Osama's Bonanza

So, according to Lawrence Wright in his book The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Knopf, 2006), apparently Osama bin Laden was, when a child, a great fan of the western television series, Bonanza (which originally ran from 1959 to 1973, with seemingly perpetual reruns). Let us imagine young Osama eagerly tuning in:



Now, this is a rather striking image in itself. But let me explain why I consider it not merely bizarre, but significant. I am convinced that no one, not the most heinous monster, is content to think ill of himself (and I'm going to stick with a "he" here for this particular argument). Even if “no man is a hero to his valet,” every man is a hero in the story he tells of his life within his own imagination, the notion of the gleeful villain being purely an invention of melodrama. That being the case, the sources of a man’s self-understanding --- the myths and stories chosen as favourites, the sources in which the very nature of "heroism" are defined --- are crucial to understanding his nature. So, how exactly did Osama bin Laden, as a boy, feel about Bonanza? How did he position himself in the stories?

Well, pondering the Ponderosa through Osama's eyes, thoughts of Lorne Greene as Ben Cartwright suddenly jogged my memory of a brief account of Osama bin Laden’s father that I had read in a biography of the son on the Frontline website some time ago.

Lorne Greene, Queen's University alumnus and Ben "Pa" Cartwright on Bonanza.

To make the point clear for those who have never seen Bonanza, I’ll start with a description of Ben Cartwright from a website devoted to the show:

"Ben Cartwright, a man whose quiet strength and perseverance has always been a steadfast and stabilizing influence on his sons.
A man who values family and moral justice . . . A man who stands fast when faced with adversity . . . A man who never allowed the wealth that he had accumulated to overshadow his beliefs.
He is a man who is no stranger to tragedy, a man who became a widower three times. After each of these devastating losses, the love he felt for his sons helped him overcome his pain and continue building his life’s dream, the Ponderosa, the largest ranch in the Nevada Territory.
Ben Cartwright never forgot his simple beginnings. A generous man, he has sheltered and helped many people, rich or poor, from every walk of life. He reaches out to his neighbors, never failing to offer them support in times of trouble. A tolerant man, who never judges another, who looks at a person for what they are on the inside, not by what they appear to be on the outside.
A righteous man, he firmly instilled his strong faith and unwavering convictions in his four sons. But he was also a gentle, loving father who knows instinctively how to give each one the guidance they need, to console in just the right way, a man who understands each son, who loves and 
accepts them no matter what circumstances they face.
Ben Cartwright, a man respected and admired by all who know him. He is the bonding force of the Ponderosa, whose deep voice and wisdom touches everyone." (Source)

And now a description of Osama bin Laden’s father, from a biography of Osama written by a friend of his, and reproduced on the Frontline website :

"His father Mohammed Awad bin Laden came to the kingdom [of Saudi Arabia] from Hadramout (South Yemen) sometime around 1930. The father started his life as a very poor laborer (porter in Jeddah port), to end up as owner of the biggest construction company in the kingdom…
…[Awad] bin Laden was so supportive to King Faisal [of Saudi Arabia] that he literally paid the civil servants' wages of the whole kingdom for six months....
The father was fairly devoted Moslem, very humble and generous. He was so proud of the bag he used when he was a porter that he kept it as a trophy in the main reception room in his palace. The father used to insist on his sons to go and manage some projects themselves.
The father had very dominating personality. He insisted to keep all his children in one premises. He had a tough discipline and observed all the children with strict religious and social code. He maintained a special daily program and obliged his children to follow. At the same time the father was entertaining with trips to the sea and desert. He dealt with his children as big men and demanded them to show confidence at young age. He was very keen not to show any difference in the treatment of his children."
(Source)

The place in which Mr. Greene is currently rolling as I write this.

