at some point and see if I can improve it, but, at least for now, I am done with it. Here it is:

talisker-painitng

“This House”: Last Wednesday was another meeting of Judie’s Women’s Group in the flat, so I had to vacate. This has turned into my evening to go to the theatre by myself, trying to see plays that I don’t think will appeal to Judie that much. This time, I picked “This House”, playing at the Garrick Theatre in the West End, following an initial run at the National Theatre. It is very political play, set in the offices of the Whips of the Labour and Conservative Parties in the late 1970’s. This was the period before Thatcher became PM and Labor had tenuous control of the government, requiring them to constantly make sure that their MPs showed up for the votes and trying to bring over the votes of the various minor parties. It was real inside Parliamentary politics, which I found fascinating. For example, one of the subplots involved the tradition of “pairing”. This happens when an MP is ill or away on government business. The whips meet and such an MP is paired with an MP of the other party, thus cancelling their votes. As a result of a dispute during the play, the Conservatives stop the practice and the Labour whips have to go to great efforts to get their members in to vote. One very sick member is simply moved into a bed in an office. This invokes another Parliamentary tradition, “nodding through”, in which the vote of a member in the building but too ill to appear is counted anyway as a courtesy. This particular member is eventually sent home and, in the climactic scene, the Labour party is faced with a vote of no confidence which could end their government. They need the vote of this terribly sick guy. But they realize that calling him in to vote would probably kill him decide that this is where they have to draw the line. (They had previously drawn the line at nothing in struggling to retain power.) Labour loses the motion by that one vote, an election is called as a result and Thatcher is elected PM, as the play ends. The play is not about policy or the important ministers. It is all behind-the-scenes maneuvering and the characters are really appealing in a ruthless sort of way. The stars are really the Deputy Whips, who do most of the dirty work. The Conservative side is exactly the sort of upper crust types that you’d expect. Nathaniel Parker (Inspector Lindley on the TV mysteries and Henry VII in “Wolf Hall” on Broadway) plays the Deputy Whip and Malcolm Sinclair (a fabulous actor who is great at playing snotty upper crust types and who we already had seen in “The Meeting” and in “Show Boat”) was the Whip. The Labour side were appropriately working class blokes. Steffan Rhodri was brilliant as the Deputy Clerk. Phil Daniels was a wonderfully Cockney Whip in the first act. When he was forced to resign, the new Whip was played by Kevin Doyle (Mr. Moseley in “Downton Abbey”). Another great character on the Labour side was a young woman that they added to the team, played by Lauren O’Neill (who we saw in “Reasons to be Happy”) as even tougher than the men. This is “One of the Things I Will Miss about London” (you’ll be seeing this a lot in the coming months): not just seeing great actors, but seeing the same actors over and over in different parts.

“Sleeping Beauty”: When Diane and Gene were visiting up before Christmas, they made a point of going to see a “panto”, which is a bit of an English tradition. We had never seen one. So, on Saturday, we went to one. It was the last weekend for Christmas pantos and we went to the Hackney Empire, what appears to be an old Music Hall theatre in diverse, working class Hackney (see photo below). It boasts one of the more famous pantos in London, a new one of which has been created and directed by the same woman each year for nearly 20 years. A panto is short for pantomime, but it is not really a pantomime. It is a form of family holiday entertainment, that includes music, big production numbers, comedians, traditionally including one dressed in drag, often a pie throwing scene, and lots of bantering with the audience. This version of Sleeping Beaty only loosely followed the plot, which was notably changed so that her nanny wakes her with the kiss and she becomes a warrior princess who goes to rescue the prince, who has been kidnapped by the evil witch. (The witch and her minions were all Caribbean, which reflects the demographics of Hackney.) The evil witch and Sleeping Beauty were played by talented women, with great big voices and the other star was the nanny, dressed in drag and played by Gavin Spokes, who we’d seen playing Nicely Nicely in “Guys and Dolls”. There was a long string of Brexit jokes included in the show, notably a song sung by the Nanny and the King called “Never Ask the People What They Want”. At the end the Nanny comes out in an outrageous dress that is half Union Jack and half EU flag. My favorite Brexit joke from the show was when the King announces that he is trying out a new court jester. He is asked “What happened to the old court jester?” and he answers “He is the new Foreign Secretary” (a fairly hilarious reference to Boris Johnson). The Nanny does all sorts of stuff with the audience. The best was when she went down to the stalls and picked out a hunky looking guy in the front and says he is not looking well and sprays him in the face with his special nanny elixer. He gives the spray bottle to the poor guys date and periodically through the show, stops everything and says “You are not looking well, Kieran. Please spray him in the face for me” and the guy’s date gleefully sprays him. A great running gag. The show ends with the Nanny coming out and reading out birthday wishes to kids in the audience, a joint sing-along and a big final number. Great fun.

hackney-empire

I think that I will make the following a running theme in the rest of the blog, appearing at the end of each one.

