I guess I can pass this info on. The rumor is true: an expanded edition of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien will be published later this year. This collection of Tolkien's correspondence with his children, his publishers, his readers, and others has been a vital source for information on his thought and intent since it was first published in 1981, and even more so after it finally got an adequate index some twenty years later, compiled by the indispensable Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull.
The new edition will contain material cut from the original to fit the book down to the size the publishers wanted. I can't wait to see what they had left out.
And it will have a good index.
Kalimac's corner: a journal by DB
Thursday, July 20, 2023
Tuesday, July 18, 2023
it's the movie that's impossible
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part One
Oh ghod, I'm not going to go into my history with this series, but the results are that I didn't like #1-3 but was increasingly pleased with #4-6. The Kashmir sequence at the end of Fallout, #6, is to my mind the ideal movie action run.
So what will they do for an encore? (This is #7.) The answer is, having reached the top, they've now gone over the top and down the other side. It has its virtues: despite its length it's never boring, nor is it frantic and tedious like an Indiana Jones, and they've figured out how to combine an emotionally satisfying conclusion with an open-ended continuation for the next movie.
But it doesn't have the charm and appeal of Fallout or its predecessors, and the problem is not just the uncontrollably gargantuan plot and the literally bloodless villain, but what they've done to the characters. Too many of Tom Cruise's stunts are not breathtaking action scenes, or funny as many of them used to be (the Russian prison breakout? the sticky gloves failing as Cruise climbs the Burj Khalifa?) but just getting pummeled for the sake of getting pummeled. And the rest of the IMF has it worse. In the previous movies they were a real team. A large part of what makes the Kashmir sequence in Fallout is that everyone's important. Tom Cruise's heroics would mean nothing without what Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, and Simon Pegg are doing, even as what they're doing would mean nothing without him. But here? Rhames and Pegg have become disposable secondary sidekicks, and Pegg's frantic episodes have changed from a characteristic into a gimmick. Ferguson's character has tossed away the hard-won status she achieved at the end of the previous movie, and then she's thrown aside in favor of a younger and prettier brunette. The other returning actor is Vanessa Kirby, who used to be a sly amoral operator and is now a kind of absurd comic relief. There isn't even any mention of Michelle Monaghan's character, did you notice that? She used to be the reason for Cruise's character's existence, even as Rhames and Pegg were his inseparable buddies. Now all of that hint of depth in the characterization is gone. When Cruise tells Hayley Atwell, the new brunette, that her life will mean more to him than his own, it doesn't carry any believability because it isn't based on anything.
I want to forget about this movie and deem it uncanonical.
Oh ghod, I'm not going to go into my history with this series, but the results are that I didn't like #1-3 but was increasingly pleased with #4-6. The Kashmir sequence at the end of Fallout, #6, is to my mind the ideal movie action run.
So what will they do for an encore? (This is #7.) The answer is, having reached the top, they've now gone over the top and down the other side. It has its virtues: despite its length it's never boring, nor is it frantic and tedious like an Indiana Jones, and they've figured out how to combine an emotionally satisfying conclusion with an open-ended continuation for the next movie.
But it doesn't have the charm and appeal of Fallout or its predecessors, and the problem is not just the uncontrollably gargantuan plot and the literally bloodless villain, but what they've done to the characters. Too many of Tom Cruise's stunts are not breathtaking action scenes, or funny as many of them used to be (the Russian prison breakout? the sticky gloves failing as Cruise climbs the Burj Khalifa?) but just getting pummeled for the sake of getting pummeled. And the rest of the IMF has it worse. In the previous movies they were a real team. A large part of what makes the Kashmir sequence in Fallout is that everyone's important. Tom Cruise's heroics would mean nothing without what Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, and Simon Pegg are doing, even as what they're doing would mean nothing without him. But here? Rhames and Pegg have become disposable secondary sidekicks, and Pegg's frantic episodes have changed from a characteristic into a gimmick. Ferguson's character has tossed away the hard-won status she achieved at the end of the previous movie, and then she's thrown aside in favor of a younger and prettier brunette. The other returning actor is Vanessa Kirby, who used to be a sly amoral operator and is now a kind of absurd comic relief. There isn't even any mention of Michelle Monaghan's character, did you notice that? She used to be the reason for Cruise's character's existence, even as Rhames and Pegg were his inseparable buddies. Now all of that hint of depth in the characterization is gone. When Cruise tells Hayley Atwell, the new brunette, that her life will mean more to him than his own, it doesn't carry any believability because it isn't based on anything.
