cheeto christ stupid czar

In anticipation of this weekend’s Emmy Awards, NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross has reprised interviews from earlier in the year from some of the nominees, including an enjoyable exchange with performer Randy Rainbow well worth revisiting.
I had intended to post Rainbow’s parody vignette of the show tune “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” lampooning the 2017 Alabama senate campaign in which a sexual predatory with the support of another sexual predator happily lost his bid, the better judgment of the electorate prevailing, thinking there couldn’t possibly be any other number more on point. This interview and medley from Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera, however, are surpassingly good and address Trump’s latest loathsome antics.

jennyanydots

I think we are all this film review of the upcoming “live,” demented deep-dreaming nightmare adaptation of the musical Cats. So many questions that dare not seek answers.
The 1981 piece is based on a collection of epistolary poetry that T. S. Eliot (previously) composed to entertain his godchildren in the 1930s—presenting a sociological tract on a tribe of felines and their nomination of one of their members to ascend into a paradisaical afterlife and be reincarnated, and the new production, starring an ensemble cast of screen and stage luminaries projected onto cat-sized avatars, is seemingly riding the coattails of attempting to revive old properties with live-actors aided by digital graphics, dispensing the need for imagination and suspension of disbelief, illustrative of what happens when creative outlets are not constrained by a budget and no one has the courage of conviction to say when a project is going in the wrong direction.

requiescat in pace: douglas rain

NPR reports that accomplished Shakespearian actor Douglas Rain passed away, aged ninety in Ontario, with an illustrious career with many hundreds of credits to his name, both on stage and on television, working alongside countless veteran actors—but perhaps the role that Rain will be remembered and appreciated in the widest sense for is that of voicing the Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer that controlled the systems of the Discovery One spacecraft on its voyage to Jupiter in Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Arthur C Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (previously here, here, here and here). Rain’s calm and measured tones became something menacing and unforgettable, to have lost agency and the ability to countermand a machine. In 2010, HAL is rebooted and Rain reprises his role, this time alongside his twin, SAL 9000, voiced by Candice Bergen.

expurgation

The US Federal Communications Commission released thirteen pages of public complaints on comedian Michelle Wolfe’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner performance.
Ironically, the majority of the objections focus on obscenities and profanities that the dotard Trump himself forced uncomfortably into the public sphere and lowered standards all around by his own words and actions. Furthermore, it looks like those getting grumbly couldn’t be bothered to switch stations—thirteen pages seeming rather measly compared to the furore ignited on social media.

what a piece of work is man

On this day fifty years ago, the rock musical by lyricists Gerome Ragni and James Rado and composer Galt MacDermot Hair began its run on Broadway, with over seventeen hundred performances.
Reception, with some notable exceptions, was overwhelmingly positive and became the anthem for several movements of the counter-culture uprising of the early 1970s and beyond—including racial and tribal identities, pacifism and environmentalism, and religious orthodoxy versus the esoteric.
One year later, “Bob” McGrath (one of the human neighbours) performed the song “Good Morning Starshine” on Sesame Street and the score helped launched the careers of Meatloaf and Donna Summer and many others. A decade later, production started on a cinematic adaptation by Miloš Forman, reviving the revolutionary spirit that the original inspired and brought the story to a broader audience.

reprise or i know what my people are thinking tonight

The doggedly diligent campaign reporters of Nation Public Radio’s Politics Podcast have been working virtually non-stop during this entire physically and emotionally taxing election cycle in America, serving up a refreshingly thoughtful and reflective reporting on the election despite the usual common discourse and the pace of change. Now they’re working even harder with daily broadcasts, but recently to bridge the weekend presented a really interesting episode from this summer that I’d missed before—before all these dread realities began to coalesce and was not a regular listener. Encore examines the role of music—specifically musical theatre in the shaping of campaigns and presidencies.
I knew that FDR with “Happy Days are Here Again” (Chasing Rainbows, 1930) and Truman with “I’m just Wild about Harry” (Shuffle Along, 1921—for addressing social justice questions) had capitalized on popular, feel-good songs of their day—just like other rallying standards, but I didn’t realise that the Kennedy White House did not become characterised as Camelot organically but rather became known as such because the Lerner and Loewe Broadway production about to be adapted to film was so popular. Musical numbers might not have the same purchase on cultural currency as they did in decades past—at least not one that’s immediately recognisable—having been replaced by other power-ballads, but it’s interesting how the discussion touches on one candidate’s invoking of songs from The Phantom of the Opera as part of his regular playlist (plus some number with those damn dancing cats, whereas perhaps “Tomorrow belongs to Me” from Cabaret may work better) because of his connection to New York and the Great White Way, and the other who backed away from her rather accidental though intended as flattering comparison to Eva Perón.

