Italics are mine

Stella Adler on Ibsen

If you care about good theater and in particular wonder what separates good actors from the rest, you really only need the books by William Esper teaching the Meisner technique, which I wrote about here, and the books by Stella Adler, whether on craft or on playwrights. Most recently I got Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg and Chekhov, and I was stunned by the quality of her insights into Ibsen and Chekhov (I'm sure she gives an outstanding an analysis of Strindberg too, but I skipped over that part, having little interest in Miss Julie since I saw a widely overhyped production of it in Paris a few years ago with Juliette Binoche in the title role.) Her key argument is that an actor needs to know the context of the play in order to act his role convincingly, and for Doll's House in particular, Adler made a very convincing argument that Nora faces a bleak future after leaving her husband - she even suggests suicide - and her behavior, which makes the play's ending, had the effect of a bombshell in the nineteenth century. (She also has piercing insights into the supporting characters, but you'll have to read her essay to learn about that.)

I saw Doll's House at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) a few years ago and I very much enjoyed the performance, especially the rotating set that allowed the house to turn and show the audience different rooms where characters are presented behind closed doors, which reminded me of the Metropolitan Opera and was well-suited to the play. It was a good production. The revolutionary aspect of the play in its time, though, was lost in that Young Vic production, in the sense that the production was competently done but far from earth-shattering, and I say that as someone who did enjoy it. I suppose we have to put the blame on the way Hattie Morahan played the leading role, which seems so different from the way Adler tells us Nora would have behaved in that time period, in that small Norwegian village some distance from Oslo. I tend to side with Adler in everything.

My first introduction to Adler's teachings was through Stella Adler on America's Master Playwrights. She has such depth of insights that one wishes she had been a theater professor at a university so that generations of students had benefited from her knowledge, but in the end she had just as big of an impact on aspiring actors through her acting schools in New York City and Los Angeles, and now on theater lovers through her books, although she died in 1992. 

Anyway, if you ever have to prepare for a role she covers in one of her books, start by reading what she has to say.

Review of "Mothers and sons" by the Uptown Players

I went to see this play by Terrence McNally (of Master Class fame) on a whim, because I was nearby and I had missed the NYC premiere of it 2 years ago with Tyne Daly in the role of the mother. I knew the play was about a mother who arrives unexpectedly to visit the lover of her dead son who died of AIDS 20 years earlier - and finds him married to a 15-year-younger man with a 6-year old son. You can read the review of the 2014 NYC production here.

The play hit closer to home than I had expected because the dead son had been an actor and it is explicitly mentioned in the play that he died at 29 shortly before a cure was found and dying of AIDS is not a pretty thing. It turns out that an actor acquaintance of mine in Paris died of AIDS in the summer of 1996 in his mid-thirties. (There have been a few deaths of people I was close to during my time in Paris, and the people who know me know what I'm talking about. We're all affected by the deaths of people close to us sooner or later and I was affected sooner. This one was neither sudden nor unexpected but it was tough in different ways.)  

I hadn't expected the play to remind me of him as much as it did. But of course the same questions are there: what life didn't he have, what did his friends become? His entire generation was deprived of some amazing artists and thinkers because of that plague. (In the U.S., the names of Alvin Ailey and Robert Mapplethorpe come to mind.) Those were the days where in France obituaries would talk about "deaths after a long illness" as an euphemism for AIDS because that word was taboo but people could read between the lines.  

I remember reading an article in the New York Times along the same lines, on how some people were saved from certain death within days by a dramatically effective treatment found in 1996, although it only made the cells inactive and didn't make them disappear, which opened a whole new range of health issues. And when I looked at the timeline, I thought: it was really a matter of months. Some people lucked out and some didn't. That acquaintance didn't.

The performance was particularly poignant because it was held the Sunday after the shooting in Orlando happened, and many middle-aged gay couples were in attendance - the age of Cal and Andre in the play. And I had to wonder, what friends did they lose, what did they have to go through to be here today? 

The play was spellbinding and made its points without being preachy, in spite of the difficult subject. The quality of the direction, acting and costumes/sets was extremely high. The lines about Dallas got many laughs - I hadn't realized the mother was coming from Dallas and the local color provided some lighthearted moments in a heartrending play. 

It is always tough to lose young people. What makes the AIDS case different is the epidemic that ravaged creative communities in New York City (where Cal and Andre lived) and elsewhere - the then lack of understanding of how the disease spread, the speed of the illness, the lack of a cure (even now there is no cure, only a treatment that makes the cells dormant). Plague is not too strong a word to describe what it was like 20 years ago.