One of the Things We Will Miss About London: We will miss getting to walk over to the fitness club in the morning (or in Judie’s case recently, hobbling), going through our routines and then stopping at the local conveyer belt sushi restaurant for lunch afterwards.

One of the Things I Won’t Miss About London: The British, with one notable exception, don’t seem to invite people to visit them in the homes. Except for Paul and Jane Jee and a Bryan Cave Goodby Party, the only people we have been invited to visit are various American expats. Is this shyness? Is it some sort of house shame? Is it the fact that people seem to meet at pubs? I am not sure, but it has impeded our ability to become close friends with people here. I will say that it is a trait that the Brits appear to have lost on the voyage to Australia.

Catching Up: Royal Shakespeare and Community Organizing

Posted on by Nick Lewis

We are back from our Thanksgiving trip. Before I write anything about that, I want to finish up a post that I couldn’t complete before leaving. I probably should have done this on the plane or while I was in Montclair, but I don’t really like writing on my phone. And I suppose I am a creature of habit.

“King Lear”: Samuel Johnson said that he found “King Lear” almost unbearable. Yet here we were at the Barbican, experiencing it for the second time in a week. (According to the programme, the play was adapted in the 1680’s creating a happy ending, which was how Lear was played for the next 200 years.) After seeing Glenda Jackson take on Lear at the Old Vic, we were curious to compare the Royal Shakespeare Company version, starring the great Shakespearean actor Antony Sher, who we had seen memorably playing Falstaff about a year ago.

It is hard to compare the two Lears. The RSC production was in more traditional costumes and didn’t use things like projections. In some ways, I found the overall look of the RSC version preferable, although I thought the storm scene in the Old Vic production was more dramatically staged. One of the interesting little things the RSC production did was have destitute, silent characters often moving about the stage or sitting in corners, stressing the political context of the play, discussed below. Sher’s Lear was a more powerful a figure at the beginning, at least in part because he is not 80 years old like Jackson. So he begins the play as a robust monarch, taken with making declamations to the heavens.  (This production seemed to stress the part of the play that dealt with heavenly orbs and astrology.) The usurpation of his power and his descent into madness is a longer fall, perhaps, than Jackson’s. Glenda Jackson’s Lear was older and frailer and the removal of her knights was more of a personal affront. Sher’s Lear was a more active character so taking away his knights was a profound attack on his lifestyle in addition to his dignity. The daughters were more purely evil in the Jackson version, while the RSC played Goneril as more convinced of her father’s decline and her actions seemed more driven by concern for him, at least at first. (Regan was more the pure evil daughter.) The Fool (Graham Turner) was far more melancholy in the RSC production, as if he could foretell Lear’s upcoming demise. David Troughton as Gloucester was memorable, but with Royal Shakespeare productions it is almost unfair to call attention to any actor since the entire ensemble is always terrific.

I have to say that I wasn’t really that familiar with “King Lear” before this intense exposure. I think I read somewhere that Lear has currently become the most produced of all Shakespeare’s tragedies, passing “Hamlet”. It has almost as many iconic lines, though fewer soliloquies and some of the scenes are more memorable. The storm scene is a classic, but I think my favorite is the one in which Edgar leads Gloucester to what he imagines is the cliffs of Dover, so that the blinded father can jump to what he hopes will be his death. There are countless references to sight throughout the play and the play has a political sensitivity that seems fairly modern. As Lear wanders the heath, he finds himself surrounded by the homeless and starving and clearly is surprised and moved by the discovery of such poverty in his kingdom (“houseless heads and unfed sides”). According to the Programme, this reflected the conditions in Shakespeare’s time, as population growth, food shortages and economic problems lead many peasants to leave the land and move toward the cities. While a system of private social welfare was developing, the government did little to help the destitute migrants crowding into London (who Shakespeare saw on a daily basis) and Lear’s comment “O, I have taken too little care of this” can probably be seen as political commentary. This criticism reaches its peak when Lear urges Gloucester to get a glass eye “and like a scurvy politician seem to see things that thou dost not”.

