The Hills of California

 If I hadn't just returned from California, and experienced crossing some hills there, I might have reacted differently to the Jez Butterworth play, The Hills of California, we saw in New York on December 8. The title is drawn, as it happens, from a Johnny Mercer song, so the play's dealing with California is its central theme, about the return of the oldest of four sisters who had formed a singing quartet after she had not been in communication with her family since leaving for California about two decades before.

The play received excellent reviews in New York, from both the Times and the New Yorker. The London critics were not a kind: they pointed out that the play is long and meandering, and indulges in lots of unrelated stuff; the return of Joan, the oldest and most talented sister brings out, of course, that she has not succeeded any more than her younger siblings, who haven't either. Nor has their dominating mother, who only realizes and never really accepts that she has trained them to sing harmoniously in a girl group on the model of the Andrews Sisters.

A talent scout for US TV points out to her that the Andrews Sisters were already in decline as a successful act and were virtually invisible to producers looking for new styles of singing. One is led to wonder what attention Veronica, the mother, had been paying for all those years she had been rigorously training her four daughters to where music was heading.

Laura Donnelly, who originated the double role of Veronica and Joan, and is Jez Butterworth's partner, gives a bravura performance. We see her twenty years earlier when the girls are teens, and then when they are grown up and dissatisfied with their lives. They have to adjust quickly to the newly found fact that Joan was no more successful than they have been. Donnelly is excellent in both roles.

I was drawn to see this play on Broadway by my having seen two of Butterworth's previous plays, Jerusalem in London and The Ferryman in New York. He seems to have an ability to stir the New York critics into a positive frame of mind where they shout out hosannas for his product. To me, Jerusalem was exceedingly English and I was amazed it had been brought to New York at all; the secret quality it contained, however, was the leading role performed by Mark Rylance, whom I would classify as the finest currently active actor I've seen.

The large cast is excellent, as an equally vast ensemble was in The Ferryman, which has a plot set in The Troubles in Northern Ireland which is more clearly drawn than this story. Jerusalem's title, by the way, refers to Blake's famous poem comparing England to the legendary ideal of ancient Jerusalem. It is about a bunch of drifters who are mesmerized by a societal dropout (played by Rylance) who is unable to and does not even want at heart to be their leader.

Even the basic background of The Hills was obscured, especially in the first act, by the difficult-to-follow accents of the leading players, most of whom were in the original London production. They also often addressed the rear or the side of the stage, at low volume, which made it even harder, but by the second and third acts, most of these problems, admittedly relying on the audience, had been resolved.

What hadn't been, though, was the matter that the play's issues remain essentially unaddressed, as Joan gives only a brief account of how she fared in California: she may ave had a few acting or singing gigs but in the end, was far from a success. None of the others, despite their fine singing attributes, honed by the relentless workouts their mother gave them, made it in any significant way, either. It all comes back to the critical visit of the talent scout, who also precipitates a family crisis by his actions.

The show will be on the boards for another month and in many ways, it's a theatrical attraction that hols your interest. Despite its almost three-hour duration, it doesn't drag. But I don't expect that many who have seen or will see it got a whole lot more out of it than I did. As it happens, Butterworth and his brother have written the screenplay for what looks to be a top-notch streaming series, The Agency, a CIA story set in London, and based on a French series, The Bureau.

Those Damn Dodgers

In Douglas Wallop's 1954 novel [the date is important], The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, a Washington Senators fan aims to sell his soul to the Devil in a Faustian manner so that the Senators can beat the Yankees for the American League pennant. The Senators do win the pennant because an umpire makes a controversial call that the fan-turned-star is safe at the plate despite the protests of the disguised Devil character, played by Ray Walston. So even the Devil couldn't make an umpire change his call.

The Devil then tries to convince the fan not to be turned back into a fan so that the Senators can beat the Dodgers, whom they will play in the World Series. After all, the Devil argues, "As much as I love the Yankees"--naturally the Devil is a Yankee fan--"I hate the Dodgers. Those Dodgers [as of 1954] have never won a World Series." So, amazingly, the next year, 1955, saw the Dodgers do just that: win the Series for the first time.

