Somebody had a plan

Reading is now overtaking me – again, there is just no lack of great fiction at the moment. I have to save my reading of “The Other Queen” which I have bought as an audiobook, and which - again - yielded a surprise.

I bought it because Richard Armitage performed the part of George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury – and because I like the books by Philippa Gregory. In fact, I noticed only after I had ordered it, that I have already read TEN of them. And that I had conveniently stopped after the one that, in historical order,  came before “The Other Queen”! If I remember this right, it was the one about the short and dismal reign of Jane Grey – whom I had never noticed to have been Queen of England in the first place. Well, it might be contestable …

Nonetheless – I was so fed up with these horrible Tudors then that I stopped, and now I had the guts to go on with it. Didn’t take a lot of persuasion because the book – and the performance! – is amazing. I think I never bought this one as a paperback because I had had so many different accounts of this brief period of history – when there were two queens in England and the country got divided over them – that I thought I didn’t need this one on top of it. Well, I was wrong. Maybe I really didn’t need it to understand the history – but I needed it to finally understand BREXIT.

By the way, not one of these ten books is redundant or boring because she always tells the story from such an interesting perspective that it cannot fail to upset me at some point. That is, she tells it from DIFFERENT perspectives, radically subjectively, so that I always come to emphasize with ALL the characters at some point. Even, marginally, with the absent Queen Elizabeth … I just could understand her terrible predicament. (And I always quite LIKED Queen Elizabeth – even though she was horrible!)

Much more surprising that I should ever come to emphasize with Mary, Queen of Scots, whom I have never liked. Only very briefly - where her fate touches one of my deepest fears: of being hung out to dry. But it is certainly understandable that she did what she did. Philippa Gregory always manages to distress me at some point because she always gets so close to people’s “innermost” person – and so convincingly, because she always keeps this consistency with their “outermost” person as a political and social being – that I always believe her about everybody. (Even when I am totally convinced AT THE SAME TIME that the real George Talbot, and the real Queen of Scots - and probably even Queen Elizabeth – if they lived today, would have been right to sue for libel …) This time I got distressed on three different accounts – at least! – and, at some point, just thought: I CANNOT believe this godawful mess!!!

This time, for once, there is even somebody who can be made RESPONSIBLE for the mess. According to Philippa Gregory, the culprit is William Cecil, Lord Burghley. Everybody hates him, or is extremely wary of him, and, of course, nobody likes him. I always get suspicious when I notice this happening about a fictional character. It always raises a spirit of contradiction. Besides, I always quite LIKED Lord Burghley …

I never knew why I liked him. Of course he played for the winning team, and he played it so very shrewdly … Maybe it is cheap to like somebody because he was on the “right” side of history, but it is also stupid to automatically side with the losers. Besides, I am not always for the winners. I “always” was a Yorkist – that is, I was a Yorkist a long time BEFORE I had an obvious reason to be. I always kind of hated the Tudors … NOT because of Henry VIII, but BECAUSE of Shakespeare!???

I suddenly understood why I have always liked Cecil when it came to the trial of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. I had had this distinct feeling a few times before this that this entirely historical story – and this way of analyzing it – is telling us a lot about what is going on RIGHT NOW, right there where it happened. But, at that moment, I realized that the reason for the godawful mess - and why so many people died for no good reason, or were brought so low they never would have dreamt they could be – was FEAR. That the party in power was living in fear, and was so deeply distrustful of ALL THE REST OF EUROPE. (With good reason, by the way!) Therefore, the Queen of Scots acted as some kind of catalyst, and had to be removed. And I realized that the predicament today is almost exactly the same. Or rather MY analysis of the predicament is exactly the same. I couldn’t analyze it, though, on my own, I just always thought when I heard German journalists comment on the issue: Don’t you know ANYTHING? Believe me, you have the wrong end of the stick entirely …

Where I am concerned, I ALWAYS understood why the British – or rather the slight majority that never got used to “us”! – wanted Brexit. When I came to think of it, I even realized that I have never understood why they joined the European Union in the first place. Strictly speaking, THIS was their historical error – which is now almost impossible to undo. “What’s done cannot be undone …” – maybe I am not quite as pessimistic. But I think that everybody who believes that they can “undo” this mess now, or even should, by undoing Brexit, is wrong. - I will miss them. I am already missing them more than I can say, more than I even ALLOW myself to feel, and I so HATE them for leaving us – but I was never surprised that Brexit did appeal to so many people. Let’s face it: They NEVER liked us, and they never TRUSTED us, and they never took us as seriously as we are taking ourselves, by the way - with good cause! Whereas the rest of Europe will be so much the loser for losing the part of its soul where a brain and a heart can still work TOGETHER, I am afraid that they won’t miss us so very much in the long run.

