The Importance of Understanding Earnest

Not the right title, you say! Well tell that to Ted Dykstra, because frankly I'm wondering if he understands Oscar Wilde's sublime comedy of manners. Based on an interview he gave the Ottawa Citizen I had the impression he did. Watching Friday night's opening performance of the NAC English Theatre season I have my doubts.

Now there is more than one way of approaching Wilde's play of improbable probabilities and I have seen several but they have all had one thing in common: they were earnest.  According to several dictionaries I've consulted the adjective means "resulting from or showing sincere and intense conviction."  Wilde himself refers to it as "a trivial play for serious people" and that is what makes it both funny and enduring.   It seems that Dykstra took "trivial" to mean farcical.  What he presented us with was a French bedroom farce without the slamming boudoir doors.   Pratfalls were taken, things jumped over, things thrown, bellows bellowed, audiences winked at and double takes taken - the only things missing were those door slams and the crack of Harlequin's slapstick.

Don't get me wrong I love  farce - bedroom or just good old fashioned knockabout - but if that's what you want to direct then why not choose one of the many great pieces by Feydeau, Labiche or Ben Travers:  revivals of Italian Straw Hat or Rookery Nook are long overdue.  But to take one of the wittiest plays in the English language and turn it into a knockabout comedy - sorry old man, it's just not done in the best of (play)houses.

Director Ted Dykstra (centre on floor) and his cast for the NAC English Theatre's presentation of
Oscar Wilde's The Important of Being Earnest.

NAC Photo: Andree Lanthier

Based on the concept they were given it may be unfair to say much of the individual performances except that the ladies fared better than the men.  Unfortunately Alex McCooeye (Algernon) and Christopher Morris (Jack) bore the brunt of much of the clowning with Morris spending most of the second act delivering his dialogue at a relentless and frantic shout.  Perhaps because she sat or stood in almost monolithic splendor Karen Robinson's Lady Bracknell was the most convincing performance of the evening.   Her very stillness made her reactions more telling and drew bigger laughs than all the mugging in the world could ever achieve.

Designer Patrick Clark's sets and costumes caught the tone of playful seriousness - both Lady Bracknell and Algernon were slightly over-the-top but still within the bounds of early Edwardian good taste.  And as always with the NAC the production values were of the highest standard.  I noticed that we did not receive a warning about the fact that "real cigarettes" would be smoked at this performance - let's hope the PC police don't get on them for that one.

I saw Mr Dykstra, who I admire greatly as a performer and writer, in the audience and can only hope that he took note of the reaction around him:  yes we laughed at some of the business but the most sincere and loudest laughs came from Wilde's dialogue.  I only wish the trust he had shown when speaking of the play had carried over to the stage.


A separate note:  The evening had begun with greetings from Elder Annie Smith-St George who reminded us that we sat on unceded Algonquin land but more important asked that we quietly stand and remember our brothers who had become one with the Spirit world in the past three days.  She spoke for a moment or two of the Creator who gave us the gift of laughter and joy that we would share in this place.  It was a lovely and touching few minutes.

October 25 - 1854: The Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War (Charge of the Light Brigade).

Much Ado About Something

A planned trip to Stratford in August and the donation of a few items - designs, programmes and postcards - to the archives of the Shakespeare Festival triggered memories of my first visit there.  It has been 35 years since my last visit in 1978 but I believe the magic will still be there.

Robert Farifield's building for the Stratford Festival echoed its beginnings in the tent.  But he gave the Festival a performance space undisturbed by the whistles of freight trains or the cries of the umpire from the local baseball diamond that often fought for the audience's attention in the early days.

Back in 1958 my friend Bruce and I boarded a train at Toronto’s Parkdale Station headed for Stratford and its Shakespeare Festival   I was 12 at the time and Bruce was 14 - strange when I think that our parents had no second thoughts about us going on a trip like that alone. It was the first of what were to become regular visits over the next 20 years to the Festival town that Tom Patterson, Tyrone Guthrie and Alec Guinness put on the theatrical map five years earlier. The Festival had forsaken its original “big top” for a permanent home the year before; at the time a revolutionary design,  Robert Fairfield's circular structure built into the hillside surrounded the revolutionary stage that Tanya Moiseiwitsch had designed to invoke, but not slavishly copy, the theatre of Shakespeare’s time.

