Joe Cillo

Particle Fever

Directed by Mark Levinson

 

 

This is a documentation of science as a media circus.  It is a public relations infomercial for CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research that operates the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland.  I was disappointed in it to the point of loathing.  I was expecting something akin to the old NOVA programs on PBS, where they seriously examine the scientific issues and provide in depth biographical portraits of the scientists involved.  It wasn’t anything like that at all.  This was superficial and childish.  It was a cross between the Oscars and a cheerleading section at a basketball game.  But this is a game that no one understands or knows how to play.  So it is hard to understand why anyone is cheering or what they are cheering for. 

They showed a graphic with an H in the center of it and told us that’s the Higgs Boson; that’s what we’re looking for.  It’s the key to the universe.  It’s the long sought Holy Grail of particle physics.  Well, . . . OK.  But no attempt was made to explain what it is and why it is so important, or why you need this gargantuan apparatus to find it.  Maybe they decided that we are all just too dumb to get it, so they would try to create some phony drama that would hop us up and entertain us.  But it didn’t work on me.  I have too much curiosity — which was the main justification they gave for building this behemoth in the first place.  The film should have pandered to that curiosity that is driving the scientists.  The scientific issues should be engaging and interesting enough in their own right to hold the interest of the audience.  But the filmmakers simply didn’t believe in it.  They opted to make something like late night television.  I’m getting more annoyed the more I think about it.

A hundred years ago a lone, eccentric scientist, driven by little more than his own peculiar interests, could build an apparatus in his basement that was capable of making important discoveries.  That is no longer the case.  It costs a lot of money to build and operate a mother bear like the Large Hadron Collider, and for that they need a lot of support from political leaders and the public, since it admittedly does not produce anything of immediate economic value.  Perhaps the debacle in the United States of the Superconducting Super Collider struck fear in their hearts, when the U.S. Congress, in 1993, canceled the project to build the world’s largest and most energetic particle accelerator after it was well under way.  Perhaps the thinking is that the way to garner public support is through propaganda, public relations gimmicks, and advertising, rather than trying to educate people about the subtleties of particle physics and the deep structure of the universe.  I disagree, but I am certainly no expert on public relations.  My opinion is that this attitude is mistaken and this film is misguided in its fundamental approach to the subject.  It is an unfortunate missed opportunity both to educate the public about recent developments in particle physics and to broaden the base of public support for large scale scientific enterprises of the type done in the Large Hadron Collider.  I don’t think this film is going to be popular, and I don’t think is serves the scientists well who participated in it and who care about pushing back the frontiers of human knowledge and understanding the origins and structure of the universe.  Even if you are suckered by the light entertainment this film offers, you won’t know very much more about the Higgs boson when you leave than you did when you went in.  

Program 3 — Firebird — San Francisco Ballet Performance

February 28, 2014

 

 

Three ballets make up Program 3:  The Kingdom of the Shades, which comes from Act II of a ballet called La Bayadére, by Ludwig Minkus and Natalia Makarova; Ghosts, by Kip Winger and Christopher Wheeldon; and Firebird, by Igor Stravinsky and Yuri Possokhov.  They all have to do with male idealizations and conflicts about women.  They are psychological in that they deal with the internal, psychic representations of women in the male imagination rather than with stories, events, or women who might be real.  Firebird is by far and away the superior of the three.

The Kingdom of the Shades is a sublime display of dance technique at the highest level and great visual beauty.  According to the program notes, “The scene is the opium-induced hallucination of Solor, who grieves for his love, the murdered temple dancere (bayadére) Nikiya.”  However, you would never guess this upon watching the ballet.  There is no suggestion of opium influencing Solor (Denis Matvienko), who presents several impressive solos that show him perfectly sharp and at the top of his game.  There is also no suggestion that Nikiya (Maria Kochetkova) has been murdered, or that she is even dead.  What you get is the sense that Solor is dealing with an illusion about a woman, not any woman in particular, but an abstraction of woman, a phantasm.  Nikiya is not a woman who actually exists or ever did exist except in Solor’s imagination.  It is a naive, idealized conception of a woman by someone who doesn’t really know women very well.  The music starts out somber, nostalgic and conflicted, but morphs into a series of waltzes that grow progressively cheesier as they go along.  What saves the ballet is the technical brilliance of the dancers, which we have become spoiled into taking for granted at the San Francisco Ballet, and the visual beauty of the staging and choreography.  Once again the San Francisco Ballet has taken something that is short on substance and turned it into a pleasing visual spectacle.

