Pater Familias » Theater

THE LAKE BELOW THE OPERA.

Philip — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 23:51:51 +0000

THE LAKE BELOW THE OPERA. The audience watching The Phantom of the Opera may well think that there are elements of fantasy in the story. However, as Neil Shea points out: “Beneath the Paris Opera House, for example, sits a large reservoir, sometimes called a lake. The lake figures into the story of the Phantom of the Opera.” I mentioned the lake to Annalisa, who is a big fan of the Phantom of the Opera, and she already knew all about it. In fact, she pointed out that there are catfish in the lake.

COUNTING AND COMEDY.

Philip — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 21:06:21 +0000

COUNTING AND COMEDY. I posted here about how Jim Dale learned to count his pauses in years of working in British music halls. There was a count that would make a joke work and over time audience reactions would tell you what the right count was for each joke. Jana Prikryl had an article in the New York Review of Books (June 9) about Buster Keaton, and Buster Keaton had similar training and experience. Keaton had a salary in the family’s vaudeville act at the age of 4 and was the headliner of the Three Keatons at 5. When he was 7 or 8, one of the routines involved his father giving him a kick in the pants. Keaton reminisced: Now a strange thing developed.” An immediate “ouch”— no laughs. No reaction at all—no laughs. His father taught him to count to ten slowly and then scream—huge laughs. Keaton’s theory of why this worked was; “Audiences love The Slow Thinker.”

DO CRITICS KNOW BETTER THAN PLAYWRIGHTS?

Philip — Tue, 24 May 2011 23:23:09 +0000

DO CRITICS KNOW BETTER THAN PLAYWRIGHTS? It’s tempting to make the argument that Tony Kushner and Shakespeare know what they’re doing more than critics do. Kushner seems to like “lengthy digressions and superfluous subplots.” Shakespeare’s subplots seem always to be important; in Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare chose to make the Beatrice/Benedick story a subplot. Yet critics can help playwrights, and the out-of-town tryouts for Broadway plays back in the day permitted comments by critics that previews do not. Neil Simon gave credit to the Boston critic Elliot Norton’s advice for fixing the third act of The Odd Couple. Norton’s suggestion: Bring back the Pigeon sisters. Simon says here: “Brought back the Pigeon sisters, and the play worked.”

IS 1700 THE CUTOFF DATE FOR UNDERSTANDING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE?

Philip — Wed, 04 May 2011 17:28:19 +0000

IS 1700 THE CUTOFF DATE FOR UNDERSTANDING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE? As a linguist, John McWhorter points out that language change is “a gradual process with no discrete boundaries.” Yet, he says, Congreve writing in 1700 is readily understandable by a modern audience, but that the English of 1600, when Shakespeare was writing, “has changed not only in terms of a few exotic vocabulary items, but in the very meaning of thousands of basic words and in scores of fundamental sentence structures.” It seems to me an important question. When did the English language become the one we use? McWhorter is probably right. The answer is likely 1700; it is not 1600.

SHOULD SHAKESPEARE BE TRANSLATED INTO MODERN ENGLISH?

Philip — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 19:40:16 +0000

SHOULD SHAKESPEARE BE TRANSLATED INTO MODERN ENGLISH? My friend Joe Foley has long contended that Shakespeare’s language is inaccessible to modern audiences. John McWhorter argues in this essay that for theatrical performance Shakespeare should be translated into modern English. What Seamus Heaney did for Beowulf should be done for Shakespeare’s plays. McWhorter says that the audiences for Shakespeare would be greatly increased—that “Shakespeare in the original would play to critical huzzahs but half-empty houses, while people would be lining up around the block to see Shakespeare in English the way Russians do to see an Uncle Vanya.” I don’t agree with McWhorter in his claim that Shakespeare in the original text is hard to enjoy. The popular success of outdoor Shakespeare in our area shows that the plays work for a lot of people even when the acoustics are imperfect.

MARY JANE’S FULL-LENGTH PLAY ABOUT SHAKESPEARE.

Philip — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 18:36:32 +0000

MARY JANE’S FULL-LENGTH PLAY ABOUT SHAKESPEARE. Mary Jane’s full-length play about Shakespeare—Shakespeare in the Dark—will be given a reading by an excellent cast this Friday January 28 at 7:30 at 5 Gregory Blvd., Norwalk, CT.

“THE PENSIVE AND AWFUL SILENCE.”

Philip — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 20:31:14 +0000

“THE PENSIVE AND AWFUL SILENCE.” The final scene of 1776, as I remember it, is silent except for the tolling of a bell and a solemn voice announcing the name of each of the delegates portrayed and the colony he represented. Each then steps forward and signs. It turns out that this scene also tracks the historical record. SIGNING THEIR LIVES AWAY quotes a letter (link here) from Benjamin Rush to John Adams:

“Do you recollect the pensive and awful silence” which pervaded the house when we were called up, one after another to the table of the President of Congress to subscribe what was believed by many at the time to be our own death warrants?”

HOW JEFFERSON WAS CHOSEN TO WRITE THE FIRST DRAFT.