Not wanting the Dodgers to win, ever, is a sentiment that comes even more strongly to a Giant fan. The ancient rivalry--Giants v. Dodgers--continues on the West Coast to this day even if it's no longer played out at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan and Ebbets Field in Brooklyn.

I never was much of a Yankee hater. True, the Yanks had beaten the Giants in the two Series when they met while I was growing up, in 1951 and 1962. But other than then, in those pre-interleague play, the Giants never played the Yankees.

Thus, I found myself in the uncharacteristic posture of rooting for the Yankees in this year's Series, which the Dodgers won today by winning the 5th game and thus taking the contest, four games to one. The Yanks didn't make it easy. They took a big early lead with Aaron Judge's home run but then committed an unpardonable run of errors in the 5th inning; the final score, however, was a tight 7-6.

The Dodgers have spent the most money in baseball on players. They have power hitters. The old Dodgers exemplified "small ball": scoring by hitting singles, advancing with strategic bunts and stolen bases, and finding their way to home plate through mastery of "fundamentals." Great players end up switching teams when they accept the highest bid. In addition to acquiring a Japanese ballplayer named Ohtani who is the first player since Babe Ruth to qualify as a great hitter AND pitcher, the Dodgers picked up a superb hitter from the Atlanta Braves, Freddie Freeman, who went on in this Series to hit a home run in almost every game.

Although the Yankees managed to dispose of Cleveland in the American League final playoff series, and earlier defeated another surprise entrant, the Kansas City Royals, they lacked the assured aura of confidence that usually accompanied them post-season. They suffered from terrible managing decisions by their skipper, Aaron Boone. Their unparalleled record of winning the Series 27 times was for naught.

Alas, after the Giants' run of the teen years of this century--they won the Series in '12, '14, and '16, we thought they'd keep winning in even-numbered years, but it was not to be. Their team got old, or was traded away, or both. Manager Bruce Bochy retired and then un-retired to manage the Texas Rangers last year to their first Series triumph. Their finest player, catcher Buster Posey, signaled the ultimate end of that era when he retired a year or two ago.

So we have to suffer with a Dodgers win. They won four years ago and have accumulated eight wins since 1955, when the headline in the now-defunct Brooklyn Eagle screamed: "THIS IS NEXT YEAR!" because the perennially-losing Dodgers' mantra was "Wait 'til next year!".

Santa Barbara

We travelled to Santa Barbara, not for a destination wedding, but the nuptials of the son of a good friend of ours to a lady who hails from...Santa Barbara. I'd been there briefly twice before but this was the time we had a chance to see something of this incredibly charming town. The locals have a word for it: perfection, which may be a mild exaggeration but only a mild one. It's a delightful spot.

The wedding itself was outside, which is not a major risk in the summer here. The bride's older sister was duly qualified as an officiant and earned the fond regard of all by conducting a meaningful, short ceremony, with an emphasis on the short part. The speeches were enjoyable, especially when the bride's father started his by observing that we all must be wondering why in laid-back California, this occasion was black tie. I'm not sure he provided an answer to that but he also was responsible for his bagpipe group piping in the wedding party and then performing after dinner. We also enjoyed both the welcoming pro secco and the platters of salmon, steak, broccolini, and green salad that were passed along the long tables.

There were many of of us who travelled from many different spots. Everyone was friendly and many took off after the dancing was concluded to a karaoke bar in the midst of Santa Barbara's Festival week--the 100th annual celebration of its Spanish roots.  We had a nice lunch on East Beach less than 100 feet from the ocean at Reunion with a college friend of Eileen's who lives on the major hill on one side of the town with a view over the whole place right over the ocean, too.

Now we're in Long Beach visiting the Museum of the Academy Awards of the Motion Picture Academy next to the L.A. County Museum of Art on Wilshire. There's lots of fun stuff to see there, with videos of past Oscar presentations, a special section devoted to Casablanca, with both of the pianos Dooley Wilson pretended to play and other clips and memorabilia. There was a controversy about not mentioning the founders of the industry when the museum opened, but now there's an exhibit on the Jewish studio chiefs and the creation of what we know as Hollywood and how it defied Edison's trust that controlled the business until it located in Hollywood at a time when being 3000 miles away made enforcement of his patents less practicable. The Supreme Court ended the reign of the trust in 1925.