Ghosts is a more interesting performance in my eyes and ears.  The music is more interesting and the choreography and staging have a greater sense of freedom and imagination.  The ballet is abstract.  The theme is Ghosts.  Well, what is that?   What you see are pairs of male-female couples, that stay pretty much in those pairs throughout the performance.  There are a couple of triangles with two men and a woman, but there is a strong sense of the male-female couple throughout this ballet.  And the couples are strongly interactive.  They look at each other and touch each other and are quite involved with one another physically and emotionally all the way through.

My understanding of a ghost is that it has to do with the past and with the imagination.  A ghost haunts one by intruding into ones consciousness unbidden and unsolicited.  An experience or person of some significance, but long past, continues to disrupt and influence ones present emotional balance and cannot be easily dismissed.  One does not get that sense from this ballet.  There is no sense of the past that I could discern.  And these ghosts were benign, whereas I think a ghost suggests something ominous.  A ghost is an unwelcome presence in my understanding.  This ballet has no such overtones.   One does not get a strong emotional fix on this ballet, but it is visually interesting and danced with a high degree of skill.

The highlight of the evening was Firebird, with music by Igor Stravinsky and choreography by Yuri Possokhov.  This ballet has an interesting concept and is beautifully staged and danced to high quality music.  The dance and the music complement one another very effectively, which is something I especially like to see in a dance performance.  This is one I would like to see again, because I don’t feel like I got it all on the first viewing.  It is a complex, ambiguous story that allows for a wide range of interpretation.  I might have to study this one some before I come to a clearer conception.

The Firebird is a mythical figure (female) who seems to fall in love with a prince.  They part on good terms for reasons that are not clear and the prince then takes up with a princess.  The relationship between the Firebird and the Princess is not clear, and I am wondering if they are the same in some sense?  A devil-like character, Kaschei, appears and brings discord to the romantic couple.  The nature of the discord is not clear, but the Firebird reappears to dispel Kaschei and restore the couple’s harmony and equilibrium.  The story ends with an apparent wedding and a happily ever after sequel.  According to the program notes it is supposed to represent the ultimate triumph of good over evil, something I am finding it increasingly hard to believe in the older I get, but the story is very positive and uplifting and danced and staged at a superb level of skill and taste.

What I can say now is that this story, like the previous two ballets, has to do with male psychology, with male conflicts and idealizations of women, and it represents them in much more depth and interest than the previous two ballets.  The Firebird seems to represent the sensual, sexualized woman of the male imagination.  It is she who rescues the beleaguered young couple beset by turmoil sown by Kaschei, the disruptive, dissatisfied, restless aspect of the young male.  It is the Princess’s ability to tap the sexual energy of the Firebird, the hidden Firebird within herself, that enables her tame Kaschei, to hold the male’s interest, and create a lasting, stable bond.  It is not exactly a triumph of good over evil, but rather a triumph of human connection through sexual bonding over disappointment and dissolution.  This is one you should go see, if you have a chance.  It is both mentally challenging and aesthetically satisfying.

Tim’s Vermeer

Directed by Teller

 

 

This is a film that is going to appeal mainly to people who have a special interest in art history or painting.  It may have some appeal to the museum-going general public, but the audience on the night I attended was sparse.  There is not a lot of action — no, that’s not right.  There is not any action, except the slow process of creating a painting stroke by stroke — sort of like watching ice melt, for those of you on the East Coast.  But that can be very interesting, and it is, but you have to be interested in painting.  If you have ever tried to paint anything with any kind of realistic likeness, you’ll understand what I mean.

