Travel Journal: People's Republic of China, 1980 – Part 1

 

[At Christmastime in 1980, I took a trip to the People’s Republic of China.  The country had only recently opened to foreign tourists and the only way one could visit the PRC at that time was as part of an organized tour group.  Only certain officially designated tour agencies could book tours to China.  I signed up with Inter Pacific Travel-In-China, which had an office on Madison Avenue at 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan. 

[The trip I booked ran from Friday, 19 December 1980, with our departure from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Sunday, 4 January 1981, with our departure from Hong Kong and return to New York City.  That was another restriction of traveling to the PRC in the early ’80s: you had to enter and leave China through Hong Kong, then still a British colony (until 1997, when sovereignty over the city was returned to China).  Direct flights into the People’s Republic still weren’t available yet; they weren’t to come for a few more years.

[Around 1978, Deng Xiaoping (1904-97), de facto successor to Mao Zedong (1893-1976) and paramount leader of the PRC, implemented China’s Open-Door Policy, encouraging foreign tourism and investment.  (This was the second so-named program in China’s history; an earlier Open-Door policy was instigated in the late Qing era at the turn of the 20th century.)  The first steps were tentative, but by 1980, as new hotels and other accommodations for visitors were begun, the flow of travelers from abroad increased. 

[My parents had made a trip to China a few years earlier and then travelers had to be part of a special group, such as, say, teachers or lawyers, or organization, like a union or university alumni association.  (Pan American Airways, for example, had gotten permission to bring visitors to the People’s Republic in 1978.)  My folks, for instance, traveled with the Smithsonian Institution of which they were members.  Individuals or families couldn’t visit China at that time on their own, and private agencies weren’t authorized to arrange tours.

[By the time I went, tourism had opened up some, but, as we’ll see, the country was just creating the facilities and infrastructure to accommodate and manage large numbers of foreign tourists.  My group was still an experiment in hosting ordinary travelers.  Some hotels in which we stayed were still under construction when we arrived; there simply hadn’t been any tourist hotels in China designed to accommodate foreigners for almost 30 years.

[Among the other restrictions on foreign visitors was the ban on travelling anywhere you felt like.  A formal itinerary had to be drawn up and followed—no ad hoc side trips would be permitted.  And though a travel agency like IPTIC could book the trip and make out the itinerary, once we entered China we would be turned over to the China International Travel Service, or CITS, the official government tourist office, to guide and monitor us while traveling in the country. 

[We had “guides” (read: ‘minders’) from the main CITS office out of which our group was administered—ours happened to be the Wuxi office of the Nanjing branch; it was apparently an arbitrary decision—and two actual guides for each city we visited.  The head-office minder went everywhere with us, but the local guides were the ones who explained what we were seeing, answered questions, and gave us the history of the sites we visited.

[Tourism rules changed incrementally over the next several years.  Eventually individuals and families could make a trip, though it still had to be booked through an authorized agency and an itinerary had to be made—but the group or organization was no longer required.  I believe that just a few years after my visit, tourists could even pay for souvenirs, meals, and hotels with credit cards like Visa and MasterCard.

[As you see, by the way, sometimes I’ll be referring to the PRC simply as ‘China.’  I’m not forgetting that ‘China’ can also refer to the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan or that Hong Kong, even when it was a British colony, is also ‘China.’  I’m not overlooking those facts, nor am I making any kind of political statement; I’m just being colloquial.

[As I wrote in my introduction to “Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982 – Part 1” (11 July 2021), I’m not going to censor my 34-year-old self—though I may explain or comment on my reportage and I’ll clarify facts where I think it’s necessary.  I’ll expand abbreviations and correct misspellings and other writing errors, and I’ll also probably break up long paragraphs in the journal to make reading easier on the blog.  Otherwise, I plan to leave the content of what I wrote 41 years ago as it was, warts and all.

[An explanation of my commentary format: insertions I’ve made since the writing of the journal in ’80 are enclosed in square brackets.  If the comment is also italicized, then it’s based on information that dates from after 1980—information I couldn’t have known at the time.  (I make an exception for life dates that I’ve added; I think it’s self-evident that if someone’s died after 1980, I wouldn’t have known it at the time of my trip.)

[A note on the romanized spellings of the names of Chinese cities such as Guangzhou, formerly Canton, and Beijing, formerly Peking: in 1979, the Chinese government mandated that all foreign-language publications of the PRC use the pinyin romanizations instead of the old Wade-Giles system.  Western publications began conforming to the Chinese spellings soon after—though in 1980, both versions of the romanized names were still in use even in China, especially in tourist materials.

[(The same system was also applied to people’s names, so, for instance, Mao Tse-tung became Mao Zedong and Chou En-lai became Zhou Enlai; communist party chairman Deng Xiaoping’s name was romanized in Wade-Giles as Teng Hsiao-p’ing and President Xi Jinping of the PRC would be Hsi Chin-p’ing.) 

[Today, the Wade-Giles transliteration is rarely used in the People’s Republic or abroad, though it can still be found in old documents and publications.  In the Republic of China on Taiwan, Wade-Giles is still common for transliterating names and words.

[Some tourist information in the PRC still used the old Wade-Giles transliterations, so the usage in my journal was mixed.  That’s because the guides and the CITS materials they handed out used both despite the official ukase.  I’ll try to provide both the obsolete forms and the currently preferred ones.  In my inserted commentary, I’ll use mostly the pinyin romanizations.

[(Some uses of the old forms have become so well-known that they haven’t been changed.  Readers will see that Peking duck, the famous Chinese meal, isn’t renamed “Beijing duck” and the well-known Chinese opera style called Peking opera still often goes by that name.

[(One further note about the Chinese personal names I use in this transcription: in most instances—whether in pinyin or Wade-Giles—all are in Chinese style, with the family name first and the given name second.  So Mao Zedong’s surname is ‘Mao’ and Sun Yat-sen’s is ‘Sun.’  (Some Chinese who live, work, or are published in the West have westernized their names, putting their family names last as we do in the U.S.  I. M. [Ieoh Ming] Pei, the renowned American architect, is an example; his surname was ‘Pei.’)]

EN ROUTE & ARRIVAL

New York/Anchorage/Tokyo/Hong Kong – Friday-Saturday, 19-20 December 1980

Finally left JFK – late take-off – ca. 12:30 p.m. [EST.]  Minor turbulence delayed release from seat belts.  Otherwise uneventful flight to Anchorage.

Magnificent sight flying over Alaskan mountains – Mount McKinley [now officially called Denali] on our right as we came in.

[I didn’t note in my journal that I had been offered a choice of airlines for the flight to Hong Kong: I could fly on Japan Airlines or an American carrier—probably Trans World Airlines (TWA) or Pan American World Airways (Pan Am), but since I didn’t book that way, I don’t remember.

[I expressly chose JAL because, though the IPTIC Tour Guidelines said that in the PRC all meals except breakfast would be Chinese, I couldn’t wait and I thought that on JAL, I’d get at least Japanese food.  (In 1980, airlines still served actual food on board; they even competed to outdo one another for the best in-flight cuisine in the industry!)  Unfortunately, I misjudged and didn’t get anything but Western food until we hit Guangzhou (Canton).]

Prices are unbelievable in Anchorage!  $1.25 for a glass of milk – $2.25 for a hot dog!  [That’s the equivalent of $4.15 and $7.47 in 2021.  This was all long before my 2003 visit to Alaska; see “The Last Frontier,” posted on Rick On Theater on 26 March, 5 and 30 April, and 10 May 2014.]

Late take-off again for Tokyo.  New York-Anchorage was 7½ hours; Anchorage-to-Tokyo was about 6 hours.  Also uneventful.  Got very weary.  Read China guidebook and [Craig] Claiborne article [a December 1978 food article, “Dining Out In The New China,” from the New York Times Magazine].  Day got very long during second leg.

