Afternoon eyelids
Drift darkly down; night descends
Despite the daylight
22 June 2009
21 June 2009
smiles of a summer night
Strindberg’s Miss Julie is one of those odd gaps in not only my play-going, but my play-reading, so off I went to the Aurora Theatre’s recent production, which was directed by Mark Jackson, who had also done Salome there. Even though this was billed as a “version” by Helen Cooper, I’m assuming that the story and psychology basically match the original and only the language was updated or arranged for our twenty-first century ears. I found it an extremely well-done production of a surprisingly flat play.
The three actors – Beth Deitchman as the maid Christine, Mark Anderson Phillips (an outstanding Jokanaan in Salome) as her fiancĂ© and Miss Julie’s lover, the servant Jean, and Lauren Grace as Miss Julie – all gave convincing and thorough presentations of characters who could seem arbitrary or limited. I suspect we are meant to see Christine as narrow-minded and conventional, but by the end of the ninety-minute show she was the only one I was really interested in listening to – at least she was talking sense; however limited her view of the world, she was aware of how it worked and what she needed to do in it for her comfort (qualities which admittedly I probably like because I lack them).
Miss Julie is a country aristocrat who varies between ordering Jean to polish her boots (with her in them, of course) to throwing herself at his feet. Though these switches make her seem dramatic, she really only has the drama of a seesaw: she’s up, then she’s down, then she’s back up again. She’s one of those women who despises men who don’t dominate her and resents men who do. (An arrangement of more-or-less equals is out of the question here, not because of society but because of individual psychology.) Once you figure this out about her, she’s of limited interest because Strindberg doesn’t vary her circumstances enough for her character to show deeper or different aspects. (Compare Miss Julie’s limited range of interactions with the variety of people and situations that confront Hedda Gabler, and you can see why I find one character fascinating and the other not.) I remember when I first met a woman of this type and I was pretty pleased when I finally figured out what the deal was; of course I was just out of adolescence and since then my patience with figuring out that type has dropped considerably. I think the censored theater of Strindberg’s day could be compared to a boy just out of adolescence, and I can understand why Miss Julie caused great shock and interest, but presumably the theater has matured some in the intervening years and the novelty has worn off.
Though she’s definitely an actual type, it’s difficult not to feel that it’s a type summoned up by Strindberg’s anxieties. I don’t even consider her an example of his famous misogyny (a word I don’t really trust, and I don’t think the several other Strindberg plays I’ve seen allow me to make a judgment on that). To me she’s not about men fearing the strength of women, she’s about men fearing their own weakness.
Jean is a poor boy who has risen to a respectable position, albeit as a servant; he plans to rise farther and one reason for his entanglement with his mistress is to persuade her to take the money he thinks she has (or has access to) and to run off with him, so that they can run a swank hotel in Switzerland, a scheme which under the circumstances and considering the personalities involved seems utterly nutty (though I didn’t get the feeling we were meant to see its comic side). The secret subject of the whole drama is not sexual anxiety but social anxiety and status maintenance and status climbing, which makes watching the play oddly similar to reading The New York Times.
The set (nicely designed by Giulio Cesare Perrone) is dominated by an upside-down tree hanging over the table in the kitchen; this is both a realistic decoration for the Midsummer’s Eve feast and an almost surrealist symbol of nature turned upside down. I couldn’t help feeling that a little more surrealism would have helped –the situation is claustrophobic (that is, repetitive) in a way that made me long for another perspective, even that presented by the conventional maid. As with the Albee plays I’ve seen, the drama is hampered by having its absurd essence trapped in an overly realistic hold – I can see why Miss Julie and Jean are tangled together, but I kept thinking that in reality (and even given the more limited possibilities of the time for both of them) either one could have stepped aside in a variety of ways, ways which would have made for, to my mind, a more interesting play.
The three actors – Beth Deitchman as the maid Christine, Mark Anderson Phillips (an outstanding Jokanaan in Salome) as her fiancĂ© and Miss Julie’s lover, the servant Jean, and Lauren Grace as Miss Julie – all gave convincing and thorough presentations of characters who could seem arbitrary or limited. I suspect we are meant to see Christine as narrow-minded and conventional, but by the end of the ninety-minute show she was the only one I was really interested in listening to – at least she was talking sense; however limited her view of the world, she was aware of how it worked and what she needed to do in it for her comfort (qualities which admittedly I probably like because I lack them).
