Murray Ross

Elizabeth Wright Ingraham

When my father was a young man beginning his career as the Los Angeles cultural affairs commissioner (not as fancy as it sounds back then), he had occasion to take a train from Phoenix to Los Angeles. He stood in line at the station to get his ticket and was annoyed to see a small man bustle past everyone and shove his way to ticket window demanding to be served. He was further annoyed when this same guy entered his compartment and sat down opposite him. My father ignored him and stared out the window at the western landscape. An hour into the journey the man said, "you're an artist, aren't you?" My father, who had studied painting, said, "how did you know?" The man said he could tell by the way he looked at the landscape. My father looked down at the man's luggage and saw it was engraved with the initials FLW. The penny dropped.

And so began a relationship that continued to bear fruit for years. The Los Angeles Art Department had jurisdiction over Barnsdall Park, which housed a number of Frank Lloyd Wright's structures, including the famous Hollyhock House. My father eventually persuaded him to design a temporary municipal gallery on top of the hill, and they remained friends till the great man died.

I never expected to have a second generation parallel experience, especially in Colorado Springs, but so it came to pass when, thanks to her friend and champion, Elaine Freed, I met Frank Lloyd Wright's granddaughter thirty years ago. Liz and I hit it off pretty well right away, and during a period of personal turmoil I even went to live with her for a few months in the large house she was care taking in Palmer Lake (I should add that when my wife kicked me out she asked Liz if she would take me in, and Liz said sure). We had some great evenings out there in that house with a view north that went on forever, with nary another domicile in view. When I got back she would have some dinner waiting: frozen peas and simple chicken. She claimed to love food and always waxed enthusiastic over her own hastily prepared dinners, but really they were terrible. She was no Julia Child and I began to understand why good kitchens and comfy chairs were never features of Wright houses.

(It should be noted that Liz also provided sanctuary for our producing director for a time too. She liked lively guys I think).

The indifferent food didn't matter one bit because the talk was so good. Liz was one of the greatest ranters I have ever known. She would launch into a tirade against our stupid town, our idiot politics, bad architecture, dumb foreign policy that was breathtaking in its gusto, a never ending cataract of Whitmanesque energy. Sometimes I would have to yell to interrupt: "Could you shut up for a moment Liz?" It was the only way to change the current. She would stop, smile, and say "Of course, Murray, what do you have to say?" And then she would actually engage in real dialogue. It was never idle talk: Liz only wanted to deal with the largest of subjects. She expected you to bring it with you came. She read everything, and was always annoyed at how dismissive and dim arts people were about science. She loved making her good brain work. She was an old fashioned humanist: she thought we could and should figure out how to live, and live better. She had totalitarian instincts like her grandfather, but also endless curiosity.enthusiasm and generosity. We had some good times in Palmer Lake.especially when I made a fire and a singed black squirrel who had taken up residence in the chimney came charging at us out of the fireplace, sparks shooting from his tail.

Liz moved like a whirlwind through everything, at top speed. I think she would have made an excellent centaur: head held high and proud, and reaching back to slap her flanks, saying giddy up. She complained regularly about the commute to town which she made daily in her white Bronco-- "here we all are happily moving down the interstate at 80 miles an hour, and some idiot has the nerve to go the speed limit in the left lane. What's the matter with these people!" Almost to the very end, when her joints failed her and she could barely stand, sit or walk down a hall, Liz kept moving. Endless energy never ceasing until death. She was Shaw's life force incarnate.

She didn't suffer fools gladly but had the aristocrat's interest and respect for working people. She told me to pay our house cleaner more; "$20 an hour is not enough!" she would pronounce,with the usual exclamation points.

She told great stories, about her legendary family and about life in 50's in Colorado Springs, when there was much drinking, a little scene, and people went home by moonlight, hopping home from rock to rock near the Garden of the Gods.

But above all Liz had taste, discernment and the sense that art, really great art, really matters. It was her soul's blood. Much of this was inherited from her family. When I told her that for me seeing Falling Water in Pennsylvania made me burst into tears, she understood. I told her it was as good as anything, I thought it was as good as good as Chartes, and she agreed. She campaigned for great and distinctive architecture, harangued for it, loved it, and did her best to make it. And for this she was cherished by her peers. People looked after her.

Liz (often with her husband Gordon) designed several of the most beautiful houses in Colorado Springs. See the Beadles House, for example. You can't beat it.