One gets out of the theater feeling for Cal - who doesn't have AIDS, doesn't know who gave AIDS to Andre or who Andre cheated on him with, and who was deprived of the future he had envisioned with the man he loved - Katherine - who lost her only son, holds a number of prejudices about gay men ("he wasn't gay when he left for New York!") and doesn't seem to have an existence of her own - Will - who has had to put up with the ghost of his husband's dead lover for years - and their young son Bud, who ultimately offers Katherine redemption in a way I won't disclose. A far more beautiful play than the quick description of "AIDS tale" would suggest, it is a story about how loved ones continue to haunt the people they have left behind and how they come to terms with the loss. 

Shostakovich and dance

Back in May I saw both the Shostakovich Trilogy at American Ballet Theatre - an all-Ratmansky program on Shostakovich music - and the 21st Century Choreographers II program at New York City Ballet, which ended with Ratmansky's DSCH Concerto again set to music by Shostakovich. The NYCB program also included a new piece by Justin Peck, which was far better than I expected, a new piece by a choreographer whose name I forget and then a new work by Christopher Wheeldon shamelessly capitalizing on the success of An American in Paris via a ballet set to Gershwin's music with Robbie Fairchild in the title role, although Amar Ramasar stole the show. (The sad part was, the Wheeldon ballet played before the last intermission and the Ratmansky program, for which a number of supposedly cultivated New Yorkers didn't stay, having seen the Wheeldon one.) While the works of his competitors had moments of brilliance as well, Ratmansky unquestionably emerged as today's leading choreographer in the difficulty of the moves and the interplay between the music and the dance. He doesn't go for facile or expected choreography.

I did like the DSCH Concerto a bit better than the 3 works he showed at ABT because the ABT Program was darker - I thought it was a pity to only show the tormented side of Shostakovich's music, since he was capable of so much more. DSCH Concerto is set to Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No 2, which, according to the NYCB website itself, "displays the composer's optimistic energy after the repressions of the Stalinist era." It is well-known by now that the 4 notes of the title, D, S, C and H, also spell the beginning of Shostakovich's name in its German spelling. Here is the New York Times review. The ballet deserves every single word of praise Alastair Macaulay heaps on it. And below is a glimpse of the ballet in rehearsal at Pacific Northwest Ballet, posted on PNB's YouTube channel.

Shostakovich Trilogy is set to excerpts of Symphony #9, Chamber Symphony and Piano Concerto #1, and the website of the Metropolitan Opera (where ABT performs when in NYC) quotes the New York Times back at the 2013 premiere as follows: "Fascinating, poetic, enigmatic. Alexei Ratmansky’s Shostakovich Trilogy includes expressions of ebullience, heroism, affection, wit and inspiration." Although I preferred DSCH because it had less soul-crushing angst, the performers of Shostakovich Trilogy were superb. Let me mention in particular Jeffrey Cirio in Chamber Symphony, who recently joined ABT from the Boston Ballet, and Calvin Royal and Gabe Stone Shayer in Piano Concerto #1. Here are excerpts thanks to San Francisco Ballet on its YouTube channel. 

The great New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay himself singles out Gabe Stone Shayer for praise in his recent review of ABT's Swan Lake. I'm always amazed by his careful read of dancers' gestures and acting. Here's to wishing Stone Shayer much success to come in the company's ranks!

"Shostakovich against Stalin: The War Symphonies" DVD

This is my favorite DVD about my favorite composer, hands down. It contains beautiful excerpts of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and Kirov Orchestra led by a much younger Valery Gergiev (who has, it seems, his own complicated relationship with the top man in power) and is fascinating not only because of the discussion of Shostakovich's war symphonies but because it provides an amazing glimpse into life in the Soviet Union during the war. (The pictures of dead bodies in the snow and the discussion of cannibalism are eerie.) Thus, it is an important document both for musicians and historians. 

My favorite moment was when Shostakovich is interrogated on a Friday and is told to come back on Monday at noon for further questioning, which looks like it will surely lead to arrest and long-term imprisonment if not death, and when he reports to the place (not sure if it was the police headquarters or the prison) on Monday at noon he learns his interrogator himself was arrested on Sunday. So Shostakovich survived because of that.

I first discovered the DVD last year but for some reason never got around to writing a post about it. This is actually the DVD that got me interested in "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk", for which I particularly recommend the remarkable movie version "Katerina Ismailova" with Galina Vishnevskaya  - Mrs Mstislav Rostropovich, the greatest cellist of the 20th century - in the title role.  

