What Every Woman Knows (Play)

      J. M. Barrie What Every Woman Knows (1908) In style and tone, a cross between Pinero and Wilde. Some very good satire on the solemn (as opposed to the serious) man. A pseudo-Shavian play, not as acerbic or subtle as Shaw’s works, yet treating the same themes. Maggie the wife is of course the driving force in her husband John Shand’s political career, a fact he never fully acknowledges, although he eventually recognises her value to him, and even, in his awkward, self-centred way, comes to love her. Shaw did it much better, but Barrie did it more palatably: he didn’t insult his audience the way Shaw did. A nicely done play, which could be done successfully now, if the director can find the right balance between affectionate respect and camp. **½

The Importamce of Being Earnest (Play)

     Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) Why does this play work so well in contrast to Pinero’s melodrama? Its story is melodramatic (the discovery of lost orphans, the reconciliation of lovers, the winning of the approval of disapproving relatives, are all melodramatic motifs), but  unlike Pinero, Wilde knew and understood the artificiality of the genre, and played with it. Paradoxically, this playfulness makes more profound and subtle, that is truthful, points about morality, social standards, hypocrisy, and true goodness than Pinero’s laboured drama, which deals with exactly the same themes. Part of the difference is of course the language. Wilde’s style is realistic, or seems so, despite the many epigrams, or perhaps because the epigrams are just the ones a truly witty person (such as Oscar) would use in polite company. Wilde also understands the difference between superficial and deep feelings, Pinero’s characters operate at one level only. And Wilde doesn’t write his play to teach a lesson, but to entertain, which in the end teaches more powerfully than any overtly didactic work ever can. **** (2000)
     Update 2013: I've seen two film, one video, and one stage version of this play. In every medium, it works wonderfully well. It's thought of as a comedy, that is, a funny play. It's certainly funny, but it's also a comedy in Frye's sense: the story of an outsider hero who must undergo some test which nearly destroys him before becoming a full member of his community. That's one reason it's lasted. Another is that it shows how people can and do transcend the rules of the society to which they ostensibly subscribe. And of course it's a romantic comedy, and a vast multitude of theatre-goers are suckers for romance. That includes me.

The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (Play)

     Arthur Wing Pinero The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1894) One of the plays in Sixteen Famous British Plays (Modern Library 1942). These are all full-length scripts, so I will review them individually. I’ve been reading them since August.
     All these plays were in their time box-office hits. Reading them one is struck by the datedness of the style, characterisation, and structure. This play is no exception. It’s a social melodrama, a soap opera in other words, and a very dated one. Mrs. Tanqueray has a past which catches up with her: she has been the mistress of one of her husband’s old friends. Just as she has made friends with her husband’s daughter (a moral snob), the old friend shows up. She kills herself because she can’t bear the shame of it all. I suppose the play was considered daring in its time. It’s pseudo-Ibsen. It has its moments, but to me it seems overwrought and artificial. It appears to be intended as a tragedy, but at best it merely achieves pathos.
     Why can’t we believe in these stories nowadays? Perhaps because even in their own time they were unbelievable. Their content and form are social parables (which all melodramas are, according to Davies), and weren’t intended to be taken literally. Yet the style is naturalistic, and the tone is Ibsenist. The play doesn’t really know its own genre, in a way. That it would work as theatre is plain. but since it’s dated, it would be hard to do well now. Interesting as a period piece, its values seem not merely quaint but oppressive to us, so it might have interest precisely because it’s so dated. But most theatre goers would be offended, I think, by the smugness of the male characters. *1/2 (2000)

The Hospital (Movie)

     The Hospital (1971) [D: Arthur Hiller. George C. Scott. Diana Rigg] Dr Bock (Scott), chief of staff, feels suicidal because he thinks he’s accomplished nothing worthwhile. His marriage had ended, his children are petty crooks, the hospital he works for is a shambles. Just how much of a shambles becomes apparent when a series of murders occur, all of them the result of the murderer’s taking advantage of the chaos and sloppiness and poor management. Barbara Drummond (Rigg), the daughter of a comatose patient, wants to take her father home to Mexico, and a group of community activists wants to stop hospital expansion. Bock and Drummond have an affair; her father, whose brain has been fried by the semi-competent treatment, turns out to be the murderer; and Bock turns down the opportunity to go to Mexico with Drummond, because, as he says, "Someone has to be responsible." But he does help her get her father away from the scene of his last murder, and on the way to Mexico. I suppose this evasion of justice is what makes this a "black comedy", as IMDbF terms it.
     Doesn’t sound like much of a movie, and it isn’t, but it has an odd retro charm. It’s very 70s in its tone, plotting, acting, and editing. Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote and co-produced, received one of his three Oscars for the script, which is certainly well-constructed. But a well-constructed script doesn’t necessarily give us characters real-seeming enough to engage us beyond the plot. Didn’t do it for me, anyhow.
     My main interest in the movie was to see how Chayefsky resolved the various twists and tangles he invented. The resolution, Bock’s surfacing from his deep funk and taking control of his life (and the hospital), seems to be contrived. Marie said the movie wasn’t very Hollywood, by which she meant that it didn’t have the happy superficiality we nowadays expect from Hollywood (when we don’t expect gory horror, that is). But the ending is pure Hollywood I think: only a Hollywood movie would show a character enjoying such an easy cure for depression. **½