Her houses were rigorous, uncompromising, classic in form and function, and the best of them are very tender too. They were partly designed to make you a better person from living in them. though I think she was always a little wary when people actually moved in, and put up paintings she did not approve of, and bred children who left large bright toys all over her clean tiled halls. Liz was perhaps not as great an architect as her grandfather (no shame there; one else was either), whom she so much resembled in spirit and largeness of vision. She too had a wonderfully imperial ego, and at times could be an oracular bore. But Liz was a woman, sensitive to women's issues, and deeply committed to relationships. She was really so deeply kind. She meant a great deal to many people.

No one will take her place. I think she led one of the most realized and fulfilled lives I know of, from the time she carried her daughter in a sling while working over a drafting table until the end, arranging her affairs, and continuing to dream in epic fashion. always looking for the next new idea. Liz had real grandeur and true nobility. You recognize it when you are in its presence.

We won't see her like again, but how lucky I was to have had her company and strong warm light. Others lucky like me will say the same.

Gun Control

In light of our recent recall election I offer, without comment, this passage from David Mamet's American Buffalo.  Please let us know if you think we should consider the play for our next seaon.

[Donny and Teach are planning a house break-in to recover a coin, an American Buffalo nickel.

Teach takes out a revolver and begins to load it.]

DON: What's that?

TEACH: What?

DON: That.

TEACH:  This "gun"?

DON: Yes

TEACH: What does it look like?

DON:  A gun.

TEACH:  It is a gun.

DON: I don't like it.

TEACH: Don't look at it.

DON: I'm serious

TEACH: So am I.

DON: We don't need a gun, Teach.

TEACH:  I pray that we don't, Don.

DON: We don't, tell me why we need a gun?

TEACH:  It's not a question do we need it . . . Need . . . Only that it makes me comfortable, okay?  It helps me to relax.

So, God forbid, something inevitable occurs and the choice is (And I'm saying "god forbid") it's either him or us.

DON:  Who?

TEACH: The guy.  I'm saying God forbid the guy (or somebody) comes in, he's got a knife . . . a cleaver from one of those magnetic boards . . .?

DON:  Yeah?

TEACH: . . . with the two strips . . . ?

DON: Yeah?

TEACH:  And whack, and somebody is bleeding to death.  This is all.  Merely as a  deterrent. 

All the preparation in the world does not mean shit, the path of some crazed lunatic sees you as an invasion of his personal domain.  Guys go nuts.  Don, you know this.  Public officials . .. Ax murderers . . . All I'm saying, look out for your own.

DON: I don't like the gun.

TEACH: It's a personal thing, Don.  A personal thing of mine.  A silly personal thing.  I just like to have it along. Is this so unreasonable?

DON:  I don't want it.

TEACH:  I'm not going without it.

DON:  Why do you want it?

TEACH: Protection of me and my partner.  Protecttion, deterrence. 

DON:  I don't want it.

TEACH:  I can't step down on this, Don.  I have to go with it.  The light of the way things as they are.

DON: Why?

TEACH: Because of the way things are.

 

 

Seeing Double

It was standard practice in Shakespeare's company for one actor to play many parts.  The plays are generally large and expansive, and the company was downsized for maximum profit. The King's men probably had an ensemble of about 15, who had to cover cast lists that often number over 30.  So it is with Cymbeline,which lists 37 named characters, in addition to exta lords, ladies, British and Roman soldiers, and musicians. No actor in this show at Shakespeare's Globe would have been off stage very long, and the tiring house (the changing room) would have felt like rush hour for the more than two hours traffic of the stage.  Our own production is even more streamlined than Shakespeare's original, since only 11 actors are involved (this is almost double the record set by Fiasco theatre, which last year did the play triumphantly with a cast of 6).

Doubling roles in Shakespeare is not only cost effective, it can yield additional theatrical pleasures. One particular instance of this is the doubling of the play's ostensible leading man, Posthumus, with this opposite, the clownish villain, Cloten (a double that Fiasco somehow missed) .  We are told right from the beginning the two men could not be more different. The vile Cloten is a "thing too bad for bad report."

while Posthumus, beloved by Imogen,  is "a creature, such/ As to seek through the regions of the earth/For one his like, there would be something failing/ in him that should compare." 