Late take-off again for Hong Kong.  Five-hour flight was unexpected.  Lady next to me wouldn’t shut up.  Managed to get some sleep.  Including time/date change, flight was 36 hours (left noon, Friday, 19 Dec.; landed midnight, Sat., 20 Dec.)  Actually, flying time was ca. 20 hours plus an hour or so each at Anchorage and Tokyo. [Anchorage was a lay-over; Tokyo was a plane-change.]

Met my roommate, Noel Cooperberg – MBA student at the University of Michigan.  OK.  Baggage took forever to get to the room.  Was nearly 3 a.m. before we got to bed.  Had to be up at 7 a.m.  Hotel fine; new “motel modern” high-rise.  Our room has view of Victoria Peak [highest hill on Hong Kong Island at 1,811 feet above sea level].

[I didn’t record the name of the hotel in which we stayed in Hong Kong, but notes I saved suggest that it was the Hotel Furama Inter-Continental in the Central District of the city.  It was a 33-story hotel that was only built in 1973, managed in 1980 by Inter-Continental Hotels Ltd.  It was closed and demolished in 2001.]

Tomorrow – Hong Kong.

HONG KONG

Hong Kong – Sunday, 21 December

Briefing at 9 a.m. – nothing new from literature and book.  (Some people are really stupid; they just don’t listen!)   Signed up for evening tour of island and dinner at Victoria Peak.  Will look around Kowloon shopping area this a.m.

[I think I should make a comment on that stupid-people-who-don’t-listen crack now, and then do a brief run-down on Hong Kong as it was in 1980.

[Our tour group was made up largely of middle-aged folks, mostly couples, from Long Island.  (I was about to turn 34 on Christmas Day and Noel was in his early 20’s or so.  There was at least one couple from Brooklyn who were in their late 30’s and early 40’s, but the rest were mostly older.)  They seemed to be mostly interested in buying stuff: rugs, porcelains, antiques, carved jade or ivory, tchotchkes, souvenirs.

[I didn’t learn this about my traveling companions immediately—it took a few days—but signs began to show right away that might have been clues if I’d been paying attention.  My remark above, I think, was about the food we were going to be eating once we crossed the frontier into the People’s Republic.

[IPTIC’s mimeographed guidelines, which I mentioned earlier, told us, “Breakfast will be Western style; lunch and dinner are Chinese . . . .”  Despite this explicit note—which we all received before we left the States—many of my fellow travelers complained bitterly about all the Chinese food they’d be getting!  (We actually hadn’t gotten any yet, by the way, much to my disappointment.)

[I was delighted . . . when it finally started in Guangzhou . . . but my companions went off in Hong Kong in search of the nearest McDonald’s.  Horrors!  When I found out, after a few stops along our itinerary, that if we arrived at a hotel in the afternoon or early evening, we could request Chinese breakfast the next morning instead of the Western breakfast that was the default—I (and a few others in the group) jumped at the offer.

[Now, about Hong Kong in the ’80s and before (in brief). 

[First of all, Hong Kong was British.  I don’t mean just because the United Kingdom owned the city—well, leased it . . . for 99 years—but it had the veneer of British culture (over its native Chinese/Cantonese one).  Almost everyone with whom a visitor came into contact spoke English, and did so with a British accent.  The hotels all served high tea in the afternoon, and the deluxe hostelries, such as the Peninsula Hotel, used Rolls Royces for their courtesy cars.

[Hong Kong had its own currency, the Hong Kong dollar (HK$), issued by the Government of Hong Kong.  The exchange-rate with the U.S. dollar in 1980 was about HK$5 to US$1; most stores accepted foreign money—dollars, francs, pounds, marks, and so on—at various rates of exchange, and American Express traveler’s checks and credit cards were generally accepted, too.  (Visas and MasterCards were not yet ubiquitously accepted abroad in 1980 as they are today, but Amex and, I think, Diners Club were.)

[Hong Kong became a Crown Colony in 1841.  At the time, the colony consisted only of Hong Kong Island; in 1860, the colony expanded to include Kowloon Peninsula, north of Hong Kong Island across Victoria Harbour, and in 1898, it added the New Territories, an area consisting of 368 square miles of the mainland north of Kowloon Peninsula.  The 1898 agreement was the one at which the 99-year lease began.

[By 1980, the population of the colony was about 5 million inhabitants, of whom about 98% were Chinese.  Residents of the British colony held British National Overseas Passports and could live and work in the U.K. and apply for permanent residence status and British citizenship.

[Hong Kong in the ’80s was known for its wealth, as well as its high cost of living, and it was a popular tourist destination for its lifestyle and the shopping.  Goods, especially luxury goods such as jewelry, watches and cameras, antiques, art, and fashion, were on sale all over downtown Hong Kong, which was like a huge open-air, high-end mall.  (My family used to call Hong Kong “the World’s PX.”)  When the People’s Republic first opened up to foreign tourism, Hong Kong was the designated gateway to the mainland.

[In 1997, the U.K.’s 99-year lease on the territory expired, and Hong Kong was returned to China—which, in the interim, had, of course, become the communist-run People’s Republic of China.  All the former citizens of the British Dependent Territory of Hong Kong involuntarily became citizens of the PRC and subject to its laws and authority.]

One of our [IPTIC] guides, Patsy Cheung (Pepsi Cola [a nickname she supplied]), took us by subway to Waterloo Road in Kowloon where the Chinese Emporium is.  Very clean, fast, and efficient subway, and not expensive [HK$3, ca. 60¢US in 1980/$1.99 today], either.  [The Mass Transit Railway, or MTR, went into operation in 1979.]

Looked around Chinese Emporium – said to be better quality handicrafts here than in PRC.  [I don’t recall the store now, but according to the Hong Kong tourist map I have from this trip, it was probably the Chung Kiu Chinese Products Emporium on Nathan Road near the corner of Waterloo Road.  A branch of a mainland-owned department store, it carried a wide selection of Chinese products of good quality; it went out of business in 1997.] 

Bought white silk scarf with blue “Lucky” embroidered [in Chinese] and interesting table screen – my souvenir of China.  [I still have the scarf, a little grayed with age and rumpled from use.  I used to have a navy-blue overcoat with which I liked to wear that white scarf—very dashing!—and it lived in the coat’s sleeve.]

Some nice things (Chinese jackets and robes, cloisonné, antiques) and some cheap-looking things (cinnabar, furniture, some ivory carvings).

[Cloisonné is a decorative technique for metalwork in which colored enamel is baked between raised thin bands of the metal.  (In antique cloisonné pieces, the colored inlays were cut glass or even gems.)   

[Cinnabar is the common term for a distinctive Chinese form of carved lacquerware in which the lacquer has been colored with cinnabar, an ore of mercury which is a deep red mineral.  It’s used to make a variety of decorative and practical items such as boxes, plates, trays, screens, and furniture.  Fine pieces, especially antiques—the practice goes back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and most of the extant pieces are from the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) Dynasties—are very expensive.]

Took subway to Nathan Street [sic – Road] area [still in Kowloon] where main shopping is.  Wandered a bit and bought a pocket calculator to figure currency conversions.  Had lunch at Peninsula Hotel (with Cooperbergs [my roommate and his parents]).  Very “colonial” old hotel – boys in white uniforms (including pillbox hat) at doors – Rolls Royce parked out front and very grand.

[One of the things my parents suggested I do when I was in Hong Kong was to have tea at the Peninsula Hotel, which opened in Kowloon in 1928.  I didn’t manage to do that exactly, but this was my substitute.

[Combining colonial elegance and modern elements, the Peninsula has maintained its Baroque style architecture since its opening.  The Rolls was one of a fleet (Silver Shadows [1965-80], I believe), all painted “Peninsula green.”  Surprisingly, the hotel is not only still in operation under the communist regime, but continues to be a Western-type, colonial-style luxury hotel.]

