Catsup As A Vegetable: how quickly they forget

Broadway is currently running a scaled-down revival of Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music.” I saw the original production with Glynis Johns who could not sing and Hermione Gingold, who also could not sing. But they could act!

The current version uses an audience-packing trend of placing a big Hollywood star in the cast. It sells seats and nobody seems to care if the acting is good or not. But, since I have not seen the current version, I will not make a judgement.

One of the most interesting songs is called, “Remember.” It deals with former and present lovers trying to remember events in their relationship. Invariably, things are incorrectly recalled. There is a line in the song which caught my attention: “you acquiesced and the rest is a blank.” The song ends with “I think it was you.”

The Tea Partyers are currently running rampant with their conservative bantering. They dislike everything that is going on in America. They even managed to scare enough people to supply Massachusetts with a Republican senator. Yes, blue Massachusetts! They seem to be able to blame the current administration with everything wrong in the economy, the wars, the banking industry, and don’t forget those impending “death panels.” And many people are believing every word.

Thomas Frank, the eloquent author and historian, was a recent guest of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS. In the discussion, Mr. Frank argued, rather convincingly, that the resurgence of the Republican Party and their politics is due to the fact that “Americans have forgotten what their country looked like under conservative rule, ‘That's the disease of our time...that sort of instant forgetting.’ "

All of us have the tendency, like the quintet in the Sondheim musical, to romanticize the past. Even the most recent past. But let’s go back a bit. I recall a calendar that I was given during the Reagan years. Each day of the year had a quote from Mr. Reagan. Many were amazing in their naivete. “Facts are stupid things.” “I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I’m in a cabinet meeting.” “You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans.“ "Trees cause more pollution than automobiles." "Approximately 80 percent of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources." "What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice." He also felt that unemployment was a choice.

Reagan’s disconnect with the common man was legendary. Remember, this the administration that attempted to classify catsup as a vegetable in order to have a balanced lunch program in our public schools. Save those packets son, times are bad.

In his economic programs, Mr. Reagan promised to curb governmental spending but instead increased it by 68% over the Carter administration. His tax cuts actually cost the less-affluent more.

Yet, Mr. Reagan is a hallowed, populist president. And obviously an expert at stagecraft.

We move forward and remember the first decade of the new century - The Bush Years. The Tea Party group and most Republicans see it as a time of greatness. Look at the record: the handling of Katrina, the move into a war without a reason to do so, their record on the environment, world diplomacy, climate change, and yes, the economy. How quickly people forget. Bush 43 said in December of 2008, "I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system." He also said, “I'm the master of low expectations.” "It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it." I must have missed that calendar.

So, the Tea Partyers will gather at the Opryland Hotel for a big convention shortly. It is sold out. Will they come up with a valid plan for the economy or merely rant about it? Do they wish to solve the healthcare crisis in our country or are they unconcerned because they are not among the 30 million uninsured? Don’t they worry that a well-oiled healthcare lobby has spent record money to attempt to defeat any proposal? Isn't a light going on somewhere between the ears?

The March Hare, speaking to Alice at another famous tea party said, “you could at least make polite conversation.” I have low expectations of this based upon the history of the movement.

So, in the midst of this hysterical backlash, will we repeat the past cycles where people acquiesced and through “instant forgetfulness, “the rest is a blank?”

What is that music I hear?

“Quick send in the clowns. Don’t bother, they’re here!”

Sitting In The Dark, Hoping To Understand

In the midst of all the talk about Black Friday and Cyber Monday, I heard a blurb on WFMT about a new production of Franz Lehár’s “The Merry Widow,” just in time for the holiday season. The story involves a debt-ridden country attempting to capture the millions of a wealthy widow in order to save their economy. A contrived stimulus package. This has a strange ring of reality about it.

Opera and reality?

Now while I personally enjoy opera, I am the first to admit that there is nothing created by humankind that is more bizarre. Think about it: singing a dialogue, generally in a foreign language, then reflecting upon this dialogue with soaring melodies that challenge the bounds of the vocal physiology. All the while, this supported by a symphonic ensemble, a stage crew, prompters, lighting technicians, and an adoring public prone to wearing capes and peering through the darkness of the theatre via little golden binoculars held in place by “mother of pearl” sticks. (Okay, so I have exaggerated a bit about the capes and the opera glasses. But, only slightly.)

When people have expressed reluctance to attend opera because of not understanding the language, I have always insisted that even without knowing the language, there will be enough happening on stage to give one a basic understanding of the story.

After attending a performance of Kodály’s “Székely Fonó” (The Transylvanian Spinning Room), I may wish to amend that.

My encounter with this opera took place at the grand Hungarian State Opera in Budapest. This is a house built in the late 19th Century in a Renaissance/Baroque style and a lavish tribute to the operatic art form. Like opera, itself, everything about this palace for performance is a bit “over the top.” Since the Kodály work was new to me, I attempted with no success to research the story in advance. Having failed, I was reassured by my mantra to others: “there will be enough happening on the stage to give a basic understanding of the story.”

In this staging, the house lights lowered and you heard the sound of a steam locomotive pulling to a stop. Stage lights revealed several figures in black trench coats and black hats standing in front of the curtain. As the idle train hissed the sound of escaping steam, two figures divested their dark coats and hats to reveal heavily decorated Hungarian folk dress. In an immediate blackout, the train is heard to pull away and in a bit, stop again. The lights go up on the same group and two more people divest revealing brightly-colored folk costumes. This continues until the whole group stands before us in their traditional native dress. At this point, the music began and the curtain opened onto a large room filled with spinning machines. In the background there was a simulated forest with various wooden bridges on and over which people in black trench coats sometimes appeared. (Remember the train?) Downstage, near the edge is a box from which objects/props were removed from time to time. There was a bridge across the orchestra into the audience over which people sometimes left. I don’t recall if anyone ever returned from that direction. People sang. People embraced. People sometimes looked really sad. A couple of times I caught the glimpse of a smile. (Someone either happy or out of character.)

Despite watching everything intently, I have no idea what this opera is about. I can only say that everyone who started out singing was still singing in the end and seemed happy about things. The people in black trench coats were no longer hovering ominously in the background. The music was up-tempo.

Since the month-long wedding of Fernando and Christine back in 1589, opera has captured the imaginations of music lovers. My good friend, Mike, recently purchased season tickets to the opera. Having grown up in a less urbane part of the Midwest where there were not a lot of opportunities to hear opera, he wanted to experience a new musical idiom. Sadly, Mike’s first encounter was opera on hormones: Wagner! Some of these operas last for days with nothing even approaching reality.

Once, at a performance of “La Bohème” at Chicago’s Lyric Opera, a stage that boasts the largest proscenium opening of any opera house in the world, the curtain opened to reveal the humble loft of the starving artists of the story. In this design, rather than being a small hovel amid the Paris skyline, this loft encompassed the whole of the vast opening of the Lyric stage.

The older lady seated to my left whisper loudly to her friend beyond. “It’s no wonder they are so poor; trying to heat that place.”

Lady, it’s opera. Like our economy, don’t expect anything reasonable. Just sit in the dark and hope to understand.