This film is slow moving and cerebral.  It is a documentation, a realization, of a theory advanced by artist David Hockney and physicist Charles Falco in 2001 that Renaissance masters like Van Eyck and Vermeer and others across Europe used optical techniques incorporating lenses and mirrors to create their stunningly accurate realistic images.  They did not just eyeball their subjects to realize the kind of microscopic accuracy that characterizes the Dutch Masters style on a painted canvas.  Tim Jenison, an inventor from Texas with no particular ability in art or painting, became familiar with Hockney’s theory and hatched the crazy idea to replicate Jan Vermeer’s studio, materials, and techniques from scratch and recreate one of Vermeer’s masterpieces, The Music Lesson, himself, using the techniques suggested by Hockney and Falco.  The film documents this process with attention to all the minutiae one might find in one of Vermeer’s paintings.

I saw this when I was rather tired after a long, busy weekend, and I started feeling a sense of tedium even though the subject and the process were very interesting.  We get to see shots of mixing paint from pigments, grinding a lens, carving a table leg on a lathe, building a studio, and gradually watching the painting take shape a few strokes at a time over a period of, I think, 213 days.  The result is a flawless replica of a Vermeer masterpiece.  Jenison takes it to David Hockney, who grades it favorably, and there is a discussion of the process and the significance of Jenison’s experiment.

Jenison did not prove that Vermeer used lenses and mirrors in order to paint.  Jenison’s experiment is akin to Thor Heyerdahl’s sailing of Kon-tiki from the shores of Peru to Polynesia.  Heyerdahl’s experiment refuted skeptics who said such a voyage was not possible.  It did not prove that anyone ever did sail such a route in such a vessel, but it opened an avenue of interpretation of other evidence that might have been closed off by dismissal or the presumption of fantastical improbability.  Jenison showed that using only materials and techniques available during Vermeer’s time, he could indeed replicate Vermeer’s achievement as an untrained painter.  This does not show that Vermeer painted this way, because there is no documentation of how Vermeer worked, but coupled with the fact that there is no documentation of Vermeer ever having been trained as an artist, the absence of a drawing beneath the painting that would have served as a guide and which was customary in the work of other artists of that time, and, most tellingly, I think, that some small “mistakes” can be discerned in Vermeer’s image that reflect distortions created by the use of a lens, all give the argument weight and strengthened plausibility.

It is a very interesting film that should be noted by painters, historians, and art students.  It presents a compelling case, but not a final conclusion, and I think it indicates a fruitful direction for further historical research.

 

 

 

 

“Journey’s End” is a romantic title for the R. C. Sherriff play that just opened at The Barn Theatre in Ross.  To get a better idea of what it’s about, go up close to the stage, and examine the set. Rough beams cross the ceiling, sweaty-looking cots sit on either side, wrinkled old papers are pinned to the walls, dirt spreads over the floor, and a view through the curtained opening shows more dirt outside. “Journey’s End” is not an idyll; it’s a war story. This is a British dugout in W. W. I France,  and the trench outside leads into battle. One of the play’s first lines is, “It’s coming pretty soon now.” Flashes in the sky outside and booms from distant artillery confirm that. But when?

 

This mid-season production from Ross Valley Players departs from the rest of the season, especially from the two comedies that bracket it. “Journey’s End” shows the tedium of waiting for battle and the ways the plucky cook maintains service, no matter what food he has to work with.  Captain Stanhope, who’s been here three years and whose nerves are “battered to bits,” numbs his existence with alcohol, while a newly-arrived junior officer is excited about the prospect and thinks it’s “an amazing bit of luck” that he’s been assigned to Stanhope’s battalion.

 

This all sounds remarkably real, and it was. Sherriff served in the war and was twice wounded. It has been said that “Journey’s End” was his tribute to those who didn’t survive. It came to the stage in London in 1928, with an appropriately young Laurence Olivier in the role of Stanhope. The Ross Valley production was directed by James Dunn, who’d seen the play in London in 2005 and was determined to bring it to Ross Valley, where it is having a west coast premiere. Dunn’s respect for the material shows in every scene.

 

The British accents seem natural and the pronunciations unaffected. Stanhope is referred to as “Stanup;” the town of Ypres is called “Wipers.”

 

The set, so important to the mood of the story, was designed by Ron Krempetz and assembled by Ian Swift. The Army costumes, helmets included, were  collected by Michael Berg. Maureen Scheuenstuhl arranged the dugout’s props.

 

Stephen Dietz, who plays the self-controlled 2nd Lt. Trotter, also designed the very effective sound effects. Ellen Brooks and Ian Lamers did the lights, which become more important as the play goes on.

