Happiness is Overrated

I should probably preface this with the fact that I speak, at max, six sentences worth of Russian. I can read a little more, but by read I really mean that I know what words written in the cyrillic alphabet should sound like but have no idea what they mean.  All that said, I love Russian lit.  Because of that, I thought it might be a good idea to head in to Brooklyn for the Maly Drama Theater's production of Chekov's Three Sisters.  For those of you who clicked on the link to the company's website, you may have noticed that it is not in English.  I saw a rather quintessential production of the Three Sisters if only because I actually saw it in Russian.  There were English supertitles, but the actors were undeniably speaking Russian.


What was particularly interesting to me about the experience was the time difference of the audience's laughter.  The play is questionably worth seeing because it's incredibly depressing (even for Chekov) and a little pedantic (more on that later), but an interesting part of the experience was that the performance was supertitled.  Some projectionist had the thankless job of projecting the translation of the Russian words on screens on either side of the stage in time with the dialogue so that the non-Russian speakers in the audience could understand the action.  Now of course this is not a perfect solution; some of the lines were up a little too long, some were not up for long enough, some of the translations were a little questionable, and - most importantly - the audience reactions were not in sync.  The Russian speakers in the audience would, without fail, laugh/react first.  Which is interesting to say the least.  To me this begs an interesting linguistic question: can translation work?  Are "I love you" and "te quiero" analogous or does the one loose something in the translation into the other?  As I said before, I do not speak Russian, but I do get by in Spanish (at least I should given how long I've taken it) and I think the power of language is fascinating.  I strive to be able to read things in the original spanish because I don't want to loose meaning in the translation.  Of course I'd love to be able to read Chekov in the original Russian or Dumas in the original French, but I only have so much time in my day and I can't learn every language known to man.  So we must often be satisfied with the translation, imperfect though it may be.


Additionally, I was intrigued by Chekov's focus in this play on happiness.  Here's where the play gets a little pedantic.  The characters, trapped in a provincial, Russian garrison town, turn regularly to philosophy to pass the time.  More specifically, they talk of happiness and whether it is attainable.  Vershinin (I think, the fact that it wasn't in English made me loose track of the characters a little) repeats the mantra that happiness will only be possible in the future once they have built (literally.  Many of the characters are strong proponents of laboring to bring happiness to oneself.) the foundation for their descendants.  The repetitiveness of the discussions renders the play a bit pedantic, but it's still an interesting thought.  The argument (and it is a very specific one) centers on the idea that labor in this life will either bring you happiness or your descendants.  I'm not sure I agree with their methods for bringing happiness, but the general question is certainly an interesting one: is happiness possible to attain?


So, that's a lot to think about.  Comment away...

All the World's A Stage

I maintain that only Brits can do Shakespeare right.  This assertion was proved more right on Friday night when I made the trek down to Brooklyn to see Simon Callow in Being Shakespeare at BAM.  One-third one-man show, one-third Shakespeare survey, one-third lecture, this production is a fascinating look at who Shakespeare was in the context of his life and times using Jaques' famous "All the world's a stage" speech from As You Like It as frame work.  The text of the production was written by Jonathan Bate (preeminent biographer of Shakespeare) and the design and direction is the brain child of Tom Cairns.  The moment Callow steps on stage we are treated to a somewhat disheveled looking professor and guide through The Bard's life and words.  And it's not just the classics that everyone knows.  In addition to a fantastically realistic Falstaff, Romeo's "psychotic chum" Mercutio, the Rude Mechanicals from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and a weary Macbeth, we are introduced to some more obscure works.  Like a monologue from Sir Thomas Moore.  Don't worry, it's not part of the official cannon.  It's from one of his collaborations with other writers.  Which, as it turns out, is how he got his start.  Will Shakespeare rose from glove maker's son, to horse carriage valet for London theaters, to technician, to ensemble cast member, to script fixer, to author, to William Shakespeare.  It makes me unmeasurably happy that he was, at one point, a technician.  As he grew older, he continued to write his own plays, but also contributed a monologue or two to the works of others.  Hence, Sir Thomas Moore.  We are also introduced to what little William would have learned in school.  Which is to say Latin Grammar and Rhetoric.  Callow takes apart the "Friends, Romans, Countrymen..." speech to show the audience each rhetorical device employed by Shakespeare to convey his point.  It's super cool.  All in all, it was a fascinating look into the seven ages of William Shakespeare that I would recommend to anyone.

Talkers Be Not Do Gooders...

I hope I caught that right.  If I did, it's from Richard III.  Specifically, the Richard the III featuring Kevin Spacey playing now at BAM.  And it's awesome.  Seriously, you should all go see it.  I think the ballonatic Menendes' Bridge Project has finally turned out something worthwhile.  Since this is Shakespeare, I'm going to go ahead and spoil the ending a bit because its been around for 400 years.  If you are averse to that, read no further.

Richard III is Shakespeare's second longest play (after Hamlet), but you wouldn't know it to see this production.  There's never a dull moment in the court of England when Kevin Spacey is present, and even when he is off stage there is rarely a pause in the action.  As he himself says, this play is destined either for heaven or for hell; and while Richard himself is certainly going to hell, this play is ecstatic. If only for the technical feats of focusing on the lights, check out the play for the staging.  The multi-doored set seems to have a single light focused on each door, which let me tell you is a feat.  I'd love to sit down with this lighting designer to talk to him about his shadows, because they were gorgeous.  It is impossible to escape the feeling that the sun is setting on all of them. This sense is compounded by the projections, the text of which seems to lengthen faster or slower depending on when each character dies.  And a lot of them do.  The omniscient, mad Queen Margaret curses the whole court within 45 minutes, and they all seem to meet the fate she sets out for them.  It is she that places x-es on each door as each character passes on, creating an inescapable sense of predetermination.  It seems that the characters could do nothing else but fall.

As for the bunch-backed, toad himself, I have nothing but wonderful things to say.  Spacey seems to taunt the rest of the cast with his grotesqueness of character and physiognomy.  It seems that he's testing them to see how far they'll let him go.  All in all, he manages to take in Anne - whose father and husband he has killed - various lords and dukes, the princes regent, and the populace of England (thanks to a spectacularly media savvy Buckingham); all the while telling the audience how much he should be hated.  And not for his physical features.  He seems to have come to terms with that.  No, we should hate him because he has consciously decided to be a villain.  And he loves it.  He begins the play with a Nixonian sweating problem, graduates to the Kim Jong Il-style aviators, and ends the play strung up by his feat a-la Mussolini.  As I said, the staging is spectacular, but it is made that much better by the way the actors play with the space.  (Yes, I just gave credit to the actors.  Deal with it.)  They know exactly how to run their show, and they make a truly memorable Richard III out of a spectacular technical environment.

So go see this show.  NOW.