Angels and ministers of grace
– defend us.
Which, yes, is a line I’m fond of from Star Trek IV. That’s part of the fun of and also part of the distraction found in watching Shakespeare: That line was the title of an Edmund Crispin novel; that’s one of the most famous lines anywhere; “Conscience of the king”, haven’t seen that Star Trek episode in ages; oh, look, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, not dead yet…
Last night PBS aired something I’ve been salivating for: the film adaption of David Tennant’s stint with the Royal Shakespeare Company as Hamlet. With, I was slightly giddy to see, Patrick Stewart as Claudius. I was (obviously) excited – and I was really disappointed that they were airing it on a Wednesday night. I didn’t think they usually did Great Performances then – I suppose they do, I just haven’t been paying attention. Oh well – I watched it. I enjoyed it, by and large. And, being me, herein I shall discuss it.
Something that always confuses me is the complaint by – oh, a whole lot of people, that they can’t understand a word of a Shakespeare play. Maybe I’m just peculiar (maybe?) but I generally have very few problems. Granted, a line like “Against the which, a moiety competent Was gaged by our king” is more easily comprehended on the page than otherwise, but obscurities can usually be defined by context, or they’re past so quickly that whether or not you catch every word is irrelevant. The main reason I had to scamper to catch up with this rendition was that it was extremely fast-paced – David Tennant in particular, when he gets a full head of steam, speaks very quickly. An example of that – both speedinesses – was when the ghost kept intoning “SWEAR!” and Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus kept scrambling from place to place; they lost me completely.
All in all, to my surprise, this wasn’t my favorite version or favorite performance of Hamlet. That still goes to Derek Jacobi, in the BBC Complete Works set (in which Patrick Stewart played … Claudius. With curly hair). That was mind-altering; it shifted the light and shadows of the play and moved me to tears. I really kind of expected this to pull it off. It didn’t… I love David Tennant. And I think he was very good; a drawback for me was occasionally hearing that tone in his “mad” voice, and 
instantly flashing to Doctor Who. He can’t help it: it’s his voice. And I can’t help it – he was 10 for five years. I think his “to be or not to be” was lovely – he’s exhausted. Several times in the play Hamlet references bad dreams – it’s not hard to figure that they’re either fouling what sleep he is getting or keeping him from falling asleep for fear of “what dreams may come” (there’s another one, and yes I do know the quote refers to death). My main problem with it, the whole act, was that t-shirt. It’s hard to focus on a tragic monologue when the monologuer is wearing a T limning a wicked six-pack. (I admit it – I do have some issues with modern-dress versions of Shakespeare. But this shirt was especially problematic.) But before the shirt hove into view, the use of the backlit three-quarter profile was just gorgeous…
In that monologue it felt a true moment of Hamlet, off-guard, unguarded. He did a lovely job with it, I think. That is a man who is beaten down by exhaustion, grief and fear, fury and revenge, compunction and duty…
And in the scenes that immediately follow I feel like the character is really defined. He does love Ophelia – and Tennant’s face and voice show this when she comes on. He thrusts her away because he can’t afford the distraction, perhaps, or he’s cutting ties; or simply as another arrow in his crazy quiver. I don’t think he ever cared for Polonius – I would expect he was fairly put out with him for continuing on in his post and serving Claudius as he did Hamlet’s father – so the childish japing with him probably was rather fun for him… And then come Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (or Guildenstern and Rosencrantz). That scene is heart-breaking. They are his friends – he loves them; they seem like an odd trio, with Hamlet as sharp as he is and the other two so very dull, but perhaps they’ve been friends since they were very young. And gradually he realizes that they’re not here for him – not in the way they want him to think. R&G are miserable actors, and they can’t hide it: he forces them to confess that they were sent for. Betrayal. They lied to him – repeatedly; as soon as he knows they were sent for he knows full well they’re there as spies. Base betrayal… So, now, what have we? Father dead. Bad enough for one year. Mother remarries with indecent haste – also bad enough – but wait: marries father’s brother. And yet they wonder that he is unhappy; the question is more one of why the rest of the lot of them are fine with the situation. Into that mire comes the horripilating ghost of his beloved father to tell him that he’s not just dead, he’s murdered – by Claudius… And into the resulting roil of that comes his two dear friends, who very quickly turn out to be not on his side. I know what the latter is like (to a lesser extent); that alone is a horror. The lines between Hamlet’s act of madness and the real onset of insanity begin to blur right about there, I think – they’d almost have to.