Obviously, I always liked William Cecil because he was the man who had a plan. He “saved” Britain by coming down on everybody who threatened its independence: He subdued the “papists”, the Irish, and he even had a plan for Scotland that worked – in the long run. He actually set up Britain PERMANENTLY as what it is today! And I even think, in their historical subconscious, many British people will be missing Lord Burghley these days, fervently wishing that there was just ANYBODY who had a plan …

Digital Theatre!!! 💓💓💓

Reading has been a bit slow lately – other things to do! – but it has definitely picked up pace with the “cinema season”, and now I have discovered DIGITAL THEATRE!!! As I should have done years ago, of course … First thing I did was to rent out “The Crucible” for 7.99 £ to watch within the next 48 hours. Not just because it is the first thing that hits the eye when you open their page – still, after all these years!!! (I must say, I was sooo pleased!)

Of course I knew that I was kidding myself pretending that I didn’t WANT to see it another time, but I couldn’t own up to it. It was just too painful to acknowledge that I will never EVER have it on DVD. But Digital Theatre certainly is the next best thing. There was a sound reason, though, for not wanting to see it again because there was a genuine fear of spoiling the supreme pleasure I remember from my first time. A danger that it suddenly might appear “relative”, and that I wouldn’t even know why I had loved it so much. So, I set this up because I knew that I had to – now that I had discovered that I could! -  but didn’t really dare to look forward to it.

Apart from that, there was the tiny little hiccup that I cannot set it up at home (at least not yet, I am definitely working on it!) and had to watch it in my office, a prospect I didn’t fancy that much. There is nobody in my office on the weekends, though, and, of course, I am not supposed to be there, but what …?! So, I bought a quarter of prosecco and some cake for the interval to prevent low blood sugar, and, on a beautiful Oktoberfest Saturday, set out on my quaint mission. (I mean, how WEIRD is this: going to my office to watch digital theatre while “everybody” is outside in the sun in dirndl and lederhosen, gaping at the horses and drinking beer …? I definitely began to like this!)

It was just as well that I didn’t bother with it because I could never have ANTICIPATED the pleasure I experienced seeing it again. It was even better than seeing it the first time, even though it was only on a computer screen with insufficient sound, not on the big cinema screen in surround. (The sound was very clear, though, so that I could understand every word and appreciate every “voice feature”. So, basically, everything was fine.) And I cannot even begin to say how pleased I am that I HAD BEEN RIGHT! Right about seeing it again as well as about my first impression of this being the best production of a play I have ever seen. The most perfect, most beautiful, and most emotionally exact production of a fictional text I have ever seen – be it on screen or in the theatre. I remember thinking, when I saw this for the first time,  that this must be the best production of this play EVER, and I am now positive that it will be. There is just NOTHING RELATIVE about it, and this is what I enjoy more than anything. That it is possible to leave all my petty “construction sites” behind me for a few hours and have the FEELING of this in my memory for years - potentially forever. This is what I want, and it is what I can get when I am playing it right. I think I understand now why Richard Armitage talked about “opera” on behalf of “The Crucible”. This is exactly what opera is destined for – though, in my case, it doesn’t work because I don’t enjoy the music that much and am always so suspicious about the romantic and tragic content. Arthur Miller is just so RIGHT about everything, and intellectually and emotionally challenging, that there is no problem at all with the tragic content. Richard Armitage roaring at the skies at the end with everything that was in him is just EXACTLY as it should be.

And I had been right, by the way, about not having WANTED to see it in the theatre. I would just have been crushed and totally unable to analyze. Unfortunately, most of the time I am actually happier with a solid screen between me and the text instead of an imagined fourth wall. Not least because it prevents me from trying to distance myself from the text, which was rather important in this case.