Miss Julie is a country aristocrat who varies between ordering Jean to polish her boots (with her in them, of course) to throwing herself at his feet. Though these switches make her seem dramatic, she really only has the drama of a seesaw: she’s up, then she’s down, then she’s back up again. She’s one of those women who despises men who don’t dominate her and resents men who do. (An arrangement of more-or-less equals is out of the question here, not because of society but because of individual psychology.) Once you figure this out about her, she’s of limited interest because Strindberg doesn’t vary her circumstances enough for her character to show deeper or different aspects. (Compare Miss Julie’s limited range of interactions with the variety of people and situations that confront Hedda Gabler, and you can see why I find one character fascinating and the other not.) I remember when I first met a woman of this type and I was pretty pleased when I finally figured out what the deal was; of course I was just out of adolescence and since then my patience with figuring out that type has dropped considerably. I think the censored theater of Strindberg’s day could be compared to a boy just out of adolescence, and I can understand why Miss Julie caused great shock and interest, but presumably the theater has matured some in the intervening years and the novelty has worn off.
Though she’s definitely an actual type, it’s difficult not to feel that it’s a type summoned up by Strindberg’s anxieties. I don’t even consider her an example of his famous misogyny (a word I don’t really trust, and I don’t think the several other Strindberg plays I’ve seen allow me to make a judgment on that). To me she’s not about men fearing the strength of women, she’s about men fearing their own weakness.
Jean is a poor boy who has risen to a respectable position, albeit as a servant; he plans to rise farther and one reason for his entanglement with his mistress is to persuade her to take the money he thinks she has (or has access to) and to run off with him, so that they can run a swank hotel in Switzerland, a scheme which under the circumstances and considering the personalities involved seems utterly nutty (though I didn’t get the feeling we were meant to see its comic side). The secret subject of the whole drama is not sexual anxiety but social anxiety and status maintenance and status climbing, which makes watching the play oddly similar to reading The New York Times.
The set (nicely designed by Giulio Cesare Perrone) is dominated by an upside-down tree hanging over the table in the kitchen; this is both a realistic decoration for the Midsummer’s Eve feast and an almost surrealist symbol of nature turned upside down. I couldn’t help feeling that a little more surrealism would have helped –the situation is claustrophobic (that is, repetitive) in a way that made me long for another perspective, even that presented by the conventional maid. As with the Albee plays I’ve seen, the drama is hampered by having its absurd essence trapped in an overly realistic hold – I can see why Miss Julie and Jean are tangled together, but I kept thinking that in reality (and even given the more limited possibilities of the time for both of them) either one could have stepped aside in a variety of ways, ways which would have made for, to my mind, a more interesting play.
20 June 2009
faery lands forlorn
Here’s a programming tip: if you feel the work you want to perform will be lost in your concert hall without massive amplification, then – well, ideally you would blow up your concert hall and build something less like a barn, but barring such an expensive act of radical sanity you should just forego the desired work, however reluctantly.
I was in the front row for the San Francisco Symphony’s season-ending performance of Iolanthe on Thursday, and I immediately realized that was a bad place to be, though I doubt the effect was better elsewhere in the hall. It’s very odd to see people singing right in front of you and yet to hear them as if you were listening to a CD broadcast in a canyon. I pretty much know all the words and the singers were right there and I still couldn’t always make out what they were singing. The sound might have been even muddier farther back. I can’t really comment on the orchestra because after the overture the unbalanced sound meant that the voices completely swamped the accompaniment. That was a real disappointment since I had been looking forward to hearing a topnotch symphony perform delicate magic on this wonderful and wide-ranging score.
It’s a real shame because the potential was there in the talented cast and in the clever staging by Patricia Birch. I particularly enjoyed such touches as the frog brooches on Iolanthe’s cloak when she first rises from her pond (the costumes were by Dona Granata). The San Francisco Ballet School provided a charming company of fairies and pages; I recognized several of the dancers from the Bolshoi’s La Bayadere at Cal two weeks ago, so those little girls have been working very hard.
Lucas Meacham as Strephon was also a surprisingly capable dancer, and he and his Phyllis, Sally Matthews, brought operatic heft to their roles, but again the sound just steamrollered everything. Sasha Cooke was as touching and delicate an Iolanthe as the amplification allowed, but a big emotional moment like her reunion with her husband, the Lord Chancellor, who has assumed for years that she was dead, didn’t have the power it should have had. Possibly this was because Richard Suart as the Chancellor, for all his comic cleverness, couldn’t make the transition to the dramatic swiftly and subtly enough, but I can’t help feeling that the real problem here as elsewhere was the amplified removal of nuance and naturalness.
Though I’ve said the staging was clever, I think the direction could have toned down some of the more obvious jokeyness. Gilbert and Sullivan have to be played seriously and with the appropriately stylized dramatic conviction, to keep the material from tipping over into the overly arch and adorable. I would have liked more dignity and presence in the Queen of the Fairies, but since Joyce Castle was (I understand) a fairly last-minute replacement in the part, I can’t get too harsh. Gilbert gets a lot of automatic criticism for his satirical cruelty towards older women, but I find an endearing dignity about them, and they often have truly moving love-laments – for the Queen of the Fairies, it’s Oh foolish fay; my favorite example is Katisha’s Hearts Do Not Break. And they always end up with the man they want.