In addition to a 76 minute documentary, the DVD also has 70 minutes of audio extracts that you can listen to without the documentary if you are so inclined. It samples Shostakovich's war symphonies and so provides a good introduction to his symphonic music. And if you want more Shostakovich after that, I love this collection of his complete symphonies by various artists, that one of his concertos, and the box set of the Emerson Quartet playing his chamber music.

Review of "Long Day's Journey into Night" on Broadway

I like to think I've seen great theater before (the performance of Philip Seymour Hoffmann in Death of a Salesman comes to mind) but absolutely nothing compares to the revival of Long Day's Journey into Night currently on Broadway at the Roundabout. I knew the cast and crew were stellar (Jonathan Kent directing, Jessica Lange as Mary Tyrone, Gabriel Byrne as her husband James Tyrone), the reviews have been excellent and the revival has gathered 7 Tony nominations, but that doesn't always paint an accurate picture of a show - I was underwhelmed by Ivo van Hove's take on Arthur Miller's View from the Bridge, for instance, and didn't Once win a Tony Award? But from the first few minutes at Long Day's Journey I sat just riveted in my seat. To say this production is spellbinding (all 3 hours 45 minutes of it including a 15-minute intermission) almost sounds like an understatement when you have sat in the American Airlines Theater transfixed by a cast of phenomenal actors.

What I will remember most of this production is how the actors react to each other's lines as if they were a real family, caught in the moment - they talk over each other, their body expression changes at the precise moment they hear something from another character, nothing is telegraphed, nothing sounds rehearsed, they embody their roles with such perfection you can't even tell they've learned lines. It is fascinating to watch. Having some training in theater, I am familiar with the Sanford Meisner/William Esper technique (William Esper teaches the Sanford Meisner technique, but his books about it are much more insightful than Meisner's) but it is the first time I see it in action with such fire.

Also, the play was particularly poignant because it gives the best description (that I'm aware of) of people who started life with high dreams and slowly went down. Both Mary and James share the same fate in a way but the stakes are much higher for Mary since she has become a morphine addict and it doesn't seem that the status quo will be tenable for her, while James could spend many more years as a cheapskate. The play will wring the heart of anyone who has seen friends, colleagues or relatives on a similar downward path, which is why I wanted to see it in the first place - it is a rare play that can have such relevance today, sixty years after its premiere. 

The production is far superior to the Hepburn movie of Long Day's Journey (where Hepburn massively overacts, a rare false note in the career of a very reliable actress) and gives you insights into human nature that will stay with you long after the performance is over - in addition to having you witness for yourself what top-caliber acting means. Go and see it while you can.

Shostakovich's "Katerina Izmailova"

This is the 1966 movie version of Shostakovich's "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District", starring famed Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya (1926-2012), who was the wife of cellist Mstislav Rostropovich (1927-2007). I hope that if you're reading this blog, I don't have to tell you Rostropovich was considered to be one of the greatest cellists of the 20th century. I watched the movie before Christmas and just loved it, not only because of the beautiful voices, Shostakovich's music and the Russian words I could understand (the movie also has subtitles in English), but also because of the outlandishness of the movie premises, where the actors sing throughout and with the exception of Vishnevskaya the actors are dubbed by opera singers. The singing is remarkable, the acting is great, the music is mesmerizing - a masterpiece.

You can read Vishnevskaya's obituary in the New York Times here.  I'll quote the opening paragraph: "Galina Vishnevskaya, an electrifying soprano who endured repression and exile as one of the postwar Soviet Union’s most prominent political dissidents, died on Tuesday in Moscow. She was 86." What a life summarized in those few words!

Paris, Chereau, Isolde

I've been thinking about the late French director Patrice Chereau (1944-2013) a lot since this summer, when I saw the Ring at the Bayreuth Festival in the production by Frank Castorf (more on that some other day, but my summary is that the first two operas in the cycle are superb and the last two underwhelming). I primarily knew Chereau as a French movie director and stage director, but it turns out he was made famous, at least in certain circles, by his centenary production of the Ring Cycle at Bayreuth in 1976. By a stroke of luck, I managed to buy the very last new copy of Chereau's Ring Cycle on Amazon (back when it was offered at a reasonable price; it's now being reissued with a hefty price tag) so I've watched it from beginning to end and was very impressed by Chereau's creativity and ingenuity, although the production is sometimes a bit dark (visually) for my taste. And he was only 32 at the time! Imagine that. He also directed a landmark stage production of Phedre in 2003 with one of his favorite actresses, Dominique Blanc, in the title role.