Dear Life (Book)

     Alice Munro Dear Life (2012) The latest, and I suspect the last, of Munro’s story collections. She demonstrates the same ruthless powers of observation as in her other books, and the same ability to show us the moment of revelation, of self-discovery, of the momentous decision. But the decisions that change the course of a life are never known as such. In Munro’s world, as in real life, people choose what seems to them a minor expedience. Its effects redirect a the course of a life, but that’s not seen for months or even years, when a chance glimpse of the past overlays the present with unrealised and unrealisable possibilities.
     Munro shows us the bones of a life, the topography of desire and need and fear and pleasure that underlies the roads and fields and woodlands of the everyday busyness and chores that we believe is the defining landscape of our lives. But this power of seeing below the surface is not enough to make art. Munro’s style wastes no words. In a few words, a single phrase, she can show us the essential detail, the unexpected insight that tilts the world into focus, the one remark that clarifies forever the relationship between two people who would otherwise never know what roles they play in each other’s lives, that one memory that shows what could have been. Her stories are not only life-like, but like life.
      Reading Munro stories, we are able to imagine our own lives as random patterns of our own and other people’s choices. She suffuses that randomness with significance. Not meaning or purpose, for meaning and purpose imply predictability and planning and successful progress towards a goal. In a random universe prediction is impossible. But we may explain the random sequence. Munro explains how a life’s pattern came to be, and leaves the why unanswered and unanswerable. Munro has the skill to leave us satisfied with the how. She leaves us accepting that the how is all we’ll ever know, and that it’s enough. ****

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (movie)

     The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) [D: Peter Jackson. Ian McKellem, Martin Freeman, etc] The Hobbit interpreted as an action flick. Quite entertaining, but not satisfying. Yes, the story is a fantasy, so we need special effects. And yes, there are battles and such in the book, but they don’t go on and on and on the way they do here. After a while the fighting is quite boring. I kept myself amused by picking out allusions and references to other fantasy quests, such as Star Wars.
     It’s a pity the special effects and battles take up so much space and directorial energy, because the effect of culture clashes on the interplay of the characters, the way the characters grow as they journey, the reminders of the ancient grudges that propel and complicate the plot, all these are quite good as far as they go. But the relentless focus on "action" doesn’t leave much room for or attention to these things. Action isn’t bashing other people over the head with magic swords, it’s the decisions that a character must make in the face of competing interests, inadequate data, and conflicting motives. The motivations of the villains could have been explored too: why are the Orcs such savage enemies of dwarves and men and hobbits, for example? Is Saluman already corrupted by Sauron? Why do the elves decide to assist the dwarves? Their alliance has always been one of convenience. They have little in common besides enemies. I think that Jackson has simplified Tolkien’s vision to mere diagrams. Evil is more complex than shown in this movie.
     Of course, anyone who has read the books, and/or seen at least the first part of The Lord of the Rings can follow the story well enough. Several of the actors reprise the characters they portrayed in the film trilogy. The universe of the stories is well imagined and realised. The telling of the tale proceeds briskly enough, the only longeurs are those comic-book fights. The filming angles and special effects betray adaptation to 3D, which in my opinion is unnecessary. But if you go see it prepared to suspend disbelief, you’ll spend an entertaining three hours. **½

Noel Coward: The Complete Short Stories (1985)

     Noel Coward The Complete Short Stories (1985) Coward was a very clever writer. All of these stories are worth reading, but few stick in the memory or move the heart. I think he constructed stories rather than told them. Several are more or less gloomy shaggy dog stories: "The Wooden Madonna" tells how a self-satisfied young playwright patronises an ordinary bloke Englishman and becomes the unwitting mule for diamond smugglers. Others show a rather too neat resolution of the plot: In "Nature Study" the dissatisfied wife of a stuffed shirt type runs off with the chauffeur. Coward has a sharp eye for folly, smugness, complacency, hypocrisy, and worse vices. But he also has a soft spot for people who are just trying to get by as best they can, held back from worldly success by kindness and decency.

       He knows the theatre, and several of his best pieces are set in that milieu. The characters in these stories have the ring of truth: I wonder if someone who knew Coward and his career intimately would recognise their prototypes. In the best story, "Me and the Girls", the narrator recounts his life as a small-time manager/producer who wanders the show circuit with a troupe of girls who perform in shows devised to make the most of their small talents in singing, dancing, and sketch comedy. He’s a man who has made the best of his few chances at love and affection; now he’s dying, and we realise that his tawdry and messy life has been marked by courage and kindness. Not a bad legacy for anyone. I saw video versions of this and "Mrs. Capper’s Birthday", and enjoyed them both.
     Nor are these stories a bad legacy for Coward. They are skilfully made, and they consistently make heroes of those who practice the ordinary virtues of kindness and decency. You may guess from this that the tone is often rather sad and occasionally world-weary. You would be right. His short stories amount to novels in miniature. Like other short story writers, Coward can suggest a whole life in a few incidents. I enjoyed reading these stories, even the early ones where the mechanics of the plot were a little too obvious. ** to ***