Back to the stars

Over the weekend we took in the latest film in the Star Wars saga: The Last Jedi. I'm not a Star Wars fanatic--I did see the first three, missed the next three, and went to the last full movie a year or so ago, The Force Returns. I don't think any of the sequels, prequels, whatever, matched the original. For one thing, Alec Guinness only appeared in the first and Harrison Ford was a new face, at least to me, in that one.

This time, we get to say good-bye to Carrie Fisher, who eventually became the strongest performer in the troupe; when she started, it struck me that she was lucky to get the part. To me, the new leading players are fine but they could be in any adventure picture. And there's not enough cleverness in the writing to make this picture stand out. Lots of plot, lots of action, and what appeared to be a search for deeper meaning that remained unresolved.

Later, I watched the first few episodes of the second season of The Crown, on Netflix. There's some good acting here--last year's series was definitely high-quality. But I realized what the problem will be: the royals are not inherently interesting. Especially the Queen and Philip. Princess Margaret was an attention-getter because of her much more lively--and in many ways, sad--life. 

And I see that later in this series, they will bring back the Duke of Windsor, who commands interest because his abdication turned out to be one of the best things that happened to the Brits. He barely escaped being officially labelled a collaborator in World War II. He managed to outlive his dutiful brother, George VI, who earnestly took on the responsibility he never expected to have, and performed mightily.

There's also a drop-off on the political side. The series did confirm my view that Winston Churchill deserves great respect for the five-plus years of his wartime leadership, which was magnificent. But the series shows him in his last years as Prime Minister in the early 50s, when he was losing it and didn't have a war to fight nor an empire to defend. The finest decision by the British electorate was in 1945 when they decided that Winston was not the man to lead them in peacetime.

The speedy demise of the great Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, when he finally became Prime Minister, was well presented, but I'm already wondering about the portrayal of Harold (Supermac) MacMillan, who turned out to be shrewd enough to stay in power for more than seven years. Claire Foy does a fine job as the young Elizabeth II--even in these early years as queen, she already demonstrates that she may be the only one of the royals with any common sense.

'Darkest Hour" and 'The Post'

These are two excellent pictures. Darkest Hour shows Churchill at his best: 1940-45 was his time, a rather brief but totally overwhelming part of a long life. Before he had been an itinerant journalist, writer, politician, strategist of the disastrous Gallipoli invasion, and generally unappreciated Member of Parliament; in May 1945, when Britain finally held an election following V-E Day, he and the Tories were voted out as the populace preferred Labour in peacetime.

But during those first days in office, and for the next years, Churchill was the man they needed and he delivered. This movie is especially good at pointing out the crew of losers and appeasers who had dominated and still dominated the Conservative Party despite their yielding to his designation by King George VI. Neville Chamberlain had been ousted but was by no means finished--that came with his death within six months--and Viscount Halifax was a dangerous rival who wanted peace at any price and is seen in the film as going to any length to undermine Churchill and give in to Germany.

Gary Oldman is marvelous as Churchill as is Kristin Scott Thomas, as his wife, Clementine, the one person who could speak bluntly and effectively to him. Ronald Pickup, whom I saw on stage in a visiting Royal Shakespeare Company troupe in Brooklyn ages ago as both Richard II and Bolingbroke--he exchanged roles in alternate performances--was fine as Chamberlain and Stephen Dillane is appropriately slimy as Halifax.

We've had two fine performances as Churchill, with John Lithgow's in the first year of The Crown on Netflix. Darkest Hour, though, is set at the high point of Churchill's career--the low point for Britain--and the pressures he was under unyielding. He was really beginning to fade when he returned as prime minister in 1951 when Lithgow's role starts. And it was far more satisfying on screen than Dunkirk, which seemed to take the view that pictures can tell the whole story, as there was precious little dialogue.

The Post is well-done as well. Hanks and Streep shine as Ben Bradlee and Kay Graham. Their personalities alone justify the moviemakers deciding to focus on The Washington Post rather than The New York Times, which ran the first story on the Pentagon Papers, and when enjoined, saw the Post pick up and run with the story which Daniel Ellsberg had then provided, after the Post had tracked him down.

Today's Times had a column by Jim Ruttenberg that tried to make the case that the movie should have been about the Times. It's not just that the Post provided a better story: Ben Bradlee and Kay Graham were both more sympathetic and more interesting than Abe Rosenthal. Graham knew she was unprepared in many ways to make the biggest decision of her career and Bradlee was a natural showman. Even people who respected Rosenthal's ability regarded him as an obnoxious individual.

The movie, however, is excellent in its depiction of the whole scene and story, including its presentation of the Supreme Court scene, a pet peeve of mine, which was almost completely accurate. For some reason, Hollywood is unable to re-create the Supreme Courtroom accurately, although far more challenging sets have been built. Both movies tell important stories that cry out to be seen and remembered.

More on the Middle East

In the next few days we covered a lot of ground. Many, many ruins--there are an amazing number of national parks. Gamla, Tel Dan, Zippori, Beit Shearim--all either with amazing outlooks or significant ruins, including burial sites. Climbed the city on the hill, Safed (Tsfad), and managed there to see the Museum of Hungarian Jewry, since my maternal grandfather's family came from what was then Hungary (and now is Eastern Slovakia).

Tsfad is also an art center, with one street in particular lined with galleries filled with objects worth a look as well as plenty of opportunities to go turisto. It of course is best known as the centuries-old center of those who studied the Kabbalah. Seeing all the natural high spots and the excavated crusaders' castle at Akko (Acre), the Roman-era port at Caesarea, the steep incline of Haifa, and the view of the Sea of Galilee from the Golan Heights emphasized how much there is in addition to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

The Palmach Museum in Tel Aviv provides one of the most moving and amazing experiences I can recall. They were the advance guard of the Haganah that became the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and the museum moves you through the training of one group of young people and shows the conflicts in the years immediately preceding the War of Independence in 1948.

I spent some time at the genealogy section of the Museum of the Diaspora in Tel Aviv, and found some entries that will be useful in my updating a family tree that was last fully worked up about twenty-two years ago. These included a great-aunt of my mother's, hitherto not known (at least to the previous preparers of the tree), for whom my mother may well have been named.

We also visited two of my second cousins, sisters who have lived in Israel for decades, one from before World War II and one some years after, coming from England. Some of their families were there, too, including a teacher of Hebrew and an El Al account manager, formerly a flight attendant. My cousin's late husband had been in the IDF and had had a career that was right out of Exodus, the novel.

Much about the trip was unexpected, including the cuisine. Israel salad--tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, chopped as in shopska in the Balkans and absolutely delightful--was often served for breakfast or at lunch at an outdoor cafe, accompanied by several small dishes, sometimes including falafel and schwarmer. There are now plenty of top-class restaurants, especially in Tel Aviv, but a fish restaurant there on the harbor was all that it should be.

The Middle East--Part I

What surprised me most about Israel were the stones. Everywhere there are rocks, mostly big ones. Not just in Jerusalem, where you stare at the huge multi-ton stones that form the remains of the Western Wall.

It brought me back to grade school, when at assembly, they often read Biblical selections that would offend neither Christian nor Jew (there weren’t any other religions present back then.) So either we read a psalm or the part from Ecclesiastes about “A time for war and a time for peace…” Remember the line “A time to gather stones together and a time to cast away stones”? Now I finally know what that meant in a place where there are stones all over the place, and not just around ruins, of which there are a huge number.