I’m playing it on pbs.com as I write this, and my appreciation is increasing.
I was not overfond of the use of security cameras throughout – but I did love his grabbing one down and flinging it away after Rosencrantz and Guildenstern leave him (after the players make their exit): “Now I am alone” becomes “Now I am alone.” And then, barefoot, he drops down against the wall and monologues about passion and courage … “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!” That – now, that was beautiful.
“Now I am alone” – it could so easily have been used, and likely has been used, to mean: father dead, lover driven off, mother turned harlot with uncle, two old friends turned spy for mother and uncle… Alone. There’s still Horatio – but while another old friend he is of lower status, and little regarded among the rest of them. He’s almost Hamlet’s imaginary friend.
And the recorder scene was sharp and painful, and excellent –
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of
me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know
my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my
mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to
the top of my compass: and there is much music,
excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot
you make it speak. ‘Sblood, do you think I am
easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what
instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you
cannot play upon me.
I think I really hate R&G.
The graveyard scene was one of the best.
I was less than enthusiastic about much of the supporting cast – disappointed in the RSC, really; Mariah Gale as Ophelia I didn’t entirely care for. She’s a fine actress, but I felt too old for the part, and not entirely convincing as an innocent maiden who could be driven mad by her lover’s madness and father’s death. (I want very much to see Helena Bonham Carter’s performance again.) The mad scenes should have hurt; though the very last scene nearly did (and “There’s a daisy” was actually quite funny) these were partly hard to watch simply because of the annoying trick of shooting into the broken mirror, and because Ms. Gale can’t sing very well. Laertes in other productions has broken my heart; this one didn’t manage it. And I thought the leather jacket was mildly silly. Also, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern weren’t the only ones in those skins who weren’t the best actors.
Gertrude was played by Penny Downie. The loving mother – she really is, mostly – and grieving widow – really – and loving wife – truly. I’d love to see some take someday on how she reconciled and justified the whole mess, whether she was always in love with Claudius – just how that marriage came about. She was pretty wonderful (and so were her gowns), as was Polonius (Oliver Ford Davies) – and I loved how they played together. Overall the varied treatment of Polonius was very well done… He was the old windbag who really is still a valuable staff member, if not as sharp as he once was. Claudius treats him just that way, with an amused understanding and tolerance and an appreciation for his work. Gertrude, though, is utterly exasperated by him and makes no effort to hide it. Laertes and Ophelia are the adult children who know his speeches by heart, and love him however long-winded he is. He meant well.
Uncle Patrick – sorry, SIR Uncle Patrick! I had no idea. How wonderful. I love David Tennant – and I have long adored Patrick Stewart. (Wiki: “Stewart has expressed interest in appearing in Doctor Who“. Calloo. Don’t tease.) And he was, of course, lovely here… ruthless, glibly lying when necessary… Uncle Patrick couldn’t give a bad performance if he tried. The only thing I did not like, which he (according to the “Behind the Scenes” they showed at the end) was most pleased with, was the shrug before he took the cup from Hamlet … It didn’t seem right. He seemed remarkably unmoved by Gertrude’s death. He may have known it was all coming to an end, all, but I was disappointed in the whole last scene.
I was even more disappointed that, while I approved of bringing it to a close at “And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!”, PBS gave that line about two seconds to reverberate before they merrily jounced into the “Behind the Scenes”. It was awful – three hours of intense Shakespeare, undermined. Ill done. It was very hard to appreciate anything they had to say, however clever the whole thing with mirrors was, while still reeling a bit from the shock.
It was a strange time to be watching, because I had a bloody awful couple of days of it, Tuesday and Wednesday. What with one thing and another, I was sitting with a sort of smirk of recognition at far too much of what Hamlet had to say:
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Why, what should be the fear?
I do not set my life in a pin’s fee…
Hamlet is a peculiar thing to watch when you’re depressed.
If I have time and inclination this weekend I may well hold a mini-Shakespeare marathon. It’s been too long.