Took Star Ferry back to Hong Kong.  Carols being sung at City Hall.  Went back to hotel to freshen up and met tour of island.

[The Star Ferry runs between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon across the harbor from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m.  The fare was 30¢HK for 1st class (upper deck) and 20¢HK for 2nd (lower deck).  (That’s all of 6¢US and 4¢US, respectively.  The Staten Island Ferry, which operates 24/7, is free now, but it used to cost the same as the New York City bus and subway—$1.50 when it went fare-free, the equivalent of HK$7.50 in 1980.)]

So far, don’t really feel I’m in China – Hong Kong [is] so Western, except for [the] faces, could be Berlin or Athens!  [Well, that was inaccurate.  I was stationed in Berlin in the army in the early ’70s (see “Berlin Memoir,” 16 and 31 December 2016 and 20 January, 9 and 19 February, 11 and 29 March, and 13 April 2017) and I visited Athens in 1973—and neither city was anywhere near as modern in its appearance then as was Hong Kong in 1980.  I’d describe this city’s architectural style as aggressively modern.]

Bus tour starts with Aberdeen [an area on southwest Hong Kong Island famous for floating village and floating seafood restaurants in Aberdeen Harbour].  Now I see some of old China in Hong Kong.  Old tenements climbing the hillside, real native shops and markets.  Very different from Kowloon of this morning.

Aberdeen is first real “exotic” encounter.  Somewhat like Turkolimano near Athens [smallest of the three ports of Piraeus and used by smaller yachts and small fishing boats, known for its seafood restaurants and bars], but teeming with people and fish.  Sampans [flat-bottomed Chinese wooden boat, often used for fishing] crowd the harbor – took a ride around the harbor – past fishing junks [type of Chinese sailing ship with distinctive battened sails] and floating restaurants.  “Floating people” with whole families, including dogs, living on the boats.  Getting overcrowded and city is trying to force them all onto land.

On to Deep Water Bay ([off southern shore of Hong Kong Island] where [1955’s] Love Is a Many Splendored Thing [starring William Holden and Jennifer Jones] was filmed) and Repulse Bay ([next to Deep Water Bay to its east] named for World War II destroyer sunk there).  Some very wealthy homes perched along the bay!  [Deep Water Bay is reputed to be the richest neighborhood in the world.]

[The origin of Repulse Bay’s English name is obscure—and probably apocryphal.  No account of the name’s origin rests on any documentary evidence that has so far been found. 

[The story that it was named after the British warship HMS Repulse which was stationed at the bay is undocumented: no ship named Repulse was ever docked there according to Admiralty records.  Another account is that in 1841, the bay was a haven for pirates who were “repulsed” by the British Royal Navy.  No such action is recorded in the naval logs of the period.]

Up to Victoria Peak – wonderful view of Hong Kong by night.  The meal was good [we had dinner at one of the several restaurants near the summit – but Western.  I guess we won’t get Chinese food ’til tomorrow on the way to Canton [Guangzhou].

[My plaint about a Western meal on the Peak comes from the long wait I had for my first taste of Chinese cuisine, even after we arrived in Hong Kong.  I didn’t note at which restaurant we ate that night, but I think it was the Old Peak Café (renamed the Peak Lookout Restaurant in 2001) which served so-called international cuisine—a fancy name for Western food—much to my disappointment.

[As it turned out, the meal we got en route to Guangzhou didn’t satisfy my craving . . . as you’ll hear shortly.]

Just stepped out for a walk around Hong Kong Centre ([the city’s main business district] near the hotel) where the Christmas lights have just gone on.  (They seem to wait ’til the last weekend to put them on.)  Everybody’s out with their cameras and tripods.

Tomorrow starts very early (5:00 a.m.) and looks to be very long.

[This is the first of five installments of my transcription-with-commentary of “Travel Journal: People’s Republic of China, 1980.”  I’ll be posting the rest of the journal at three-day intervals through Wednesday, 5 January 2022; I hope you’ll return for each installment.

[The next segment of the journal will appear on Monday, 27 December, covering my entry into the People’s Republic and my visits to Canton (now called Guangzhou) and Shanghai.]

Reviewing the Beatles

by Kirk Woodward

[My friend and a longtime contributor to Rick On Theater, Kirk Woodward, is an avid Beatles fan—right from their very start in this country.  He also happens to be musically educated, so he’s written for this blog many times on both music and the Fab Four,

[Furthermore, Kirk’s knowledgeable about the art of review-writing—as he demonstrated with his book The Art of Writing Reviews (Merry Press, 2009; http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/the-art-of-writing-reviews/6785272)--so this time around he’s applied those three attributes (believe me, he has more, as frequent readers of ROT will know) to comment on the press coverage of the Beatles during the years they were together.

[Kirk is focusing on the coverage in the New York Times—I’ll let him tell you why—but not only is his analysis valid for other outlets, but it can be applied to reviews in other fields: theater, books, and art, among others.]

I have in front of me a collection of articles about the Beatles printed in The New York Times from 1963 through 2013. I have written extensively about the Beatles in this blog; their cultural influence is so vast that it doesn’t seem out of place to discuss them in a context primarily devoted to theater.

[The past Beatles posts contributed to Rick On Theater by Kirk Woodward include: “The Beatles and Me,” 7 October 2010; “The Beatles Box,” 30 September 2012; “The Beatles Diary” by Kirk Woodward & Pat Woodward, 8 January 2013; “The Beatles’ Influence,” 13 July 2015; “Now, Live, the Non-Beatles,” 27 September 2016; “Bob and Ringo,” 1 December 2017; and “Help!,” 17 September 2020.]

Besides, this time I will be discussing, not so much the Beatles themselves, as how they were covered in one newspaper of reputation and impact, up to the end of their time together as a group (roughly, late 1969). I could have chosen any number of other approaches; there are hundreds of books about the Beatles written from every possible angle, from the foolish to the penetrating.

The Times, of course, began covering the Beatles as a news event – huge crowds, screaming fans – at a time when reviewing popular music was not a primary focus of journalism. The paper did its best, I’d say, by printing articles written by the outstanding rock reviewers of the day. As we will see, its coverage of the Beatles’ music improved steadily.  As we will also see, where critical opinions are concerned, anything goes!

We have the advantage, as the writers of many of the Times pieces did not at the time, of knowing how the Beatles “turned out.” Successfully predicting the future is difficult; second-guessing is easy, and probably unfair. However, if there are agreed-on standards for reviewing, it is fair to apply them and see how well they were met. Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) proposed such standards and they have held up well. A reviewer, Goethe suggests, should ask:

What is the artist trying to do?
How well do they do it?
Is it worth doing?  

Based on observation I would say that reviewers who habitually ask and answer these questions are few and far between, and that many if not most reviewers go immediately to the last question, with some of the second perhaps thrown in for good measure.

In any case, these questions will be invaluable as we look at the Times’ coverage of the Beatles. Many writers contributed to that coverage, of course, and the results vary.

The first article, from 1 December 1963 by Frederick Lewis for The New York Times Magazine, is light on examination of the Beatles’ music. To be fair, there was not at that point a great deal to examine. Lewis provides a non-hysterical examination of the Beatles’ sociological and psychological significance:

They are working-class, and their roots and attitudes are firmly of the North of England. Because of their success they can act as spokesmen for the new, noisy, anti-Establishment generation which is becoming a force in British life. In their uncompromising Northernness, they are linked with actors like Albert Finney and with novelists like Alan Stilltoe [1928-2010, novelist and author of the short story “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner”] and John Braine [1922-1986, novelist noted for the book Room at the Top].