But Chereau for me remains first the director of many movies that have marked my youth. He tended to work again and again with actors he liked and he happened to like many of the foremost French actors of that generation. I feel American movie-goers don't know what the trend toward blockbusters is depriving them of, with either ad-hoc casts put together for each movie or franchises using cardboard characters in the same lifeless roles. In France when I was in college I remember the movies by Chereau the most and also by Arnaud Desplechin, who also tended to hire repeatedly the actors he liked to work with (Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Devos, etc).

Last week I watched Queen Margot again starring the superstar Isabelle Adjani, as well as Vincent Perez, who disappeared from the screens when he got tired of the heartthrob roles (or didn't negotiate the transition successfully, or didn't find roles he liked and decided to do something else with his time), Pascal Greggory, who was Chereau's long-term partner, Dominique Blanc, Jean-Hughes Anglade, and so many actors such as Emmanuel Salinger who make a cameo at the beginning of the movie as wedding guests that you just know from the cast list how much of a privilege it was to take part in a Chereau movie. I remember that movie, at the end of my high school years, before I moved to Paris. How my girl friends and I all chatted about the movie (Isabelle Adjani! Vincent Perez!) instead of studying for the baccalaureat.

I also remember Those who love me can take the train. The movie isn't particularly action-driven and so wouldn't be to most Americans' liking (you can tell this is the case from the fact that the movie isn't offered on Amazon Instant Video, contrary to Queen Margot). In some French movies and French novels, nothing much happens - people argue, people reconcile, and so on. We French people like to talk. I remember watching the movie when I was in Paris - I was in engineering school back then, I think it was the end of my second year.

The movie is about people who are on a train to go to the funeral of someone they knew, who wants to be buried in Limoges. I went to see the movie because Valeria Bruni Tedeschi was in a leading role (sister to Carla, but a very different personality), as well as Charles Berling, and Jean-Louis Trintignant (names that may mean nothing to my American readers), and Vincent Perez cast as a transsexual who is transitioning to being a woman (how many young, handsome male actors who had half the teenage population in love with them would dare do that? and this was 1998, let me remind you). Chereau wasn't afraid of being ahead of his time on certain topics - the sign of a true, uncompromising artist.

There is a final twist to this post. I've been researching Wagner's Tristan und Isolde because of a novel I'm writing (I saw that at Bayreuth too this summer, in addition to the Ring), and the very best production I've ever been able to watch, whether live or in DVD, is the one with Waltraud Meier and Ian Storey at La Scala in 2007. I love the use of light and shadow, the spare sets that avoid being too abstract, the choice of costumes - I love absolutely everything to the DVD, except that in the third act, the person who was making the DVD decided to use a lot of "fading to black" between scenes, which is distracting and sometimes downright aggravating. But besides that, I worship that production like few others (Luc Bondy's Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera comes second). And guess who directed the Scala production of Tristan? Sure enough, Patrice Chereau. 

People who are not particularly creative are quick to dismiss creative people. What is it, they wonder, that those creative folks do that is supposedly so important? And it is true that a lot of "art" produced by pseudo-creatives is drivel. But when you see the work of someone like Chereau, or Yael Farber today, you really understand what makes exceptional artists so needed in today's society. They make us see the world in ways we hadn't imagined before - they offer new perspectives, fresh insights, shed a new light on a well-known play or opera, bring an aspect of human relations to the forefront by making a movie about it. Chereau died at 68 from lung cancer two years ago (read his obituary in the New York Times and in The Guardian). That was much too soon.

Next on my viewing list:  his very last production, opera Elektra by Richard Strauss at the 2013 Aix-en-Provence festival. I have no doubt it's going to be spectacular.

Is your work life a Shakespeare play?

Here are possible ways your work life could be a Shakespeare play. Enjoy!