So, what lessons did young Osama take in at his father's/Ben Cartwright's knee? And which of the three sons did he most identify with: Adam, Hoss or Little Joe? Well, my guess is that it was not Adam, if only because Adam was gone from the series by 1962. But what part of the mythology embodied by Bonanza left the series along with Adam's departure? Well, consider this episode that someone has helpfully edited down (sometimes it seems you can find absolutely ANYTHING on YouTube) in which the venerable Ben Cartwright is bent on "taking the law into his own hands," and Adam, the rational liberal, attempts to reason with him. Try substituting the Islamic Holy Land for the Ponderosa ranch in your mind, and see how it plays:



But, it seems to me that the pseudo-liberal resolution arrived at in this episode was not exactly characteristic of Bonanza, and that the more frequent moral would be something along the lines of what Kenny Rogers declared in "The Coward of the County": "sometimes you've got to fight to be a man." And, indeed, it seems that after a time there was not quite room enough in Bonanza for the point of view represented by Adam, for the character lasted only three seasons, Pernell Roberts leaving the series in 1962 because of his disagreements with the writers. (To get a sense of what these disagreements were, it is important to note that Roberts was something of a liberal activist in real life, politically known for publicly embarrassing NBC about their lazy habit of hiring caucasian actors to play natives.) But it almost seems as though they could not allow Roberts to go without teaching his character a hard lesson in one of his last episodes --- one of the more famous from the series, number 94, “The Crucible." I’ve combined two different website sources to create this synopsis:

“After completing a grueling cattle drive, Adam Cartwright takes a trip into the wilderness for some peace and quiet, Instead, he is robbed and stripped of his weapons and clothing by a pair of vicious outlaws. Left to die in the middle of nowhere, Adam attempts to make the grueling journey to Signal Rock on foot. Along the way, he meets prospector Peter Kane (Lee Marvin), offering to work Pete's claim in exchange for the man's mule. Alas, the mentally unbalanced prospector turns out to have an altogether different agenda in mind. He holds Adam prisoner and tortures him to prove his theory that anyone could be driven to kill, even a man as rational as Adam.” (Source 1 & 2)

In subsequent seasons, then (those which appeared after Osama had turned five, in 1962), Ben Cartwright represented absolutely the most authoritative view on show: wise and unopposed in his no-nonsense idea of hard-nosed, stand-alone justice --- the Texan ideal (although, yes, the Ponderosa is supposed to be in Nevada). So, am I suggesting that Osama bin Laden became a terrorist because Pernell Roberts left Bonanza? Well, I don't think I'd like to go that far. But I will say that all of this brings me to consider that, in terms of personal mythology, there is perhaps very little separating the ideas of Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush except the accident of geography: for each seems determined to consider the world his own personal Ponderosa.

The Other Blanche

For years now, I have been deeply curious about what Jessica Tandy might have been like as Blanche when A Streetcar Named Desire first played on Broadway. Tandy was the only one of the major players from the Broadway production, directed by Elia Kazan, who did not recreate her role for the film, also directed by Kazan. Instead, the role went to Vivien Leigh, who had played the role in London under the direction of her husband, Laurence Olivier. Leigh was a much bigger star than Tandy, of course, having won an Oscar for her performance in Gone With The Wind; and in the end she won another Oscar for her performance as Blanche, which is certainly memorable, although to some viewers nowadays --- to some of my students, at any rate --- it seems just a little too mannered. Kazan confessed later on that he actually preferred Tandy in the role because she was subtler. So did Karl Malden, who played Mitch; although he also emphasized that when he discussed this question with Marlon Brando, Brando had said he preferred Leigh, because she had brought a sexual energy to the role that Tandy had lacked.

I had always assumed that there was no objective evidence left for us to make a comparison, but the other day (while in fact looking to see if there was any video of the country-rock band, Tandy --- evidently not yet), I came across this clip on YouTube of Jessica Tandy recreating a bit of her performance in a monologue that was filmed for a television special on Tennessee Williams. Of course, this was probably filmed almost three decades after the original production: Tandy is grey-haired and a very different woman, and there is no Marlon Brando or Kim Hunter for her to play off. But still, it's interesting, and gives some clue to how the production must have differed from the film. Whereas Vivien Leigh gave the impression of being a sort of panicked song bird battering against the window of a room, struggling to escape from Stanley and everything he represented, Jessica Tandy seems more like a dignified, beautiful creature speaking about the instrument of its imminent extinction. She also seems more formidable than Leigh --- her struggle with Stanley must have seemed more like an even match, which would probably strengthen the play quite a bit. But, one can also see Brando's point about the sexuality: while it's easy to see this Blanche as a schoolteacher, it's a little more difficult to imagine her seducing a school boy. She seems too much in control of herself for anything quite so impulsive.

