By Helen Kaye
[Helen has been a friend since I directed her in a production of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan back in the ‘70s. Born in Britain, Helen lived in the States for many years before moving to Tel Aviv. We keep in touch regularly and she’s visited New York several times since she made her aliyah. She directs English-language plays in Israel and has written reviews and cultural features for the Jerusalem Post. Helen’s a grandmother, too, so activities and events for children are an interest of hers in both her private and professional lives. She sent me this round-up of children’s performances in and around Tel Aviv this summer and I’m sharing it with ROT readers. ~Rick]
"What are we going to do with the kids?" is a parental refrain country-wide in Israel from the second week in August.
School lets out on June 30 – high school even a bit earlier – so summer vacation in Israel lasts from July 1 to September 1. It's hot, very hot, with never a cooling shower to sluice down the sticky, smelly streets or provide a bit of cool relief to sweltering citizens. If our children revel in two months of freedom, their parents, especially if the children are small and require supervision, are less starry-eyed. Lots less starry-eyed.
True, for some there's a small reprieve.
Where children in the U.S. go to summer camp, children here can attend a kaytana, a made-up Hebrew word that usually denotes a day camp where the children enjoy day-long activities from 8 in the morning until around 4 in the afternoon, when they're collected by their parents, or their grandparents.
But all too soon comes that second week in August when even the most resilient kaytana closes its doors.
Now what?
Ah.
Israel is a very child-oriented country. Children here are mostly cherished – which is why there's such a huge kerfuffle over the government's decision to deport 400 children born in this country to illegal migrant workers.
Back to vacation.
August is host to a puppet festival, a children's theater festival, a dance festival with programs for children; and this year the Israel Opera has debuted an opera mini-season for children on the main stage. The IO presents hour-long children's versions of famous operas all year long in the foyer of the opera house, but this is the first time they've been on the main-stage. There's also Shrek, the Hebrew version of the successful Broadway musical.
Most of these programs are aimed at the younger set because any child above the age of 10 or so is usually very capable of amusing itself. It's not unusual to see children of 10-12 roaming Tel Aviv (which is where I live), late at night; by and large they are perfectly safe.
I'm not going to this year's puppet festival in Jerusalem because my grandson is still too young to deal with both the trip up to the capital, see a show and then return. It's at The Train Theater, so called because its home was, and still is, a railway carriage, and was founded by four originally minded young artists in 1981. The festival showcases the work of Israeli puppeteers and those from abroad. It takes place at the Train which is situated in the Liberty Bell Gardens and at various venues close by. The performances are mostly for the youngsters, but there are shows for youth and adults as well. The Train Theater's website is www.traintheater.co.il
The Suzanne Dallal Center (SD) in Tel Aviv is host to Magical Tales, a three-day festival of plays, puppetry and dance. This year it includes a musical version of The Wizard of Oz by veteran puppeteer Eric Smith and his long-term collaborator, the actor Yossi Graber.
Mr. Smith, who came to Israel from his native South Africa in 1967, established his puppet theater in 1972, and has taught his craft to generations of local puppeteers. His beautifully costumed, near life-size puppets have enchanted generations of kids. They sure enchanted my grandson and his mother. She said the show was wonderful.
SD, Israel's top dance center, is home base for the Orna Porat Children and Youth Theater, named for its founder. Already a star of local theater, Ms. Porat decided that children also deserved quality theater, and so in 1970 she established the Children and Youth Theater. Its audience is drawn from pre-school to high school, and while never drearily didactic, its repertoire carries a message.
At this year's Magical Tales OPCYT presents Something Wonderful Will Happen Here, a movement theater piece, and a dance theater version of Aladdin. I didn't see the first show, but Aladdin, as in the Disney film, carried the message 'be who you are.'
The Israel Opera, whose children's series in the relative intimacy of the foyer works beautifully, chose to transfer to the main stage The Magic Flute and Rossini's Cinderella, and neither made the transfer well. More or less swallowed up by the stage, hampered by unimaginative direction, and too distanced from their audience, both operas produced fidgeting from and boredom among the kids.
The one production that held its young audience spellbound was the premiere of Alice in Wonderland with libretto and script by David Zebba, an Israeli composer and conductor. Here no expense had been spared with the result that set and costumes were colorful, imaginative and witty. The direction was equally colorful, imaginative and witty. Small wonder that the children were captivated.
The second week in August I took my grandson to Shrek. It was given at the Mann Auditorium which is the home of the Israel Philharmonic and configured acoustically to orchestral playing. Nothing daunted, the Shrek producers had created an apron stage so that some of the action took place literally among the excited children.
Overall this Shrek lacked the snap and crackle of a Broadway production, but the kids, fortified by popcorn, pretzels and other goodies, loved it, my grandson among them. As we walked back out into the blistering afternoon, he said it was wonderful!!
At Magical Tales in the third week of August we walked to our shows through a gauntlet of vendors selling balloons, toys and the usual variety of glittery tchotchkes (A Yiddish portmanteau word for 'all kinds of forgettable trifles’), into the theater. As I mentioned, my grandson loved The Wizard of Oz, was polite about the tediously cute though beautifully costumed Aladdin and enthusiastic about poet Leah Goldberg's gentle A Tale of Three Nuts, another OPCYT show. This one is about the enduring value of kindness.
On Wednesday, September 1, my grandson starts school. Today we're going to a movie – there's lots of kid-friendly movies in August too – this one is Space Chimps II. It's his last August treat.
Whew! Farewell summer vacation – until next year!
[Helen has said she’ll try to send me more reports of things Israeli. (ROT may have a “foreign correspondent”!) I hope she can, because the performing arts in Israel is a fascinating mix of art, Mid-East culture, and politics. (Almost anything that happens in Israel or Palestine has or creates a political aspect.) Helen still reviews plays for JP and attends many of the cultural and theater events, including several festivals, that take place in Israel. Along with her directing, she has a great view of the performance culture in an intriguing part of the world.]
12 September 2010
07 September 2010
Broadway Angel
By Kirk Woodward
[As my friend Kirk says, I’m “continually on the lookout for unusual aspects of the theatrical experience,” so when I heard that he and his wife had invested in a Broadway production, I asked if he’d consider writing about the experience of being a Broadway “angel.” Happily, he agreed and here’s the result: a description of what it’s like to be a small investor in a Broadway musical. This story even has a happy “ending” (it’s not really over, of course) because the show the Woodwards, veteran theater people but first-time angels, put their money into was Memphis, which won the Tony Award for Best Musical (as well as a few other categories) at the ceremony on 13 June, justifying the Woodwards’—and everyone else’s—commitment to the production. As the song says, “There’s no business like show business”! ~Rick]
As everyone knows, putting on a Broadway show is incredibly expensive. No matter how you try to contain costs, a Broadway musical will need several million dollars just to get it open, and once it’s playing in New York, it will continue to need pots of money in order to continue to run. Those operating costs are called the “nut,” and anything over the nut, if there is anything, goes toward paying off the show’s investors, hence the observation of my friend Dan Landon, house manager for one of the Shubert theaters, that “One dollar over the nut – it’s a hit!”
That saying is definitely true about a show in terms of how long it runs – under ordinary circumstances, as long as a show makes its nut it can stay on the boards. There are exceptions to this principle. Sometimes, for example, a producer wants to close a show even though it’s making money, perhaps in order to free a theater for a new (and presumably more profitable) show. But in general, as long as you meet your operating expenses, you can keep your show open.
Just because a show runs, however, doesn’t mean its original investors will make their money back. They may not, and of course they know it, or they ought to – most Broadway shows don’t turn out to be profitable, sometimes even at the end of a long run. Jekyll and Hyde is said to have lost its investment – in other words, not paid its investors back anything – even though it ran on Broadway for four years.
Nevertheless people keep investing in Broadway shows, on the principle, to borrow a remark from the playwright George Axelrod (who said it about playwrights), that on Broadway you can’t make a living, but you can make a killing. (Axelrod reversed the order.) I’ve met people who invested in Same Time, Next Year, and more recently in Jersey Boys. They are rolling in kale. And the odds of succeeding on Broadway may be better than the odds of winning the lottery . . . but not all that much better.
Decades ago a producer might put up his or her own money to bankroll a Broadway musical. (As Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II once wrote in the New York Times, "A great many producers 30 or 40 years ago used to invest their own money in their own shows. They all died broke.") Those days are gone forever. Nowadays producers are either corporations – the Shuberts, Disney – or massive lists of, basically, “angels” – people who put up money for a show. When a musical wins a Tony and the producers, a herd of them, come up to the stage to accept the award, most of those people didn’t do anything about producing the show at all, except to produce their wallets at the appointed time.