I want to forget about this movie and deem it uncanonical.
Friday, July 14, 2023
Charles E. Noad
One of my oldest friends, and the longest-lasting of my British friends, has passed on. Charles was a mainstay of the Tolkien Society, the UK-based organization, and an absolute monument for Tolkien studies for all that he didn't write very much. Besides doing bibliographical work for the TS, his most valuable contribution was as proofreader for most of the posthumous Tolkien volumes, in the History of Middle-earth series and elsewhere. At this his ability to catch glitches was unsurpassed. He could quite literally tell whether a period (the full stop at the end of a sentence) was in italics or not. As a support to Christopher Tolkien, the editor of these volumes, he was more than invaluable.
One piece he did write was an essay "On the Construction of the Silmarillion," which appeared in the festschrift for CT, Tolkien's Legendarium, ed. Flieger & Hostetter. It was a fascinating and well-researched and -argued speculation on what Tolkien would likely have put in The Silmarillion had he ever finished it: a more heterogeneous volume than the one actually published under that title. It immediately preceded my own contribution, and I was pleased to be adjacent to the other contributor whom, at the time, I knew the best.
Charles and I had met on my first trip to Britain, in 1979. That's 44 years ago now: amazing. We had some long talks, at first in a corner of the hotel of the World Science Fiction Convention, and later in London, at pubs and in his flat, which I got to visit for the only time. Even then it was packed with books; what it must have been like 44 years later - he was still at the same place in west London - I can't imagine.
We worked out a treaty, similar to ones he made with several other American Tolkienists in those days when international purchases were difficult to make unaided. He would purchase my annual membership in the Tolkien Society, and I would work off the balance by buying and shipping to him American publications that he wanted: not just Tolkien ones; he had a deep interest in the history of the space program and would seek out rare books and magazines in that area. That interested me also so we'd talk about that too.
He also provided other things to me: one project he undertook during my first visit was to make me photocopies of all of Tolkien's fugitive early published poetry. I still keep those in my files, with his carefully penned bibliographic citations on the backs.
Charles looked dignified, with a neatly trimmed beard, and he was very soft-spoken. It was best to meet with him in a quiet place. One quiet place we sometimes met was the back room where the Inklings met of the Bird and Baby, their pub in Oxford, the first beeline if we were meeting in the town for some event. John Rateliff writes that Charles was the only person he ever bought a beer for, and the same might be true for me.
On some of my last trips to England, just before the pandemic, he organized meetings for me with himself and a few friends at Penderel's Oak, the central London pub where the local Tolkien group often met. I arrived at the first with a padded envelope filled with half a dozen copies of the Newsweek special issue on Tolkien, which I'd picked up at my local grocer's: one for Charles, the rest for him to distribute to other British TS members who might be interested.
The son of a friend came round to take Charles to a hospital visit on Thursday, but found him deceased. Heart attack, probably: Charles had been having heart trouble recently. That's all I know: I'm sure details will be forthcoming, probably on the TS website. A great loss, a great loss.
One piece he did write was an essay "On the Construction of the Silmarillion," which appeared in the festschrift for CT, Tolkien's Legendarium, ed. Flieger & Hostetter. It was a fascinating and well-researched and -argued speculation on what Tolkien would likely have put in The Silmarillion had he ever finished it: a more heterogeneous volume than the one actually published under that title. It immediately preceded my own contribution, and I was pleased to be adjacent to the other contributor whom, at the time, I knew the best.