Another Election: On Thursday, I went with my rabble-rousing New Unity Social Action crew to another meeting of a community organizing group. A few months ago, I went to a meeting of Hackney Citizens, in which the mayoral candidates spoke and were questioned. The time, the meeting was held by TELCO. It sounds like a telephone company or some sort of multinational conglomerate, but it actually stands for “The East London Community Organization”. It is the oldest Saul Alinsky-inspired social action organization in England and one of the biggest and most successful. Now there is a Citizens UK and a Citizens Liverpool and Citizens Brighton, etc., bur TELCO has held on to the name. So as I understood it from Andy that one of the main purposes of the meeting was the change the name to East London Citizens. The meeting was one of those over-programmed type of Alisnky meetings, which stresses participation by many and sticking to a script and to time limits. The whole thing was scripted out to he last word and most people just got up and read their little bit. So as you might imagine, it was stilted and lifeless.

Despite their efforts, they screwed up one thing. They seemed to be under the impression that London had agreed to build 100 affordable units at the old Olympic site in East London, through Community Land Trusts that Telco was pushing. A representative of Mayor Kahn was there. If you are going to have an action like this, you are supposed to meet with the speaker to make sure that you know exactly what he is going to say and, ideally, tell him what to say. They didn’t do that. So when some TELCO guy got up and with great fanfare asked the official to confirm and guarantee that the 100 unit would be built, he would do no such thing. He said nice things about the idea and said they would do some as a pilot, but simply refused to commit to any number. The TELCO guy seemed stunned and, as this was supposed to be a great victory they were highlighting, it made the actual achievement that they did accomplish seem a little like a failure.

Then they had the name change vote. Any member organization with five members present (how they checked the membership was unclear to me) was allowed to vote. They had two speakers for the two options. They did propose changing Community to Citizens in TELCO, which does nothing to deal with the confusion in the name. It seemed like a sure thing that the name would be switched to East London Citizens and I am pretty sure that is what the organizers wanted, but when they counted the ballots, TELCO won. It would have been interesting to attend the post-mortem that is supposed to be a part of every one of these sorts of meetings. The thing seemed like a chaotic disaster to me. It is a shame because they are quite effective in reality and are doing important work.

Shakespearean Tragedies

Posted on by Nick Lewis

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.

King-Lear-Old-Vic-697-549x357.jpg

“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.

A Game 7 Blog: A New Painting, Another Guide Play and Election Thoughts.

Posted on by Nick Lewis

I have actually avoided watching baseball very much this postseason. It is just too debilitating to stay up until 4:00 AM night after night. But this is going to be a fairly cosmic game 7 And it seems to me that, simply as a baseball fan, I have to watch it. It deserves to be an epic game, which means that it will probably be a blow-out. But I want to see baseball history made, one way or another, so I’ll be on it to the bitter end. This means that I will spend 45 minutes (at least) staring at a screen that says “Commercial Break”. So I’ve decided to be constructive and try to write in the many, many dead moments. I am actually starting a bit early and that you God for ending British daylight savings time earlier than the US.

New Painting: This was a fun one, partly because red and black is my favorite color combination. It is based on one of many photos I took when we went with Robbie and Bob to see “Trooping the Colors”, the event where the various costumed soldiers march around and present themselves to the monarch. We actually saw a rehearsal, since we were going to be in Scotland on the big day. (I wrote all about his back in May, with photos and everything). I had a little trouble trying to figure out this painting. I thought at one point of cutting out the guy on the horse and making it a strictly black and red affair, which would have been more abstract than what I ended up with.  I finally decided that the guy on the horse gave the whole thing some context, although I have to admit that the prospect of painting a horse worried me, even without the head visible. After I completed most of it, I had to decide whether to add any detail and if so, how much. I didn’t want to break up the black and red too much. I ultimately decided to give the guy on the horse some gold and white and some darker red to give the impression of arms. Then I added the white on the beefeaters, figuring I could always paint over it if I didn’t like it. As you can see, I left it in. I’m not crazy about the pants on the line in the front, but I decided it’s Ok and the painting is really about the black and red anyway. Here it is:

trooping

“A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer”:  Judie’s women’s group was meeting in the flat, which meant that I had to vacate. I didn’t know much about this production other that it was at the National Theatre (possibly the best theatre in the world) and it was some sort of musical about cancer and, after “iHo”, it seemed like a fun idea to see consecutive plays with Guide in the title. Kinda weird choice, but it was a good production. [1-1 after three innings.] It follows a women who has to bring her baby back to the hospital for cancer tests. While there, she meets all of these other cancer sufferers. It is kind of cancer “Chorus Line”, as each of the characters has a song. Of course, you figure that they will not all be doing a kick line in sequins, so the issue was how it would end. [The Indian centerfielders may cost them the Series] The set looked like the waiting room of a hospital–same colors, etc–and as the act went along, big balloons with odd cancerous shapes would appear, growing out of the walls or coming out of the doors. [Cubs score two in the top of the fourth to take a 3-1 lead.] There were also moments where Emma, the main tragic mother character, was followed about by actors dressed as cancer cells (sometimes singing and dancing), which was certainly odd. The whole first act was predictably emotional and actually quite moving. [Indians down in order in the fourth. Why do the announcers seem to want to take the Cubs starter out? ] There is something about cancer of course that make you start to thing about all of your friends and relatives who are suffering or who have died. [Baez homers leading off the fifth. Cubs lead 4-1.]

In the second act, Emma (the mom) gets the bad news about her baby and I’m thinking where do we go now? And all of a sudden the actors break character (although it takes a minute to realize it) and begin to lip-sync the recordings of the cancer sufferers whose stories are the basis of the book. Very moving. And then Emma asks the narrating voice “Who am I?” and it turns out that she is playing the Artistic Director of this troupe, who had gone through this with her son, and which inspired the show. Then, to top it all off, a cancer sufferer is called up to stage to say something and the actors all have shout out to someone impacted by cancer. Then they ask the audience to do the same and the show ends with a song. [Cubs leading 5-1, take out their starter. Seems like over-managing, but it may not matter. Well, maybe it might. Strange two-run wild pitch makes it a ball game again. 5-3 after five.]

This whole play leaves me wondering. Is this really a good theatrical production? Or is this a manipulative work about a fraught subject for many people? A little of each, I think. It really was ver effective at making yo think about cancer. In particular, there was a section in the play and in the programme which looked at how we treat people, including friends and family, with cancer. And you find yourself thinking “Do I do that?” I think that it is all a valuable look at cancer and how we think about it. It isn’t exactly “The Sound of Music”, but this is a serious work about a subject that is as serious as it gets.

[So we have passed 2:30 AM and I have been sipping Makers Mark for a while. Enjoying the game. Seventh Inning Stretch. Cubs led 5-3 and the game would be kind of boring, were it not for the two-run wild pitch off the catcher’s head. It is looking like a long night. I’ll have to proofread this mess tomorrow.]

A Break to talk about the US Election:  I haven’t written that much about it because that is there to say that isn’t being said? Which isn’t to say that I am not obsessively checking FiveThityEight to see what Nate et al. are saying. (They are the most sensible people covering the election, I think.) But now I can’t even watch the BBC coverage or because I’m so stressed about all. [Now it is past 3:30 and the Cubs have blown their lead. Maddon is over-managing to a horrible degree. A two-strike Squeeze play? Too much stupid small-ball strategy. He got Lester up too early and then had to bring him in too early, so he had to bring Chapman in too early. What an odd game.] Judie and I are trying to decide what to do on Election Night. We are going to “King Lear” that night and it turns out that there are a number of all-night parties in London. [OK. Now it is 4:00 AM and there is rain delay. Are you kidding me? What am I supposed to do now? Am I supposed to just hang out until Dawn? I can’t really give up on this game now. But when will it end?] I guess if I am willing to stay up to watch the World Series, I should probably stay up to see the future of the world determined.

CUBS WIN! And it isn’t 5:00 PM yet!

 

Time, Intelligent Guides and iHo

Posted on by Nick Lewis

Where Does The Time Go?: We found out today that daylight savings time had ended. We hadn’t even realized it. Our clocks, phones and computers all reset their clocks automatically (which meant that we got up at the “usual” time). My cheap watch that I bought at Spitalfields had stopped because I accidentally wore it into the shower and Judie’s watch was wrong, but we figured that she just hadn’t reset it right after all of the traveling. So we went through the entire day blissfully unaware that the time had changed until it seemed oddly dark at 4:30. Good thing our appliances are more aware than we are.