Hello, Doctor
Someone online had mentioned that they were going to watch the new Doctor Who on YouTube, and that sounded like a plan to me… They’ve had some of the specials On Demand for a while now, but no Matt Smith as yet. And the suspense was killing me. I tried YouTube, and BBC Wales will be happy to know I couldn’t find it. Which left iTunes; the episode was available on, I believe, the 18th. I’ve had trouble watching iTunes video on my computer – freezing and stopping and starting and otherwise hiccuping – but I figured there’s always the iPod. So $1.99 (can I watch hi-def on the iPod?) and about three hours later, there it was: “The Eleventh Hour”, starring Matt Smith. As per usual, I dithered. Finally, once I was alone and had finished what I was working on – in other words, once I couldn’t put it off any more – I opened it up in iTunes… and lasted less than three minutes. It was brutal. Video quality, I mean, not the episode… it froze and stopped and started and hiccuped, AND additionally aggravated me in that it wouldn’t open up to full screen. 3X5ish it started, and whatever I did 3X5ish it stayed. So I figured if it’s going to be small, it might as well *be* small, and onto the iPod it went. And it was perfect. I love my iPod. (NOW it’s On Demand – which is good, in that it means I don’t have to buy them all… I’d rather wait and get dvd’s. Extras, etc.)
SPOILERS GALORE
With all my dithering it was pretty darn late before I started watching again, and so I stopped again a few minutes later – and then said “hell with it” and watched the rest. I couldn’t leave that dangling over me. Which means I expected to be asleep at my desk before long – between watching it and thinking about it I was awake into the wee hours … I think I got three hours’ sleep. But I’m glad I watched it. I think. It feels a little like the Star Trek movie – I want to really like it, while simultaneously wanting to hate it, while admiring all that went into it. It was nice to see “by Steven Moffat” , which soothed feathers slightly rumpled by “MATT SMITH” and the new theme (which was a drastic but not unpleasant change from the old theme, although – jumping to the end – they got rid of my favorite section)… I did love the new logo and what they did with it. There is a possibility that the opening sequence will change for following episodes, as this one featured the poor TARDIS being tossed and battered and struck repeatedly by lightning; hopefully that was just because the maiden voyage under #11 was … difficult. Even if that is the permanent opening, I can live with it – it’s spiffy. Score one for the new team.
It bothered me unduly that young Amelia Pond was praying to Santa (“You can’t fool me. There ain’t no Sanity Clause!”)(see last post) … I’ll get over it. She’s a parentless little girl in care of an aunt who, er, doesn’t. There’s a good case there for “doesn’t know better”. That being said, I thought Caitlin Blackwood, the wee actress, was brilliant. She had me entertaining thoughts of what it would be like to have a seven year old Companion … Not, on further processing, a good idea – the Doctor is both too high maintenance and too intolerant of high maintenance – but if there were ever going to be a 7 year old, it would be sma’ Amelia Pond. I wish she’d had that. Character: brilliant; actress: brilliant. Score.
If it’s not to be the 7YO, the 21YO, I believe, will do just fine. She’s … I like her. 12 years – + 2 – and four psychiatrists later, she’s not going to let the Doctor off the hook too easily, and good for her – I hope we hear “14 years!!” periodically from her. I was worried about her going into this – not nearly as much as shall we say other things, but worried nonetheless… But I do like her, Karen Gillan and Amy Pond. She’s not Wonder Woman (though she probably has an outfit somewhere for the Kissogram job), and she gets scared – but she’s tough; she probably won’t try anything stupid, but she also probably won’t stay put when told – repeatedly – to do so. I had a premonition at the end of the episode, when she asked if she could be back by morning, of the reason she wanted to be back … And gosh darn if I wasn’t right: another runaway bride. She should have learned something from “five minutes” and “just ran to the Moon”, though – she’s not going to make it back by tomorrow morning. I can all but guarantee it. Regenerations come and (*sob*) go, but none of them can land on a dime like that. New Team: 3 up.
And point #4 for The New Team – the writing. Well, Moffat wrote it, so I had expectations, and I wasn’t disappointed. It was a great story, well told. It was sharp, it was funny (believe me, if it got a smile out of me at 2:00 that morning, it was funny), it was cohesive; it had the feel of Doctor Who without being (*sob*) David Tennant. It had enough of a story that it was a solid episode in and of itself, but the story was still slight enough that there was plenty of room for introducing everyone without it feeling cramped. (And just about everything short of the concept did have to be introduced – from the new TARDIS to the new credits to … an entirely new cast…) I liked the story and the writing. Under other circumstances – if, for example, this was the first episode of the new run of DW, the first of a brand new 9th Doctor a few years back – or if David Tennant’s trainers weren’t to the ones being filled (if, say, #10 had been more like Colin Baker) – I might have loved it. It was a solid beginning, a good groundwork to build on. Now, build.