On 10 February 1964, the day after the first appearance of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, Jack Gould (1914-1993, television reporter for the Times) was dismissive and patronizing, talking about “the cyclical turnover in teenage trauma.” He said basically nothing about their music. Surprisingly, Theodore Strongin (1918-1998), a composer who sometimes wrote for the Times, made an effort to come to terms with the Beatles musically, if bafflingly:

Their harmony is unmistakeably diatonic. A learned British colleague, writing on his home ground, has described it as pandiatonic, but I disagree. [With more music to examine, he probably would have actually agreed, at least to some extent. “Pandiatonic” basically means the use of notes that the average ear would not expect.]

The Beatles have a tendency to build phrases around unresolved leading tones. This precipitates the ear into a false modal frame that temporarily turns the fifth of the frame into the tonic, momentarily suggesting the Mixolydian mode. But everything always ends as plain diatonic all the same.

At least he is trying to engage with the music; good luck reaching the readership. He continues:

The Beatles’s vocal quality can be described as vocally incoherent, with the minimal communication necessary to communicate the schematic texts.

Here we see in embryo an approach frequently encountered in reviews of the Beatles: the dismissal of rock as an inferior form, without principles or values of its own. (We will encounter the opposite of this approach later.)

The video of the first Ed Sullivan appearance is available on YouTube; the words can be understood, and the Beatles are “communicating” as rock musicians. That was what they intended to do, and that was what they did, with obvious success. They were unquestionably communicating effectively within their chosen field.

It is reasonable to note that, at this early point in the Beatles’ career, screaming audiences were the first thing many people noticed, because, first, you couldn’t miss them, and, second, they made it difficult at best to hear the performances of the songs, or to think about anything else. So most early articles review the audiences more than they do the Beatles. That is not our approach here, and, of course, that situation would change.

I do feel it’s worthwhile to point out that some people in early 1964 already had a high opinion of the Beatles’ music – me, for one, because very early I heard “From Me to You” on the radio (it originally got brief airplay in the United States in 1963) and loved its brightness and its harmonies. Not surprised when they “hit it big,” I was listening for more good music, and got it. Similarly, I remember in college asking my friend John Burgard, a musician and still a figure in the Louisville, Kentucky, blues scene, if he had been surprised by the Beatles’ success. “No,” he said, “I had listened to the records.”

Robert Shelton (1926-1995), in an article published 11 August 1965 in anticipation of the Beatles’ famous appearance at Shea Stadium, accurately summarized their earliest music:

The music of the Beatles is a form of American music that ricocheted to Europe, became infused with the group’s personality and has since bounced back here. Mostly, the “Liverpool Sound” is a buoyant, infectiously rhythmic series of cadences, with some unsettlingly exciting harmonies (in open fourths and fifths), a bedrock blues beat and an aura of youth, channeled sexuality and exuberance. Often there is a wistful, plaintive quality to their slower ballads.

The Beatles were influenced while working in the Cavern in Liverpool, directly or through recordings brought by American seamen from the Gulf Coast, with American rhythm and blues, rock ’n’ roll, or rockabilly interpreters, such as Mr. Presley, Little Richard, the Everlys or Buddy Holly and the Crickets. From this, with a dash of the British folk-jazz called “skiffle,” the Beatles’ style emerged.

There is more that Shelton could have said – by this point the Beatles had issued several albums, including Help! (although Shelton may not have heard it in its remarkable British form), and Rubber Soul was just ahead.

Dan Sullivan (b. 1935) in an article in the Times on 3 March 1967 had enough information to say:

The funny thing about teenage idols is that some of them turn out to be artists. Frank Sinatra illustrated the process years ago. Now we have The Beatles. . . . Beatlemania and the editorials about it quickly grew tiresome, but not the Beatles themselves. Entirely apart from their authentic personal charm, they proved to be far more original musicians than they had seemed at first. . . . The Buddy Holly yelps and Elvis Presley growls gradually fall away, and are replaced by odd intervals, antique harmonies, raga-like sequences and rhythmic devices new to pop music. . . . [Paul McCartney’s] casual way with the traditional harmonic circle-of-fifths has stretched the public’s ear considerably – as has his decision . . . not to limit himself to conventional four- or eight-bar melodic units.

The next major evaluation of Beatles music in the Times came with the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), memorably reviewed for the paper by Richard Goldstein (b. 1942) on 18 June 1967.

Goldstein’s review, we may confidently say, goes against the flow of opinion about the album, which he describes at different points as “busy, hip and overcluttered”:

The obsession with production, coupled with a surprising shoddiness in composition, pervades the entire album. There is nothing beautiful about “Sergeant Pepper.” Nothing is real and there is nothing to get hung about [a reference to the Beatles song “Strawberry Fields Forever”]. The Lennon raunchiness has become mere caprice . . . . Paul McCartney’s soaring Pop magnificats have become merely politely profound. . . . With one important exception, “Sergeant Pepper” is precious but devoid of gems.

(The exception Goldstein describes is the monumental track “A Day in the Life.”) Goldstein’s review has been the subject of astonishment since its publication; the reputation of the review has hounded him through the years. Several things are going on here.

First of all, every reviewer’s nightmare, I should think, is to pan an art work that turns out to be a classic. In the field of music, Nicholas Slonimsky (1894-1995), a conductor and composer, has compiled a Lexicon of Musical Invective (1953) which Wikipedia correctly describes as “a collection of hilariously scathing, insulting, vituperative, and enraged contemporary critiques of musical greats in their time,” including Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Puccini, and many, many others. Goldstein’s review belongs in such a collection (along with at least one other review to be discussed below).

Sometimes reviewers simply have bad days. Anthony Lane, the movie reviewer for The New Yorker, has described how he watched much of a film disapproving of its shadowy cinematography before realizing that he had his sunglasses on. Similarly, Richard Goldstein, although he does not apologize for his review, has confirmed to The Washington Post (11 May 2017) that he listened to Sgt. Pepper on a broken stereo record player, so the sound he heard was incomplete!

More importantly, however, Goldstein’s review illustrates a condition common in reviewers: they criticize a work, not beginning with its artist’s intentions, but with their own opinions about what such a work ought to be. In Goldstein’s case, he clearly states what he wanted to hear:

The best Beatle melodies are simple if original progressions braced with pungent lyrics. Even their most radical compositions retain a sense of unity.

That is to say, the Beatles should stick to the straightforward rock ’n’ roll that established their early reputation. Instead,

for the first time the Beatles have given us an album of special effects, dazzling but ultimately fraudulent.

The notion that an album is “fraudulent” occurs often in music reviews – other terms are “phony,” “not genuine,” and so on. This kind of attack has always mystified me. What does it mean? If it refers to insincerity on the part of the artist, how does one know that, and even if the artist is trying to produce deceptive work (I suppose that happens, but how often?), the resulting object is not honest or dishonest – it just is. (Pablo Picasso is supposed once to have said, “I can paint a fake Picasso as well as anybody.”)

More importantly, though, Goldstein actually senses what the Beatles intended to do – he just doesn’t like it. They intended – I believe, and many others have said – to create a “soundscape,” a set of aural images of unique beauty, and they succeeded.

Rock was their heritage, songs were their material, but their aim went beyond a collection of “good songs,” toward a new experience of sound. Goldstein senses this – but it doesn’t fit his idea of what they should be doing, so his review is off kilter from the start. Had he listened to Goethe, he likely would not have made this mistake.

Although Paul McCartney, according to reports, has held the review against Goldstein ever since, the Times did not. On 31 December 1967 Goldstein doubled down on his criticism in a review of the Magical Mystery Tour album which is even more an attack on what the Beatles were becoming:

The Beat is no longer implicit to the Beatles. In its place, they have created a collage of sound-images masquerading as Brechtian vaudeville. Sometimes this free inquiry into the nature of pop art stuns with a resonant power; at other times it seems capricious and gimmick-ridden. But rarely does it rock. . . . All these touches exemplify an approach to song that is closer to programmatic music than it is to rock. . . . Scratch the surface of “Magical Mystery Tour” and it bleeds like show music . . . . This electronic posturing is what I found fraudulent in “Sergeant Pepper,” and it is even more apparent here. . . . Does it sound like heresy to say that the Beatles write material which is literate, courageous, genuine, but spotty? It shouldn’t. They are inspired posers, but we must keep our heads on their music, not their incarnations. In that critical distance lies the deepest sort of respect.