I won’t embark on an analysis now – not just because I would never be able to finish. The main reason – and this might appear kind of sad, but isn’t! – is that I have FINISHED reading it. Seeing it this time has closed everything that was still open from seeing it the first time, and this is also something that I thought could never happen with any important text, but it has. And it is not the least bit sad but feels great because this is a stage I have probably never reached with any text, but which SHOULD be – ideally! - where reading leads to. I will never discover anything new now about this text because I have seen it all, and I have understood it all, and felt it all. And this is, of course, why this production is so good. (It is even exactly right to feel like shit for three days, realizing that such a high will probably never come again. I just hope that it won’t happen again this time …)

I already tried to analyze the complexity of this play, dealing with tragedy in my blog. And I think I already discovered tragedy as a VEHICLE. I wouldn’t distance myself in the least from anything I have written about Richard Armitage playing John Proctor – quite the contrary. I think I still couldn’t believe seeing something so powerful and so exact AT THE SAME TIME. Like the rest, it was even better than my memory of it. I didn’t know that he got an Olivier Award nomination for this until I finally read the Wikipedia this year. The only thing I will never understand is that he didn’t get the award. (Well, the audience’s choice in this case would have been obvious: it is still one of the top three productions on Digital Theatre, and the others much more recent!) Nonetheless, reading all these interviews by him afterwards, and being still so preoccupied with my own issues about the play, my reading got biased. I missed most of the complexity of this incredible text, and this was what I could compensate this time. I even knew that I had only these fuzzy memories left of what I felt about certain moments, and had lost the text, REMEMBERING at the same time what I had lost. This was kind of frustrating, and it got completely mended seeing it a second time.

It think that, for the first time ever, I actually NOTICED directing. I sometimes notice camera, very rarely, and only if I get kind of hit on the head with it. Nonetheless, camera is crucial, and I instantly notice when something is wrong with it. I never notice directing. Strictly speaking, it isn’t even possible to notice directing, but this time I actually SAW it. Being able for the first time to take in the complexity of what is going on on the stage, the number of actors involved, almost everybody being equally important and everybody as right about what they were doing as could be, the incredible timing and dynamics … Sure, there is this great STAGE TEXT – that you think would work like a charm almost by itself when you see this – but of course this is not so! Somebody has to set this up so that it can work like a charm. I’ll never forget now Elizabeth Proctor standing alone on that stage at the end, speaking her last sentence exactly as she spoke it. The end is as strong as the beginning, and there is not one weak or fuzzy moment, or any single second of insufficient acting, in between. So – Yael Faber is a genius and a miracle, and her directing is the main reason that I could read this text so COMPLETELY. It is incredibly complex and exact - and utterly terrifying! - as to what happens in between people, what society is made of, and how people would react when something like this is breaking loose. The “classical” tragedy is just the most powerful vehicle to carry this through to the end – and NOT to leave us in a muddle of wretched feelings which would make us want to forget this “mess” as fast as possible, as we would do in real life … Arthur Miller certainly is a genius when it comes to handling “us” – and in this case I don’t mind!

So, back to my petty construction sites! After this, I have even more reason to go to London next year to see “Uncle Vanya” than I had before, but now my credit card is buggered because I cannot set up the new secure code shit they have deviced, and there is nobody who can help me with it. One day we’ll finally all be so secure that we cannot leave our flats anymore … It is such a ridiculous issue but so important because, before this is resolved, I won’t be able to book anything for next year. I don’t even know if my MasterCard will still work in the UK after Brexit – or will I need Visa??? As usual, I have no idea … At least there will still be Digital Theatre for me, and Amazon – but how long until they will have noticed that they have to implement the new secure shit …??? The horizon is darkening, and I just hope that SOMEBODY has a plan …

Reading update: „Late Night“

Had to “save” “Late Night”, as an instance of exceptional reading – and acting! – but first of all because something happened when I saw it, and I had to find out what that was. I knew that I would if I could find the time … In fact, this might have been my “Woody Allen” of the year. (Meaning: A text that is analyzing ME even though the content has nothing to do with me in the first place.)

I went to the “Cinema” because of Emma Thompson, but was also cheered by the expectation of seeing a comedy for once – as a break from all the sad stuff I have seen or listened to lately. (Though it is certainly due to menopause when I find life’s deep sadness in “Marple” ?!!!) But it wasn’t. I mean, it wasn’t a break. And “Late Night” certainly isn’t a comedy, rather this complex, almost unbearably truthful, kind of tragic character study. There is a lot of great humour too, especially in the beginning, but after a while I stopped laughing and started wincing, and squirming in my seat.