On a side note, it's also interesting to hear Tennessee Williams' voice at the beginning of the clip. It's easy to forget sometimes, just seeing him frozen in photos (like that great Yosef Karsh portrait above), that he was almost as broad a character in his own way as was Truman Capote (e.g., "collEEsion cohwrse"). And on a side note to my side note, I am very eager to see what Daniel MacIvor does with Williams in his new play, His Greatness, which is about the last year in Williams's life, and a new draft of which Daniel finished just the other day, according to his blog (see the bottom of this page).

Anyway, here's the Jessica Tandy clip:

Harper's Newspeak and its Enforcers

I think, from here on in, I am going to allow my blogs to drift as far away from theatre as my mind happens to be at any given moment. And in this case, I have as my topic another passion, my hatred of bullies.

The bully in this case is one Dr. Irwin Itzkovitch, Assistant Deputy Minister, Earth Sciences Sector, Natural Resources Canada (who has very thoughtfully posted his photo and email on the government website). To be sure, he was carrying out the wishes of his odious master, Stephen Harper --- but rather more zealously than conscionably, as you shall see. A couple of months ago, Harper's Magazine (a favourite of mine) published some of Itzkovitch's email correspondence, and while it made me laugh, and then sneer, eventually it made me burn with indignation. If there is one thing that I hate even more than a simple bully, it is one who is putatively acting in my name, as a citizen of Canada. I began to think that, in spirit, though of course not degree, Itzkovitch's acts are of a piece with the sort of attitude popularly typified by Adolph Eichmann: unquestioning, boot-licking obedience to one's masters and ruthless intolerance towards underlings. And once I'd thought that, I didn't really feel comfortable just letting this go with a sneer anymore. So I wrote to him. Anyway, for your reading pleasure and moral indignation, I offer to you first the original correspondence as it appeared in Harper's, then my email to Itzkovitch.

From a September email exchange between representatives of Natural Resources Canada and Andrew Okulitch, a scientist working at the Geological Survey of Canada in an emeritus capacity. Irwin Itzkovitch is an assistant deputy minister under Minister of Natural Resources Gary Lunn. Vanessa Nelson is an executive adviser. Okulitch was fired but reappointed two weeks later. The Conservative Party won control of Canada's government in January, after twelve years of Liberal rule. Originally from Harper's Magazine, December 2006:

FROM: VANESSA NELSON As per the Minister's Office, effective immediately, the words "Canada's New Government" are to be used instead of "the Government of Canada" in all departmental correspondence. Please note that the initial letters of all three words are capitalized. Thank you for your cooperation.

FROM: ANDREW OKULITCH Why do newly elected officials think everything begins with them taking office? They are merely stewards for as long as the public allows. They are the Government of Canada. Nothing more. I shall use "Geological Survey of Canada" on my departmental correspondence to avoid any connection with "New Government." The GSC, steward to Canada's earth resources for 164 years, is an institution worthy of my loyalty, as opposed to idiotic buzzwords coined by political hacks.

FROM: IRWIN ITZKOVITCH Given your strong though misdirected views of the role and authority of the Government as elected by the people, and your duty to reflect their decisions, I accept that you are immediately removing yourself from the Emeritus Program. I wish you every success in your future.

FROM: ANDREW OKULITCH Although your knee-jerk response seems typical of Ottawa "mentality" these days, to give you the benefit of the doubt, it may have been mandated by our nervous minister. Of course, it is not a particularly rational decision, and perhaps you might reflect upon it. We of the GSC are used to taking the long view. Ministers come and go, but my talents will always remain available to the people of Canada.

FROM: IRWIN ITZKOVITCH This is not a knee-jerk reaction nor was it dictated by anyone. My decision stands and I await confirmation that it has been executed by the responsible GSC management.