• Are you a recent graduate thrust into a position of leadership ? If so, you could be Hal or Hotspur in Henry IV Part 1 and Part 2.
• Hal and Hotspur are both sons of a king or would-be king, and fight alongside their father in battle. At first Hotspur looks like the more valiant of the two, while Hal appalls his father with his free-partying ways in the taverns of Eastcheap, but once he's enjoyed his youth, he proves a determined soldier on the battlefield - killing Hotspur in battle - and ultimately a good king, at least in the Shakespeare play.
• Hal becomes Henry V by proving himself less hot-headed than Hotspur, a great strategist, a valiant fighter, and also a man who is willing to cut old ties to people who would drag him down and prevent him from achieving greatness (such as Falstaff, who expects a special appointment simply because he knows the new king). Yes, Hal breaks Falstaff's heart in Part 2 by repudiating him, but you must learn to let old relationships die when you've outgrown certain people. If you have become someone very different from the person you were back then, what is the point in associating again with people that don't reflect your best self back to you? Loyalty is important, but even more so loyalty to the right people, so maybe you don't need to give a job to your sorority Big Sister just because she was your Big Sis in college. 
• Hotspur is quick to anger and spouts diatribes when he feels wronged. Anger never serves any purpose. Losing control never serves any purpose. If you want to get angry, go and sit in your car (preferably after having parked it on a shopping mall's parking lot where you won't run into coworkers, rather than making faces in your company's parking lot). If you want to get angry less often, try meditation. I rarely start my day without a 15-min meditation. If I feel cranky I'll do a 30-minute meditation to figure out how to deal with things. Once a week I do a 1-hour meditation. It quiets my mind like nothing else can, and afterwards (not during!) I get a ton of insights, fresh perspectives into problems, ideas for new projects.
• If you are expected to take over the family business after college or after a few years in industry, you are definitely Hal or Hotspur. Just make sure you end up a Hal (future King Henry V) and not a Hotspur. Interestingly, Hal once he is Henry V has some advisors but does not seem to have one very close mentor. Mentorship, whether through Falstaff (bad example) or Henry IV (good example), happened while he was still prince. Once he is king, Hal is his own person.
• Do you have subordinates (e.g., graduate students of the research group you manage) who badmouth other subordinates of yours and try to set you against them? If so, you could be Othello or King Lear.
  •  It is always good to ask yourself what agenda people have when they share news with you. We all want to believe we surround ourselves with trustworthy people thanks to our exceptional judgment, but we are often only able to read people definitely after working with them for extended periods of time, during which the least ethical of them may try to manipulate us or steal our place.
  • If subordinates (e.g., graduate students) are competing against each other to become the favorite, that would make you King Lear. In contrast with many of the other kings in Shakespeare's plays, King Lear is rather pathetic - an old man who wants to be loved but goes about the wrong way in finding out who loves him most.
  • In other words, King Lear is not a king you want to be. You might be blind to the fact that Cordelia has different values than what you expect and won't stoop to badmouthing her colleagues, which you might interpret as an admission of guilt regarding whatever she was accused of. The trick is to figure out which subordinates are badmouthing others and which ones are sharing important information you need to be aware of. This is not something you will figure out on the spot, so resist the temptation to banish Cordelia right away (fire the subordinate, remove him from project leadership, etc) and to divide your kingdom into the two other daughters, who really just wanted power to begin with. 
  • What you want to do is to take the time to observe and judge for myself, so resist rolling your eyes and complaining you don't have time for this, whether "this" is bringing you bad news or having to deal with people who can't lead a project. If people bring you information, say thank you, don't commit and think about it. Either you've just been given information on the lack of ethics and desire to manipulate of the person who brought you the news, or you've learned something about the person they spoke about. Either way, you're bound to learn something new about your team. Be grateful if it happens when you can still do something about it. 
  • King Lear has two power-hungry "bad" daughters who want what he already has said he will give (his kingdom). Othello has a confident who actively plots his downfall out of revenge for a slight. Is someone you have passed over for promotion giving you advice, and does that advice include negative facts about other people who work for you? If so, you could be Othello.
  • I write "negative facts" purposefully, because Iago is masterful at planting evidence. Yes, Cassio has Desdemona's handkerchief, but that's because Iago planted it in his chambers. Maybe a subordinate writes you an email that you find ridiculous and that can only have been written by an incompetent person, but perhaps Iago told her to write it like that because he assured her that he knew you best and that was the right way to phrase things to get your attention.
  • Do you know your weak spots? In the end, King Lear's "bad" daughters Regan and Generil exploit his need to feel loved and Iago exploits Othello's sense of outsider-ness and worry his new wife has already stopped loving him. What is the type of story you often tell yourself to explain what happens to you? Could someone exploit that story to their advantage?
  • A typical one would be "I'm the only one who understand the true challenges we face in this business and everyone else is asleep at the wheel [or incompetent, or out-of-touch, or...]" and, if you're not able to see through that little game, Iago would play on your feeling of one-against-all to make you feel he's the only one who deserves your trust and then he would "helpfully" point out that the person you have just promoted as your second-in-command for your division is having a lot of lunches with your big adversary who controls the other branches of the business.
  • Although I advocate cutting Iago types loose as soon as you can, there might be some benefit in keeping them close before you can get rid of them, in order to prevent them from wreaking havoc in the company. But you need to be on your guard and at the top of your game to pull it off. 
• Are your peers or colleagues badmouthing you and plotting your downfall? You could be Cassio, Cordelia or Desdemona (in Othello, King Lear and Othello, respectively).
  • Cassio and Cordelia are both warriors (Cordelia leads the army of the King of France once she marries him) and Cassio is hated by Iago precisely because he was promoted instead of him. Desdemona is a sweet, loyal thing but a bit clueless. In the workplace she would more likely be an allegory for something that the main character really wants, like the top job at the company, rather than a real person.
  • Cassio and Cordelia have in common that they have high integrity but Cassio isn't even aware of the plotting in his back while Cordelia refuses to imitate her unethical sisters to get her rightful share of the kingdom. In that sense, Cordelia is a far more inspiring figure.
