The Score at Shakespeare Theatre Company

The Score, a British production directed by the well-regarded director Trevor Nunn, and now playing at D.C.'s Shakespeare Theatre Company, is based on a real-life event from the 18th century. Johann Sebastian Bach journeyed from his home city of Leipzig, where he was chorusmaster, organist, and composer, in response to the invitation to visit the King of Prussia,, Frederick the Great, at his palace in Potsdam.

Bach is aging, doesn't want to make the arduous trip, and disapproves of Frederick because of his war-making and the deaths his battles have caused to civilians in Silesia and in Leipzig, where other atrocities were committed by Frederic's Prussian army. The play tried out in Bath and then was presented in the West End, London. This is its only American booking.

Brian Cox, a star of the English stage, plays Bach and is definitely the leading character. Nicole Ansari-Cox, his wife in real life, plays his wife in the play, and Stephen Hagan plays Frederick.  The play's first act is a (slow) set-up to what happens in Potsdam and Bach's faith-based beliefs against Prussian militarism are more than adequately advanced by Cox in scenes with his wife and his son, Carl (better known as the classical composer C.P.E. Bach), who is working as a composer for Frederick.

The action and drama arrive in the significantly longer second act when Bach arrives at Frederick's palace. Their differences focused on faith and war--it's not too hard to figure out who's in favor of which--emerge despite the senior Bach's promise to his son to restrict his touching on these touchy subjects. The other court composers suggest to Frederick that a theme he has composed--Frederick enjoys his slight efforts to compose--be the subject of a wager as to whether J.S. Bach can compose a three-part fugue from the short theme.

J.S. proceeds to do just what is asked, surprising all of them, except his son, who wins the bet. The elder Bach is totally unaware that the request Frederick makes for him to compose the fugue is the subject of the wager and was intended to demonstrate Bach's declining powers in performing what the composers deemed an impossible task. His performing what would be impossible for any other composer confirms the assertion Carl has made (and wagered) that his father remains the greatest musician then extant in Europe. 

The tension of the drama is whether Bach's angry argument of his views on faith and war will cause Frederick to take action against him, given the powers of royalty and the atmosphere of suspicion and accusation in the palace, especially in Prussia, in those days. But it does not come to that. In fact, the closing scene finds Frederick visiting Bach at his Leipzig home where they continue their discussion. The presence of Voltaire, well played by Peter de Jersey, injects some needed lightness and even a bit of humor to the proceedings.

The play by Oliver Cotton does well in presenting the verbal and intellectual conflict. In London and Bath, Cox, who played the leading character, Logan Roy, in the streaming drama Succession, received strong reviews for his performance. In my view, I was more impressed by how Hagan created the character of Frederick the Great. The King was known for inviting major artistic figures in Europe to visit him as despite his basic orientation as a warrior king, has major intellectual and artistic ambitions. Thus the presence of Voltaire as a visitor when J.S. Bach was also spending what turns out to be only two days at Potsdam.

In Hagan's depiction, Frederick's positions are presented shrewdly and effectively, with a good deal of charm. Cox makes Bach a powerful force but given the atmosphere of suspicion and suppression in the King's court, to me he came off as too strong and too loud. Bach at one point recalls how in Leipzig he needed to negotiate with the city councillors for his wages and working conditions; he admits that he hasn't succeeded in winning what he feels he deserves. Underneath, Bach likely accepts that he is unlikely to convert Frederick but his continued assertion of his views in a challenging tone made me feel that he was deciding in his old age to say things that he had not dared to say earlier.

The subservient attitude of the three court composers, who are in awe of J.S. Bach, as well as the same outlook of Bach's son, who urges him not to remonstrate with Carl's employer, Frederick, conveys the scary atmosphere of the palace. I had the feeling that the playwright was striving to show that J.S. Bach was by this time (62 was doubtless an advanced age then) beyond suppressing his opinions to anyone's control, even a monarch who may have had stronger intellectual powers but probably the tempestuousness of Henry VIII.

All in all, it was a good theatrical experience. The play will be playing for another month in D.C. with, as noted above, no present plans to put it on elsewhere in the U.S. 

 

 

 

 

Catching Up With Life

It shouldn't feel surprising that I haven't posted here for months. If you've checked this site out, I'm very appreciative and yes, regretful. It just slipped out of my active consciousness (when I use that kind of term, I recognize how my writing has been influenced by reading too much prose infected by both legal and clinical--as opposed to critical--thinking).  

I do attribute my absence from this page mostly to Eileen's death on April 16. This piece follows almost five months since then. I haven't stopped feeling the effect of that event, and I doubt that I will anytime soon. We were married for 55 years, knew each other for 60, and enjoyed each other amid the usual (and some unusual) ups and downs. Most who know us were aware of Eileen's incredible survival through five or six major cancer episodes requiring surgery. One was Stage 3 (out of 4). Those who saw us over the past two years and especially the last seven months or so of her life could discern that this last time was different. Too many insuperable challenges hit at the same time.

She experienced treatment this time provided by a variety of physicians with varying bedside manners. In the end, it was for naught except that she gained at least one and almost two years to enjoy life before things truly began to go south. She had realized that as much as she loved her profession--mediation--and had excelled both in doing it and training others, here and abroad, it finally was time to retire in July 2024 after 49 years in several different roles at the Federal Mediation & Conciliation Service. Her positions included district director and general counsel, but what she loved the most was being a mediator (which carried the title of "Commissioner") and mediating disputes.