 

Francis Serpa has the role of idealistic young Lt. Raleigh. Tom Hudgens is Lt. Osborne, everybody’s “uncle,” and Philip Goleman is the terror-stricken Hibbard.

 

Sean Gunnell portrays Pvt. Mason, the tireless cook, with Jeff Taylor as the Company Sgt. Major. David Yen appears in the Olivier role as edgy  long-termer, Capt. Stanhope, explaining his alcohol consumption as, “I couldn’t bear to be fully conscious all the time.”

 

Two former Peninsula  lads — Ross Berger and Steve Price — are double-cast. Berger plays Lance Cpt. Broughton and a German soldier, and Price is both Capt. Hardy and the Colonel.

 

R. C. Sherriff, says James Dunn, didn’t set out to write a pacifist play, but that’s what he wrote. It’s a strong and moving piece of theatre, and it comes almost 100 years from the beginning of that war.

 

“Journey’s End” will play at The Barn Theatre in Ross Thursdays through Sunday, Feb. 16. Thursday performances are at 7:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. Ticket prices range from $13 (children and students on Thursday nights) to $22. A “Talkback” with director and actors will take place after matinee performances in February.

 

To order tickets, call the box office at 456-9555 or see the website, www.rossvalley.players.com.

 

 

 

Giselle

San Francisco Ballet Performance

January 27, 2014

 

 

This is a very strange story that ultimately doesn’t make sense.  Maybe I just don’t understand it.  A prince disguises himself as a peasant and moves to a village to court a peasant girl of irresistible charm.  It would be like Jamie Dimon disguising himself as a bus boy to court a waitress in a restaurant.  A rather odd concept, don’t you think?  Especially since the prince is already engaged to another woman — but we don’t find that out until later. 

It is a narrative, and I do like ballets that attempt to create a narrative line simply through dance without verbal support.  But the narrative here is convoluted and rather bizarre.  Without first reading the synopsis in the program, a viewer would be lost trying to figure out what is going on.

The first act, after doing a passable job of establishing the story gives way to a long cadenza-like display of dancing virtuosity.  I had trouble grasping what all this athleticism had to do with the story.  There is nothing wrong with virtuosic dance.  This is, after all, the San Francisco Ballet.  But virtuosity for its own sake, is self indulgent and risks becoming dull if it is overworked.  I think this ballet, since it had so little substance in the story line, relied a little too much on dazzle.

I don’t like scenes where one or a small group of dancers perform while a multitude of bystanders sits idle on the stage just watching.  This technique is employed to excess in this ballet.  My feeling is that if someone is on the stage they should be doing something besides being part of the scenery.  I don’t like spearholders.  If they are doing nothing, then they should be doing nothing for a good reason.  Inertness should speak.  But in this ballet it doesn’t, and you’ve got these vast stationary multitudes on stage serving as an adjunct to the audience of paid ticket holders while a few dancers hold court.

The prince’s rival is Hilarion, a “woodsman,” or hunter from the village.  He is a known quantity to Giselle and she finds him much less appealing than the disguised prince.  Hilarion exposes the prince’s disguise, reveals his true identity, and the fact that he is already engaged to Bathilde, a woman of his own class.  This puts the kibosh on Giselle, and instead of taking it in stride and chalking it up to experience (or taking up with Hilarion), she runs herself through with the prince’s sword and dies.  You can always tell a vacuous story by the need for phony melodrama to pump some life into it — in this case, killing off the heroine at the end of the first act.

The music is undistinguished and tends toward the banal and the schmaltzy. Visually, however, it is very beautiful.  The sets, costumes, configurations and choreography are interesting and make a pleasing impression.  The dancers are outstanding, as usual.  The San Francisco Ballet has done a superb job with mediocre material.  Apparently it is enough to seduce the audience.  The house was full and seemed to give a good response to this vapid nonsense.