Weather in Southern California is predictably consistent at this time of the year and definitely less humid and more temperate than it will be when we return to DC later this week. The Pacific is warm enough for swimming and even walking now is refreshing. Alaska upgraded us on the trip out, so we're already ahead of the game.

 

Retrying the Hauptmann Kidnap-Murder Case

 

By all accounts, the 1935 trial in Flemington, N.J., of Bruno Richard Hauptmann for the murder of celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh’s infant son merits its frequent citation by many as “the trial of the century”. Although Hauptmann was executed in 1936, controversy has surrounded the trial and conviction ever since. 

My friend and law school classmate, Noah Griffin, organized a re-enactment held on May 20 at the Marin County Superior Court in San Rafael, California, along with retired California Judge Lise Pearlman, who published a 554-page book on the case, The Lindbergh Kidnapping Suspect No. 1, The Man Who Got Away. and the Criminal Law and Justice Center of University of California Berkeley School of Law.

  

While I played a small role in the trial's re-enactment, Noah, who is an historian, popular singer, and impresario, and and who was press secretary to former San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan, made the event happen, and another friend and classmate, Peter Buchsbaum,  a retired judge of the New Jersey Superior Court, filled the role of prosecutor. 

 

Peter, who sat as a judge in the same court before which Hauptmann was tried, once litigated a civil case in the historic courtroom where the trial occurred. That courtroom, he recalls, had a chair labelled, “This chair was sat in by Bruno Richard Hauptmann.” 

 

“It was spooky sitting right in front of that seat,” Peter remembers, “and now here I am all these years later doing this mock trial. I didn’t come away from today convinced that Hauptmann was innocent, but I do think it is worth looking into.” 

Those present—observers, law students, and participants, who included many public defenders, prosecutors, and court staff, including bailiffs provided by the local Sheriff’s Office—voted, 38-5, in favor of a new trial for Hauptmann. A similar vote followed a re-enactment of the Hauptmann case in 1986 in San Francisco that Noah put together after meeting Hauptmann’s widow, Anna Hauptmann. She testified in that retrial, as she did at her husband’s original trial. 

Peter played the role of N.J. Attorney General David T. Wilentz, who founded a leading New Jersey firm but proudly asserted in his closing argument, “I have never prosecuted a murder case in my life.” I appeared as a “wood expert” witness from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service. He had testified as to the strength of the wooden ladder which Hauptmann allegedly used to carry out the kidnapping of Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., from the second-floor nursery in the family home in Hopewell, N.J. 

It’s strange to deliver testimony that has now been deemed totally unreliable in our age of DNA evidence, and also that just about all of this witness’s testimony regarding the ladder was shown to be based on sloppy investigation and failure to establish chain of custody. 

In her  book, Judge Pearlman argues that Hauptmann was innocent.  Charles Lindbergh, like many prominent Americans in the 1920’s and 1930’s, was a passionate advocate of eugenics. There had been rumors that the baby had serious medical problems. Judge Pearlman suggests it may well have been that the infant was physically imperfect with an abnormally big head and other defects and that Lindbergh’s fervent eugenicism could have led to his seeking dangerous medical experiments on his son. She concludes that the kidnapping could have been a failed effort to cover up all of this. 

Retired Marin County Superior Court Judge Lynn O’Malley Taylor filled the role of the trial judge, and others played parts including prosecutors, witnesses, defenders, Lindbergh, and Hauptmann: all were reading actual testimony. Major additions to the written trial transcript were provided in the analysis given by Marin Deputy Public Defender Patricia Castilla. Appearing as a current-day lawyer, she pointed out what now appear to be hordes of clear errors that undermine the state’s case against Hauptmann. 

She stressed in her interpolated comments during the trial reading how a witness who had been declared legally blind said he saw Hauptmann’s car driven away from the Lindbergh house with the suspect at the wheel. Further, pictures shot in 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh Jr.’s nursery right after he was taken captive did not show muddy footprints on a suitcase under the window Hauptmann allegedly  used to escape, yet those footprints somehow materialized on the suitcase at the trial. 

More ignored evidence concerned the ladder as to which Arthur Koehler, the Forest Service expert whom I played, testified. Police said Hauptmann reached the second-story window going up the ladder and then used it to escape with the baby; when it was tested, it was shown as unable to hold the weight of the 175-pound suspect and 30-pound baby. 

