Olivier, by Philip Ziegler (2013)

Of the three, great theatrical knights of the 20^th Century, Laurence Olivier (1907-1989) always came in third with Your Correspondent, trailing far behind both John Gielgud (1904-2000) and Ralph Richardson (1902-1983).  Olivier was indeed a great actor, but he lacked, to us, the poetry of Gielgud or the twinkle of Richardson.

However, it becomes clear in reading this champion biography by Philip Ziegler (born 1929) that of the three, Olivier was the most ambitious, the most tenacious and the most daring.  For Olivier, becoming a great actor was less a feat of artistry than an act of great will and determination.  Throughout his life, Olivier would seemingly set higher and more complex challenges for himself, stretching his powers as a performer, as an advocate for the theater, and as a man.  He sometimes fell far from his mark (most notably as a man), but as a record of passion, energy and drive, Olivier is hard to beat.

Olivier did not initially consider being an actor, but when his clergyman father (a distant, rather brutal figure) told him that he would be on the stage (“of course”), young Laurence took to it with alacrity.  He was fortunate in his early roles and in mentors … while still a young man, he was playing classical parts like Romero and Mercutio, while also finding offers to star in mainstream movies.  With successes in both Wuthering Heights (1939) and Rebecca (1940), it would have been easy for Oliver to take the easy route and become a movie star; instead, he stuck to his loftier ambition to become the premier classical stage actor of his day.

However, his success in film (something denied Gielgud and Richardson in their early years) also provided Olivier with insight enough to know that cinema was an important medium.  While he claimed that he didn’t fully understand ‘movie acting’ until rather late in the game, he was wise enough to make large-scale movie adaptations of several Shakespeare plays that provide us some clue as to his in-person dynamism.  His film versions of Hamlet, Henry V and Richard III – both as director and star -- are not only good Shakespeare, they are good movie-making.

But this complete man of the theater was unsatisfied with performing and filmmaking; he also wanted to be the man who created a National Theater of Britain.  It was a project to which Olivier would dedicate more than a decade of his life and his not inconsiderable energies.  As star actor, occasional director, business manager, spokesman and man-of-all work, Olivier faced the Herculean task of building a national theater that showcased both the classics and contemporary plays.  It was not for the faint of heart.

In a book with more than its share of delicious gossip and screamingly-funny theater bitchiness, Ziegler devotes most of the book to the almost day-to-day business dealings of building the National.  For one of the foremost actors of his age, the great dramas of Olivier’s life were born in board rooms, political gatherings and backstage meetings.  More than just an actor-manager of the old school, Olivier virtually carried the foundation, creation, formation and survival of the National Theater on his back.  When the Board, in a stunning act of treachery, let him go after it was up-and-running, Olivier’s physical and mental health were permanently hampered.  It’s odd for a theatrical biography to read like a business primer, but it is this heroic struggle that made Olivier so interesting, and what makes Ziegler’s book so out of the ordinary.

This is certainly a warts-in-all portrait, but more often it seems that Olivier was more sinned-against than sinning.  Ziegler looks at Olivier the husband and father, as well as at Olivier the artist.  It would seem that he was a man capable of great generosity, kindness and wit – but a basilisk if you crossed him or got in the way of his ambition.  Like many great men, he was a mixture of the petty and the perfect, of vaunting ambition and piddling meanness.

For those who love backstage stories, Ziegler does not disappoint.  One of the more interesting revelations for Your Correspondent was Olivier’s volcanic temper and gifted potty-mouth.  At one point, Olivier calls fellow actor Laurence Harvey a “fucking stupid, sniveling, little cunt-faced asshole.”  Though hardly Shakespearen, such invective is heroic.

But these aren’t the stories that resonate with Ziegler, amusing as they are.  Olivier had Olympian aspirations, and Ziegler wisely reflects those aspirations in the story of his life, matching them up against his very real achievements, which continue to reverberate in the world of theater today.  Ziegler, a biographer of Lord Mountbatten, actually closes his biography with notes on the similarity between the two men.  This is a book for those who long for star biographies, but with a little more depth.  Highly recommended.

Verdi’s Macbeth at Glimmerglass

Our recent sojourn upstate was punctuated by two very different theatrical experiences – the dramatically reimagined Oklahoma! at Bard SecondStage, and the opening night of Verdi’s masterful Macbeth, at Glimmerglass.

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) wrote Macbeth in 1847; it was his initial foray into translating Shakespeare from theatrical stage to operatic stage.  (He would later do the same with Otello and Falstaff).  Verdi collaborated with Italian librettist Francesco Piave (1810-1876), with whom he would also collaborate on Rigoletto, La Traviata and Simon Boccanegra.  Most of these operas are perhaps better known than Macbeth, which is something of shame as it is a riveting and compelling piece of work.

When approaching Macbeth the play vs. the opera, it is best to remember that the play belongs to Macbeth, while the opera belongs to Lady Macbeth.  Strong players (or singers) are essential for both, but the male performance must carry the play and the leading lady must carry the opera.  This was thrown into stark relief in the Glimmerglass production, which succeeds largely on the masterful performance of Melody Moore as Lady Macbeth.

Macbeth stars baritone Eric Owens in the title role.  Owens has done wonderful work in the past, but he is primarily a singer, and most directors seem to forget that opera demands acting as well.  Though his voice is powerful, it lacks emotional range, and as an actor Owens is utterly hopeless.  Rotund and bearing a striking resemblance to the late Tor Johnson, Owens seems to have only one facial expression as his stock-in-trade:  uncomfortable surprise.  His Macbeth spends several hours as if he just realized a mouse ran up his trouser leg, and it does his singing and the production no favors. 

