Archives for 2008

It’s a bad day when, as an arts and culture commentator, you read a headline like: “Bad Day by Daniel Powter has been the most played song in the UK over the past five years. What is it about this track and others that keep popping up everywhere we go?” and realize that you’ve neither heard of the song nor the artist in your life.

My discomfiture was palpable this morning when I came across the aforementioned BBC headline. Not living in the UK is hardly an excuse for not knowing the song. ‘Bad Day’ did very well in the U.S., soaring to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 charts within seven weeks of being released. “Urk,” I thought to myself. “It really is time to renew that subscription to Entertainment Weekly and start listening to commercial radio again.”

It was only when I visited Powter’s website that I realized that although his name and the title of his song were completely unfamiliar to me, I had of course heard the catchy-mood melody thousands of times before — at the gym, in stores, on the radio…In fact, I feel like I know the song so well that I can even sing most of the lyrics off by heart. This is kind of weird and just a bit scary considering that the melody has made an impression on my neural pathways completely unconsciously.

I hope Powter’s song-writing powers don’t fall into enemy hands. Imagine what unscrupulous warlords could do with songs as sticky as “Bad Day.” The brain-washing potential is frightening frankly.

A dear old friend of mine in London, Matthew, was browsing about on my blog the other day and read my post about tuning into the terrific London Calling radio show on my way home one dark Tuesday night.

In the spirit of discovering new things, Matthew sweetly sent me information about two very different artists whose work is intersecting in an unusual way.

The first is Andrew Bird, a singer-songwriter and classically-trained violinist, whose spiraling, whimsical songs get under the listener’s skin from the very first hearing. Matthew sent me two tracks — “11.11” and “Headsoak”. I was instantly hooked. I love the singer’s doleful voice and spiraling string lines. His music is gentle in some ways, but there’s fire in this guy’s belly. I gather he’ll be performing at the Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco on August 24 (Radiohead’s performing the day after.) I may have to stump up $85 for a ticket.

Matthew also alerted me to comic book artist Jeffrey Brown. Brown’s frank, open-hearted and down-to-earth style has the same whimsical quality as many of the Bird songs I’ve heard so far. Matthew also sent me a few pages from one of Brown’s comics in which the author hears one of Bird’s songs in a cafe one day and then endeavors to try to find the name of the song and the person who wrote it. The song gets welded in his memory and has powerful associations for his life. It’s a delightful read.

The relationship between Brown’s auto-biographical character in the comic strip and Bird’s songs drew Daniel Levitin’s great book This Is Your Brain On Music to mind. In the book, Levitin talks about how songs trigger powerful memories and what mechanisms in the brain — which center on “multiple-trace memory models” — help to contribute to this phenomenon. I sent Matthew a couple of pages from the book. Here’s a taster:

A maxim of memory theory is that unique cues are the most effective at bringing up memories; the more items or contexts a particular cue is associated with, the less effective it will be at bringing up a particular memory. That is why, although certain songs may be associated with certain times in your life, they are not very effective cues for retrieving memories from those times if the songs have continued to play all along and you’re accustomed to hearing them — as often happens with classic rock stations or classical radio stations that rely on a somewhat limited repertoire of “popular” classical pieces. But as soon as we hear a song that we haven’t heard since a particular time in our lives, the flood-gates of memory open and we’re immersed in memories. The song has acted as a unique cue, a key unlocking all the experiences associated with the memory for the song, its time and place.”

This makes sense. I wouldn’t be surprised if whenever I hear an Andrew Bird song or come across a Jeffrey Brown comic strip, Matthew pops into my head.

P.S. Something you should know about Matthew: When he’s not being a doctor, he helps out at a hip-hop karaoke night in London. For some pictures and information about the event, click here.

I recently re-read Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim. The novel might be more than half a century old (my copy says that it cost “3’6” on the front, referring to the former British currency). But the book still retains its bite, as musty as it is.

I’ve been especially struck by the way Amis describes oboists, being one myself. He reserves a special place of hatred in his heart for this brand of woodwind player. You can almost taste the smirk on the author’s face every time a reference to “Johns”, the unfortunate oboe-playing character in the story, crops up, viz:

DIxon had resolved to travel to the Welches’ by bus to avoid Johns’ company, so he now got up, thinking he ought to impart some specific warning to Atkinson. Unable to fix on anything, however, he left the room. Behind him he heard Atkinson speaking to Johns again: “Sit down and tell me about your oboe.“

I was reminded of Lucky Jim only yesterday, when I found myself sitting once again between two extremely fussy American oboists at an orchestral gig in Oakland.

