5.5 plays by Shakespeare

When B. and I went to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in March, only one of their five Shakespeare plays of the season had yet opened; we filled our card with other material. But that one Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, was outstanding, and its excellent Sir Andrew, and last year's truly great Benedick, Danforth Comins, was to star in Hamlet this summer. I had to see what he would make of the Dane, so I returned a week ago to catch all five of the Shakespeares in three days.

Comins was good, but I would not call this an outstanding Hamlet. He played an anxious, nervous Prince, more notable for his body language than his speech. The show otherwise lacked much pitch or tension, a problem facilitated by a profoundly wooden Claudius. (He stood up at the murder of Gonzago, but any emotional reaction to it had to be guessed at.) The production's most unusual feature was that Hamlet never speaks his most famous line. He came on stage, stuck a microphone - this was a semi-modern production that occasionally used them for emphasis - into the face of an audience member, and coaxed her into saying "To be or not to be." (I'd like to see her blog post: "I played Hamlet at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.") Then he took the mike back and continued the speech. This was funny, but pure gimmick, contributing nothing to the art of the work.

Perhaps inspired by the number of Asian-American actors in the cast, the production of The Winter's Tale featured a Sicily set in Han Dynasty China and a Bohemia modeled on, if anything, the Patchwork Girl of Oz. As with The Tempest, the plot largely consists of people sitting around talking about what they're going to do later. A good production of either consists of disguising this. By that standard this was not a good production, though it had some fine performances, particularly by Cristofer Jean and Miriam Laube as Camillo and Paulina, the two most long-suffering of a large cast of long-suffering courtiers.

Twelfth Night was still great the second time, even with a lately-cast understudy playing Orsino. Also great was Richard II, a play I tend to consider wordy and overstuffed, but not this time. Christopher Liam Moore, playing Richard, is short with a high voice. These aided in a portrayal of the king as fussy, pompous, and out of his depth. In the Flint Castle confrontation, he was dwarfed by a huge cape that literally spread across the stage. But after Richard's fall, Moore deployed a powerful inner strength that gave sympathy to the character and made his fate moving. The rest of the cast was also consistently terrific, especially Tony DeBruno as Uncle York.

Timon of Athens was carried by the big, bold Anthony Heald as Timon and the smaller, wiry Vilma Silva (yes, a woman) as Apemantus. Their scene of dueling curmudgeons near the end was a terrifically hot rendition of one of Shakespeare's least-known gems.

But! I stayed on for an extra day, so that the day after I saw Timon I could catch a special one-off performance of a staged reading of Kenneth Cavander's translation of the play into modern English. That's the .5, because it's only half Shakespeare. You've heard of this project to update all of Shakespeare: it's been denounced widely for its sacrilege. The idea is that Shakespeare's language is now too antique for the average audience to fully comprehend at speed, so why not translate it to a modern form as is done for other languages? And they started with Timon because it doesn't have any famous speeches where you can hear how they mangled the poetry.

Well, I bought the text of the updated Timon, and they did mangle the poetry. Contrary to the claim, the rhythm is often altered or ignored. However, it's not dumbed down, and the line-by-line translation preserved the particular ornate floweriness that's Shakespeare's most distinctive quality. It read well in the actors' hands, and I confess: not knowing Timon well, there were some critical plot points that I missed in the original-text production that were entirely clear in the modern-text version. Plot, structure, and the feel of the large-scale flow were unchanged, but it was as if the play's windshield had been thoroughly wiped down.

The entirely different cast did make for a different feel in other respects, especially in its much more stolid Timon, read by Jeffrey King, who had stared imperturbably as Bolingbroke at the king in R2. But that didn't affect the experiment. Purists may mourn my defection, but I'd be willing to try another of these.

visit

I did not watch the debate last night. My one-liner on that is that I have never been fond of horror movies. "The Lady and the Buzzsaw" is not an appealing title.

Instead, I spent part of the day in Portland, visiting my ailing friend and her equally friendly husband. Many of you will know who they are. We conversed, insofar as that was practical, listened to Tchaikovsky (she had once expressed unsatisfied curiosity about what's going on in his Serenade; well, I can help with that), and had takeout tacos for dinner. I am very glad I saw them, and hope I contributed a little cheer and variety to their day.