I also liked Rory – and Jeff, what there was of him, was fun, as was his … mother? “that other fellow” “This is Rory…” “No, the other one – the good-looking one” “Hey!” (<- paraphrased until I get the iPod battery recharged…) I believe Rory will be seen again, which is good; I hope he wasn’t the one Amy was planning on being back for in the morning. Interesting how for all of the original run of the series No One Knew About The Doctor – and now with the last two regenerations and 11 family members do get to know. I like that; it makes sense. I would leap at the chance to take off in the TARDIS – but if I had to do so without letting the family know it would mar the experience for me, knowing how worried everyone left behind were. Well, look at Jackie before she was let in on it.
Effects were lovely. I’m glad that the Rottweiler didn’t speak (and there’s a sentence bound to mess with anyone who didn’t see this) – that would have been bad. I loved the small noises Prisoner Zero-as-woman-with-kids made as she turned her head and spoke. I loved the Atraxi ships (or were those the actual Atraxi?). (Why does that name sound familiar? A search only brings up DW.) The only thing that failed for me – partly because it was right at the beginning of the episode and I was predisposed to be cranky – was the Doctor hanging out of the TARDIS door… it didn’t look good. In any manner of speaking. I wouldn’t have expected she could fly with her doors open – I’d think there would be failsafes. Yes, I’m just kvetching in order to avoid the main point.
Which is, of course, how’d the kid do?
Not bad. Not bad at all. He gave me very little to object to. The beginning, the attempts to feed him (while really wonderfully shot) raised my eyebrows – so, not only not ginger, but rude – and had me muttering “You need tea, you nit”… But … Hey, he was regenerating. It’s not easy. The next episode, in which he will theoretically have settled in a bit, will tell the tale … He was great with the little girl. “You know how sometimes grownups will say ‘everything is going to be fine’ but you know they don’t mean it and they’re just trying to make you feel better?” “Yes,” she replied, with an expression that spoke volumes about how well she knew. “Well – Everything’s going to be fine!” said the Doctor, and smiled a patently false smile. I wasn’t altogether keen on that the first time round – but in retrospect it was a pretty good way of conveying that things were a bit dire without scaring the little girl to pieces.
I can’t even imagine the pressure on Matt Smith going into this. I think Steven Moffat had it easier, because there’s a good-sized contingent of geeks who ranged from not altogether sorry to out-and-out glad to see RTD bow out. And Moffat has the resume to inspire confidence – as I’ve said before, Time Crash alone would make me rest easier. But for Smith… Put one foot wrong, and you’ll be eaten alive. From what I can see, Doctor Who is much bigger in its homeland than it is here; it’s on one of the primary channels, for one thing. It’s probably a bit like Lost is (or was) here. And the Brits seem even more vocal than we are about what they like and don’t like. So for a 26YO coming in to this iconic role … I’d imagine there were a couple of sleepless nights, poor guy.
I can call him that, and mean it, because I think – I *think* – it’s going to be okay. The delay since the last Tennant episode, while less here and even less for me, is to Smith’s advantage, I think; if David Tennant stepped down during a regular season I think it would have been much harder to make the transition. At this point, though, new Doctor Who is good Doctor Who, so – yay.