FROM: ANDREW OKULITCH I have just received the clarification of the usage policy for the term New Government, stating that the new wording is required only in documents prepared for or on behalf of Minister Lunn. This limited usage is consistent and appropriate. We would appear to have been victims of an unfortunate misunderstanding. My intransigence about the term was in protest about its misapplication, not a call for civil disobedience. I do understand the need to obey ministerial directives once I am given them clearly. If I can help calm the waters by issuing my own clarification and apology, I would be glad to do so.

FROM: IRWIN ITZKOVITCH Your reaction was and continues to be unacceptable for anyone associated with Public Service. My decision stands. As of yesterday you are no longer an emeritus scientist.

FROM: ANDREW OKULITCH I concede that my memo was intemperate and deserving of a reprimand. It was, however, prompted by misinformation sent out by your staff. I don't expect that anything I might say now will change your mind, so I'll conclude with a few facts you will now have to live with. I'll come out of this a champion of common sense (except when it comes to sending memos), someone who tried to defuse a situation with humor and made an effort to restore calm. You'll come out as an intemperate, irrational manager who lacks the strength of character to reverse a hasty decision. Do you really want to be remembered as the only assistant deputy minister who sacked an emeritus scientist over such trivia? It is never too late to repair an unfortunate situation if everyone approaches it with an open mind and good intentions.

To: Irwin.Itzkovitch@nrcan-rncan.gc.ca
From: Craig Walker
Subject: Correspondence

Dr. Itzkovitch,

Because I have been busy with other things, I have only just read your correpsondence with Andrew Okulitch published a couple of months ago in Harper's Magazine.

I imagine your emails must look very different, reading them as reproduced in an international publication rather than reading them upon your computer screen from the seat of power. Now it is there for all to see that in one swoop you managed to act as both a bullying tyrant and a craven toady. Shame on you. If you do not have the bare common sense to be at least moderate in your implementation of a government policy that any objective judgement would have to admit was, at best, rather vulgarly self-serving, you have no business holding any leadership role. I suggest that you resign before you disgrace yourself any futher.

Sincerely,
Craig Walker
Professor of Drama,
Queen's University

Second Person, Singular

You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this…

Or, at least, you would not ordinarily volunteer for anything that resembled the excruciating predicament of audience involvement. But here you are all the same. Excited. Nervous. Curious. That pretty dark-haired, dark-eyed girl speaks to you by name and asks if you have remembered to bring your pass. You hand over the little folder for her to check. It has a title, Everyman, and has the name of a theatre company, Single Thread, but apart from that, it looks less like a theatre ticket than a passport (to “the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns”?). Then she takes your coat and hat and gloves and locks them away in a chest. (A coffin for your clothes?) She chats with you in a friendly way, but she knows that you’ve come here to die. So, she’d like to make you comfortable, but there’s only so much, really, that she can do.

She takes you downstairs into the basement of the church, where there is a single theatre seat that faces a closed door, and she leaves you there, alone. Then the sounds begin that will continue intermittently throughout the next (last) hour of your life: strange music, fragments of speech, mechanical noises --- odd, peripheral sounds, like rats scuttling in the walls of your mind, dragging fragments of the daylight world behind them like long vaguely nauseating tails.

Then a glow appears behind the door and muffled voices are heard, and still you wait, wondering whether you should open it or not. But at last you do. And it has begun.

There, in a white room, is the girl from the lobby. And you feel relieved to see her in this new world at first, like Alice does in seeing the White Rabbit she has followed. And the room is full of other people, some of whom you know from the real world, but they seem to be a little out of their senses, acting like profoundly autistic people, except for a gaunt and pale figure in a dark suit in one corner, and an attractive but intimidating woman in another who is reading. And, in another corner there is a little puppet theatre, where, after a moment, a rather silly finger puppet show begins, enacting the opening scene from the medieval morality play, Everyman, in the vaguely modernized text by John Gassner. It’s amusing but trivial, and could become tiresome. But, when the woman slams the book shut, the tone in the room becomes much more intense. Because it is around that time that they start speaking to you. Death is coming after you. And you are forced to move from room to room, from Fellowship’s basement apartment, to the middle class suburban dining room of your Cousin and Kindred, to the somewhat claustrophobic and almost disgusting room of Goods, stuffed full of appliances and toys, like the squalor of the student residence room of an overindulged grown child.