Charles and I had met on my first trip to Britain, in 1979. That's 44 years ago now: amazing. We had some long talks, at first in a corner of the hotel of the World Science Fiction Convention, and later in London, at pubs and in his flat, which I got to visit for the only time. Even then it was packed with books; what it must have been like 44 years later - he was still at the same place in west London - I can't imagine.
We worked out a treaty, similar to ones he made with several other American Tolkienists in those days when international purchases were difficult to make unaided. He would purchase my annual membership in the Tolkien Society, and I would work off the balance by buying and shipping to him American publications that he wanted: not just Tolkien ones; he had a deep interest in the history of the space program and would seek out rare books and magazines in that area. That interested me also so we'd talk about that too.
He also provided other things to me: one project he undertook during my first visit was to make me photocopies of all of Tolkien's fugitive early published poetry. I still keep those in my files, with his carefully penned bibliographic citations on the backs.
Charles looked dignified, with a neatly trimmed beard, and he was very soft-spoken. It was best to meet with him in a quiet place. One quiet place we sometimes met was the back room where the Inklings met of the Bird and Baby, their pub in Oxford, the first beeline if we were meeting in the town for some event. John Rateliff writes that Charles was the only person he ever bought a beer for, and the same might be true for me.
On some of my last trips to England, just before the pandemic, he organized meetings for me with himself and a few friends at Penderel's Oak, the central London pub where the local Tolkien group often met. I arrived at the first with a padded envelope filled with half a dozen copies of the Newsweek special issue on Tolkien, which I'd picked up at my local grocer's: one for Charles, the rest for him to distribute to other British TS members who might be interested.
The son of a friend came round to take Charles to a hospital visit on Thursday, but found him deceased. Heart attack, probably: Charles had been having heart trouble recently. That's all I know: I'm sure details will be forthcoming, probably on the TS website. A great loss, a great loss.
Tuesday, July 11, 2023
saved by the
A few weeks ago an old crown on one of my teeth broke, and when I went in to the dentist I reported on an episode of extreme temperature sensitivity I'd had on the other side of my mouth for a couple of days. The dentist poked around over there and thought I'd need a root canal job. I was given a referral to an endodontist who, I only found out by accident later, had moved to a different office than the one listed on the referral. (The phone number was the same, and they didn't mention the move when I phoned.)
I made the appointment for after the new permanent crown would be secured and in use for a bit, because not being able to chew on both sides of my mouth at the same time is beyond my skill set. Fortunately the temperature sensitivity didn't recur. Unfortunately, the endodontist's new office is right by where I had my auto accident a few years ago, a spot I'd been trying to avoid ever since.
So it was this morning that I went in. The good news is that the endodontist ran some more detailed tests on my tooth sensitivity, and reported that I didn't need a root canal job after all, at least for now. However, I did have to pay for the exam.
I made the appointment for after the new permanent crown would be secured and in use for a bit, because not being able to chew on both sides of my mouth at the same time is beyond my skill set. Fortunately the temperature sensitivity didn't recur. Unfortunately, the endodontist's new office is right by where I had my auto accident a few years ago, a spot I'd been trying to avoid ever since.
So it was this morning that I went in. The good news is that the endodontist ran some more detailed tests on my tooth sensitivity, and reported that I didn't need a root canal job after all, at least for now. However, I did have to pay for the exam.
Monday, July 10, 2023
there to meet with the Scottish play
Our four-person play reading group has returned to Shakespeare to do Macbeth because one of our number was thirsting to read the title role. That's OK: I'm waiting for us to get back to the history play cycle because next up is the role I want, Richard III. Villains are the best. (My first ever Shakespeare reading experience was as Cassius.)
We read the first half, up through the assassination of Banquo. Even half of this play seems to be more full of immortal lines than any other Shakespeare except Hamlet. It has such lines as:
And there's Mackers' famous speeches, which in this half include the ones that begin "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well / It were done quickly" and "Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?"
There's the famous book and movie titles, like Steinbeck (The Moon Is Down), Fritz Leiber (Night's Black Agents), and Star Trek ("Dagger of the Mind"). Our mystery-reader noted that there are a lot of mystery titles also.