Here’s how it went down for me, basically. Open with the TARDIS being battered and torn – I looked grim. I don’t like harm to come to the Enterprise or the TARDIS, even if the former gives Scotty/O’Brien/etc. something to do and complain about and even if the latter heals herself… It hurts. And, as I mentioned, I didn’t like the whole Doctor-hanging-out-the-door-and-narrowly-missing-Big-Ben thing. Cut to opening credits – MATT SMITH *sigh* … guarded approval of the animations and music. Really quite splendid cut from the wormhole to a pinwheel spinning in a yard. And then to Amelia, praying for help – and getting it. And whether or not I liked her praying to Santa, I loved “Back in a moment” – I think that was when she won me completely – and, a bit like when Gandalf sang “The road goes ever on” many years ago, I relaxed a little. It was a sign of all being in good hands. And out Amelia goes into the yard, where the poor old TARDIS lies on her side amidst the ruins of a shed – and how did they explain that away when they were trying to convince Amelia the raggedy Doctor wasn’t real? And that’s where I determinedly shut off the video for the second time. It was Smith’s first appearance with interaction and dialogue that had me worried, that I was dreading – and the first shot bore up my fears, popping up over the side of the TARDIS’s base like a jack-in-the-box. Once he started talking things improved … Poor Amelia must have had a hell of a life, and also that must indeed have been one hell of a scary crack in her wall, for her to take this strange young-seeming man’s antics so calmly, but she handled him as if she’d been interning in a psych ward for years. She barely batted an eyelash. So he helps – sort of, though not really – and runs off abruptly to keep his ship from exploding, and “back in five minutes” … Poor, poor little girl.
I knew it hadn’t been just five minutes when he returned; it didn’t need daylight to make me certain of that. I take back what I said before – he *can* do some serious precision flying; when was it he landed the TARDIS around a group of people? And I believe, in a spirit of “I’ll show you”, “Father’s Day” was pretty accurate, etc. – but, in the vast majority of cases, when there aren’t lives or worlds on the line, nuh uh. I was surprised when the “policewoman” said Amelia’d been gone six months – I was fairly certain that was Amelia (and no, I wasn’t spoiled: I had seen pictures of the new Companion, but didn’t know her name, and didn’t recognize her in the cunnin’ hat). I can’t take much credit for a good guess there – it was largely casting that gave that one to me: Young Amelia was played by Karen Gillan’s 10-year-old cousin. There’s a wonderful family resemblance there – very well done indeed.
I loved “How do you lose the key??” I thought that skirt was much too short for a real cop.
I’m still kind of putting off saying it, aren’t I? Okay, then. Here we go. I liked him. He didn’t win me over the way Tennant did; his is a rather quieter and less manic-depressive portrayal, so far. It seems odd to call him “quieter”, but compare the swordfight and the non-stop piffling of “The Christmas Invasion” to “11th Hour”; once the initial pangs of regeneration were past (for him and me) the mood swings were much shallower. I think the expectation is that this is going to be a Doctor younger both in body and in outlook; he has survived the deepest grief and guilt and pain, and is ready to take on life and adventure and excitement again, with a Companion and everything. He has a new outlook on life, so to speak. Well, good. Now if he can just stay away from the bloody Ood for a while – and if it can just be a little while until the Master comes back (seriously, what did happen to him?) – maybe things will be a little happier in Whoville. Matt Smith is a fine actor. I knew that from “Ruby in the Smoke”; I need to watch the episode again to judge his work here without the first-contact looking-askance dread-filled layer of emotion, and as I said the next episode will show a great deal. I’m still sad – but I am reservedly looking forward to what’s to come.
Which is, according to Wikipedia:
“The Eleventh Hour”, written by Steven Moffat – 4/3/10 – check.
“The Beast Below” by Steven Moffat 4/10/10
“Victory of the Daleks” by Mark Gatiss 4/17/10
“The Time of the Angels” and “Flesh and Stone” – Steven Moffat – 4/24 & 5/1/10
“Vampires in Venice” Toby Whitehouse – air date unknown
“Amy’s Choice” Simon Nye – air date unknown
Two as yet unnamed episodes written by Chris Chibnal – air dates unknown
“Vincent and the Doctor” Richard Curtis – air date unknown
An unnamed episode by Gareth Roberts – air date unknown
2 more by Steven Moffat – air dates unknown
13 episodes altogether, 7 of which are/will be written by Steven Moffat. OK good. OK fine. (Wow, I haven’t thought of Mouse in a long time…) The preview at the end of 11th Hour had a lot from the Blink Redux episodes – I guess the Weeping Angels have a score to settle with the Doctor, and since they were one of the creepiest and coolest enemies in the new run of episodes I’m happy. We will also, as evidenced in the trailer I watched a while ago, see vampires – now revealed to be in Venice, for alliteration’s sake if nothing else. Also in this preview was a good bit involving someone identifiable through costume and painting props, and put it together with “Vincent and the Doctor” and that is sure enough Van Gogh – excellent. It’s about time we paid a visit to a great artist. The Daleks are back – they’re more durable than cockroaches or Twinkies, apparently … and “Amy’s Choice” sounds intriguing. I wonder how many jaunts she’ll want to take before returning to “tomorrow morning”…
Please, someone, tell me that Matt Smith is going to be around for a few years. If I *do* grow attached to him, I don’t want to face this sort of thing again any time soon. I’m getting too old for this nonsense.