One would guess Goldstein had received a certain amount of pushback from his review of Sgt. Pepper. One notices his insistence that the Beatles should be creating more “rock”; anything else is “electronic posturing,” “fraudulent” (there is that word again), created by “posers.” Again, he understands what the Beatles are trying to achieve – a “free inquiry into the nature of pop art.” He simply knows better than they what they ought to be doing.

Imagine his relief when he heard the album The Beatles (the “White Album”), which he reviewed on 8 December 1968. One would assume that a review that ended with the following sentence was a positive review:

This album is so vast in its scope, so intimate in its detail, and so skillful in its approach, that even the flaws add to its flavor.

In fact the opening paragraphs of the review drip with scorn:

The Beatles . . . epitomize the pretenses of their culture. For, more than anyone in the pop hegemony, the Beatles involve themselves in the times. Unlike Dylan, who wanders like a pilgrim across the fiery plains of his own imagination, the Beatles are inspired groovers, equally at home in the haute monde (which cherishes them as clever rakes) and the underground (where they are loved as magic rebels).

Goldstein essentially accuses the Beatles of pandering to their times, a conclusion undercut by the fact that their music has vitality more than half a century after it was first heard. Oddly, he also feels that the Beatles are trying to regain their own past:

What the Beatles are really attempting to revive here is the spontaneous vitality of their earliest songs. They mean to project a sense of the immediate, the makeshift and the incomplete – all missing from their recent work.

I simply do not believe that an open-minded listener will take away from the album a sense of “the makeshift and the incomplete.” But once again, Goldstein senses the real thrust of the Beatles’ intention with the album, at least as I understand it:

Even more effective is the album’s burlesque of musical forms. In this respect, “The Beatles” is almost a mock-history of pop.”

“Mock” does not strike me as the correct word, but I definitely hear the album as a tribute to what music can do, and a successful one. (It’s my favorite of any album, Beatles or otherwise.) So when Goldstein says he hopes that “Yer Blues” is meant as “a parody of white blues,” I want to say, “Yes, of course it is, as you’d know if you’d calm down and listen to what the Beatles are actually doing.”

A minor detail is that Goldstein exercises his reviewers’ right to contradict himself. Writing about The Beatles he speaks of “the meticulous structure of ‘Sergeant Pepper.’” Here is what he wrote of that structure in his review of Sgt. Pepper: “There is no apparent thematic development in the placing of cuts, except for the effective juxtaposition of opposing musical styles. At best, the songs are only vaguely related.” So much for “meticulous structure!”

“This time, the Beatles have dared to be restrained,” Goldstein writes, a conclusion that seems incomprehensible to me if he listened to the album at all, as he obviously did – demonstrating again the power of the preconceived opinion.

“Restrained,” moreover, is hardly the word for the next major review of Beatle music in the Times – a cautionary tale of a review written by Nik Cohn (b. 1946) and published 5 October 1969 about the Beatles album Abbey Road. If a review is in part a consumer report, would you buy this album?

On “Abbey Road” the words are limp-wristed, pompous and fake. Clearly, the Beatles have now heard so many tales of their own genius that they’ve come to believe them, and everything here is Instant Art. Give me just five minutes in the privacy of your own home and I can make you a super-bard.

I am uncertain what he feels makes a lyric either limp-wristed or a fake.

Cohn then quotes a lyric from the album, about which I would like to say, as I have before, that quoting words from songs to prove their worthlessness is worthless, because a song lyric is only a part of a whole. Cohn should know better – he wrote a book called Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom (1969), a quotation from a song recorded by Little Richard (Richard Penniman, 1932-2020), a nonsense lyric and a great and memorable one.

Cohn admires the medley that concludes the second side of the album, although even that admiration is mixed:

Apart from [a couple of short sections], it’s all pretty average stuff. Most of the melody lines have been used elsewhere, and some of the lyrics are quite painful. . . . Most of the lines here are steals, partly pinched from other people and partly from other Beatle albums.

And, he continues,

The rest of this album is an unmitigated disaster. . . . The badness ranges from mere gentle tedium to cringing embarrassment. The blues, for instance, is horribly out of tune, and Ringo’s ditty is purest Mickey Mouse.

Finally we get to the foundation of the review, and, as with Richard Goldstein, it’s a notion of “real” rock as a sort of primitive musical Garden of Eden. Cohn is discussing the song “Oh! Darling”:

Slow 1950’s rock was something very formal, a ritual as classic and changeless as bullfighting, in which each embellishment and each progression had its own exact function. On “Oh! Darling,” Lennon flounders in an orgy of gulps, howls and retches, flung together at random, and the whole point is lost.

This kind of overkill, in fact, has become very much a Beatles trademark. It ruined their last double-album, and it ruins two-thirds of “Abbey Road.” The great strength of the medley is that it doesn’t overkill – no repetitions, no heavy breathing. It gets back toward the kind of ease and style that the Beatles had five years ago.

One can argue with this screed on factual grounds – the long medley does include repetitions, and, embarrassingly, John Lennon doesn’t sing “Oh! Darling,” Paul McCartney does, as even a casual listener, much less an important rock reviewer, ought to know.

The more important point is that Cohn’s primary interest is in his picture of what he thinks the album ought to be, rather than in what it is. He seals this point with another illustration, this one from a song that actually is sung by John Lennon:

“Come Together” is a slowed-down reworking of Chuck Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me” and is intriguing only as a sign of just how low Lennon can sink these days. “You Can’t Catch Me” is a very great song, after all, and lumbering it with the kind of “Look Ma, I’m Jesus” lyrics that Lennon unloads here is not a crime that I’d like to have on my conscience.

It’s hard to decide which claim is more absurd – that Lennon’s song is Berry’s slowed down (it quotes, more or less, about eight words from the second verse of Berry’s song, and shares a two chord progression typical of the blues), or that Chuck Berry’s song is so great that it should represent the farthest advance of songwriting.

The New York Times is a great newspaper, and Richard Goldstein and Nik Cohn have both made significant contributions to the reviewing and criticism of music. The reviews discussed here did no great harm to the Beatles – Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road are widely considered masterpieces, are among fifteen Beatle recordings in the Grammy Hall of Fame, and have sold millions of copies. The reviews didn’t help Goldstein and Cohn, but both have nevertheless had long and productive careers.

And reviewing is a difficult and often arduous job. The pitfalls are many, some of which have been illustrated here:

Ignoring, dismissing, or minimizing the intention(s) behind the work.
Upholding standards that may not be appropriate to new work.
Factual errors.

It has been suggested more than once that reviewers ought to stick to description, and entirely avoid evaluation – in effect, to be reporters in the strictest sense of the word. This advice seems likely to be taken only by reviewers with little to offer. The greater their ability, the more likely they are to make a review a personal matter. In any case, a little humility and a little curiosity will help, and perhaps an internal conversation with Goethe.

[I don’t do footnotes on ROT, but occasionally I feel that a post should have a list of the sources at least of the quotations and other references.  Kirk’s “Reviewing the Beatles” fits that bill, I think, so I’m appending below a list Kirk assembled of the reviews from the New York Times he quoted and a couple of other sources of statements he made in his article. 

Cohn, Nik. “The Beatles: For 15 Minutes, Tremendous.” New York Times 5 October 1969: 13.