As for why I was in Oregon at all, that is another story for a later post.

an artistic day

The reason it was such trouble for me to arrive at the 7:30 PM Brahms program at Stanford last Saturday was because I'd been up in San Francisco reviewing a string quartet concert that had begun at 4. Despite consisting of four Haydn and Mozart quartets, the performers managed to get it in at just under two hours, mostly by cutting repeats ruthlessly. One of the performers had buttonholed me before the concert started to alert me to this, and to explain that the length of the concert had alarmed them too when they were preparing it. Here's the review. Despite my recent experience hearing ten Haydn quartets at the Banff festival, neither of this concert's works were among them: not too surprising, considering that he wrote over 60 of them. As for Mozart, not a note of him had been heard all week at Banff, one of two indispensable string quartet composers of whom that was true (the other was Shostakovich; some might add Elliott Carter to that number, but I wouldn't).

So, having carefully located a street parking space near the church venue for the concert, I hopped it directly down to Stanford as soon as it ended, and found a space down there in only the third lot I tried.

Ironically, the same string quartet concert was being repeated in Palo Alto on Sunday afternoon, which would have made more sense for me except that that was when B. and I were at City of Angels, having already changed the date from the one on our series ticket which we can't make because of another random concatenation of events. And thus our lives consist of assembling jigsaw puzzle pieces.

A lucky puzzle-piece find occurred when I realized that, since the concert in San Francisco began at 4, that would leave me time to attend the first showing of the afternoon of Ron Howard's documentary on the Beatles' touring years, which was playing half a mile down the street at the Sundance Kabuki Cinema (yes, that's its name) in Japantown, the closest to me it was appearing, but farther than I'd want to make a trip just for. Illuminating movie, with lots of film clips I didn't even imagine existing, like of the Beatles cavorting in their hotel rooms, and plenty of interviews - recent ones with Paul and Ringo, archived clips of John and George - reminiscing, describing how exciting they found Beatlemania at first, and how tiring it had become four years later. And every time the band is shown playing, it's of a different incredibly classic song. There's even a comparison, by a musicologist, of their creativity with that of Mozart and Schubert, which put me in a good mood for the live music to come.

As I walked through Japantown towards the theater, it occurred belatedly to me that, with a little preliminary research I might have found a restaurant there suitable for lunch - Japanese food and I require considerable negotiation before we can come to an accommodation - but I hadn't; I'd started off with a visit to the deli another mile away.

musical theatre review

To South Bay Musical Theatre this afternoon for Cy Coleman's City of Angels, a show I knew nothing about, but we subscribed this year and it's on the season. It's about a 1940s Hollywood screenwriter who's writing a film noir, which is taking place on the other half of the stage as he writes it, its actors lit by a sickly green light so their skin looks as black-and-white as their clothing is. The show becomes something of a fantasy when the P.I. protagonist of the film starts arguing with his creator, shades of Asimov's "Author, Author" (and, actually, a number of other stories).

It's probably not that great a show, though the book is by Larry Gelbart which meant at least that the story wasn't boring, but the music was not all that much to my taste. A number of the songs in the film scenes are diegetic and partake of the pop song style of that time, which I really don't care for. The best number by far was "You Can Always Count On Me," a song that echoes some of the bawdy swing of "Big Spender," which is almost the only other Coleman song I know. This mourn of the lovelorn woman was belted out energetically and on-pitch by Glenna Murillo, who gave the same pizzazz to the rather similar role of Marie in Fiorello! here a few years ago. I also enjoyed "All You Have To Do Is Wait," sung by a Hispanic police detective in the film, while at the morgue investigating a murder, in a lively quasi-Hispanic style while doctors, cops, and reporters dance flamboyantly behind him. The incongruity of this was the funniest thing in the show.

The acting ranged up the scale to adequate; so did the singing. The actor playing the P.I. looked like Nicolas Cage and talked like a low-rent Bogart. The orchestra was too large and too loud for the small venue. The question I would like to ask the choreographer is, "Had jazz hands been invented in the 1940s?"

not educational

I went to some trouble - to be described later - to arrive at Stanford this evening in time for the Brahms program. Advertised as free, it drew a tremendous crowd. The St. Michael Trio, plus additions, played pretty good performances of individual movements from various Brahms chamber pieces, interweaved with an educational lecture by their pianist about Brahms, his life and his music.

Now, it is possible to talk or write about music at a level understandable and interpretable by a lay audience while respecting the integrity and the complexity of the music. Robert Winter, in his old Voyager CD-ROM on Beethoven's Ninth, did it. Rob Kapilow, who gives traveling musically-illustrated lectures on individual works under the rubric "What Makes It Great?", does it, at least in the Vivaldi session that I heard some years ago.

That's one way of doing it. The other way is to dumb it down, to oversimplify and trivialize the music, the composer, and the intelligence of your audience. That's what we heard tonight.

