Kim Pereira

Author: admin

  • The Winter’s Tale (Program Notes for Michael Kahn’s Production)

     

    The description of Shakespeare’s last plays as romances suggests that they contain certain features from a romantic tradition which began with the Roman playwright, Plautus (who in turn borrowed from the Greeks), and flourished throughout the Middle Ages in such tales as Beowulf, The Song of Roland, and the Arthurian legends.   In an age dominated by intolerance, strife, refugees, and attempts to reunite communities sundered by political callousness, the themes at the heart of these plays are remarkably relevant today.  Characterized by long adventures and wanderings, separations and reunions of family members, and themes of forgiveness and renewal, these plays are sometimes called tragicomedies, suggesting not a thwarting of tragic consequences but an inherent coexistence of tragic and comic rhythms—hubris headed toward a disastrous end merging with comic patterns of rebirth and a new order that are not without a strong skein of pathos, yet filled with all the passion and turbulence of tragedy.

    Despite highlighting thematic similarities between the plays, such categorizations tend to be reductive and limiting in scope, for their initial focus on commonalities also deflects attention from what is original in each play.  Shakespeare didn’t set out to write plays that fell into neat cubbyholes.  His objective was to express his unique vision of the human condition.  Of all the metaphors he uses in this quest, none is more fascinating than the theatre itself.  The very craft that occupied his life’s work became the central prism of artistic expression, from performances of songs and poems to plays-within-the-play (The Mousetrap in Hamlet), roles-within-the-role (Rosalind, Portia, Viola), and a hundred similes (all the world’s a stage; a poor player that struts his hour upon a stage) that draw parallels between the theatre and life.  Many great playwrights use metadrama pointedly, but Shakespeare seems to go beyond this self-referential aspect of dramatic writing.  It’s as if he saw little difference between theatre and life; to him they were virtually the same thing.  Modern critics argue that art doesn’t reflect life, it reflects itself.  With Shakespeare this is utterly true.  But in writing for and about the theatre, he writes abundantly about life.

    In The Winter’s Tale, the very title signals his intent.  From the outset he is patently a raconteur, with all the privileges of dramatic license such a role affords.  In The Tempest, he would take this idea further as Prospero appears to create the story in front of our eyes.  Some have suggested that Prospero is like a director or regisseur, but, all things considered, playwright seems more appropriate.  This tale, however, isn’t just any story; it’s a tale for winter, one with a plaintive tone, such as you would expect to hear huddled round a fire.  “A sad tale’s best for winter,” says young Mamillius to Hermione.

    The opening scenes waste little time in exposition except to tell us that Polixenes has been visiting his closest friend, Leontes, for nine months (a significant piece of information, for Hermione, Leontes’ wife, is nine months pregnant).  Immediately we are plunged into the main action of the play as Leontes is seized by jealousy that descends into a murderous rage.  Although a favorite Shakespearean subject, the jealousy in this play is not the smoldering fire we saw in Othello.  Here, the storyteller is off and running, spinning his tale in a rush of emotion.  We don’t need motivation, though it was there if we looked closely.  All of us can recognize the green-eyed monster that rises instantaneously and unbidden from the depths of our insecurities to overwhelm us with its debilitating effects.  In a king such rage can have devastating consequences.

    As the narrative grows ominous, Leontes spirals out of control and his language loses its stately rhythms, degenerating into sharp outbursts and interjections.  If this is not quite the prosaic incoherence of Othello’s fit, it is peppered with insulting asides, explosive phrases, and gross innuendo.  The raconteur is now in full flow and, in as much time as it takes to tell, a murder is plotted, a queen publicly accused and humiliated, a child is born, another dies, Apollo’s oracle consulted and declared, the queen is pronounced dead, and a king made to see the error of his ways!  Time (even in choric garb) and space are compressed to fit a master storyteller’s master plot.

    In several plays, Shakespeare uses a “green world” to solve urban problems—forests in As You Like It and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Portia’s Belmont.  There is an Apollonian/Dionysian dialectic at work here.  The feminine, Dionysian milieu of creativity often provides solutions for imbroglios encountered in the unbending, masculine, Apollonian world of austerity and the letter of the law.  The tug between these complementary forces is also a negotiation toward a balanced lifestyle found at the heart of most cultures—Shiva/Vishnu in Hinduism, Yin/Yang in Chinese philosophy, Eshu/Ifa in Yoruban mythology.  From Sicilia, The Winter’s Tale rushes into Bohemia, seeking relief from the insanity of jealousy and tyranny.  Before that can happen, however, death lurks in the form of most people’s favorite Shakespearean stage direction, “Exit, pursued by a bear” (my personal favorite is “Enter Ariel, invisible”).  In a magical leap over sixteen years, the savagery of the Bohemian seacoast is transformed into a delightful, bucolic town.  Now we have clowns, shepherds, shepherdesses, and a floral feast as enchanting as any in literature.