Intelligent Guides: On Saturday night, we went to see “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures” at Hampstead Theatre (where they refer to it as “iHo”). I’ll get to the play in a minute. But the name gave me a bit of a “madeleine moment”. When we were cleaning out things after Everett (my father) had died, we came upon a book entitled “The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism” by George Bernard Shaw. It was clearly my mother’s book and I think it may have been inscribed “Elizabeth Mahoney”. It brought to mind a picture of my mother as a young woman living in Greenwich Village, having just met this interesting young lawyer. She realized what his political leanings were and ran out to buy a book to learn more about socialism (maybe on his recommendation). In my mind, I owe my very existence to Shaw and this book. You may think this is a fantasy of my overactive imagination (and maybe it is), but consider that they kept that book for about sixty years and that my middle name Fabian refers to Shaw’s socialist Fabian Society. I’m just sayin’….

Getting back to the play, it was just a fabulous production. It is written by Tony Kushner. In the interview in the programme, Kushner said he had written this big and complicated play around 2009 and that he has been working on it ever since, assisted by the casts that have performed it. He thinks he is now ready to publish it, which he finds difficult to do, since he has trouble finding his works really finished (he is still fiddling around with the second half Angels in America). The director was Michael Boyd, who was the Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company for ten years, among other things. The cast was incredible and they had to be to perform this.

It is an impossibly layered play. One one level, it uses the classic Miller/O’Neill/Williams device of gathering a family around a kitchen table and having them tear each other to bits. That part alone would have been a great play. But the play was also about the history of radical Italian-Americans, the American Communist Party, the history of the Labor Movement in America, the 1973 Longshoreman’s strike, the guaranteed annual income that certain longshoremen received to settle the strike, and the future of radicalism and the labor movement. I have probably left out a theme or two, but you can see there was a lot to talk about. And the characters did talk and talk (it’s along play of about three and half hours), often at the same time. Just like a real family they did not take turns and there were often two or more arguments going on simultaneously. It was hard to take it all in. And because this a Tony Kushner play, there was whole other layer added about homosexuality and the difficulty of two of the characters to maintain relationships.

The story is about an imagined family of a real person, Vito Marcantonio, who was a radical Congressman, representing East Harlem until his opposition to the Korean War led to his defeat. At the center of the play is Vito’s fictional nephew Gus, a longshoreman and labor organizer and committed lifetime communist, who was one of the guys who received a guaranteed annual income as a result of the 1973 strike and hadn’t worked (except as an organizer) in the ensuing 30+ years. Gus is living in a now very expensive brownstone (I think in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn) with his sister, a former nun who later went off to work with the Shining Path. Gus has decided he wants to sell the house and kill himself and has called his family together to tell them the news. There is his eldest son Pill, a history teacher living in Minnesota with his long-time husband and who is trying to figure out his relationship with his lover, a male prostitute. The second child is MT, a labor lawyer and lesbian, whose wife is about to have a baby with sperm donated by Vito, the baby of the family, who works as a contractor and has a traditional family. Also wandering through is MT’s ex-husband, who is helping Gus sell the house and a woman who is assisting Gus to kill himself (his earlier attempt to slit his wrists had been unsuccessful). Put that all together, give it a shake and watch it explode. This play was one that hit a lot of buttons for me (besides the mere name, as I discussed above). The fact that the other central character MT was a labor lawyer was one obvious link. And I have met union guys like Gus in my life.

I won’t try to describe this all any further, since it was so complicated with so much going on and so many subplots to follow and thoughts to digest. I found it fascinating. The accents of the British actors were spot on. It never occurred to me that they were anything but New Yorkers. Two particularly stood out: David Calder was just wonderful playing Gus. And Tasmin Grieg was riveting as MT. But the entire cast was terrific. For a play as long and as complicated as it is, the evening seemed to go quickly. The production had an overwhelming momentum, which only let up at the very end, when Gus is trying to decide whether to kill himself.

A great night of theater.