I write these words as a Broadway investor – a very small-scale investor, and, as you’ll see, not a terribly sensible one, but still . . . . To be precise, I didn’t actually invest in a Broadway show. Instead, I invested in a group of investors. The show is Memphis. It’s a fictionalized version of the beginning of the popularity of rock ’n’ roll, with a major theme of relations between the races. Memphis had four productions before it came to Broadway, at the North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, Massachusetts; at TheatreWorks in Mountain View, California; at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, California; and at the 5th Avenue Theater in Seattle, Washington.
Obviously a show with so many productions had something to offer – many theaters won’t touch a play that’s not a premiere, but three theaters picked up this one, not counting Broadway. Another way to put the situation is that the show had “buzz,” which is the noise I heard in my ear when at a party I asked a friend who works for a ticket sales agency what shows were stirring up the most advance interest. “There’s Memphis,” he said without hesitation. “I hear it’s great.”
By coincidence, the next week another acquaintance of ours sent around an email asking if anyone was interested in investing in – you guessed it – Memphis. Serendipity! This was the first time my wife, Pat, and I had ever had a chance to invest in a Broadway show of any sort. We discussed the opportunity, and agreed to look at the materials for the show, which at that point was close to beginning previews in New York. The investor group, as I said, was actually a sub-investor, intending to buy a share in the show itself. We would buy, then, a piece of an investment. Our money would be used for an advertising reserve.
Among the many reasons I was interested in becoming a Broadway backer, two stand out. One, of course, was the possibility of making money. It would be lovely to have Broadway provide some disposable income. Another and, I suspect, more important reason was the feeling that we’d be participating in the Broadway world – in a Broadway adventure. For people like us who’ve worked in theater for years, being part of the Broadway community, even in a small way, is a powerful emotional lure.
Obviously due diligence requires careful research on the show, so obviously that’s not what I did. Well, I did to a certain extent – I went on the show’s website, for example, and listened to parts of the score, and I liked it. On the other hand, I didn’t read the script (I don’t remember if it was available), and I didn’t really consider the fact that Memphis had no “big names” or film stars in it. I don’t recommend my procedure to anyone as a best practice. My way of selecting a show to invest in didn’t differ that much from horse players who pick a winner based on its name, and perhaps a tip from the guy at the newsstand. Be warned.
Nevertheless I persuaded Pat that we should make the investment, and we sent in a certain amount of money we weren’t sure we had. Pat made it clear that the responsibility for this decision, about as financially sound an idea as investing in a treasure hunt, lay entirely on my shoulders. But the die was cast, and we sent in our check, joining a mighty throng – the musical’s poster lists thirty-seven producers, both individual and corporate, and that doesn’t even begin to include sub-contributors like us.
We began to receive encouraging emails from our investment coordinator, and finally – glory be – an invitation to both Opening Night and the subsequent cast party. We’ve both been to opening nights before, but never to a Broadway cast party. This was beginning to look good.
The show opened, after previews, at the Shubert Theater on October 19, 2009. We didn’t hire a limo to take us to opening night – we’d spent enough money on the show already – but we did get there early and wandered around, feeling very connected. The show was excellent and well received, as it should have been, considering how many seats must have been filled by investors like ourselves. At intermission I talked with a few people connected with the show, including its producers in Seattle. Nowadays, even though newspaper and TV reviews typically appear following opening night, those reviewers actually see a show at an earlier preview performance rather than at the official opening, so there was no worry about how this particular performance had gone. But it did go well.
Then off to the cast party, at the Hard Rock Café on 42nd Street. You undoubtedly have images of Broadway cast parties, with the breathless entrance of the person who’s snagged the first copy of the New York Times. Alas, there must have been eight hundred people at this cast party, all screaming at the tops of their lungs over a background of rock music, and that breathless entrance wouldn’t have been noticed if the person were carrying a stack of copies of the paper a mile high. That, my friends, is a lot of producers.
We milled around a while, trying not to be suffocated while we looked, fruitlessly, for the table assigned to our investment group, whose name we weren’t sure of anyway. Finally, hunting for breathing room, we located a clearing which happened to be near the press area, and saw the only celebrities we identified the entire evening – the entire lineup of Bon Jovi, whose keyboard player, David Bryan, had written the score (lyrics with Joe DiPietro). The band looked relaxed and happy, and they posed for numerous pictures. We watched this cheerful spectacle for a while, and then we went home.
The next morning we had the excitement of bringing in the New York Times from the lawn and reading our review – and damn it, it wasn’t good at all. We were, what’s the word for it, crushed. Also we felt a lot poorer than we had the night before, our wallets a great deal lighter. I look at several papers in the course of the day, and the other reviews I read were quite good. But the Times is terribly important to the success of a Broadway show, and all in all, October 20, 2009, was not a happy day. In addition, adding insult to injury, several days later my favorite magazine, The New Yorker, didn’t like the show much either.
Well, theater is a matter of continuing ups and downs. A few days later we got a package in the mail, containing the following: a Memphis souvenir worth displaying on the family room mantle; a poster of the show signed by the whole cast; and a letter explaining that, while the Times hadn’t liked the show much, most of the rest of the reviews were terrific, and that a well thought-out and creative advertising campaign (that’s where our money went, remember!) would eliminate the effect of the review in a short time, and the show seemed likely to have an excellent run.
That was almost exactly eight months ago as I write this account, and since that day I haven’t heard a word about how our money is doing, except that for income tax purposes I received a form of about eight pages, which I passed on to our preparer without my understanding a word of it, except that it definitely didn’t say we’d made any money yet.
But there was, of course, one more event worth mentioning. The Tony Awards were presented on Sunday night, June 13, 2010. The Times, true to its nature, had seemed to us to try its hardest to promote Fela for Best Musical, but there are limits even to the power of the Grey Lady. My wife and I were barely even paying attention to the Tony broadcast when the winner was announced. I heard a scream from the next room – that was Pat - and ran in to see on TV – yes – a crowd of producers on stage, yelling like soccer fans and bouncing up and down while their designated spokesperson reported how delighted they all were.
So were we. I was happy, of course, because since I was mostly responsible for our decision to invest in the first place, now we had official ratification that the decision had been a good one. I was also happy because both Pat and I have worked in theater for years, and now we had a Tony! Truly the Lord works in mysterious ways.
I suppose the last paragraph of this piece shouldn’t be written until, months or years or decades from now, we receive a final accounting on our investment. There will be a national tour of Memphis in 2011, I’ve read, and after a while the rights to the show will be made available to amateur groups, who should have quite a good time with it. But in a way, all that is just bookkeeping. We became Broadway investors! We helped a show reach Broadway and stay there, at least for a while! We invested in a show we were proud of! And we got a piece of a Tony Award, even if we’re the only ones who know about it. All in all, not a bad eight months. Theater can always surprise you.
[As my friend Kirk says, I’m “continually on the lookout for unusual aspects of the theatrical experience,” so when I heard that he and his wife had invested in a Broadway production, I asked if he’d consider writing about the experience of being a Broadway “angel.” Happily, he agreed and here’s the result: a description of what it’s like to be a small investor in a Broadway musical. This story even has a happy “ending” (it’s not really over, of course) because the show the Woodwards, veteran theater people but first-time angels, put their money into was Memphis, which won the Tony Award for Best Musical (as well as a few other categories) at the ceremony on 13 June, justifying the Woodwards’—and everyone else’s—commitment to the production. As the song says, “There’s no business like show business”! ~Rick]
As everyone knows, putting on a Broadway show is incredibly expensive. No matter how you try to contain costs, a Broadway musical will need several million dollars just to get it open, and once it’s playing in New York, it will continue to need pots of money in order to continue to run. Those operating costs are called the “nut,” and anything over the nut, if there is anything, goes toward paying off the show’s investors, hence the observation of my friend Dan Landon, house manager for one of the Shubert theaters, that “One dollar over the nut – it’s a hit!”
That saying is definitely true about a show in terms of how long it runs – under ordinary circumstances, as long as a show makes its nut it can stay on the boards. There are exceptions to this principle. Sometimes, for example, a producer wants to close a show even though it’s making money, perhaps in order to free a theater for a new (and presumably more profitable) show. But in general, as long as you meet your operating expenses, you can keep your show open.
Just because a show runs, however, doesn’t mean its original investors will make their money back. They may not, and of course they know it, or they ought to – most Broadway shows don’t turn out to be profitable, sometimes even at the end of a long run. Jekyll and Hyde is said to have lost its investment – in other words, not paid its investors back anything – even though it ran on Broadway for four years.
Nevertheless people keep investing in Broadway shows, on the principle, to borrow a remark from the playwright George Axelrod (who said it about playwrights), that on Broadway you can’t make a living, but you can make a killing. (Axelrod reversed the order.) I’ve met people who invested in Same Time, Next Year, and more recently in Jersey Boys. They are rolling in kale. And the odds of succeeding on Broadway may be better than the odds of winning the lottery . . . but not all that much better.
