Gertie and awful men

The past is not all that far away, sometimes anyway. Suddenly this evening in the city still warm with October heat, I think of Gertie and James her pet corgi.
In a remote part of Wales,remote even in the late 40s and 50s, I accompanied my mother to visit a cousin I had never seen. I was about nine years old. Gertie was the daughter of my uncle John dead long before my birth and so Gertie who had never married, was about the age of my mother, perhaps even older, mother being the youngest of 17 children, all of them now long gone. We took a couple of buses which wound their way round the high hedged country roads. It was hot for August but finally we reached her two up and two down as we used to say, this with a door in the middle, open of course, and a white washed wall enclosing lovely red and yellow wallflowers.
"Come in Aunty dear". They hugged each other. I was introduced first to Gertie and then to James her beloved corgi. In the kitchen with a kettle boiling on the stove she said. "Let me make tea for you. You'd like that wouldn't you, Lionel bach?" "Yes, I would, thank you"
She turned to my mother and over a lunch of corned beef, boiled potatoes and sliced tomatoes, she told of her life with her mother and her stepfather, an awful man she said who sang loudly in chapel, was a prig and a hypocrite. I listened to all this as I ate my lunch. She reached the climax of the story by sitting back and declaring to mother, "Oh Auntie, aren't men awful?" and without missing a beat she added, "More potatoes, Lionel?". I said yes of course wondering ever after that simple meal of corned beef if men were really awful.
I think now she may have been right.

Traveling.....

Much traveling in the past few days. Saturday Shanghai 1942, Ang Lee new movie LUST AND CAUTION with Tony Leung, a tense and true movie with notable sex scenes. Then to Paris of Moliere for THE MISANTHROPE, set in modern NY, then to Periclean Athens for ELECTRA of Sophocles, onto Rome of the Caesars with AGRIPPINA of Handel set in the 1950s. This last was amusing filled with lively singers.
It is difficult to return to the mundane but a compensation today with a hike to Anthony's Nose, quite tough, lots of ups and downs but great views over the mighty river Hudson.
More anon......

The Misanthrope

A new production of a great play, THE MISANTHROPE of Moliere. This one from the NY Theatre Workshop on East 4th Street, a company celebrating its 25 years of innovation.

I have seen some duds here and had read about this production. I didn't enjoy it but found it diverting. Using video, amplification and all the paraphernalia of modern life, cell phones & computers we nevertheless never lost sight of Alceste's problem with other people. Our age is portrayed as vacuous and hollow as the court of Louis XIV. Unfortunately the actors, all accomplished were asked to asked to do some rather silly things. Alceste covers himself in tomato ketchup, chocolate and oil. He brings three bags of garbage on to the stage found (by chance!) outside the theatre; we are treated to the actors backstage, their lives seemingly overlapping the characters. The filming was disconcertingly out of sync. with the speech and the mikes made some of the actors shrill, very loud and sometimes incomprehensible. I have seen this play before in memorable productions, at the Comedie Francaise and in the 70s set in the de Gaulle sixties starring Diano Rigg and Alec McCowen, a brilliant well spoken production. No garbage there but the brittleness of the court conveyed in dazzling Parisian terms.