Tanya Moiseiwitsch designed this revolutionary thrust stage based on discussions she and Tyrone Guthrie
had about the ideal platform for performing Shakespeare.  Director Michael Langham felt the stage
was too "feminine" for the tragedies and histories and asked Moiseiwitsch and Brian Jackson to give it
a "sex change" in 1962. I recall being shocked by what I saw on entering the theatre for The Taming
of the Shrew that year.   I got use to it but still have a fondness for this first stage.

As well as well-known performers – Guinness, James Mason, Frederick Volk, Siobann McKenna, Jason Robarts Jr and Irene Worth – the Festival was developing its home-grown stars chief amongst them William Hutt, Douglas Campbell, Frances Hyland, Amelia Hall, John Horton, Douglas Rain, Kate Reid and a young and vibrant Christopher Plummer.  Plummer had first appeared on the thrust stage in 1956 as a charismatic Henry V in a ground breaking production by Michael Langham that bridged and celebrated Canada's two solitudes and featured Gratien Gelinas with members of Quebec based Theatre de Nouvelle Monde as the French King and his court. Plummer was to follow that with Hamlet, Andrew Aguecheek, Leonates, Mercutio, Philip the Bastard, Cyrano, Antony and in 1958 Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing.

A young, and very handsome, Christopher Plummer as Benedict, 1958.

It was that production that we boarded the train to see on a sunny July afternoon. In those days the Toronto Telegram sponsored a “special” Tuesday train to Stratford. For the price you got the 2 hours train ride, a bus upon arrival to take you to a local church – Parkdale United, as I recall – where the ladies of the parish had prepared a hot dinner. I don’t remember what exactly they served as a main course but I do remember desert was homemade cherry pie with fresh whipped cream. The Festival theatre was a short walk away and the buses waited to take you back to the station at the end of the play. The late night train from Chicago passed through at a convenient time and arrival at Parkdale meant getting home well after midnight. Fortunately there was no school the next day and Bruce’s mother was willing to pick us up. Several year’s later the late train no longer operated and the Telegram was no-longer published.  You could go up by train but the only way of getting back after the play was the bus – and I do recall a number of nights standing all the way from Stratford back to Toronto.

The wedding scene from that 1958 production of Much Ado About Nothing.  This Festival
postcard photo was taken from approximately where I was sitting that evening. I have
a collection of these postcards that will be going into the Stratford archives this summer.

Michael Langham at a rehearsal - 1988.

Sara Krulwich - The New York Times

The Much Ado was the second of the Shakespeare comedies that Langham directed at the Festival and as time passed he proved to be a master of the genre.  That is not in anyway to discredit his handling of the tragedies, histories or the problem plays.  His Romeo and Juliet with the oddly cast but somehow very right Julie Harris and Bruno Gerussi as the star-crossed lovers, Kate Reid, Tony Van Bridge and Plummer started as a light-hearted youthful affair filled with high-spirits and romance that spiraled into deep, aching and bewildering tragedy.  And both his Trolius and Cressida and Timon of Athens (with a score by Duke Ellington) proved less problematic then many imagined them to be.  His 1966 Bretchtian Henry V though not much loved at the time caught the pessimistic spirit of the period as accurately as his production ten years earlier had mirrored the optimism of its time.  The 1964 King Lear that he directed with John Colicos was a searing indictment of man's inhumanity to man - he often said that his time as a prisoner of war in Germany gave him new insight into the bleakness of that darkest of tragedies.

But he didn't restrict his productions on the stage that he knew better than anyone else to Shakespeare.  Langham also directed a bawdy but stylish The Country Wife, a funny but ultimately unsettling almost frightening The Government Inspector and first with Plummer than Colicos a Cyrano de Bergerac that was the ultimate romance-adventure story.  It has always been said that his crowning achievement was the 1961 Love's Labour Lost (a play he was to direct three more times at Stratford including his final production in 2008) - sadly I choose to see Henry VIII that year; at the time a historical pageant with elaborate Tudor costumes seemed more appealing then the heady word-play of a young Shakespeare dazzled by his love of the language.  Ah the callowness - and foolishness - of youth.