And of course one shouldn't forget the old New York Magazine contest which asked readers to create a quotidian piece of literature like a weather report in the style of a famous author, and one brilliant submission was a Shakespearean weather report:
We read the first half, up through the assassination of Banquo. Even half of this play seems to be more full of immortal lines than any other Shakespeare except Hamlet. It has such lines as:
Fair is foul, and foul is fairPlenty more coming in half two.
Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it*
*Bet you don't remember that's from Macbeth! Without checking, now: who is it referring to, and who says it?
The milk of human kindness
The be-all and the end-all
Screw your courage to the sticking-place
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care
In the catalogue ye go for men
We have scotch'd the snake, not kill'd it
And there's Mackers' famous speeches, which in this half include the ones that begin "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well / It were done quickly" and "Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?"
There's the famous book and movie titles, like Steinbeck (The Moon Is Down), Fritz Leiber (Night's Black Agents), and Star Trek ("Dagger of the Mind"). Our mystery-reader noted that there are a lot of mystery titles also.
And of course one shouldn't forget the old New York Magazine contest which asked readers to create a quotidian piece of literature like a weather report in the style of a famous author, and one brilliant submission was a Shakespearean weather report:
FIRST WITCH. Hail!
SECOND WITCH. Hail!
THIRD WITCH. Hail!
Sunday, July 9, 2023
Debby Jones
I want to mark the passing of another figure from my corner of the fannish universe. Debby was from St. Paul, MN, and in fandom was primarily a costumer. She participated in CostumeCon and ran the costume presentation at her local convention, Minicon. I knew her because she occasionally showed up at Mythcon, usually in costume collaboration with her friend Ellie Farrell, a more regular Mythcon figure and a Bay Area resident. When Mythcon came to the Twin Cities in 1993, Debby ran costumes there too.
But Debby most deserves to be remembered in Mythcon circles as the co-founder of the Not-Ready-for-Mythcon-Players. Ellie told the story ...
Anyway, so that little Bellairs presentation is a particularly fond memory. Debby died Saturday evening after a long battle with brain cancer.
Deborah Katherine (Vleck) Jones, 1948-2023
But Debby most deserves to be remembered in Mythcon circles as the co-founder of the Not-Ready-for-Mythcon-Players. Ellie told the story ...
The 1987 Mythopoeic Conference at Marquette University in Milwaukee was honored to have not only Christopher Tolkien but also John Bellairs as Guests of Honor. A fantasist whose delightful wit is mostly known from a series of young adult novels, Bellairs had also written a couple of bizarrely hilarious but hard-to-find pieces, such as St. Fidgeta and Other Parodies and The Pedant and the Shuffly. Debby Jones and I decided to stage a condensed version of the latter as a masquerade entry, to introduce the story to more people. In this tale, an unpleasant wizard (the Pedant) changes people he doesn't like into creatures called "Flimsies" -- which look like dinner napkins soiled with gravy and cranberry sauce. Not having such condiments available in the Marquette cafeteria, we covered Eric Rauscher and Sherwood Smith with sheets coated with chocolate sauce and cherry jam, and put on our little play. Bellairs professed himself charmed, and gave me his permission to distribute xerox copies of his story.Which the Mythopoeic Press later re-published. I'd been the narrator who read Ellie and Debby's summary of The Pedant and the Shuffly aloud as they and Eric and Sherwood enacted it on stage. This little sketch gave rise to a tradition of a skit guying the works of the Guest of Honor at each Mythcon, and I still read the narrations.
Anyway, so that little Bellairs presentation is a particularly fond memory. Debby died Saturday evening after a long battle with brain cancer.
Deborah Katherine (Vleck) Jones, 1948-2023
Thursday, July 6, 2023
mindfk
Well, it turns out that the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has been playing games with its members in terms of the information they gave. Today I received an announcement, signed by the chair of the board, that a new artistic director will be taking office in September. So what happened to the old artistic director? Not a word about her departure. Turns out, I find from searching theater news articles, that she resigned two months ago, taking effect before the summer season started. Again, not a word about this came in e-mails from OSF, even as they were sending fund-raising e-mails and announcements about the new season, and an introductory e-mail from another officer who had just joined; and the playbills for the shows we attended last week - even the ones that didn't open until after the resignation took effect - still had a greeting note from the artistic director they didn't say had resigned.