Other witnesses confirmed that Hauptmann was picking up his wife at the bakery where she worked in the Bronx, New York City, when the crime ostensibly occurred far away in central New Jersey. A medical examination of the body, found more than two months after the kidnapping, revealed that the baby didn’t die, as the police and prosecutor contended, the night he disappeared: it even suggested that the corpse might have been mutilated in a medical experiment. 

Two New Jersey governors first accepted the validity of the verdict. N.J. Governor Harold G. Hoffman (no relation), who refused to call off the execution, later wrote a series of articles in favor of reopening the case. Gov. Christine Todd Whitman also would not reopen the case but fifteen years after she left office, she also said that the obvious errors made it important to review the case far more deeply than had occurred originally.

 

 

Born With Teeth

 It's always enjoyable to see some drama at a playhouse in some charming place. So taking in Born With Teeth at the Mendocino Theatre Company on the California North Coast turned out to be a fine surprise of the positive kind. This play by Liz Duffy-Adams has already been in some prominent places--it premiered at the Alley Theater in Houston and then played the Guthrie in Minneapolis: two outstanding regional theaters. Next stop is likely to be New York, and exactly where there remains unclear. Perhaps one of the prime workshop theaters--N.Y. Theatre Workshop or the Public Theater--in preparation for one of the hardest nut to crack--a Broadway production of a drama.

But first things first. This is a two-character, three-segment drama. Characters: two 16th century playwrights named Will Shakespeare and Christopher (Kit) Marlowe. They were rivals, of course, in the amazing and challenging Elizabethan theatre world, but also colleagues, and here, were charged with working together on the three-play series that emerged as the three parts of Henry the Sixth.

Henry VI is not the best known of Shakespeare's plays. I saw a condensed verson at Vancouver's Shakespeare on the Beach some years ago and what made it exciting for me was the emergence in the final part of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in preparation for his own play, Richard III.

But there's scant discussion of that project in this play. Shakespeare is still a newcomer but already showing signs of greatness. Marlowe is more established but more corrupt. He wants Shakespeare to do all the writing, which he could then reshape as he would see best. Shakespeare, demeaned by Marlowe as no more than an unsuccessful actor trying to recover his status as a playwright, is already far beyond the young man from the provinces he is seen to be in Marlowe's more experienced but no more perceptive eyes.

The first act takes time to develop. It will need some work. But in the second, these are segments that flow together without any intermission other than a short blackout and renewal after each segment, the plot thickens and is resolved mightily in the third. The theater's program has a piece explaining the conspiratorial atmosphere of London theater in the Elizabethan age. Playwrights needed protectors and sponsors from the nobility to avoid being arrested, tortured, or murdered.

The play shows how Shakespeare managed to operate in this sordid and wildly challenging world. Mention is made that a contemporary of both men--Thomas Kyd, whose Spanish Tragedy was a successful play of these times--apparently was destroyed by these vicious elements. You might recall that his play is recalled by a footnoted line in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. 

Conspiracies of all sorts abounded; Marlowe was involved up to his ears. He seems both oblivious to the possibility that Shakespeare may be more adept and informed than he appears, but also intent on maintaining some rapport because Marlowe sees a major figure arising. Brady Voss and Randall Jaynes carry the burden and opportunity of a two-character play forward. Beth Craven's direction was spot on, as was fight coordinator Noah Lucé.

 

Westward Bound by Train

 

Arrived in the grand old station in downtown Portland, Oregon, on Amtrak’s Empire Builder after a two train, almost three-day, transcontinental journey from Washington, DC. The last part of the trip was the best: cruising along the southern boundary of Glacier National Park in Montana. The sudden appearance of snow-capped peaks, rushing rivers, and tall trees coincided with arriving into the far western reaches of Mountain Time so that sunset occurred much later than usual.

 

It had been a good day on the train. We cadged a table in the observation car, not all that great for photos owing to grimy windows and the limits of admittedly much advanced cell-phone cameras. I recalled the domecar on the old Denver Zephyr and the high views to be had from the observation cars on the Canadian—especially the one we had to flee before it would be removed from the train at Edmonton.