The Posthumus/Cloten opposition is enough all by itself to invite double casting.  But there is more.  The two characters are never on stage together.  And we know they look exactly alike--at least from neck down, wearing the same clothes, which they often do.  Cloten is determined to revenge himself on Imogen for her insulting him, saying that the meanest garment of Posthumus was worth more to her than all the hairs on his head.  So he contrives to get into Posthumus' clothes, go find her in the country, kill her boyfriend, rape her, cut the garments she loved so much to pieces, and then send her home.  That will teach her.  Unfortunately, Cloten is beheaded before he gets the chance to execute his cunning plan, though not before he tells us how well Posthumus' garments fit him--an amazing thing! And when Imogen finds the headless man, she is convinced it must be her husband: I know the shape of's leg; this is his hand/ His foot mercurial, his Martial thigh,The brawns of Hercules . .. "

Imogen has no doubt this is her husband, and who should know his body better?  And though she turns out to be mistaken, her recognition is entirely correct too: the body of the villain is quite obviously also the body of her lover, since they are both being played by the same actor.

There is additional resonance to this pairing too, since it invites us to see comparisions where we have been told there were only contrasts.  Just after leaving the stagen in the first scene, the actor reappears as Cloten complaining,"And that she should love this fellow and refuse me!"  A lovely moment.  But the more you experience the play, the more you see how lines are often blurred between the ostensible hero and the thuggish villain.  When Posthumus is tricked into believing his wife has been unfaithful to him, he goes mad--and becomes dangerous; in a jealous fury of betrayal, he rushes to murderous revenge on Imogen, just as Cloten does for her insulting him. Posthumus decides to have her killed.  His diatribe against her and against all women is scary, and as a character he now seems "harsh" and "simple"--exactly the words Imogen uses to describe Cloten.  Posthumus for most of the rest of the play is subject to violent fits, and as a character he seems a patchwork of snatched emotions jerked from him, tossing him this way and that.  And this jerkiness is exactly the rhtythm and tempo of the clownish Cloten.  The lines of distinction are blurring from the other direction, too.  Cloten, surprisingly, turns out to be a fine singer: not a quality you associate with a thug.  And he also has some of the best pride in country lines in the play, lines everyone in the English audience would applaud when the Romans come demanding payment of tribute : Why should we pay tribute?  If Casear can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light; else, sir, no more tribute, pray you now." These are lines you would think the hero might say, not the villain  (in fact the hero does say something similar, earlier, though far less memorably).

The wonderful climax of this blurred meshing occurs in the first scene of the 4th act, when Cloten swims triumphantly on stage wearing the garments of Posthumus.  For nearly two hours the audience has been watching the same actor change characters and clothes--at least a half dozen times before now.  We have become very comfortable and confident in sorting out the two men, thanks both to the difference in their costumes and the actor's ability to create two distinct personalities.  But at this one fabulous moment our minds are happily blown: who is this?  Cloten? for sure! Posthumus?  He sure looks exactly like him!  Both?  Well, yes . .. in a way!

And finally, in a kind of happy postcript, at the end of the play Guiderius describes how he cut off the head of the unbcouth Cloten, and says he is "right glad he is not standing here/ to tell this tale of mine."  Absolutely true--and not true--since the actor playing Cloten (now only Posthumus) is standing right there on stage with him.

There's nothing like Shakespeare, who doubles our pleasure and intelligence like no other playwright.  And what a wonderful play this is, as I am seeing over and over again.

Hog Heaven

The stage direction in Act 5 Scene 3 of CYMBELINE reads: Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle; he throws a thunderbolt.

That would have been a great sight in 1610 in the Globe Theatre, when the trap door in the heavens opened and the god was lowered from a winch to settle the affairs of wailing ghosts and petty mortals. Shakespeare was not in the habit of writing deus ex machinas, but when he finally got around to one he didn't mess around.

This stage direction posed bit of a problem in our tent--from which no divinely big bird could possibly descend.  A pigeon, maybe. What could we do? One answer was to cut the scene entirely, as the recent New York production did. But this is a climactic and spectacular moment in the play, when the presiding Olympian god arrives to inform us that all will be well.  It would have been a pity to lose it.

The answer presented itself while driving home, as I often do, on North Nevada Avenue.  There it was, orange and black and gleaming, the lavish Harley Davidson sign, telling me they had what we needed.  If our Jupiter could not fly in on an eagle, could he not at least ride in on a motorcycle?  We had cast a motorcycle rider in the part, Melvin Grier, a long time veteran of our Shakespeare campaigns. And he had a splendid motorcycle too, a Honda Gold Wing.   But really,there is no way Jupiter should ride into ancient Britain on a large smooth Honda. He needed a machine with total testosterone throwing down  maximum thunder. He needed a Hog.

So the next morning I went down to the Harley-Davidson store and asked to speak to the manager, DJ Stringer.  I waited for 30 minutes and when DJ showed up he said he had 2 minutes.  I explained the situation and he understood immediately.  I knew there was no chance Shakespeare would get a Harley, but I had to ask.