We started out in Jordan, where we figured it made sense not to mention “the other place,” where we were heading in a day or two on the Royal Jordanian flight from Amman. Eileen was on a work assignment training people and meeting with officials and I turned up in time for the drive to Petra. In case you hadn’t heard, Petra is one of the more recently selected wonders of the world. It should have been one of the seven ancient wonders (of them, only the pyramids are still standing) but no one knew Petra existed since it was effectively “lost” for centuries.

It lives up to the build-up because you emerge from the Siq—the narrow entry canyon that gives you several kilometers of water systems and interesting markings to prepare you for the sight of the Treasury, the Greek-styled front carved into the red rock face of the mountain. There are other marvelous sights even if you don’t climb up torturous paths; and our runners and walkers should note that we walked the miles in and out of Petra without clambering aboard a horse, donkey, carriage, or camel, all of which were bidding for our custom.

We have squeezed a lot into eight days here in Israel. A day in West Jerusalem seeing the Israel Museum and Yad Vashem and a day in the Old City seeing the City of David, the Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Armenian Quarter, and the best falafel I’ve ever tasted from a stand near the Wall that should be named the Falafel King of the Kotel. And then we visited Eileen’s frum cousin and her daughter (who has nine children) in a seriously observant section of the city and amazingly, we emerged in good humor.

Stopped off in Be’ersheva to catch up with Grace Erdmann, teaching English in an elementary school, who gave us yet another view of life in the Holy Land. Then on to Masada—don’t even ask if we took the cable car, because we did—which is a spectacular sight along with the sadly diminished Dead Sea, victim of the country’s vicious version of privatization. Couldn’t give away the secret of the En Gedi synagogue’s warning from 2000 years ago, although it likely was the perfume they made to mask the smell of the dead.

Arena's Pajama Game

A lecturer on Broadway musicals recently observed that Broadway wasn't sure about The Pajama Game when the original production was coming to town in 1954. No one could recall a musical focused on labor relations. With songs including "Hey There," "Hernando's Hideaway," and "There Once Was a Man," the show ran for more than two years and has been revived over the years.

Last night at D.C.'s Arena Stage, the production was good, with strong voices and excellent dancers. Minor complaint for me was the high volume of the obvious amplification: not only was it annoying but it shows that in the years since the musical stage has introduced amplification, there now is no shame whatsoever in making it obvious. The orchestra, mostly hidden under the stage-in-the-round, was too loud as well.

But more important, does the show hold up? It was based on a novel by Richard Bissell called 7 1/2 Cents, and prepared for Broadway by some real pros--George Abbott and Jerome Robbins directing, Bob Fosse was choreographer, John Raitt--fresh from Carousel--was the male lead, paired with the Broadway regular, Janis Paige, and the veteran trouper Eddie Foy Jr. in the "older man" role of the time-study guy, Hines, who even gets to tap dance. Among the dance corps were the young Peter Gennaro and yes, Shirley MacLaine.

The show was stolen, however, by the great dancer Carol Haney, and seeing how her part was nicely played last night by Nancy Anderson, I can see how the part lends itself to over-the-top performances. As an added lagniappe, Donna McKechnie, the original Cassie on Broadway in A Chorus Line, turned in a fine showing in a supporting dramatic role.

But does the show hold up? Mostly. The show is not at all a propaganda vehicle for the labor movement, much as that movement might need one now. There are some outdated lines and characterizations but on the whole, the show is still fun and modestly meaningful. There are more than the usual improbabilities in some of the romantic development, but again, you get more than two hours (2 1/2 hours running time) of good singing and dancing, and yes, even a soupcon of acting.

Enjoying Jule Styne

Having some more free time, I'm able to indulge in daytime lectures on subjects in which I've always been interested, such as theatrical history. Yesterday I went to a program in Bethesda on the Broadway composer Jule Styne. Just for openers, he wrote the music for Gypsy, Funny Girl, and Bells Are Ringing. Born in London with immigrant parents who took him to Chicago when he was eight, he was a prodigy and could have gone on as a pianist. 

Instead, he liked popular music, so after writing some songs, he went to Hollywood where he wrote a lot of songs, many with Sammy Cahn, including "It's Been a Long, Long Time" and "Three Coins in the Fountain" for the picture of the same name, for which he won his Oscar.

On Broadway, he  began with High Button Shoes, with Phil Silvers and Nanette Fabray, and then wrote "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" for Carol Channing in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. His "additional music" for Peter Pan included two wonderful numbers: "Captain Hook's Waltz" and "Neverland"--watching a video of Mary Martin singing "Neverland" was one of those golden moments of showbiz.

Then there were some greats: "The Party's Over" sung by Judy Holliday in Bells Are Ringing and "Don't Rain on My Parade" and "People" by the one and only Funny Girl,  La Streisand. I remember walking out of the theater after seeing that one and hearing an elderly lady comment to her companion, "She's funny but she's not Fanny." 

The lecturer--another lawyer gone right--didn't stop to mention Say, Darling, which was a clever show I remember seeing, which was the breakthrough show for the young Robert Morse. It was a show taken from a memoir of Richard Bissell, who wrote 7 1/2 Cents, the source book for The Pajama Game, now being revived here at Arena in D.C.

Nor did I recall a standard, "Make Someone Happy", from another Phil Silvers show, Do Re Mi. But probably his top show of all was Gypsy, and it was such a pleasure seeing Ethel Merman sing "Everything's Coming Up Roses" when she was 76 and gone forever a few months later. There was also an audio of her doing the inimitable "Rose's Turn." Alas, we also had to watch Rosalind Russell, whose husband bought her the part as a price of his investment in the show, try to do "Small World" and "Funny."

Jule Styne had some of the best collaborators in the business, too. Betty Comden and Adolph Green were with him for many of his best shows, beginning with Bells Are Ringing, and Stephen Sondheim did the lyrics for Gypsy. He really was one of the best.

Another Immersion in 'Ulysses'

Those of us who find the work of James Joyce continually fascinating are not put off by Joyce's own listing of the four greatest writers: Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Joyce. I'm again taking a Ulysses course, this one at our Politics and Prose bookstore taught by Chris Griffin, an Irish former teacher of Irish literature at George Washington Univ.

There's always more to be found in this novel, often heralded as the greatest of the 20th century. I have more of a feeling for many of the places after the initial trip in June to Ireland where I was able to enjoy Bloomsday, June 16, and see many of the settings of famous scenes in the novel. Incidental comments in the class add to the appreciation: for example, that Joyce felt that Gabriel Conroy, the main character in his story, "The Dead", in Dubliners, was who Joyce felt he would have become had he remained in Ireland.

The comments meant for the first-timers to the book also help. The first three chapters are centered on Stephen Dedalus, who represents Joyce himself at the age of 22 and was the leading character in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, although he has yet to produce any work of art. He is highly intellectual, however, so many of the allusions are to Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas; when we get to Chapter 4 and meet Leopold Bloom, Joyce's everyman, the allusions are just as likely to focus on then-popular songs--Joyce himself was a tenor who sang with John McCormick.

I learned so much about Joyce and his life from reading Brenda Maddox's magnificent biography of his wife, Nora. Joyce, like some other geniuses, did believe the world owed him a living and he lived high when he could, usually on other people's money. Years ago we stayed in a Kensington house in London we rented from the nephew of Harriet Shaw Weaver, an English lady who spent a great deal of her fortune supporting Joyce.