But still, through all this, you are thinking about what is being done. About how Liam Karry, the director, has made his choices. About how each of the actors has played impressively, with commitment. About how the experience is a little like death itself, in that we know in a general way what is in store for us, but really nothing about the specifics. And you are thinking, recurringly, about how self-conscious you are of the experiment, much as you were when you read Jay McInerney’s novel Bright Lights, Big City, which was written entirely in the second person singular (opening with the line "You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this...")

But then, suddenly you are pushed through a door and you are left in complete and utter darkness. And there is no sound at all for a moment. Nothing. And for a moment too, you have no idea where to go. Because of the maze of rooms you’ve been through already, you really would have no idea how to make your way backwards through the darkness, even if the door had not closed behind you. So you grope about yourself and realize that you are in a hallway. Then, out of the darkness ahead of you, you hear someone crying out in pain, calling for your help, quietly at first and then more loudly and urgently.

And so, having no other choice, you make your may forward, gropingly, until you come to the room where Good Deeds lies, on the ground, and with a little horror you recognize that he is on a crucifix. And, although this again makes you think about (and admire) the director’s choices, you suddenly also realize that, in that dark hallway, when what you had to do and what Everyman had to do were one and the same thing, the nature of your involvement changed. You lost your formerly inescapable sense of detached irony for a moment, and you were in the midst, playing along in earnest. And this will be your guide for how to approach the rest of the journey. Good Deeds and Knowledge will be of great help in this, because the actors play their roles with a degree of earnestness that makes you ashamed of your petty irony. And when you encounter Confession, you have been emotionally moved enough that you find yourself solemnly wishing that you knew how to utter contrition in a manner commensurate with the moment --- that, in effect, your upbringing was not Protestant. So that, by the time you are taken down a long, dark, dank tunnel, and left in your grave to lie and listen to the faint, remote ticking and rattling of a world beyond your darkness, you have, indeed, thought upon your own mortality.

And when, at last, the light literally at the end of the tunnel begins to glow, and you follow it to the room in which you recover your clothes and then climb the stairs through the cellar door ("the most beautiful phrase in the language") up into the snowy night, and the cold fresh air strikes your face as you see your breath appear in the moonlight, you are overwhelmed by the exhilarating feeling of just how good it is to be alive.



I lifted a couple of production photos from Alex Dault's page on Facebook. So sue me. The one at the top is of Annie Briggs as Confession. If you are going to get down on your knees and make yourself abject before a woman, you really do want her to be someone like Annie Briggs. In the photo immediately above are Adam Wray and Fernanda Fukamati as Kindred and Cousin. They were wearing clothes when I went through, so I can only surmise that they have exaggerated ideas of the degree of formality my dignified presence requires.

NOTE:
I apologize for how long it has taken to make this posting. In fact, I would have made it a month ago, immediately after I saw the show, but I was sworn to divulge nothing about the show to anyone for as long as it was still running (36 performances for 36 individual audience members). But my imagination can be stubborn, and because it was this posting it wanted to make, it refused to offer up any alternatives. And then, when the run of the show was over, I had so many obligations to fulfill that this had to go on a back burner. But I intend to allow much less time to elapse before I post again.

Invidious Casting

Can the casting of roles be invidious? At first glance, it appears that, race apart, the notion of offensively unfair discrimination cannot, perhaps must not, apply to casting. (I leave aside the question of race, which, it seems to me, is at least in our age mainly irrelevant to casting, except where the script explicitly makes it of absolutely crucial relevance. Native Son, for example, would be difficult for me to stage to my satisfaction with a white actor playing Bigger Thomas; but on the other hand, I’ve directed Daniel David Moses’s Brebeuf’s Ghost, which is about the impact of White European culture upon Aboriginal American culture, with a more or less all white cast, no aboriginal actors being available, because I think that the play is really more about the collision of ideas than race, per se.) To take some obvious examples, if a script requires a character to be beautiful, it is difficult to make do with someone homely; if references are made to a character’s anorexia, it would confusing to cast an obese actor; and if the character is a domineering alpha male in the Coriolanus mould, the audience might rightly complain if, oh, say, Wallace Shawn were cast. Unless, of course, the production is making a point of the very unsuitability of the characters for the roles in which the characters are cast---unless, that is, the casting is purposefully ironic. But more of that in a moment.