Banquo is much better served by Soloman Howard, who brings a sense of gravitas and vulnerability to the role.  His singing, at times, seems less sure than is ideal, but he does manage to hold the stage by the tone of his voice and his considerable stage presence.  Strong, too, was Nathan Milholin in the thankless role of the doctor who observes Lady Macbeth’s mad wanderings.  He served as a valuable stabilizing element to Moore’s stagecraft.

However, the evening certainly belonged to Moore and her magnificent Lady Macbeth.  Her singing was a revelation, and her performance deeply affecting and memorable.  All too often (in Shakespeare or Verdi), we are served a one-note Lady Macbeth, but Moore clearly understood the arc of the character, and the many conflicting emotions that drive her early ambition and her later madness.  On top of that, Moore has a compelling presence, charisma to spare, and a quality of glamor that makes her eminently watchable.  This is a singer who will make a considerable mark.

Joseph Colaneri conducted the score competently, but unevenly.  At times, it seemed as if he did not pay proper attention to the entire orchestra, or integrate the vocals with the music seamlessly.  However, the music itself is so wonderful, stirring and majestic that these problems of technique are forgiven.

Perhaps the major misstep of the evening is the direction by Anne Bogart and choreography by Barney O’Hanlon.  Bogart sets the production in what appears to be the era between World Wars, but, once that conceit is in place, seems to do nothing with it.  It is not a comment on fascism per se, nor on nationalism.  She peppers the stage with effectively lit (by Robert Wierzel) refugees … but where does that fit in with Macbeth?  In addition, the murder of Banquo is committed by thugs in bowler hats and Halloween masks, carrying both rather tony walking sticks along with clubs.  Laurel and Hardy Go to Hell may be an interesting idea, but it does have to tie in with the overall concept to make any sense.

Confusing, too, was Bogart’s concept of the Weird Sisters (or witches).  Normally three in number, Bogart serves us 12, all of whom seem to dress like dowdy spinsters straight from Agatha Christie.  This does seem to diminish their power to frighten and mesmerize, and the multi-national nature and broad age-range of the witches seems to add to the confusion.  (Perhaps they are all part of the Coven Exchange Plan?  Who knows?)  The sisters play other roles, suggesting evil omens throughout Verdi’s operatic cosmos, but we never get a handle on who they are or why they are menacing.

The staging is achieved with a minimal set – a rotating wall denoting swanky interiors, and a dark room painted with enormous roses for the mad scene.  It all works surprisingly well … but it doesn’t always play as theater.  In many senses, this is a superb concert performance of Macbeth rather than an overall successful theatrical experience.  With that caveat in mind, Macbeth makes for an enjoyable evening at the opera and worth a trip to Cooperstown.

The Consolations of Junk Art, Part I: Star Trek

“Was it not Gautier who used to write about la consolation des arts? I remember picking up a little vellum-covered book in your studio one day and chancing on that delightful phrase. Well, I am not like that young man you told me of when we were down at Marlow together, the young man who used to say that yellow satin could console one for all the miseries of life. I love beautiful things that one can touch and handle. Old brocades, green bronzes, lacquer-work, carved ivories, exquisite surroundings, luxury, pomp—there is much to be got from all these.” --- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

"To the man who loves art for its own sake," remarked Sherlock Holmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of the Daily Telegraph, "it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.”  -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Cooper Beeches (1892)

Two very different concepts on the curative power of art, written only one year apart.  However, recent events have led me to believe that it may be Sir Arthur and not Mr. Wilde who was closer to the mark.

Your Correspondent has recently been thinking of the pleasures of pop art versus those found in the Fine Arts, the proper subject of this blog.  Dealing with multiple responsibilities, I relaxed within the warm confines of some delightful junk art.  It has gotten me thinking that often, when tired, that it was not towards the highest, but, rather, towards the lowest that I went for succor and comfort.  Why, I wonder, would that be?

The reasons are multiple and, as is usual when considering art of any type, complex.  It would be too easy by half to say that junk art provides only expected sensations, and, consequently, comfort, pleasure and even a kind of solace.  Nor do I think that good junk art was created solely for the groundlings, who are unworthy (or unwilling) to interact with the higher branches of the fine arts.  No … I would argue that good junk art stimulates essential pleasure centers of the brain, pleasure centers that were meant to be stimulated, and that need that stimulus in order to remain healthy.

So, we have to agree when Sherlock Holmes says that art’s keenest pleasures are often to be derived in its least important and lowliest manifestations.  (It is important to remember here, too, that the Sherlock Holmes stories are junk art of the very highest pedigree.)

I have been enjoying a great deal of junk art over the past couple of weeks, and wanted to share both the delights and pitfalls to be found in them.  And how better than to start with that global phenomena, Star Trek.

For those readers who have not been living in a cave for nearly the last 50 years or so, Star Trek started as a science fiction thriller on network television in the 1960s.  It fairly limped along for three seasons until the network pulled the plug in search of something that would generate better ratings.

Normally, the result would’ve been that the vast majority of American viewers simply opened another beer and moved onto to some other program.  But Star Trek would not die.  It was saved once during its initial run by a letter campaign that ensured the final two seasons, and once it was off for good, it was kept alive in syndication, comic books, novels, fan fiction and on the convention circuit.

