The Debatable Land

Lessons on Taking a Compliment

Yeah, even by writers' standards, John O'Hara could be touchy. Here's Alan Jacobs:

Anyway, when Pal Joey was a big hit on Broadway in 1940 a couple of friends ran into O’Hara at a restaurant and told him, “John, we just saw Pal Joey again and it was even better than the first time!” O’Hara replied, “What the hell was wrong with it the first time?”

Splendid stuff, you'll agree.

Department of Calumny

Patrick Appel, standing in for Andrew while the Boss Man takes a break, has the audacity to nominate Terry Teachout for one of Mr Sullivan's "Poseur Alert Nominee" awards. Yikes! What has the urbane Mr Teachout written to deserve such teasing? Why only this:

"I know how it feels to see the design for the dust jacket of a book that I've written, but that's different: the cover is not the book. An opera, on the other hand, truly exists only in performance, and must be created anew each time it is produced: the score is not the show. As I saw how Hildegard had transformed my libretto into a three-dimensional object, a Biblical phrase popped into my mind: Thus the word was made as flesh."

If one were to fault Mr Teachout - and I do not mean to - one might say that, far from being a poseur or a pseud, he is in danger of merely stating the obvious. Anyone who hasspent any time in the theatre a a director or producer or actor - far less as the author - knows that there's a vast difference between having the words on the page and seeing them performed, in the same way that an actor's performance in rehearsal is a far cry from the real thing. You may know the lines, but they dn't really live (or, on occasion, alas, die) until there's an audience. Equally, for sure, the lines are different each night, even if notionally, they remain the same. In that respect, since the theatre, like the opera, is a living, ever-changeable beast, the word is indeed made as flesh. And remade every night.

Hamilton vs Jefferson?

Is that the future of American foreign policy debate? Noah Millman, super as ever, considers this through a Beckettian lens here. Great stuff.

The Verona Daily Mail

Condensed Shakespeare: nation's tabloids report modern repeat of story of Romeo & Juliet under headline:

KNIFE CRIME TOFF IN PAEDO SUICIDE PACT

Hamlet: the Facebook Folio

Courtesy of Sarah Schmelling at McSweeney's:

Horatio thinks he saw a ghost.

Hamlet thinks it's annoying when your uncle marries your mother right after your dad dies.

The king thinks Hamlet's annoying.

Laertes thinks Ophelia can do better.

Hamlet's father is now a zombie.

- - - -

The king poked the queen.

The queen poked the king back.

Hamlet and the queen are no longer friends.

Marcellus is pretty sure something's rotten around here.

Hamlet became a fan of daggers.

V droll.

[Hat-tip: Ezra Klein]

Prime Hutton

Lovely story told by Simon Hoggart in his Guardian column at the weekend:

The death of Simon Gray lets me reprise a favourite story. He was a close friend of Harold Pinter, a great cricket lover. Once Pinter wrote a poem about his hero Len Hutton. It read, in its entirety "I saw Hutton in his prime / Another time, another time." He sent it to several of his friends.

Soon afterwards Pinter and Gray were at the same dinner party and Pinter asked what he thought of the poem. "I don't know, Harold," said Gray. "I'm afraid I haven't finished it yet."

[Hat-tip: Stephen Pollard]

Simon Gray, RIP

Sad news. Simon Gray, the playwright and memoirist, has died. Just last month I read the latest, and, I suppose, final installment of The Smoking Diaries, a wonderful, funny, poignant set of memoirs that I recommend without the slightest reservation. More importantly, sad because he was one of my father's oldest friends from Cambridge days way back when. Not many of them left. Booze and tobacco and all that.

Telegraph obituary here. The Guardian's Michael Billington here. And a characteristically good Simon Hattenstone interview here.

Understandably Gray rather disapproved of the notion that his memoirs may outlive his plays, but that's the nature of the respective genres. But I can't think of a better thing to read in what remains of this dismal summer than Simon Gray's diaries. For once the old saw that "you'll laugh, you'll cry..." is apposite.