I am being inconsistent, I know, because I am usually not really delighted with comedy. I usually enjoy the wincing and squirming. And, of course, it was exactly what I expect of Emma Thompson – just STILL better. My absolute favourite scene in “Love Actually” – a film I see every year on Christmas Eve, and which is brimful of favourite scenes - is the moment she is standing in her bedroom crying after she has discovered that her husband gave a present to another woman. Of course, really good crying is always so convincing, and so few actors are able to do it, but what I love is the COMPLEXITY of this moment – the way I can see everything crumble and her life being irrevocably changed … And “Late Night” has LOADS of this stuff. There is probably no other actor I know who can “hold down” so many different “sides” and facets of a character and show them AT THE SAME TIME. So, a film I’d absolutely recommend – if there was somebody to recommend it to. Just don’t watch it in a state of menopausal depression …

It might just be that everything with a tiny bit of depth can make me feel bad right now – even Agatha Christie. How much more so when the writing is so exceptional as in “Late Night” where I actually SAVED – more or less - EXACT QUOTES from seeing it once. This is something I have never done before, and this was how I knew that something must have happened. Both the great writing and “deep” acting makes this film stand out from other representations of a world “we” think we know so well from films and social media: the world of the successful and famous, and the predicament of staying at the top and having a private life at the same time. Of course “we” – who never were there – know everything about it already, but the extraordinary depth of analysis in this case made me look twice and find a completely new and, I think, more truthful description of this predicament.

„If you give of yourself you have overstepped a boundary. You CANNOT step back,”

certainly made me sit straight and prick up my ears. Of course it is nothing I will ever have to worry about. Nonetheless I find the notion – that, if it just happens ONCE, you have already lost because you are already “out there” – as accurate as it is utterly terrifying. How clever do you have to be to know this BEFORE it is too late? So, basically, before you actually ARE famous! Of course, people who finally arrive “at the top” – wherever that may be for them, but at any rate in a place for public scrutiny! – “always” knew that they would, some day. Even if they never admitted it to anybody - and EVEN if they were prudent enough not to admit it to themselves! – in their heart of hearts they always knew where they were headed. Nowadays there isn’t even a chance to deny that you are famous, if it scares you, because there is indelible proof when you count your followers on twitter. The only thing you can do, I suppose, is to focus on your work and avoid the fatal trap of actually giving a piece of yourself … This “poisonous” quote made me understand still better why I try to clinically avoid stumbling on any private input about the very few famous people I care about, and why I am always so utterly pissed off when I do …

Though I THOUGHT I knew this, it actually came as a bit of a shock … and this was only the beginning. Emma Thompson, playing the talk show host Katherine so truthfully and “completely”, made me see that the relationship of a public and private persona is exactly the opposite of how “we” - that is: the ignorant majority to which I belong! - usually see it. The private space is NOT the area where people want to be, where they can be “themselves” whereas “out there” they always have to pretend. It CAN be so, in certain respects, because everybody needs a break from being great – but the truth is that what people WANT to be is out there where they can shine and give their absolute best. The private life is vitally important, though, because it is NECESSARY. No matter if it is rather common or full of sordid secrets, or great, or reasonably happy - or if it consists of clinical depression and total dependency on the one person who really knows them, as in the film – it is necessary to SUPPORT the person they endeavour to be. What we are is what our life is about, at least in my opinion. It MAY be about fame and fortune and glamour, but it may just be, as Katherine’s husband puts it, about “excellency”.

Of course I knew this, but sometimes knowing is not the right category. It’s understanding why. The reason why the obsession with the private lives of “our” idols actually is so stupid is that it is based on the misapprehension that they are LIKE US – whereas the whole point of our relationship with them is that they are NOT.

So, this was about the dark side of the film, and there certainly is a “lighter”, comical side as well. But, as it does when it is great comedy, it is getting WORSE … (There IS a reason I am still sticking with tragedy when I am reading Shakespeare.)

The comical  - or fairy tale – bit consists of the story of a young woman who works in a factory – sorry, a chemical plant! – and who gets hired as a writer on her favourite show just because she is female. But, in this case, the fairy tale bit gets swallowed up and bogged down pretty quickly by the truthfulness of the original set-up of the story. I loved the scene where the female writer gets hired back personally by Katherine after having been sacked. To convince her to come back she enumerates all the reasons why she needs her on the show. After a while it dawns on the young woman, and she says: “You love me!” – “I wouldn’t say THAT …”. As always with comedy, the point is in the acting, not just the dialogue. It has to be SEEN. However, both their assessments of the situation are absolutely precise.

I think this scene is so good – or rather “bad”! – because it is about one of the NON TRIVIAL truths of life which may concern “mere mortals” like myself: that people never love one another IN THE SAME WAY. The young woman will probably never be loved in the way she wants to be because

“Famous people hate their admirers.”