Edgers, Geoff. “Getting better all the time.” Washington Post 14 May 2017: E 1, 16. [On-line edition: “Meet the critic who panned ‘Sgt. Pepper’ then discovered his speaker was busted. He’s still not sorry,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/meet-the-critic-who-panned-sgt-peppers-then-discovered-his-speaker-was-busted-hes-still-not-sorry/2017/05/11/aa0058b4-2f44-11e7-9dec-764dc781686f_story.html, 11 May 2017.]

Goldstein, Richard. “Are They Waning?” New York Times 28 August 1967: D 14.

Goldstein, Richard. “The Beatles: Inspired Groovers.” New York Times 8 December 1968: 33.

Goldstein, Richard. “We Still Need the Beatles, but . . .” New York Times 18 June 1967: D 24.

Gould, Jack. “TV: The Beatles and Their Audience.”  New York Times 10 February 1964: 53.

Lane, Anthony. “Introduction.” Nobody’s Perfect: Writings from The New Yorker (Vintage, 9 September 2003), xx.

Lewis, Frederick. “Britons Succumb to ‘Beatlemania.’” The New York Times Magazine 1 December 1963: 124-26.

Shelton, Robert. “The Beatles Will Make the Scene Here Again, but the Scene Has Changed.” New York Times 11 August 1965: 40.

Strongin, Theodore. “TV: The Beatles and Their Audience.”  New York Times 10 February 196: 53.

Sullivan, Dan. “Beatles: More Than a Mania.” New York Times 5 March 1967: D 33.

[Geoff Edgers’s Washington Post article in which Richard Goldstein admitted he listened to Sgt. Pepper on a damaged stereo is on line, as are the New York Times reviews.  (Both papers have been digitized so there are databases which also have the .pdf versions of those articles as well, if you have access to one.)

[Readers should note that in articles dating from before the start of online publication (1996 for the Times), the digitization process sometimes introduces transcription errors or other problems into the online text that effects readability and accuracy. 

[Anthony Lane’s book, the source of the anecdote about his wearing sunglasses when he watched Contact, the movie he was reviewing for the New Yorker, is not online in its entirety.  Google Books offers a preview that includes most of the introduction, where Lane tells the story, and it’s quoted on several Internet websites.  One such site is http://richardgilbert.me/noted-anthony-lane/. 

[(For the curious, most of Lane’s 21 July 1997 review of Contact is also in the Google Books preview of Nobody’s Perfect [pp. 194-97] as well.  The sunglasses incident isn’t mentioned.)]

More Script Reports IV: Classics

 

[Not all the plays on which a literary manager has to report are new or recent scripts.  Part of my job at StageArts Theater Company, the Off-Off-Broadway showcase house where I worked for several months in 1984, was to help them start a script-soliciting program and a script-reading process. 

[But the artistic directors, Nell Robinson, a stage director, and Ruth Ann Norris, an actress, also wanted me to advise them on ways of bringing, not audiences—they were actually doing okay in that regard—but reviewers and producers into the theater.  In that capacity, I saw that I had to broaden their vision with respect to the kinds of plays StageArts was offering.

[Without going into detail, what I determined StageArts needed to do was go beyond the new plays they’d been producing and add a little variety.  I tried to steer Nell and Ruth Ann toward some riskier material, and some older work that might not be being done so much in New York and might catch the attention of reviewers and grant-makers.

[What you see in this collection are some of the older plays, most written in the 19th century, I read and evaluated for SA, taking into consideration their tastes, but also what the small company could handle.  Some of the plays in this group are ones that I selected for Nell and Ruth Ann because I thought they’d be eye-catching and weren’t often produced in New York; others were plays that one of the artistic directors, most often Nell Robinson, wanted me to evaluate for them.

[There will probably be another collection of classic script reports, and among them will be some plays I didn’t actually like, but Nell or Ruth Ann had an interest in them and wanted my take on them.  In this batch, there’s a group that I knew was just out of the StageArts wheelhouse.]

--------------------

[Anna Cora Mowatt (née Ogden; 1819-70) was a French-born American author, playwright, and actress.  She was clearly precocious, taking to writing at an early age.  She was educated at a private school, but was mostly taught at home.

[In 1834, when she was 15, Mowatt eloped with an older man, James Mowatt, a New York lawyer.  He encouraged her to continue her schooling and her writing, and in 1836, she published her first book, followed in 1837 by her second.  She wrote magazine articles and her first play, a six-act drama called Gulzara, The Persian Slave, was intended to be played by an all-female cast (including the lone male character, a “breeches” role).  Set in a Constantinople harem, the story was the abduction of the Turkish sultan’s son.  It was subsequently published in a New York weekly newspaper. 

[Mowatt’s most famous work, Fashion, or Life in New York, was published in 1845 and was an instant hit.  It opened at the Park Theatre on Park Row in Lower Manhattan, on 24 March 1845 to rave reviews.  It was produced in theaters all across the country.  (This was in the days before New York City became the undisputed theater capital of the United States and plays and actors toured the nation, playing in theaters in all the cities in the states and territories.)

[In 1924, the play was revived by the renowned Provincetown Players in Greenwich Village.  It eventually moved uptown to the current Theatre District and had a run of more than two hundred performances.  In 1974, at the McAlpin Rooftop Theater on W. 34th Street in Manhattan, a chamber‐ensemble musical adaptation of Fashion was presented Off-Broadway.  The adaptation was up-dated to 1973 and was played by a company of women—"with the exception of one male chauvinist . . . who . . . assumes the role of the faithless, irresistible and phony hero” (Clive Barnes’s New York Times review).]

StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION

[ca] 6/20/84
[Rick]

 

Fashion, or Life in New York by Anna Cora Mowatt
(3 acts; 5 w, 8 m – 1 black, extras)

 

Plot Synopsis:  Mr. Tiffany’s success as a merchant leads his wife to assume all the affectations of high society and to fill her home with would-be esthetes and presumed European nobility.  Trueman, an honest upstate farmer, comes to visit his old friend and decries the changes that have taken place in the Tiffany home.  With the aid of Gertrude, the family governess, he helps the Tiffanys shake off their sycophantic companions and return to a more simple life.

            Theme:  This satire on life in New York society pits Yankee honesty against European (and pseudo-European) phoniness.  An amusing variety of characters functions in this capacity, and Count Jolimaitre, a French fop, provides a contrast to the plain Yankee heroes.  Much of the plot concerns the exposure of the count.

            Evaluation:  This is an American classic from 1845, the days of melodrama.  This is, in fact, a quintessential melodramatic farce, and is both very funny and charmingly warm.  The style, language, and behavior are of the period, and are therefore not easily handled, but with care and delicacy on the part of the cast and director, it should make a delightful production.

            Other Considerations:  This play has been produced in New York in recent years, but not so recent that a new production would not attract attention.  It is a classic, and belongs to the early period of American drama that is not frequently presented.  Aside from its importance in theater history, the play is fun to do and see.

*  *  *  *

[Aleksandr Ostrovsky (1823-86) was a Russian playwright whose dramas are among the most widely read and frequently performed stage pieces in Russia. 

[Ostrovsky started writing early, producing collections of scenes while he was still in his 20’s.  His first publication was a short play, The Picture of a Family Happiness, in 1847.  He continued to write plays, which were often praised when they appeared in periodicals—but were also banned from the stage for their critical outlook.

[Finally, his first play to be staged, Stay in Your Own Sled (1852), made it to the Maly Theater in Moscow in 1853.  For the next 30 years, the Maly or the Aleksandrinsky Theater in Saint Petersburg would première his plays.

[In 1859, Ostrovsky wrote one of his best-known works, The Storm, which premièred at the Maly Theater in Moscow later that same year.  It was also staged in Saint Petersburg and was warmly received in both cities, giving the playwright and the producing theaters big box-office hits.  In 1863, Ostrovsky was awarded the prestigious Uvarov Prize for The Storm.