A decade after the last television episode saw the first, big-budget film adaptation, and the franchise has not stopped for breath since.  There have been 12 movie adaptations, and five later television series.  It does not seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

As with any huge entertainment franchise, there is much that is good and much that is bad in Star Trek.  Your correspondent has a soft spot for the original series, starring William Shatner and the late Leonard Nimoy, and likes Star Trek: The Next Generation a great deal.  But … it’s all still junk.

Though there will be calls for my head on a pike, the ugly truth is that when Star Trek is good, it’s pedigree junk, and when it’s bad, it’s nearly unwatchable.

What’s the good?  Well, Star Trek will often confront questions on the nature of the human condition … but only in the most surface and reassuring way.  Vindications of our simple humanity and calls for universal tolerance and progress are all good things.  And when these homilies are delivered by an actor with real gravitas (such as Patrick Stewart, who played the Shakespeare-quoting Captain Picard), they can sound wonderfully profound.  However, their profundity is of the Reader’s Digest sampler kind; propositions no one is really going take issue with, and never to be examined in any depth.

This often makes terrific television and compelling movies, but it is not art of a high order.  In short, Star Trek is an imitation classic – it is Shakespeare for those too tired, or uninterested, in the real thing.  But, unlike Shakespeare, any real profundity is brought to it by the viewer, and is not really inherent in the text.  But its deficiencies are not the point … Star Trek, in terms of high-minded themes translated into compelling drama still manages to get the job done.

What’s the bad?  Well … like many offerings that generate obsessive fan-bases, Star Trek is often its own worst enemy.  Too often plot, character development or even the underlying philosophy of the concept are driven by demands of an entrenched fan-base.  That kind of outward direction has killed greater modes of artistic expression, and for a franchise it can be the kiss of death.  (For an example of this, look at the disaster that is Star Trek IV: The Undiscovered Country.  Designed as the farewell film of the original cast, it is little more than a litany of shtick, none of which seems to make sense in context of the story.)

Another problem is that, with an enterprise like Star Trek (sorry), it is impossible not to come to the well too many times.  Though it is often reinvented with tweaks that give the appearance of freshness, the franchise is filled with tired blood and should be put out of its misery.

Wait … I hear you saying, isn’t the whole point of this the consolation of the arts?  Indeed it is.  Your correspondent admits that when he is tired, there are few things more comforting that an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Just listening to Stewart mouth the platitudes and homilies that Star Trek provides in great profusion can be a tremendous solace.  It is also a delight to know that someone, somewhere, believes that the race will continue to exist hundreds of years from now, and will even move out into the stars.  Finally, while Star Trek would never argue in favor of the perfectibility of the human race, it continues to underscore what is worthy, heroic and noble in our natures.

And that’s not junk.

Alarms and Discursions, by G. K. Chesterton (1910)

Over the past many months we have been reading quite a bit of that brilliant author, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, (1874 – 1936), creator of the delightful Father Brown detective stories.  Though little-remembered today, Chesterton was one of the outstanding critics and thinkers of his age.  There are many reasons to admire GKC, but perhaps the most sensible is that he had never lost his childlike sense of wonder.  It was his innocence and clarity, mixed with a prodigious erudition, that resulted in his gargantuan influence as a writer and thinker.  He is simply the finest critic of Dickens and Stevenson I have ever read, and his take on Shakespeare is enthralling.  To read Chesterton is to see these writers anew, as if some profound truth were staring us in the face and it took a little boy to point it out.

The Falstaffian figure of GKC was familiar to all literate people in the US and UK for decades.  Tall and fat, he wore a broad-brimmed slouch hat and cape, and often carried a sword cane.  Of such figures legends are made, and Chesterton, the man himself, influenced writers who converted the easily recognizable figure into a string of fictional characters.  (His influence on detective fiction is vast – and the man himself served as the model for the fictional Dr. Gideon Fell, who appeared in mysteries by John Dickson Carr.)  The most contemporary figure similar to GKC would be Orson Welles; but though brilliant, Welles did not have his deep and profound depth of learning, his purity of soul, nor his sense of fun.  Welles was old before his time; GKC was forever young.

Chesterton earned his bread and cheese as a journalist, writing for the London Daily News.  His 1910 book Alarms and Discursions features dozens of columns on a variety of different subjects.  Paging through this book, the reader would learn his thoughts on everything from democracy, to cheese to the failure of the English upper classes.   Anyone interested in learning more about this fascinating man should look at his newspaper columns while also reading his many novels and books of sustained criticism.

Here are some quotes:  When a man says that democracy is false because most people are stupid, there are several courses which the philosopher may pursue. The most obvious is to hit him smartly and with precision on the exact tip of the nose. But if you have scruples (moral or physical) about this course, you may proceed to employ Reason, which in this case has all the savage solidity of a blow with the fist. It is stupid to say that "most people" are stupid. It is like saying "most people are tall," when it is obvious that "tall" can only mean taller than most people. It is absurd to denounce the majority of mankind as below the average of mankind.