Joyce, however, was true to Nora over the years of both privation and success. He did not have an easy life as both his children probably suffered from his over-involvement in trying to direct their lives. Nora worked mightily to keep the traveling household together and Joyce's siblings were often drafted to support him, both with money and in many other ways. His brother Stanislaus's memoir was properly entitled My Brother's Keeper.

I always learn something from the class sessions and the book of annotations to Ulysses. There's a reference to Ferrando, an operatic character. I assumed it was to the tenor in Mozart's Cosi fan Tutte, a leading role. But I was mistaken. This Ferrando is the captain of the Count di Luna's guard in Verdi's Il Trovatore, and while not a leading character, his aria, to which Stephen refers, tells the whole back-story of the opera. 

What's fascinating about this incredible novel is that if you think you see some allusion or reference, it is definitely meant to be there. 

Talking Baseball

Baseball deserves to be the great American game. Certainly this is not because of any inspired leadership. Those in charge of the administration of the game have done much to diminish it, beginning with the designated hitter. Of course, their offenses against the public good tend to pale when compared with the NFL owners. 

But there is a beauty to baseball when played at the postseason level, where you have really good teams and strategy becomes crucial. Individual and team performances reach heights rarely seen during routine games during the season. And this year in the first round, we've had the chance to enjoy an amazing range of venues. From the eccentric Fenway Park to the classic Wrigley Field to always majestic, even the new version, Yankee Stadium, to now-seasoned Dodger Stadium, and then to good new parks like Jacobs Field in Cleveland and Nationals Park here in DC.

Games are tight, scoring frequently is low, errors count much more, and October weather may be totally inappropriate--note the more-than-drizzle in Chicago yesterday. Another sin by baseball is refusing to stop games when it clearly is raining. The game is not meant to be played on slippery grass; two throws by pitchers to first went awry, purely because of the wet field.

Some players rise to the occasion: Bryce Harper and Michael A. Taylor of the Nats come through with crucial, unanticipated homers; Anthony Rizzo of the Cubs delivers a succession of two-out, two-strike hits. Stephen Strasburg pitches better--extraordinarily well--when not fully recovered from illness than some days earlier where in his sixth inning, he allowed the game to start to slip away. Dusty Baker ensured the disaster by bringing in Sammy Solis, who promptly gave away the critical runs.

Teams, too: the Yankees were unheralded, often maligned during the season for lacking the obvious all-stars we have grown to expect: no Ruths, Gehrigs, DiMaggios, Mantles. But they came in, lost the first two games, and surprised a Cleveland club that most had predicted to win the World Series. 

Brings back 1954--when I first learned about baseball--and the greatest Cleveland team, one which won a then-record 111 games (out of 154) with possibly the finest pitching staff ever assembled: Feller, Lemon, Early Wynn, Mossi and Narleski--fell in four straight to the rag-tag New York Giants. Leo Durocher got the most out of a bunch of non-Hall of Famers, plus--yes, there's always a catch: The Catch--Willie Mays.

These Yankees prevailed despite their manager, Joe Girardi, who seemed to make mistake after mistake. The Nats may or may not break their fifth-game barrier tonight, but the seemingly brilliant maneuvering of Cubs' manager Joe Maddon in Game 4 backfired with the Michael A. Taylor home run off Wade Davis, while Dusty Baker's apparently mindless sticking with Ryan Madson despite what seemed to be a lacklustre performance turned out well.

So many maxims fall by the wayside. Good pitching beats good hitting. Yes...usually. Even the video replay review of challenged  close plays by a team in New York proved its worth: the base umpire called Ryan Zimmerman safely back on first after the second of two rare Jon Lester pickoff throws. Yet once anyone looked at the video, Zim was clearly tagged and out before he touched the bag.

My knees resent the constant standing in the seats during the playoffs. Yet this is only one more instance of how the excitement of the postseason permeates the baseball world. We begin with a week of multiple games and then it starts to narrow down. There will be great catches, throws, pitches, and hits. Mistakes will be made. Strategies will be exposed as deficient.  But all the hoopla and commercialism in the end is overriden by the thrills and fabulous plays.

Wonderful 'Hoffmann'

I have a particular affection for Les Contes d'Hoffmann, the great Offenbach opera based on the weird tales written by E.T.A. Hoffman, the German Romantic who also wrote the story on which The Nutcracker is based. It is a long opera but all its parts are delightful. The title character falls in love with three unlikely ladies: a doll, a sickly singer, and a courtesan. Each love (and act) ends in disaster. There's also a prologue and epilogue, set in a tavern where Hoffmann waits his latest charmer, a diva named Stella singing in the opera house upstairs.

The opera not only has had many productions in many places, but even exists in many different versions. This is because Offenbach left it unfinished. In recent years, Acts II and III have been reversed, and this switch has even been accepted by the sometimes stodgy Met. Now the Venice act comes last--with its multiple shoiwpiece arias and duets--the famed Barcarolle which opens and closes the act, the Love Duet between Hoffmann and Giulietta, Schlemil's rollicking song--now sung by Hoffmann at the Met, and the villain's , in this act, Dappertutto's, great bass aria, Scintille Diamant.

The Met's production, which had its first performance this season last week on the second night of the season, is eight years old and was created by Bartlett Sher, who has been highly successful on Broadway, with the fine revival of South Pacific as well as several other hits. But his Hoffmann is not a great production--it has lots of the kind of weird, strange characteristics of many edgy European opera productions without the freshness that those shows often possess.

Nevertheless, to me, it was a roaring success because I heard possibly the best singing of this opera I have ever enjoyed. Vittorio Grigolo was a marvelous Hoffmann, singing clearly and beautifully with full emotion, yet not giving way to any ornaments that would detract from the characterization. Ornaments were left to Erin Morley in the coloratura role of Olympia, the doll with whom Hoffman falls in love. The other two lovers were played by Anita Hartig and Oksana Volkova, who also had lovely voices. Geraldine Chauvet had the trouser role of Nicklausse, Hoffmann's reliable friend and travelling partner, who becomes his Muse in the epilogue. She was marvelous but the staging did have her wandering around during many scenes for seemingly no good reason.

Laurent Naouri played the four villains with excellent style and Christophe Mortagne overacted as the four servants, but his gesturing was well within the normal wide range allowed the performer of these roles.

As it was as good a performance in terms of singing that I had ever experienced, it can only be compared to the CD I have of Placido Domingo and Joan Sutherland (doing all the heroines), which is about as good as it gets. The great Gabriel Bacquier did the villains and it made me realize how good both he and Naouri were because their native French comes through so well.

There did not appear to be a Times review of this production but last week it was mentioned prominently in an article about the rise of singing and the voice to preeminent roles in today's opera scene, as contrasted with the emphasis on productions, staging, and story that dominated for some time, often under the appellation "regietheater". This singing was the kind that stays with you, especially for the wonderful music in Hoffmann.

A Family Funeral

Fortunately, I have not yet reached that reputed age where one finds funerals enjoyable events to attend. Yesterday, however, I went to one held in what New Yorkers often refer to as "the cemeteries"--the mass of mostly Jewish and Catholic graveyards that line the north side of the curving Jackie Robinson Parkway (nee Interboro, which was truly descriptive of the road's linking Brooklyn and Queens in that the Queens-based Mets descended much more from the [Brooklyn] Dodgers than from my old N.Y. Giants; the parkway appropriately recognizes baseball's pioneer). 