    After stamping his genius on tragedies, comedies, and histories, Shakespeare demonstrates his mastery over the pastoral form favored by his contemporaries, Beaumont and Fletcher.  Act IV, Scene iv, the magnificent sheep-shearing scene, is one of the longest he ever wrote.  A folk festival replete with mythological references and the heady scent of nature, this scene provides the backdrop for two vastly different characters—Perdita and Autolycus—whose presence springs the comic rhythm that will alleviate the pain of Leontes’ folly.  Queen of the Festival, arrayed in metaphors of flowers and herbs, and partnered by the aptly named Florizel, Perdita is the personification of “great creating Nature,” recalling the Proserpina myth and its promise of Spring.  Autolycus is a full-fledged descendant of Hermes, the prince of thieves.  In the tradition of Falstaff, Mercutio, and the tricky slave of Roman comedy, he is a reincarnation of trickster deities (Krishna, Eshu, Legba), and kin to folk heroes (Brer Rabbit, Coyote).  His unabashed roguery is the perfect antidote to dispel the lingering pall of Leontes’ tyranny, and his lovely ballads restore harmony to a discordant play, even as a new society is being fashioned through the restoration of Perdita, the lost one.

    Of all the theatrical devices Shakespeare employs in this play, none is as breathtaking as the final scene.  His story-telling prowess knows it can’t sustain two recognition scenes without detracting from both, so he narrates Perdita’s reunion with her father and saves the magic for the resurrection of Hermione, literally drawing the curtain on a moment brimming with forgiveness, liberation, and renewal.  But there is a quiet intensity at the end, for the joy of embracing “that which is lost” cannot expunge the persistent echoes of time and love mislaid.  In our fractured world groping toward rapprochement, the message of redemption in The Winter’s Tale is miraculously clear.

  • Pericles–A Most Theatrical Event (Program Notes for Mary Zimmerman’s Production)

    Whenever a discussion turns to Pericles, critics are always at pains to delineate the various problems associated with the play—that Shakespeare had no part in the writing the first two acts, that the piece is devoid of fully-fleshed characters, that the title character is more sinned against than sinning, thus depriving him of any tragic tension, that only the magnificent brothel scenes are worthy of comparison with the playwright’s best efforts, and that the play’s major significance is in its foreshadowing of the romances to follow.

    While all the above criticisms may be true to a greater or lesser degree, what they fail to acknowledge is the sheer theatricality of the play.  Throughout his career Shakespeare was fascinated by the reverberations of the reality of the theatre beyond the confines of the formal stage.  Life seems to have unfolded before him as a medley of theatrical events in a more profound way than with any other playwright, indeed to such an extent that the central metaphor of his dramatic imagination became the theatre itself.  In the comedies and tragedies he had used the theatre in a myriad metaphorical devices.  In Pericles, the experiment appears to be an exercise in unabashed theatricality.  Value judgments and comparisons with earlier and later plays only reveal the limits of our own narrow imaginations and would deny Shakespeare free rein in his artistic experiments.

    Even if the first two acts seem a bit unwieldy on their pages, a good director and actors with an understanding of the expansive nature of the play can negotiate a skilful path through an apparently cumbersome plot not by ignoring it or cutting a swath around it, but by embracing it in all its theatrical aspects, of which there are plenty—a self-incriminating riddle created by Antiochus which, if solved, would lift the curtain on the heinous crime of incest, a murder plotted, an escape, a hurried journey, a shipwreck, a resurrection, a tourney for the hand of a princess, and a marriage, all in the first two acts.

    Envisioning the world of the play as a play itself—an entire play within a play—Shakespeare seeks a stage-manager for this production and turns, significantly, to a medieval poet, Gower, adorning him in choric garb to set the stage, define the changes in time and space, and control the rhythm of the drama.  The playwright as poet employs a poet as playwright to comment on the action and oversee the arrangement of the scenes.          In keeping with the theatrical structure of the piece, Shakespeare eschews the use of dramatic narrative language in some moments and replaces them with prologue-like dumb shows, thus enhancing the beauty of the visual feast that the play provides. This also allows him to compress time, space, and action, and to leap over them whenever his narrative desires.  The dumb shows and divine manifestations utilize marvelous and sacred elements to knit together the threads of this sprawling play as it zigzags around its theatrical corners, flinging itself across a network of far-flung cites—Antioch, Tyre, Tarsus, Pentapolis, Ephesus, and Mytilene.  Linking them is a turbulent ocean which, at different moments, becomes a birthplace, a cemetery, and, in the case of Thaisa, a passageway from death to life.