Isn’t that grand?  And here is GKC writing in 1910 something that is even more pertinent to 2014:  In a popular magazine there is one of the usual articles about criminology; about whether wicked men could be made good if their heads were taken to pieces. As by far the wickedest men I know of are much too rich and powerful ever to submit to the process, the speculation leaves me cold. I always notice with pain, however, a curious absence of the portraits of living millionaires from such galleries of awful examples; most of the portraits in which we are called upon to remark the line of the nose or the curve of the forehead appear to be the portraits of ordinary sad men, who stole because they were hungry or killed because they were in a rage. The physical peculiarity seems to vary infinitely; sometimes it is the remarkable square head, sometimes it is the unmistakable round head; sometimes the learned draw attention to the abnormal development, sometimes to the striking deficiency of the back of the head. I have tried to discover what is the invariable factor, the one permanent mark of the scientific criminal type; after exhaustive classification I have to come to the conclusion that it consists in being poor.

GKC had a remarkably Christian point of view – and by that, I don’t necessarily mean he wore his Catholicism on his sleeve.  He was a Christian humanist – someone who, seemingly against all odds, genuinely loved people.  This is a rare quality among those who live in the mind, but GKC was a rare man. 

The charm of a book like Alarms and Discursions is that it can be read through in one sitting, or can be dipped into almost indiscriminately.  There is not a page without gold of some kind, and, in addition, even his most interesting observations are presented with a puckish insouciance.  Read this, and savor, especially, the last line:  Roughly speaking, there are three kinds of people in this world. The first kind of people are People; they are the largest and probably the most valuable class. We owe to this class the chairs we sit down on, the clothes we wear, the houses we live in; and, indeed (when we come to think of it), we probably belong to this class ourselves. The second class may be called for convenience the Poets; they are often a nuisance to their families, but, generally speaking, a blessing to mankind. The third class is that of the Professors or Intellectuals; sometimes described as the thoughtful people; and these are a blight and a desolation both to their families and also to mankind. Of course, the classification sometimes overlaps, like all classification. Some good people are almost poets and some bad poets are almost professors. But the division follows lines of real psychological cleavage. I do not offer it lightly. It has been the fruit of more than eighteen minutes of earnest reflection and research.

Alarms and Discursions is available at Project Gutenberg, and the invaluable www.manybooks.net.  It makes for wonderful reading.

Cromwell Before the Coffin of Charles I, By Paul Delaroche (1831)

We close this weeklong look at the pictures of Paul Delaroche with a scene that happened (at last!) after an execution.  Here is Oliver Cromwell gazing at the body of his nemesis, Charles I.

As we remember from yesterday’s picture, Strafford Led to Execution, we know that Charles was a hard-headed practitioner of real politik, who did not hesitate to cast longtime friends to the wolves in the name of political expediency.  Charles fought the armies of the English and Scottish parliaments in the English Civil War. He was defeated in 1645, and surrendered to a Scottish force that handed him over to the English Parliament.  Charles refused to accede to demands for a constitutional monarchy, and escaped in 1647.  He was re-imprisoned on the Isle of Wight, where he forged an alliance with Scotland.  However, Oliver Cromwell had control over England by 1648, and then Charles was tried, convicted and executed for high treason in 1649.  The monarchy was abolished and the Commonwealth of England began (lasting a scant year, when the monarchy was restored to Charles’ son, Charles II). 

It’s important to remember that Delaroche was among the most popular and highest paid painters of his generation.  It was a generation that brooded upon the French Revolution decades earlier, and had lost much of its optimism.  Instead, Delaroche had a particular affinity for history’s victims.  One critic claimed he specifically chose subjects “that attack the nervous system of the public.”

Delaroche regularly synthesized French history through the prism of English history; and after the defeat of Waterloo there was a great interest in English history in France, and in the works of Walter Scott, Shakespeare and Byron.  Delaroche was drawn to the Civil War, which he saw as a forerunner of the French Revolution, where he cast Charles as a proto-Louis XVI and Cromwell as a less-dapper Napoleon.

Delaroche paints Cromwell Before the Coffin of Charles I with the Lord Protector—“brutal as fact” in the words of the poet Heinrich Heine—standing over the body of his defeated enemy. Though Delaroche would deny any specific connection, it is impossible not to interpret this work as a comment on recent French history.

Delaroche does not trust this man; preparatory drawing of Cromwell

Ever theatrical, Delaroche paints a tableaux.  We witness the horrible crimes of history, and watch the victors and victims saddled with their aftermath.  For greater verisimilitude, Delaroche built little stage sets, including plaster model figures, to help his artistic imagination.  More important, he never let actual history get in the way of a good story – in fact, the scene depicted above is apocryphal.  There is no record of Cromwell gazing at the corpse of his vanquished enemy, but Delaroche had heard the story and knew it contained all the artistic truth his history needed.

The important thing is that Delaroche always gets the big picture right: pity the suffering, despise the powerful and corrupt, and be deeply suspicious of the mob. 

The Cromwell of today’s picture does not seem to be the hero of English parliamentary law, but, rather, yet another politician ensuring that a powerful enemy was out of the way.  One hand rests by the hilt of his sword, the other holds open the coffin.  The tiled floor suggests, to me, a chessboard, and Cromwell has certainly outmaneuvered the King.  There is deep satisfaction on his face, but what does he look at so intently?

Look closely at the corpse of the dead monarch, and you will see the bloody stiches around the dead man’s neck, where the king’s head had been sewn back on the corpse.  Nor is the dead man attired in kingly robes befitting his office, but a simple shroud of white, no different from that wrapping any dead commoner.  He does not lie in state, but his simple coffin is propped on a chair.

I do not think Delaroche believed Charles to be a good man (or monarch); in fact, his sympathetic painting of Thomas Wentworth before execution, a mean and deadly trick Charles played on a key ally, makes that fairly plain.  But, neither, does Cromwell seem to capture the painter’s admiration.

In fact, after painting so many history pictures with executions, betrayals and excess of power, I believe Paul Delaroche knew politicians for what they are.

Children of Edward by Hippolyte Paul Delaroche (1831)

Today we start a weeklong look at the work of Hippolyte Delaroche (1797-1857), also known as Paul Delaroche.  Paul came from an artistic family; his father was an art dealer who made his fortune buying, selling and cataloging art.  His father encouraged young Paul and worked hard to advance his artistic education, sending young Paul to work with Baron Antoine-Jean Gros (1771– 1835) in 1818.

Paul studied landscape painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and he made his first appearance in the Salon with an oversized picture, Josabeth Saving Joas (1822). This picture met with great success and, as a result, he soon became the friend of such luminaries as Géricault and Delacroix.  In fact, the three of them were the center of the historical painting scene of the era.

Following his debut, Paul spent most of his life as an active (and prolific) artist.  He visited Italy in 1838 and 1843, when his father-in-law, Horace Vernet (1789-1863) was director of the French Academy. His studio in Paris was in the rue Mazarine, where he built a reputation for patient industry.

The great love of Paul’s life was Louise Vernet.  They married in 1835, the same year he exhibited Head of an Angel, for which she served as a model.  Paul never recovered fully from the shock of her death 10 years later, aged only 31.  After her loss he created a series of small, exquisite pictures based on the Passion of the Christ, focusing his attention on the story’s dimension of human suffering.

Paul was extremely adept at history paintings – meaning not only pictures depicting historic events, but also mythological or biblical pictures, scenes from great literature and allegorical paintings. 

The key to Paul’s enduring success was that he had a dramatist’s eye and sense for the key moment of heightened tension.  His pictures depicting past events were not, perhaps, always scrupulously accurate in the representation of the actual historical moment, but were always intensely dramatic and psychologically true.

With that in mind, let’s look at one of his great pictures, The Children of Edward (1831).  The scene is, of course, familiar to anyone who has seen Shakespeare’s Richard III.  Two princes, held in the Tower of London, are about to be smothered on the order of Crooked-Back Richard, their uncle and usurper of their rights (and, eventually, the throne of England).  Knowing the fate of the children as we do, the sense of dramatic suspense is remarkable.

The two children, pale with terror, cling to one another on a four-poster bed in a dark room.  Edward V, and his brother Richard, children of the late king, Edward IV, have heard a noise and stopped reading.  The king gazes sadly at us, the gaze of his younger brother is drawn to the door, where his eventual murderer will enter.  The dog sees the shadow of a foot in the light under the door….

When this picture debuted at the Salon in 1831, it was a riotous success.  It was immediately purchased by the administrators of the Royal Museums; indeed, it was the inspiration for Casimir Delavigne to write a play, The Children of Edward (1833), which is little-performed today.

With this picture, Paul renders the subject in a manner both natural and emotional.  The children are quite real, and the dog emphasizes the tragic pathos of the moment.  There are few warm colors in evidence, and Paul’s inherent sense of dramatic romanticism is contained – such a moment did not need embellishment.

The scene can be found in Richard III, Act 4, Scene 3, where it is described in the words of Sir James Tyrell, who had commissioned their murder from Dighton and Forrest:

The tyrannous and bloody act is done -

The most arch deed of piteous massacre

That ever yet this land was guilty of.

'O thus', quoth Dighton, 'lay the gentle babes';

'Thus, thus', quoth Forrest, 'girding one another

Within their alabaster innocent arms.

Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,

And in their summer beauty kissed each other.

A book of prayers on their pillow lay,

'Which once', quoth Forrest, 'almost changed my mind.

But O, the devil' -- there the villain stopped,

When Dighton thus told on, 'We smothered

The most replenished sweet work of nature,

That from the prime creation e'er she framed.'

More Delaroche tomorrow.

Frank Langella Is King Lear at BAM

We here at The Jade Sphinx are still reeling from the magnificent performance of Derek Jacobi (born 1938) as Lear at BAM nearly three years ago.  It remains, simply, the greatest Shakespearean turn we have ever witnessed.  Is Frank Langella (born 1938), one of the finest actors of his generation, up to the challenge?

Lear is one of the most provoking and ambiguous of Shakespeare’s plays.  Its place in his cosmology is deeply contentious – is the play one of the most bleak and despairing ever penned, or do the final reconciliations and admissions of frail humanity make it ultimately optimistic?  We have seen Lears howling into windstorms, mumbling quietly to themselves, and – sometimes, as in the case of Jacobi – opening their inner-selves to display the very workings of their souls.

The current production of King Lear is a mixed bag of delights.  As is often the case when a “Great Actor” tackles a major role, many of the supporting parts are stinted, and that is the case here.  Fortunately, the overall value of the production maintains a consistent interest.

We are first struck by the wonderful set by Robert Innes Hopkins, a blasted heath right out of a horror film.  Lit by torches, capable of suggesting a castle and a barren ruin, it strikes a wonderfully somber note (helped immeasurably by dramatic lighting by Peter Mumford).

Cavorting through this magnificent design is Langella.  Oddly enough this protean actor, so famous for the velvety richness of his voice, changes the timbre and pitch to something more like a growl.  Where Jacobi saw Lear as alternately a spoiled and abused child, Langella visualizes the King as both an old fool and an old bully.  It is an entirely valid approach, but his growling, shouting and raging in the first act strikes a single note, and his performance suffers from a lack of variety.