Decades ago a producer might put up his or her own money to bankroll a Broadway musical. (As Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II once wrote in the New York Times, "A great many producers 30 or 40 years ago used to invest their own money in their own shows. They all died broke.") Those days are gone forever. Nowadays producers are either corporations – the Shuberts, Disney – or massive lists of, basically, “angels” – people who put up money for a show. When a musical wins a Tony and the producers, a herd of them, come up to the stage to accept the award, most of those people didn’t do anything about producing the show at all, except to produce their wallets at the appointed time.
I write these words as a Broadway investor – a very small-scale investor, and, as you’ll see, not a terribly sensible one, but still . . . . To be precise, I didn’t actually invest in a Broadway show. Instead, I invested in a group of investors. The show is Memphis. It’s a fictionalized version of the beginning of the popularity of rock ’n’ roll, with a major theme of relations between the races. Memphis had four productions before it came to Broadway, at the North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, Massachusetts; at TheatreWorks in Mountain View, California; at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, California; and at the 5th Avenue Theater in Seattle, Washington.
Obviously a show with so many productions had something to offer – many theaters won’t touch a play that’s not a premiere, but three theaters picked up this one, not counting Broadway. Another way to put the situation is that the show had “buzz,” which is the noise I heard in my ear when at a party I asked a friend who works for a ticket sales agency what shows were stirring up the most advance interest. “There’s Memphis,” he said without hesitation. “I hear it’s great.”
By coincidence, the next week another acquaintance of ours sent around an email asking if anyone was interested in investing in – you guessed it – Memphis. Serendipity! This was the first time my wife, Pat, and I had ever had a chance to invest in a Broadway show of any sort. We discussed the opportunity, and agreed to look at the materials for the show, which at that point was close to beginning previews in New York. The investor group, as I said, was actually a sub-investor, intending to buy a share in the show itself. We would buy, then, a piece of an investment. Our money would be used for an advertising reserve.
Among the many reasons I was interested in becoming a Broadway backer, two stand out. One, of course, was the possibility of making money. It would be lovely to have Broadway provide some disposable income. Another and, I suspect, more important reason was the feeling that we’d be participating in the Broadway world – in a Broadway adventure. For people like us who’ve worked in theater for years, being part of the Broadway community, even in a small way, is a powerful emotional lure.
Obviously due diligence requires careful research on the show, so obviously that’s not what I did. Well, I did to a certain extent – I went on the show’s website, for example, and listened to parts of the score, and I liked it. On the other hand, I didn’t read the script (I don’t remember if it was available), and I didn’t really consider the fact that Memphis had no “big names” or film stars in it. I don’t recommend my procedure to anyone as a best practice. My way of selecting a show to invest in didn’t differ that much from horse players who pick a winner based on its name, and perhaps a tip from the guy at the newsstand. Be warned.
Nevertheless I persuaded Pat that we should make the investment, and we sent in a certain amount of money we weren’t sure we had. Pat made it clear that the responsibility for this decision, about as financially sound an idea as investing in a treasure hunt, lay entirely on my shoulders. But the die was cast, and we sent in our check, joining a mighty throng – the musical’s poster lists thirty-seven producers, both individual and corporate, and that doesn’t even begin to include sub-contributors like us.
We began to receive encouraging emails from our investment coordinator, and finally – glory be – an invitation to both Opening Night and the subsequent cast party. We’ve both been to opening nights before, but never to a Broadway cast party. This was beginning to look good.
The show opened, after previews, at the Shubert Theater on October 19, 2009. We didn’t hire a limo to take us to opening night – we’d spent enough money on the show already – but we did get there early and wandered around, feeling very connected. The show was excellent and well received, as it should have been, considering how many seats must have been filled by investors like ourselves. At intermission I talked with a few people connected with the show, including its producers in Seattle. Nowadays, even though newspaper and TV reviews typically appear following opening night, those reviewers actually see a show at an earlier preview performance rather than at the official opening, so there was no worry about how this particular performance had gone. But it did go well.
Then off to the cast party, at the Hard Rock Café on 42nd Street. You undoubtedly have images of Broadway cast parties, with the breathless entrance of the person who’s snagged the first copy of the New York Times. Alas, there must have been eight hundred people at this cast party, all screaming at the tops of their lungs over a background of rock music, and that breathless entrance wouldn’t have been noticed if the person were carrying a stack of copies of the paper a mile high. That, my friends, is a lot of producers.
We milled around a while, trying not to be suffocated while we looked, fruitlessly, for the table assigned to our investment group, whose name we weren’t sure of anyway. Finally, hunting for breathing room, we located a clearing which happened to be near the press area, and saw the only celebrities we identified the entire evening – the entire lineup of Bon Jovi, whose keyboard player, David Bryan, had written the score (lyrics with Joe DiPietro). The band looked relaxed and happy, and they posed for numerous pictures. We watched this cheerful spectacle for a while, and then we went home.
The next morning we had the excitement of bringing in the New York Times from the lawn and reading our review – and damn it, it wasn’t good at all. We were, what’s the word for it, crushed. Also we felt a lot poorer than we had the night before, our wallets a great deal lighter. I look at several papers in the course of the day, and the other reviews I read were quite good. But the Times is terribly important to the success of a Broadway show, and all in all, October 20, 2009, was not a happy day. In addition, adding insult to injury, several days later my favorite magazine, The New Yorker, didn’t like the show much either.
Well, theater is a matter of continuing ups and downs. A few days later we got a package in the mail, containing the following: a Memphis souvenir worth displaying on the family room mantle; a poster of the show signed by the whole cast; and a letter explaining that, while the Times hadn’t liked the show much, most of the rest of the reviews were terrific, and that a well thought-out and creative advertising campaign (that’s where our money went, remember!) would eliminate the effect of the review in a short time, and the show seemed likely to have an excellent run.
That was almost exactly eight months ago as I write this account, and since that day I haven’t heard a word about how our money is doing, except that for income tax purposes I received a form of about eight pages, which I passed on to our preparer without my understanding a word of it, except that it definitely didn’t say we’d made any money yet.
But there was, of course, one more event worth mentioning. The Tony Awards were presented on Sunday night, June 13, 2010. The Times, true to its nature, had seemed to us to try its hardest to promote Fela for Best Musical, but there are limits even to the power of the Grey Lady. My wife and I were barely even paying attention to the Tony broadcast when the winner was announced. I heard a scream from the next room – that was Pat - and ran in to see on TV – yes – a crowd of producers on stage, yelling like soccer fans and bouncing up and down while their designated spokesperson reported how delighted they all were.
So were we. I was happy, of course, because since I was mostly responsible for our decision to invest in the first place, now we had official ratification that the decision had been a good one. I was also happy because both Pat and I have worked in theater for years, and now we had a Tony! Truly the Lord works in mysterious ways.
I suppose the last paragraph of this piece shouldn’t be written until, months or years or decades from now, we receive a final accounting on our investment. There will be a national tour of Memphis in 2011, I’ve read, and after a while the rights to the show will be made available to amateur groups, who should have quite a good time with it. But in a way, all that is just bookkeeping. We became Broadway investors! We helped a show reach Broadway and stay there, at least for a while! We invested in a show we were proud of! And we got a piece of a Tony Award, even if we’re the only ones who know about it. All in all, not a bad eight months. Theater can always surprise you.
02 September 2010
'Have a Nice Life' (2010 New York Fringe Festival)
My friend Diana and I planned to take in two Fringe XIV performances on Friday, 20 August, but private considerations prevented us from making the afternoon show we’d selected, so we caught the 10 p.m. performance of Have a Nice Life: a therapeutic musical at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in the West Village. Produced by the Philadelphia troupe Nice People Theatre Company, Have a Nice Life is slugged "Direct from a sold-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe" in its listings and promotions (and, indeed, a check of the ‘Net shows a passel of nice notices from across the pond). Advertising being what it is, when Diana proposed this show, including the promotional line in her message, I succumbed.
Silly me!
I wasn’t even going to report on Nice Life because I think it’s too insubstantial—and I didn’t figure it would resurface anywhere after the NYIFF production, so no one would be likely to encounter it down the road. I was curious, however, so I looked on the ‘Net to see if there were any responses to the play, and I was surprised to find not only that there were quite a few comments, but that so many of them were not just positive but excessively laudatory. Words like “brilliant,” “clever,” and “exceptional” turned up all over the coverage. I also noticed that besides the 2009 Edinburgh performances, the show has had a life at other festivals (New York Music Theatre Festival, 2006; Philadelphia Fringe Festival, 2008) as well in its home base in Philly. I don’t get it, frankly. The show was tolerable (because the cast was good and, more significantly, enthusiastic) but derivative, slight, unsurprising, and even predictable (except for the ending); it was pleasant but unremarkable. Diana seemed to have agreed with me—it was like something a bunch of grad students might put together, we concluded. Too knowing for undergrads, but not meaningful enough for pros. So let me try to make a case for my side.