Blogging Beckett

Noah Millman, one of my favourite bloggers, on Brian Dennehy appearing in Krapp's Last Tape:

It’s a marvelously devastating bit of theater, as Beckett should be.Krapp’s Last Tape is – and should be – a particularly uncomfortable play for a blogger. Here sits a man, a writer, having reached his grand climacteric, looking back on a life devoted to a project of self-creation through self-revelation (and using new technology – the reel-to-reel tape recorder), and consumed with self-disgust at the utter waste of such an effort. The fact that I’m continuing to blog after having seen this play is only more evidence that theater lacks any real power to change one’s life. Which, I think, Beckett would agree with.

Discuss! I like the idea of Beckett as a blogger: all those words, all that cyberspace... All that silence. But then I would say that, wouldn't I?

When Charlie Rose Met Sam Beckett

Filmmaker Andrew Filippone Jr imagines a pseudo-Beckettian edition of The Charlie Rose Show:

Carmen May Seriously Damage Your Health...

Anthony Holden in The Observer:

Carmen is back at Covent Garden for the first time since last summer's Orwellian smoking ban and I'm delighted to report that the Royal Opera has taken not the slightest notice. If there's any opera in which onstage smoking should be mandatory, this is it. Cigarette girls and soldiers alike all puff their heads off during the first act, to the point where the fumes drift gratifyingly into mid-stalls. And, even better, there are none of those ludicrous health-and-safety signs out front, as, for instance, at the Old Vic, to warn us of the perils of entering a smoke-stained auditorium.

Of course in plucky Scotland this production would be shut down by zealous council officials. The smoking ban in Scotland is so absurd that even smoking herbal cigarettes on stage is prohibited, presumably lest this too persuade impressionable audiences to take up the noble habit. Such is life in brave new Scotland.

Consequently there are some plays that it is simply not possible to produce in Scotland anymore, among them Pirandello's sweet-yet-disturbing The Man With the Flower in his Mouth* since smoking is a central, irreplaceable part of this two-hander.

*Especially irritating to me since I appeared in a (successful!) Dublin University Players production of the play. TMWTFIHM was also, incidentally the first drama ever broadcast on television by the BBC.

Mamet reads Friedman: Obviously Can't Write Anymore

Marvellous stuff - to the point of self-parody- from the Guardian's Michael Billington:

I am depressed to read that David Mamet has swung to the right. In an essay for the  Village Voice, Mamet claims he is no longer a "brain-dead liberal" and increasingly espouses a free-market philosophy and social conservatism. As a citizen, Mamet is free to do as he likes. What worries me is the effect on his talent of locking himself into a rigid ideological position.

Surely shome mishtake? You mean the wong ideological position? Indeed so:

I've always seen Mamet as an inordinately complex writer: one whose apparent tough-guy, Hemingway-esque stance conceals a sensitivity to social and sexual issues. But when Mamet talks openly of his admiration for conservatives like Milton Friedman and Paul Johnson, I begin to worry that he may be painting himself into a corner. Already in his last but one play, Romance, seen here* in 2005, there were tell-tale signs of his talent going off the boil.

You have to love that "last but one" don't you? It means his latest play is fine and, sadly for Billington, uncorrupted by Friedman or Hayek...

*Oddly, Billington's own review of Romance says that while the play may not be one of Mamet's finest it reveals another side to the dramatist: "a passionate moral concern with the state of the nation" and that "It was moving to be reminded that American drama, at its best, has always possessed a strong social conscience - and that, well away from the bright lights of Broadway, writers such as Mamet... are keeping alive the tradition of theatre as a vehicle of radical protest."

[Hat-tip Prospect's First Drafts]

Whither the American dramatist?

The New York Times' Ben Brantley says this was a year in which drama reasserted itself on (and off) Broadway. If so then that's a splendid thing. It's notable, though, that just two American plays make his list of the top ten* dramas to have played in New York this past year. No fewer than seven are the work of British and Irish playwrights (with only two of the productions Brantley hails being revivals of, respectively, Pinter and Sherriff).