I feel rather scrod over by this.
And why did she resign? Apparently because of the death threats she'd been receiving from those unreasonably upset at her moves to make the festival more diverse. I'd known about the threats a while ago - but again from news sources, not from the festival, which said nothing more than they'd expanded their security staff, they didn't say why.
And the new artistic director? His name is Tim Bond, and he worked for OSF in the '90s and '00s. He's Black, like his predecessor, so I don't expect much change in direction. I had to scour the production history to find out what he'd directed when he was here before. That was a period I wasn't attending OSF very often, and don't have any records of what I saw. Mostly he directed plays of Black interest which I probably didn't see, though he also directed an outdoor theater production of Twelfth Night which I probably didn't see either. Probably next season will have to be chosen by the interim staff before he takes office, so there may be a transition period.
But I really don't like having been kept uninformed like this, and thus writing a review of the season's plays in ignorance that the artistic director I was crediting for it had already both resigned and left.
I feel rather scrod over by this.
And why did she resign? Apparently because of the death threats she'd been receiving from those unreasonably upset at her moves to make the festival more diverse. I'd known about the threats a while ago - but again from news sources, not from the festival, which said nothing more than they'd expanded their security staff, they didn't say why.
And the new artistic director? His name is Tim Bond, and he worked for OSF in the '90s and '00s. He's Black, like his predecessor, so I don't expect much change in direction. I had to scour the production history to find out what he'd directed when he was here before. That was a period I wasn't attending OSF very often, and don't have any records of what I saw. Mostly he directed plays of Black interest which I probably didn't see, though he also directed an outdoor theater production of Twelfth Night which I probably didn't see either. Probably next season will have to be chosen by the interim staff before he takes office, so there may be a transition period.
But I really don't like having been kept uninformed like this, and thus writing a review of the season's plays in ignorance that the artistic director I was crediting for it had already both resigned and left.
Wednesday, July 5, 2023
reincarnations
The most-recurring topic of conversation at Tuesday's Independence Day/anniversary party was the new Indiana Jones movie, in which I have no interest, having found the first movie terminally dull and not having seen any of its successors, none of which claimed to surpass it anyway. One said he'd name Raiders as his favorite action movie: defining that category narrowly (i.e. not just a movie with action in it), I'd name the latest Mission Impossible movie, which I thought did a fabulous job with the action. It's about to be succeeded by a later one, so we'll see how that does.
Aside from the plays, about which I already wrote, the trip to Ashland for the Shakespeare Festival was mostly uneventful. Temperatures were in the 90s, but not too broiling, and the power didn't go out as it did one broiling June a few years back. The exciting part was on the freeway coming up seeing an electronic sign display saying that the freeway was closed some miles ahead. Listening to the emergency radio service (which is AM: what happens when that option disappears from cars?) and inquiries to the service workers when we stopped at a rest area revealed that a tanker with liquid nitrogen had overturned and blocked all the lanes.
I'd stopped to look at the AAA area map I'd brought along just in case something like this happened. Fortunately it was in an area where alternative roads were plenty. I turned off the freeway when the congestion started to hit and threaded my way through suburbs and countryside for a few miles until I was sure I was past the affected zone. Timing was tight because we had a later-than-desirable start and a dinner reservation at our favorite local restaurant, but we made it without trouble.
Someone dented our parked car in the theater garage, and was kind enough to leave a note. So I've had to go through the business of phoning them, getting the information, then dealing with the insurance company and the body shop, far more work than, in my opinion, a small dent is worth. To me a car is a machine to get you places, and as long as it's working right, who cares if there's a small dent? But the world doesn't like that attitude, and I'm expected to go through all this rigamarole.
Thing learned this year: the online list of closed rest areas that's good on Wednesday will be entirely obsolete by Saturday when you come back, so best look it up again.