 

DJ said, "Fine, no problem, when do you want it?"

"Friday--and for a month!"

"No problem."

"It has to look good, and it has to start.  It can't be too big but it has to . .."

" . .. make noise."

"Yes."

"No problem. Pick it up Friday."

And so it has come to pass that Jupiter makes a really grand and hilarious entrance in our Cymbeline to the wonder and delight of all.  You have to see it to believe it. This is a god who can settle some hash.

 

And the further wonder of it is, the Harley folks not only supplied our god with his chariot, they did it with a simple handshake, and for free.  This is not the way things work in today's America.  That very day my wife Betty took her 81 year old sister, visiting us from the east coast, as a guest to her class at the YMCA. But because my sister-in-law, traveling light to yoga, did not have a photo ID, she was not allowed in.  Security, it was explained. Right. That's life in America nowadays.

Our thanks to the Harley-Davidson tribe for reminding us that things can be different.  And truly, what better combination is there on a summer night than Shakespeare, Jupiter, and a mighty hog!  Now that's living! That's romance!

Authentic Shakespeare

We received this query the other day:

Hi-I'm trying to figure out this production. Is it authentic Shakespeare or some more recent adaptation? Supposed to be set in Roman Britain primarily. But all the publicity photos I've seen show a bunch of guys carrying 1880's vintage American lever action rifles!!! What gives??

Good question, and perfectly legitimate too.  Indeed our publicity photos do show three guys with rifles who look more like they came out of True Grit than ancient Britain. It turns out since we took those photos in the Garden of the Gods, we've ditched the rifles.  But not because they are not period appropriate. 

What is the appropriate period for Shakespeare plays?  If you are strict constitionalist, you might go back to the original--but the original might surprise you.  Here is the only contemporary drawing of a Shakespeare play in performance. sketched by a spectator at the Globe.

This is a scene from Titus Andronicus, a play set in the Roman period, like Cymbeline. But what's most conspicuous about the costumes is that they are quite a mixed bag.  The dark figure on the right is clearly Roman, as perhaps are the kneeling figures.  But the people on the left are distinctly Elizabethan, dressed in the clothes of Shakespeare's contemporaries. So when you go to the source what you find is kind of a mash-up, costuming that reflects both period and modern dress. 

Cymbeline is one of Shakespeare's most period diverse plays: it seems to be taking place in Roman Britain, Renaissance Italy and wild Wales, which is a place and time all its own.  It is also a play about costumes and clothes: the words "garment" and "fit" occur more times than in any other play by Shakespeare, and the word "fit" seems to mean spasm as well as suit.  In the original production a cast of a dozen or so actors played more than 30 roles--they must have been changing garments and outfits all the time. One character specifically is built so like another he fits perfectly fit into the other's clothes--indeed you wonder whether these were meant for the same actor.

We have adopted Shakespeare's own practices in designing our production, which combines both period and contemporary elements.  The play is a singular mash-up, a fractured fairy tale which proceeds in fits and starts, and ends with happy and comprhehensive wonder.  So, for instance, the character of Belarius, the old warrior who is raising stolen princes in a cave way out in Wales, looks like this in the sketch by Rose Fox, our designer:

Hardly a figure out of Roman Britain, right? But we think he is Shakespeare's Belarius even so--with his tartan and fur and hat, a compound of Scottish romance and Amrican western---you could even make a case that Rooster Cogburn is one of his descendants.  Both are rough, ready and good hearted.

And yes, we thought about the eye patch too--but decided against it, along with the rifles. A rifle makes nonsense out of a swordfight, unless it's unloaded--something that would never happen in Wales or Colorado). So in the flesh and on stage here is our Belarius (Tom Paradise), along with his princess (Susan Maris):

Which simply goes to show you that now, as then, Shakespeare is not of an age but for all time.