Though my uncle was 99, his death on Monday was still a surprise. I'd seen him not long ago and he was his always alert, wise, and delightful self. Yes, he seemed frailer and didn't get around that easily, but it was wonderful spending some time with him. He was the youngest and last surviving sibling of five; he left sons, daughters-in-law, granddaughters, and great-grandchildren.

Important to him, though, were the 29 courses he had audited at the English Department of Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., where he had lived for the past two decades. Now that I'm attending various classes and lectures much more often than I ever seemed to have the time to savor previously, I look to his example.

He followed a good policy: as an auditor who was several years--actually, decades--older than the paying college students in the class, he would never volunteer to speak but would respond if the professor called on him. I knew he was a good writer, not only because he always responded to any holiday letters I might incautiously send to him along with others -- his response invariably identified not only errors of style but of fact -- but because I remembered that he had written short stories, many published, when I first got to know him when I was in grade school. 

He came by his writing ability both naturally and as a benefit of a career that started out on the editorial side of journalism before he profitably shifted to the business side. His father, my grandfather, was a successful lawyer turned historian who had started out with nothing as an immigrant boy on the Lower East Side; he not only graduated from CCNY and Columbia Law, but received an M.A. in English from Columbia. My uncle was the last surviving member of his class at Washington & Lee. He attended many of our college graduations.

The brief talks at the graveside service emphasized how he had been a treasured friend as well as wise adviser to his sons and his grandchildren, and I recalled how he had visited my first cousin and I when we were at college. While taking us to dinners at better spots than we would likely have gone to dine on our own, he provided helpful guidance on matters great and small. I have nine first cousins on that side of my family and I think he maintained a relationship with all of them. 

He was always living in the world, reading The Times daily by noon and often travelling to see us as well as his grandchildren when he was able to travel. He was aware of what was happening in theater, books, art, and music as well as being deeply troubled by current politics. He was the easiest Yankee fan not only to like but to talk baseball or opera with. He truly was a mensch, an appellation he would have declined as pretentious. I'll miss him a lot.

Pinter Wthout Pain

One of the trademarks of Harold Pinter's plays is that some note of menace inevitably enters into the scene. It can be prolonged and painful, as when the two enforcers visit Stanley in The Birthday Party, or it can be relatively quick as in the two short plays I saw at the Shakespeare Theatre Company Sunday: The Lover and The Collection.

The latter turned out to be the interesting play. There's a pitting of two men with one menacing the other, whom he believes has been having it off with his wife. That such an event might have occurred is problematic because the man accused appears to be living with a third man with whom he seems to be engaged in a gay relationship.

In the first play, the shocker comes at the start when a husband asks his wife if she is planning to entertain her lover that afternoon. By the end you don't know whether they have an "arrangement" or whether this is merely a role play for the two of them, although there is indeed a scene in the afternoon with her lover present.

In The Collection, you are left adrift as is usual with Pinter but the perplexity comes from a gradual perception that the accused man may be playing a game on both the man with whom he lives and the man who is accusing him of adultery. The performers are superb: Lisa Dwan plays the woman in both plays--we saw her in June doing a one-woman show, No's Knife, based on some Beckett pieces, at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Patrick Ball, Patrick Kennedy, and Jack Koenig are all excellent, and also have international appearances on their CVs.

Asheville and Maggie Valley

We're on a road trip--to Asheville, where we toured the Biltmore Estate, had some fine barbecue, and enjoyed a tootsie restaurant called Rhubarb; and then to Maggie Valley, out at the edge of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where Eileen was invited to a picnic and program for survivors of bladder cancer at the Cataloochee Ranch.

Right now, we've broken up the trip back at Roanoke, about halfway to Washington, and the location, as befits an old railroad town, of a wonderful museum devoted to the finest of railroad photographers, O. Winston Link. The museum named after him is located between the Museum of Transportation, itself right beside what are now the Norfolk Southern tracks and the historic Roanoke Hotel.

Asheville itself, of course, is a charming artsy town with a thriving downtown filled by shops of all kinds, including a fine bookstore called Malaprop's. Those of you who have taken the tour of the Biltmore Estate know that it's the largest house built in the U.S., designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt, who also built New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the grounds by Frederick Law Olmstead, of Central Park and other great green spot fame.

The Vanderbilt who built the pile, which does look as if it somehow migrated to 125,000 acres in Asheville from the Loire valley, clearly knew who to hire. He also had John Singer Sargent down to do the family portraits. Otherwise, his artistic taste was somewhat stodgy, with heavy European furniture and many, many prints, most not up to the level of the few Durers he acquired; there also are some marvelous tapestries from Brussels that are definitely worth extended viewing.

My favorite bit of Hunt's design are the angled windows on a grand staircase that takes one up to the next two floors from the overwhelming first level. They are delightful to see both from the inside and the outside as the kind of folly that makes structures like this one memorable. We also enjoyed seeing the vast gardens, although much of the planting was finished by this time of year.

Moe's Original Bar-B-Q, near Biltmore Village, is also the real deal. Fantastic brisket and ribs, with a clearly local crowd, and not from the arts district. We arrived at the Cataloochee Ranch after a drive through Maggie Valley, a typical town at the edge of a national park, and then climbing about 1,300 feet on a three-mile curving ride up to 4,000 feet.

It was the 9th annual such assemblage and provided a helpful occasion for attendees to receive updates on developments in medical and treatment research, as well as to exchange experiences about survivors who received different treatments and those who live with and care for them. The views of the mountains at that elevation are spectacular and a fine time was had.

Revisiting Portnoy

Eileen and I have been attending a course given by our notable local bookstore, Politics and Prose, on the Early Novels of Philip Roth, taught by an English  professor emerita from Princeton, Elaine Showalter. Tonight the subject was Roth's best known work, Portnoy's Complaint (1969).

In preparation we both re-read the novel, for the first time since it was published. In my case, it was the first time in that I read the big parts of the novel when Roth published them in the New American Review and other magazines way back then, but I realized I had never read the last part, especially the ending set in Israel. One big change since 1969 and the cause celebre that the novel became is that nobody in the class was especially offended or shocked by it.

That's not to say that some people didn't express the view that they could see themselves being offended. In one of Roth's many interviews, he was asked if Jews were right to be offended by the novel, to which he responded that he thought there were things in the book that Gentiles might be offended by. 

To me, the reason it's his most significant novel is that it best captures his humor. Roth has sought to emphasize that he is an American not just a Jewish writer, but his funniest and seemingly most trenchant moments always concern Jews. He is one of the only writers I've ever read who produces laughing-out-loud pieces of writing. 

We do learn things from these classes. Roth himself was psychoanalyzed by a famous psychiatrist who also published his account of analyzing Roth in a psychological journal with the analysand thinly disguised. Though the psychiatrist of course denied it, this was clearly and completely unethical. Also, there was a lot of discussion about the significance of the famous last line (the "Punch Line") of the book, uttered by the psychoanalyst: "So now ve may perhaps to begin."

Everyone seemed focused--well, at least the two psychiatrists in the class were--on it indicating that the psychiatrist felt that now that Portnoy had told his story it was the right point to begin to analyze his account and determine what underlay his behavior. I thought and said that the reason Roth calls it the Punch Line is that most readers are likely to feel that after this narrator has ranted and raved for almost 300 pages about his growing up and his affairs, all the psychiatrist can think of to say is that perhaps ve now may begin. That to me is what makes it a punch line.

Anyway, some questions were answered, many were explored, and I'm still not at that certain as to why the title character seems to have a breakdown and is impotent when he gets to Israel.