One critic referred to Eileen Herlie and Christopher Plummer's Beatrice and Benedict as being like
Brandy and Benedictine.   They seem to have brought out the best in each other.

But back to the events of that evening in 1958:  the fun of a train ride (I love trains), a delicious home-cooked meal and the thrill of that trumpet fanfare echoing from the terrace of the Festival theatre on a summer's night.  But that was nothing compared to the pageant that followed:  Vincent Massey, our Governor General at the time, was there with his party.  As the trumpets sounded a new fanfare he made his entrance resplendent in his red and gold uniform, his daughter-in-law Lilias on his arm and surrounded by the vice-regal party in dress-uniform with their summer-frocked ladies.  We all stood as God Save the Queen began and at the end of the anthem cheered - we did that sort of thing in Canada in those days.  But even that was to pale in my 12 year old's mind with what followed.

Desmond Heeley's citizenry of Messina had a look to them that was
more English country house than Sicilian palazzo. But it gave the
production an elegance and style that mirrored Langham's direction
and the company that he was building.

Suddenly that gleaming wooden structure was filled with ladies and uniformed gentlemen more elegant even than those in the audience.  Langham and Desmond Heeley had chosen to set the play in the 1870 and though they may have been looking to the Risorgimento, it was more English country house than Sicilian palazzo.  But given the players it worked:  Tony Van Bridge was a pompous, deadly serious, and more comic for all that,  Dogberry with Alan Nunn, his perfect foil, as an Uriah Heepish Verges; Conrad Bain and Mervyn Blake where slightly stuffy but loving father and uncle; William Hutt, an elegant and handsome Don Pedro - his lone estate at play's end was all the more puzzling for that; Bruno Gerrusi as a dark, threatening Don John; Diana Maddox and John Horton all organza and braid looking the perfect young lovers.  But at the centre of it all were Eileen Herlie and Plummer as Beatrice and Benedick.  A star may have danced at her birth but a whole constellation celebrated the sparring match, strange-woeing and eventual wedding between these two.  As one critic remarked they were a heady mixture of "benedictine and brandy" - each complimenting and bringing out the best in the other.

It was all very magical and I recall Bruce - who was a stage-struck as I - talking about it all the way home - I'm sure much to the annoyance of those around us who were trying to doze on the trip back. I had been going to the theatre since I was five years old but I believe I can honestly say that it was that performance of Much Ado About Nothing that sealed my love-affair with the magic of the stage.  And each year for the next 20 I would make the trip to Stratford, sometimes once but often five or six times, and I waited for that familiar fanfare and the lights to come up on that marvelous platform when once again that magic would be reborn.

May 7 -1920: The Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto, opens the first exhibition by the Group of Seven.

Toy Theatres - Part III

"Sharing with People Brings Happiness"

In a reserved Danish way the famous Tivoli Gardens has moved with the times: modern midway rides, trendy boutiques, Danish and International pop and rock performers on the outdoor stage and at the Music Hall.  However in many ways it is still the "pleasure garden" imagined by Georg Caresten back in 1843 - flower beds, peacocks, fountains, pathways, kiosks, places of refreshment, nighttime illuminations and the famous Peacock Theatre.  I have written about my fascination with this little gem of a theatre and our recent visit there this past June.  But I thought I'd share a few more photos and a short video that highlights what is on display within the framework of its fantastical Chinoiserie proscenium.

At one time in the not distant past a live orchestra played for two daily performances; the first piece was always a pantomime and the second often a ballet.  Today, no doubt due to modern economics and possibly dwindling interest in the old-fashioned entertainment offered, the music is recorded and a single performance, either a pantomime or ballet, is schedule two or three days a week.  It would be sad if the tradition of Harlequin, Columbine and Pjerrot, which can be traced back as far as Plautus, were to be overtaken by the more raucous entertainments but for the time being, at least, there are still opportunities to catch the tale of two young people who overcome the objections and machinations of the foolish and the old to be united by the magic of love.