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“Is my Aunt Minnie in here?”
On Saturday the Channel 13 classic film was the Marx Brothers: A Night at the Opera. I think I saw it a long time ago, but nothing stuck except the infamous stateroom scene, so I went into this almost unspoiled. My knowledge of the Marx Brothers was, I have to admit, somewhat vague: Groucho, the smartass with the moustache and eyebrows and walk straight from Monty Python’s ministry; Chico, the Italian-accented straight-man, I thought; and Harpo, my favorite, best known from the I Love Lucy skit –
– the harp virtuoso and silent clown who set the stage for Teller of Penn & Teller (who then spoiled things by talking rather often). This was a bit like some of the other classic comedies I’ve seen in recent months, Pink Panther and M*A*S*H – it has not benefited by being so great a classic and staple in its genre. Groucho was so familiar a character, even not having seen much of his actual work, that it almost felt like an impersonation – it was hard to keep in mind that this was the Original, and, at the time, fresh and outrageous. (I hadn’t really registered how very much Bugs Bunny owes to him.) Neil Gabler’s intro told of how the Brothers’ contract with Paramount ended, and MGM made a bid for them, promising bigger and better things by, to start with, giving them films with actual storylines rather than just a string of gags.
Not that the storyline of Opera was exactly stellar: boy in opera chorus loves girl starring in opera (Kitty Carlisle, Allan Jones), who is pursued by male lead; boy (of course) has better voice and virtue than lead, so of course she loves him back; girl and lead are recruited to leave Italy and star in NY opera; boy stows away with very weird friends and follows girl. Groucho plays Otis P. Driftwood the “financial manager” of Mrs. Claypool (Margaret Dumont) – meaning she inherited millions from her late husband and he would love to help her spend them. He talks her into donating a couple hundred thousand to the NY opera – which is a lot now; what did that sound like then?? – which leads to the hiring of Bad Guy Tenor, which leads to the hiring of the Girl … Harpo was the dresser for Bad Guy Tenor, who used to beat him, so now Harpo’s up for revenge; Chico is an old friend of Good Guy Tenor, and takes on the role of manager. I wonder – did the audience of the 30’s really enjoy opera so much more than the general public now? Were they really so much more familiar with it? Today there will never be a comedy in the slapstick lane (EVER) that allows so much screen time to seriously portrayed opera. Ever. I can see a comedy set around an opera production, but any attempts at performance would be constantly interrupted and sabotaged. The finale of NatO featured the full duet from Il Trovatore, straight up. It was a little bizarre. (Good Guy tenor really was very good – Starlet not so much, imho.)
Half the film was spent in Italy (apparently, though everyone but Chico (and Groucho) (and, naturally, Harpo) sounded Refined American) and on the ship to America – that was the best. The stateroom scene (“Is my Aunt Minnie in here?”) was nearly axed – isn’t that the way these things always happen? The most iconic moments of films are the ones that nearly didn’t make it? I saw somewhere a review that the shortcoming of this movie is that the Marx Brothers had lost the anarchic edge they had always had before (hello, storyline); I don’t know anything about early Marx Bros., so I can’t address that. They were fairly anarchic and unsocialized in this, though, and damn good at it. But my favorite part of the film, which became one of my favorite parts of any film, was the (to quote Gaelic Storm regarding their contribution to Titanic) Party in Third Class. The humor was comparatively gentle – the three stowaways being fed, thoroughly, for the first time in a while, etc. – but it was wonderful. It was a huge party among the Italians in steerage, counterpoint to the stuffier First Class party Groucho attended, complete with folk music – leading to another in the series of featured opera performances, by GGT. I’m allergic to opera, but this was not at all bad. “Cosi Cosa” – what was the French version again?? Ah! Comme çi, comme sa. Phew. It was right on the tip of my brain. Anyway. Following that song, Harpo and Chico slide into the seats at harp and piano left empty by the band going to get food. The musicians protest, but the crowd’s in a good mood and defend the boys, and Chico rewards them with the most joyous and delightful piano solo I’ve ever seen. Research shows it was “All I Do Is Dream of You” – no wonder it was familiar! I couldn’t place it. It was magnificent. He was surrounded by children who looked genuinely captivated, and played with a tiny smile and a quirky brilliance that was wonderful. Most pianists can’t play that well straight-faced; he flicked and poked and doinked the keys and was marvelous. And then he got up and Harpo moved in – and played with the stool and slammed the lid on each hand, alternately, and generally played up to the kids, who were slightly hysterical. Having had enough of the piano’s abuse, he shifted over to the harp – and … wow. He went from wild-eyed crazy man to the most beautiful harp solo I’ve ever seen – a variation of the film’s theme “Alone” – and back again without missing a beat. It was surprising – both performances – and did I use “marvelous” yet? Loved it. The funny parts were funny, the opera wasn’t dreadful, and that was perfect. I wouldn’t agree that it’s one of the Best Movies Ever, but it was pretty great. And now I want more Marx Bros.