Either way, seen in this light, it would appear that theatre is one of the few places in which it is still permitted and even necessary to make the various sorts of value judgements which are, with very good reason, ordinarily regarded as invidious and therefore unacceptable in civil society. Choosing secretaries based in part on their looks is morally offensive; choosing Cleopatras is not. Indeed, in the theatre many kinds of stark personal assessments are essential. Consider the measurements that are taken in wardrobe: waistlines and inseams are set forth as cold, hard facts. Furthermore, in a conversation between a director and a costume designer about appropriate costumes, to ignore the fact that a particular actor is, say, slope-shouldered or thick in the waist, or whatever, on the grounds that to speak of it would be impolite, would be to open the door to various inappropriate choices which could result in the demoralization and even humiliation of the actor. It is awful enough in ordinary life to feel that one is playing a role for which one is unequipped (think of the dyslexic child called to read aloud, the innumerate student called to the chalkboard in math class, the klutz forced to bat in gym class); it is still more awful on the stage, before an audience that feels very much at its ease making judgements about the actor's person while it complacently sits in the darkness, itself more or less unobserved and safe from any reciprocal judgements.

As for personal feelings, it is patronizing to assume that the facts of an actor’s physical being must be left unmentioned before her or him. The body is the medium through which the actor works, and it must be known for what it is as thoroughly and truly as the carpenter knows a hammer. That is to say, the fat actor knows that fatness will be an aspect of any character in which he or she is cast, and so on; not to know so is to be not merely self-deluded but also a bad actor.

Moreover, because, at least in theory, theatre takes the entire field of human relations as its subject, and because, at its base, it is an attempt to expose what is by the light of what might be, it is essential that it not be limited by mere etiquette from making its meanings. In short, theatre has far more important concerns than the worry about whether it is on its best manners.


Maude Mitchell as Nora and Ricardo Gil as Dr. Rank in Mabou Mines' DollHouse.

That, at least, is the argument that I would make ordinarily. So why, then, was I bothered by the use of dwarfs (the word is not, by the way, dwarves: Tolkien must answer for that) in the Mabou Mines adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll House --- or Mabou Mines DollHouse as they prefer to call it --- currently playing in Toronto at Harbourfront Centre? (It ends today, so if you are about to see it this afternoon, read this later.) For those who have not heard, let me explain that in this production, all the male characters are played by dwarfs; the females are mostly played by unusually tall women. The point of all this is hardly obscure, and indeed is based on an ideological perspective that, in the last thirty or so years has become so utterly commonplace and unexceptionable as to be regarded as a simple truism: the patriarchy is a construction of figuratively little (i.e., weak) men to protect themselves against figuratively large (i.e., powerful) women. Fair enough. And yet the way the male dwarfs were used in the production bothered me, because clearly, they were meant to be inherently risible in their efforts to assert their authority. (I exclude Hannah Kritzeck, the young female dwarf who played Emmy Helmer, because she has clearly been cast because, while she looks age three, she brings to her role all the skill of a clever and talented ten-year old, which is apparently her real age.) Now, this is something that I have only heard one other person confess an unease about, and indeed, the dwarf actors themselves are presumably comfortable with the fact (it is patronizing to presume them to be unwittingly exploited), so it might be that mine is a rare, and perhaps even misplaced, concern. But, for all that, it is mine, and I am interested in delving into the roots of it.

I should perhaps begin by confessing that A Doll House is probably my least favourite of all of Ibsen’s plays (although there are at least a couple of his very early verse plays that I have not read). About a year ago, I saw Peter Hinton’s production of the play at the Saidye Bronfman Centre in Montreal, and left feeling that if such a strong production could not teach me to love the play, then nothing ever would. But I would say that if I am unenthusiastic about the play, the evidence suggests that Lee Breuer, who directed the Mabou Mines production, hates it outright. Both Ibsen’s society and Ibsen himself appear to have been targeted for satire here, for the entire play is presented as a grotesque parody. Not only are its melodramatic aspects underscored --- literally so, for as with real melodrama, the action is accompanied by continuous overwrought music --- every exchange, every character, every emotion, every idea, and every gesture is deliberately over-stated, so that the ironic intent of the exaggeration is unmistakable.

