The increasingly potent effect of Ohio State Murders at the Shaw Festival is that it strikes us repeatedly but quickly each time like an imperceptible fist. One feels deeply shaken long after the play’s mere 55 minute running time, perhaps dirtied by the racist realities depicted of the cruel world in which we live. The reasons for one’s rising despair are laid out or implied in Sophia Walker’s brilliantly unforced presentation of a life as one lives it, incident by incident. Thus, we who watch share Suzanne Alexander’s present tense as much as her past. As we watch we are committed to watching more because the whole gripping play hasn’t happened yet. And in 55 minutes the play has come and gone and we have been constantly reminded that we have witnessed an accumulation of personal horrors and wounds. A stunning experience throughout.
Some years ago, after I had edited and published two books – Talks with Jackie Washingto and More Than a Blues Singer- I was invited to says a few words about the subject of these books at a gathering on the first Jackie Washington Day in Hamilton. I remember stressing in my remarks that no one who was white could truly understand what it was like to be black in our racist culture. I had asked a number of black musicians for another book how they as blacks felt about the matter, musicians like Oscar Peterson, Jay McShann, B. B. King, Mavis Staples, Doc Cheatham, Dizzy Gillespie. Their responses were heartbreaking and provoked great anger on their behalf but, again, I was still a white in a white culture and not a black persecuted by this same culture with its flexible hypocrisies.
As mentioned before, I’ve been working on the publication of a new book on creativity, so this year I’m unable to divert many writing chops to deeply covering the Shaw Festival. There has been – I must say “invariably”- much cause for unwavering delight this season, say in the just seen Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense. As with One for the Pot, one surrenders to the wit and frenzy of the thing and joy in hilarity ensues nonstop.
But in writing this, I realize again how a director and cast can set in any play an atmosphere, a tone, a permeating atmosphere, an ever-present energy, a feeling of distinct vibes that we actually inhale as we look on. These are often subtle and, being ineffable experiences very hard to express in adequate if any words. But I again became aware of the vibe of a production while watching the Shaw Festival’s production Shaw’s Heartbreak House. I’d last seen this play at London’s Haymarket Theatre with Paul Scofield, Vanessa Redgrave, Felicity Kendall, and Daniel Massey all directed by Trevor Nunn, and, by way of the London production, it has become a part of my life.
It now remains so via the intriguing and compelling Shaw Festival production, and as with several other productions at the Festival I’d like to have another look at it, since no one can get a work of art at one go. Actually, the nature of a play’s production, with its endless variables, is in many ways a one-time experience that varies from performance to performance, as does a person in the audience. So, as we watch a play, what exactly are we watching? And who are we as we watch? We live a life of constant change and unending process, so the pretensions of “critics” are laughable, if only they did not do so much damage.
THE END OF THE WORLD APPEALINGLY PRESENTED
Since the fate of the world and all of us in it depends, in part, on the whims of three sadistic, cowardly and utterly contemptable men – Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Nettanyahu – I find regular solace in such news being delivered with class and style by each of the following:
Adrienne Arsenault, CBC
Ian Hanomansing CBC
Lucy Hockings BBC
Annita McVeigh BBC
Christiane Amanpour PBS
Rachel Maddow MSNBC
ALAN BENNETT’S SIX POETS: HARDY TO LARKIN in both book and CD is a pleasure either way, a very engaging read or listen that provides insights into the lives, works and characters of Hardy, Housman, Betjeman, Auden, MacNiece, and Larkin. It also includes autobiographical anecdotes and insightful evaluations in Bennett’s one-of-a-kind narrative voice of himself a major literary creator.