I draw no broader point from this than to suggest that if five of the best ten dramas presented in New York this year - according to New York's most influential critic** - are contemporary Scottish, Irish or English plays then a) the existence of empty British cathedrals don't seem to have ruined playwrights' ability to fashion successful drama and b) more pressingly: was this just a down year - relatively speaking - for American drama or is there a (doubtless cyclical) shortage of American dramatists right now?

I mean, I'm all for a British (and Irish) invasion but seven out of ten* (even if some were American productions) plays seems to be over-doing it.

Perhaps Terry Teachout will oblige us with his rather more expert thoughts on the matter.

*The tenth being a new production of Cyrano de Bergerac.

Cigarettes aren't merely sublime; they're useful

Now that Hollywood has decreed that smoking in movies is as bad - and in fact perhaps worse - than gratuitous sex and violence, it's not a great surprise that folk are reminiscing about the role smoking has played in the movies. This Slate sideshow doesn't break much new ground - and, lamentably, declares smoking "deplorable - but it's worth watching for the super video clips from the Golden Age of Gold Leaf.

It's worth mentioning, however, in rather more detail than the slideshow does just why smoking and the cinema became inextricably linked. Sure, smoking was a more mainstream activity and, sure, clouds of cigarette smoke look kinds cool in black and white, but there was a practical reason too that goes a little beyond just observing that cigarettes can be useful props: they solve one of the great problems actors face (on stage or screen) - what do you do with your hands? Take this classic Bogart image for instance: it simply won't work as well if he has both hands in his pockets or were his right arm just hanging by his side. The cigarette is vital.

Smoking gives actors something to do with their hands that is a) natural and therefore b) isn't going to get in the way. There are other advantages to tobacco too: want to inject some movement into a scene in which the characters would otherwise just be talking to one another? Have one of them light a cigarette; or have one of them cross the room to fetch their cigarettes or whatever: at a stroke you have natural and purposeful movement that does nothing to distract from or undermine the action.

And then there's sex. Or at least the suggestion of it. Leaving aside the obvious symbolism of it all, smoking provides a practical way for a director to get his characters physically close to one another in a way that a) is natural and unforced and b) made for a close-up. (See Bogart and Bacall below.)

And that's before you even consider the usefulness of cigarettes or pipes to an actor in terms of establishing character, mannerisms, pacing and timing...

Cigarettes  aren't just delicious (and cool) then, they're important artistic tools too. Puff on that next time you find yourself thinking that they just don't make movies the way they used to...

The 42nd's latest triumph

For once the hype proved accurate. Black Watch, which closed its New York run yesterday, is every bit as good as the reviews, advertising and word of mouth had suggested. It goes to Sydney and Wellington next before returning to the US and Toronto next year (I think the next US venue is Norfolk, Virginia). If you're in -  or near - any of those cities, you're in for a treat.

Forget 42nd St, Rush to See the 42nd Highland Regiment

As someone who has, er, fond teenage memories of being barked at by NCOs from the Black Watch during hours of drill on the parade-ground and rather fonder recollections of cricket matches against the regiment, I've been looking forward for months to seeing Gregory Burke's prize-winning play about the regiment's experiences in Iraq during its current run in New York. Today's good news then is that - hurrah! - I snagged one of the two remaining tickets for the shows' final performance on, appropriately enough, Remembrance Sunday.

So it's really just a bonus that the New York reviews have been tremendous. Here's Ben Brantley in the NYT:

“Black Watch,” which was the hit of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe last year and runs through Nov. 11, arrives like a blazing redeemer in the grayness of the current New York theater season, a cause for hope after a surfeit of microwaved revivals and ersatz musicals...

...In the final marching sequence, as the men moved forward and stumbled in shifting patterns, I found to my surprise that I was crying. For this was no anonymous military phalanx. It was an assembly of men who, while moving in synchronicity, were each and every one a distinctive blend of fears and ambitions and confusion.

They were every soldier; they were also irreducibly themselves. This exquisitely sustained double vision makes “Black Watch” one of the most richly human works of art to have emerged from this long-lived war.