Jerry Lewis

You have to pronounce the name the way they did in the Mountains--Zhehree Lews--at joints that don't exist any more like Brown's, where the theater was named after him and after he became really famous, he would come back and do a weekend for the owners. Brown's was the kind of place where a woman screaming from the pool to be saved from drowning was hard to notice because there was a loud mambo band playing next to the pool.

Many of the critics never "got" his kind of comedy. It was a time when we still had high culture, and then what Dwight Macdonald called midcult or kitsch. I'm not sure Jerry Lewis was even up to the level of kitsch. All he was was--incredibly funny. He was the most natural clown I ever saw perform. I'm old enough to recall how great he and Dean Martin were on the Colgate Comedy Hour in the early 50s. There hasn't been a team like them since. 

My dad used to go to the Las Vegas MD telethon every Labor Day. We would tease him about it but Jerry Lewis raised billions for the charity even if this was clearly the most offensive of a species--the telethon--that is so offensive it has disappeared from our world. I did get to the stage where going to Jerry Lewis movies was a non-starter because he was too much to take in such a big dose. 

He was best in limited amounts. This was tough to find because he did not respect limits. He always was over the top. He even showed he could be a "real actor" in his later years, when he played the Johnny Carson part in The King of Comedy with Robert DeNiro. I did enjoy the headline when he played the Devil in Damn Yankees on stage: "Jerry Lewis Goes Legitimate".

The French were the ones who "got" him the most. They appreciated his being the perfect clown. Ed Wynn was known as the Perfect Fool, but it really was Jerry Lewis. From his first appearance with his vaudevillian parents in 1931, he knew how to get a laugh. I recall him on some TV show doing a takeoff on Jose Greco, the great flamenco dance star. He's clicking his feet all over the stage, screaming, "My feet! My feet! This hurts!"

He will be missed, not so much for the telethon or for some of the awful pictures, but for his character, who anticipated all the "dumb and dumber" stuff. His secret was probably not very hard to discern: he always knew how to be funny.

The Architect Who Endures

On the way to a group weekend outing (our running-walking group) at Nemacolin in Laurel Highlands in Western Pennsylvania, we headed first to see two of Frank Lloyd Wright's great houses--the renowned Fallingwater and the nearby but somewhat less famed Kentuck Knob.

Fallingwater was a fantastic idea that Wright managed to execute when in his prime; Kentuck Knob was a modification of his later-career emphasis on usonian houses: very practical, affordable designs. One of the guides did mention that Wright was not very attentive to cost in terms of charging the client but he did expand Kentuck Knob's original design to suit the owner's wishes. The changes were all good because his "low-priced" house was very tight and almost tiny--some of the hallways and bedrooms are still very narrow or small.

Fallingwater of course is the house you've seen pictures of that hangs out over a cascading stream. Except for the one big room on the first level, none of the rooms is huge but the terraces outside each are wonderful and expansive. I did observe that there are plenty of stone stairs in the narrow passages--Wright believed in compression (the hallways) opening up into expansive rooms or areas.

Much of his work is similar in all his designs--he designed his own furniture to fit into the houses and his horizontal designs are still artistically sound and attractive. It was interesting to learn that he did change his ideas--the flat roof he used in his Prairie style houses evolved to the slanted roof of Kentuck Knob, which solved the continuous problems his clients encountered with the flat roof that usually leaked.

I've seen many of his houses in Oak Park and Riverside, Illinois, from the outside, and his Unity Temple there, as well as the synagogue in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, where my aunt, uncle, and cousins resided nearby. I remember people saying that his synagogue design was too small. His Guggenheim Museum at 89th St. and Fifth Ave. in New York is a triumph. I also toured his western headquarters, Taliesin West near Scottsdale, Arizona.

He did have a huge ego, much like Ayn Rand's Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, who supposedly was modeled after him. He often had lower doorways and ceilings because he was a short man. But his designs had a wonderful style that was his own, especially the use of stone and horizontal patterns in the many Prairie-style homes he saw built. There's clearly good reason why we go out of our way to see his buildings and tour their insides as well. It is a rare chance to see what a true artist accomplished.

Galway and Beyond

Our trip to Ireland was so engaging that I've fallen way behind in chronicling it here. After the last instalment re Bloomsday, we went to see and hear Robert Gogan's one-man reading of parts of Ulysses at the Stag's Head pub, entitled Strolling Through Ulysses. He's very good at assuming all the different personas and does focus on the most sensational parts of the novel. We also enjoyed a dinner on the top floor of the roaring Brazen Head pub which features an Irish storyteller who regaled us with descriptions of Irish food, the potato famine, and fairies. 

The Brazen Head claims to be Dublin's oldest pub and it certainly is a large, very animated one, with about five bar rooms filled with imbibers, and then a dining room upstairs as well another private one further up where we heard the storyteller. It's not far from the Guinness Storehouse which tells you the story of Guinness (not that fascinating) but for your admission price, you get to go up to the Gravity Bar on the top with a 360-degree view of Dublin while enjoying a properly-pulled pint of the dark, delightful brew.

Driving on the left was not very hard, especially in an automatic. I drove on the left years ago using a stick shift and that is challenging. I even took a lesson once in London where we pulled out right into Tottenham Court Road, which is near the center of the city (just above Trafalgar Square). The road to Galway is almost all superhighway and is easy.

Galway is the perfect town in Ireland, with a scenic bay and wonderful pedestrian district featuring old and musical pubs, nice interesting stores, and good restaurants. We enjoyed both the best fish'n'chips spot on our trip, McDonagh's, and the bookshop voted the best in Ireland last year, Charlie Byrne's. The latter was a delightful place to check out new and old books of all kinds, with particular emphasis on Irish writers of all vintages.

We took a ferry to InisOirr, the smallest of the three major Aran Islands, a half-hour ride from Doolin. The island was relatively quiet and made you realize what life was like there over the centuries. We walked around some and enjoyed local beer at the pub as the pony carts paraded by as did the cyclists. On the trip back we saw the Cliffs of Moher from the sea and then were transported to see them from the top. Misty at the top but a nice natural site. The ride back along Galway Bay was spectacular, as was dinner at O'Grady's on the Bay in Barna near Galway.

Lissadell House in Co. Sligo is a historic country house that had been the seat of the Gore-Booth family, Irish aristos. The eldest daughter, Constance, became Countess Marcievicz, a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising spared by the Brits because of her being a woman, and she went on to become the first female Cabinet member in Europe as Minister of Labour in the first Irish Free State goivernment in the 1920s.

We had taken a Revolution 1916 tour in Dublin that ended at the General Post Office where the risers had their headquarters. British executed the leading six and thus lost the majority support that they had seemed to have before that, leading to Irish independence and partition after World War I in 1921. Yeats' poem said it all: "All changed, changed utterly:/

A terrible beauty is born."

It's Bloomsday

And for the first time, I'm enjoying June 16 in Dublin. Just returned from a walking tour of some of the locales in Ulysses, organized by the James Joyce Centre. If you're a Joyce fan, nothing in the book is too small--we learned some about how detailed some of his research was as he contacted people in Dublin he knew to check out specific details.

The woman who led the tour got into the spirit by reading appropriate selections from the novel at each stop. Memorable lines from Joyce--Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as well as Ulysses. Normally this kind of minute tracking leaves me cold but with Joyce, it all becomes fascinating. People get tied up in his plotting so that you think this is where Leopold Bloom walked and tend to forget that he and all the rest were fictional--except that so many of the characters, like the Citizen in the great scene in Barney Kiernan's pub, were closely drawn from real people Joyce knew. 