I hate to make rash generalizations, but if oboists are characterized as a neurotic bunch, I’m beginning to think that the American players are to blame. In the UK, the average oboe player — myself included — is ready to play within about minute. We plonk ourselves down in our seats, stick a reed in our mouths to get it going, put our horns together and get on with it. End of story.

But in this country, it seems to take oboists at least a quarter of an hour to get going. The players over here are forever mucking about with their reeds, soaking them in little pots of water, fussing with the key work on their horns, etc etc etc. It’s a wonder that they ever get their acts together in time to give the customary first ‘A’ that’s needed to tune the rest of the orchestra.

Yesterday’s oboists were among the most extreme I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing with. The one to my right spent 20 minutes just selecting a suitable reed. Meanwhile, the one to my left had the most elaborate set-up I’ve ever seen in all my years of playing. This included a three-pronged instrument stand on which to place his oboe and cor anglais, an artillery-sized reed case, the most intricate-looking music stand I’ve ever sat next to (and he set it up with the sort of form normally reserved for army privates putting together a rifle), a full-sized strip lighting system for attachment to his music stand, and an enormous electronic tuner/metronome. And let’s not forget his custom-made mini “shelf” featuring a velvet cushion on which to place reeds and a special hole for a water pot — which the player proceeded to attach to his stand with industrial precision.

This country of course boasts amazing oboists. But I wonder if Amis’ negative feelings towards this segment of the musical population might stem from negative experiences he had with American players?

One of the most common things for San Francisco-based actors to do if they’ve had a modicum of success on local stages and don’t have any strong ties to The Bay Area, is to decamp for Los Angeles or New York. I’ve seen this happen time and time again in recent years.

Sometimes, an actor’s decision to up sticks makes sense. One actor acquaintance of mine, whom I shall call D, recently left for LA. He decided to make the move after ten years of working as an actor in San Francisco. D had a string of successes to his name. This really strong track record as a theatre performer enabled him to build up over the years a devoted following among audiences as well as links to several great local theatre companies, one of which he will always be able to call his artistic home.

D left because he wanted a change and wanted to explore the world of film acting for a while. Although D’s decision to launch a film career in Hollywood wasn’t auspiciously timed owing to all the Union issues going on right now, D had a good foundation to start from. Not only does he have several apparently significant contacts in the movie industry down there, but he also has family in the LA area. With the promise of free accommodation and access to a car, the move to LA seemed a lot less daunting to D than it might have done to another Hollywood hopeful.
In addition, D had also managed to line up a couple of roles in theatre productions in San Francisco and Berkeley for 2009. This meant that he would continue to keep his ties to the Bay Area performing arts scene.

Whether D lands his dream movie roles in Hollywood or not is neither here nor there at the end of the day. He went to LA in the spirit of adventure, and from the recent email I received from him, it sounds like he’s having a good time and making contacts, even though business is slow for the time being.

I sense that the desire to move seemed to come from a deep place within D and he had taken all the right steps before he left to make the transition as smooth and stress-free as possible.

D’s case is unusual though. Not everyone, after all, is lucky enough to have family and friends in the industry and free apartments and cars to avail themselves of in New York or LA. More often than not, Bay Area theatre people move to New York or LA in under altogether more precarious circumstances. Another actor actor I know, F, decamped to New York after the success of one solo show. The show had transferred from a small to mid-sized venue and had earned rave reviews.

F decided that New York would receive him with open arms and he jumped ship for the East Coast while people were still talking about him on the West. Unhappily, things didn’t go the way he’d planned after the move. And beyond the one hit solo show, he didn’t have any other strong ties to the Bay Area arts scene and didn’t have any contacts or gigs lined up in New York. Judging by conversations I had with the actor, who returned to The Bay Area after a year of trying to make inroads in New York, his move had been motivated mostly by egotism. Riding high on the success of his solo show in The Bay Area, he thought people on the other side of the country would treat him like he was a celebrity.

There’s something refreshing about F’s impulsivity; I admire him for giving New York a go. But the entire experience completely embittered him. By the time F returned to the Bay Area, he was completely jaded. Since his return a few years ago, he hasn’t to my knowledge produced any new work, though he did do a short reprise run of his hit solo show from the mid-1990s in a small theatre a couple of years ago.

The trend of actors moving away from San Francisco doesn’t especially worry me. There are enough fantastic performers who decide not to move to relegate the issue to the minor leagues. Besides, I’m of the belief that change is a good thing if it truly comes from the gut as opposed to the head. But it strikes me that people considering a move to one of the bigger metropolises on either coast should get in touch with what they’re feeling and carefully analyze their motives before making the leap.

Just spent a beautiful evening at The American Bach Soloists’ Summerfest. It all began at 6pm with ABS principal violone, contrabass and viola da gamba player, Steven Lehning, giving a lighthearted yet informative lecture on early string instruments. Then there was a delicious picnic supper with music provided by the early music ensemble The Whole Noyse. The evening ended with a (mostly) expertly played concert of string quartets by Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn. (I say mostly because the intonation on the opening number, Beethoven’s D Major quartet Op 18 No 3, was a little dicey.) The players were Adam LaMotte and Carla Moore (violins), Elizabeth Blumenstock (viola) and Tanya Tomkins (cello.)

One of the best things about the evening for me, however, was the discussion I had after dinner with Stephen Escher, The Whole Noyse’s cornett player.

The cornett is a velvety sounding hybrid between a brass and woodwind instrument that was all the rage between the 1500s and 1700s. The instrument is made out of wood (usually box wood), has open finger holes like a recorder and a small, trumpet-like mouthpiece. It’s often curved in shape and fiendishly difficult to play.

I once played a cornett. I think I was about 16 at the time. I don’t remember much about the experience except that I almost burst a lung trying to get a note out of the thing.

Anyway, it was wonderful to hear the instrument come to life in The Whole Noyse’s program of short works by Italian composers of the 1500 and 1600s like Antonio Troilo, Giovanni Taeggio and Florentino Maschera. I also learned some fascinating facts about this weird and rarely heard instrument from Escher. Some highlights of our conversation:

The cornett’s curved shape may derive from an earlier form of the instrument that was made out of an animal’s horn.

Some cornetts are straight and some even have the finger holes on the other side of the curve. (I asked Escher if this was to make playing easier for southpaws. He didn’t think so.)

If you want to buy a cornett today, you have to visit the few people who still make them. One master craftsman (who made Escher’s instrument) lives in Utah. Other respected cornett makers reside in Montreal and Paris.

Escher doesn’t really know why the cornett fell out of use. According to Escher, one explanation might be to do with a great plague which hit Italy in the 17th century. “It killed off most of the great cornett players of the era,” said Escher. “And no one really kept the tradition alive in Italy after that.”

The 17th annual San Francisco Fringe Festival kicks off on September 3. Judging by what I’ve read about the lineup so far, a notable difference between this year’s Festival and its previous incarnations seems to be the plethora of site-specific work.

In recent years, the festival has offered one or two site specific shows — I caught one offering in a cramped hotel bedroom last year; another company staged a show on a traveling bus a couple of years earlier.

In addition to hosting 30 shows at the festival’s headquarters, The Exit Theatreplex, the festival will present a further 18 shows at venues ranging from Grace Cathedral to doorways on Market Street (the main road that runs like a backbone through the middle of the city.)

Some of the Festival’s most creatively situated shows include:

To Kill For, film and theatremaker Lucy Gray’s remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo at Grace Cathedral. Probably the most famous film ever shot in San Francisco, Vertigo celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. The show will be staged in the 99-seat chapel in the nave of the Cathedral.

The Doormen, a street theatre-esque tour led by performance artist Barbara Michaels of the seedy doorways of Market Street.

Theatre that Moves, another tour, this time on a 15-passenger bus, led by artist Mercedes Segesvary.

If You’re Going to San Francisco, a series of 16 performances by Greedy Fish at Union Square. The series is billed as “a celebration of some of the unique characters and conflict that have shaped the city “built on vice, ambition, and sand dunes.”

Peg-Ass-Us, a puppet-infused burlesque show staged at the Centre for Sex & Culture on Mission Street by New York artists John Leo and Sophie Nimmannit.

Last Exit, a show staged in a basement by San Francisco company Scrap & Salvage. The location can’t be revealed, according to the Festival’s organizers, because the landlord “sort of doesn’t know about it.”

“I was looking for more site-specific pieces and I’m happy to say I got them,” Festival director Christina Auguello told me over the phone yesterday.