  • Do you believe skill, talent and character alone are enough to win the game? Don't become a Cassio. Think about who might want to make you fall. Who might envy you? (people who competed with you for your last assignment, people who have been in a job position longer than you and yet have not been promoted while you were, people whom you have bested in your projects,...).
  • Cassio's demise comes from the fact that, at Iago's prodding, he gets drunk although he knows he shouldn't, and Iago has arranged for him to get into an altercation with one of his (Iago's) acolytes and thus create a ruckus sure to infuriate Othello. In other words, to bring Cassio down Iago doesn't just use words and stories he plants into Othello's mind. He pushes Cassio to make a mistake (get drunk, get into a fight) so that Othello demotes him. Then Iago uses Cassio's attempts to get his job back to destroy Othello through Desdemona, by suggesting to Cassio that he beg Desdemona for help. (And then he hints to Othello that Cassio and Desdemona are seen together because they're having an affair.)
  • In contrast with Cassio, a better awareness of politics wouldn't have helped Cordelia, since she witnesses her sisters' great speeches of love to King Lear and simply refuses to play the same game. Cordelia's main issue is that she is outnumbered. Her sisters and her sisters' husbands ally while she is cut out from her inheritance and only finds an army when the King of France marries her. She is the lone warrior who takes a stand for her values, a bit like Gary Cooper in High Noon. Lone warriors in real life get themselves boxed out, marginalized and neutered.
  • It is hard to think of good advice to give Cordelia. No one should have to compromise her values to get what is her due. She must have known, if only by overhearing them chat once in a while, that her sisters were manipulative shrews obsessed with power, and so she should have figured out earlier that not only she should watch her back but it was her responsibility to look out for her father, who after all was so tired that he wanted to relinquish power - a sure red flag. He didn't become wary with power overnight. She also should have seen that her father was the sort of person who yearned for great professions of love and thus would be easy to manipulate by bad people.
  • Things she could have done include helping him with day-to-day decision-making to take some of the weight of king-ship off his shoulders so that he would have delayed relinquishing the throne, building alliances for instance by getting married earlier and asking for her share of the kingdom as part of the marriage negotiations to the King of France. Cordelia does die in the play but she dies with integrity and honor. King Lear realizes his mistake but collapses and dies shortly afterward. 
• Are your associates egging you on to make an unethical move that would put you at the top, and would make them right-hand-men to a really very powerful person? Be careful not to turn into Macbeth. Macbeth is a brave general who first commits regicide (egged on by his wife, after witches tell him he will be king) to ascend to power, and then kills and kills and kills again to remain in power.
  • What I find interesting in the play is that Macbeth starts out as a good man, and then is caught into a spiral of murders. The play is about his wife's naked political ambition and his own lust for power that he proves unable to relinquish. In the process, he and his wife become monsters.
  • The other thing I find interesting is that the witches may have known he wouldn't become king if they didn't tell him he would and thus incite him to murders. They know exactly what to tell him to bring his downfall, a little bit like a confidant who insists you deserve better, so much better, you should be sitting at your boss's desk right now, so that when the occasion presents itself to (figuratively!) orchestrate a coup, you find a resolve you would not otherwise have had and get rid (again, figuratively) of your boss. Meanwhile, the witches may laugh at your gullibility, but you're already far down the slippery slope of backroom intrigues, Machiavellian manipulations and illegal practices that you need to remain in power.
  • Is there someone near you who seem to have unbridled ambition in his lust to reach the top? If you stand in his way, you may end up as Banquo, who was Macbeth's friend and fellow general, and is murdered by him because the witches prophesied (after telling Macbeth he would be king) that Banquo would be father of kings, although not one himself. (The murderers who kill Banquo also try to kill his son but he escapes.) 
  • If someone near you, like your boss, stands in that person's way, but that person can't reach your boss directly, then he might try to get rid of the people who make your boss effective, such as you. If so, you'd be like Macduff's wife and his little children, all assassinated while Macduff is out of the country although they had no direct role in the intrigues. 
• Do you have achieved the top? You will surely be aware that some people will try to take your place, but don't become Duncan, the king Macbeth kills, in placing too much faith in your lieutenants. (Duncan is killed while he spends the night in Macbeth's castle. This was asking for trouble from the start.) Further, be careful that people around you don't mistake you for Julius Caesar. 
  • Julius Caesar is murdered by a group of men led by envious Cassius, who takes advantage that Julius Caesar is so loved people want to give him absolute powers to spur uneasiness in his friends and claim Caesar is letting power go to his head. Cassius manipulates Brutus into taking part in the ploy to murder Caesar. Cassius pretends he is doing a good deed for Rome but he is really just acting out his envy at Caesar's power. 
  • Brutus is taken advantage of by Cassius's good words and convinces himself he is acting in the interest of Rome, out of a sense of honor and moral responsibility. In contrast with Cassius, Brutus really believes what he says. If a colleague tries to incite you to take part in a backroom coup on the grounds that your boss has become out-of-control, you may be a Brutus.
  • Cassius and Iago behave in similar ways, giving interpretations of others' gestures that are false but become ingrained in the minds of the people they talk to. In the end, Brutus is the last one to stab Caesar in the back. Julius Caesar turns around and sees him. His "You too, Brutus?" in surprise at Brutus's betrayal is something Brutus would have had to live with for the rest of his life, but it turns out that Brutus is killed not too long afterward. The perpetrators of the backroom coup are fired, and the Brutus-like character doesn't even have his honor left, since he associated with envious, manipulative colleagues to betray his boss, who viewed him as someone he could trust. 
  • If you're the lone man trying to do the right thing and not only avenge your boss, fired after a meritless power coup, but get rid of the conspirators who engineered his downfall, then you're Marc Antony. Later, much older Marc Antony will succumb to the charms of much younger Cleopatra and make a fool of himself that will cost him his empire, his honor and his life, but in Julius Caesar, Mark Antony is the good guy who, thanks to his oratory, sets the crowd against the murderers and thus brings about the murderers' own death. He is the right-hand man who doesn't let you down even after there's nothing more you can do for him. We all need people like that in our lives.