We passed Oliver St. John Gogarty's residence and recalled that as the marker says, he was a surgeon, writer, and statesman, but in fact he's remembered almost entirely because he was the model for Buck Mulligan, whose name begins the first sentence of Ulysses. This is like the powerful Viennese critic whom Wagner mocked as the character Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger but today is only remembered for that.

Yesterday we paid the obligatory visit to Trinity College's Old Library to see the Book of Kells. The Book is worth seeing, being an 8th century product of the monastery world, and you crowd around the glass-covered exhibit case in a darkened room (to protect the vellum) as everyone seeks to see it close up. To me, going upstairs to the Long Room, which is possibly the most magnificent classically-designed library I've ever seen, was far more impressive.

The tour of Trinity College was also fascinating. The tour guide had just graduated so she passed on inside info such as the true story about the once-highly-desired lodgings in classic old buildings that although occupied by the fellows--the faculty--and prize students, lack central heating and require one to wait outside to use the communal showers. The less historic, but still old, regular dorms have been renovated and are now preferred. I wonder what Samuel Beckett or Jonathan Swift thought, much less Oscar Wilde, who spent two years there and whose family lived nearby.

Later we went to another Joycean event--a panel discussion of the idea of Irishness in Ulysses by three writers, held in the General Post Office on O'Connell Street, site of the 916 Easter Rising. This was a good exploration of both the way Joyce viewed Ireland and the way the people he writes about saw the country.

Frank Deford

A good reporter would have figured that Frank Deford must have been in bad shape because he had been quoted as uttering pleasantries when he emerged confidently from the hospital a few days ago, only to die Sunday in Key West. Or else, he merely remembered that the reporter is never the story, one of many lessons he taught writers willing to pay attention to a sportswriter, and well beyond that limited category, he was best of breed.

Today he's recalled sometimes for his long pieces in Sports Illustrated, for which he wrote for a half-century, as well as having delivered more than 1,600 commentaries for National Public Radio, mostly early on Wednesday mornings, until last year when he cut back to once a month and then last month, when he stopped them entirely. He also researched and reported major stories on Real Sports, the Bryant Gumbel sports investigative cable program for years and for a wonderful two to three years, he edited The National, the first and only all-sports daily paper. And there were the twelve books: his wonderful memoirs published a couple of years ago and the incredibly moving first book he wrote, about the death of his first daughter at age 8 from cystic fibrosis. 

But I remember him from when he was a real, on-deadline reporter for SI, covering things like college basketball and hanging out, as he had done when editing The Daily Princetonian, at the great basketball temple, the Palestra, in Philly, and reporting on the many fascinating specimens who inhabited that shrine. Here's the greatest sportswriter of our generation and I loved his recalling how he was hired at SI because no one else from an Ivy League paper would deign to apply to be a sportswriter--he also added, tellingly, that the 50s were a great time to be a white guy looking for a job at Time-Life, where all sorts of minorities, not just black people, weren't even let in for an interview.

His long pieces in SI, of course, were what made his rep. I remember the great one--recalled by others today--about Billy Conn, and what his life was like after losing a great fight to Joe Louis in his prime. It was titled "The Boxer and the Blonde" and it showed how Conn managed to make the most of the brief moment he had in the limelight. Although Conn managed his life after boxing far better than Louis, which isn't itself saying much, Louis's line was marvelous, noting how he had taken quite a few rounds to get used to Conn's boxing skill: "I gave you the fight for eight rounds, but you couldn't hold on to it."

Deford also had an amazing ability to cut through the phoniness in sports and the pompousness of sports owners and officials. He looked for those nuggets that give you a real perception into a sports legend's personality, which at heart is what we all want to learn from sports writing. He didn't get trapped in focusing on the business of sport--except to point out glaring inequities in the way players were treated both before and after they formed unions. Most old-time sportswriters sided with management, from whom they got their free food and drink.

He never got hung up on all the ancillary stuff--agents, contracts, except to comment pungently on NPR about how ridiculous the competition among countries and cities for the sleazy International Olympic Committee and its trinkets was. But he never let that necessary corrective to the palaver put out by house shills divert him from spotting the extraordinary athletic performances that in the end are what continue to draw us to watch the Olympics. He will really be missed as sports pages increasingly ignore what we all yearn for and which he provided so well. 

The Hockey Business

Marvin Miller was the best thing that happened to baseball going back a few years. He brought the players, who are the game, out of the equivalent of indentured servitude, which is a fancy name for slavery. But as important as full coverage of sports as a business is, since we never should forget that sports is a business, the focus on the business side of sports has overwhelmed the media coverage of the games themselves.

For example, when the N.Y. Times gets around to including stories about major sporting events prominently  in its sports pages as contrasted with the oddball features to which it usually devotes most of its limited space, the stories often focus mainly on the business side--how much is the contract and who's making the most money. 

It has gone so far that we are no longer surprised when sports commissioners, who have generally ignored their original charge to look out for "the good of the game," emphasize money at all costs over integrity and good sportsmanship. People like Gary Bettman, the NHL commissioner, don't deserve to be called sportsmen. In fact, they probably would resent being called anything other than a businessman.

Bettman went to the same undergraduate institution I attended--Cornell's industrial and labor relations school--which now takes pride in training union- busting types like he is. But his greatest offense against the good of the game is his position that it is bad for the NHL to take a break so players can enjoy the international competition of the Olympics. His employers--the team owners--can't stand the idea of losing a couple of weeks of income. It's just business, as the Corleones would put it.

In Europe, football, i.e., soccer, teams have recognized that great players must be allowed to take the time needed to play on their national teams, if so honored, for the glory of their country. This is also true in international cricket competitions--which attract huge attention in all parts of the English-speaking world except the U.S. Sadly, however, the U.S. attitude of making the business not just the number one but the only priority is spreading.

Some European owners want to restrict the release of great players to play on their national teams. It will take some time before the U.S. approach corrupts European and international sport but just look at the International Olympic Committee's and FIFA's generations of corruption if you think that this attitude won't spread. In fact, those corrupt institutions are only defending release of players because if the teams and leagues didn't allow them to play, international competition would be killed.

Some baseball players appeared in the World Baseball Classic. Others were afraid of injury and passed it up. Those who watched said that the competition was superior to that offered by Major League Baseball, because the players had their heart and national pride in their play. Remember when the U.S. runner Jackson Scholz in Chariots of Fire told Charley Paddock that he'd better look out for Eric Liddell on the track, "because he's running for something bigger than the medal."

Sacramento Museums

Spent a few days in Sacramento with the Horatio Alger Society but also managed to enjoy seeing two museums I had never visited previously: the California State Railroad Museum and the Crocker Art Museum. The rail museum is modern in design, as contrasted with the finest rail collection on the East Coast--the B&O Museum in Baltimore. It traces the development of rail in the U.S. and has a good deal of rolling stock as well as several locomotives.

Also featured is a train of the future designed by Siemens and possibly the prototype for use if and when the high-speed rail linking Northern and Southern California is completed. Enjoyed walking through a Canadian National "open sleeper" with berths and then a Santa Fe dining car. Lots of rail paraphernalia and was most pleased to see a special section on the Pullman strike of 1894. That great uprising was broken by Grover Cleveland but saw a young attorney resign from representing the railroads to sign on with Eugene V. Debs and the American Railway Union: the lawyer was none other than Clarence Darrow.