However, Langella improves exponentially in the second act.  His voice returns to its normal register.  His mad scene with Gloucester is delightfully played, and his reconciliation with Cordelia moving.  At her death, his reading of "Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, And thou no breath at all? O thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never” is among the most moving I have ever seen.  Langella pauses between each “never,” looking into different parts of the theater, his voice softly echoing through the house.  It’s a wonderful moment, and one wishes there were more like it.

Director Angus Jackson creates a wonderfully theatrical experience, with many showy set-pieces.  The raging storm where Lear descends into madness is effective (though the staging nearly overwhelms Langella’s playing), and the suggested battle bits (lights flashing behind looming trees) is impressive.  

Sadly, Jackson falls far short of providing sufficient support for Langella. Denis Conway, as Glouscester, William Reay, as Burgundy, and Steven Pacey, as Kent, are all fine without setting the stage afire.  On the other hand, Catherine McCormack, as Goneril, and Isabella Laughland, as Cordelia, are simply wretched.  (In fact, Laughland is never more convincing than when she plays a corpse.)  As Albany, Chu Omambala delivers the most flat and uninteresting performance I have seen this season.

Lauren O’Neil is terrific as Regan, and Harry Melling quite wonderful as the Fool.  (Why does Shakespeare make this wonderful creation vanish from the latter part of the play?  One of the many mysteries of the play…)  As Cornwall, Tim Treloar is deliciously evil.

Better still are Max Bennett and Sebastian Armesto as half-brothers Edmund and Edgar, respectively, who lend wonderful support.  Armesto makes a particularly appealing Edgar, and straddles the difficult line of rejected son to feigned madman superbly.  Better still is Bennett.  King Lear often becomes Edmund’s play when cast correctly, and the handsome and athletic Bennett makes a meal of his role.  By turns suave, puckish, conniving, and amoral.  It is a star-making turn, and this Lear may signify the debut of a major, North American classical actor.  Mr. Bennett, more, please.

At the end, we were somewhat moved when the final effect should’ve been devastating.  This Lear is highly dramatic, but only intermittently moving.  It could have been so much more.

This production of Lear premiered in October 2013 at Chichester's Minerva Theatre and plays its New York engagement at BAM through Feb. 9 in the Harvey Theater.

Twelfth Night, With Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry

Well… talk about a reversal!  As ham-fisted, flat-footed and ill-conceived was the Shakespeare’s Globe production of Richard III, its Twelfth Night is nimble, smart, funny and delightful.  It is, happily, simply the finest Shakespearean comedy that I have seen in decades.  Like its sister production performed on the same set, Twelfth Night strives for Elizabethan authenticity, with period instruments, authentic costumes and males playing female parts. 

Where to begin?  The direction by Tim Carroll is loose and light-on-its feet.  His staging of Richard was lumbering, but here the cast virtually dances through the play.  It never loses it sense of comic pacing, the rhythm and tempo underscoring the moments of farce and comedy both high and low.

Mark Rylance as Olivia – suddenly love-struck after mourning the death of her father and brother  – is a marvel.  All of the fusty business of his Richard is gone, and his natural gifts as a comedian shine.  In his skillful playing, he manages to convey both the tragedy of mourning and the giddy realization of both affection and sexual passion.  Olivia always straddles a difficult line: we are sympathetic to her love for Cesario (who is actually a woman, Viola, in disguise) but tickled at her transformation and seductive quest.  Rylance makes Olivia a profoundly moving comic figure.

Equally moving is the magisterial Stephen Fry as Malvolio.  This is Fry’s first Broadway appearance, and it would be difficult to think of a more challenging role for his debut.  Malvolio – a figure of steady courtesy, sobriety and decorum – is duped by the play’s comic figures into playing the lover to Olivia.  He is thrown into a sunless dungeon for this effrontery and Fry wonderfully embodies the straight-arrow, the foolish wooer and the injured party.  Like Olivia, it is an extremely tricky role – Twelfth Night is not Malvolio’s play, but his presence often resounds with the greatest resonance.  Fry carries both Malvolio’s gravitas and folly on his sizable shoulders in a performance that is not to be missed.

Equally excellent is Samuel Barnett as Viola/Cesario.  The heavy pancake makeup he wears in Richard III, strangely, works surprisingly well in a comedic setting.  Twelfth Night capitalizes on his amazing resemblance in makeup to Joseph Timms (as twin-brother Sebastian) to create an astounding end-of-play revelation.  This resemblance was a misstep in Richard III – but here, the payoff is nothing short of magical.

Equally deserving praise is Paul Chahidi as Maria – who is equal measures comic figure and villain.  He skillfully got laughs without ever losing sight of Maria’s inherent venom.  And Angus Wright, so windy and flat as Buckingham Richard III, delivers a deft comic performance as Sir Andrew Aguecheek – and his near-duel with Cesairo/Viola is a riotous comic set piece.

Finally, special mention must be made of the beautifully spoken and sung performance of Peter Hamilton Dyer as the fool, Feste.  In a play of fools, it is a typical Shakespearean irony that the sanest, and perhaps sweetest, man wears motley.  His singing of the final song is deeply moving, and a fitting finale to the evening.