Not everyone was positive about Nice Life. There were a few naysayers who seemed to be closer to my estimation than that of the apparent majority. On the other hand, one blogger was far more negative than I was. He characterized the “unsalvageable” play as progressing “from kinda dumb to monumentally stupid to ‘I want to rip my head off’" (the italics are original). Neither Diana nor I found the experience that excruciating.
The play’s gimmick is that we’re watching a group-therapy session in real time. (The play’s subtitle is a therapeutic musical, which is supposed, I guess, to suggest that the content is both about therapy—which it is, minimally—and serves as therapy for us. Ummm . . . NO.) The group leader is Patrick (Benjamin Michael), a very young and uncertain therapist who offers clichés and programmed exercises like word association and role-playing to the group while dealing with his own issues of inadequacy. (Patrick’s been on the job 18 months or something like that, but Michael looks and acts like a college peer counselor rather than a pro.) The group members are people we’ve met many times before, especially on TV sitcoms (I particularly think of the old Bob Newhart Show—which was much funnier): Chris (Dorian Belle), heavyset and closing in on middle age, a mama's boy who resents his mother's new beau and has never had a girlfriend of his own because he’s holding out for an “old fashioned romance”; Jean (Megan Martinez), an angry and obstinate ex-teacher who has difficulty sustaining relationships and controlling her temper; Frank (Gregg Pica), a swaggering mailman who attends the sessions to hook up with “chicks”; Jackie (Amy Acchione), talkative and needy, a frazzled mother of three who says she doesn’t have any friends; and Barbara (Nicole Paloux), dressed in black leather and high boots, a belligerent and anti-social hard-ass who’s attending the group by court order (for reasons she won’t disclose). Each character gets a song or two, but we never get to know much about them beyond their basic problems, which are pretty familiar and minimally examined. Book writer Matthew Hurt often brings up topics the play doesn't explore, such as the suggestion that macho poseur Frank might be gay.
Patrick reveals his inexperience at the outset by letting Jackie, who’s been absent for several sessions (having a baby, we soon learn), bring a new member to the group with no notice. Of course, if he didn’t, there’d be no play since the only excuse for the sparks that provide the impetus for what follows is the arrival of an interloper within the ”circle of trust.” It’s contrived, but then so is everything else in Nice Life. The stranger is Amy (Miriam White, an NPTC co-founder), Jackie’s new best friend whom she met three hours earlier when Amy discovered Jackie's new-born baby alone in his stroller outside the store Jackie was shopping in. This is supposed to be endearing and quirky; in real life, though, parents have been arrested for doing that. Amy at first presents herself as someone without a problem (Jackie led her to believe that the group was for social networking), but the tension of the session impels her to reveal that everything she’s said are half-truths. So now everyone’s got a problem, as you knew they would, and Patrick’s supposed to help his patients learn to cope with them. Except he doesn’t—and no one gets any help. That might have been a comic twist, except I don’t believe we’re supposed to notice that nothing happens. We’re supposed to find it all . . . well, sweet, I guess. (One reviewer thought this was okay because everything was so darned amusing. Well, I demur.)
It often seemed to me that Hurt and Composer-lyricist Conor Mitchell just don’t know enough about psychology and psychotherapy to tackle the subject matter they chose to exploit. That’s the grad-student sort of dynamic again—their ambitions outran their abilities. Some research or a consultant might have helped, however. Complicite’s recent play, A Disappearing Number, which was partly about higher math, had two mathematicians on call—one who was an actor and one who’d been a supporter of the company since its start. When I directed an adaptation of Chekhov’s story Ward Six, set in a mental hospital, I asked a shrink I knew to advise on the patients’ ailments and behavior. When I played Dr. Spivey in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the director invited a psychologist to meet with us during one rehearsal and we visited a state hospital one day to observe the patients’ and staff’s behaviors. The Nice Life team didn’t seem to have delved at all deeply into the truth of a therapy group, even if their ultimate intention was to make fun of one. It was all very superficial and unsatisfying on a dramatic level. (I remarked on departing the Lortel that night that with a show like Next to Normal having gotten so much positive attention, it’s almost embarrassing to have one like Have a Nice Life playing just downtown.)
The therapy session format gives each character a moment in the spotlight. Hurt’s plot is thin and the characters are underdeveloped to the point of being one-dimensional and they’re essentially self-centered, so there’s no dramatic interplay between or among any of them. On top of this, they’re not especially interesting and they’re not really very . . . well, Nice People. (In his review of the NYMTF in ’06, Charles Isherwood wrote that “the mostly unlikable characters were embroiled in pedestrian and familiar emotional turmoil.”) Since there’s no substantial connection among any of the characters, however, aside from the contrivance that brings them together, the plot’s like a simplistic version of those Grand Hotel/Airplane scenarios that assemble a bunch of strangers and then tosses in a twist that unites them all temporarily. This formulaic set-up doesn’t permit any character to develop a dramatic arc, so while there’s a lot of movement, there’s very little action. Then the ending, too, feels rushed and unmotivated. (That’s where the play’s title comes from. Despite sounding like a sprightly, if empty, expression of hope, it’s really a sarcastic farewell. I won’t explain that more explicitly here—it would give away that tacked-on ending.)
The story is told mostly through song and the score was well played by musical director Tom Brady on piano and Joseph Yasso on drums. Mitchell borrows too frequently from others, however; NPTC called the show “an homage to American musical theater,” but the music is repetitive and derivative, sounding like minor Sondheim. The songs all sound alike, almost as if the score were one, long song broken up by occasional dialogue scenes. I don’t have the musical sophistication to describe the composition accurately, but it’s what I’d call a kind of pop recitative or Sprechgesang, like “Getting Married Today” from Company, but not nearly as clever or amusing. Every character gets a number or two, usually backed by the rest of the company as chorus/ensemble, in which she or he reveals the surface aspects of a character flaw. Nancy Berman Kantra's choreography, except when the actors dance with folding umbrellas for one cute parody of Busby Berkeley’s parasols, is uninspired and equally repetitive and familiar. (It doesn’t help that the cast are better actors and singers than they are dancers. The Lortel’s stage is also a little cramped for a seven-dancer ensemble to do much but strut and cakewalk.) The direction of Bill Felty (another company originator) keeps the actors busy moving but in unmotivated ways. The group members seem always to be carrying their chairs out of or back into the “circle of trust.” When characters sing solos, they cross down front with the ensemble behind them in a 19th-century semicircle.
Yet the actors sell the show as well as they can, and thanks to them, the 90 minutes pass reasonably painlessly. The cast is appealing and talented enough to make this new musical (which actually goes back to ‘03 in an earlier version) an acceptable summer evening show, but no more. NPTC’s Fringe program insert for Nice Life includes the slogan “So Nice you’ll want to see it Twice!” Well, no—not so much.
[I gather from reading past reviews and announcements for Have a Nice Life that there have been considerable changes since it premièred at the New York Music Theatre Festival four years ago. Mitchell and Hurt did some script revisions in Philadelphia (the composer’s Irish; the book writer’s a Brit) and a whole new cast and different director and choreographer have come in. I can only describe what I see, of course, but it’s possible, as one writer who saw and reviewed both New York performances suggests, that the changes have diminished the play’s power and effectiveness. If that’s so, then another shift could render Nice Life an entirely different experience—but, of course, I can’t predict that. Caveat emptor, as they say.]
[Fringe XIV ran from Friday, 13 August, to Sunday, 29 August 2010, with 197 events in 18 venues around lower Manhattan. Have a Nice Life played at the Lortel from 20 to 22 August.]
Silly me!
I wasn’t even going to report on Nice Life because I think it’s too insubstantial—and I didn’t figure it would resurface anywhere after the NYIFF production, so no one would be likely to encounter it down the road. I was curious, however, so I looked on the ‘Net to see if there were any responses to the play, and I was surprised to find not only that there were quite a few comments, but that so many of them were not just positive but excessively laudatory. Words like “brilliant,” “clever,” and “exceptional” turned up all over the coverage. I also noticed that besides the 2009 Edinburgh performances, the show has had a life at other festivals (New York Music Theatre Festival, 2006; Philadelphia Fringe Festival, 2008) as well in its home base in Philly. I don’t get it, frankly. The show was tolerable (because the cast was good and, more significantly, enthusiastic) but derivative, slight, unsurprising, and even predictable (except for the ending); it was pleasant but unremarkable. Diana seemed to have agreed with me—it was like something a bunch of grad students might put together, we concluded. Too knowing for undergrads, but not meaningful enough for pros. So let me try to make a case for my side.