The Crocker features an extensive exhibition of contemporary California painting--many artists from the later 20th and current centuries. There's also good landscape and impressionist art from the 19th century, with some nice canvases from painters who opposed the luminists by focusing on much more intimate detail, like branches of conifers. The museum's more recent curators did what appears to be a good job gathering a wide range of new and often experimental art, better than their predecessors did in focusing, for the European part of the collection, on 19th century Dutch and 18th and 19th century German. 

The American sector of the museum--by far the largest--was notable for focusing on artists not renowned or world-famous. Yes, there are paintings by Childe Hassam, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Marsden Hartley, to pick out three recognizable names, but the other Americans provide a fascinating backdrop to California's emergence. 

This is a museum where those making the acquisitions likely had a good deal to spend, as one of the books in the museum shop about one of the Crocker heirs notes that at age 12, she inherited the equivalent of $250 million. Charles Crocker himself is depicted at the railroad museum where he was recalled as one of the "Big Four" who underwrote the Central Pacific, the Western component of the first U.S. transcontinental railroad.

Their Finest; High Noon

If you haven't seen the British film, Their Finest, the novel from which it was adapted is entitled Their Finest Hour--and a Half. This should emphasize that the story, while seriously set during the World War II London blitz, has its comic moments. It's about making a propaganda film to boost British morale--and then gets ensnarled in starting with a real heroic story but making it more heroic by movie standards as well as adding characters--such as an American to appeal to the U.S. population, then still steadfastly trying to stay out of what was seen as a European war.

The leads are British players whom I hadn't seen before--Gemma Arterton and Sam Claflin. Richard E. Grant, whom I had seen before in various British pics, plays an old-style bureaucrat. And Jeremy Irons appears for a cameo as the Minister of War. Ms. Arterton is well cast and does a fine job playing a secretary who wants to be a screenwriter and gets her chance, amid the even-more chauvinistic official world of World War II government in London.

She is superb, but the picture is almost stolen by the invariably magnetic Bill Nighy, playing an aging actor who still insists on the deference he believes is his due. It is, in a word, a charming picture, with a surprise twist near the end that will likely pull your chair out from under you.

Last night we attended a benefit to support our local non-profit community supported theater, the Avalon, with a performance of the classic High Noon, followed by a discussion featuring Glenn Frankel, the author of a recent book about the picture. It was delightful to see the great Western on the big screen. Seeing it confirmed my feeling that the lead was perfectly suited to Gary Cooper, the taciturn, rock-ribbed marshal who won't run.

The rest of the cast remains magnificent, from Grace Kelly, Katy Jurado, Lloyd Bridges, Thomas Mitchell, Otto Kruger, Lon Chaney, Jr., and yes, Lee Van Cleef in his first screen appearance, with no lines, but he does play the fabulous theme song, Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling, on his harmonica. I learned from the book that Howland Chamberlin, who plays the snarky hotel clerk who admits his disdain for the marshal to Grace Kelly's playing the marshal's new wife, was cast by Carl Foreman, who wrote the superb script.

Foreman was rousted off the picture by blacklisting but tried to take care of a few friends whom he knew would not be getting many pay checks for the same reason he wouldn't and Chamberlin was one of them. 

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Oslo

Managed to get to see the remarkable play, Oslo, at the Vivian Beaumont, Lincoln Center, when in New York last weekend. I had heard of two of the leads, Jefferson Mays and Jennifer Ehle, before but not much and not anything about the others in this excellent ensemble cast. The play is based on how two Norwegians with foreign policy backgrounds initiated and facilitated the talks between Israelis and Palestinians that led to the Oslo Accords in the 1990s.

Mays plays a policy think-tank head who has met leading Palestinians and Israelis through his contacts in the foreign policy world. One is the finance minister of the P.L.O. and the other is a right-hand man of Shimon Peres, the legendary Israeli politician who was described upon his death last year as the last of the Israeli founders.

He manages, with the help of his wife, an official in the Norwegian foreign ministry, to bring these Israelis and Palestinians to Norway to meet. (Later, when they warm to each other, they agree that it was a shame they had ended up meeting in Norway: "It's so cold!"). But his approach proves successful: he places the men in a room together and does not join them to facilitate, mediate, or try to drive a bargain. Instead, he wants them to speak directly to the other and he makes sure they are plied with superb local cooking
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It works. There are further meetings and eventually, Israel upgrades its representative and finally, a Washington lawyer is brought in to ice the deal in precise terms that Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister, will approve. Although it all seems likely to collapse at any moment, all persevere and the Oslo Accords are signed off by both sides, in Washington, despite the steady dismissal of the American efforts to broker a deal through traditional interventionist tactics.

The performances and the play are both top-notch. It is a thrilling experience to see this play which captures why this unusual event occurred. At the end, each character states what happened to him or her after the Accords were agreed to, and many had unfortunate ends. So did the Accords, rendered mostly ineffective when Israel's government turned to the right after the rightist assassination of Rabin.

Aside from its dramatic power, the play and its performers convince you of what might have been.

Explaining Schubert

I'm not sure Schubert is a composer you can explain but if you can, Rob Kapilow is the guy to do it. He presents a program for the Smithsonian here in D.C. entitled "What Makes It Great?" in which four times a year he takes apart a piece of music or a group of musical pieces. Last time (the first time) I heard him he was analyzing Cole Porter's songs. He showed how they are made up of amazing key transitions and all sorts of musical legerdemain. 

Sunday he devoted his program to Schubert's Symphony No. 8 in Two Movements, well-known as the "Unfinished Symphony" to the world. He had the Peabody Orchestra with him to play each phrase, or for parts of the orchestra to play the phrase, and then after his hour's lecture, he led them in playing the entire piece. As an added lagniappe, at the very end of the show, after a question-and-answer session, he led them in what is the only part of a projected third scherzo movement Schubert finished--the first 20 bars. The student players were magnificent.

In that these 20 bars added little, I tend to go along with Kapilow in concluding that even if he didn't intend to conclude the symphony after the first two movements, it turned out pretty well anyway. He actually didn't finish a lot of things he started, and the man died at 31. This was written about six years earlier. The two movements might just be the most melodic symphony ever composed.

I don't think any other composer came up with the incredible range of melodies that Schubert did. My other favorite is the Quintet in C for string quarter and an added cello. It is not unfinished. In fact, it is long and yet you don't feel it ever lags or is padded. And I'd love to hear Kapilow expound on what Schubert intended with the strange couple of notes at the end. There were so many questions about the Unfinished that asking one about the Quintet would have meant changing the subject.

His usual inspirations were the mixture of love and pain, according to Kapilow. These also of course are the ideas behind the lieder for which Schubert is also renowned. The lieder, like Winterreise, make the sorrows of young Werther seem mild by comparison. And he was enthralled by Beethoven, too. Yet he composed in his own inimitable style, which does pay some tribute tio Beethoven but is in no way repetitive or even derivative. Just glorious in his own particular way.

The Real Deal on the Piano

This week I went to a mid-week concert at Kennedy Center to see and hear the latest piano sensation, Daniil Trifonov. He's a Russian pianist in his mid-20s who has taken the world by storm. I first read about him only a month or two ago when he performed with the New York Philharmonic. We are lucky that major classical performers and orchestras often set up their tours to stop here, if only for a night, in between major stops like New York and Chicago.