And moving is perhaps the note upon which to end.  Twelfth Night has always been, at least to your correspondent, a difficult play.  The overwhelming action of the plot revolves around various practical jokes, many of them committed with malice deep and damaging.  Because of the impersonation of Viola/Cesario and thanks to the japes and wheezes of Maria, Aguecheek and Sir Toby Belch, one man is imprisoned to the point of nearly losing his sanity, two men come perilously close to killing each other in a duel, and a lonely woman becomes a figure of fun by falling in love with another woman disguised as a man.  We laugh at all of this, but I found myself saddened, as well.  Olivia’s love for Cesario (at one point, she grabs a halberd in his defense) is no less real for being comic, and Malvolio’s wrongful imprisonment is hard to laugh away. 

Twelfth Night is the last day of the Christmas holidays – and the festive season is never mentioned in the play.  Perhaps Shakespeare selected the title as an indication of the bitter-sweet quality we often feel at the end of our revels.  Or, perhaps he wished to create a light comedy for those who laugh, and a more subtle, darker farce for those who think.  It can be no mistake that the full title is Twelfth Night – Or What You Will.

Richard III, With Mark Rylance

It’s not often the Shakespeare’s Globe productions make it to the US, so when they arrive it is cause for riotous celebration.  So … it is with a great deal of disappointment that I report that the recent production of Shakespeare’s Richard III at the Belasco Theatre starring Mark Rylance (born 1960) is an ill-conceived, ramshackle conception.  This is a great shame as Rylance is one of the most gifted actors of his generation – however, I doubt I have ever seen a more wrong-headed interpretation of Shakespeare’s crookbacked anti-hero.

Problems with Richard III start at the top and the rot continues down.  As written, Richard is a charming monster.  He revels in his villainy, and his constant asides to the audience make us complicit in his monstrosity.  His ego is enormous and his self-satisfaction over the most wretched and heinous crimes become droll in his endless self-regard and delight in manipulation.  In short, it is a role for an actor with a High Comic sensibility.

Sadly, High Comedy is not in Rylance’s bag of tricks.  He is an expert Low Comedian, and while he does get laughs with Richard, the overall conception never comes alive.  Imagine Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau disguised as Richard III, and you get the idea.  There is a great deal of business between Rylance and the audience in the first few rows, where he is mugging for a response, while some of his most malefic lines are thrown away as under-the-breath asides.  This is not High Comic villainy, it’s a homicidal Nigel Bruce.  It is a novel approach, but that is all.

Richard III is presented in repertory with Twelfth Night, and in strives to recreate an Elizabethan theatrical experience.  True to the time, all women’s roles are played by men.  I have seen this work wonderfully well in the past (I recall the troupe Cheek By Jowl in a series of Shakespearean productions at BAM 20 years ago that were stunning), but the effect here is more Monty Python than Renaissance theater.  Joseph Timms, as Lady Anne, is so heavily made up that he seems more like a waxwork figure.  (White pancake makeup applied with a trowel, one would assume, to ape portraits of Elizabeth.) Sad to say that equally dire is Samuel Barnett, as Queen Elizabeth, who unfortunately resembles Timms in makeup to such a degree that it’s almost impossible to tell one from the other.

Richard the III is really Richard’s play, and there aren’t many other good roles; however, what is here is poorly played.  Angus Wright, as Buckingham, looks and sounds like Raymond Massey … and is just as bad an actor.  But perhaps the most egregious offender of the evening is Kurt Egyiawan as the Duchess of York, and later as Richmond -- in a lifetime of watching Shakespeare on stage, I have never seen a more wretched performance.  Only Liam Brennan, as Clarence, seems to make something of his part.  I hope to see more of him in the future.

Tim Carroll directs and makes rather a hash of it.  The staging is unimaginative and, at times, simply ridiculous.  Troubled by dreams of his victims, Carroll parades them backstage in white sheets holding candles; more Our Gang than Halloween horror.  How such a gruesome play was rendered so bloodless may be the great mystery of this production.  It ends with Richard and Richmond locked in mortal combat – but it never convinces.  Nor does it help that – in an attempt to create a true Elizabethan experience – the entire cast gather onstage at curtain’s fall and pad through a clumsy quadrille.

We are seeing Twelfth Night later this week; it is Stephen Fry’s Broadway debut, and perhaps his intelligence, taste and sense of fun will positively impact on the production.  We can but hope.

Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff

Few figures of the Ancient World hold so powerfully the allure of myth and mystery as does the Queen of Egypt, Cleopatra.  Much of the historical record of this most wondrous monarch is unknown, clouded in mystery, or garbled by a millennia of material penned by her enemies.  Most of what we know was written by Roman historians in a language – Latin – unsympathetic to her and to her world.  But despite these hindrances, the historical and mythical Cleopatra looms large in our consciousness.

Cleopatra has inspired artists as diverse as William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw and Cecil B. DeMille.  Even P. G. Wodehouse had a crack at her in this inspired lyric:

In days of old beside the Nile

A famous queen there dwelt.

Her clothes were few,

But full of style.

Her figure slim and svelte.

On every man that wandered by

She pulled the Theda Bara eye.

And every one observed with awe,

That her work was swift,

But never raw.

I'd be like Cleopatterer,

If I could have my way.

Each man she met she went and kissed.

And she'd dozens on her waiting list.

I wish that I had lived there.

Beside the pyramid.

For a girl today don't get the scope

That Cleopatterer did.

And when she tired as girls will do,

Of Bill or Jack or Jim,

The time had come, his friends all knew,

To say goodbye to him.

She couldn't stand by any means,

Reproachful, stormy farewell scenes.