No Fringe Festival is complete, as far as I’m concerned, without giving audiences the chance to explore the strange and cobwebby nooks and crannies of a city. It’s all part of the adventure. I’m happy to hear that SF Fringe is embracing the concept.

Yesterday, I had interesting phone conversations with the dramatist David Henry Hwang and the movie director David Cronenberg. We were talking about the new opera version of The Fly, for which Hwang has created t he libretto based on David Cronenberg’s cult 1986 movie (as well as the 1958 Kurt Neumann film and the original 1957 novella by George Langelaan.) The score has been written by Howard Shore, who wrote the music for the 1986 film.

From talking to Hwang and Cronenberg, it sounds like they’ve been aiming for a compelling fusion of film and theatrical sensibilities.

According to Hwang and Cronenberg (and some reports about the project in the media) the opera makes use of more makeup and special effects than you would normally see on the opera stage. The production involves a puppet baboon and baritone Daniel Okulitch has to scale the walls and ceiling of the set in a harness. Shore’s score involves many truncated back and forth exchanges between characters, like film dialogue. The libretto also references a couple of Cronenberg’s other films, including Scanners and Videodrome.

Yet the creative team, according to my sources, isn’t in the least bit interested in re-creating Cronenberg’s movie on stage. The production uses no video; the story takes place in flashback and is set in the 1950s; Cronenberg says he hasn’t even watched his movie since it came out in 1986.

But the point in the opera where film and theatre intersect most intriguingly by the sounds of it, is where Cronenberg employs an acrobatic double to perform a daring physical act beyond the capabilities of Okulitch (who, granted, is in better physical shape than most opera singers and reportedly does most of his own stunts.) Yet, as Hwang tells me, even though Cronenberg uses this highly filmic technique on stage, Okulitch’s momentary stand-in follows theatrical conventions in the sense that the opera’s creators haven’t tried particularly hard to find a perfect physical match for the singer. The acrobat employed to do the scene in Paris, Hwang says, didn’t look anything like Okulitch. “We’re not trying to fool anyone in the audience,” Hwang says.

Theatre relies on audience members suspending their disbelief to a much greater degree than film. But I wonder if this film-theatre fusion will work for me when I see the production in September when it arrives in Los Angeles? Or will Cronenberg and his collaborators have created a hideous monster — a theatrical Brundlefly.

Following the world premiere in Paris, which closed three days ago, the opera will have its U.S. opening at Los Angeles Opera on September 7.

As I read over Tom Lubbock’s interesting piece in today’s UK Independent newspaper about society’s obsession with explaining works of art, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my own recent attempts to impose meaning on an approach to a theatre production which I don’t fully understand.

I’m currently involved in what’s being billed as a “fusion” production of Hildegard von Bingen’s 12th century musical drama Ordo Virtutum. My vocal ensemble, San Francisco Renaissance Voices, is performing the work in the original Germanized Latin chant. But the director has imposed an Asian flavor on the 12th century piece by dressing us up in Indian dance outfits (long colorful skirts, matching embroidered or sequinned tops and flowing scarves) and introducing Kathak dance steps. We’ll also be accompanied by a bansuri (Indian flute player) and a harpist.

;Perhaps it’s the overly-analytical theatre critic in me, but as soon as I found out that we’d be mixing traditions, I felt a pressing need to know why.

;When the director wasn’t able to give me a truly satisfactory explanation, my mind started spinning like car wheels stuck in a ditch. Without even doing it consciously, I started to look for all kinds of rationales for why we might be doing Hildegard this way. Suddenly, clues for the meaning haphazardly started to emerge for me. I gleaned insights from the text (eg Hildegard refers to “garments” a lot in the piece so having the performers all dress in really bright and atypical clothes is a way of drawing attention to this idea.) I found myself thinking about the basis for Hildegard’s story – about the battle between the devil and the virtues for the soul – as having echoes in Indian mythology. I even went as far as to consider the link from a musical/physical perspective: chant opens up the body in the same way as saying “om” or some other mantra in yoga, which has its roots in Indian culture.

;You’ll probably think that this is all a bit over the top. Maybe so. But the point I’m trying to make is this: Art need not justify itself by having to mean something. But we cannot help but search for it anyway. If my director chooses to create a fusion production of Ordo for the simple reasons that he happens to know a bansuri player, has a few sarees from a friend who recently moved to Asia lying about his office, and thinks it might be cool to explore some of the vaguely universal ideas in the work, then at some level that’s OK. I, however, personally have to find more tangible to connect with the work I am about to perform. Some of these ways are intellectual and some are more visceral, physical and emotional, as the above examples suggest.