The second act was way too long.  It could have been cut in half to a much more pleasing effect.  It takes place at midnight in a forest where Giselle’s grave is located.  Giselle returns as a ghost accompanied by a cohort of Wilis, forest spirits all decked out in pure white wedding dresses, to comport with the prince who has come to visit her grave — in the middle of the night.  The tenor of the whole second act seems to imply no hard feelings on the part of Giselle toward the prince, even though she was upset with him enough to kill herself with his sword at the end of the first act.  Now that she is dead, all is forgiven and they dance like they are freshly love struck.  It’s idiotic and extremely repetitious.  I was getting so tired of it, just waiting for it to end, and it went on and on.  The curtain call seemed overdone as well, but then, I didn’t feel much like applauding and wanted to get out of there.

The moral of the story seems to be: you should not look for love outside your own social class, and if you are a woman, you are bound to get the worst of any such liaison — a reassuring, conservative, message for all the stodgy Republicans in the San Francisco audience.

KNIT ONE, PURL TWO AND YOU’RE FREE

Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit,
and it doesn’t hurt the untroubled spirit either.
Elizabeth Zimmerman

I was a nervous child.  I was terrified of the horrible dangers that lurked around every corner.  If I talked to strangers because they would abduct me; I must never argue with my mother or she would give me back to the Indians.  I couldn’t cross a street without risking my life; if I dared to boil water, the steam would blind me.  Touching the pan would cost a finger. Boys with nasty leers jumped out behind bushes at little girls like me, and teachers got angry for no reason at all.

Reality was too much for me to absorb.  My nerves were jangled and my nails bitten to the quick.  I jumped at an unexpected sound; I screamed when a light flashed; I hid under the couch when someone slammed the door.

My mother was a redhead with an attitude.  She was afraid of nothing. Danger actually thrilled her and she met it head on with eyes flashing and acid repartee that quelled the bravest among us.

And it was she who made me quiver and shake at the thought of facing another day with all its pitfalls.  It was she who reminded me that I might trip if I ran too fast; I might break that dish I was wiping; or jam the brush into my eye when I brushed my hair.  She couldn’t stand the fidgeting, the nail biting, and the twitches.  “This kid is driving me crazy,” she told my Aunt Hazel.  “She is a nervous wreck.”

My Aunt Hazel was a pragmatist.  When she didn’t get enough meat for dinner, she left home.  When she couldn’t earn enough money to support herself she married a bootlegger.  She was one of the first in that generation to think outside the box.  “Teach her to knit,” she told my mother.

“Are you crazy?” said my mother.  “She jiggles so much she’ll poke her eyes out with a knitting needled. “

“Well that’s one way to calm her down,” said Aunt Hazel.

So it was that my aunt took me with her to the Stitch In Time Knitting shop filled with yarn in every color and an oval table piled high with pattern books. Several ladies sat around that table drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes (this was 1943) chatting about the war effort and knitting scarves, mittens and caps for our servicemen.  Their needles clicked and they smiled and laughed as they worked.  As I watched these women moving those needles at the speed of light, I saw to my amazement that they were creating all kinds of garments: sweaters with lace sleeves, block patterns and colors, plaids and stripes and polka dots.

“I want to do that,” I told my aunt.

“I thought you would,” she said.  “What would you like to make?”

My aunt took me home that afternoon and told my mother, ”She’s knitting a scarf.  That will keep her in line.”

That was back in 1943, but my aunt’s wisdom holds truth even today.  In fact, a maximum-security prison in Brazil came to the same conclusion.  They have decided that if their inmates knit something for three days, it is worth one day off their sentence.  They know what my aunt figured out so many years ago.  Knitters don’t have time to get in trouble.  They might drop a stitch.

 

Wayne McGregor/ Random Dance

Dance Performance

Lam Research Center at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco

January 19, 2014

 

 