To such coarse stuff she would not stoop,

So she just put poison in his soup.

When out with Cleopatterer,

Men always made their wills.

They knew there was no time to waste,

When the gumbo had that funny taste.

They'd take her hand and squeeze it.

They'd murmur "Oh you kid!"

But they never liked to start to feed,

Til Cleopatterer did.

She danced new dances now and then.

The sort that make you blush.

Each time she did them, scores of men

Got injured in the rush.

They'd stand there gaping in a line,

And watch her agitate her spine.

It simply use to knock them flat,

When she went like this and then like that.

At dancing Cleopatterer,

Was always on the spot.

She gave these poor Egyptian ginks,

Something else to watch besides the sphinx.

Marc Antony admitted,

That what first made him skid,

Was the wibbly, wobbly, wiggly dance,

That Cleopatterer did.

But that’s not all.  Cleopatra was the lover of the two most powerful men of her age: Julius Caesar and Marc Antony.  Her name is a synonym for feminine sexual power, for seduction, for unbridled ambition and for wanton sexuality.  (We should all be so lucky.)  With such baggage, what good does it do for the contemporary historian to set the record straight?

Well … much good.  With Cleopatra: A Life, Pulitzer Prize winning biographer Stacy Schiff has written what might be the single most readable biography of this fascinating figure.  Born in 69 BC, Cleopatra, like most of the ruling elite in Egypt, was Greek, descending from a long line of Ptolemies that traced ancestry back to Alexander the Great.  Family relations were a complicated affair – brothers married sisters and most questions of succession were settled by inter-family butchery.  But the Ptolemies had a genius for leadership and statecraft, and Cleopatra was one of the most accomplished of her line.

Cleopatra ruled from Alexandria, the most glorious city of the Ancient World.  It had the world’s greatest library, was richly laden with civic art and treasures from Greece, and was populated by a worldly, educated and cosmopolitan people.  It had a taste for luxury and spectacle, and may have been the richest nation in the civilized world.  However, by the time Cleopatra had come to power, her empire was in decline and it was necessary to maintain good relations with the rising Roman republic.  This she did through a heady mixture of bribery, bluff and bedroom shenanigans.  Most dramatizations of Cleopatra, Schiff argues, are always weak tea in comparison to the genuine article: Cleopatra’s combination of genius, guile and the grandiose are too heady to load into a single artistic construct.  Poets, playwrights and filmmakers often emphasize one component of her cosmic personality over another, distorting the complete picture.

Schiff’s book suffers somewhat from an overload of feminist sentiment.  While it is important to appreciate that Cleopatra was out-maneuvering the boys in the all-male game of world domination, Schiff seems to argue that Cleopatra was history’s only significant female world leader, which surely would be news to figures as diverse as Queens Elizabeth and Victoria, Indira Ghandi, Margaret Thatcher and the Empress Dowager Ci'an.  Schiff certainly would have scored higher points by detailing more of Cleopatra’s genius, sense of style, mastery of sexual politics and gift for statecraft and by harping less on her womanhood.

Where Schiff’s book excels is in her masterful evocation of the Ancient World, and the sense of scale, opulence and magnificence of Cleopatra’s Egypt.  Reading the story of Cleopatra and her relations with both Caesar and Antony, you see giants walking the world stage, and get a sense of how beautiful and wondrous Ancient Egypt must have been.

Aesthetes have been tormented by visions of Egyptian beauty, and Schiff’s pages emit the rich, heady perfume of a bygone era.  Here, in a particularly wonderful and particularly purple passage, Schiff details the preparations of Cleopatra and her barge for her first historic meeting with Marc Antony:  The queen of Egypt’s presence was always an occasion; Cleopatra saw to it that this was a special one.  In a semiliterate world, the imagery mattered.  She floated up the bright, crystalline river, through the plains, in a blinding explosion of color, sound, and smell.  She had no need for magic arts and charms given her barge with gilded stern and soaring purple sails; this was not the way Romans traveled.  As they dipped in and out of the water, silver oars glinted broadly in the sun.  Their slap and clatter provided a rhythm section for the orchestra of flutes, pipes, and lyres assembled on deck.  Had Cleopatra not already cemented her genius for stage management she did so now: “She herself reclined beneath a gold-spangle canopy, dressed as Venus in a painting, while beautiful young boys, like painted Cupids, stood at her sides and fanned her.  Her fairest maids were likewise dressed as sea nymphs and graces, some steering at the rudder, some working at the oars.  Wondrous odors from countless incense-offerings diffused themselves along the river-banks.”  She outdid even the Homeric inspiration … Earlier that evening or on a subsequent one Cleopatra prepared twelve banquet rooms.  She spread thirty-six couches with rich textiles.  Behind them hung purple tapestries; embroidered with glimmering threads.  She saw to it that her table was set with golden vessels, elaborately crafted and encrusted with gems.  Under the circumstances, it seems likely that she, too, rose to the occasion and draped herself in jewels.  Pearls aside, Egyptian taste ran to bright semiprecious stones – agate, lapis, amethyst, carnelian, garnet, malachite, topaz – set in gold pendants, sinuous, intricately worked bracelets, long, dangling earrings.  On his arrival Antony gaped at the extraordinary display.  Cleopatra smiled modestly.  She had been in a hurry.  She would do better next time.

This is delicious stuff, and your correspondent read Cleopatra: A Life with considerable relish.  This is a biography not to be missed.