One time I saw red during the lecture was when he "simplified" sonata form down to a level so trivial and meaningless as to make it unintelligible why anyone would bother to write in such a form, let alone Brahms who supposedly raised it to a peak in his Piano Quintet (the opening movement of which they then proceeded to play). So definitive was this work, the man said, that no great piano quintets have been written since. Bang goes Cesar Franck, then, along with Edward Elgar (who'd been earlier quoted praising Brahms' work), and Shostakovich, along with Arensky, Dohnanyi, Bloch, Schnittke ...

Another time I saw red was when he explained Brahms' unpopularity among some people by saying he was pessimistic. Besides trivializing some deeply-felt aversions on the part of people whose opinions deserve respect (Stravinsky, Britten), he contrasted Brahms in this respect with Mozart, whom he described as a composer of cheerful, lighthearted music. (And every time he mentioned Mozart in this context, he played one appropriate snatch of music.)

But it's also trivializing to characterize Mozart this way. Mozart, the author of some of the darkest, most dramatic and even harrowing music in the repertoire, like this and this and this (which I've linked to before) and (remember the opening scene in Amadeus, with the old Salieri screaming Mozart's name in delirium, and the dark, stormy music playing over it? That was) this? Cheerful and lighthearted? You don't know Mozart.

There was a lot more, including the expected tired interpretation of Brahms writing his subsequent music in the throes of unrequited passion for Clara Schumann. (And not even a word about Agathe von Siebold, whose name he actually encoded in his music.) I'd expected to enjoy an evening of Brahms, but I left ready to swear out an arrest warrant for crimes against musical education.

concert preview

I'll have to miss Redwood Symphony's production of Brecht and Weill's The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny next week. I'm not sure if that's a misfortune or a narrow escape. Brecht and Weill are brilliant, caustic artists, and I've never seen this show; but even The Threepenny Opera is a little too Weimarish for me, and this one seems more so.

So I made it up to Redwood by putting the concert as the forefront centerpiece of my upcoming season roundup for the Daily Journal today. Like most of these roundups, this is a workaday article whose virtues should be measured by how much information I was able to cram in to a limited space.

concert review: San Francisco Symphony

MTT conducted 3 symphonies in C. (But not Stravinsky's.)

For Haydn, C Major meant "bring out the trumpets and drums," and that's what his rather military Symphony No. 69 is like. It sounded to me like an inferior remake of his more exciting Symphony No. 48. (Listen to the opening bars of the first movement of each, and you'll hear what I mean.) But the performance was very Haydnesque.

Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 is actually in C Minor, and doesn't get to C Major until the finale. This famous work is a hard and craggy masterpiece, so I was struck at the smooth fluidity of this fine and vivid performance.

Sibelius' Symphony No. 3 is totally different from these, being rather quiet and reflective. Another inspiring and beautiful, if rather over-fast, performance of perhaps Sibelius' most obscure symphony, but my favorite of his. The Maazel recording of the slow movement, with its mournful falling theme, was my comfort music for melancholy moods when I was in college. It was great to hear the piece live again, perhaps only the third time I've ever had the pleasure.

The SF Opera, which is right across the street from the Symphony, is now running a free shuttle bus from the BART station three long blocks away. The Symphony has signed up also, insofar as the buses also leave (though from in front of the Opera House) when the Symphony lets out as well as when the Opera lets out. With my walking what it is these days, I was grateful for the lift.

Philip K. Dick under the stethoscope

The Divine Madness of Philip K. Dick by Kyle Arnold (OUP)

The problem with using any of the pre-made tool kits of literary, artistic, or personal analysis - whether it be Marxism, Freudianism, or any of the more recent inventions - is that you have to pick the right subject. The kit that works well on one subject is completely inapt for another. All I can say after reading this book is that the tool kit of clinical psychology is ideally suited for the study of Philip K. Dick, because damn, is this book ever piercingly insightful.

The author, a practitioner of same in Brooklyn, has closely read both PKD's fiction and all the biographical material about him, and builds his conclusions and surmises, carefully labeled as such, on a firm basis of knowledge. The book proceeds generally through PKD's life, stopping to examine stories and novels where they're relevant to the biography, not necessarily when PKD wrote them, and expending entire chapters on points of special psychological interest, in particular the death of PKD's infant twin sister (which haunted him all his life) and the mysterious burglary of his house in 1971 (Arnold inclines towards the view, expressed also by others, that PKD trashed his own stuff in an amphetamine haze and then forgot he'd done it). And, of course, the visionary pink light he received in 1974. Arnold, a specialist in delusions and psychosis, makes a strong argument that PKD's lifelong amphetamine use, starting with childhood medications, was responsible for most of the weirdness; but shrewdly he points out that even if the specifics were delusionary they contained genuine, often metaphorical, insights into reality.