Not everyone was positive about Nice Life. There were a few naysayers who seemed to be closer to my estimation than that of the apparent majority. On the other hand, one blogger was far more negative than I was. He characterized the “unsalvageable” play as progressing “from kinda dumb to monumentally stupid to ‘I want to rip my head off’" (the italics are original). Neither Diana nor I found the experience that excruciating.
The play’s gimmick is that we’re watching a group-therapy session in real time. (The play’s subtitle is a therapeutic musical, which is supposed, I guess, to suggest that the content is both about therapy—which it is, minimally—and serves as therapy for us. Ummm . . . NO.) The group leader is Patrick (Benjamin Michael), a very young and uncertain therapist who offers clichés and programmed exercises like word association and role-playing to the group while dealing with his own issues of inadequacy. (Patrick’s been on the job 18 months or something like that, but Michael looks and acts like a college peer counselor rather than a pro.) The group members are people we’ve met many times before, especially on TV sitcoms (I particularly think of the old Bob Newhart Show—which was much funnier): Chris (Dorian Belle), heavyset and closing in on middle age, a mama's boy who resents his mother's new beau and has never had a girlfriend of his own because he’s holding out for an “old fashioned romance”; Jean (Megan Martinez), an angry and obstinate ex-teacher who has difficulty sustaining relationships and controlling her temper; Frank (Gregg Pica), a swaggering mailman who attends the sessions to hook up with “chicks”; Jackie (Amy Acchione), talkative and needy, a frazzled mother of three who says she doesn’t have any friends; and Barbara (Nicole Paloux), dressed in black leather and high boots, a belligerent and anti-social hard-ass who’s attending the group by court order (for reasons she won’t disclose). Each character gets a song or two, but we never get to know much about them beyond their basic problems, which are pretty familiar and minimally examined. Book writer Matthew Hurt often brings up topics the play doesn't explore, such as the suggestion that macho poseur Frank might be gay.
Patrick reveals his inexperience at the outset by letting Jackie, who’s been absent for several sessions (having a baby, we soon learn), bring a new member to the group with no notice. Of course, if he didn’t, there’d be no play since the only excuse for the sparks that provide the impetus for what follows is the arrival of an interloper within the ”circle of trust.” It’s contrived, but then so is everything else in Nice Life. The stranger is Amy (Miriam White, an NPTC co-founder), Jackie’s new best friend whom she met three hours earlier when Amy discovered Jackie's new-born baby alone in his stroller outside the store Jackie was shopping in. This is supposed to be endearing and quirky; in real life, though, parents have been arrested for doing that. Amy at first presents herself as someone without a problem (Jackie led her to believe that the group was for social networking), but the tension of the session impels her to reveal that everything she’s said are half-truths. So now everyone’s got a problem, as you knew they would, and Patrick’s supposed to help his patients learn to cope with them. Except he doesn’t—and no one gets any help. That might have been a comic twist, except I don’t believe we’re supposed to notice that nothing happens. We’re supposed to find it all . . . well, sweet, I guess. (One reviewer thought this was okay because everything was so darned amusing. Well, I demur.)
It often seemed to me that Hurt and Composer-lyricist Conor Mitchell just don’t know enough about psychology and psychotherapy to tackle the subject matter they chose to exploit. That’s the grad-student sort of dynamic again—their ambitions outran their abilities. Some research or a consultant might have helped, however. Complicite’s recent play, A Disappearing Number, which was partly about higher math, had two mathematicians on call—one who was an actor and one who’d been a supporter of the company since its start. When I directed an adaptation of Chekhov’s story Ward Six, set in a mental hospital, I asked a shrink I knew to advise on the patients’ ailments and behavior. When I played Dr. Spivey in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the director invited a psychologist to meet with us during one rehearsal and we visited a state hospital one day to observe the patients’ and staff’s behaviors. The Nice Life team didn’t seem to have delved at all deeply into the truth of a therapy group, even if their ultimate intention was to make fun of one. It was all very superficial and unsatisfying on a dramatic level. (I remarked on departing the Lortel that night that with a show like Next to Normal having gotten so much positive attention, it’s almost embarrassing to have one like Have a Nice Life playing just downtown.)
The therapy session format gives each character a moment in the spotlight. Hurt’s plot is thin and the characters are underdeveloped to the point of being one-dimensional and they’re essentially self-centered, so there’s no dramatic interplay between or among any of them. On top of this, they’re not especially interesting and they’re not really very . . . well, Nice People. (In his review of the NYMTF in ’06, Charles Isherwood wrote that “the mostly unlikable characters were embroiled in pedestrian and familiar emotional turmoil.”) Since there’s no substantial connection among any of the characters, however, aside from the contrivance that brings them together, the plot’s like a simplistic version of those Grand Hotel/Airplane scenarios that assemble a bunch of strangers and then tosses in a twist that unites them all temporarily. This formulaic set-up doesn’t permit any character to develop a dramatic arc, so while there’s a lot of movement, there’s very little action. Then the ending, too, feels rushed and unmotivated. (That’s where the play’s title comes from. Despite sounding like a sprightly, if empty, expression of hope, it’s really a sarcastic farewell. I won’t explain that more explicitly here—it would give away that tacked-on ending.)
The story is told mostly through song and the score was well played by musical director Tom Brady on piano and Joseph Yasso on drums. Mitchell borrows too frequently from others, however; NPTC called the show “an homage to American musical theater,” but the music is repetitive and derivative, sounding like minor Sondheim. The songs all sound alike, almost as if the score were one, long song broken up by occasional dialogue scenes. I don’t have the musical sophistication to describe the composition accurately, but it’s what I’d call a kind of pop recitative or Sprechgesang, like “Getting Married Today” from Company, but not nearly as clever or amusing. Every character gets a number or two, usually backed by the rest of the company as chorus/ensemble, in which she or he reveals the surface aspects of a character flaw. Nancy Berman Kantra's choreography, except when the actors dance with folding umbrellas for one cute parody of Busby Berkeley’s parasols, is uninspired and equally repetitive and familiar. (It doesn’t help that the cast are better actors and singers than they are dancers. The Lortel’s stage is also a little cramped for a seven-dancer ensemble to do much but strut and cakewalk.) The direction of Bill Felty (another company originator) keeps the actors busy moving but in unmotivated ways. The group members seem always to be carrying their chairs out of or back into the “circle of trust.” When characters sing solos, they cross down front with the ensemble behind them in a 19th-century semicircle.
Yet the actors sell the show as well as they can, and thanks to them, the 90 minutes pass reasonably painlessly. The cast is appealing and talented enough to make this new musical (which actually goes back to ‘03 in an earlier version) an acceptable summer evening show, but no more. NPTC’s Fringe program insert for Nice Life includes the slogan “So Nice you’ll want to see it Twice!” Well, no—not so much.
[I gather from reading past reviews and announcements for Have a Nice Life that there have been considerable changes since it premièred at the New York Music Theatre Festival four years ago. Mitchell and Hurt did some script revisions in Philadelphia (the composer’s Irish; the book writer’s a Brit) and a whole new cast and different director and choreographer have come in. I can only describe what I see, of course, but it’s possible, as one writer who saw and reviewed both New York performances suggests, that the changes have diminished the play’s power and effectiveness. If that’s so, then another shift could render Nice Life an entirely different experience—but, of course, I can’t predict that. Caveat emptor, as they say.]
[Fringe XIV ran from Friday, 13 August, to Sunday, 29 August 2010, with 197 events in 18 venues around lower Manhattan. Have a Nice Life played at the Lortel from 20 to 22 August.]
28 August 2010
Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle (Letter VIII)
By Washington Irving
[Once again, Oldstyle replies to his friend Andrew Quoz. Both men find additional things to say about New York’s drama reviewers. Is it any wonder that some of the theater journalists took exception to Irving’s statements?]
[The following communication was received someone since, but accidently mislaid.]
Sir,
I had just put on my spectacles and mended my pen, to give you an account of a visit I made some time since, with friend Quoz and my sister Dorothy, to a ball, when I was interrupted by the following letter from the former.
My friend Quoz, who is what the world calls a knowing man, is extremely fond of giving his opinion in every affair. He displays in this epistle more than usual knowledge of his subject, and seems to exert all his argumentative talents to enforce the importance of his advice. I give you his letter without further comment, and shall postpone my description of the ball to another opportunity.
My Dear Friend,
I once more address you on a subject that I fear will be found irksome, and may chafe that testy disposition (forgive my freedom) with which you are afflicted. Exert, however, the good humor of which at bottom I know you to have a plentiful stock, and hear me patiently through: It is the anxious fear I entertain of your sinking into the gloomy abyss of criticism, on the brink of which you are at present tottering, that urges me to write.