"Eugene O'Neill: A Documentary Film"

Here is another DVD I like, also from PBS (in their American Experience series): the documentary about Nobel-Prize winner and Pulitzer-Prize winner American playwright Eugene O'Neill, who died 62 years ago today in Boston. What is most remarkable about O'Neill is that he won three of his four Pulitzer Prizes (the fourth one was posthumous) and his Nobel Prize before writing the plays that have ensured his legacy and continued presence today in the Pantheon of best twentieth-century playwrights, up there with Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.

O'Neill had a complicated family that he depicts with harrowing precision in his best play A Long Day's Journey Into Night, which he didn't even want produced after his death and which led to his fourth Pulitzer Prize after his third wife and executrix Carlotta disobeyed him. One can argue that most creative types who successfully contribute to the world feel like outsiders in some way but O'Neill brings it up a notch. While his family wasn't abusive, it was clearly dysfunctional: one elder brother died as a baby when the oldest boy went into his room when he was sick with the measles, to the mother's never-ending grief (and her overt belief the oldest boy had done it on purpose, pushing the boy into alcoholism and a failed life), his father's regret that he could have been a great Shakespearean actor if he hadn't stumbled upon the "cash cow" of The Count of Monte-Cristo, a perennial audience favorite that kept him stuck in a money-making acting job that he came to despise, his mother's addiction to morphine after Eugene's birth and the family's inability to deal with it, including her own inability at taking responsibility for it.

In the play, the mother (Mary Tyrone) clearly loves her youngest child, now a young man she refuses to admit has been stricken with tuberculosis while the father, a cheapskates, plans to send him to a cheap sanatorium, to the older brother's outrage. In terms of dysfunction this reminds me very much of my own family although the story line isn't quite the same and the fact that I feel right at home with the Tyrones is probably the main reason why I am so looking forward to seeing the revival of the play with Jessica Lange in the role of the mother this spring at the American Airlines Theater thanks to Roundabout. You can also watch a taped performance of a remarkable, award-winning production at the Apollo Theater in London in 2012 thanks to Digital Theatre (see my post here).