This is an abstract study in movement and agility.  It starts out with a male/female couple in a rather contentious vignette against a beautiful vocal sound track.  The opening segment was intriguing, however, the rest of the performance seemed to be a repudiation of this promising outset.  It was as if this opening represented something from the past that had given way to something much harsher, with less human connection and less emotional content.  Perhaps it is an oblique comment on modern life.  In any case the subsequent segments were set against  clashing, percussive electronic soundtracks that incorporated sounds like the din of a factory, passing trains, jet airplanes on an airport runway, cars with stereos thumping full blast.  Intrusive, noisy, discordant sounds.  Blaring strobe lights add to this grating atmosphere of unpleasantness in an aggressive frontal assault on the audience.  The dance that was set in front of all this was active, if not frenetic.  Movements are fluid, but staccato, disjointed, contorted and sometimes grotesque.  There is interaction between the dancers, but emotional connection seems shallow.  Bodies are emphasized by the almost nude costuming, but there is little eroticism.  The eroticism is fleeting and subdued.  There is a feeling of detachment and narcissism throughout, like the activity on the streets of a large city where people are busily and anxiously active, but completely self absorbed and indifferent to others with whom they might be sharing the street and even casually interacting.  This performance seemed determined to minimize emotional interaction.  The dancers did an admirable job with a physically demanding program.  It lasted one hour without an intermission — which I appreciated.  The length was just about right, because this strident, relentless cacophony gets to be taxing.  It was not exactly to my taste, but it did have interest.

 

 

The Invisible Woman

Directed by Ralph Fiennes

 

 

 

This movie is slow moving and hard to follow.  If you don’t know much about Charles Dickens — and most Americans don’t, let’s be real — it is very hard, especially at the outset (that is, for about the first forty-five minutes) to tell what is going on, who the characters are, or what their relationships are to one another.  It takes a long time to wind up the propeller on this airplane and get it off the ground.  The plot is very simple:  an unhappily married man in midlife meets a fresh young woman and has an affair with her.  The affair goes badly, however, and they end up separating.  That is about all that happens.  So in a story like that the interest is going to be in the psychological intricacies of the characters and their relationships to one another.  But this film does not succeed in that aspect.  It is called “The Invisible Woman.”  Presumably, that refers to Nellie (Felicity Jones), but it could more aptly refer to Charles Dickens’ wife, Mary, (Susanna Hislop), who is given short shrift in the movie, and presumably also in life.  More broadly, everyone in this movie is invisible, including Charles Dickens (Ralph Fiennes).  None of the characters are well drawn.  We do see Charles Dickens’ vitality, energy, and his love of celebrity and the acclaim he received for being a famous writer.  But we see nothing of what made him tick as a writer, why he wrote the things that he wrote, what inspired him, or the dynamics of his relationships with his women.  Nellie is an aloof, self-absorbed young woman, who seems oddly conservative for a man like Charles Dickens.  They seem to break up — sort of — after a train wreck in which Nellie is injured.  She goes on and establishes a life for herself after Dickens, but none of it has any rhyme or reason.  A lot of time and attention and expense has been spent on costumes, settings, and creating the cinematic spectacle.  The result, I feel, is rather overstaged.  This striving for cinematic perfection gives the film an unreal, illusory quality.  Perhaps it mirrors the way the characters and the affair have been portrayed.  The whole thing comes off as sanitized and romanticized, which the nineteenth century definitely wasn’t, nor was anything in Charles Dickens’ books.  I don’t believe anything in this movie, and it did not make me want to read the book.  It is the kind of movie where the more I think about it, the worse it gets.   I guess that is an indication that I should stop now, but you get the idea.

Falstaff

San Francisco Opera Performance

November 2, 2013

 

 

Every time I go to the opera I am struck by how conservative it is.  It has to be the most conservative art form in its philosophical and social outlook.  Falstaff exemplifies this beneath a rollicking, lighthearted surface.  It is a fast moving, involved plot line.  It is harder to follow on paper than in the stage realization.  If you just read the synopsis, it seems complicated, because there are so many characters and relationships to keep straight, but when you see it, everything is clear and natural.

The production is excellent.  The cast and orchestra are all of special merit.  The sets were not particularly imaginative or noteworthy, but they were effective and satisfactory.  Falstaff is the weighty center of the story.   His dominating presence carries the performance, very effectively portrayed by Bryn Terfel.  In contrast to The Flying Dutchman, which is a static, repetitious, psychological drama where almost nothing happens, Falstaff is nonstop action with a minimum of theorizing.  But it is not at all clear what the message is, or if there is one.  It seems rather confused and mixed up.

Falstaff is presented as an aging rogue, hopelessly deluded about himself, pursing younger (married) women whom he has no chance of winning.  The women take exception to his misguided interest and spend the whole play making sport of it and taking cruel, sadistic vengeance upon him.  It suggests the mean spirited side of Halloween.  Beneath the playful pretense, there is sharp-edged animosity.  Men are presented as bumbling fools (except for Fenton), Falstaff as delusionally grandiose, Ford as delusionally jealous.  Women are manipulative, conniving, controlling, and cruel, while superficially presenting as virtuous and innocent.  It is very simplistic and simpleminded.