Aside from the plays, about which I already wrote, the trip to Ashland for the Shakespeare Festival was mostly uneventful. Temperatures were in the 90s, but not too broiling, and the power didn't go out as it did one broiling June a few years back. The exciting part was on the freeway coming up seeing an electronic sign display saying that the freeway was closed some miles ahead. Listening to the emergency radio service (which is AM: what happens when that option disappears from cars?) and inquiries to the service workers when we stopped at a rest area revealed that a tanker with liquid nitrogen had overturned and blocked all the lanes.
I'd stopped to look at the AAA area map I'd brought along just in case something like this happened. Fortunately it was in an area where alternative roads were plenty. I turned off the freeway when the congestion started to hit and threaded my way through suburbs and countryside for a few miles until I was sure I was past the affected zone. Timing was tight because we had a later-than-desirable start and a dinner reservation at our favorite local restaurant, but we made it without trouble.
Someone dented our parked car in the theater garage, and was kind enough to leave a note. So I've had to go through the business of phoning them, getting the information, then dealing with the insurance company and the body shop, far more work than, in my opinion, a small dent is worth. To me a car is a machine to get you places, and as long as it's working right, who cares if there's a small dent? But the world doesn't like that attitude, and I'm expected to go through all this rigamarole.
Thing learned this year: the online list of closed rest areas that's good on Wednesday will be entirely obsolete by Saturday when you come back, so best look it up again.
Sunday, July 2, 2023
unlucky Jim
This will only be funny if you've read Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, but I thought it plenty amusing. It's from a novel called The Runes Have Been Cast by Robert Irwin, which I was reading for my "Inklings in fiction" bibliography: Tolkien makes a cameo appearance, and other Inklings are mentioned.
Anyway, this is a conversation between an English and a History don - shouldn't be hard to figure which is which - at a provincial university in the UK, circa 1962.
Anyway, this is a conversation between an English and a History don - shouldn't be hard to figure which is which - at a provincial university in the UK, circa 1962.
Quentin pointed to a novel that was in Jaimie's other hand. It was called Lucky Jim and it was by a man called Kingsley Amis.
'What did you make of it?' asked Quentin. 'I read it a few weeks ago and I was quite shocked by it.'
'I am only halfway through it and so far I haven't been shocked by anything in it. What is so shocking?'
'No, I suppose not shocking, just terribly sad and the title so misleading. It is called Lucky Jim but perhaps that is intended to be ironic, for the Jim character had started work on what might well have been a brilliant thesis. Let me see ...' He started riffling the pages. 'Yes, here it is, The Economic Influence of the Development of Shipbuilding Techniques, 1450 to 1485. Most promising, and surely a brilliant academic career awaited this Jim, but then the young fool throws it all up. I can see that there are jokes in the book, but the underlying story is really quite tragic. A most promising future thrown over for a woman. It is, like so many novels, something written by a smart Alec who has no respect for academic goals or civilised values.'
Jaimie was looking at Quentin with incredulity. It was as if he had blundered into a conversation with a Martian. But Quentin did not notice and continued, 'The late fifteenth century was an exciting time for shipbuilders. More contacts were developing between mediterranean and northern designers and carpenters. Also open sea navigation was becoming more normal. Maritime trade had expanded considerably and with it the tonnage of the ships, but at the same time shortage of labour enforced certain constraints on the dockyards. By the end of the fifteenth century the rig of a ship proclaimed that its master craftsmen no longer owed anything to the Middle Ages. Jim's chosen period is the age of the gun-carrying ship, a presage of modernity. It is a thrilling subject and this Jim throws it all away for some pints of beer and a few fucks. By the end he is a ruined man - but, I'm sorry, I should not have given the ending away.'
'Not at all," Jaimie was polite. 'You have put the novel in an interesting perspective.'
Saturday, July 1, 2023
Shakespeare and not-Shakespeare
What with pandemics and all, this was the first year that the new(ish) artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has really put her imprint on the productions. Her name is Nataki Garrett, and she's a Black woman from Oakland. She's not the first woman to hold the post, but she is the first Black, and she's putting an urban American Black sensibility on the shows.