Many of us cannot avoid mining for meanings in art because we are sentient human beings and we naturally look for ways to understand the world we live in. Art provides one way of getting to grips with the essential incomprehensibility of the universe, but great art makes no claim to provide the answers.

;One of the great joys of experiencing art, in my opinion, is the playfulness it inspires in the audience. I can spend hours just mulling over alternate and contradictory meanings in a work of art, or equally, just turn my attention to how it cause vibrations to course through my body or makes me want to rush out of the room in horror.

Outside of academia, I can’t see a drive to find a work of art’s meaning trumping the basic experience of interacting with the work itself. And for anyone who’s tired of having art explained to them, the solution is simple: Just ignore the program notes and the artist’s statement on the gallery wall and walk around before and afterwards with earphones in one’s ears to avoid listening to other peoples’ reactions. Live in a cocoon. It’s as easy as that.

Following last week’s post about two great music radio shows that I’ve been listening to lately — London Calling and Thistle and Shamrock — I received a variety of mail not just from fans of these shows, but also from radio buffs about other interesting musical offerings on the radio.

I am particularly grateful to Mark Urycki, Program Director at WKSU in Kent,OH for pointing me in the direction of Folk Alley. This online folk music radio station boasts some ear-grabbing content. Just now, as I’ve been typing, I’ve heard a gorgeous ballad by Sonia Marie entitled “Ashes Fall Down,” Nick Drake’s maudlin “Road” (one of my favorite songs by the late brilliant songwriter) and Jeff Black’s “One Last Day to LIve”, a song which wouldn’t sound out of place played on mainstream American rock radio.

Mark tells me that most listeners access Folk Alley online, but some public stations in the US are broadcasting it on their HD channels.

Some other things to know about Folk Alley:

*Folk Alley features feature concerts and studio recordings by professional bands.

*The Open Mic section broadcasts music by anyone who feels like sharing their material. I’ve been shuffling songs on the Open Mike playlist and have been delighted to hear a wide variety of content from a skin-tingling version of “The Star of the County Down” by a German Celtic music group called Craic, to a rockin’ bluegrass track by James Reams & The Barnstormers with guest fiddler Bill Christoph.

*According to Mark, all the Open Mike music on the site is original. “The really good songs get added to the regular mix,” says Mike. “Some people from different states have met on Folk Alley and later collaborated on music.”

*The channel is about to celebrate its 5th anniversary. Folk Alley is producing concerts in Cleveland, OH and Boulder, CO in August in celebration of this auspicious event.

*Folk Alley is working on developing un-hosted side streams so that people who only want to hear Celtic or Bluegrass or 1950’s music or whatever, can hear those genres nonstop. Though my own musical tastes are all over the map, this development particularly excites me; it’ll mean I can listen to sea shanties all day if I want to.

The French soprano Natalie Dessay has the opera world in thrall. People are crazy about her for more than her singing. For one thing, she’s a tremendous actress. Around 23,000 people were putty in her hands the other day during a live simulcast of Lucia di Lammermoor at San Francisco ballpark. And some people are talking about her turn in La Fille du Regiment at The Met recently as trumping Juan Diego Florez’s famed nine high C’s.

On top of that, she seems like a very down to earth person. At a recent CD signing event at SF Opera, staff were trying to move the long line of fans waiting to meet the star through at top speed. But Dessay wasn’t in the mood to be rushed. She asked the people who came to meet her questions and appeared to want to take the time to talk to each person individually.

Some friends of mine were puzzled by the way in which Dessay signed their CDs — a flamboyant “Natalie” squiggle followed by “DC”. Then one of them, who speaks French, realized that the letters DC, when said with a French accent — “Deh-Seh” — sound like “Dessay”.

Seems like the performer has been playing around with her name for years. According to a sweet profile by Norman Lebrecht in La Scena Musicale, Dessay started out life with a different spelling of her name. Lebrecht writes: “She was born Nathalie Dessaix and changed it because the ‘h’ in her forename looked phoney and she was taunted in school as ‘deux-Sexe’, or two sexes.”