Cav'nPag-NYC Opera, production from Dallas

What a treat the other day. The dress rehearsal of Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci, usually sung together to form an evening's entertainment. Sublime music, young hot singers and good stories given a new twist. Both about ordinary people in old Italy, they are tales of passion, a woman scorned, a husband cuckolded.
I am reminded of Congreve's "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned." The very stuff of great (and mediocre) literature and art.
Santuzza has given herself to Turiddu but he has abandoned her for Lola, wife of Alfio. Santuzza begs Turiddu to return to her but he scorns her and so she takes revenge by telling Alfio the identity of his wife's lover. Alfio seeks revenge, challenges Turiddu to a deadly duel. When I have seen this in the past the killing takes place on the steps of a great church. In this production created by the Dallas Opera, the killing takes place off stage . Alfio had brought with him some dark-glassed and suited thugs who look business. Poor Santuzza lives on to a life of regret and misery. After intermission, we open in the tawdry circus arena of I Pagliacci, the clowns. My mother used to sing On with the Motley to me as a child and we had 78 records of Gigli singing great operatic arias. I gave them away to a wretched cousin who tried to seduce me once. No great passion there I'm afraid. Just a rather unhappy man with a younger wife and two boring sons. Enough of that eh?
A novelty of this production was the appearance of Lola the betraying wife from Cav. walking across the stage carrying two old suitcases, her clothes dirty and her face battered. She had been beaten and driven from her village. It set the tone for the tragedy about to evolve.
Here the love scenes beteen Silvio and Nedda are hot, they are young good looking singers with excellent voices. Singing and making love at the same time. Not easy! The whole rehearsal was a thrill for me and took me away from the wretched world in which we are forced to live.

Ruth Rendell

I have just finished THE WATER'S LOVELY by prolific mystery writer Ruth Rendell. Again she has written a book one can't put down. Even if the plot seems to rely on coincidence, the vividness of her characters pulls one along. I followed breathlessly the tale of Ismay and her close sister Heather, the step father, deceased Guy who likes long slow baths, mad Beatrice the mother and her sister Pamela who goes to a dating service and meets a dark swarthy man with attractive eyes, Edmund the male nurse who lives with his demanding mother Irene and her friend the venal Marion who lives by her wits and endures a brother Fowler who smells as he gets his precarious living from going through bins in the posher parts of London. Not to mention Andrew who is a lawyer who smokes. And of course two adorable rabbits who seem prey to some horrible fate. (shades of Fatal Attraction) and then a Max Jacob handbag. The details remain with me.
I was distracted from the hurly burly, the dreadful real news, the explosions, the NYTimes with its sensational information tastefully written. Good for you Ruth Rendell, you have entertained me. Long may you write.

Problems as necklaces

We went on a hike, eleven plus me so we were a dozen. I longed to ask which is the beloved disciple John, but knew no one would reply, thinking I am an odd one and of course they are partly right. I often have thoughts which have allusions in them and no one can follow the allusions. Mention Laurence Olivier nowadays and people look blankly at you. One can go on telling stories of course, one can make them up, confident that no one can contradict.
Say it with authority and a smart accent and you're home free. People are easily taken in and react to the surface. Of course that's alright as one can control the situation but when one looks for someone to surprise, to astonish, to intrigue, these are rarer than those hen's teeth. Go on say something.. Tell me a story. Etonnez-moi. Alack, it doesn't happen. One sets out with high hopes and as so often happens both with life and especially with people one finds dull dross, sad aspirations and problems. Of course how many of your friends do you know who wear their problems like a river of diamonds around their neck, proud of the grief and anxiety. By their problems shall ye know them. The problems make them interesting. So they think poor dears.

There is in fact little or nothing there. Sad, sad, sad.

I love that quotation from Lady Caroline Lamb about Byron "Mad,bad and dangerous to know." One still longed to meet him.

Alan Bennett and thoughts..

Well, I ran out of steam, lost my puff, or my interest for blogging. And yet I am often thinking things as I walk down the street or lie in bed, thinking I'd like someone else to comment on that or just listen to it. I have just read Alan Bennett's new book THE UNCOMMON READER about the Queen discovering the joys of reading. It is slyly amusing. One wonders if HM has read it in an idle moment, not that HM has many of those. I expect by now she has seen everything and been everywhere although I think not to the former USSR which I suppose makes sense, the commies having executed her relatives, the Tsar, his lovely wife and children, now rehabilitated in a kind of way. Of course as I recall the Brits could have saved the Russian monarchy but did not want to cross the new regime taking over in 1917. I remember Princess Kotchoubey and her husband settled in Paris having been refused entry to the UK. Perhaps the UK should have been a little more selective than it has been in refusing entry to some but who knows. Princess K. and her husband did alright though raising four fair daughters and the Princess herself working hard as a corsettiere. Bet it was hard work putting up with those rich Americans after the second world war flashing their huge wealth around.