Oh, look!
Fiorello: Hey, wait, wait. What does this say here, this thing here?
Driftwood: Oh, that? Oh, that’s the usual clause that’s in every contract. That just says, uh, it says, uh, if any of the parties participating in this contract are shown not to be in their right mind, the entire agreement is automatically nullified.
Fiorello: Well, I don’t know…
Driftwood: It’s all right. That’s, that’s in every contract. That’s, that’s what they call a sanity clause.
Fiorello: Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You can’t fool me. There ain’t no Sanity Clause!
Anne Frank
I was looking forward to the Masterpiece Theatre (or whatever) take on Anne Frank’s story. Looking forward to it … I must have read the Diary when I was a kid; I must have seen one of the films, probably the one with Melissa Gilbert. I don’t remember. I do remember The Attic: The Hiding of Anne Frank, based on Miep Gies’s book. I don’t remember why I was so eager to watch this.
Perhaps they did too good a job of telling the story. I almost – almost – forgot the ending as they lived the middle. The acting was top-notch; the writing and use of the Diary excellent… There was no glossing over or sanctifying of the people in this story, as I’m pretty sure happened in the 50’s film version. This was a group of eight people trapped for two years, more or less, in a very enclosed space with limited food, limited amenities, and limited hope – the only thing they had plenty of was fear. Oh, and anxiety. Any family caged up together like that would have problems, and the Franks were … ordinary. Very intelligent, enlightened, overall a warm and loving family – under normal circumstances there wouldn’t have been much to tell about them, and that’s usually a wonderful thing; tales are only told about the interesting, and the interesting is generally uncomfortable, at least. Unfortunately for them, their lives became … interesting.
Petronella van Daan was played by Lesley Sharp; she had a fine touch on showing the woman as deeply irritating and yet, at times at least, understandable and sympathetic. But not someone you’d want to live with 24-7, 365. Her husband Hermann (Ron Cook) seemed like rather a good fellow, at least trying to smooth things with the others – just not with his own wife. Geoff Breton was Peter van Daan – poor, poor Peter. Quiet, shy, unable to understand Anne’s mood shifts… I wonder whatever happened to his cat.
Albert Dussel (Nicholas Farrell) … My heart broke for him. Earlier than it did for the rest of them, that is. He told Anne that he had quite a few children as patients, and so they should get along splendidly – to which she replied rather sharply that she wasn’t a child. And having children as patients – having to work on their teeth, endure the screaming and crying and intense dislike and then hand them off back to their parents – is vastly different from having to live cheek by jowl with one… I can’t imagine how it came to be arranged that he and Anne would share a room; I would have thought they would shift Anne to Peter’s spot and give Peter and Mr. Dussel the double room. As it was, it was unendurable for both of them… as evidenced, I’m sad to find, by the name used in this production, which was the name used by Anne in her diary. “Dussel”, apparently, means “nitwit” – his real name was Fritz Pfeffer. A 54-year-old man who seemed to value privacy and peace forced to cohabit with a precocious, sharp-tongued, impatient young girl just hitting puberty … That must have been hell. For both of them.