    But this play is not merely a visual spectacle; the theatricality woven into the action has a purpose similar to that of tragedy—to lay bare in all its glory the beauty and power of the indomitable human spirit in the face of a crushing fate.  If Pericles is about anything, it is about the vicissitudes of Fortune, the spinning wheel of one man’s shifting destiny and its effects on his family.  A birth at sea is countered by a death, a quasi-death, at sea.  Death thwarted by pirates leads to the verge of a fate worse than death and the valiant stand of virtue against impending moral disaster.  An assassin on the prowl and faithless foster parents are balanced by loyal ministers and a ruler with healing powers.  Integrating the whirling episodes are the romantic themes of reconciliation and reunion as sundered families are miraculously  restored and lost loves find one another.

    What many scholars agree upon is the power of the brothel scenes. As always, Shakespeare paints his most vivid pictures on the canvas of “low life” in the remarkable tone and flavor of the whorehouse and its denizens.  The plaintive figure of Marina, armed only with her virtue, is set in lovely counterpoint to the vibrant if unscrupulous characters who would profit from her virginal allure.  The broad comic overtones of the “marketing” of Marina’s maidenhead never overshadow the gravity or menace of imminent danger, and Marina’s healing of the distraught Pericles, the revelation of her identity, and the subsequent restoration of Thaisa to him are as moving as any scenes in Shakespeare.  To suggest that these moments are merely prologues to what would follow in the later romances is to deny the power of both.  Resurrections are the stuff of miracles as well as of the most theatrical imaginations.  The fascinating aspect of this ending is that not only are Marina and Thaisa resurrected to Pericles, but that he himself is revitalized from his moribund state of despair to hear “the music of the spheres.”  That which was lost is finally found, and under instructions from Diana the virgin goddess (whose protective mantle is now revealed to us) Pericles is promised happiness only if he tells his tale “before the people all.”  In this play we can expect nothing less than a call to narrate this most theatrical story, which of course reminds us that that indeed is what has just occurred.

    All that’s left is for Gower to tie up loose ends, to clear the stage, as it were, and pull down the curtain on the epilogue informing us that justice has been meted out to the wicked foster parents and their family.

     

  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream

    Few Shakespearean productions have run the gamut of critical deconstruction as has A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Over the years it has been interpreted as a light-hearted, fluffy frolic, a somber meditation on sexual politics, and an examination of latent violence, even bestiality.  At its heart, however, it is a mature, complex play about the nature of love, marriage, and, most of all, the imagination.  As an artist Shakespeare was obviously interested in the power of the imagination; as an artist in a romantic age, he virtually worshipped it.

    The journey into the forest in this play is a journey into the depths of the imagination where all things are possible, where our deepest emotions are unleashed, where identities dissolve, strange shapes and creatures abound, and where love, the greatest emotion, is painful, confusing, and wondrous.  The play begins in the stringent court of Athens, where Theseus holds his captive bride Hippolyta and Aegeus seeks to bridle his feisty daughter Hermia who is threatened with death if she refuses the man of her father’s choice.  This is the Court where women are subservient to the whims of men and feminine destiny is in thrall to a masculine world order.  For such a punctilious culture to survive it needs modulation into a new key, it must expand its simplistic rhythms to include more complex harmonies.  The straitlaced world of experience must embrace the greater reality of the imagination—the feminine, chaotic, and creative world of the forest—and move, as all comedy does, towards a new culture, one that is liberal and all-embracing.  This is Shakespeare’s earliest experiment with the redeeming power of the green world, a theme he would often revisit, particularly in the comedies and romances.

    To escape the fate of Theseus’ dictum on her marriage, Hermia seeks refuge in the woods.  We feel the power of nature almost instantly. As the two lovers plan their forestal retreat, their language changes—a Shakespearean device that signals a dramatic shift in the action.  Rhyming couplets replace blank verse as the magic of the green world starts to transform even their urban setting.  The dream has begun.  This forest is a fluid milieu, crammed with lovers’ tiffs, sexual play (more on Titania’s part than on Bottom’s; it is significant that he seems more interested in being chummy with the Queen’s minions than in responding to her advances), and impending storms.  Nature is alive and in full flux as the fairies share names with common insects and flowers; the first time we hear them—Mustardseed, Peaseblossom, Moth, Cobweb—we are treated to a glorious list of richly textured nature: apricocks and dewberries, purple grapes and green figs, mulberries, honey-bags, waxen thighs and fiery glow-worm’s eyes.   This is the world of love and fantasy.  Here lovers conduct amorous rehearsals and in the same spot blue-collar tradesmen practice the art of make-belief.