Chris Visits: Part 2-Museums and Theatre

Posted on by Nick Lewis

You Say You Want a Revolution?: This was a special exhibit at the Victoria & Albert Museum that got great reviews. It’s basic idea is that the 1960s music and culture changed the world in various ways (feminism, ecology, computers, etc.). It could easily be criticized as a bit Boomer-centric in its pitch, but I think it did capture something about the excitement and feeling of possibilities that were so prevalent in the 1965-1970 period. And the collection of stuff that was in the exhibit was very impressive. There were so many amazing artifacts of the era, that it is hard to pick out any one to talk about here. I was afraid, as we walked through the first gallery, that the whole thing would be about American culture. But, when you think about it, that whole explosion of music and cultural change were at least as big in London, so a lot of the exhibit was about looking at the parallels in what was happening, especially between London and San Francisco. Everyone who attended got an audio set, which automatically picked up different music and other clips as you walked around. So for each subject, you automatically heard music that was appropriate to the gallery that you were in, which worked great. There were lots of album covers and books, which were real trips down memory lane. Chris and I both commented that we felt like we had read many of the books and either owned or knew someone who had a majority of the albums. It was a wonderful multimedia experience, dipped in huge dollops of nostalgia. Walking through it, looking at the various kids and young people checking it all out, I couldn’t help thinking how weird it was that a part of my life is now thought of as history. Ultimately, the final feeling was a sort of regret for me. There had been this feeling, expressed in the exhibit, that there was a real revolution taking place and that, after the sixties, the world was going to be a different and better place. Anything seemed possible, which was made that who time so exciting, but, in the end, the change that occurred was just incremental.

“Oil”: This was a play at Almeida Theatre. I’d never been there, although I knew the neighborhood since it was a block away from New Unity’s Islington building, where I often go for meetings. The play was written by Ella Hickson, a playwright with a good resume and directed by Carrie Cracknell, coming off directing “The Deep Blue Sea” at the National Theatre. And it starred Anne-Marie Duff, who is spectacularly talented (and who I saw last fall in “Husbands and Sons”). But it turned out to be one of those “nice try”sort of productions. It was a series of scenes, most of them pretty good. But each of the scenes were more like mini-plays than part of one coherent story. All were vaguely related to oil and they all featured a mother (Duff) and her daughter (Yolanda Kettle). The two leads were great and supported by a wonderful cast. But the play covers a period of about 150 years, so while the mother and daughter are in each scene (the daughter is in utero in the first), their characters are not consistent and don’t exactly grow in any meaningful way. And the somewhat apocalyptic final scene, when it appears that oil has run out, was trying a bit too hard to make some sort of point about oil. The whole thing was not completely unenjoyable and there were enough good moments and fine acting that it gave you some hope, it ultimately never came together and was just a frustrating mess. Too bad.

A History of Art in an Afternoon: On Wednesday, we went to Somerset House and the Courtauld Institute. Somerset House is an amazing palace near the Thames. Now it is probably best known for the traditional ice skating there in the Holidays. There is, of course, a great history. The land was given to Jane Seymour’s brother by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I lived there when Mary was Queen. For more history, you can look here if you’re interested. The Courtauld Institute was begun in 1932 and is based on the art collection of Samuel Courtauld, who had a particularly amazing incredible set of Impressionist paintings, with a number of truly iconic canvasses. Going to these sort of galleries always inspires me to go and paint, so I took a lot of photos while I was there. Below is a Seurat painting called “Young Woman Powdering Herself”. It is of his twenty-year old lover, who was pregnant when the portrait was done. It dawned on me that this is “Dot” from “Sunday in the Park with George”! If you are a fan of that musical, as I am, you’ll be interested in seeing this.

dot

The other interesting thing about this painting is that there was an infrared scan done by conservators, which revealed that under that picture of flower in the upper left is the only known self-portrait of Seurat. It is said that a friend made fun of it, so he painted over it. That sounds like the George you get to know through Sondheim.

While we were walking through the galleries, Chris mentioned that Impressionism is his favorite genre of painting and that he doesn’t really like anything that followed it. So I took him to the Abstract Expressionism exhibit at the Royal Academy. It is a bit of a Greatest Hits exhibition of the greatest artists of the period, which made the art hard not to like. I do suspect that second-tier Abstract Expressionist works would not be as enjoyable to view as lesser Monets and van Goghs, and, in that respect I agree with Chris that Impressionism is a greater period. But it was fun to follow one with the other, especially since it was possible to see the progression from one to the other.