Way out west

We're just about midway into rehearsals for CYMBELINE, and really the play is giving me a second youth (others might say I never left my first childhood).  As usual, exploring a Shakespeare play, especially one you have never done and don't know, is like going into a cave that keeps opening into other rooms (and a cave figures prominently in this play).  You think you have arrived and then another room beckons.  As usual, Shakespeare is playing tricks with us.  He introduces us early on to his hero.  He is modest, poor, manly, gentle and much beloved, as we are told again and again.  He is the perfect fairy tale hero, despite that odd name of Posthumus.  Not a romantic name.  Posthumus and Juliet?  Maybe not. But he is much beloved of his lovely bride, Imogen, who only has eyes, heart and soul for him. So far so good.  But then watch Posthumus carry on:  he makes a rash bet about his girl, which he is tricked into thinking he's lost--as a result he puts out a contract on his unfaithful wife, and has her murdered.  Or so he believes.  Then later he feels really badly about this, so badly that he wants to die--which he plans to do fighting, first against the Britains, then against the Romans.  When he finally openly confesses his guilt and crimes, he is absolved by his wife--whom he promptly smacks to the ground.  This Posthumus is a dangerous character--clumsy, impulsive, violent and not very bright.  In fact he looks quite a bit like his foil and opposite, Cloten, the "harsh, noble, simple nothing" of the play--they can wear the same clothes, and actually do.  And yet, Shakespeare is not finished with his tarred and much tainted hero--at the very end of the play Posthumus for once acts just as he should, as we hope he would, and for the first time appears to be a prince indeed.  Too little too late? Decide for yourselves.  It's only one of the many mysteries awaiting you way out west in Ancient Britain, soon arriving at Rock Ledge Ranch.

Naked in Paradise

I went to see Paradise Lost last night.  Just saying that sounds ridiculous, since Milton's poem has defied theatrical representation for nearly 400 years, and understandably so since  the epic is the mother of dense poetical verse, a supertanker full of pipe organs.  Impossible to stage, especially on a budget of $600, the grand total of theatre 'd art's production resources.  But I am happy to say I was mostly surprised and delighted, was never bored, and often deeply  engaged.  Every one of the many young actors gave me pleasure, Jon Margheim had some inventive directorial touches (creating a terrific tree of knowledge), and Jeff Keele did a splendid job of wrestling Milton's leviathan into a two hour eventful evening of theatre.  Was it a revelation?  Not quite.  Even on $600 you would hope to get past plastic flowers for paradise, bad hair and magic markers for hell, new age music in heaven.  I don't think the worlds of the epic-- heaven, hell and Eden were deeply imagined or reinvented into theatrical life, though that's a daunting assigment for anyone.  But hell, this was still heaven and earth in Milton's grand style.

The bravest and most abiding image of the production, besides undertaking it all all,  were Adam and Eve.  They were entirely naked.  And not naked far off upstage, or whirling in strobe lights, appearing and then vanishing in a flash.  When they appeared they waked naked on stage, took their place in the warm garden, sitting happily together, as Milton says, "under a tuft of shade."  They stayed naked for nearly the entire production, and walked around comfortably through the audience in this promenade staging.  It was remarkable, and partly because it became unremarkable very soon.  I remember how this worked from my time at a hippy spa in California, in those edenic days of the late 1960's.  You arrived and realized everyone was naked. It was a fabulous shock---and then, in about 5 minutes, the shock wore off, and you might have paid less attention to the nude bathers than you would to a small beach of bikinis, and you were naked too.  There was simply nothing more to see (desire, remember, is wanting what you have not got, and when everyone is naked you get it all).

This is exactly what happened in Paradise Lost. After the first greedy shock of naked Eden, we accepted Adam and Eve as characters; their nakedness was their costume.  In very little time the staring stopped and we paid attention to what they were saying, and within 15 minutes a naked Eve standing two feet away from me seemed just as normal as the customer behind me at Seven Eleven (well, actually maybe much more normal). 

Nakedness is of course required in Eden--anything less (or more) would be completely wrong.  Milton writes about it, and the scene of our first parents is iconic. Nakedness in Eden spells innocence, purity. as well as the complete absence of fear and danger---now that's Paradise.  All praise to theatre 'd art and to the actors playing Adam and Eve for getting this exactly right.  Both were lovely, and yet neither were supermodels--it is the tenderness of their flesh,and the softness of their bodies, that impressed, not their allure.  And there is everything to be said for nakedness, for seeing us as we are, made, as Milton says, in God's own image--this is a genuinely lovely thing to contemplate, especially, perhaps, in Adam and Eve, both young and possessing bodies nature is still interested in.

When Satan arrives in Eden, with his smoldering mind bent on total destruction, "the Fiend," as Milton says, "saw undelighted all delight."  But something different happens when Satan sees the naked Eve, "Her heaven'ly form/ Angelic, but more soft, and Feminine."  Eve's innocence and grace  "overaw'd His Malice" and he stands suspended:

" . . . the Evil one abstracted stood

From his own evil, and for the time remain'd

Stupidly good, of enmity disarm'd,

Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge"

Satan's response to naked human beauty is momentary, since he is always burning with hot Hell.  For the rest of us, the absorbtion lingers.  Nothing is more lumenscent than lovely, simply human flesh.  My thanks to Milton and to theatre 'd art for giving us an alternative to the nakedness of advertisements and porn, and returning us to paradise, where, for a moment, we could all be stupidly good and natural together.

