Our Town (Review)

Our Town (Thornton Wilder, 1938) Presented by Theatre SMC (Sault Ste Marie) D: J Lauzon & L Durat. With Vernon Bailey, Bridget Murphy, Alexandra McCauley, Andrew Lorimer and others.
     We went to see this play at the Quonta competition in Elliot Lake. It was the only one Marie wanted to see. It was well done, as far as I could tell a faithful revival of Wilder’s original vision (I saw the play many years ago in Edmonton.) The story, set in Grover’s Corners,  is well known: Emily, the central character, is shown growing up, falling in love and marrying the boy next door, eventually dying in childbirth. Several other characters recur, and the Stage Manager (who speaks directly to the audience) brings us up to date on the events in Grover’s Corners since the previous act. The set is a nearly bare stage, the story moves forward in set-pieces (many of which were even then already cliches of stage and screen), and the wonder is that this severely schematic script can and does engage us.
     Thornton’s talent was using stereotypes in a way that we forget they are stereotype. There is enough particularisation that we care about the characters, yet Wilder continually reminds us that we are watching what amounts to an almost abstract fable, a parable, about the value of ordinary life and ordinary people. This life is all we can be sure of having, so we should value the people that we love and who love us.
     The production was very good. Murphy as Emily was especially good. Vernon Bailey found just the right note of matter-of-factness as Stage Manager that his direct talk to us seemed natural. The pace was occasionally slower than I thought it needed to be, and over it there hung a whiff of Reverence for a Classic. But overall I enjoyed the play. Well done. ***

The Hugging Trees

The hugging trees on December 26 2012. See March 8 post for an earlier photo.

Two old movies (Review)

The Accidental Tourist (1988) [D: Lawrence Kasdan. William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Geena Davis] Macon writes travel guides for people who have to travel, and don’t really want to leave the comforts of their American home(s). His son was killed during a robbery, and he has been unable to come to terms with his grief. His wife Sarah asks for a divorce and leaves. When Macon takes his badly behaved dog to a kennel for boarding while he’s on his next assignment, he meets Muriel, who offers to train the dog. She has a son. Macon moves in with her. Eventually, Macon has to choose between the two women, and chooses Muriel. Along the way, Macon’s sister Rose meets Julian, Macon’s publisher, who falls for her. That ends with a happy marriage.

    Obviously, this is a romantic comedy, but it’s not the kind that indulges in farcical or physical humour.  The movie is slow, languid, low-key, it has the feel of one damn thing after another. Anne Tyler wrote the book; based on the few of her things I’ve read, the movie seems a faithful reproduction of her tone. Tyler is interested in the ways in which people manage to eke out some sort of happiness in lives beset with bad luck, pain, stifling habits, obligations to exasperating people, the vagaries of emotion, and the desire for connection. It dragged a bit here and there, but despite that seemed shorter than its two hours.
     There’s a lot of incident and incidental social comedy. Although set in Baltimore, it feels like a New England movie: the characters seem afraid of acknowledging their feelings, let alone expressing them. It’s Muriel’s unapologetic need for pleasure and purpose, not to say any scraps of casual income she can gather, that propels the story. Without her, Sarah and Macon would have divorced without coming up from under their stifling grief, or  understanding how and why their marriage is over. The cliche descriptor is “bitter sweet.” It fits, which might make you think the movie is a cliche, too, but it’s not. It’s one of those quiet little stories that sticks in your mind, and you don’t quite know why. ***


Crossing Delancey (1988) [D: Joan Micklin. Amy Irving, Peter Riegert] Another romantic comedy, one of many that show how one of the partners is mistaken about how to live his or her life, and must be rescued from a fate amounting to death by a wooer who appears to be everything but the right one. In this case, it’s Isabelle, a 30-something New Yorker in the book business, who has deluded herself, and Sam Posner, a third generation pickle seller, who must persist until he has won her. Isabelle’s infatuation with Anton Maes, a third-rate poet, distracts her into believing she wants an intellectual life. Then Sam tells that he saw her three years before, and he only agreed to allow a matchmaker to set him up with Isabelle because he’s been thinking about her ever since. This confession sparks an interest that slowly but surely grows into the kind of comforting passion that spells happy ever after.
     Nicely done, this movie was a pleasure to watch. I’m a sucker for romance, especially the kind where a Knight (Sam) rescues a Maiden (Isabelle) from a Dragon (Anton). ***

Politics & money

     No, this won't be a rant about how much influence the moneyed have on politics. The only rant is this sentence:

"Politics is driven by misconceptions about money and wealth."

     Too many people think that money is wealth, and that therefore it should be hoarded. The phrase we use is "saving money", which makes hoarding money sound like a virtue. It's not. Our ancestors knew that: the money hoarder is a miser, a miserable Scrooge.
    Money is not wealth. Wealth is goods and services. Money and wealth flow in opposite directions: When I give you a $10 bill for a dozen used books at your yard sale, I have a dozen used books, and you have a $10 bill. You can now exchange that for something you think is worth $10, say a small roast and some mushrooms, from which you will make yourself a stew. The owner of the grocery store can use the $10 to pay an employee. Eventually, that $10 bill could show up in the hands of a neighbour who wants to buy a dozen used books from me at my yard sale. In the meantime, it has enabled a great deal of trading of wealth.

      If I hang onto the $10 bill because I think it's wealth, then you can't sell me your used books, and you can't buy the stew meat and mushrooms, and the grocery store owner will have to get $10 from someone else, and so on. Money is only good for one thing: spending. As long as people spend money, wealth will be traded. More than that: wealth will be created, because people want to trade it.
     In Cabaret, the MC sings "Money makes the world go around." Yes it does. Of course, we don't really need money, we could barter directly, or use IOUs, but money makes it much easier to trade with each other. Trading distributes wealth, which is a good thing. If we couldn't trade our wealth, if we couldn't make wealth to trade, we would each one of us have to find what we needed to survive. Just like the animals who don't have any notion of creating or trading what they need.
     Money makes it easier to share the wealth. That's all.

More trees

Here are the most recent tree photos, posted later than planned. This is a view from our bedroom balcony.

Russian olive in front yard. Both pictures were taken on March 3, the day we had planned to drive to Toronto, but the heavy snow made the highways too risky.

Trees (Photos of)

Here are a couple of my photos of trees, made back in the days of black and white film. In the darkroom, I fiddled with contrast and range by selecting paper and controlling exposure and development. Now, I just move sliders on a tool pane. The trees hugging each other have survived. I will post the most recent photo tomorrow. If you like these pictures, leave a comment.

The Book of Bunny Suicides

Andy Riley The Book of Bunny Suicides (2003) Cartoons illustrating the title theme. Some are bizarre and gruesome (a bunny jumps into a colander, the rock at the other end of the see-saw flips on top of it, it’s reduced to bunny noodles), others merely bizarre (a bunny sits on a bobsled run reading the paper while a four-man sled hurtles down on it), some are just funny (a bunny has attached dynamite to the leaning Tower of Pisa, and is about to depress the plunger). I have no idea how bunny lovers would react to this book. Oh wait, I’m a bunny lover, and I thought this book was funny. Ok, mildly amusing: the joke wears off about half way through. **-½