Some people---some very intelligent, insightful friends of mine, I might add---have said that the production pays off one’s patience in its final moments; but to me it was more of the same. If Breuer’s method of over-statement was the equivalent of driving at 80 kilometres an hour in a 50 zone, in the last twenty minutes, he accelerated to 120, but it was still the same method: the underscored melodrama became opera, the characters were multiplied by dozens of puppets, Nora not only became “her real self” but literally naked and even bald. The final image is of Nick Novicki, the actor who plays Torvald, in a sheet which has served as a toga but now resembles a diaper, wandering through the auditorium, bleating out Nora's name in a babyish manner: the infantile nature of the patriarchy has been mercilessly exposed.

Well, of course, all of this was not quite like anything I had ever seen before. I thought it bold, sensational, spectacular and extraordinary.

But it also seemed to me simplistic, crass, contemptuous and sophomoric.

And I found myself wearied and vaguely nauseated ---in the way one is after too much dessert--- by the production's incessant, deliberate falsity. This seemed to be a species of irony intended for those with no appetite for subtlety. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the production seemed to me banal --- in the sense of the word that Hannah Arendt meant when she suggested the evil of men like Eichmann was banal --- not that what was done was not extraordinary or astonishing, but that it seemed empty of any real depth of thought or transcendent intention.

So, having said all that, the question arises: would I have felt more comfortable about the casting of dwarfs in a production which, on the whole, I had liked better? Well, yes, probably; but that would be a production which I regarded as a good deal more thoughtful than this one, and there’s the rub. I can’t imagine a truly thoughtful production that would attempt to elicit our derision for certain characters by having them played by people who suffered from deformities. There was indeed, at least one funny moment to do with their stature: when Nick Novicki as Torvald asked haughtily “Are you saying I’m small?” Moments in which we see a preposterous lack of self-knowledge are usually rather funny. But that still leaves me with my discomfort that these characters were only ever presented to us as ridiculous. If the idea is that any notion that the men who played these roles might have dignity and authority is inherently preposterous because they are so small, then it is an idea that I reject, of course. And yet the production made it difficult to reach any other conclusion except this. Again and again, it seemed to say: "Look at the dwarfs try to be important! Ha ha ha!"

And that, I suppose, I consider an example of invidious casting.

The Fabulous Invalid and Robust Alternatives

It's been well over a week since I last posted; those pesky classes have been keeping me busy, believe it or not (we just finished the first week back in classes at Queen's University). Anyway, by way of making amends, here're a few observations I discussed at some length in my first class of the new year.

Naturally, the theatre changed a great deal over the last century, and it can be interesting to look at some of the specific ways in which this change has occurred and to consider the reasons for and implications of the changes. Consider the example of Broadway, "the fabulous invalid":

In the 1927-28 season, there were 264 new productions that opened on Broadway.
In 1930-31, only four years later, it was down to 187 new productions.
By 1940-41, it was down to 60 new productions.
In 1967-68, it had not dropped much further, for there were 58 new productions.
But by 1989-90, there were only 35 new productions.

Now, this may look like a straightforward if disheartening tale of decline. But we need to look further past those simple numbers and think about the explanations. We can interpret some of those numbers fairly plausibly by saying, for example, that in 1927 the “Talkies” had come along and in 1929 the Great Depression, and that these had taken a bite out of the audiences. In the 1930’s when the Great Depression was in full swing, radio had become the central medium. Yet, by that token, it seems odd that after television took off in the 1950s, Broadway should still be doing so well near the end of the 1960s. To be sure, one might answer that this was also a time of great prosperity, and increasing leisure time and tourism, but still, the subsequent decline through the 1970s then becomes a little confusing at first glance.