    Within nature’s depths the problems of the court, though not forgotten, are given imaginative play.  Who is in love with whom?  Who belongs to whom?  Does Lysander really love Hermia?  Or does he harbor a deep-seated desire for Helena?  Does Demetrius want Hermia or Helena?  Is Helena feeling sorry for herself because no-one loves her (be careful what you wish for!)?  Are Lysander and Demetrius really that different from each other?  Who are we and what do we really want?  In the mysterious woods inhibitions are shed, identities interchange, desire isn’t just a game of courtship; it becomes a passionate pursuit.  Love is transient, like a dream, yet it is the foundation of permanent relationships.  In these realms tradition and convention are reversed, women chase men, and a common weaver can become the paramour of the Fairy Queen.

    In the forest the tradesmen (rude mechanicals seems an unfair term for such vibrant creatures) meet to put on a play.  They begin indifferently enough, except for the irresistible Bottom whose imagination knows no limits as he bounces between every character in their little drama.  In his desire to play all the parts he demonstrates a boundless sense of fantasy and, although clownish, his unabashed creative playfulness is rewarded by Shakespeare who allows him to penetrate the furthest depths of his imagination and enter the realms of Oberon and Titania.  Bottom’s profession, weaving, contains magical associations so it is no accident that he finds himself tangled in the skeins of Puck’s web as he spins into the heart of fairyland.  He is the only character who straddles both worlds of experience and fantasy.  When he returns he can find no words to describe his adventure, resorting to a botched (of course, being who he is) biblical reference (“the eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen…”) to explain the bottomlessness of his vision.  When the laughter has died, we can see that he has been to the deepest regions of a spiritual experience (where Bottom’s words end, St. Paul continues: “the spirit searches all things, yea the deep things of God”).  Such an imaginative journey is profoundly religious.

    The other tradesmen seem terrified of performing their play, but led by Bottom and exhorted by Peter Quince they feel the liberating power of their art.  They learn that fancy can lift them out of their mundane lives into a magical world; how else could lowly craftsmen command the attention of the Duke and his nobles?  Although their production is ridiculous and their imagination unmatched by their skill, once they overcome their initial stage fright they hurl themselves into the play with the zest and energy of true amateurs, ones who love their art.  The blasé Athenian court, with its caustic remarks about the play, appears dull and bland by contrast.  One is left to wonder whether they learned anything from their sojourn in the woods.

    The end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, like the beginning, is set in Theseus’ court.  But where the court was once a place to lay down an unfair law and threaten Hermia with death, now it hosts a farcical play.  Has the spirit of the green world modulated the strict cadences of Theseus’ palace?  He certainly appears kinder and more generous than at the beginning as he sits through the festivities with an amused tolerance. At the end of the evening the fairies enter the court and as they wander through the castle they bring a woodsy flavor, replete with the magic and turbulence they always carry, into the heart of this urban center.  But their invasion has a beneficent goal, for Oberon promises to bless this palace with “sweet peace.”  The physical presence of the mystical, imaginative world finally imbues Theseus’ city with the grace, charm, and tolerance that were missing at the beginning.

     

  • Henry IV, Part One

    The label history play is almost a misnomer when used to describe Shakespeare’s plays about the English kings, not only because he played fast and loose with the facts but also because the term conjures up in the popular mind the image of a historical documentary.  In fact, these plays run the gamut of the human condition in all its sacred and profane, tragic and comic, beautiful and ugly aspects that characterize the comedies, tragedies, or romances.  One critic even described Henry IV as “the broadest, the most varied, and in some ways the richest champaign in Shakespeare’s extensive empire.”

    Although the title suggests that the central character might be Henry IV (the Bolingbroke of Richard II), and Falstaff has become one of Shakespeare’s most famous characters, the play revolves around the fortunes of Hal, the Prince of Wales, the future Henry V.  The main action of Henry IV, Part I charts Hal’s odyssey from profligate prince to chivalrous heir apparent in a Tudor version of the centuries-old theme of the prodigal son.  Dover Wilson, a Shakespearean critic, has drawn an interesting parallel between Henry IV, Part I and an early 16th century morality interlude Youth.  In the morality play Youth, the heir to his father’s land, first rejects spirituality in favor of a licentious lifestyle as he consorts with Riot (wantonness), Pride, and Lechery.  In the end, of course, Youth embraces Charity and Humility, and all is well.  Several clues in Shakespeare’s play suggest that the similarity of Falstaff to Riot and Hal to Youth was intentional.    At the beginning of Henry IV, Part I Hal is described as a degenerate cohort of Falstaff and his friends, and, indeed, he appears more at home in the taverns and on the highways of London than at court.  Even his father deplores his behavior, comparing him unfavorably with Hotspur and suggesting that he would not be unhappy if it could be proved that Hotspur were indeed his son and that the two boys were exchanged at birth.  Thus, at the outset we find Hal stranded, as it were, between three worlds–Henry’s court, Falstaff’s taverns, and Hotspur’s feudal countryside.  Everyone appears to have condemned him to Falstaff’s world, but if we follow the play closely we soon see that although he carouses with the merry-makers he remains apart from them in temperament.  His soliloquy at the end of Act I, Scene 2 leaves no doubt that he is only biding his time before stepping up to claim his destiny:

    So when this loose behavior I throw off
    And pay the debt I never promised,
    By how much better than my word I am,
    By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes;
    And, like bright metal on a sullen ground,
    My reformation, glitt’ring o’er my fault,
    Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
    Than that which hath no foil to set it off.

    Even as he plays, his vision is fixed far ahead on the task he must undertake.  During the first three acts he moves from the tavern to the court (even mobilizing Falstaff and company into an army of sorts), learning the value of responsibility from his father and earning the older man’s respect and affection, and by the end of the play he has even conquered Hotspur’s rebel world.

    In some ways, Hal’s destiny lies between the positions of Falstaff and Hotspur, who stand at extreme ends of the same pole, for both are knights who corrupt the chivalric code in different ways—Falstaff in a comically pathetic manner, Hotspur in a tragic pursuit of misguided ambition.  Hal emerges from the clash of these polarities to create a new ideal and a new world.  He proves himself gracious and forgiving, honorable and just.  Maynard Mack suggests that by the end of the play Hal “has practiced mercy as well as justice, politics as well as friendship, shown himself capable of mockery as well as reverence, detachment as well as commitment, and brought into a practicable balance court, field, and tavern.”

    If King Lear is about the decaying of a king, and Richard II about the “unmaking” of a king, Henry IV, Part I is about the making of a king.  In this world of the late twentieth century, where the character and private lives of kings, queens, and presidents are no longer considered unimpeachable and the debate rages as to what personality traits constitute a good ruler, this play raises some interesting questions.  Are the indiscretions of youth merely that, or are they emblematic of some more profound flaw in one’s character?  What, indeed, makes a ruler?  Can the sins of the father be forgiven in the son?  But over and above the philosophical questions it raises about kingship and governance, Henry IV, Part I is the dramatic unfolding of a personal journey that all of us must take–the evolution from youth to adulthood.  This is what gives it universal significance and why it appeals to us long after the very concept of the monarchy has become an anachronism and it no longer matters who sits on the English throne.

  • Henry IV, Part Two

    “Then you perceive the body of our kingdom
    How foul it is, what rank diseases grow,
    And with what danger, near the heart of it.”

    These lines, spoken by King Henry IV, symptomize the uneasiness that pervades this play.  In fact, the play opens with the entrance of Rumor (a role expanded in this production) who promises to “bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs,”  thus leading us into one of the essential themes of this play–betrayal–which manifests itself in two major incidents: first, the rebels are promised that their grievances will be redressed, but once they sue for peace, Prince John executes them as rebels; second, at the end of the play, Falstaff is summarily dismissed from Hal’s presence as the young prince assumes his father’s throne.  Framed by these two “betrayals” are a host of “expectations mocked,” which began in King Henry IV, Part One when Hal, against all expectations, defeated Hotspur.  The language is filled with imagery that confirms the contrariness of the times.  Hopes, like ships, “touch ground and dash themselves to pieces,” while “in poison there is physic.” Even the comic moments find this theme pervading them–Mistress Quickly expects Falstaff to marry her, and is soon disabused of that notion.

    But, from within this vortex of deception and dashed hopes, Shakespeare continues the master plan begun in King Henry IV, Part One–the making of a king.  At the end of Part One, Hal seemed to have made the transition from profligate prince to mature heir apparent; yet, in another instance of “expectations mocked,” he now appears to have shunned the orderly, Apollonian world of his father’s court for the Dionysian revels of Falstaff’s libertine domain.  There are two main reasons why Hal (now Prince Harry) finds the transition difficult to navigate.  He intuitively understands what his father has discovered, that under the heavy burden of kingly responsibilities “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.”  The other reason is that the freedom of Falstaff’s realm is too irresistible for the young prince to ignore, particularly when faced with a kingdom embroiled in a seemingly never-ending strife.  How much easier it is for him to roam the taverns and highways than to don the majesty of kingship which “dost pinch [the] bearer . . . like a rich armor worn in the heat of day, That scald’st with safety.”