(that is, they might even love them very much - if they meet them for less than five seconds or on twitter … which the Emma Thompson character hates as well, but: “They made me use it.” Luckily for her, because, at some point, twitter will save her career!)

I always knew this. I am certain I knew this was true BEFORE I saved this quote from “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” for my proverbial fridge:

“I am very loath to be your idol.”

I liked it that the RSC made Silvia into some kind of Paris Hilton in their recent production of the play, somebody with a lot of “followers”, whose life might appear absolutely perfect to most people. This makes it immediately evident why she says this to the young man who is stalking her, but throws her picture at him because she knows that, giving that, she doesn’t give him ANYTHING … I always thought this was brilliant – the writing and what they made of it in this production! Of course, Silvia hates her admirer because he actually wants a PIECE of her – but WHO would she be without the general admiration and approval …?

The only “good” bit about “asymmetrical” love relationships also is in this dialogue, and it is also important: Even though people never love one another in the same way, they love one another NONETHELESS. There are probably many relationships like this which are quite unspectacular and not at all “comedy-worthy”. And quite unlike anything “we” imagine when we are day-dreaming. Like any meaningful relationship, they are mostly hard work.

So, serves me right for going to the cinema! (At least I can now skip the next Woody Allen without the least bit of a guilty conscience …) And, on top of the discomfort of being analyzed, there is yet another actor I should add to the “unlimited credit” section, just because of the overwhelming excellency … But I won’t. Of course I “filed” her a long time ago, and certainly in the “top drawer”, but I noticed just the other day that my fictional love relationships have nothing to do with excellency in the first place. As they have nothing to do with physical attraction - in the FIRST place. They are extremely personal. As I noticed a few times, they are really about me.

I noticed it again when I was watching a series with Christopher Eccleston after I hadn’t seen anything by him for quite some time. It was a rainy day, and I had done all the boring and exhausting stuff and ended up watching DVDs I had already seen, to file them. And I hated everything. Everything made me feel bad and unsettled me, even “Marple”. (As I found out, Agatha Christie can be a lot more unsettling than I gave her credit for …) Then I hit on “The A Word” which I bought because of Christopher Eccleston. I didn’t even like him that much in the series, but, as soon as I saw him again, I became totally calm and serene. It might just be because what he does is always so COMPLETE. There are no “fuzzy” bits, or nondescript areas. He always convinces me that he knows everything about the character he is playing. No – every great actor does that! It is that he, somehow, manages to EXPRESS everything he knows. As I realized earlier: he never misses the point about any character or situation, he always brings the hidden content out into the open. Consequently, I am fascinated no matter whom he is playing. Maybe, in his case, the relationship is purely AESTHETICAL – as if this special kind of energy and structure he brings to any single character he is playing is exactly what I need … But I cannot KNOW this. With Ralph Fiennes the feeling is exactly the same, even though I think it is about something different, more emotional. I think it is about the INTENSITY of feeling that he is able to convey. I always feel completely safe with him, even if it is about something frightening or ugly. (I finally have his “Red Dragon” now, by the way. Special treat for Halloween!!!)

With Richard Armitage it is totally different because he unsettles me almost all the time. It is my most demanding fictional relationship because, with him, it is never the same thing twice. I have learned by now that I am always in for a SURPRISE. This makes me skittish, and I am not at all sure if I will even enjoy seeing him in the theatre next year … (if I can make it.) And there is always a genuine possibility of being disappointed – which is not so with the others. But, when it actually happens, the way he surprises me is worth any disappointment. As he probably does himself, I like it more than anything to go where I HAVEN’T BEEN, and UNDERSTAND what is happening there.

My relationship with Simon Russell Beale is again completely different. I think that it is the way he ANALYZES text and characters which we share. But he has this huge, inventive repertoire of SHOWING the results of his analysis, and it always makes me completely HAPPY when I see it. But I miss him less than the others when I don’t see him, probably because I am doing this kind of analysis myself all the time.

So, either of my intense fictional relationships is about something I NEED, and which I actually GET by seeing – or listening to – their work. (As I found out recently, there are great audiobooks read by Richard Armitage – and I am not yet ready to accept that I cannot get the Bernard Cornwell – from my beloved “Making of England” series!!! – that he has performed, on Amazon. Shhh… 😢😢😢) As sad as this may be, this is much better than what I get out of non-fictional relationships – which are NECESSARY nonetheless, but, most of the time, not really about me.