I would set before you the rights and wrongs of an actor, and by painting, in strong colors, the peculiarity of his situation, call your good sense into action.
The world, my friend Oldstyle, has ever been prone to consider the theatrical profession in a degraded point of view. What first gave rise to this opinion, I am at loss to conceive; but I consider it as the reliques of one of those ancient prejudices which the good sense of the world is daily discarding; and I flatter myself it will in a little time be totally exploded. Why the actor should be considered inferior in point of respectability to the poet, the painter, or any other person who exerts his talents in delineating character, or in exhibiting the various operations of the human mind, I cannot imagine. I know you, friend Oldstyle, to be a man of too liberal sentiments not to be superior to these little prejudices; and also one who regards an actor, provided his private character be good, with equal respect as the member of any other profession. Yet you are not quite aware of the important privileges solely attached to the dramatic performer. These I will endeavor to point out.
The works of a poet or painter you may freely criticise—nay, they offer them for that purpose—they listen attentively to your observations, and profit by your censures. But beware how you exercise such conduct towards an actor—he needs no instruction—his own impartial judgment is sufficient to detect and amend all his imperfections. Attempt to correct his errors and you ruin him at once—he'll starve to spite you—he is like a decayed substance, that crumbles at the touch.
No, sir—when an actor is on the stage he is in his own house—it is his castle—he then has you in his power—he may there bore you with his buffoonery, or insult you with his pointed remarks, with perfect impunity. You, my friend, who are rather apt to be dissatisfied, may call it hard treatment to be thus annoyed, and yet compensate the annoyer for his trouble. You may say, that as you pay an equivalent for your amusement, you should have the liberty of directing the actor in his attempts; and, as the Chinese does his ear-tickler, tell him when his instrument offends, and how he over-does himself in the operation. This is an egregious mistake: you are obliged to him for his condescension in exerting his talents for your instruction; and as to your money, why he only takes it to lessen in part the weight of your obligation.
An actor is, as I before observed, competent to judge of his own abilities—he may undertake whatever character he pleases—tragedy—comedy—or pantomime—however ill adapted his audience may think him to sustain it. He may rant and roar, and wink and grin, and fret and fume his hour upon the stage, and “who shall say nay?” He is paid by the manager for using his lungs and limbs, and the more he exerts them the better does he fulfil the engagement, and the harder does he work for his living—and who shall deprive him of his “hard-earned bread?”
How many an honest, lazy genius has been flogged by these unfeeling critics into a cultivation of his talents and attention to his profession!—how have they doomed him to hard study and unremitting exertion!—how have they prejudiced the public mind, so that what might once have put an audience in convulsions of laughter, now excites nothing but a slight pattering from the hands of the little shavers who are rewarded with seats in the gallery for their trouble in keeping the boxes. Oh! Mr. Oldstyle, it cuts me to the soul to see a poor actor stamp and storm, and slap his forehead, his breast, his pocket holes, all in vain: to see him throw himself in some attitude of distraction or despair, and there wait in fruitless expectation the applauses of his friends in the gallery. In such cases I always take care and clap him myself, to enable him to quit his posture, and resume his part with credit.
You was much irritated the other evening, at what you termed an ungenerous and unmanly attempt to bring forward an ancient maiden in a ridiculous point of view. But I don't see why that should be made a matter of complaint. Has it not been done time out of mind? Is it not sanctioned by daily custom in private life? Is not the character of aunt Tabitha, in the farce, the same we have laughed at in hundreds of dramatic pieces? Since, then, the author has but travelled in the same beaten track of character so many have trod before him, I see not why he should be blamed as severely as if he had all the guilt of originality upon his shoulders.
You may say that it is cruel to sport with the feelings of any class of society: that folly affords sufficient field for wit and satire to work upon, without resorting to misfortune for matter of ridicule: that female sensibility should ever be sacred from the lash of sarcasm, &c. But this is all stuff, all cant.
If an author is too indolent or too stupid, to seek new sources for remark, he is surely excuseable in employing the ideas of others, for his own use and benefit. But I find I have digressed, imperceptibly, into the “rights of authors,” so let us return to our subject.
An actor when he “holds the mirror up to nature,” may by his manœuvres, twist and turn it so, as to represent the object in any shape he pleases—nay, even give a caricature where the author intended a resemblance; he may blur it with his breath, or soil it with his dirty fingers, so that the object may have a colouring from the glass in which it is viewed, entirely different from its natural appearance. To be plain, my friend, an actor has a right whenever he thinks his author not sufficiently explicit to assist him by his own wit and abilities; and if by these means the character should become quite different from what was originally intended, and in fact belong more to the actor than the author, the actor deserves high credit for his ingenuity. And even tho’ his additions are quaint, and fulsome, yet his intention is highly praise worthy, and deserves ample encouragement.
Only think, my dear sir, how many snug little domestic arrangements are destroyed by the officious interference of these ever dissatisfied critics. The honest king of Scotland, who used to dress for market and theatre at the same time, and wear with his kelt and plaid his half boots and black breeches, looking half king, half cobbler, has been obliged totally to dismiss the former from his royal service; yet I am happy to find, so obstinate is his attachment to old habits, that all their efforts have not been sufficient to dislodge him from the strong hold he has in the latter. They may force him from the boots—but nothing shall drive him out of the breeches.
Consider, my friend, the puerile nature of such remarks. Is it not derogating from the elevated character of a Critic, to take notice of clubb’d wigs, red coats, black breeches and half boots! Fie, fie upon it! I blush for the Critics of the day, who consider it a matter of importance whether a Highlander should appear in breeches and boots, or an Otaheitan in the dress of a New-York coxcomb. Trust me, friend Oldstyle, it is to the manner, not the appearance of an actor, we are to look: and as long he performs his part well, (to use the words of my friend Sterne), “it shall not be enquired whether he did it in a black coat or a red.”
Believe me, friend Oldstyle, few of our modern critics can shew any substantial claim to the character they assume. Let me ask them one question—have they ever been in Europe? Have they ever seen a Garrick, a Kemble or a Siddons? If they have not, I can assure you (upon the words of two or three of my friends, the actors) they have no right to the title of critics.
They may talk as much as they please about judgment and taste, and feeling, but this is all nonsense. It has lately been determined, (at the theatre) that any one who attempts to decide upon such ridiculous principles, is an arrant goose, and deserves to be roasted.
Having thus, friend Oldstyle, endeavored in a feeble manner, to shew you a few of the rights of an actor, and of his wrongs; having mentioned his constant and disinterested endeavors to please the public; and how much better he knows what will please them than they do themselves; having also depicted the cruel and persecuting nature of a critic; the continual restraint he lays on the harmless irregularity of the performer, and the relentless manner in which he obliges him to attend sedulously to his professional duty, through fear of censure, let me entreat you to pause!—Open your eyes to the precipice on which you are tottering, and hearken to the earnest warning of your loving friend,
My friend Quoz certainly writes with feeling: every line evinces that acute sensibility for which he has ever been remarked.
I am, however, perfectly at a loss to conceive on what grounds he suspects me of a disposition to turn critic. My remarks hitherto have rather been the result of immediate impression than of critical examination. With my friend, Mr. Andrew Quoz, I begin to doubt the motives of our New-York Critics; especially since I have, in addition to these arguments, the assurances of two or three doubtless disinterested actors, and an editor, who, Mr. Quoz tells me is remarkable for his candor and veracity, that the Critics are the most ‘presumptuous,' ‘arrogant,' ‘malevolent,' ‘illiberal,' ‘ungentleman-like,' ‘malignant,' ‘rancorous,' ‘villainous,' ‘ungrateful,' ‘crippled,' ‘invidious,' ‘detracting,' ‘fabricating,' ‘personal,' ‘dogmatical,' ‘illegitimate,' ‘tyrannical,' ‘distorting,' ‘spindle-shanked moppets, designing villains, and upstart ignorants.'
These, I say, and many other equally high polished appellations, have awakened doubts in my mind respecting the sincerity and justice of the Critics; and lest my pen should unwittingly draw upon me the suspicion, of having a hankering after criticism, I now wipe it carefully—lock it safely up, and promise not to draw it forth again till, some new department of folly calls for my attention.
[The series was a great success for Irving, but his health was poor and his brothers financed a two-year trip to Europe from which he returned in 1806. He launched the satirical magazine Salmagundi (described as the Mad magazine of its day) in 1807. The magazine, which lasted until 1808, further established Irving as a writer of talent and appeal. (In the pages of Salmagundi, Irving coined the name Gotham—an Anglo-Saxon term that means ‘Goat’s Town’—for New York City.) He eventually followed this effort with the publication of The History of New York (1809), written under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker—another word that came to mean ‘everything New York.’ From that point on, Irving’s prominence as a writer, one of the first Americans (with James Fenimore Cooper) to become famous in Europe as a writer, was firmly established.]