    It is at his father’s bedside that Prince Harry finally resolves the doubts that have plagued him.  He recognizes that the crown, though blemished on his father’s head–for having wrested it from Richard II– will sit freely on his own, because he will have inherited it lawfully, as will his sons.  From this point on, Prince Harry assumes with grace and dignity the title of Henry V, transforming himself finally into the great king who would defeat the French at Agincourt and win for England her lost dominions.  But before making that great journey, he must first uproot himself from the attractive world of Falstaff, which he does with a chilling firmness: “I know thee not, old man.  Fall to thy prayers.”

    It is important to note that the Falstaff discarded by King Henry V is rather different from the Falstaff of  Prince Hal’s youth in Part One.  In Part Two, the fat trickster displays a roughness at the edges that was noticeably absent earlier.  The wit and humor, though still present, are characterized by coarse, scatological imagery–his first words are about his urine!  The braggadocio, so endearing once, is now tempered with a constant fear of old age and death.  If Harry is to be the bright sun on England’s horizon, if he is to “mock the expectation of the world” and show that he has “turned away [his] former self,” he must banish far from himself  all the symbols of decadence and everything and everyone who would restrain him. But, despite the change in the tenor of Falstaff’s life, the laughter, conviviality, and joie de vivre have not disappeared, and Harry’s dismissal of him–while necessary for the prince’s majestic assumption–remains a rejection of an abundant world as he ascends the cold, somewhat joyless court of formality and intrigue.

  • Sock me Some Soccer

    All Right!! I’m tired of listening to some people say that soccer is too boring, too long, etc., so here’s my take on the beautiful game, adored by millions the world over. The loveliness of soccer lies in its endless creativity and Americans who hate it because of its low scores just don’t understand its gorgeous design—a free-flowing, constantly changing game where players describe several new patterns instantly with their movements. The complexity of soccer lies not with the player who has the ball, but in the choreography of everyone else as other players attempt to move into open spaces to receive the ball and the defense tries to second guess, cover, and thwart those movements. Of course, goal scoring is the ultimate “goal” but the wildly adventurous journey to get it is what imbues soccer with its thrilling moments. Some teams are better than others at doing this and, obviously, some players have greater imaginations, because it demands instant creativity.

    It is interesting to me that this central matrix of interconnectedness through movement without the ball also characterizes hockey and basketball—to really enjoy these games we have to understand and appreciate not just what the ball or puck handler is doing from moment to moment but what also everyone else around him (or her) is trying to do—exploiting and possessing the open spaces on a rink, court, or field. In the final analysis, acculturation aside, the playing of soccer AND the enjoyment of it, demands imagination.

    Consider this for a moment—the most exciting moments in American football is when a “set play” breaks down and a quarterback or some other player has to scramble, improvise, and find an open man. Well, that’s what happens throughout a soccer match—at least, in the good ones! So much time in American Football is filled with standing in a huddle, calling plays, sending in plays, walking to the” ball”, calling timeouts, breaking for commercials, etc. Now don’t misunderstand me—I enjoy American Football (being the son of a sports journalist, I love all sports) but, in comparison, to suggest that soccer is boring is just risible!

    To continue in that vein, I would add that the excitement in baseball lies not in a routine put-out or sacrifice fly but again when something breaks down or someone improvises—a runner attempting to stretch a single into a double or triple, a misfield forcing a scramble, an awkward bounce off the wall or, more amusing, a ball lost in the ivy. Besides, as I’ve written elsewhere, for me the greatness of baseball lies not in home runs (I actually find triples much more exciting), but in the mind games between pitcher and batter as each tries to outwit the other—that’s why Greg Maddux will always be my favorite player!

    As far as low scores are concerned—please!!!! Hockey and baseball have low scores and a 21-14 American football score is for all intents and purposes just 3-2!! But of course we have to inflate it to accommodate field goals—interesting how we do that, isn’t it? We love putting a “grandiose face” on things; thus, a batter who gets a hit 30 percent of the time (that’s 0.30) is said to “bat 300;” when I first heard that I thought it meant 300 percent. But, of course, that’s the idea, isn’t it? To make it sound grand—we wouldn’t want to suggest that America’s pastime is a game predicated on failure, where the best players fail 7 times out of 10. That would be like admitting that we are preoccupied with failure—not a good thing for our national psyche. And yet that is precisely what makes baseball so fascinating for me—a game where players fail constantly, get into huge slumps, yet grit their teeth and persist. It is heroic in itself and doesn’t need a “smiling face;” it’s slow, precise, and even intellectual in some ways!