Which is fine. I'm not one of those alte kochers who whine about the good old days. In fact, when I heard that some were thus whining, I wrote her a letter saying, roughly, "Ignore them. You do what you do." And I hold by that. What's my business is whether I personally like the results or not. And on the basis of four plays over the last two days, the verdict is ... decidedly mixed.
OSF has been shining for some years now at stage musicals. This year they did Rent. An excellent choice for the current theme - a dozen artistic types of various backgrounds and ethnicities living in a rathole community building in NYC in the 1980s, amid AIDS and drug addiction. (Reminded me of the Ghost Ship in Oakland, and I worried about the building catching on fire.) It was a straightforward production with minimal sets. Everybody acted and sang with tremendous gusto, and it was magnificently done. The only odd point was that the actor playing the leading character of Mark was Black, which dilutes some of the racial tension from the story. It was all new to me - the only song from it I knew was "Seasons of Love" (which I knew only as 'that song whose lyrics begin with a long number') - and due to acoustical congestion from the accompanying band it was hard to make out what anybody was singing (there's very little spoken dialog). I only knew what was going on from having B. explain it all to me beforehand. But thus equipped, I enjoyed it immensely.
But that made Romeo and Juliet redundant and superfluous, even though we saw that first. Garrett directed this, and set it in a 2020s version of the same thing: roughly-housed, homeless, and mentally ill people in contemporary Oakland. The setting had nothing to say that Rent didn't already say better. And, like most overly creative Shakespeare re-settings, it didn't fit well with the play. The specifics of the production didn't help. R&J is an overlong, talkative play, and it wasn't cut nearly enough. Some lines were altered to cope with anachronisms, but just as many weren't, and the problem of Friar Laurence's message to Romeo not getting through in a universe with smartphones in it was not addressed. The cast performed with sincerity and the leads spoke their lines well, but they were fighting against the production and it just mostly didn't work, exceptions noted below. If you want to set a classic work in a raw contemporary setting, it's best to toss the text and put the theme and plot in a new work. Like turning La Bohème into Rent. Or, for that matter, turning Romeo and Juliet into West Side Story.
But it still has to be adapted well, and lack of that is what sank the new adaptation of The Three Musketeers. Dumas was quarter-Black, right? So why not make a Black version of his most famous novel? It was a good notion, but the execution was disastrous. It started with a cat (Jamyl Dobson) who claimed to be Dumas, but didn't look or behave anything like a simulacrum of the real thing, rapping out an introduction in a manner suggesting he'd seen Hamilton too many times. The storyline was presented faithfully to the book in the original setting, but the dialog was written down in a way implying that to be Black means to be a downmarket media caricature of 2020s American urban Blacks. Everybody calls each other muthafuggas all the time (and this in a show marketed to children!), and it just sucked the big one. It was so bad, we walked out before intermission.
It didn't have to be like this, and interestingly R&J, problematic as it was, showed a better method. Newcomer Jada Alston Owens, the best actor in the cast, gave a serious modern Black ethnic accent to Juliet's most famous lines, which worked strikingly well, and Mercutio (understudy Amelio Garcia) rapped out the Queen Mab speech to a found-percussion beat, which was brilliant. But the words were Shakespeare's.
The last item on our bill was another Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, and this worked better because the adaptation was applied with a lighter touch. It was filled with early 20th century popular music of a variety of genres, but this didn't turn it into a musical like OSF's last Merry Wives. Feste sang in the adopted styles, but Feste is supposed to sing, and the music was otherwise restricted to snatches at scene-changes. It added liveliness to what was mostly a pretty dull performance, apart from Jaysen Wright as an unusually energetic Sebastian, and Al Espinosa (who was Orsino in the last production of this we saw) absolutely brilliant as a Malvolio of toweringly regal self-regard, which he kept up even in the scenes of the character's degradation.
One A, one B-, one D, and one F; last year was an A and a D. That's not a very good GPA. I've given up on OSF before when it entered slack periods, and we'll be giving thought about whether to go next year at all.