“Lazarus”: That evening, we went to see “Lazarus”, the David Bowie musical which has just arrived from its sold-out premier at the New York Theater Workshop (where Judie and I were long-time donors, referred to as Repeat Defenders). I was quite surprised to be able to get tickets, especially since Bowie is an even bigger deal here than he is the States. As you may know, the musical is based on the book and movie “The Man Who Fell to Earth”, which I had unfortunately never seen or read. (I might have been able to figure out what was happening easier.) Most of the music was specifically written for the musical, although there are a few Bowie hits like “Changes” and “Heroes”. It was directed by Ivo van Hove, whose “out there” style we know from NYTW productions. He is now very famous. It stars Michael C. Hall, who most people would know from “Dexter” and “Six Feet Under” on television. He was wonderful and very Bowie-esque, with a singing voice very reminiscent of later Bowie. The other actors were highlighted by Sophie Ann Caruso and Amy Lennox. I think the play follows only the end of the plot of “The Man Who Fell to Earth”. The main character is miserable and just wants to return to his own world, having failed in his first attempt to build a rocket. The whole thing is a bit strange and I have to say I had no idea what was going on for the first 20 minutes (although the music was good). It came into some sort of focus eventually, but was all a bit like a Becket play set to music. I think it is really a rumination about death, which, of course, makes sense as Bowie was dying (although no one knew it). Going to the play was fun since it was at a newly constructed theatre near King’s Cross Station (much bigger than NYTW, but we were in the third row). It is neighborhood that is exploding with interesting new buildings, mostly residential in an area that was once warehouses and a place where no one went, much less lived or went to theatre and restaurants. That was little bonus to going to “Lazarus”, which is quite a remarkable and unusual work of art. It is the kind of thing that I would be tempted to see again, because I suspect that I would get more out it the second time.

Trump, Shylock and Brexit

Posted on by Nick Lewis

Administrative Note: I’m going to change to the premium version of Word Press this weekend. This will change the address of this blog to nickinshoreditch.com. If you are signed up to get notifications by e-mail, this may not matter, but if you are used to just getting it through a browser, you won’t be able to find my blog using the current URL. So if you are looking for nickinshoreditch.wordpress.com and it isn’t popping up, then I’ve made the change. I’ll post an announcement on Facebook and one more right before I make the change.

Trump from a Distance: I have been blessed to be in London for this election season. Things like the interminable primary debates were on to late to watch (and I’m sure that I would have compulsively watched many of them, given the opportunity). I have missed endless Trump stories and hours upon hours of blathering by various talking heads. Which is not to say that the BBC doesn’t pay any attention to the election, it just has other stuff to cover and only spends a few minutes on the proceedings. Trump was, at first, an object of fascination to most Brits, who all wanted to know if he was a serious candidate and could someone like him actually get nominated. I have to say that I discounted Trump for far too long. After he was nominated, the questions changed from “How could he have been nominated?” to “He can’t win, can he?” to “My G0d, what is going on in America?” I have taken to compulsively checking FiveThirtyEight (Nate Silver), as well as the Times and the New Yorker and the Guardian to try to get a sense of what is going on in this miserable excuse for democratic process.

Now that the Trump campaign seems to be in a Trump-perpetuated death spiral, there is a palpable sense of relief here and I suspect in large parts of the US. But, even if Trump does lose and even if he loses in a landslide (which seems more likely than not), it is hard to feel very good about the future. It is difficult to picture Hillary being able to govern effectively, since she is unlikely to have a cooperative Congress, is reviled by so many and faces a Republican machine that will do what they did to Obama only much worse. The Republican Party seems likely to fracture and be in such a mess that it cannot be a responsible partner in government (recognizing that a significant percentage of their leaders have no interest in such a role anyway). And all of those angry Trump people, who have now been energized, are not going to go away. (And, unfortunately, neither will Trump.) Americans should not feel too smug about the defeat of Trump or claim that “It can’t happen here.” In fact, Trump proved that it could happen and if he was a not so clearly a bat shit crazy narcissist and sexual predator, he might very well have been elected  President next month.

“Merchant of Venice”: On Yom Kippur, of all days, we went to the Globe to see “The Merchant of Venice” with Jonathan Pryce as Shylock. Our seats were not great (don’t get seats on the side there if you ever go) and there was a major rain storm about 30-40 minutes into the play, which soaked the people standing in the pit. (The Globe has no roof, although the seats and the stage are mostly protected.) Then the temperature dropped and the wind kicked up and it was positively frosty. Not at all Venetian. (It is strange commenting on the weather when talking about a play.) Despite all of that, I did enjoy the performance. I had forgotten much of the plot other than the Shylock bits, particularly the sections in which Portia’s suitors are tested to see if they can marry her. These scenes were wonderfully done. The cast was typically very good. British actors just do Shakespeare really well, although sometimes overeager directors with weird interpretations let them down. Perhaps it is part of their training that accounts for it. Shylock’s daughter was played by Pryce’s real-life daughter, which was actually more of an interesting footnote than something which added to the overall performance. Rachel Pickup, who played Portia, the dominant part in the play, was marvelous. I suppose that you could play Shylock differently than Pryce did, but it is hard to imagine it being played any better.