    But back to soccer. There are no timeouts except for injuries, no coaching from the sidelines, and no unlimited substitution of players. If you don’t like what the opposing team is throwing at you, you can’t take a moment to talk about it. Once you get onto the field you live or die by your talents and your ability to improvisefor ninety minutes. Requiring no fancy equipment, the game flowers as easily on a cow pasture in Bangladesh, a back street in Colombia, a beach in South Africa, or a meadow in Portugal. Starving, thirsty, barefooted children on a dirt strip in South America or sub-Saharan Africa seek the harmony of this beautiful game in the midst of abject poverty with the same devotion as brightly uniformed boys and girls in Munich or suburban America do in the presence of their soccer moms! Played with an aerodynamic ball at the World Cup or oranges in a backstreet in Brazil or a bundle of socks in an Indian village, it is the ultimate leveler, this ballet with a ball, a great exercise in democracy (much like basketball in the US), where some dreams come true, passions run sky-high, and the world stops for 90 minutes!

    Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan may be famous, their names are certainly familiar to people around the world, but they will never know the godlike worship that follows the Brazilian soccer star, Ronaldinho. From the tiniest hamlet in Eastern Europe to the tip of South America, the jungles of Africa, and the small islands of Southeast Asia, soccer stars are greeted as messiahs. Their names are mentioned breathlessly like a litany of saints. The mercurial Brazilians, known only by single names in the tradition of their god Pele Kaka, Maicon, and Lucio; Messi of Argentina coached by Maradona the magnificent madman; Ronaldo of Portugal, Carlos Vela of Mexico, the Dutchmen Van der Vaart and Van Persie; Rooney and Gerrard of England, Keisuke Honda from Japan, Drogba from The Ivory Coast, Zambrotta the Italian, and Landon Donovan of the United States. Amen!

  • Michael Jackson America

    Michael Jackson was the boy who never grew up, and even to say he was the perverted Peter Pan of show business is quite something considering the motley multitudes that inhabit Tinseltown. But as I pondered this death by show business I couldn’t shake the thought that our fascination with him was symptomatic of something deeper, something profoundly unsettling in our national psyche; in so many ways Michael Jackson was the epitome of America, a miniature version of the USA!

    Step outside the boundaries of this country to gain a little perspective and the similarities are striking–a naive country mired in a state of adolescence, given to excesses even in the face of economic disaster, obsessed with its image, blessed with immeasurable natural resources yet trapped in a downward spiral of self-destruction; loved, hated, and a source of endless ridicule, admiration, and fascination; replete with talent beyond description, the sire of a million imitators, desperately attempting to escape from its parents in search of its own destiny, unsure of its racial identity, needing to be loved…

    The sight of the cherubic Michael hopping across a stage is heartbreaking when we see how it all ended. We created him, embraced and canonized him, mocked him and mourned him as a brother. He started life with so much promise and came a cropper on the shores of excess; we as a nation followed a similar path, beginning with so much and drowning in our self-indulgences.

    In the weeks following MJ’s death the news-wires are still buzzing with all sorts of postmortem frenzies; I just wonder if all this isn’t part of an ongoing bizarre pre-mortem portent of the death of a nation!

  • Of Kings and Queens

    “Queens! Queens! Strip them naked as any other woman, they are no longer queens!”
    –Mark Antony in Cleopatra.

    Such a brouhaha over Michelle Obama’s supposed embrace of Queen Elizabeth! Royal Watchers (I can scarcely believe that’s a legitimate profession), tabloids, the British public were in a tizzy over the apparent lack of etiquette by America’s First Lady as they rolled their eyes and snobbishly cocked a snook at another American faux pas, tempered this time by their amusing fascination with Mrs. Obama’s “down-to-earth” attitude!? The pomposity surrounding the monarchy begs so many questions it’s hard to know where to begin.

    In an age that prizes democratic ideals it’s unbelievable that so many people still pay homage, even abject adulation, to a person and family whose sole claim to their position springs from what can only be described as an accident of birth. I suppose every country has its own objects of affection, whether it’s the royal family or film stars or just the rich and famous–perhaps our need to be ensorcelled fuels our levels of aspiration, or at least fulfills our vicarious imaginings.

    It’s quite astonishing to realize that 44 monarchies still exist around the world today, that almost 600 million people are bowing and scraping to kings and queens. It is also interesting that questions of propriety and royal protocol seem to surround British royalty more than anyone else. Perhaps that’s because Britain’s Queen maintains at least a “figure-head” authority over many of her erstwhile colonies across the globe, from Canada to Australia. It also has to do with the fact that Britain makes a great deal of fuss about it–I’m sure visitors to Swaziland or Saudi Arabia or Japan slip up occasionally when it comes to protocol without making headlines; but the British whine about it loudly lest we forget they have a queen, which we’re always on the verge of doing! Italian PM Berlusconi shouted out to someone while walking near the queen and was chastised for it, for how dare we talk above a whisper in her royal presence?! Australian PM John Howard drew criticism for appearing to place his hand on the Queen’s back to direct her through traffic. All of this springs from a 16th century belief that the royal touch had the power to cure disease!!

