Amadeus

The Milos Forman film Amadeus has always been one of my favorite films but I had never seen the stage play by Peter Shaffer on which it was based. I remedied that last week when I caught the production at the The St. Louis Repertory Theatre directed by Paul Mason Barnes and starring Andrew Long as Salieri and Jim Poulos as Mozart.

This and That

Just some miscellaneous thoughts:

• I finally read one of Sue Grafton's books, of course the "A" book:  A is for Alibi.  I can see why she sells although I guessed who the bad guy was almost immediately.  I'll probably read more.  I'm a sucker for a mystery series. I think that's why I never read her before - I just didn't want to start.
• I never finished reading Charles Dickens' The Chimes (I only got through the first part) but here's a link to the discussion about it.
• I was surprised to learn that authors in Britain get paid a royalty when books are borrowed from public lending libraries.  Check it out in this Guardian article. (h/t Book Chase)
• Something non-book related - December's production at The Rep was This Wonderful Life, a one man show in which the actor performs the entire movie It's a Wonderful Life  - yes, he plays all 32 characters.  I was doubtful during the first 20 minutes.  It reminded me a bit of a moment last summer when my little cousin Megan decided to tell us the entire story of Star Wars, but in this case the actor was not as cute as Megan.  Eventually, though, I suspended disbelief and enjoyed it.  The show was written in 2006, and oh how times change.  At the moment when the run on the bank occurs the actor (in the person of narrator) tells the kids in the audience to ask their parents what a bank run is, that it is something from the Depression - and then he throws in an extra "but they'll know ALL TOO WELL" (and the whole audience laughs knowingly).  Who knew, in 2006, that bank runs would become a worry again?
• I laughed at the beginning of this article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the American Philosophical Association conference in Philadelphia.  Yes, it's probably unfair to reduce an entire conference to a vignette of someone using a completely true argument in a wholly impractical way.  But it made me laugh.  It reminded me of blog conversations.
• On my way back from Florida a month or so ago I picked up The Monsters of Templeton, by Lauren Groff, in the airport bookstore.  Wilhelmina "Willie" Upton has returned home to recover from an affair gone wrong.  Her former-hippie mother has been born-again and confesses to Willie that her dad wasn't an unknown person (as Willie always thought) but is a local man who is, in fact, distantly related to Willie's mom.  Willie distracts herself by trying to figure out who her "real" dad is by working out her family tree.  Oh, and the mysterious loch-ness style monster in the local lake has died.   Which I think was meant to be symbolic of ... something.  I'm not sure of what, but the monster was actually my favorite character. I never got emotionally or intellectually attached to this novel but commenter AndiF listed it as one of her top books of the year, so you might want to give it a try.  

No

Enid Bagnold - The Chalk Garden

I finished reading The Chalk Garden and A Diary Without Dates and I'm pleased I spent the time, although for different reasons.

The Chalk Garden in play form is slightly different than the movie version (and I did go back and watch the movie).   Maitland, the manservant played by John Mills in the movie version, is less of a stable character than he is in the film.  In the movie version he is a voice of reason who we think is concerned for the best interests of Laurel but who doesn't have the power to do much more than he does.  His only quirk is his interest in criminal trials.

In the play, he's more quirky, just as caught up in the psychological games that the household is caught up in as the rest of them and with the same touch of instability.  Where there is a hint of romance between Maitland and Madrigal in the film version, I caught no hint in the play.  Maitland is portrayed as one of those sexless characters who is vaguely camp. 

Mrs. St. Maugham is also more batty than she is in the movie; we meet her as she shouts from the garden wondering where she has left her false teeth.   But the biggest difference is the presence of two more characters who are not in the movie version - Mr. Pinkbell the butler (who is an invisible character and hovers unseen over the cast sending directions down from his bedroom where he is dying) and his nurse who delivers his directions when he isn't directing things personally over the house telephone.:

Mrs. St. Maugham:  You made me jump.  He's my butler. Forty years my butler.  Now he's had a stroke but he keeps his finger on things.  (Rings handbell. Keeps bell)

Madrigal:  He carries on at death's door.

Mrs. St. Maugham: His standards rule this house.

Madrigal: (absently) You must be fond of him.

Mrs. St. Maugham: Alas no.

More so than the movie, this is a play about the death of a way of life.  Mrs. St. Maugham is living by the standards of the butler, the standards of another age, and the tension is whether she will ever have to acknowledge that, in the modern age, things may be done differently.

The most obvious tension over this is over the handling of the garden.  Pinkbell directs the gardening from his window and the garden is dying.  Madrigal brings her own knowledge in and the garden begins to thrive. 

This is also seen in the tension between Mrs. St. Maugham and her daughter.  In the movie there is an allegation that is never really rebutted that the first marriage of her daughter, Olivia, might have been caused by Olivia's unfaithfulness.  Olivia is certainly portrayed as a glamorous figure in the movie.  In the play it is clear that Olivia was a quiet girl who had no wish to "marry into society" and did so on the arrangement of her mother.  The marriage was a failure for reasons other than any unfaithfulness.  And the husband appears to have died long before Olivia met her new husband.

(Olivia enters from front door.  Madrigal rises)

Olivia:  (shakes hands) Judge!  I remember you! You used to be so kind to me when I was little!  What was that odd name Mother had for you? Puppy?  I used to wonder at it.

Judge: (Smiling, taking her hand) You were that silent little girl.