pour, oh pour the pirate sherry

PfRC will be taking a much overdue sabbatical soon. This time, we will be crossing the Channel and exploring south-west England. Stay tuned—same time, same station—for further adventures.

a man for all seasons

The British Library, as the Guardian reports, will be digitising the only known surviving script written by William Shakespeare in his own hand. The piece, on the subject of Sir Thomas More, Catholic martyr, who managed to rise to the rank of Lord Chancellor in the court of Henry XIII. Focused on More’s divided allegiance by the king’s schism with the pope in Rome and witness to the persecution of the Huguenots who had sheltered in London—having fled violence of France who considered them heretical, the play was not authored by the Bard himself, but rather re-worked by a committee of playwrights in hopes of bringing this anonymous work finally to the stage.
Though feeling audiences were ready for a less than favourable portrayal of king and country, the play remained unscreened for fear it would incite a riot, much like those limned in the manuscript. The lines that Shakespeare form powerful soliloquy for the protagonist, which speak to current tensions over the refugee crisis:

You’ll put down strangers,
 Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,
And lead the majesty of law in lyam [by a leash]
To slip him like a hound. Alas, alas!
Say now the King
As he is clement if th’offender mourn,
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you: whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbor? Go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, Spain or Portugal,
Nay, anywhere that not adhere to England:
Why, you must needs be strangers.

pronoun, dative-singular

“What new entertainment have you, Jester?” “Beholde o Lord! ‘Tis mine inventio, what that I clepe the Selfum-Sticke.” The king is unimpressed.

curtain-call and cat-walk

Sometimes a reminder is far better than a discovery.

Dangerous Minds admonishes us how David Bowie, fresh from the release of his album “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)” toured with the theatre company performing The Elephant Man, playing the principal role. Fellow-actors and the audience attested that he played the part perfectly, without make-up or prosthetics. Other artists, reportedly, only craved the Elephant Man’s bones. The mobarazzi by fans was really to much to bear at times, and David Bowie took measures to protect himself. During the production’s run on Broadway, several luminaries caught the show, including Yoko Ono and John Lennon—who was killed by a crazed fan shortly afterward. This tragic act must have surely turned Bowie away from the stage, given the grasping he’d already experienced despite his talent. Be sure to check out the link for more details and a performance.

dramaturgy or meme-base

An aspiring thespian and student of Aristotle named Theophrastus devised a list of archetypal and stock-characters. While it may not be predictive of every aspect of human nature—as their ought to be as well a generic Misogynist, the Fan-Boy and the Xenophobe—and alternately, many positive qualities that probably are not very exciting are absent, it seems to be pretty complete, same-otherwise, and you could certainly apply the same template to a lot of modern means of expression, though the Greek makes the caricatures sound especially harsh:

The Insincere One (Eironeia, irony)	The Flatterer (Kolakeia, the shit-sayer)	The Garrulous One (Adoleschia, the Sophomoric One)

The Boor (Agroikia, the Skeptic)	The Complacent One (Areskeia, the Inactive One)	The One without Moral Feeling (Aponoia, the Psychopath)

The Talkative One (Lalia, Chatty-Cathy)	The Fabricator (Logopoiia, the Wordsmith)	The Shamelessly Greedy One (Anaischuntia, shunning society)

The Pennypincher (Mikrologia, Scrooge)	The Offensive One (Bdeluria, who sides towards delusion)	The Hapless One (Akairia, the Unlucky One)

The Officious Man (Periergia, just like a Boss)	The Absent-Minded One (Anaisthesia, the Selective One)	The Unsociable One (Authadeia, the Loner)

The Superstitious One (Deisidaimonia, the staunch conventionalist)	The Faultfinder (Mempsimoiria, the vulnernable one with something to prove)	The Suspicious One (Apistia, the conspiracy theorist)

The Repulsive One (Duschereia, poor hygiene)	The Unpleasant One (Aedia, the jaded, the scapegoat)	The One with Petty Ambition (Mikrophilotimia, the vain)

The Stingy One (Aneleutheria, the ungrateful child)	The Show-Off (Alazoneia, the dare-devil)	The Arrogant One (Huperephania, the by-stander)

The Coward (Deilia, the nostalgic soul)	The Oligarchical One (Oligarchia, the Untouchable)	The Late Learner (Opsimathia)

The Slanderer (Kakologia)	The Lover of Bad Company (Philoponeria)	The Basely Covetous Man (Aischrokerdeia)

dovunque al mondo or rent to own

Last night I got a chance to spend a cultural evening out and saw moving production of Giacomo Puccini's Madame Butterfly, hosted in the very fancy venue of the storied state theatre.  I was expecting tragedy and melodrama, being an opera, but did not recall the actual story and subject, thinking wisps of what I remembered to be possibly a contemporary interpretation: an American naval officer is stationed in Nagasaki at the turn of the century, and through the US Consul acting as an intermediary, purchases a house staffed with domestics and is introduced to the breathtaking and available Butterfly. 
Despondent and restless though afraid to make a commitment, the Navy officer decides to wed Butterfly—at least until he can find a "proper American wife" and due to Japanese mores and marriage laws (as interpreted at the time by an Italian librettist) in comparison to the relatively stricter rules regarding divorce (but not polygamy) in America.  The officer, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton speaks of a lease of nine-hundred ninety nine years with the option of quiting in the coming months.  Butterfly has already garnered her family’s displeasure by marrying a foreigner—a wealthy local businessman is also making overtures for Butterfly's affections but she rebuffs his advances, and covertly converts to Christianity for the sake of her new life, renouncing Buddhism and her ancestral, household gods.  A short while later, the officer is assigned to another port of call in the US and is away for three years.  Butterfly divulges to the Consul, whom she hopes to implore for her husband to return, that she had born the officer a son in secret.
The Consul does manage to arrange the officer's return, but the officer brings his new American bride with him and plans to take custody of the young child and raise him in America.   This modern opera is itself a direct adaptation of earlier stories, but I am not sure in what context and what allegorical elements are intentionally writ, how direct and literal, but it was certainly the musical element of the score that came across as most emotive. As the orchestra was striking its limbering cacophony before the curtains parted, those strains they played of the Star-Spangled Banner, the US anthem—were random exercises, like hearing snatches from the Miss Marple theme or scales during this warm-up—and not samplings from the liet motif. We'll have to have a night at opera together real soon.

manager of mirth or as you like it

The Bard, William Shakespeare, had such a circumspect command of English grammar (and other languages besides) as to be able to depart significantly from convention and intersperse his plays with what is regarded now as natural and essential parts of speech but created or rather committed to paper transformations of verbs in to noun counterparts and vice-versa and coined the antithesis for many words. The action to manage was in common parlance but not so a manager; there was hearten but no dishearten, the same for inaudible—not to mention inventive and intuitive words for the nonce, like swagger and belongings. One convention Shakespeare was unable to buck, however, was the Elizabethan proscription again having women on the stage and all roles were played by male actors. Often in the stage directions, one can find the abbreviation, “Dr.A.G.,” dressed as a girl, in other words, when these characters were cued. It was not until the latter half of the nineteenth century that the term drag (and the counterpart for a cross-dressing female, drab—dressed as a boy) appeared again in print, but maybe the idea can be traced by to the playwright as well.

bardolatry

In recognition of the upcoming anniversary of the birth (extrapolated, guessed, from his documented baptism) and death some fifty-one years later of William Shakespeare, I would like to point readers to the excellent series of postings, recently concluded, from the Big Think, that not only keep the debate of authorship alive, as well as other aspects of the cult of personality, but go further to explore how prodigy and poetry challenge and strengthen one's own mental capacities and how the timing of the playwright came as the English language was still malleable and under development. These two grammars, Elizabethan and complex, grew together and the body of work culturally crystallized English literary tradition more so than king, country and might. No one wants to entertain that those plays and sonnets germinated as some unsourced leavings and improvisation of the age and the focus on the historical identity of William Shakespeare has never taken away from the genius and richness of his drama, no matter if revised and polished over the years--idealized like the author--or were gifted complete like some religious acheiropoieta, but it strikes me as perfect that Shakespeare identity is really only knowable through his works, just like his characters, who no matter how real or contrived, are fleshed out with just a few lines and stage-directions but each one is much more than some playful but scant vocabulary.