But one Broadway show is not exactly the same as another, and it's interesting to see what happens to the breakdown of the genres of Broadway entertainment. Those 58 new shows of 1967-68 comprised 14 musicals and 44 non-musicals. But those 35 new shows of 1989-90 comprised 12 musicals (of which 6 were revivals) and 21 non-musicals (plus 2 “special attractions” which fit into neither category). So while the number of musicals was relatively undiminished at that point, the non-musical shows were still in decline. But a glance at the theatre listings of last week's Sunday Times (7 January 2007) showed that there were 35 shows currently playing on Broadway (four of the thirty-nine theatres were dark while they were in turn-over). Of these, 27 were musicals (a full 23 of which were either revivals or at least two seasons old), and only 8 were non-musicals (4 of which were revivals). Now that is a very significant change in the character of Broadway.

Now, one of the related stories to this transformation of Broadway lies in the demographic shift which has occurred in the audiences---whether this is cause or effect is, I am sure, impossible to say for sure. It was reported in the New York Times last month (and thanks to Michael Murphy for pointing this out to me) that "The latest demographic report from the League of American Theaters and Producers, the marketing umbrella agency for Broadway, shows that during the 2005-6 season, 19 percent of Broadway theatergoers were from New York City, down from 31 percent in 1980-81" ("The Great White-Bread Way," NYT, 10 Dec 2006). So Broadway has really become mainly a tourist attraction. It is no longer "New Yorkers' theatre" to which others visit. It is now a theatre principally for others.

Meanwhile, the traditional (and by traditional, I am thinking back as far as Classical Greece) use of theatre as a unifying and defining event for a specific community has been displaced from Broadway to the outlying regions of North America. Consider the example of Canada, where, prior to that watershed 1967-68 Broadway season, we had a handful of really important theatres: those that had been established in the 1950’s, including the Stratford Festival and Theatre du nouveau monde; and a few others that had been added in the 1960’s, including Shaw Festival, Manitoba Theatre Centre, Vancouver Playhouse and so on. But none of these produced much Canadian drama to speak of. The theatre in this country was, largely, a foreign theatre.

But 1967-68 was a watershed season in Canada for other reasons, for it closed off the national centennial celebrations and left the country with a strong interest in nationalism to fuel theatrical aspirations. And it was in the years following, we saw founded in Canada an immense number of important theatres which made a huge contribution to the national drama, such as: Confederation Arts Centre, National Arts Centre, Great Canadian Theatre Company, St Lawrence Centre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Factory Theatre, Tarragon Theatre, Toronto Free Theatre, Blyth Festival, Thousand Islands Playhouse, Alberta Theatre Projects, Prairie Theatre Exchange, Globe Theatre, Theatre Calgary, Persephone Theatre, Belfry Theatre, and so on.

And it is here, in these smaller regional theatres---not just in Canada, but in the United States too, of course; though that is somewhat outside my expertise---that the traditional functions of theatre are being upheld.

I've got more thoughts about this, but no more spare time to explore them at the moment, so I'll have to leave off there.

Tractatus Logico-Westernicus

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Talk low, talk slow, and don’t talk too much.” — John Wayne

Apparently, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was a great fan of movie westerns. Which pleases me, because I am a fan of both. I imagine that what appealed to Wittgenstein in the western was partly the economy of the sparse dialogue, which is so characteristic of the genre and is roughly parallel to the terseness of Wittgenstein’s own style; and perhaps it was partly too the way in which metaphysical questions are, in the best westerns, evoked, engaged and explored by the action and the cinematography without any attempt to settle them in an explicit verbal way. To be sure, there are trite westerns, just as there is pretentious philosophy, but the best of each expand our horizons, help us to take a broad perspective.

As a side note, I don’t know how well it is known, even now, that Ludwig Wittgenstein and Adolph Hitler were classmates when they were about twelve to fourteen years old, at the Realschule in Linz, Austria.


It’s astonishing to think of; and one wonders if Hitler’s irrational hatred of Jews took some root in what must have been the depressing evidence of his own mediocrity when he found himself sharing a classroom with young Ludwig. In any case, Wittgenstein is presumably the boy alluded to in Mein Kampf: “In high school I did learn to know a Jewish boy, whom we all treated cautiously, only because various experiences had taught us to doubt his reliability.”

Now Hitler, there was someone who talked loud, talked fast and talked far, far too much.