(Madrigal crosses down right)

Olivia:  Yes. I was silent.

As in the film version, the dramatic tension comes to a crisis when Olivia arrives to take Laurel away and when Madrigal's past is revealed and she sets herself in opposition to Mrs. St. Maugham over Laurel.  But the key moment of the play, the moment of the butler's death, comes immediately after Mrs. St. Maugham discovers who Madrigal really is, realizes that under the butler's rules Madrigal would be unacceptable in her household and would be a scandal and yet the Judge does not seem concerned, Olivia is not concerned, and Maitland is in awe of the fact that a real convicted murderess is among them. 

Mrs. St. Maugham:  Heavens!  What an anti-climax! What veneration!  One would think the woman was an actress!

This moment when celebrity outweighs propriety is the very moment when the Butler dies.  We have entered the modern age.

I enjoyed reading this play as much as I can enjoy reading plays.  I'm not very visual, my mind doesn't work that way, so the stage direction didn't give me a clear idea of the action.  Just reading the description of the set confused me and the stage directions (moves down right) meant nothing to me.  My imagination just isn't that specific. So even though I love going to plays, I don't think I'm going to spend my time reading a lot of plays.

Oh.  One last thing.  I particularly enjoyed this note at the beginning of the script:

By the Lord Chamberlain's wish, and in all places within his jurisdiction, the word "violated" on p. 24  Act One, must be played as "ravished," though it should remain "violated" on the printed page.

Showing that, even in 1953, things weren't quite as modern  as they could be.

The Little Dog Laughed

Last Tuesday I was invited to go see The Rep's Off-Ramp production of The Little Dog Laughed at the Grandel Theatre. This four character play by Douglas Carter Beane, was originally produced in New York in 2006. In typical St. Louis fashion, it wasn't chosen to be a Mainstage production at the Rep because "some" might find the subject matter (and the male nudity) offensive. That's what Off Ramp productions at the Grandel are for (it's a bit humorous, as if the invisible line that separates the city from the county acts as a barrier to protect the fragile sensibilities of the "some", all of whom must live in the county).


This is a play about deception, self-deception, deceptive appearances, and real deception. The four characters are an up-and-coming film actor named Mitchell, his agent Diane, a rent boy named Alex and Alex's girlfriend Ellen. Mitchell and Diane are in New York for an awards dinner and Diane also uses the trip to make a deal for Mitchell to obtain the rights to film a popular play about two gay men. Although Diane points out to the audience that Mitchell suffers from "recurring homosexuality", his image is the good looking, heterosexual boy next door. Diane thinks the film version of the play can make Mitchell a big star. She says: "If a perceived straight actor portrays a gay role in a feature film, it's noble, it's a stretch. It's the pretty lady putting on a fake nose and winning an Oscar." Of course this opportunity would not be available if Mitchell were not perceived as a straight man.

The problem is that Mitchell has met Alex, who has rocked his world. Diane is worried about protecting her investment even if that means keeping Mitchell in the closet and getting rid of Alex.

The undoubted key to the play is Diane, who is acted brilliantly by Erika Rolfsrud. Diane spends a great deal of the play talking to the audience, analyzing Hollywood, the film industry, and the other characters with ruthless precision. Diane doesn't deceive herself or the audience of the play but her life is based on deceiving other people, including of course Mitchell's adoring public. One of the best scenes in the play is when she and Mitchell meet the (invisible) playwright over lunch to persuade him to sell the screen rights to his play and she is asked to give her word "as a professional" that they won't ask him to change the ending. She looks at the audience and says "That's like asking a whore for her cherry." And then promptly makes the promise.

But all the characters are deceitful, either with others or with themselves and sometimes both. Ellen deceives herself about Alex but also has just ended a relationship with an older man and is running up his credit cards to the max. Mitchell is living a lie for the benefit of his fans. Both Mitchell and Alex deny that they are gay at the beginning of the play, Mitchell tells Alex that he just does occasional homosexual acts. Alex says he does it just for money and that he has a girlfriend.

Alex, who is the heart of the show in the hooker with a heart of gold mode, is still a character who steals Mitchell's money after Mitchell passes out and uses dishonesty as a shield (when Mitchell asks him about his first time with another man he blurts out that it was his stepfather but rescinds it and comes up with another story when he sees that Mitchell can't handle that truth.)

One of the interesting things that Beane did with the script was to make the action seem almost but not quite to be a play within a play, all controlled by Diane. As the play goes on she expounds either to the audience or to other characters (visible and invisible) about how a script should be structured and how to give audiences what they want. Her opening monologue is about Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's and how the first five minutes of the film are among the most perfect openings ever - and then it is all ruined with the appearance of Mickey Rooney.

By the end, Diane is on the phone lecturing the poor (invisible) playwright as to how his play needs to be re-written so that the main character ends up with the girl, not the guy. At the same time she is orchestrating just such an ending for Mitchell's true life story. The success of this play, I think, is that the (real life) audience is not left with any happiness in the ending, but rather the feeling that they've just seen something very sad happen. The audience wanted Mitchell and Alex to end up together. The sadness isn't so much because they didn't end up together but because Diane has been proved right about what motivated all the other characters and was able to manipulate a Hollywood happy-ending in which perception becomes reality. And yet the (real life)audience knows that this is not a happy ending and is not the ending they would have chosen.

And maybe the sad feeling at the end is because Hollywood (and perhaps The Rep) so underestimates the sensibilities of the American public.