As they did with ballet the Danes took styles of pantomime from several sources and melded them into a hybrid that is uniquely Danish.  Drawing on the English traditions of conjuring, mechanical tricks and fairy intervention they then stirred in the slaps, pratfalls and acrobatics of the Italian commedia dell'arte.  Perhaps the character that evolved the most from this mixed-marriage is Pjerrot. In Danish pantomime he is never the white-faced melancholic beloved by Watteau and admirers of Les enfants du paradis; neither is he quite the dupe of Italian commedia nor exactly the sly trickster that was Joseph Grimaldi's clown.  Rather he's simple but clever - an overgrown child, curious and insatiable.  And though he may not be directly responsible for the union of the two lovers - it takes fairy magic for that to happen - he takes great delight in easing the path of true love if perhaps a greater delight in enraging his master Cassander.  And he is the only character with a voice which he saves until the end when he leads the audience in the traditional "Tivoli Hurrahs!"

The other characters too are a strange mix drawing from the commedia dell'arte, opera buffa and English fairy plays. In the original British pantomime the fairy scenes introduced and ended the Harlequinade but in Denmark Harlequin meets his fairy-savior only after Cassander has denied his consent to the romance between his daughter Colombine and the poor, but incredibly handsome and agile, hero.  This Harlequin is a long way away from his grotesque Italian cousin Arlecchino but Cassander is the duped old man of Goldoni and Gozzi; and the hapless suitor is every foolish, vain fop of theatrical tradition. 

Many of the pantomimes being performed go back to the mid-1800s though a few date from the mid-1900s.  Few of the pantomimes from the early years were written down but passed from performer to performer; in 1919 because of waning interest and war time restrictions ballet master Paul Hudd cut the performances down to 30 minutes, a practice that has continued to this day.  Since 2001 an attempt has been made to adapt and record the older works and include them in the rotating repertoire throughout the summer season.  The night we were there one of the older pantomimes was being presented: Pjerrots fataliteter (Pierrot's Misfortunes) was first performed in 1864.  It was adapted by Niels Henrik Volkersen, the famous Pjerrot of the day, from an older work in the repertoire of the Casorti family troupe.

When ballets are performed they are often modern works - Queen Margrethe II designed the sets and costumes for a new version of The Tinder Box in 2007.  Often visiting dance troupes use the Chinese theatre as their venue - though apparently the slope of the stage, which is double that of most raked stages, can be a challenge for dancers unaccustomed to the surface.  Even the members of the Royal Danish Ballet have some difficulty adjusting on the evenings during the season when excerpts from the classical ballets of August Bourneville are presented.  As I mentioned Tivoli seems to evolve with the times and for All Hallow's Eve they presented Kassander Loves Dollars, a hip-hop horror-ballet pantomime featuring all the traditional characters but with a twist.

Pjerrot leads the audience in the "Tivoli Hurrahs":  he's been up to his old tricks, Cassander has been thwarted, Colombine and Harlequin are united, all ends happily and its time for the Peacock curtain to close.

After the October performances the Chinese Theatre closed for the season but along with the rest of Tivoli Gardens puts on its finest for Christmastide and the annual Yule Fair.  The Peacock's colourful tail takes on the palette of winter and remains - perhaps frozen - in place until once again Pjerrot and company return to "share with the people and bring happiness".

Much of the historical information I gathered for this posting came from three sources:

The Pantomime Theater: life behind the peacock curtain in tivoli
Annett Ahrends and Henrik Lyding - translated by Pamela Starbird
Published by Forlaget Vandkunsten
Erik Ostergaard: Pantomime Theater - Theatrical History; Pantomime Plays at Tivoli

03 November -1793: French playwright, journalist and feminist Olympe de Gouges is guillotined.

Things to Come

I have mentioned before - though probably both you and I had forgotten - that we seem to book up musical events well in advance. At the moment I'm holding tickets for La Traviata a year from today - how is that for optimism?

But looking at the calender a few things are being red circled as events to look forward to in the next few months.