 

Beige Men

I was invited by college classmates to write about our 50^th reunion, and since reunions are theatrical occasions, I include some fragments here to fill the not very wide gap of time between now and Cymbeline, coming soon to a ranch near you.  Here’s my report on returning to a small potted ivy league school 50 years later.  It was all boys then.

                                                                * * *

The reunion costumes were bland: vanilla pudding polos and khakis, confirming what a preppy homogenized crowd we are.  I showed some reunion photos to my adopted god daughter and she said, “You all look very buttoned down.”  And Patti Seidman, looking at our class photo in the gym, said, “You all look the same.”  We are beige men.

And that might be the largest truth of our 50^th reunion. Though not always keeping each other’s company, we belong together, and I suspect now more than ever, having many of our edges rounded off, sloping gently into old age.  I think we might have assigned ourselves George Valliant’s recent book about the Grant study, The Triumph of Experience, since it correlates fairly closely with our collective histories.  The Grant study closely followed the lives of 268 Harvard men for 70 years—they are a short generation older than us, and probably better and brighter too.  But the parallels are close, most notably in their surprisingly high levels of happiness after they turned 70.  They were generally intelligent and healthy, fortunate in having had privileged educations and financially secure.  Alcohol was their enemy—as it has been ours.  Most had career satisfaction, and most enjoyed long and happy marriages.  They look like us, or at least the us who came to the reunion.  They too probably wear khakis and are men of beige.

                                                    ***

It was wonderful to run into people I hadn’t seen or thought much about in a quarter or half a century:  Bill Sittig, Doug Maxwell, and Clark Hobbie, now a marsh rat in South Carolina.  I almost burst into tears seeing my freshman roommate, Elliot Urdang, now fully in bloom.  Standing below Steve Weinstock on the Baxter steps took me back to the last time this happened, when the lights went out in the dining hall freshman year and he rose up next to me and hurled a plate of chicken a la king across the room.  He was a god.  I wonder if I was the only guy at our Saturday dinner half wishing history would repeat itself, but a room full of flying lobsters might have taken quite a toll.  Besides, there were ladies present. And that, we all agree, was a good thing.

                                                ***

This reunion was noticeably low on drama, but women figured in the closest thing to it, when at group therapy Gordon Davis rose out of nowhere to remind us of our collective abuse of females fifty years ago, recounting the revolting “pig parties,” the forlorn dumped dates of women’s weekends, and the notorious mattress-filled Fiji room in the basement of the Phi Gam house.  I have since heard from one reliable source this room was a myth, which is both a relief and a pity; The Fiji room has a grotesque and lurid allure, as well as the indelible imprint of urban legend (my son tells me there was rumor of a similar room at Harvard).  Thankfully Gordon’s speech occasioned the confession from Al Mondell that he had never gotten laid at Williams, and this in turned was greeted by a chorus of sympathy and dispelling laughter, and the wives of Williams climbed over desks to hug and console him, and kiss his fair and well shaped ears.

                                                    ***

A week after the reunion by happenstance I drove with Betty through Williamstown, and we stopped at the Clark Museum, which always seem to be the artistic equivalent to Williams: small, personal, privileged and the best of its kind.  I was surprised at how well I remembered the collection, more vividly than most of my classmates.  There is the Napoleonic Hussar on horseback, and there is Homer’s heroic and well cut men rescuing drowning damsels—it’s a great collection of boys’ art, among other things.  Not on view but unforgettable was Bouguereau’s glossy painting of the callipygian nymphs dragging a hairy satyr into a cold shower, the one painting in the collection I am sure we all remember. It hung for years in New York’s most exclusive gentleman’s club.  I am thinking of proposing an installation at Mass MOCA to coincide with our 55^th reunion: it will feature only this painting and all the mattresses from the Fiji room.  It will blow your mind.