Philip — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 22:28:57 +0000

HOW JEFFERSON WAS CHOSEN TO WRITE THE FIRST DRAFT. I had known that the songs between John Adams and Abigail Adams in 1776 were based on their letters. I had not known that the song sung by a quintet about whether Jefferson would write the first draft of the Declaration of Independence—”But, Mr. Adams”—was based on a letter written by John Adams. The chapter on Adams in SIGNING THEIR LIVES AWAY contained the following passage (which I found here):

“The subcommittee met. Jefferson proposed to me to make the draft. I said, ‘I will not,’ ‘You should do it.’ ‘Oh! no.’ ‘Why will you not? You ought to do it.’ ‘I will not.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Reasons enough.’ ‘What can be your reasons?’ ‘Reason first, you are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second, I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third, you can write ten times better than I can.’ ‘Well,’ said Jefferson, ‘if you are decided, I will do as well as I can.’ ‘Very well. When you have drawn it up, we will have a meeting.’”

“But, Mr. Adams”, a traditional Broadway musical song and dance number, incorporates John Adams’s acknowledgment that he is “obnoxious and disliked” and the scene features Adams telling Jefferson that he writes ten times better than Adams or anybody else in Congress.

THE ACCURACY OF 1776.

Philip — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 20:25:44 +0000

THE ACCURACY OF 1776. My idea of the signing of the Declaration of Independence comes from the musical 1776, and I was pleased to see how accurate the musical was. The one exception that I found in reading SIGNING THEIR LIVES AWAY was the portrayal of James Wilson, who was apparently a yes vote, but in the musical, with the consolidation of characters, is credited with the last minute switch to Yes that was actually made by another Pennsylvania delegate. The musical is a tour de force, creating the drama of history within a Broadway art form.

TOO MUCH OSCAR WILDE?

Philip — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 20:30:00 +0000

TOO MUCH OSCAR WILDE? I have long believed that the New York Times, which has extraordinary power over New York theater, does not like revivals of classic plays. An essay (December 22) by Jason Zinoman provides some evidence. It asked: “The Roundabout Theater has programmed a revival of’ ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ this month, which is nice. But why not use the built-in audience for holiday entertainment to try something entirely new? Or at least that hasn’t already been on Broadway eight times?” I followed the link on the words “eight times”, and got this information from the Internet Broadway Data Base:
“#1 Apr 22, 1895 – Closing date unknown Play / Original Empire Theatre, NY, USA
#2 Apr 14, 1902 – May 1902 Play / Revival Empire Theatre, NY, USA
#3 Nov 14, 1910 – Dec 1910 Play / Revival Lyceum Theatre, NY, USA
#4 Jan 20, 1921 – Feb 1921 Play / Revival Bramhall Playhouse, NY, USA
#5 May 3, 1926 – Jul 1926 Play / Revival Comedy Theatre, NY, USA
#6 Jan 12, 1939 – Mar 1939 Play / Revival Vanderbilt Theatre, NY, USA
#7 Mar 3, 1947 – May 10, 1947 Play / Revival Royale Theatre, NY, USA
#8 Jun 16, 1977 – Aug 28, 1977 Play / Revival Circle in the Square Theatre, NY, USA
#9 Jan 13, 2011 – Play / Revival American Airlines Theatre, NY, USA”

That is, the play has been done seven times on Broadway before 1947 and also in 1977 (a generation ago). And the New York Times reviewers are complaining that it has been done too much.

THE CROCODILE—SHAKESPEARE’S BAWDY.

Philip — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 19:11:45 +0000

THE CROCODILE—SHAKESPEARE’S BAWDY. In Antony and Cleopatra, in the drinking scene (Act II, scene 7), while the men are talking about Egypt, Lepidus asks Antony: “What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?”

Antony replies:

Antony: It is shap’d, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath breadth. It is just so high as it is, and moves with its own organs. It lives by that which nourisheth it; and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.” (II, vii, 42-45)

Lepidus: What color is it of?

Antony: Of its own color too.

Lepidus: ‘Tis a strange serpent.

Antony: “Tis so, and the tears of it are wet. (III, vii, 46-49)

Until I saw the Hartford Stage Company production, in which a drunken Antony mimed the lines, I had missed the point that—especially given the context that the scene is a drunken carousal,—the speech is one of Shakespeare’s bawdier ones.

OCTAVIUS AND ANTONY.

Philip — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 20:47:44 +0000

OCTAVIUS AND ANTONY. One surprising thing about the Hartford Stage Company production of Antony and Cleopatra was their interpretation of Octavius. The play contrasts Antony and Octavius. Frank Kermode in the Riverside Shakespeare gives what seems to be a representative view of Octavius: “rock-like, stable Octavius.” There is a lot of support for this in the play. But the Hartford production highlighted the contrast between Antony and an Octavius who is a full generation younger than Antony (and Julius Caesar) and who is not a warrior. In the drinking scene, Octavius expresses his dislike of drinking with the other soldiers (“I had rather fast from all, four days,/ Than drink so much in one.”). In Hartford, Octavius can’t hold his liquor and a bucket is brought on stage for him. Octavius was played by Scott Parkinson, who we thought was brilliant in the “Rose Rage” production of the Henry VI plays. I asked Mary Jane for a description of this Octavius. She used the words “spoiled, ruthless child.” But this Octavius is shrewd and focused on power, and Antony is not.