[Letter VIII is Irving’s last letter in the series that commented on theater. Letter IX, published on 23 April 1803, is about dueling, which was legal in the United States until later in the 19th century. Indeed, Aaron Burr, Vice President of the United States and part-owner of the Morning Chronicle, fatally shot Alexander Hamilton, former Secretary of the Treasury under George Washington, in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey, on 11 July 1804; Hamilton died the next day. (Letter I, published on 15 November 1802, is a commentary of clothing fashions in the city; Letter II, 20 November, is a description of New York weddings.]
[Once again, Oldstyle replies to his friend Andrew Quoz. Both men find additional things to say about New York’s drama reviewers. Is it any wonder that some of the theater journalists took exception to Irving’s statements?]
LETTER VIII
(published 8 February 1803)
[The following communication was received someone since, but accidently mislaid.]
TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING CHRONICLE
Sir,
I had just put on my spectacles and mended my pen, to give you an account of a visit I made some time since, with friend Quoz and my sister Dorothy, to a ball, when I was interrupted by the following letter from the former.
My friend Quoz, who is what the world calls a knowing man, is extremely fond of giving his opinion in every affair. He displays in this epistle more than usual knowledge of his subject, and seems to exert all his argumentative talents to enforce the importance of his advice. I give you his letter without further comment, and shall postpone my description of the ball to another opportunity.
______
To JONATHAN OLDSTYLE, Gent.
My Dear Friend,
I once more address you on a subject that I fear will be found irksome, and may chafe that testy disposition (forgive my freedom) with which you are afflicted. Exert, however, the good humor of which at bottom I know you to have a plentiful stock, and hear me patiently through: It is the anxious fear I entertain of your sinking into the gloomy abyss of criticism, on the brink of which you are at present tottering, that urges me to write.
I would set before you the rights and wrongs of an actor, and by painting, in strong colors, the peculiarity of his situation, call your good sense into action.
The world, my friend Oldstyle, has ever been prone to consider the theatrical profession in a degraded point of view. What first gave rise to this opinion, I am at loss to conceive; but I consider it as the reliques of one of those ancient prejudices which the good sense of the world is daily discarding; and I flatter myself it will in a little time be totally exploded. Why the actor should be considered inferior in point of respectability to the poet, the painter, or any other person who exerts his talents in delineating character, or in exhibiting the various operations of the human mind, I cannot imagine. I know you, friend Oldstyle, to be a man of too liberal sentiments not to be superior to these little prejudices; and also one who regards an actor, provided his private character be good, with equal respect as the member of any other profession. Yet you are not quite aware of the important privileges solely attached to the dramatic performer. These I will endeavor to point out.
The works of a poet or painter you may freely criticise—nay, they offer them for that purpose—they listen attentively to your observations, and profit by your censures. But beware how you exercise such conduct towards an actor—he needs no instruction—his own impartial judgment is sufficient to detect and amend all his imperfections. Attempt to correct his errors and you ruin him at once—he'll starve to spite you—he is like a decayed substance, that crumbles at the touch.
No, sir—when an actor is on the stage he is in his own house—it is his castle—he then has you in his power—he may there bore you with his buffoonery, or insult you with his pointed remarks, with perfect impunity. You, my friend, who are rather apt to be dissatisfied, may call it hard treatment to be thus annoyed, and yet compensate the annoyer for his trouble. You may say, that as you pay an equivalent for your amusement, you should have the liberty of directing the actor in his attempts; and, as the Chinese does his ear-tickler, tell him when his instrument offends, and how he over-does himself in the operation. This is an egregious mistake: you are obliged to him for his condescension in exerting his talents for your instruction; and as to your money, why he only takes it to lessen in part the weight of your obligation.
An actor is, as I before observed, competent to judge of his own abilities—he may undertake whatever character he pleases—tragedy—comedy—or pantomime—however ill adapted his audience may think him to sustain it. He may rant and roar, and wink and grin, and fret and fume his hour upon the stage, and “who shall say nay?” He is paid by the manager for using his lungs and limbs, and the more he exerts them the better does he fulfil the engagement, and the harder does he work for his living—and who shall deprive him of his “hard-earned bread?”
How many an honest, lazy genius has been flogged by these unfeeling critics into a cultivation of his talents and attention to his profession!—how have they doomed him to hard study and unremitting exertion!—how have they prejudiced the public mind, so that what might once have put an audience in convulsions of laughter, now excites nothing but a slight pattering from the hands of the little shavers who are rewarded with seats in the gallery for their trouble in keeping the boxes. Oh! Mr. Oldstyle, it cuts me to the soul to see a poor actor stamp and storm, and slap his forehead, his breast, his pocket holes, all in vain: to see him throw himself in some attitude of distraction or despair, and there wait in fruitless expectation the applauses of his friends in the gallery. In such cases I always take care and clap him myself, to enable him to quit his posture, and resume his part with credit.
You was much irritated the other evening, at what you termed an ungenerous and unmanly attempt to bring forward an ancient maiden in a ridiculous point of view. But I don't see why that should be made a matter of complaint. Has it not been done time out of mind? Is it not sanctioned by daily custom in private life? Is not the character of aunt Tabitha, in the farce, the same we have laughed at in hundreds of dramatic pieces? Since, then, the author has but travelled in the same beaten track of character so many have trod before him, I see not why he should be blamed as severely as if he had all the guilt of originality upon his shoulders.
You may say that it is cruel to sport with the feelings of any class of society: that folly affords sufficient field for wit and satire to work upon, without resorting to misfortune for matter of ridicule: that female sensibility should ever be sacred from the lash of sarcasm, &c. But this is all stuff, all cant.
If an author is too indolent or too stupid, to seek new sources for remark, he is surely excuseable in employing the ideas of others, for his own use and benefit. But I find I have digressed, imperceptibly, into the “rights of authors,” so let us return to our subject.
An actor when he “holds the mirror up to nature,” may by his manœuvres, twist and turn it so, as to represent the object in any shape he pleases—nay, even give a caricature where the author intended a resemblance; he may blur it with his breath, or soil it with his dirty fingers, so that the object may have a colouring from the glass in which it is viewed, entirely different from its natural appearance. To be plain, my friend, an actor has a right whenever he thinks his author not sufficiently explicit to assist him by his own wit and abilities; and if by these means the character should become quite different from what was originally intended, and in fact belong more to the actor than the author, the actor deserves high credit for his ingenuity. And even tho’ his additions are quaint, and fulsome, yet his intention is highly praise worthy, and deserves ample encouragement.
Only think, my dear sir, how many snug little domestic arrangements are destroyed by the officious interference of these ever dissatisfied critics. The honest king of Scotland, who used to dress for market and theatre at the same time, and wear with his kelt and plaid his half boots and black breeches, looking half king, half cobbler, has been obliged totally to dismiss the former from his royal service; yet I am happy to find, so obstinate is his attachment to old habits, that all their efforts have not been sufficient to dislodge him from the strong hold he has in the latter. They may force him from the boots—but nothing shall drive him out of the breeches.
Consider, my friend, the puerile nature of such remarks. Is it not derogating from the elevated character of a Critic, to take notice of clubb’d wigs, red coats, black breeches and half boots! Fie, fie upon it! I blush for the Critics of the day, who consider it a matter of importance whether a Highlander should appear in breeches and boots, or an Otaheitan in the dress of a New-York coxcomb. Trust me, friend Oldstyle, it is to the manner, not the appearance of an actor, we are to look: and as long he performs his part well, (to use the words of my friend Sterne), “it shall not be enquired whether he did it in a black coat or a red.”
Believe me, friend Oldstyle, few of our modern critics can shew any substantial claim to the character they assume. Let me ask them one question—have they ever been in Europe? Have they ever seen a Garrick, a Kemble or a Siddons? If they have not, I can assure you (upon the words of two or three of my friends, the actors) they have no right to the title of critics.
They may talk as much as they please about judgment and taste, and feeling, but this is all nonsense. It has lately been determined, (at the theatre) that any one who attempts to decide upon such ridiculous principles, is an arrant goose, and deserves to be roasted.
Having thus, friend Oldstyle, endeavored in a feeble manner, to shew you a few of the rights of an actor, and of his wrongs; having mentioned his constant and disinterested endeavors to please the public; and how much better he knows what will please them than they do themselves; having also depicted the cruel and persecuting nature of a critic; the continual restraint he lays on the harmless irregularity of the performer, and the relentless manner in which he obliges him to attend sedulously to his professional duty, through fear of censure, let me entreat you to pause!—Open your eyes to the precipice on which you are tottering, and hearken to the earnest warning of your loving friend,
ANDREW QUOZ.