Back to O'Neill. He clearly had his own demons (who wouldn't after being raised in a family like that - he even attempted suicide in 1912 at the boarding house and saloon that would later provide the backdrop for The Iceman Cometh) and at times displayed less-than-honorable behavior, for instance when he abandoned his wife and children and ran off with Carlotta to Europe. (For another example of less-than-savory genius, check out my post on Jerome Robbins, although O'Neill strikes a more sympathetic figure than Robbins, perhaps because of what he endured as a child and also because he could - and did - lose himself in the depths of writing thanks to Carlotta busy creating a home for him. Robbins could be very mean with dancers. But his job as a choreographer was very different from O'Neill's in the amount of interactions it involved with people charged with bringing his vision to reality. O'Neill lived in the realm of words instead.

In the end one can only be glad that he found someone like Carlotta to allow him to create his masterpieces and give him a bit of peace. It is a pity he didn't get to see what amazing impact his best-known play had on theatergoers at the premiere. You can read Brooks Atkinson's review at that 1956 premiere in the New York Times here.

I wish there was a 2-min trailer I could embed but it seems that YouTube mostly has pirated versions of the documentary posted by people who think it is ok to deprive a public institution from much-needed revenue. If you are interested in the movie, please buy the DVD, for instance on Amazon.com. The glimpse into O'Neill's pains, trials and ultimate professional triumph brings an important behind-the-scenes look into what it took for him to become a master.

"Something to Dance About": Jerome Robbins DVD

This is going to be a short post on the American Masters DVD "Something to Dance About" - a documentary about choreographer Jerome Robbins's life based on the biography by Amanda Vaill. I'd watched it some time ago and when I decided to watch it again, realized it was even more gripping than I remembered.

Quite incredibly, I'd forgotten that Robbins had testified in front of the HUAC committee until I watched again the interview of Madeline Lee Giffords, who was specifically named by Robbins in his testimony. (Robbins was reluctant to testify but worried that his homosexuality would be revealed if he didn't do it and finally caved in.) And of course when I saw Lee Giffords on video in her bright red dress, full of dignity, with tears in her eyes when she recounts those harrowing years of the early 1950s, I remembered being stunned the first time I saw the video. I also remembered her red dress and her teary-eyed poise when she said she'd been told that Robbins was dogged by his testimony for the rest of his life, and naturally she hoped he was, because after he named them the Giffords didn't receive a single phone call for three months, so intense was their friends' fear of HUAC. And the pain in her eyes was so obvious, fifty years later. Lee Giffords passed away in 2008, ten years after Robbins and eighteen years after her husband, whom Robbins also named in his testimony.

The fact that Robbins named names so that he could continue to share his talent with the world is tragic, although I'm not sure if it continues to taint his reputation today. People don't really mention that about him anymore when one of his choreographies is being revived, now that he has been dead for seventeen years. We all wish we wouldn't throw others to the lions to save ourselves in situations like those. But the risk for Robbins of losing his ability to share his enormous talent with the world (as was the case for Elia Kazan, another great artist who named names) is what led him to testify. Perhaps people not as burning with an urge to share their talent with the world can more easily take the decision not to testify, in spite of the risk of the blacklist.

Zero Mostel, made famous in Fiddler on the Roof, who would have been 100 this years but passed away of an aneurysm in 1977, was a close friend of the Giffords and resented Robbins for his HUAC testimony. But even before HUAC, it seems that Robbins had complicated relationships with the people who worked with him or for him. Put another way, he could be really mean with his dancers to get the best out of them (the documentary has concrete, specific examples of his meanness), and in that respect he reminded me of Steve Jobs as described in the biography by Walter Isaacson. It seems that genius can go together with utter meanness and selfishness. Yet, there is no doubt that Robbins was indeed a Genius with a capital G - the greatest American-born choreographer of the 20th century, to whom we owe epoch-making movies such as West Side Story and musicals like Gypsy and the wonderful ballet Fancy Free.  

I particularly enjoyed seeing how dedicated Robbins was to his art and how committed to excellence he remained throughout his career. His philosophy was (I paraphrase) that talent was pointless if one didn't work tirelessly to bring that gift forward. Robbins was a complex and flawed character, and perhaps not a role model; yet, this message is as timely today as it was at the height of Robbins's fame.

Below is an excerpt of the documentary, including a few moments of Fancy Free: