Theatrical Musings

Naturally, when someone offers you a $20 ticket to a play at Stratford, you say yes and go.  Which is how Greg and I ended up at a regrettable performance of Henry V this afternoon, a preview for the play, which opens July 13.  

It was such a cluttered unfocussed production.  Director Des McAnuff’s notes suggested his dilemma: Is Henry V, which today ran for three long hours excluding a 20-minute intermission, a celebration or a bitter condemnation of war? He suggested Shakespeare intended to present “a whole matrix of opposing yet equally persuasive points.”  

Perhaps, but it is the director’s job to clarify the paradox not to muddy it. Shakespeare’s Henry goes to war with romantic notions about heroism and the righteousness of his cause and comes out of the experience with his innocence lost. The audience are witnesses to his hardening and brutality.  

But in this production, Henry seems just about the same at the end as at the beginning. For one thing, Aaron Krohn’s Henry had little stage presence; maybe this was what director Des McAnuff intended in order to show the banality of war. If so, he succeeded. This Henry sat on a cannon during the St. Crispin’s Day speech. His voice fell away at the ends of lines when it should have swelled. His wooing of Catherine, which should be a combination of menace, temptation and flirtation, was wooden. The only time he seemed engaged with his lines was in his soliloquy on ceremony in the second act.

Alas, the actors seemed unaware of the importance of each word and placed the wrong emphasis on many, so the dramatic emphasis was lost.  This is a history play. You expect pageantry, declamation and heroic speech. Once you’ve been caught up in that, you mentally stand back and view what you may have been complicit in.  In this play, that didn’t happen. So many lines were thrown away. As Greg said, “Once more into the breach” was completely lost in ambient noise.

In fact, the actors were often up-staged by the busy-ness that went on. The play specifically calls the members of the audience to use their imaginations to picture battlefields. Instead, we were distracted by all sorts of stuff. We got saw-horse horses, which had to be put on stage and removed, a revolving parade of stretchers to indicate battlefield deaths, irritating slamming floor grates used for a variety of purposes: camp fires, blowing up prisoners, raising and lowering a throne and a bathtub featured in the only nude scene in the pay, which one of our party, to his great regret, missed because he had dozed off. There was an unnecessary diorama of Falstaff on his deathbed. The first act ended with the hanging of Bardolph ― histrionic ― and not in a good way. 

But that didn’t compare with the ending of the play when a huge Canadian flag unfurled, and we left the theatre to the strains of the Beatles’ Revolution. Too odd.

 We wondered why we hadn’t seen anything as suboptimal as this in years until I recalled that we are cowards: we usually wait and read the reviews and eschew anything which does not get at least three stars.   

Alas, the only thing meriting three, if not four, stars around this matinee was the picnic lunch we enjoyed with our friends before the performance. There, on the island in the Avon, the bubbly bubbled!

p.s.

Thanks to one of our lunching friends, here is a link to how the Band of Brothers speech should be said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRj01LShXN8&feature=related

The Potluck Gamble

Everyone knows June is the month of strawberries, but here in the Wilds of North Middlesex, it is also the month of potluck lunches and dinners, a time-honoured tradition to mark the end of another year’s activities.  Between us, Greg and I have attended at least six in the last couple of weeks, and there are more to come ― some even sliding over into July.

The question always arises as to whether to have a true potluck or the modified version. Apparently, a sign-up list is rarely handed around, as that would take the fun out of it entirely, but the hostess sometimes offers to provide part of the meal, hence, the modified potluck. However, so far this year, the normally conservative inhabitants of this area have opted for the more daring true potluck.

This has the usual unintended consequences.

People seem to have their own speciality, like sauerkraut or meatballs or jellied salad.  I confess I am beginning to rather  like orange Jell-O with crushed pineapple, but please, not grated carrots.  I don’t know the last time I had Ambrosia – well, not before the two opportunities I had to indulge this month.  It consists of coconut, miniature marshmallows, fruit cocktail and whipped cream and counts as a main dish. So does apple salad made with dream whip (the healthier choice, according to the provider, than whipped cream).

Greg and I always bring our Salsa Delight: a layer of cream cheese, topped with salsa, followed by chives from the garden, if available, or green onions, if not, and finished with grated cheddar. Our challenge is whether to spread it an inch deep and a mile wide in the flat corning ware dish (my choice) or thicker and less extensively ― and I might add, harder for dippers! – in the two-quart casserole (Greg’s option). It’s a difficult decision and, I feel, may unconsciously reveal something of the deeper nature of each of us.

Anyhow, we enjoyed three different versions of baked beans and the same number of meat ball dishes at one potluck recently. The dinner was held out in the country in a house backing onto a woods and bordered by a large field. Partway through the meal, a coyote bounded across the field, and a while later about half a dozen young coyote pups came running back in the opposite direction, followed by the adult encouraging a slow-poke sibling.

I wondered what they had been finding to eat. As it happens, the population of stray cats on our street has seemed remarkably reduced from earlier head counts.  It crossed my mind, as I took a second helping of Ambrosia, that perhaps the coyotes in our neck of the woods are enjoying their own version of potluck.

In any event, there is a knack to a successful outdoor potluck. It primarily involves avoiding food poisoning. Recently at the Parish Picnic, aka the Sunday School Picnic, we enjoyed two kinds of potato salad and various cold meats, but not a lot in the way of vegetables  –  unless you count the 11 asparagus spears wrapped in ham.  Thankfully, insulated zippered carry-ins, as well as the usual Tupperware, lined the picnic table in the pavilion at Coronation Park.  Anglicans seem to have a container for every occasion.

My enjoyment of the meal was dampened by an account of another potluck, a birthday celebration the previous afternoon after which a number of attendees suffered food poisoning. I found out later it was traced to devilled eggs. The degree of upset was in direct proportion to the number eaten and the length of time which had elapsed while they were being consumed. One devilled egg at the start produced no symptoms; five consumed over the course of a hot afternoon … well, it was not pleasant.

The ladies of the Anglican Guild (i.e., the evening guild that meets in the afternoon) held their year-end do indoors last week. We enjoyed what turned out to be a lot of fruit and veg – perhaps compensation for their non-appearance at the Parish Picnic from two days before. Not wanting to repeat the salsa too soon, I surprised everyone with seven kinds of raw vegetables and a dip of my own invention.

After lunch, we began the formal meeting with a short devotional service. We use thin leather-covered chapbooks dated 1897 and published by “the Gazette in Parkhill,” according to the flyleaf. I always enjoy the prayer in which we ask God to “pour down the continual dew of thy blessing upon him whom thou hast called to minister in this portion of thy vineyard.”

The “him” in question was absent at the time, being at a potluck lunch for his fellow vineyard keepers in Clericus.  However, he did arrive later on ― just in time to be blessed with a slice of apple pie provided by the hostess of the day, thanks to her husband, a retired farmer whose pastry, I can say without a moment of hesitation, is to die for.

*********



Potlucks seem to be the same all over, as this tune by the Prowell Family of Kansas (and YouTube) attests:

http://www.prowellfamilyband.com/video.html

Thanks to the workshop led by poet Cathy Smith Bowers at the annual Haden Institute Dream Conference, I learned a new form for poetry - the pantoum. The pantoum, a series of repetitive quatrains was first written in Malaysia in the fifteenth-century. This is my first attempt; I haven't quite decided on the title:

The black mandala holds the answer

I am wandering around in the darkness.

There is nothing but black to be seen.

I don’t feel I’m in danger of falling.

I just don’t know where I am.

It is black so there’s nothing to see.

I walk slowly but without groping.

I just don’t know where I am.

Then I think, why on earth don’t I call you?

I walk slowly but without groping;

I don’t need my hands to shield me.

Then I think why on earth don’t I call you?

We’re still friendly – it’s silly not to.

I don’t need my hands to guide me.

I am safe here though all is black.

We’re still friendly – there’s no reason not to.

I should call you; we talked just a while back.

I am safe? Where all is black,

Without land marks or buildings or roads,

I must call you. We haven’t talked for some time.

Then slowly I start to realize, “It’s not me, it’s him.”

There are no landmarks or buildings or roads, but

Is dirt ploughed up all around me?

Then slowly I start to realize, “It’s not me, it’s him.”

And now on the cusp of awaking, I just want to go back to sleep.

But is dirt ploughed up all around me?

There’s a sense of not much being there.

Now on the cusp of awaking, I just want to get back to sleep.

But a new fact slips into my dream.

There’s a sense of not much being there –

Just the blackness and overturned earth –

When this new fact is put to me:

You can’t call him because he is dead.

***

So, I’m not in danger of falling,

I just don’t know where I am.

Summer already on Victoria Day weekend

Well it is so hot here I am waiting until evening to plant the morning glories. It was too hot to eat lunch on the deck even under the umbrella. I am anticipating a very hot dry summer!

Amazingly, the pumpkins are up already:

There is one at about 1:00 off the end of my left foot. I took this photo a couple of days ago, and by noon today, there were second leaves sprouting, not to mention even more pumpkin seedlings. I am certain they are pumpkins, as they are all the same and in a row. This year, I am going to try to train them to grow over onto the grass to the right, so that I can grow more veggies in the rest of that garden. Herding pumpkins will be a new experience for me.

I need more garden space because, as usual, I went overboard buying seeds. I won a gift certificate to McFayden's Seeds in Manitoba, and my order came on Friday. Herbs, heirloom tomatoes,  nasturtiums, marigolds, beans, morning glories and much much more.The thing is there are fewer seeds per packet than I remember from 25 years ago when I ordered from Stokes. Hmmm ...

But then, there are always garden surprises. Tucked under these strawberries is a chestnut seedling:

A squirrel had to come quite far with the seed - one long block away is the closest chestnut tree. My other two chestnut seedlings, in the compost heap, disappeared mysteriously over the winter.  I think I'll take this one down to PEI for our garden there - eventually.

Thankfully I didn't accidentally weed the phlox while I was planting the pansies and the Engish daisy (to the left) and the rock cress (to the right): 

One year, I enthusiastically pulled up many incipient thistles only to realize too late that I had weeded all the poppies I had planted the year before. Good labelling goes a long way to preventing such gardening disasters.

Speaking of strawberries, I have already eaten five. I had planned to share with my significant other, but somehow, once plucked,  the berries just veered irretrievably into my mouth. They are about a month early this year.

I feel a yen for lemonade so I will close now, brave the heat of the deck and resume reading Eric Metaxis' biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer - seems appropriate for a Sunday afternoon.

Cheers ~



Smokey Tom and the Virgin Mary

The trouble with not blogging regularly is that so many things happen it is hard to decide what to write about. Not only that, but the details get fuzzy.

So here is start on some things that have been going on:

Last Saturday morning, I attended a service at St. Thomas’s Church in Toronto to honour the Virgin Mary.   Her month is the merry month of May apparently.  In a brief homily, Fr. Jonathan Eayrs described how May, not April,  is really springtime here in southern Ontario (although today felt more like summer – more on that later).  

Creation rises anew. Mary provides (a symbol of) the connection between the divine and the material world.  Unfortunately, I forget what else he said, but it related to these lines of this hymn addressing Mary:

One in joyful songs of praise,

Let us pass from mournful days

To the Paschal mystery:
God arose who lived in thee!
Virgo Maria
…
Mother, let thy risen King

Rise in us a living spring

Virgo Maria
(French mediaeval melody harmonized by R. V. Williams)

I like  the pun on spring and the line, "God arose who lived in thee." Creation is not fallen by its very nature but, alas, only becomes so by what we do to it.

Also on a further tangent, I like to think that every baby is an incarnation of divine purpose, not only Jesus.  And I admire both Mary and Joseph’s courage in rejecting social pressure to feel guilty (the former) or to punish (the latter). 

But what I enjoyed most about this service was the procession to the Lady Chapel (Smokey Tom’s is Anglo-Catholic and considered nosebleed high by most other Anglicans around here). Why a  ladder was leaning against the wall beside a statue of the Virgin Mary puzzled me until it became apparent that a small boy, dressed in a red cassock and white surplice, was going to climb it to put a wreathe of flowers on the Virgin’s head:

 He made his way ever higher up the ladder but kept treading on his vestments and stopping to get unstuck. Finally she was crowned. It was delightful. That’s the way I like my liturgy.

And that was Saturday morning.

Travels with my grandson

Coming home from kindergarten, two small boys and one howling 10-week-old are squeezed into the back seat of the car. Mummy is driving; Granny Lorna is riding shot-gun which is probably a bad metaphor in the light of subsequent events:

Howling baby’s brother: I just think she doesn’t like to be attached to her car seat.
His friend: She’s really loud.
Granny:  Maybe we should sing to her.

Two boys nod heads and wait.

Granny:  Rock a bye baby in the tree top,
When the wind blows, the baby will rock. [so far so good|
When the bough breaks, the baby will fall
And down will come baby, bough, cradle and all.

I smile; the two boys aren’t smiling.  In fact, they have rather stunned, if not horrified, expressions on their face.  I realize too late that, unlike an infant, they are actually paying attention to the words.

Granny: Yes, well, maybe that’s not the best one to sing. Let’s try this:

Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur
Happy kitty, sleepy kitty, purr purr purr.

Mummy: Where did you hear that?
Granny: Penny sings it when she tries to comfort Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory. [I forget the boys’ teacher also uses it to calm the class.]
Mummy (trying to execute a left-hand turn on a crowded street): Oh.

The baby is  still howling.  But the two boys are in some kind of zen state and are blissfully stroking the backs of their hands. 

I decide that seems like a good idea too; you learn lots of useful things in kindergarten.

I am happy to report that I phoned some references. Not only did I receive glowing reports about the builder, I learned a lot  about the neighbourhood and the people who live there.