                                                             ***

My daddy always told me two was the best company, which is not really part of the reunion dance for anything more than 3 minutes.  But a highlight for me was the chance to see one of my best friends, David Larry, a further instance of reunion irony.  David and I had talked about our mixed feelings over the reunion costs, which seemed rather high for people who were not instinctively drawn to four day rain dances of Eph elders.  In the end I caved and paid, and David did not, opting to spend time with friends but not joining the formal occasions.  This meant I could skip the Friday night dinner to have time with him at what was reviewed as the “best Mexican food in the northeast.”  I will not reveal much about this evening except to say there are things that can be said over an indifferent tamale in Williamstown between two friends and classmates of 50 years that could not be duplicated anywhere. As part of our trip down memory lane Dave brought a few signs and bumper stickers  from his gallant campaign for a weed tolerant Sheriff of Eugene Oregon a thousand years ago, and these started showing up everywhere:  one was slapped on my rental car, another appeared in our commemorative Morgan photo, and another was posted by our class saint, Jules Quinlan, below what we think was our sacred class tree , planted when Dave, our class poet, read his class poem as part of our graduation ceremonies.   So the friend who decided not to join the reunion festivities became its poster child. I love this.

 

 

                                                                ***

We are a lot closer to death now, and I imagine most of us think about it more.  It is a simple truth to say most of us won’t see each other again—well maybe not after our 60^th.  A Boston billboard I saw returning my rental car said one out of every three babies born today will live to be a hundred.  That won’t be me, or most of us.  I was stunned by Sandy McPeck (I hardly knew him) dying between his bio and our reunion, but of course this kind of thing happens now, and increasingly.   I was moved by how Bill Whitney arranged to gather and print a collection of Sandy’s paintings.  I sat next to his widow Susan at the Saturday dinner and she showed me how to crack lobster and told me she cried every night.  This is how it goes.  I went to a funeral the other day:  a tiny lovely Vassar girl, 10 years older than us, city council woman, bookstore owner.  The funeral went on in the usual Episcopal way.  And then someone got up and quoted Yeats:

Think where a man’s glory begins and ends,

And say my glory was I had such friends.

That’s not bad, I thought.  And then they played Ella singing “Every Time We Say Goodbye.”

                                                            ***

There was some talk of diversity at this reunion, beyond noting  the presence of Mexican food in the purple valley, especially at the gathering at the newly named Davis Center,  in honor of Allison and John Davis, two truly heroic black graduates of the college, and parents of our of own Gordon and John.  It was heartening for all of us to learn how much times have changed since our day: more than half current Williams students are women, and 30% are of color. This is truly great news—and brings new challenges (including getting the students of different colors to connect to each other, which is one mission of the Davis Center).  I suspect we still have a long way to go.  A few days after the reunion I was riding the New York subway, taking in the sights.  Standing across from me was a young black woman wearing a skin tight fuschia body suit which advertised every one of her considerable charms and put a spell on every man in the neighborhood.  Further down the car the child of an Asian woman was smiling at a man with a long beard and a shaved head seated across from her, and next to him was a  Muslim woman holding her baby, also smiling.  Would this one day be the future of our immaculately manicured Williams College?  A smiling old white man in a beige cap with Roman numerals (hate the shirt, love the cap) really likes the idea, and knows (having reached Erickson’s age of wisdom) it is only pretty to think so.

                                                                            ***

I’m in North Adams, at the Holiday Inn, possibly the most remote reunion outpost.  My room looks east over North Adams, and it’s a beautiful sight.  Does anybody remember North Adams?  Did anyone ever go there?  It’s a real town. It has texture.   It has Mass MOCA (an alchemical transformation of Sprague Electric), and one of the largest groups of Chinese Americans in the Northeast.  Who knew?  I think if I had a million dollars I’d rather give it to the Massachusetts College of the Liberal Arts---or UCCS or Pikes Peak Community College.  Williams has enough; it always wants and always will get more, and the worthy North Adams  school will never come close. One of the genteel and unacknowledged facts of Williams life is that we are nearly all (personal company excepted) one percenters, and we take care of ourselves—to a fault I would say, even though we are also genuinely good citizens. I’ve made this argument to our class president Jim Blume, who nods and shakes his head in agreement, and says, “I know, but I just love the place.”  OK, I have to admit I do too. I whined about the parade and the uniforms and then was so happy when we entered the gym and the applause rained down on us sweetly for no good reason at all.

                                                            ***

Saturday after lobster.  The chimes have rung at midnight.  Gordon and Peggy and I are sitting in a booth in Baxter:  two Williams men are slurping purple cow gelato.  It’s just like old times—sort of.  I am checking my text messages, the woman law professor is working, and Gordon is trying without success to book a Paris hotel.  I walk out into the night air and hear the sound of something I missed the entire reunion: the sound of music.  It’s coming from the Class of ’93 tent perched in the freshman quad.  I stroll over and find there is an actual rocking band, very little diversity and some real dancing.  I walk back into Baxter and tell Peggy what I’ve found, and ask her if she wants to dance.  She looks up and smiles.  Silly boy.