Last January I saw Iolanthe performed by the Lamplighters, and despite a much more vocally uneven cast than the Symphony’s, that performance had an emotional power this one lacked. The reunion of Iolanthe and the Lord Chancellor was genuinely touching, the entry march of the peers was genuinely rousing (as well as full of clever and funny stage business), the Act I finale (which the Symphony staged, bizarrely but somewhat amusingly, as the sort of gospel-jazzhands number now obligatory in most musicals) had genuine dramatic heft.
It was a sadly flat end to the Symphony’s season. Didn’t any of those musicians notice what the amplification did to the music?
I was in the front row for the San Francisco Symphony’s season-ending performance of Iolanthe on Thursday, and I immediately realized that was a bad place to be, though I doubt the effect was better elsewhere in the hall. It’s very odd to see people singing right in front of you and yet to hear them as if you were listening to a CD broadcast in a canyon. I pretty much know all the words and the singers were right there and I still couldn’t always make out what they were singing. The sound might have been even muddier farther back. I can’t really comment on the orchestra because after the overture the unbalanced sound meant that the voices completely swamped the accompaniment. That was a real disappointment since I had been looking forward to hearing a topnotch symphony perform delicate magic on this wonderful and wide-ranging score.
It’s a real shame because the potential was there in the talented cast and in the clever staging by Patricia Birch. I particularly enjoyed such touches as the frog brooches on Iolanthe’s cloak when she first rises from her pond (the costumes were by Dona Granata). The San Francisco Ballet School provided a charming company of fairies and pages; I recognized several of the dancers from the Bolshoi’s La Bayadere at Cal two weeks ago, so those little girls have been working very hard.
Lucas Meacham as Strephon was also a surprisingly capable dancer, and he and his Phyllis, Sally Matthews, brought operatic heft to their roles, but again the sound just steamrollered everything. Sasha Cooke was as touching and delicate an Iolanthe as the amplification allowed, but a big emotional moment like her reunion with her husband, the Lord Chancellor, who has assumed for years that she was dead, didn’t have the power it should have had. Possibly this was because Richard Suart as the Chancellor, for all his comic cleverness, couldn’t make the transition to the dramatic swiftly and subtly enough, but I can’t help feeling that the real problem here as elsewhere was the amplified removal of nuance and naturalness.
Though I’ve said the staging was clever, I think the direction could have toned down some of the more obvious jokeyness. Gilbert and Sullivan have to be played seriously and with the appropriately stylized dramatic conviction, to keep the material from tipping over into the overly arch and adorable. I would have liked more dignity and presence in the Queen of the Fairies, but since Joyce Castle was (I understand) a fairly last-minute replacement in the part, I can’t get too harsh. Gilbert gets a lot of automatic criticism for his satirical cruelty towards older women, but I find an endearing dignity about them, and they often have truly moving love-laments – for the Queen of the Fairies, it’s Oh foolish fay; my favorite example is Katisha’s Hearts Do Not Break. And they always end up with the man they want.
Last January I saw Iolanthe performed by the Lamplighters, and despite a much more vocally uneven cast than the Symphony’s, that performance had an emotional power this one lacked. The reunion of Iolanthe and the Lord Chancellor was genuinely touching, the entry march of the peers was genuinely rousing (as well as full of clever and funny stage business), the Act I finale (which the Symphony staged, bizarrely but somewhat amusingly, as the sort of gospel-jazzhands number now obligatory in most musicals) had genuine dramatic heft.
It was a sadly flat end to the Symphony’s season. Didn’t any of those musicians notice what the amplification did to the music?
19 June 2009
18 June 2009
Haiku 169
Love's geometry:
When you learn that triangles
Have only two points
*******
Standing on the shore
Watching the ship sail away,
Ticket in your hand
When you learn that triangles
Have only two points
*******
Standing on the shore
Watching the ship sail away,
Ticket in your hand
17 June 2009
16 June 2009
talk away
BLOOM
(In a seamless garment marked I.H.S. stands upright amid phoenix flames.) Weep not for me, O daughters of Erin.(He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning. The daughters of Erin, in black garments with large prayerbooks and long lighted candles in their hands, kneel down and pray.)
THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN
Kidney of Bloom, pray for us.Flower of the Bath, pray for us.
Mentor of Menton, pray for us.
Canvasser for the Freeman, pray for us.
Charitable Mason, pray for us.
Wandering Soap, pray for us.
Sweets of Sin, pray for us.
Music without Words, pray for us.
Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us.
Friend of all Fillies, pray for us.
Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us.
Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.
(A choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Mr Vincent O'Brien, sings the Alleluia chorus, accompanied on the organ by Joseph Glynn. Bloom becomes mute, shrunken, carbonised.)
ZOE
Talk away till you're black in the face.(Happy Bloomsday to my mountain flowers. Here's a fun site reJoyce.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)