January
Antonio Pappano and a bunch of the kids (Anja Harteros, Sonia Ganassi, Rolando Villazón, René Pape and our own beloved orchestra and chorus of Santa Cecilia) are getting together at the Parco del Musica to put on a show: the Verdi Requiem. Yes Parsi I said Rolando Villazón and René Pape.

Yuri Temirkanov, Opera Chic's Uncle Solly, will be giving us Russian goodies - Prince Igor and the Pathétique with the Academia Santa Cecilia orchestra and chorus.

February
Once again out to the Parco where Martha Argerich will be tinkling the ivories in the Beethoven #1.

March
Riccardo Muti returns to the Teatro dell'Opera for Gluck's rarely heard Iphigénie en Aulide. Love me some Gluck, love me some Muti so that one's got a big red circle.

April
Not musical but definitely magical - I saw the Piccolo Teatro di Milano do their signature piece Arlecchino, servitore di due padroni) back in 1959 when they toured North America.

"
In those days Arlecchino was the great Marcello Moretti but since his death in 1961 the role has been played by Ferruccio Soleri. Now in his 70s he restages Giorgio Strahler's production and still performs the incredible "lazzi" devised for him 47 years ago. This may well be my last chance to see him in action so I'm heading up to Milano for a day or two.

And then perhaps not all that musical but definitely nostalgical - Marianne Faithful in Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins. Apparently she's been doing this cantata in a few places in the past few years with great success. Marianne Faithful? Who would have thought?

May
Well we have a Zeffirelli Pagliacci (without Cavalliera Rusticana - budget cuts?)with Myrto Paptanasiu, Fabio Armiliato and Juan Pons. Yes Parsi I said Mytro and yes Shelia I said Fabio, though I have a feeling we may end up seeing the second cast on our subscription. May have to see this one twice.

The end of the month brings a return trip to Salzburg for the Whitsun Festival - again Muti and this time with an even rarer opera seria: Demofoonte by Jommelli. Plus some really great concerts including Marco Beasley and Accordione. And of course Salzburg itself - a city I never get tired off.

June
Another trip up to Milano this time for two 20th century operas back to back at La Scala - that's if the unions are good and if the Scala booking system works. I can't exactly see the tourists flocking to the two works in question so tickets may be readily available. Pizzetti's Assassinio nella cattedrale is based on T. S. Elliot's verse play and stars Ferruccio Furlanetto, like Solari in his twilight years, as Thomas à Beckett. Then Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream in Robert Carsen's famous production from Aix-en-Provence starring David Daniels. Friend Parsi was transported by this production when he saw it in Athens this past summer. Daniels! Carsen! Britten! Big red circle on that one.

And at month's end we get the Verdi Requiem again but this time with Daniel Barenboim, Barbara Frittoli, Ganassi, Marcello Giordani and Pape with the forces of La Scala. And at that point we're just mid-way through the year.

More goodies to come include the Rossini Festival in Pesaro (with Juan Diego Florez), Laurent's favorite opera Pelléas et Mélisande and that Traviata I mentioned with Daniela Dessi and Armiliato - yes Shelia I said Daniela and Fabio! Plus anything else that, in an effort to bankrupt me, my dear Opera Chic - its her fault I'm going broke -springs on me that I decided I really must see.

What is it that Lady Bracknell says? A life crowded with incident.

29 dicembre - San Tommaso Becket

A Christmas Tradition - Pantomine

By the time most of you read this Deb and I should be sitting in the Stalls at the Old Vic yelling "Oh no you're not!" or "Hello Buttons!" or even "Its behind you!" at Cinderella, the Ugly Step-Sisters or Buttons. And no we won't have had too much vino at the Fountain, we'll be part of a largely adult audience regressing to childhood at a Christmas pantomime.