Which is fine. I'm not one of those alte kochers who whine about the good old days. In fact, when I heard that some were thus whining, I wrote her a letter saying, roughly, "Ignore them. You do what you do." And I hold by that. What's my business is whether I personally like the results or not. And on the basis of four plays over the last two days, the verdict is ... decidedly mixed.
OSF has been shining for some years now at stage musicals. This year they did Rent. An excellent choice for the current theme - a dozen artistic types of various backgrounds and ethnicities living in a rathole community building in NYC in the 1980s, amid AIDS and drug addiction. (Reminded me of the Ghost Ship in Oakland, and I worried about the building catching on fire.) It was a straightforward production with minimal sets. Everybody acted and sang with tremendous gusto, and it was magnificently done. The only odd point was that the actor playing the leading character of Mark was Black, which dilutes some of the racial tension from the story. It was all new to me - the only song from it I knew was "Seasons of Love" (which I knew only as 'that song whose lyrics begin with a long number') - and due to acoustical congestion from the accompanying band it was hard to make out what anybody was singing (there's very little spoken dialog). I only knew what was going on from having B. explain it all to me beforehand. But thus equipped, I enjoyed it immensely.
But that made Romeo and Juliet redundant and superfluous, even though we saw that first. Garrett directed this, and set it in a 2020s version of the same thing: roughly-housed, homeless, and mentally ill people in contemporary Oakland. The setting had nothing to say that Rent didn't already say better. And, like most overly creative Shakespeare re-settings, it didn't fit well with the play. The specifics of the production didn't help. R&J is an overlong, talkative play, and it wasn't cut nearly enough. Some lines were altered to cope with anachronisms, but just as many weren't, and the problem of Friar Laurence's message to Romeo not getting through in a universe with smartphones in it was not addressed. The cast performed with sincerity and the leads spoke their lines well, but they were fighting against the production and it just mostly didn't work, exceptions noted below. If you want to set a classic work in a raw contemporary setting, it's best to toss the text and put the theme and plot in a new work. Like turning La Bohème into Rent. Or, for that matter, turning Romeo and Juliet into West Side Story.
But it still has to be adapted well, and lack of that is what sank the new adaptation of The Three Musketeers. Dumas was quarter-Black, right? So why not make a Black version of his most famous novel? It was a good notion, but the execution was disastrous. It started with a cat (Jamyl Dobson) who claimed to be Dumas, but didn't look or behave anything like a simulacrum of the real thing, rapping out an introduction in a manner suggesting he'd seen Hamilton too many times. The storyline was presented faithfully to the book in the original setting, but the dialog was written down in a way implying that to be Black means to be a downmarket media caricature of 2020s American urban Blacks. Everybody calls each other muthafuggas all the time (and this in a show marketed to children!), and it just sucked the big one. It was so bad, we walked out before intermission.
It didn't have to be like this, and interestingly R&J, problematic as it was, showed a better method. Newcomer Jada Alston Owens, the best actor in the cast, gave a serious modern Black ethnic accent to Juliet's most famous lines, which worked strikingly well, and Mercutio (understudy Amelio Garcia) rapped out the Queen Mab speech to a found-percussion beat, which was brilliant. But the words were Shakespeare's.
The last item on our bill was another Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, and this worked better because the adaptation was applied with a lighter touch. It was filled with early 20th century popular music of a variety of genres, but this didn't turn it into a musical like OSF's last Merry Wives. Feste sang in the adopted styles, but Feste is supposed to sing, and the music was otherwise restricted to snatches at scene-changes. It added liveliness to what was mostly a pretty dull performance, apart from Jaysen Wright as an unusually energetic Sebastian, and Al Espinosa (who was Orsino in the last production of this we saw) absolutely brilliant as a Malvolio of toweringly regal self-regard, which he kept up even in the scenes of the character's degradation.
One A, one B-, one D, and one F; last year was an A and a D. That's not a very good GPA. I've given up on OSF before when it entered slack periods, and we'll be giving thought about whether to go next year at all.
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