"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh." - George Bernard Shaw
Wargamers will have different ways of occupying themselves at the moment. One of my contacts has ordered in so much booze that one can only assume that he has decided to get and then remain so drunk that he won't notice when he is ill. Peter, on the other hand, has complained that when working from home his employer most unreasonably seems to expect him to actually work rather than paint figures. I myself fully intend at some point to paint something, but haven't quite got round to it yet. Indeed I have come up with a cunning plan to do something hobby related that will fill up my time without being in any way productive; details to follow.
Peter also commented on the craze in the UK for panic buying pasta and toilet rolls. As he observantly pointed out, if you only eat the former you are not going to need too much of the latter. If the shelves are empty when you get there then I urge you to recall this poem from your childhood:
Although clearly not at writing blog posts. Partly that is because the Seven Years War campaign is not currently happening - not dead, just sleeping - and also I have been, in a small way, engaged in trying to prove that democracy in this country is likewise merely resting with its eyes closed rather than completely moribund.
Indeed, the only thing that has appeared on here recently is a comment from Iain that 'Arms and the Man' was also set in the Balkans. I haven't seen the play for many years; in fact the more I think about it the more it seems to me that I am confusing it with 'Man and Superman' and that I have probably never seen it at all. Shaw's plays do still get produced these days - I have seen both 'Pygmalion' and 'Saint Joan' in the last couple of years - so let's hope it comes round soon.
There are a couple of tenuous connections (and you know that's the way I like them) between the play and the specific opera concerned (which was 'Idomeneo'), with a second opera as well plus a tiny, tiny bit of wargaming relevance. The phrase 'arms and the man' comes from the opening line of the Aeniad, Virgil's poem in which a member of the Trojan royal family sails off after the fall of the city to follow his fate by indirectly both founding Rome and causing the Punic Wars to take place. In Mozart's opera it is another Trojan, Aeneas' cousin Ilia, daughter of King Priam, who, having been brought back as a captive to Crete by Idomeneo, provides the romantic sub plot and causes Elettra, daughter of Agamemnon, no end of grief; although as I pointed out previously her family have already done more than enough to tip anyone over the edge.
Kurt Weill wrote an opera called 'Der Kuhhandel'. A literal translation of that is 'cattle trading', but a more idiomatic one might be 'horse trading', e.g. of the kind that politicians are prone to. Anyway, the plot about arms dealing actually does prominently feature a cow. Its original English title was 'A Kingdom for a Cow', which is, of course, a Shakespearean allusion. Opera North performed it some years ago, but changed the title to 'Arms and the Cow', a Shavian reference which rather nicely sums up what the work is all about. At the time I rather annoyed my ex-wife by going on at length about how accurate was its depiction of the world of weapon sales based on my own experiences of the same; but let's face it, if I hadn't been that which irritated her then it would have been something else.
I have no doubt that posts are already being written on many wargaming blogs condemning its publication. It's a good job that no woman has ever combined both outrages - that of wearing men's clothing and that of going to war - at the same time.
"I was admonished to adopt feminine clothes; I refused and still refuse."
"Madness in great ones must not unwatched go." - Claudius
And so to the theatre. I have been to see Hamlet, a rather bashed about and - thankfully - very much shortened version of Hamlet, but Hamlet nonetheless. The questions you are immediately going to ask are which male characters were played by women - Horatio and Rosencrantz - and whether it was in modern dress - no. Several characters and many scenes disappeared; the absence of Fortinbras meant that Horatio was literally the only person standing at the end, and she seemed to be looking longingly at the cup with poison in it.
Icarus Theatre Collective, for it was they, claim to "relish what others shy away from, show what others daren't", but in terms of staging it was pretty much like every other version of the play that I've seen: ghosts, madness, death and famous quotes by the bucketful. In this version the lines you recognise weren't always in the mouths of the characters that you expect (i.e. the ones that Shakespeare wrote them for) or indeed of any characters at all; the versatile cast, when not playing a particular role, often stood around acting as a sort of chorus, chiming in either instead of or as well as the actors whose scene it was. I must admit that I didn't really get the point of the speaking in unison. It just seemed to make it harder to make out the words. On the other hand in case one didn't fully appreciate the most famous bit - "To be, or not to be" obviously - they stuck it in three times in different places.