I liked way the sadism and cruelty were emphasized in the third act.  During the scene at Herne’s Oak the fairies and goblins appear in white costumes with pointed hats reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan and carrying a cross to boot.  They then proceed to pepper Falstaff with all manner of abuse as he is lying helplessly on the ground.  It was rather excessively sadistic, I thought.  I was wondering if they were going to set that cross on fire.  I’m not one to insist on political correctness, but this was a rather odd sight to see in San Francisco:  the Ku Klux Klan torturing a helpless victim underneath a tree with the presumption of moral rectitude on the side of the torturers.  It was another graphic representation of the persecution of male desire that is so rampant in this society.  The whole community gangs up on old Falstaff just because he wants to have an affair with a miserably married woman whose jealous, possessive husband imagines her having affairs behind his back at every opportunity and regards marriage as the bane of his life.  It doesn’t really make sense, because if Falstaff is such a ridiculous figure who is not to be taken seriously, then why is it so necessary to mobilize the entire community to reign down this excessive punishment on him?  Maybe Falstaff is more of a threat than he is given credit for.  It is supposed to be comic and funny, but there really isn’t anything to laugh at.  Maybe my sense of humor has been poisoned by modern life.

In the end all is forgiven and we see the triumph of marriage after its being under withering attack throughout the whole drama.  This is what I mean by conservatism.  Traditional (Catholic Christian) values always seem to triumph in these operas.   Dissenters are vilified and punished and things are left pretty much the way they were at the outset.  If you like things the way they are, and have a generally cynical attitude toward life, you might go for this.

 

 

THE CLEAN PLATE CLUB

Life is uncertain;
Eat dessert first.
Ernestine Ulmer

Peter Svacha was halfway through eating his chocolate pudding, when the restaurant where he was eating told him it was closing time.  He was furious.  He left the place, got a chain saw, sliced a hole in the establishment’s door and crawled back to the table to finish his pudding.

I know exactly how he felt.  I too would obliterate anything that kept me from finishing my dessert.  I blame this determination on my mother.

My mother’s forte was creating yummy desserts.  She had one number that she always served after spaghetti dinner that was amazingly beautiful and absolutely luscious.  She would bake an angel food cake from scratch (my mother would have sooner danced nude on a fire hydrant than use a cake mix).  The finished product was so light she needed to weight it down to stay on the plate.  She whipped up a custard of eggs, milk, vanilla, sugar and pineapple juice and frosted her cake with it.  She decorated the entire production with pineapple slices, maraschino cherries and strawberries and served it with a lots of whipped cream and a flourish.

BUT there was a catch.  My mother never allowed us to touch dessert until we cleaned up everything she put on our dinner plates. Before we could tuck into her pineapple delight, we had to demolish spaghetti with meatballs, broccoli in a cheese sauce, a green salad and garlic bread. We suffered for that cake.  Indeed we suffered. We endured tummy aches, stomach spasms and guilt…but we managed to down it  and when we did, we finished it down to the last bit of pineapple.

My mother’s chocolate cake was the eighth wonder of the world.  It was made with six eggs, a ton of butter and enough chocolate to keep a candy store supplied for ten years. She topped it with a mint chocolate frosting to die for and set it in the middle of the dining room table so we could see what we had to look forward to at the end of the meal.

But first, we had to finish dinner. Remember?   She would serve us a huge slab of steak, potatoes with cheddar cheese, asparagus hollandaise, a tossed salad and wait until we cleaned our plates before we could touch that cake. I still feel the pain of forcing that cake into my packed middle but I know that even if my stomach burst, I would let absolutely nothing interfere with my demolishing that wonderfully melt in your mouth cake.

All I can say, is “go for it Peter Svacha. “ Finish that pudding and never count the cost.  For what is dinner without a sweet finish?? It is nothing more than duty with no reward, a rose with no fragrance, sex without climax. Life is to be lived, of course, but if it is to be savored, we must have dessert.