Otto and Edith Frank (Iain Glen and Tamsin Greig) … Sharp-eyed Anne decided that her father didn’t love her mother as much as she him; he kissed her in the same way he did his daughters. But he looked after her, perhaps much as he did his daughters, constantly trying to shield her from news of what was going on Outside – which she was too frail to handle. He was strong enough for all of them. She was shown as nearly catatonic at the beginning here, to the point that she nearly started a fire; I read that when her daughters were transferred from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen without her – she was too ill to be moved, even by Nazis – she broke down completely. She had the hands of a lady…
Margot (Felicity Jones) … She’s a separate heartbreak for me. “The pretty one”, “the good one” – she tried to keep the peace at whatever cost to herself. Less self-centered, more empathetic, more patient than Anne, she was better able to internalize what she felt, and to at least seem to tolerate it. Which of course led to a great deal of “Anne, why can’t you be more like Margot”, which sort of thing never helps anything.
I don’t know that I would have liked Anne. I might not have finished the diary because I went into it expecting Anne to be a sympathetic and lovable girl – and she wasn’t. She was an extremely intelligent girl. She was observant, and eloquent, and mercurial – and the combination of those three things with a prepubescent self-centeredness and a wicked sense of mischief and humor did not bode well for her fellow inmates in The Annex. She had probably been raised by her liberal father, at least, to speak her mind, and she saw no reason to change that while in hiding. She seems to have been a stunning combination of ready-for-anything little girl and 13-going-on-40… It’s odd; where she was lacking it seemed that Margot was strong, and vice versa; put the two of them together…
Ellie Kendrick was Anne, and was perfect. She sank into the role, didn’t hesitate any more than the production team to show her warts-and-all, and, predictably, broke my heart. I should think she would have won awards for this performance, but I don’t see anything out there; she was utterly natural. I could wish she had been much worse.
“… It seems to me that, later on, neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the chatterings of a 13-year-old schoolgirl…”
I could wish that no one ever had cause to be interested. She was given the Diary on her 13th birthday in 1942, and started writing in it … and a month later she and her family went into hiding. I could wish that the rest of the book had been filled with wondering at and about boys, movie stars, and the horrors of a mundane adolescence… I could wish that she had kept up her diary for many years and that the only interest it would ever hold for the world at large would be as the very earliest writings of an acclaimed author.
I knew the end would have me in tears; I just didn’t realize how overpowering they would be. They weren’t – aren’t – only for the eight of them. They were for the six million… That number still shocks me. Too, they’re for my loss of simple pride in my country; it wasn’t till tenth grade history class that I learned how poorly the United States showed in the beginning of the War. I wanted to deny it when I was told that boats filled with fleeing Jews were turned away from US shores and sent back to concentration camps. I wanted to protest when I was told that this country practiced such strict isolationism that it took two years and an attack on Pearl Harbor to boot us into participation. I could wish we had better lived up to our image of ourselves.
I could also wish that stories of WWII and the Holocaust didn’t affect me so deeply. I can’t put my finger on just why they do – it hurts to touch. But London during the Blitz, POW camps, and, of course, the lights that shone out of the concentration camps, all wring me out like no other stories. Maybe because it was one of the only cases of truly good versus evil, the last time a war was so clear cut and easy to justify: Nazism is evil and must be stopped. End of sentence. Today’s wars aren’t so easy to cipher. Maybe because the War is still so near; people who lived through it are still alive. Dad was in Japan. Nearly all my maternal uncles were in the war – only Uncle Gerald wasn’t, and he nearly died trying. It’s recent, relevant, and the deepest and most concentrated well of pain and horror and heroism, good and evil in the past century. The story of Anne Frank is the story of that war, in microcosm. The turning upside-down of one young girl’s life is a lens through which the whole thing becomes sharp and clear: the pain of knowing so many friends and family were, inexplicably, gone; the horror of starting at every sound, until one night all the worst fears come to pass. The heroism of Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Miep Gies, Bep Voskujil, and the others who risked their own lives daily for the hidden eight. The good that even amidst the horror the eight of them could still find moments of peace. The evil that someone betrayed them. That’s the biggest heartbreak: someone, and it was never discovered who, betrayed them: two perfectly ordinary married couples, three teenagers, and a middle-aged dentist, betrayed them and those who helped them to almost certain death. It may sound simplistic, but I don’t understand it. I don’t really wish to.
Walk in the dust 