[The dramatist’s most popular play, Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man, premièred at the Aleksandrinsky on 1 November 1868.  It opened at the Maly on 6 November and was a huge success at both theaters and has remained popular in Russia ever since, constantly revived and filmed.  It is also Ostrovsky’s best-known comedy in the West.

[(The title of this play is translated in many different ways.  Its Russian title is На всякого мудреца довольно простоты – Na vsyakogo mudretsa dovolno prostoty, which can also be translated as Even a Wise Man Stumbles or For Every Wise Man, Simplicity Is Enough.)

[Later Russian productions include a 1910 staging by Konstantin Stanislavsky at the world-famous Moscow Art Theater in which Stanislavsky appeared, along with Olga Knipper-Chekhova, the widow of famed playwright Anton Chekhov.

[In New York City, two Off-Broadway productions were mounted (as The Diary of a Scoundrel): 1989 by Roundabout Conservatory & Ensemble Company in Chelsea, and in 1956 by the Phoenix Theatre on the Upper East Side.  The cast of the latter included Roddy McDowell, Robert Culp, Howard Da Silva, Peter Falk, Mike Kellin, Ruth McDevitt, Margaret Hamilton, Lorelei Lee, and Jerry Stiller.]

StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION

 

[ca] 6/20/84
[Rick]

 
The Diary of a Scoundrel, or Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man by Alexandr Ostrovsky
(3 acts; 7 w, 8 m)
 

             Plot Synopsis:  A young scoundrel, Glumov, flatters, bribes, stoops to anything in order to gain his own advancement.  He talks outrageously behind the backs of his so-called friends and gossips incessantly.  In private, he writes down in his diary just what he thinks about all of those with whom he comes in contact. 

When his diary is stolen from him, the young detractor is faced suddenly with the horrible embarrassment of having his diary read aloud in the presence of the very people about whom he has written.  He brazens it out, and with his own unique brand of clever rascality turns the whole thing to his advantage. 

Theme:  The play makes fun of the self-important minor functionaries of society—the stuffed shirts, the easily flattered, the ego-centric.  In the end, even though they find Glumov out, they need him to keep the pretense of secrecy for their foibles.  This play is very similar in many respects to The Inspector General [by Nikolai Gogol, 1842], though it lacks the heavy overtones of that play.

Evaluation:  The play is hilariously funny and presents a wonderful farce in performance.  Its pertinence is no less today than in 1868 when it was written, and no less applicable to the U.S. as it was to Imperial Russia.  The characters are wonderfully eccentric, and make excellent acting roles.

Other Considerations:  I don’t believe a production of Scoundrel has been done in New York in recent memory.  If you are seriously considering older plays to alternate with new works, this farce should be among them.  It is a classic in its own right, but a somewhat neglected one.

The large cast can certainly be cut some, and some characters can be combined to reduce the number of actors, should that be desirable.  It would even be possible, and perhaps even theatrically advantageous, to up-date the play to the present.  Only minor changes in the script would be necessary, and it may prove a striking comment on society.

*  *  *  *

[Edmond Rostand (1868-1918), the French writer, playwright, poet, and essayist, is world-famous as the author of one play: Cyrano de Bergerac, first performed on 28 December 1897 in Paris, and has probably been on some stage somewhere in the world every day since then. 

[In his short life—he was only 50 when he died of the Spanish flu (possibly contracted, ironically, at rehearsals for L’Aiglon, the second play in this trilogy—he wrote many other plays, however, most of them far less well-known (or popular).  I reported to my StageArts bosses on three of these at their request. 

[(One of these plays, The Far Princess, I didn’t know before I read it for SA; the other two, probably not coincidentally, I had read in French when I was in college.  I was a French-German major and I took a class in each department on drama.)

[Rostand started writing theater pieces as a boy.  He started with sketches and scenes, but he was no more than 16 when he composed his first play, unproduced and unpublished to this day: Les Petites manies (“Little manias,” 1884).  He was training as a lawyer at the time, and he did take his degree and join the bar—but he never practiced.  Instead, he devoted his life to poetry.

[Rostand’s first success in the theater was Les Romanesques (The Romancers, 1894), probably his second-most-famous play—but not for its own sake so much as for what was made of it later.  Les Romanesques is the basis for The Fantasticks, the longest-running musical play in New York and U.S. history.

[Often seen by literary and theater critics as more of a poet than a playwright, Rostand wrote in the midst of the surge of Realism on the stages of Western theater, but was a throwback to the Romantic era.  His Cyrano was a perfect example of that; so are the plays evaluated below.

[He wrote Cyrano for the actor Benoît-Constant Coquelin.  Of his lesser plays, the ones evaluated below, he wrote two of them specifically for another renowned French actor: Sarah Bernhardt.  In The Far Princess, she played the title part, Melissinde; in The Eaglet, she again played the title role, Napoleon II, son of the Emperor Napoleon I, a 20-year-old man.

[(In the 2018 play, Bernhardt/Hamlet by Theresa Rebeck, the playwright makes out that Bernhardt and Rostand were lovers but there’s no evidence of such a relationship and it’s pretty clear that Rebeck invented that.)

[The Far Princess (La Princesse lointaine, 1895; also translated as The Distant Princess and The Princess from Afar) premiered on 5 April 1895 in the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt (Théâtre de la Renaissance). It was a great success but ended in financial disaster for the actress.

[There was no trace of a production of The Far Princess in New York City (though both The Eaglet/L’Aiglon and Chantecler left small footprints).  Cyrano has had dozens of Broadway productions over the years, and at least three Off-Broadway stagings.]

StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION

 
7/4/84
[Rick]

 

The Far Princess (La Princesse lointaine) by Edmond Rostand

            Plot Synopsis:  Prince-Poet Joffroy Rudel from Aquitaine has never seen Melissinde, Princess of the Orient and Countess of Tripoli, but her rumored beauty has inspired many of his songs and he has fallen in love with her image. 

            He has embarked for Tripoli with his companion Bertrand D’Allmanon, knight and troubadour from Provence, and a crew of sailors, his chaplain, and physician.  The arduous journey has decimated the crew and brought Joffroy to the point of death.  At last they arrive at Tripoli, and Bertrand is sent to bring Melissinde to Joffroy’s deathbed at all costs. 

            The Princess is being kept under guard by the Green Knight for the Emperor Manuel who plans to marry her.  When it is learned that a knight has come ashore, the security is tightened.  But Bertrand fights his way through the guards, slaying the Green Knight, and makes his way to the Princess.  He is wounded and weak, and Melissinde tends him. 

            She falls in love with Bertrand and refuses to return with him to the ship and Joffroy because she cannot face him when she loves his friend.  She confesses her love to Bertrand who at first presses her to see Joffroy anyway to ease his death. 

            Finally, they plan to stay and be lovers, but are shocked when a black sail, the sign of Joffroy’s death, is spotted by off-stage pilgrims.  When they discover that the sail is for the Green Knight, not Joffroy, they both repent their selfishness and rush to Joffroy before he dies. 

            On board, Scarciafico, a Genoese merchant, has reported Bertrand and Melissinde’s betrayal, but no one believes him, and he is unceremoniously tossed overboard. 

Joffroy is so near death, he cannot move, speak, or hear—only see.  He spots the Princess’s barge, and Melissinde and Bertrand arrive in time to ease Joffroy’s passage into death.  Bertrand, out of contrition, wants to confess his near-betrayal, but the chaplain prevents him from upsetting his friend in his last moments.  Joffroy dies, and Melissinde gives her jewels to the sailors to join the crusade under Bertrand’s leadership as she joins a holy sisterhood in atonement. 

Theme:  Like most poetic romances, Princess touts the theme of romantic love and personal sacrifice.  There is no universal truth indicated here.

Genre/Style:  Classical romance.

Structure:  4 acts; unified time and action.

Setting:  2 locations: deck of Joffroy’s ship; the Princess’s apartment.  12th-century Orient/Mideast; Realism would be difficult, but a suggestion of the 2 sets would work with cleverness and imagination.