 

The flatiron steak in the diner came out nicely medium-rare. The plates were not the china touted in Amtrak promos but plastic imitative of the real thing was better than riding on lesser trains had prepared us to encounter. The next morning was spent with the train speeding on the banks of the Columbia River, past the wonderfully-named Bridge of the Gods and the Bonneville Dam.

 

Travelling across the plains and empty expanses of eastern Montana recalled the similar and adjacent open space seen on The Canadian transcontinental trip through most of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Right at sunset, we crossed from Wisconsin into Minnesota where there was a beautiful panoply of what seemed like endless lakes amid lush forests but actually was the meandering course of the upper origins of the Mississippi.

 

This all was a vast improvement from riding, or waiting, on the Capitol Limited, about 2½ hours out of Chicago, on  Monday morning. The power on this Amtrak train went down about 45 minutes ago and after they brought it back, they still couldn’t get the computer and thus the engine going again.

 

So now the Lake Shore Limited, running about 45 minutes behind us, arrived on the scene and passed, backed up, and then hauled us into Chicago, where we caught the Empire Builder to Portland. The promise that all the connections, including ours, would be made was met.

 

This train, on which we paid a good deal for a bedroom, slightly bigger than the Marx Brothers’s designated “stateroom”, closer to a closet, in A Night at the Opera, had been operating on what I call a post-pandemic regimen, a far cry from its glory days as the flagship of the proud Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The car designated as a diner/lounge provided microwaved, plastic-wrapped “flexible” meals; the lack of an observation car was mitigated by the fact that the train operated mostly at night.

 

As always, it was fun meeting people seated with us in the dining car whom we’d likely never have encountered elsewhere. People ride the train for a plenitude of reasons—irregular visits to family and a chance to just get away from it all. Wasn’t even discommoded when told I could’ve saved a bunch was taking the other leg of the train through Seattle to connect with a train that would also take us to Portland.

 

Aside from the breakdown in Indiana, where the Lake Shore Limited saved the day, there was hiccup about a half hour out of Chicago heading west when some unspecified “engine issue” delayed us for a few minutes—time, incidentally, that the generous stoppages at several points on the route—Winona, Minot, Shelby—allowed the train to make up easily.

 

I find I can gaze at the countryside for long periods of time that end up reducing the amount of reading I get done on long-haul trains. Physical exercise is limited to smoke breaks and clambering through the rocking of five cars to get to the diner. It’s oft been remarked upon that travelling across the U.S. by train is the way to gain some perception of the breadth of the country.

 

The accommodations on the Empire Builder were provided by what appeared to be a 3^rd generation Superliner—double-decker sleepers with roomettes and bedrooms. There was more space—until the beds were pulled out and you could barely get passed the bottom one. Roomettes are tight but serviceable—for one, despite their being beds for two.

 

The single Portland-bound sleeper was five cars behind the diner, while the Seattle three were positioned on the front side of the dining car. Not surprisingly, the diner went to Seattle and our breakfast from the café to be consumed upstairs in the observation lounge dropped down to breakfast sandwiches wrapped Starbucks-style with other cellophane-packaged goodies. The strong coffee saved the meal.

 

Would I do it again? Probably not, mainly because I’ve gone coast-to-coast now three times: on The Canadian and The Southwest Chief, Amtrak’s version of the Santa Fe’s great Super Chief, as well as this Empire Builder. I won’t count a run from Salt Lake City to Emeryville (the Bay Area terminus adjacent to Oakland) and a long-previous trip through the Rockies on that Denver, Rio Grande, and Western Zephyr, the route now incorporated into this California Zephyr.

 

It's always great to take a new route, even if the train runs late (or, as London Transport warns passengers, “not at all”). The cross-country routes I’ve taken are regarded as the standouts of the system; much as I’d love to take the trip made famous by Arlo Guthrie on The City of New Orleans, I keep reading about how it appears to be the Amtrak stepchild in terms of services and accommodations.

 

But there are bright spots on the rail horizon: the Adirondack from New York to Montreal—from which I remember the gorgeous country alongside Lakes George and Champlain as well as the beautiful old New York Central Hudson River ride—is being shut down somewhere north of Albany this summer for the track to be upgraded. As nice as the scenery was, travelling at incredibly slow speeds does take away from pleasure of the expedition.