Its difficult to explain Panto to anyone who hasn't grown up with it. Its very, very English - though the tradition has carried over to Canada, Australia, in fact anywhere on the map that was pink when I was a kid, even Hong Kong. Its roots go back to popular theatre of the 1700s but it has changed so much that John Rich and Joey Grimaldi wouldn't recognize it today. Over the years it morphed from a Harlequinade preceded by a fairy story in punning rhyming couplets to a fairy story used as an excuse for elaborate stage sets, long-limbed chorus girls and Music Hall turns. In the 90s it seemed to have become the refuge of second banana television performers and would be pop stars. Now its become all the rage with "legitimate" actors, writers and performers. Cinderella,at the Old Vic this year is written by none other than Stephen Fry - writer, actor, director, bon vivant and all round good time Charlie and Pauline Collins (Shirley Valentine) is playing the Fairy Godmother. And that my dears is Sir Ian McKellen (yes Gandolf as well as the greatest Shakespearean actor of our time) at the left as Aladdin's mother Widow Twankey two years ago at the Vic! Pantos gone all respectable like.

Why Widow Twankey? And why does she run a laundry in Peking? And why does she have an assistant called Dim Sum? Because its tradition! And speaking of Twanks there are other traditions that everyone of us in that audience today are expecting will be observed.

The Dame: There will always be a man dressed as a woman - not the same as a female impersonator, take a look at Sir Ian. This will be Widow Twankey, Jack's mother Dame Trot, Mother Goose, Sarah the Cook or in the case of Cinderella there will be two as the Ugly Step Sisters. The Dame is normally man-mad and has lines that would make a sailor blush - though fortunately they go over most children's heads. And as in the case of Sir Ian, each change of costume will be more outrageous than the last - he had 14 if I recall.

The Principal Boy: In the good old days the Principal boy was a perky-breasted, long-legged beauty in net stockings, high heeled boots and doublet with plunging neckline. She could belt like Merman, dance like Miller and slap her thigh in what was thought to be a butch gesture. Sadly that has given way to Principal Boys being played by .... a boy! Sometimes its a slightly over the hill pop star or a refugee from an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical - though more often these days its a good looking man who can sing, dance and cause the hearts of matinee ladies and the chorus boys to flutter. This year at the Old Vic its stage and film actor Joseph Millson (right) and he's required to do a strip tease - my how Panto has grown.

The Principal Girl: The main qualification is that she be pretty and able to sing - Julie Andrews was a principal girl at the Palladium back when she was a teenager.

There are Doubles acts, Animal acts, Singalongs, Audience contests, ghost scenes, laundry scenes, schoolroom scenes, in the introduction the good fairy enters from the right and the demon or villain from the left, popular references are made to local and international events (I seem to recall a line about Tony Blair hiding behind a Bush a few years back.) Songs are sung, dances are danced, good triumphs and unless its really bad the audience has a good time.

Apparantly Fry, being Fry, has written a very erudite script (emphasis on the rude) with some decidedly gay twists. The Prince and his footman Dandini have a shower scene; Cinderella's best friend forever Buttons helps her with make-up tips and accessorising and they share the same taste in men; and when Cinders and her Prince are married in the grand finale, Buttons and Dandini have a civil union. "Oh my dear, sounds ever so gay," as Widow Twankey would say!

I have a feeling we'll all be shouting "He's behind you, Buttons!" And Deb and I will be yelling the loudest.

That's one more shot of Sir Ian revealing the legs that sunk a thousand ships.

17 gennaio - San Antonio abate

You Can Say That There ..... Now!

As a follow up to last week - the vagina thing:

The School Board in Cross River N.Y. has had second thoughts about suspending the three girls who used the dreaded V word in a presentation of The Vagina Monologues. As with most bureaucratic changes of heart/mind only after parents, students, author Eve Ensler, the news media and the Civil Liberties Union raised a fuss did Superintendent Bob Lichtenfeld see it for the foolishness it was.

And I may be reading this wrong – after several Venetian murder mysteries I become cynical about officialdom – but is Superintendent Bob hanging the principal out of dry? Or just his principles??

Send In The Clowns

Saturday December 8, 1973 - Majestic Theater - A Little Night Music

It was a crowded weekend – Italiana with Marilyn Horne at the Opera Met, the Baroque Angel Christmas tree at the Museum Met, High Mass at St. Mary the Virgin (Smokey Mary’s), lunch at the Russian Tearoom, , non-stop activity – but suddenly that Saturday evening there came a grace note in both the musical and our weekend - a shared moment of melancholy quiet.