The wit, imagination, and acumen of this book are nicely summed up in a paragraph in which Arnold imagines what it would be like to be PKD's therapist:

Dick attended psychotherapy sessions religiously and says that they were helpful. Perhaps his life would have been even more painful without them. Nevertheless, it is hard to count any of Dick's long courses of therapy as successful. Indeed, a psychotherapist working with him would face a nearly insurmountable task. Imagine he walks into your consulting room. If you are a Freudian psychoanalyst, as some of Dick's therapists were, you might ask Dick to free associate. Big mistake. Speaking rapidly, Dick spins out stories about his life that are a mixture of fact and fiction. He free associates to books, theories, and fictional characters, that may or may not be relevant. You try to get clear on what is going on, try to see through the fabrications, but you can't: you are dealing with Philip K. Dick. He is familiar with all of your therapeutic procedures and outsmarts all of them. If you challenge his intellectual defenses, he pretends to agree with you, and presents brilliant pieces of self-analysis that later turn out to be specious. Eventually, you decide that it is fruitless to try to keep up with the racing twists and turns of Dick's intellect, and you fall back on brute force. You start giving Dick orders. Stop smoking dope. Eat better. Stop picking girlfriends that are bad for you. Clean up your apartment. Dick tries to follow your directives, but something is missing. He stops using drugs for a few months, but then buys some from the housekeeper he hired to clean his apartment. He pays lip service to selecting more suitable partners, but keeps ending up in unhealthy relationships. He tells you he has improved his diet, and when you ask for specifics, he says that he is dating a drug addict who cooks fantastic veggie burgers. Does he just not get it? Or is he toying with you? You wonder how serious Dick is about therapy and tell him that it does not seem to be helping him. Despondent, Dick complains that you are one of those people in his life who is going to abandon him. You are trapped. You have become another character in a Philip K. Dick story. Checkmate.

weekend: one concert, one book discussion

Friday I was at the San Francisco Symphony, literally the first regular subscription concert of the season. An all-American program. Soprano Susanna Phillips sang some of Copland's Emily Dickinson settings - deeply art-songy, these, Copland missing a bet by failing to set any of them to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas" - plus two more than obvious Gershwin numbers. For "I Got Rhythm", the singer employed a microphone - explaining into it beforehand "because I'm not Ethel Merman." It provided focus for her rather foggy and indistinct voice, and she should have used it more. Filling out the first half, Copland's Billy the Kid suite, which MTT conducts as if it's an outlier from Copland's earlier modernist period.

Everybody else in my row disappeared at intermission, so they missed the really good part in the second half, which consisted of two heavyweight three-movement works by the most emotionally effective, for me, of all recent composers, Steve Reich. Double Sextet (2007), played by members of the orchestra accompanying Eighth Blackbird, the ensemble for which it was composed, was succeeded by Three Movements (1985) for more conventional full orchestra.

The opening of Double Sextet was raucous, even scratchy, but it settled down as it went along, and the other work was smoother. It seemed to me that Double Sextet was largely an exercise in irregular rhythms that form a more stable pattern as perceived over a larger span of time, while Three Movements was the opposite, consisting of more regular rhythms that form a more irregularly-shaped larger pattern. Or maybe I was hallucinating it. Reich's music tends to send me off into another mental state.

Sunday afternoon our Mythopoeic book discussion group, joined out in a spacious yard by the resident Five Chickens of the Apocalypse, the first time we've had live chickens at a book discussion, tackled Newt's Emerald by Garth Nix. Amazingly, we found things to say about a book which seemed on surface a Regency romance comfort read. The heroine is full of agency, so much so that she repeatedly ignores other characters' pleas to stop exercising it so much at risk of her life. Also, it isn't often that you get to read a light romance novel in which the young, inexperienced heroine gets to (spoiler alert) kill two people. The heroine and hero meet both under disguise as different people, and it takes more than a while to straighten that out. Since Nix is well-enough versed in English history to play with intelligently, adjusting it only insofar as necessary to insert magic into it, and making allusive references to as far back as King Canute, I found it irksome that he's formed an Australian chapter of the American guild of novelists who insist on writing about British nobility while totally and ignorantly bollixing up the nomenclature of same. Others weren't bothered, but I bet we'd never hear the end of it if it were something they knew and cared about.

BISQC quick

Here are links to my individual daily diary entries for the Banff International String Quartet Competition.

Day 1: Recital round, part one

Day 2: Recital round, part two

Day 3: Romantic round

Day 4: interstitial

Day 5: Canadian Commission round

Day 6: Ad Lib round

evaluation of the finalists

Day 7: Finals round and evaluation of the winners