merchant

Of course, the overriding theme that makes the play great and the thing that you come away thinking about is the anti-semitism. It is actually remarkable that Shakespeare was able create the character of Shylock since, as the programme points out, there were virtually no jews in England during Elizabethan times. (It was dangerous enough being the wrong type of Christian in the era.) This actually seemed to make the anti-semitism of that time even worse, as there were no actual humans to put the lie to the crazy tales and conspiracy theories that dominated. Shakespeare’s audience would certainly have been utterly anti-semitic and ready to accept any sort of evil characterization of a jewish money-lender. But Shakespeare went out of his way to make Shylock human (“If you prick us, do we not bleed?”) and, it seemed to me, showed that he was responding to horrible treatment over many years by Antonio and the other merchants of Venice, who repeatedly spit on Shylock in the course of the play. Pryce’s Shylock was so reasoned and aggrieved that I found myself rooting for him to get his pound of flesh. But, of course, there was no way that Shakespeare could allow the Jew to win and Portia snatches victory away from him and replaces it with ruin and the humiliation of forced conversion to Christianity. Pryce’s performance made it clear that it was the latter result that was by far the worst. But in a way, Shylock brought this on himself by his hatred and desire for revenge. And I think that was the real moral of this production: that unreasoning hatred and the compulsion to get revenge can only lead to calamity.

Brexit Update: For some reason, the New York Times has suddenly become interested in Brexit and its impact on the British economy and government and has published a number of articles this week. I suspect this might reflect concern over the weakening pound and how this will play out in the world economy. Here are few impressions from this side of the pond:

  • The pound has started to fall again, after seeming to stabilize after its initial plunge. I’d say that this reflects market worry about the future of the British economy. Until recently, you could kid yourself that it wouldn’t be that bad and that Theresa May wouldn’t let things get out of hand. You’d have been wrong. May made it clear at the Conservative Party Conference recently that Brexit was happening and that Britain would not accept any deal that included freedom of movement. The government later announced that it would not let any foreign nationals (even those who were teaching at the London School of Economics) participate in the Brexit negotiations (even though it is generally agreed that Britain is woefully short of experienced negotiators). And then it was announced that businesses would be required to disclose the number of foreigners it employed. As it became obvious that the xenophobic kooks were taking charge, the pound began to fall.
  • This led to the Great Marmite Controversy. Because the pound had lost almost 20% of it value, Unilever wanted to increase its price for the items it sells to Tesco, the largest grocery chain in Britain. A stalemate ensued and soon Tesco began to run out of the beloved yeast goo. This caused outrage, only in part because Marmite is actually produced in England. I think what really scared people is that this was a clear harbinger of price increases to come.
  • Meanwhile, back in Parliament, the tenuous Conservative majority was facing the same problems with delusional back-benchers that had bedeviled Cameron. This group of 100 or more MPs keep talking about “sovereignty” and returning Britain to it position of greatness. So far, their big idea is to re-commission a Royal Yacht for the Queen, with the supposition that everything will return to Rule Britannia. It would be pathetically funny if it all weren’t so serious. May’s honeymoon period seems to have run its course.
  • Just this week, the highest British court has begun to hear a case which seeks a “constitutional” ruling (there is no written Constitution here) that May and her ministers cannot unilaterally invoke Article 50 to begin the process of leaving the EU. It is argued that the treaty that would be abrogated was ratified by Parliament and therefore can only be terminated by that body. Anther argument that the entire basis of unwritten British constitutional law is that Parliament is paramount and that an irreversible act of that import must be taken by that supreme legislative body. These seems like winning arguments to me. If the suit is indeed successful, turmoil is certain.
  • And then there is Boris Johnson and the Brexit troika of ministers. Last week, BoJo said that the aim of Britain in the negotiations with the EU is to “have our cake and eat it to.” This was instantly denounced by European leaders and seemed to harden their negotiating resolve (not that BoJo and his buddies have any sort of negotiating position beyond bluster). The European President suggested that Johnson buy a cake, eat it and see what he had left.
  • In the background, Judie’s bank clients are asking for advice about where to move their offices. Dublin, Frankfort and Paris may scoop up a lot of EU banking business that has been centered in London, which would be a complete disaster for the post-industrial British economy. A “hard Brexit”, in which the banks would lose their “passporting rights” (i.e., the ability to apply their British license throughout Europe) would make this inevitable. But this complete break from Europe is exactly what the most delusional MPs insist upon.