Eileen broke in when male chauvinism in a field populated by aging former negotiators for labor or management was still rampant. She won over many who had been skeptical of both her and other pioneer women in the mediation field through learning from those men and women, and helped by the support of the few who encouraged and promoted her, especially Regional Director Paul Yager and FMCS Director Wayne Horvitz. She benefited from the foresight of the FMCS Director when she first was an intern, W.J. Usery, later Secretary of Labor, who started the intern program to diversify FMCS although he wasn't yet sold on women as mediators. There were times she missed living and working in New York despite all the friends and colleagues she had in D.C., but in New York City, she had shared an office with a Yiddish-speaking Black mediator--where else could that happen?

She never lost her wide interest in the field of industrial relations she had discovered during her undergraduate years at the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Eventually, she won all their major undergraduate and alumni awards--the Ives and the Groat, also visiting several times as neutral-in-residence. She was elected to lead the Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution (SPIDR--later absorbed into ACR, the Association for Conflict Resolution) and the Industrial Relations Research Association (later LERA--the Labor and Employment Relations Association).

Eileen went back to Georgetown to earn a law degree at night. Her main motivation was to be able to deal more easily with the lawyers who represented most parties in labor mediations. It was like her--eminently pragmatic--to recognize this value of a law degree and bar admission. Yet she also found research in the field enthralling, even when she felt that many academics ignored the practicalities of effective mediation.

She was a people person and a superb public speaker--often demonstrated at conferences. Her sense of humor particularly came through on these occasions. I'll never know how many of those starting out in the field she assisted with more than just advice--she would call and write on their behalf. 

She traveled on work trips to train mediators and to help design mediation agencies and programs in many countries. She didn't like to be away from home, from our daughter Vanessa, who was growing up, from friends and family, and even from me. So, she made brief journeys to far-away places. While I sometimes was gone for longer periods on overseas projects, she made a three-day trip to the Philippines (not counting the travel time) to deliver a speech.

It's not surprising that for the most part, she didn't write up her experiences. Partly, she wasn't that fond of writing and perhaps more significantly, much of what she would have set down evolved from meetings and other settings where confidentiality was either mandated or assumed to be appropriate. I'm beginning to go through her massive assemblage of papers because Cornell is interested in adding them to its archival holdings; the major challenge will be dealing with material that may still require preservation of promised (and often legally mandated) confidentiality.

Eileen enjoyed teaching and taught collective bargaining, negotiations, and alternative dispute resolution, mostly at George Washington University's National Law Center and more briefly at the University of Maryland's now-Global Campus. She also presented courses at overseas law programs in China and Spain. Her former students stayed in touch with her and she was delighted with their successes and continued to help them with placements. She won the top faculty award from GW law school one year.

She did keep in contact with her family, even when they were wildly opposed to her political and social views. After all, mediation was in her system. I was fairly diligent in maintaining relationships with my many cousins, but it was Eileen who reminded me to write and to make regular phone calls and later, Zoom contacts. We did travel, not always for work, and again, Eileen maintained communication with friends and family of both of us.

She organized two of our later trips: a Normandy tour featuring D-Day sites (our first organized tour) and a trip to Ireland with Vanessa and Dave. The mark of Eileen on that trip was that she made sure there was something included that met each of our individual choices. She also drew on her many contacts to have us meet with the leader of the Irish Labour Party and a prominent community mediator in Belfast. I traveled with her to South Africa, China, and Hungary. She arranged her own trip to speak for the International Labour Organization when I was working in Indonesia for half a year. Vanessa came along courtesy of my air miles. We also finally made it to Israel after she trained labor inspectors for a week in Amman and I joined her to see Petra.

Despite her health challenges, Eileen was always an "up" person. Her glass really was  always half full or more. She took friendship seriously, always there when one needed her. She remained a friend for life with four of her roommates from college, grad school, and her year at London School of Economics. She spent seven months on an exchange with the British Advisory, Arbitration & Conciliation Service (ACAS) and was able to deliver her valedictory at the 2024  (and thus far only) combined conference in New York of FMCS, IIRA, and LERA days before she retired. 

She adored her grandsons, Ethan and Alex, and they had a very special relationship with her. She tolerated our beach weeks at Middlesex Beach every summer because Vanessa and I loved the beach. She was usually very happy there catching up on reading and more than once, she was summoned back to work for some emergency, usually a dispute crisis: she was on a 4-passenger prop that took her back once from Nantucket.

Vanessa and I always laughed when noting that Eileen won the awards, honors and elected offices in our family. The surprise came when one of us managed to get one. And she never solicited them, or organized any kind of a campaign. Our capabilities did complement each other's, yet we were only sporadically able to work closely together as some couples like R.V. (Dick) and Tia Denenberg could. She did benefit from some of my editing skills and I gained even more from her wise advice on everything.

We did enjoy Cornell, both as students and after, especially thanks to the generous hospitality over the years of Jane and Mel Richards. She profited from studying with Jean McKelvey and John Windmuller She wisely opted out of attending football games, which as a former sportswriter, I never could. But she would volunteer to go to some "important" game with me, despite my responding that I had attended so many games in so many sports that one more or less was no big deal. But when we lived in England, I did take her to Henley, Arsenal, the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, and the Grand National Steeplechase; she drew the line at cricket.

She knew her own mind and what she wanted. I met her when she was considering competting (yes, that was the word) for The Sun. She decided we were all too crazy, which we were. She did join the debating team; she said it was because the room she shared as a freshman in Donlon was too small to live in with Irish Scully if she didn't. We had a good run. I will think of her when Violetta sings "Sempre Libera" (always free) at the end of Act One of Verdi's La Traviata. I'll always miss her inimitable spirit and, yes, love.