    Questions about what seems like an anachronistic presence at the head of Britain is often met with the answer that the Queen performs an invaluable service to her country in terms of internal and external public relations–she’s the head of the most expensive PR firm in the history of the world! Of course, it’s also Britain’s way of authenticating itself in the face of its diminishing powers; that and the way it hangs on to America’s coattails.

    I don’t really care how a country decides to govern itself; if Britain–and the other 40 or so states that have monarchies–choose to spend a “king’s ransom” for the daily upkeep of their nominal heads they have the right to do so (some monarchies actually do govern their countries). But when they insist that the rest of the world treat their queen as a sacred person before whom we must virtually genuflect and whose “holy” person is not to be touched then they’re carrying their obsession too far; particularly when this same queen is the grandmother of a prince who wears Nazi uniforms for fun and uses racial slurs towards Asian colleagues!

    I suppose it really is sad when a nation seeks its identity in a monarchy that has lost its relevancy or when that same nation draws its legitimacy from an arcane and anachronistic system, or when tax dollars support the hedonistic and sybaritic lifestyles of royal offspring throughout the world!

  • Natasha Richardson

    What is it about this woman and this death that somehow feels strangely personal, even familial? Celebrities die in all sorts of circumstances, from plane accidents to drug overdoses to violence. But the news that Natasha Richardson was in critical condition created an unexplained sense of sadness which was only compounded when the final verdict was announced. I didn’t know her, obviously, except through her acting and her family association, having in my youth followed her grandfather’s (Michael Redgrave) career and then her mother’s (Vanessa), uncle’s (Corin), and aunt’s (Lynn), even a smidgen of her sister’s (Joely), as well as her father’s, the director Tony Richardson, who put so many interesting plays on film.

    Perhaps the familiarity over the years with her family’s accomplishments, having almost grown up with them, may have contributed to this feeling. It could also be that in the last month I watched three of Liam Neeson’s films, one of Natasha’s, and one of Corin’s. One doesn’t really know, does one? But if I were to guess I think the sadness is more professional, a mourning for the loss of a life cut short of its final promise.

    I remember thinking a few months ago, as I watched again The Handmaid’s Tale, that Natasha Richardson could have a later career like her mother’s. She, like Vanessa, was drawn to challenging, interesting characters and while in recent years she played the obvious Hollywood circuit (possibly easier to do while raising young children) I always felt, given her penchant for scarred, desperate people (Anna Christie, Sally Bowles), that she would find new acting challenges so rarely offered to women over 40.

    Of course, it’s interesting that she eschewed the English theatre of her family and made a name for herself in America, first in Hollywood and then, as is the wont of so many stars, on Broadway. Like her mother she was beautiful, and like her mother she was unafraid of characters that weren’t physically flattering but multidimensional, and her take on them revealed hitherto untapped complexities.

    The sadness lies in the thought that maybe her best was yet to come. She will be missed.

  • Daylight Savings

    Continuing a thought embedded in my last post I wonder anew about our obsession with Daylight Savings. It seems like we visit and debate the topic every few years, making changes back and forth. Some argue that we’re actually trying to save the Evening; that the energy conservation rationale is merely a rationalization. I’m trying to find out what we do that’s so important it needs an extra hour of daylight. We finish work at 5pm or thereabouts so that can’t be the real reason; in any case, we burn lights throughout the day in our offices and homes, so we’re not really saving any energy. Maybe an hour more of golf or some other sport? But how about winter? Besides, what we’re really doing is stealing from Morning to give to Evening, robbing Eos (Aurora) to placate Hespera! Why not just go to bed early and wake up an hour earlier?

    Could it be that we’re afraid not just of the Dark but also of Time? Think about it; everything we do suggests that we think of Time as an opponent to be attacked, diced into slices, and controlled so we can apportion and assign tasks to every minute of the day–the American work ethic, we say. It seems to be different in countries with ancient cultures–they have a more friendly perspective of Time, are more willing to meander along with it. They don’t see it in terms of hours and minutes or even days; after billions of yesterdays they know there’s always another tomorrow.

    For us each day somehow seems unconnected to the one before or after. We rush through every hour for fear of wasting minutes as though Time were an expendable commodity, as though there’s a close of business in everything we do. We invent mindless television, internet search engines to surf incessantly for inane and unseemly things, talk radio, and cyberspace social networks to fill the inevitable spaces in our day, to pretend we’re engaged in something, anything–god forbid that we sit quietly and think or read. In fact, we don’t just work anymore, we multi-task–hyper-extending linear time in vertical directions, piling on more work into every moment.

    We have less free time than any other country–and more stress. Perhaps if we didn’t have Daylight Savings we’d sleep more and work less! How bad could that be?!