Glynis Johns sat motionless at stage left and in a voice that was never really meant to sing broke our hearts. Send In the Clowns had become popular in Judy Collins’ silken - almost sexless - version but here was the woman Sondheim had written it for, singing it the way he meant it to be sung. Singing of middle-aged love and the sadness of chances missed. And in the reprise with Len Cariou singing of the sweet foolishness and deep love that reunited them and would hold them together. It was a magical moment.

As with any magical moment that you discover has been captured you wonder if it was really all that wonderful..... all that magical. Looking at this clip: it was and it still is.

You Can't Say/Do That Here/There

I’m not into U.S. bashing – that holier than thou attitude we tend to take here in Canada does have a tendency to backfire. You know the one: We don't have racial discrimination here in Canada – hmm just ask the people of Africville. However a few things I’ve read today make me fear for the Land of the Free.

In Cross River, N. Y. Three high school girls are being suspended for using the word “Vagina” during a public reading from Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. It would appear that using the proper anatomical term was going to damage the psyche of children in the audience. Somehow – though maybe I’m being unfair here – I can’t believe that many parents in Cross River would take their children to see something called The Vagina Monologues.

And this week poor Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter to most of us) has been the subject of outraged comments from American parents on several blogs – including one celebrity gossip site that I will not admit to visiting from time to time. So what has poor Harry… sorry Dan done? Well he is currently appearing in a revival of Peter Shaffers’s Equus in London’s West End. And for 5 minutes of this 180 minute play Dan is nude - with his “weewee” – I don’t want to use the word “penis” in case there are children from Cross River reading this – exposed. Now during the play he also rides on the back of men dressed up as horses and drives spikes into said horses’ eyes. But apparently that isn’t important – it’s that exposed weewee that is going to scar America’s children for life. They will never be able to look at a Wizard’s wee… damn it penis again!

The odd thing is that it isn’t happening in the mass media in the U.S. – the great exposure is happening in a theatre an ocean away. The likelihood of any of these people’s children making the trans-Atlantic hop to witness this dreadful unveiling are extremely slim –actually I can’t imagine its all that dreadful, Dan looks pretty damned buffed in the publicity photos. One upset mother referred to him appearing in a pornographic play. Any bets that Mom hasn’t read, if she reads anything at all, the play or perhaps seen a play for that matter.

Most of the indignation and outrage – indignation at the use of the perfectly valid word Vagina and outrage at a naked man 3000 kilometers away – seems to be the indignation and outrage of the ignorant. And that's what is frightening me.

You Are BeeauutiFul!*

My late friend Ryan loved telling this Edith Evans story.

Dame Edith was not a beautiful woman by any standards - short, stout, hooded eyes and a rather plain face - but she was playing Millamant in The Way of the World and Millamant is described as the most beautiful woman in London and the most desired. A close friend was astounded that when Dame Edith glided on stage she was indeed incredibly beautiful and sexually desirable.

After the performance the friend demanded to know how she had done it? Make-up? Lighting?

"No," said Dame Edith "I sit quietly in my dressing room before each performance and looking in the mirror say 'You are beeauutiFul! You are beeauutiFul! You are beeauutiful!'* If I believe it so will the audience."

I made this birthday card (above) a few years ago featuring some of the actresses who have played Cleopatra - Katherine Hepburn, Tallulah Bankhead, Sarah Bernhardt and Dame Edith. On stage I've seen Zoe Caldwell and Maggie Smith and wish I had seen Judi Dench and Frances de la Tour as Shakespeare's seductive Serpent of the Nile. None of them great beauties but all of them capable of convincing you otherwise.

Now it appears the woman herself wouldn't have made it to the finals of the Miss Thebes 28BC pageant. A story in yesterday's Guardian reveals that a coin of the period shows thin lips, pointed nose and sharp chin - a rather shrewish looking woman. Hardly the creature conjured up by Vivian Leigh as Shaw's sex kitten or Elizabeth Taylor in that over-blown, over-budget studio wrecker from the '70s.

It appears that like Dame Edith and all those other actresses the real Cleopatra knew how to convince her audience that she was "beauutiFul."

*I admit it, this is an incredibly futile attempt to put Evans' viola-like voice into phonics.