            ***

So much for the past: now, onwards into the future of Ancient Britain and Cymbeline!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Duck Primer

The Wild Duck is the most complex and thought-provoking play of our season, and it has raised more than a few questions from our audience members.  Many of these cannot and perhaps should not be answered with complete certainty, but here are two things you might want to know.

What's all this about "the thirteenth man" at the table?  

This turns out to be a very old superstition, dating at least as far back as Jesus when Judas was notoriously the 13th disciple at the Last Supper.  Since ancient times, 12 has always been a good magic number: the 12 Gods of Olympus, the 12 Knights of the Round Table, etc.  Adding another is not only odd, it upsets dining arrangements (a large table will comfortably seat 5 on each side and 1 at each end).  But more than this, the addition of a 13th person in a group of 12 was seen as a portent bad luck, and even of death. An old Norse legend tells how the gods sat down to dinner and a  13th uninvited god (Loki) turned up, which led to a series of apocalyptic unprecedented very bad disasters.  

So Hakon Werle, at the beginning of the play, is distressed to find there were 13 at the dinner party he gave for his son and fiancee.  He is an old man, going blind, with a guilty conscience, very aware of his imminent mortality.  He implies that it is son's guest, Hjalmar Ekdal, who is the 13th man.  But at the end of the play, we learn the 13th man is someone else entirely.

What's the big deal about "sacrifice"?

Gregers Werle, the play's crusading idealist and the man with a mission, tends to talk about the importance of making a sacrifice at critical moments in the play.  According to Arnold Weinstein, the author of the fine book Northern Arts, the source of this can be found in Kierkegaard's most influential work, Fear and Trembling, which discusses the radical significance of Abraham's decision to sacrifice his own son-- a decision which Kierkegaard suggests was deeply irrational, unnatural, and made in immense anxiety in defiance of all standard codes of behavior.

Yet such a radical commitment is exactly what real faith demands, and radical behavior is what is required if we are to annihilate old forms that close us in and keep us from being truly free.  When Gregers invites young Hedwig to sacrifice what is most precious to her to demonstrate her love, he is following in the philosopher's footsteps. So yes, it is a big deal, none bigger!

IBSEN IS #2!

We all know who is #1--in theatre, in literature and almost everywhere else.  William Shakespeare is way out in front, has been for some time, and will be for the foreseeable future.  No one else is close.  But the fellow running solidly in second place, the dramatist whose work is performed throughout the world more often than any one other than Shakespeare, is this guy.

He's not a man to cuddle up to.  There are dozens of Ibsen portraits and photos and not one of them contains the ghost of a smle.

 

Henrik Ibsen's reputation in America is almost as forbidding as his portraits. He's not the first fellow who comes to mind when we think of a great night out. It's like partying on a cold foggy beach full of jagged rocks with something dying in the weeds. And yet.  And yet he is the second most performed playwright in the the world! The Doll House is actually the most performed play, according to Pravda anyway.  I went back to our records and found that Wild Duck is our fourth play by Henrik Ibsen, which actually makes him second with us too (previous productions include Hedda Gabler, Doll House and, memorably with the symphony, Peer Gynt). 

So it turns out people actually do want to party with Ibsen, and for good reason too.  He's actually great theatre--and by that I mean he's exciting, mysterious, and completely accessible.  Ibsen arrived on the scene at the end of the 19th century.  The high tide of melodrama was still running strong, but the new wave of realism was about to replace it.  Ibsen has a reptutation as one of the fathers of realism, and also of modernism, and the reputation is deserved.  But this should not obscure his melodramatic heritage and roots. Most Ibsen is melodrama!  There are heroes, victims, innocents, corruptors of virtue, secrets, dark pasts coming to light, loaded letters in the mailbox, daring rescues and sudden knocks on the door.  There is passion, excitement, discovery, pathos and excruciating tension.  Now this is great stuff to begin with, but with Ibsen it gets better because he brilliantly gives melodrama new twists, turns and dimensions which had never been seen before, and which have never been bettered since.

The Wild Duck is rarely performed in America, even thought Ibsen considered it is masterpiece.  In the middle of rehearsals now, I am finding out why.  We have the rare luxury of being able rehearse days as well as nights,and we are finding we need all the time we can get: the the characters are rich and particular, the action is detailed and complex, and the power is cumulative and astonishing.  This is a time when I feel I am the luckiest man in the world, and i don't even mind if i look a little more like the playwright every day.  But I don't mind, because Ibsen is not just another pretty face: he's #2!