Archives for 2009

“It is good to be a flop sometimes but not at the time.”
Lydia Lopokova (quoted in Judith Mackrell, Bloomsbury Ballerina: Lydia Lopokova, Imperial Dancer and Mrs. John Maynard Keynes)

Mrs. T and I are much taken with Stratford, the charming little Canadian river town that is home to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. The people are friendly, the houses pretty, the food fabulous, and we’re staying at a six-room downtown boutique hotel called Xis that is all but unimprovable. The décor is modern but comfortable, while the staff is wonderfully attentive without being oppressive. Nor can I imagine a tastier continental breakfast than the one served here each morning, which features fresh fruit, homemade granola, local bread, and two kinds of cheese. If only there were a rowing machine in the basement, Xis would be perfect.

Stratford, much to my surprise, looks rather like Smalltown, U.S.A., surrounded as it is by vast expanses of flat farm country. What sets it apart from Smalltown, of course, is that it is the home of one of North America’s biggest drama festivals–there are four full-scale theaters in town–which explains why a semi-rural community should be home to boutique hotels and four-star restaurants, and why the Stratford Police Pipes and Drums should have turned out in fully bekilted force to serenade playgoers en route to the festival’s opening night, a red-carpet event that caused a lot of respectable-looking gentlemen to pull their tuxes out of mothballs.

This is the first time I’ve been to Canada in years, and I spent the whole of my previous visit at a friend’s summer house, so I’ve been walking around town each afternoon in search of impressions. Mostly I’m struck by how similar Canada is to America–and how intensely aware it is of its neighbor to the south. While I have no doubt that surface appearances are deceiving, it’s also true that every other story I read in the Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper, is either about the United States or makes prominent reference to it. I’ve yet to hear anything like a regional accent, and though one local restaurant claims to serve “world-famous Chinese and Canadian food,” the only evidence I’ve seen to date of a distinctively indigenous cuisine is the van parked a block from Xis that sells nothing but French fries and what Canadians call “pop.”

The main thing I’ve noticed since arriving on Sunday is that everyone here seems to be nice. Granted, I’ve yet to meet a Canadian I didn’t like, but the unfailing agreeability of the people whom I’ve encountered in Stratford suggests that niceness might well be a component of the Canadian national character. Between this visit and my 2008 encounter with the writing of Hugh MacLennan, I’m increasingly inclined to think that I ought to consider spending more time in Canada.

Might a visit to the Shaw Festival be in my future? Not this summer, alas–my dance card filled up months ago–but don’t be surprised if I head north again next year. I like it here.

The only surviving recording of H.L. Mencken’s voice, made at the Library of Congress in 1948:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

“An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it is also more nourishing.”
H.L. Mencken, A Little Book in C Major

Apropos of my posting about President Obama’s visit to New York to see August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, I received the following e-mail from a New York drama critic who shall remain nameless:

I find it sad that your massive ideological blinders prevent you from applauding the fact that a sitting president recognizes theater–never mind if it’s Broadway or a regional venue–as a worthy form of entertainment. If Bush, during one of his two terms, had attended a Broadway show, I can’t imagine you cobbling together this caviling post.
Or maybe you can explain to me how Bush promoted art in America, not simply fear and militarism.

To gratuitously impugn the motives of those with whom you disagree is the height of vulgarity. In this case, it’s also ignorant:
• I am, as anyone who knows my work is well aware, a constant and passionate advocate for American regional theater. That alone should be enough to explain why I wrote what I did.
• President Obama, so far as I know, has yet to attend a play in Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital and a major center of regional theater.
• I didn’t mention it in my original posting because I haven’t seen it, but Studio Theatre, one of Washington’s very best drama companies, is currently performing Radio Golf, August Wilson’s last play.
• My posting, needless to say, had nothing to do with President Bush, but I do think it worth pointing out that he put Dana Gioia, a poet of the highest distinction, in charge of the National Endowment for the Arts. Among countless other worthy things, Dana launched Shakespeare in American Communities, a program whose long-range impact on the American theater community–not just in New York, but in every part of the country–will doubtless prove to be vastly more significant than that of President Obama’s decision to take his wife to a Broadway show. (For what it’s worth, President Bush also appointed me to the National Council on the Arts, the NEA’s civilian review panel.)
So who’s wearing ideological blinders?

“I very much disapprove of the adage that you have to feel the performance completely every night on the stage. This is technically an impossibility, and really is the negation of the art of acting. The art of acting, after all, is not actual feeling but simulation of feeling, and it is impossible to feel a strong emotional part eight performances a week, including two matinées.”
Noël Coward, “The Art of Acting” (The Listener, Oct. 12, 1961)

President Obama’s trip to Broadway to see August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is reported to have cost the American taxpayer some $24,000, a statistic that did not escape the watchful eye of his political enemies. Says Gail Gitcho, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee: “If President Obama wants to go to the theater, isn’t the presidential box at the Kennedy Center good enough?”
Speaking as the Wall Street Journal drama critic who declared Joe Turner to be “a show you must see,” I’m delighted that the first couple took my advice. Speaking as the Wall Street Journal drama critic who believes that the best American regional theater is directly comparable in quality to anything on or off Broadway, I can’t help but wish that the Obamas had chosen instead to boost the local product by seeing Arcadia, Giant, or any of the other first-rate shows that have been playing in and around Washington, D.C., in recent weeks.
Everyone in Washington knows about Broadway, but comparatively few New Yorkers (and surprisingly few Washingtonians) are aware that the nation’s capital also happens to be one of the best theater towns in America. I hope that the president and his wife will help to publicize that happy fact the next time they feel like spending a night on the town.
UPDATE: A friend writes:

But isn’t it great that he supported a classic by an American playwright who wrote about American history? Well, I think so.

And so do I–but all things being equal, I also think that regional theater is more deserving of presidential patronage than theater on Broadway. In any case, politicians are in the business of balancing competing goods!