And here’s another thing that I love about Dessay: Her desire to try new things. I don’t think many opera stars take on non-singing roles in stage plays very often. Besides the fact that few have the acting chops, theatre productions probably don’t pay nearly as well as lead roles in major opera houses. But Dessay, according to Lebrecht, has just turned down Lucia the Royal Opera House to act in a Paris stage play, her first spoken role.

I would love to see her do that.

It seemed as if I had my finger on the radio dial in my car forever last night until, thankfully, I happened upon the late, great Joe Strummer’s wonderful BBC radio show, London Calling, on KALW 91.7 FM. The ex-Clash frontman’s radio show, which showcased music from all over the world, aired for several series before the musician died very prematurely of heart failure in 2002 at the tender age of 50. Last night, Strummer’s show offered sweet relief from the barrage of Dave Matthews-like schlock and watered-down jazzmatazz that was coming at me across the radio waves.

I’m glad to have something new to tune in to regularly as I drive back across the Bay Bridge on a Tuesday evening after singing. The only other radio show I listen to with any regularity is The Thistle and Shamrock, a beautiful showcase of Celtic music hosted by the inimitable Fiona Ritchie.

Here’s a great piece about Strummer from the BBC website, written in 2000 upon the launch of the third series of London Calling.

It’s an election year, and theatre companies are tripping over themselves to put on plays with political content.

One such play, Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband, is currently receiving a revival at the California Shakespeare Theater. Wilde’s potent 1895 social comedy is, at least on the surface, an ideal kind of election year play. Telling the story of a politically-ambitious woman’s attempt to bring down an up-and-coming statesman by exposing a dirty secret from his past, the work satirizes the sordid deals that underpin many political careers, showing us that life in Victorian England isn’t so very different from American culture today.

Yet for all of Wilde’s incisive comments about the less-than-pristine realities that go hand in hand with politicians’ outwardly high moral stance, the play doesn’t fit into the political play mold easily. From a political perspective, it’s an unsettling work at best and at worst, brilliantly confusing.

One of the tricky things about An Ideal Husband are its sexual politics. As in most of Wilde’s plays, the most charismatic characters in this comedy are its women. Yet despite their power and the fact that the play was written at the height of Britain’s burgeoning Suffragette Movement, Wilde takes what seems to be a reactionary view towards the political advancement of his female characters. Mrs. Cheveley’s political career revolves around blackmail; and Lady Chiltern’s efforts to mobilize women politically are affectionately brushed under the carpet. Then, at the end of the play, Wilde delivers what must have come across as a bit of a bombshell to enlightened female audiences of his day: He has the one character with any sense — the gorgeously dandyish and completely politically-uninterested Lord Goring — spoil his forward-looking sensibilities by uttering the following lines, apparently with none of the character’s usual irony: “A man’s life is of more value than a woman’s. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions.”

What does Wilde mean by ending his comedy like this? And how to pull off these lines in front of a 21st century audience without undermining the strength of the core political messages of the play?

The problem brings Kate’s last speech in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew to mind. Should Kate speak those lines about being utterly subservient to her husband as if she means them? Or should she sound like she is under duress? I’ve seen it done both ways many times to greater or lesser effect.

Cal Shakes artistic director Jonathan Moscone goes for the latter solution by having Julie Eccles, in the role of Lady Chiltern, utter the lines back to her husband between clenched teeth. The ambivalent ending is further underscored by Moscone’s use of thunderous canned applause, when Michael Butler’s Lord Chiltern, having had his political career saved by his wife, exits with his hands held aloft in the pose of the great statesman. It’s discombobulating stuff.

Another problem with seeing the play as a vehicle for making a political statement is to do with the author’s preoccupation with art. Most of the characters are compared to works of art in the stage directions. In Cal Shakes’ production, they all look like works of art in Meg Neville’s flamboyant period costumes too. Goring, who is in many ways the play’s hero, is an archetypal aesthete. He puts art above politics and is, though affected in his way of dressing, is one of the most unpretentious of all the characters on stage.

So where does all this leave us then, experiencing the play in an election year? It leaves us thoroughly entertained and not a little bemused. There are no great and worthy truths about the democratic process to take home from the production. Only a sense of cleverly-crafted confusion about the way the world works, of which both Wilde and Lord Goring would have approved. At the end of the day, the play covertly undermines its political theme completely. An Ideal Husband may be the least ideal election year play. Why? Because, as Wilde famously put it in his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray: “All art is quite useless.”