None of the above should be taken as indication that I didn't like it; I found it very entertaining with plenty of energy. The sword fights were excellent. I realise that this is fast becoming one of the standards by which I judge plays; forget the poetry, what about the fencing?
Going back to me not getting the point of things on the stage, at the weekend I bumped into my friend the theatre critic of the Morning Star for the first time in ages. I asked her about Pygmalion, which she had reviewed more favourably than I thought it warranted. It seems that where I saw much of the action taking place in fish tanks for no discernible reason beyond the director's wish for a gimmick, she saw a symbolic representation of the social constraints under which women of a certain class had to live their lives.
"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." - Hamlet
"Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood - never." - Albert Camus
And so to the theatre. Continuing (anticipating actually) the Hundred Years War theme of the previous post, I have been to see Shaw's Saint Joan in another of the National Theatre's live broadcasts, this time from the Donmar. I am pleased to report that on this occasion the Nobel Laureate has been well served by director and actors. Gemma Arterton is superb as the Maid, and the rest of the cast were excellent. Like the recent production of Pygmalion that I saw this is mostly in modern dress with a shortened script that retains the original language. For me this works well here and was unnecessary there. GBS himself wrote "It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think
otherwise than in the fashion of their own period."; I would assert that one century ago is 'our period' in a way that six centuries ago is not.
The set is a boardroom, although thankfully not one of the many such that I have sat in has ever revolved; a design decision I found less grating than for, example, much of the action in Pygmalion taking part in a fish tank. For me the parallels between then and now - not least those with power conspiring with each other against everyone else - work better because the nobility are dressed like, as well as acting like, bankers of the last thirty years. John de Stogumber's outraged rhetorical question "How can what an Englishman believes be heresy? It is a contradiction
in terms." is all the more recognisably relevant if he looks as if he's in UKIP, as is the response from the more cultured and educated Frenchman to whom he is speaking that Stogumber will be forgiven on the basis that the 'thick air' of England breeds 'invincible ignorance'. The chosen setting also made one inevitably think of 'Yes, Minister': self-interest, hypocrisy and circumlocution in beautifully crafted dialogue.
Enigma of the evening: who did steal the bishop's horse?
And so to the theatre. By coincidence two of the plays that I have seen in the last week seem to be loosely linked in theme, being concerned with the responsibility of creator for creation. As creations in their own right neither were that good, but Frankenstein was better than Pygmalion, the latter being fairly dreadful if truth be told. Victor Frankenstein also came across as a more sympathetic character than Henry Higgins; and, considering that we first meet the scientist as he pursues his creation to the ends of the earth with the intention of destroying it, that reflects rather poorly on the Edwardian phoneticist.
I've never read Frankenstein - my taste doesn't really run to the Gothic - and although I suppose I must have seen dramatisations based on the original novel at some point I was still surprised at just how ridiculous the story is; indeed it makes no sense at all. The creature was manifested by a Bunraku style puppet,a device which worked extremely well. The five young actors switched duties as puppeteers and musicians seamlessly and effectively. In fact the acting itself was the weakest link. Victor, for example, comes across like a teenager who has had a disappointing experience on his gap year instead of someone who has played at God and come to grief.
But at least it was entertaining, whereas Pygmalion was a complete mess, full of gimmicks which didn't work. Virtually all of the original West Yorkshire Playhouse productions that I have seen recently have been really poor and this is no exception. I went back for the second act - many didn't - so I suppose it must have been better than Villette, although not by much. Shaw's play is social commentary on inequality of power between classes and sexes, something just as relevant as when he wrote it. A modern dress version could without doubt be made to work, but this farrago lost everything and gained nothing. The only parts that did work were Alfred Doolittle's two extended speeches about the undeserving poor and about middle class morality, and that's perhaps because they were played almost straight. I came away thinking that if they didn't have any faith in the play as written then they should have just put on My Fair Lady and had done with it. Mind you, I had spent most of the performance fervently wishing that they would burst into song.