My companion rightly observed that he abjured the usual Chopin and Beethoven in favor of a first half entirely of Schumann, followed by Shostakovich etudes and fugues and then three selections from Stravinsky's Petrouchka. The Schumann was a good starting point because it showed his capabilities in playing slow, romantic passages and then in a toccata, furious and fast emphatic traversal of the keys.

The Shostakovich was varied -- seven parts of Opus 87 -- and challenging, to the listener as well as the pianist. Again, he seemed to be in total command. His stage presence was perfect, clad in tails in which he actually look comfortable. He would come out, sit down, immediately begin to play, and then stand for the inevitable strong applause, and walk off. He would come back and resume promptly.

I enjoyed the Stravinsky the most, perhaps because I love the Petrouchka music, ever since I first saw Fokine's magnificent dance performed years ago by the Joffrey in New York. It is both warm and exciting. Reviews a day later accepted that he was outstanding and made small criticisms of some tempi and other minor points. Trifonov has already played with what seems to be an exhaustive list of the world's top orchestras and conductors. He is only likely to get better but he is already at an extremely high level.

Groundhog Day

We took in the new musical Groundhog Day which is now in previews at the August Wilson Theater, New York, and slated to open April 17. One unusual aspect of its progress thus far is that the show opened last summer in London to generally good notices and audiences, and happened to be reviewed by the chief N.Y. Times theater critic because he was in London to review theater pieces there during the usually slow summer opening schedule in New York.

His review was positive, which leads one to wonder how that might affect a review in his paper when this production opens. Anyway, I thought it was a pretty good show. Andy Karl, who played what might be called the Bill Murray part in London--the character's name is Phil Connors--played it in New York. He is superb. He's good at acting, dancing, singing, and moving quickly around the set.

The show's first act was so good that I asked at its end what they would do for the second, never mind an encore. The movie's theme had a lot of charm, much of which is captured here, so that the show stands on its own. It relies on some of the devices in the film, but has plenty of its own original themes.

The sets and costumes are clever and the supporting cast works hard in terms of moving, dancing, and singing. Memorable tunes--about as many as in most shows these days, so not many. But the music was pleasant. The movie did have a good idea running through it, namely that the lead character has to repeat the same day over and over until it breaks through his hard exterior that his life will be incomplete unless he starts to think about how he affects others.

This theme is of course shielded by a veneer of comedy and music, but it is there as it was in the movie all the same. I was expecting some disappointment because Bill Murray is such a fascinating performer in his ability to give complexity and depth to his characters. But the composer, lyricist, book author, and Andy Karl worked well together to provide an equally good performance. Now, given that they didn't use a lot of what the movie had as its equivalent of a second act, I hope they figure out how to make that act stronger by the time opening night rolls around.

King Charles and Dvorak

Was able last weekend to take in performances at two of the finest venues for drama and music in D.C. On Saturday, we saw King Charles III at the Shakespeare Theater Company's Sidney Harman Hall. This is a fanciful drama by Mike Bartlett, mostly written in Shakespearean iambic pentameter about the future ascension of Prince Charles to the British throne. Robert Joy, who has a lengthy list of credits from Broadway, Off-Broadway, film, TV, and D.C. theater, does a fine job in the title role, and is supported by an excellent American cast. The first act is longer and stronger but it's a good evening out.

Sunday afternoon, the setting was Strathmore, the music auditorium with superb acoustics just above the Beltway in North Bethesda. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, with its music director, Marin Alsop, conducting, presented a fine program. The opener was a commissioned piece called Dancin' Blue Crabs, by Jonathan Leshem, which was fine but seemed to be over almost before it started. Then we heard Samuel Barber's First Symphony, which is played without breaks between movements. This was written in the 1930s and had plenty of good music which was worth hearing. It was followed by Aaron Copland's often-played Lincoln Portrait, which to me has the grandeur I associate with Copland. The spoken part was well performed by Barry Williams. 

After the interval, we returned for the piece de resistance: Dvorak's Cello Concerto. The cellist was Johannes Moser, a German-Canadian. We had seats in the front row, which meant we could not see the whole orchestra but did see both the soloist and the conductor, who both expended plenty of effort. The result was magnificent, which was anticipated if only because this is the gem of the cello repertoire. It is exciting and fantastically melodic, and stands with his New World Symphony as the composer's finest work.

This concerto leaves you the way you feel after hearing a wonderful Broadway musical--you leave the hall humming the various tunes. Maestra Alsop had the orchestra performing at top level and the solo cello was as good as anyone I heard, including the winner of the Cello Competition at Univeristy of Maryland a few years ago and the record we have of Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony featuring Gregor Piatagorsky. 

Enjoying Some High Notes

Every so often I like to pull up some selections from YouTube to enjoy some singing, mostly opera but some Broadway, that I might not have ever heard. Today I started with Joan Sutherland in the last two pieces from Act I of La Traviata. She has always been a favorite of mine, and in this selection, which shows her nicely dressed and more attractive than she usually appeared on stage, it is not so much the high notes, which needless to say are superbly done, but the trills, that she just seems to handle so effortlessly, that blew me away.

Sutherland always made it all sound easy. I also watched her do the Si, vendetta ending of Act II (used to be Act III when they did the brief Act I as a separate act) of Rigoletto with Sherrill Milnes. She goes up for the high note at the end, followed by his, and both are magnificent, but as usual, she holds it right along and makes it seem so easy. She also hits the high note at the end of the Quartet with no less than Luciano Pavarotti as the tenor, and there is no question that she is the dominant voice as it ends gloriously. By the way, she looks absolutely awful and makes Gilda, who I believe is supposed to be in her late teens or maybe just 20, look like she's 70 or so.

I listened to several Rigoletto Quartets and Gigli probably had the sweetest tenor, while Caruso's recordings, which helped create his legend in the early days of sound recording, show how mellifluous his voice was. In the Quartet I heard, however, it was thrilling to hear Amelia Galli-Curci produce the beautiful high notes at the end to keep pace with Enrico. 

Not to be ignored was an Act II finale with Leonard Warren and Bidu Sayao. She also had a lovely, sweet tone and Warren may have been the finest baritone of all time, although I did enjoy a Cornell MacNeil rendition which one commentor referred to as "Big Mac" coming on strong. Tito Gobbi also gave Maria Callas a good match in both the Act II finale and Quartet.

German Oscar Nominee

Enjoyed a charming German film over the weekend entitled Toni Erdmann. It has been nominated for the Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards and had been submitted by Germany. It is unusually long--2 hrs, 40 mins--and drags at times. But it is highly entertaining and enjoyable in a way that European films can be.

I won't give too much plot away but it focuses on a man who is essentially retired after a checkered career who decides to follow his coldly business-oriented daughter, a management consultant, back to her ongoing project in Bucharest, Romania, after she came to Germany for his birthday and spent most of her visit on her cell phone.

He dresses up as different characters--the title of the film is one of them--and turns up at her management meetings with clients and social occasions as well, including a reception at the American Embassy. This all results in both embarrassing and uproarious scenes with plenty of good supporting players. The two German leads have both been in previous pix but were new to me.

The film is incredibly funny and recommended if you don't mind a picture that gives its characters and plot time to develop and play out. It has several scenes that earned it an R rating, none of which is in any way objectionable, but if made in the U.S., it probably could have received a full X rating. Somehow the Europeans manage these scenes without your feeling that it is at all exploitative. 

This picture also bears a message in terms of how we live our lives, and while fortunately it is not made so as to hit you over the head with a ton of bricks, it fulfills its goals of making you think as well as laugh.