Language:  Verse dialogue in 19th-century style with many classical references.  There are several songs (Joffroy and Bertrand are troubadours).  Much of the poetry, at least in this translation (John Heard, 1935) is unrhymed and unevenly metered, making it difficult to speak.  Other translations may be available and more playable.  A prose version may, in fact be best.

Characters:  2 women: 1 20’s, 1 any age; 21 men (many can be cut): 2 20’s, 1 30‘s, 4 40’s and up, remainder any age.  The Green Knight is very big; Joffroy and Bertrand sing and Joffroy plays a “harp” (though any medieval string instrument would work—or it may be cut).

Evaluation:  This is a very early Rostand, written in 1895 for Sarah Bernhardt.  Stark Young [a turn-of-the-century American playwright, novelist, literary critic, and translator, among other occupations] suggests in the introduction that it is, with Cyrano [de Bergerac, 1897], his “most achieved” work.  He points out, however, several defects: “A certain drift toward mere wordiness and unsuccessful rhetoric, a lack of spine sometimes, a half paralysis of languorous beauty, and a failure now and then in imaginative realization of the idea in hand . . . .” 

A good deal of cutting and editing and combining other versions into a modern script could make a wonderful romantic epic of Princess, but such an endeavor and the cost of a faithfully mounted production in terms of costumes and sets would be prohibitive for StageArts at present.  It might, indeed, be a project for a future season if there is interest in it.

Recommendation:  Reject.

Source:  NR [Nell Robinson, SA’s co-art. director]/[Rick]

*  *  *  *

[L’Aiglon (The Eaglet) was first performed on 15 March 1900 in Paris at the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt.  The title role was played by Sarah Bernhardt costumed as a man for the production and it was a triumph. 

[During the Nazi occupation of France during World War II, the play was banned—I’m guessing that it was judged too “Patriotic” to France—but once Paris was liberated by the Allies, the play was performed for two consecutive years at the Théâtre du Châtelet before packed houses.  Three actors and actresses shared the title role.

[In New York City, Eva Le Gallienne staged a production at the Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway in 1934.  Le Gallienne took the title role and the cast featured Ethel Barrymore as Marie-Louise of Austria.

StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION

 

7/4/84
[Rick]

 

The Eaglet (L’Aiglon) by Edmond Rostand

  

            Plot Synopsis:  Briefly, this is the story of Napleon II, King of Rome—the only son of Napoleon Bonaparte and Marie-Louise of Austria.  Set between 1830 and ’32, when the prince, known as the Duke of Reichstadt, is just coming into his 20’s and discovering the dreams of glory he has inherited from his father.  He has no means to realize these dreams and dies in 1832 (of a form of tuberculosis).

            Historically, the Duke [whose nickname was L’Aiglon, French for The Eaglet] never reigned, though he was declared King of Rome by his father while still in his cradle and named Emperor Napoleon II in 1815 at the collapse of the First Empire (when he was only 4). 

            He left Paris in 1814 and spent his life at Schönbrunn Palace [in Vienna], a semi-prisoner, with his grandfather Franz, Emperor of Austria.  (Though he never sat on the imperial throne of France, when his cousin—the son of his father’s youngest brother Louis Bonaparte—declared himself emperor and began the Second Empire in 1852, he was crowned Napoleon III in recognition of the succession of “The Eaglet”)           

            Theme:  The Eaglet is little more than an evocation of a faded grandeur and a paean to the Napoleonic Era in the manner of Victor Hugo.  [Hugo, the great French writer, was an ardent monarchist, the son of a general in Napoleon I’s army, until the accession of Napoleon III, whom he denounced.]  It makes no universal statement applicable to today.

            Genre/Style:  Romantic epic.

            Structure:  6 acts (divided into many French scenes which can be ignored).  The play spans 2 years and jumps about a bit around Austria (mostly near Vienna). 

            Setting:  1830’s Austria; palaces, chateaux. and other scenes of royalty and nobility; elaborate and grand.  Realism would be prohibitive, but the flavor and feel of the court life must be evoked.

            Language:  Verse, mostly rhymed couplets.  For the most part, it reads like dialogue, if a bit stilted and archaic.  Many historical references are used.

            Characters:  A huge cast (doubling and cutting possible—and necessary).  10 women (plus several Ladies-in-Waiting) and 28 men, plus extras (the Royal Family, Duke’s Military Household, Emperor’s Guard, Archers, Ushers, Soldiers, etc.).  All ages, including small children (several with lines).

            Evaluation:  This play is beyond the range of StageArts to produce at present.  The expense alone is prohibitive, but the cast size and general scope of the script are major problems.  Even the original production (in 1900, starring Sarah Bernhardt as the Duke) had to be cut (it runs over 200 pages) and a modern American audience would not be able to follow much of the history upon which the play depends.  (I had to look up Napoleon II to check the facts—he is an obscure footnote in the history Americans study of that era.)

            In some future season if StageArts is interested in doing a Brechtian revision of the play, using the story and plot of The Eaglet to create a modern play, it may be possible to do so.  For now, a production is out of the question.  Even a cut-rate presentation would prove fruitless; unlike Shakespeare, Rostand’s poetry and themes would not stand up theatrically without the spectacle.

            Recommendation:  Reject.

            Source:  NR/[Rick]

*  *  *  *

[Chantecler premièred in Paris on 7 February 1910 at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin.  It’s had a number of revivals in France and has been made into an animated film (1991) and adapted several times for television.

[In 1911, Maude Adams played the title character on Broadway at the Knickerbocker Theatre, down at 38th Street, for 96 performances.]

StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION

7/4/84
[Rick]

 

Chantecler by Edmond Rostand

 

            Plot Synopsis:  Chantecler, the farmyard rooster, is worshipped by the denizens of the barnyard but hated by the creatures of the night because for them, his voice means dawn.  He is loved by the pheasant hen who flies into the barnyard pursued by a hunter. 

Chantecler’s enemies plot his death and, although they fail, Chantecler’s disillusion leads him into the forest with the pheasant.  There he finds that the sun will rise without him, but he cannot give up his heralding of the dawn out of his concern for the barnyard.  He returns, and the pheasant, flying after him, is caught by the poacher’s net.

            Theme:  Like Rostand’s other plays, a celebration of the heroic spirit in the romantic vein.  [The play is based on a cycle of medieval folk tales of anthropomorphic animals.  Reynard the Fox is the main character in the tales, though he doesn’t figure in Rostand’s play.]

            Genre/Style:  Symbolist allegory in the form of a fable.

            Structure:  Typical 19th-century 4 acts (divided into French scenes).

            Setting:  Various fanciful locations, including farmyard interior, wild hillside, kitchen garden, forest.  All must be oversize to put animal characters in proper relation to objects; script calls for fairly elaborate sets.

            Language:  Verse dialogue, including some of Rostand’s best poetry.

            Characters:  Very large cast; all animals suggestive of movie cartoons [Disney was going to make an animated film based on the play].  14 women (doubling possible); 40 men, plus extras (much doubling possible—6-7 are major).

            Evaluation:  This was Rostand’s least successful play (and his last compete one), though it has been produced with some success both here and in France.  Many critics think it contains Rostand’s best writing and the allegorical people-as-animals provide an array of lively, amusing characters.

            Needless to say, costumes would have to be designed and built along fanciful and colorful lines, which would be both an expense and a great effort.  The huge cast and long play (over 150 pages) are major problems for StageArts.

            Though an imaginative production of Chantecler might garner critical praise, the burden would be considerable.

            This play could make an excellent “readers’ theater” presentation at some point when StageArts expands beyond its current 3 main-stage-production format.  For the present, I cannot see the advantage of mounting this play.

            Recommendation:  Reject.

            Source:  NR/[Rick]