My friend Quoz certainly writes with feeling: every line evinces that acute sensibility for which he has ever been remarked.
I am, however, perfectly at a loss to conceive on what grounds he suspects me of a disposition to turn critic. My remarks hitherto have rather been the result of immediate impression than of critical examination. With my friend, Mr. Andrew Quoz, I begin to doubt the motives of our New-York Critics; especially since I have, in addition to these arguments, the assurances of two or three doubtless disinterested actors, and an editor, who, Mr. Quoz tells me is remarkable for his candor and veracity, that the Critics are the most ‘presumptuous,' ‘arrogant,' ‘malevolent,' ‘illiberal,' ‘ungentleman-like,' ‘malignant,' ‘rancorous,' ‘villainous,' ‘ungrateful,' ‘crippled,' ‘invidious,' ‘detracting,' ‘fabricating,' ‘personal,' ‘dogmatical,' ‘illegitimate,' ‘tyrannical,' ‘distorting,' ‘spindle-shanked moppets, designing villains, and upstart ignorants.'
These, I say, and many other equally high polished appellations, have awakened doubts in my mind respecting the sincerity and justice of the Critics; and lest my pen should unwittingly draw upon me the suspicion, of having a hankering after criticism, I now wipe it carefully—lock it safely up, and promise not to draw it forth again till, some new department of folly calls for my attention.
JONATHAN OLDSTYLE.
[The series was a great success for Irving, but his health was poor and his brothers financed a two-year trip to Europe from which he returned in 1806. He launched the satirical magazine Salmagundi (described as the Mad magazine of its day) in 1807. The magazine, which lasted until 1808, further established Irving as a writer of talent and appeal. (In the pages of Salmagundi, Irving coined the name Gotham—an Anglo-Saxon term that means ‘Goat’s Town’—for New York City.) He eventually followed this effort with the publication of The History of New York (1809), written under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker—another word that came to mean ‘everything New York.’ From that point on, Irving’s prominence as a writer, one of the first Americans (with James Fenimore Cooper) to become famous in Europe as a writer, was firmly established.]
[Letter VIII is Irving’s last letter in the series that commented on theater. Letter IX, published on 23 April 1803, is about dueling, which was legal in the United States until later in the 19th century. Indeed, Aaron Burr, Vice President of the United States and part-owner of the Morning Chronicle, fatally shot Alexander Hamilton, former Secretary of the Treasury under George Washington, in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey, on 11 July 1804; Hamilton died the next day. (Letter I, published on 15 November 1802, is a commentary of clothing fashions in the city; Letter II, 20 November, is a description of New York weddings.]
25 August 2010
Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle (Letter VII)
By Washington Irving
[Continuing with his tactic of responding to Oldstyle’s friend Andrew Quoz, Irving’s alter ego returns to the theater for more experiences on which to comment. This time, Quoz is in attendance, too.]
Sir,
I mentioned in my last my intention of visiting the theatre on Monday night. I accordingly reached there, with the assistance of Jack Stylish, who procured for me in one of the boxes an uncomfortable and dirty seat, which, however, I found as good as any of my neighbours. In the pit I was determined never again to venture. The little Frenchman mentioned in my former remarks had adopted the same resolution; for on casting my eyes around the theatre, I recognised his sharp phiz, and pinched up cocked hat, peering over the ledge of the Shakspeare. The poor little fellow had not changed his place for the better; a brawny Irishman was leaning with arms akimbo on his shoulders, and coolly surveying the audience, unmindful of the writhings and expostulations of the irritated little Gaul, whose chin was pressed hard upon the front of the box, and his small black eyes twinkling with fury and suffocation. How he disengaged himself I don’t know, for my attention was just then called away by a different object, and on turning round some time afterwards, little Monsieur had disappeared.
I found every thing wore its old appearance. The same silence, order, and regularity prevailed as on my former visit. The central chandelier hung unmolested in the heavens, setting off to advantage the picture of Mr. Anybody, with which it is adorned, and shedding a melancholy ray into that den in which (if we may judge from the sounds that issue thence) so many troubled spirits are confined.
I had marched into the theatre through rows of tables heaped up with delicacies of every kind—here a pyramid of apples or oranges invited the playful palate of the dainty; while there a regiment of mince pies and custards promised a more substantial regale to the hungry. I entered the box, and looked round with astonishment—not a grinder but had its employment. The crackling of nuts and the craunching of apples saluted my ears on every side. Surely, thought I, never was an employment followed up with more assiduity than that of gormandizing; already it pervades every public place of amusement; nay, it even begins to steal into our churches, where many a mouthful is munched in private; and few have any more objection to eat than laugh in their sleeves.
The eating mania prevails through every class of society; not a soul but has caught the infection. Eating clubs are established in every street and alley, and it is impossible to turn a corner without hearing the hissing of frying pans, winding the savoury steams of roast and boiled, or seeing some hungry genius bolting raw oysters in the middle of the street. I expect we shall shortly carry our knives and forks, like the Chinese do their chop sticks, in our pockets.
I was interrupted in my meditations by Jack Stylish, who proposed that we might take a peep into the lounging room, the dashing appearance of which Jack described in high terms; I willingly agreed to his proposal.
The room perfectly answered my expectations, and was a piece with the rest of the theatre: the high finish of the walls, the windows fancifully decorated with red baize and painted canvass, and the sumptuous wooden benches placed around it, had a most inviting appearance.
I drew the end of one of them near to an elegant stove that stood in the centre of the room, and seating myself on it, stretched my lame leg over a chair; placing my hands on the head of my cane, and resting my chin upon them, I began to amuse myself by reconnoitering the company, and snuffing up the delightful perfume of French brandy, Holland gin, and Spanish segars.
I found myself in a circle of young gentry, who appeared to have something in agitation, by their winking and nodding: at the same time I heard a confused whispering around me, and could distinguish the words smoke his wig—twig his silver buckles—old quiz—cane—cock'd hat—queer phiz —and a variety of others, by which I soon found I was in bad quarters. Jack Stylish seemed equally uneasy as myself, for though he is fond of fun himself, yet I believe the young dog has too much love for his old relation, to make him the object of his mirth. To get me away, he told me my friend Quoz was at the lower end of the room, and seemed by his looks anxious to speak with me, we accordingly joined him, and finding that the curtain was about rising, we adjourned to the box together.
In our way I exclaimed against the indecorous manner of the young men of the present day; the impertinent remarks on the company in which they continually indulge; and the cant phrases with which their shallow conversation is generally interlarded. Jack observed that I had popp'd among a set of hard boys; yes, master Stylish said I, turning round to him abruptly, and I observed by your winks and grins that you are better acquainted with them than I could wish. Let me tell you honest friend, if ever I catch you indulging in such despicable fopperies, and hankering after the company of these disrespectful youngsters, be assured that I will discard you from my affections entirely. By this time we had reached our box: so I left my cousin Jack to digest what I had just said; and I hope it may have weight with him; though I fear, from the thoughtless gaiety of his disposition, and his knowledge of the strong hold he has in my foolish old heart, my menaces will make but little impression.
We found the play already commenced. I was particularly delighted with the appearance and manners of one of the female performers. What ease, what grace, what elegance of deportment—this is not acting, cousin Jack, said I—this is reality.
After the play, this lady again came forward and delivered a ludicrous epilogue. I was extremely sorry to find her step so far out of that graceful line of character in which she is calculated to shine; and I perceived by the countenances around me that the sentiment was universal.
Ah, said I, how much she forgets what is due to her dignity. That charming countenance was never made to be so unworthily distorted: nor that graceful person and carriage to represent the awkward movements of hobbling decrepitude—take this word of advice fair lady, from an old man and a friend: Never, if you wish to retain that character for elegance you so deservedly possess—never degrade yourself by assuming the part of a mimic.
The curtain rose for the after-piece. Out skipped a jolly Merry Andrew. Aha! said I, here is the Jack-pudding. I see he has forgot his broomstick and grid-iron; he'll compensate for these wants, I suppose, by his wit and humour. But where is his master, the Quack? He'll be here presently, said Jack Stylish; he's a queer old codger; his name's Puffaway; here's to be a rare roasting match, and this quizzical looking fellow turns the spit. The Merry Andrew now began to deal out his speeches with great rapidity; but, on a sudden, pulling off a black hood that covered his face, who should I recognise but my old acquaintance, the portly gentleman.
I started back with astonishment. Sic transit gloria mundi! exclaimed I, with a melancholy shake of the head. Here is a dreary, but true picture, of the vicissitudes of life—one night paraded in regal robes, surrounded with a splendid train of nobility; the next, degraded to a poor Jack-pudding, and without even a grid-iron to help himself. What think you of this, my friend Quoz? said I; think you an actor has any right to sport with the feelings of his audience, by presenting them with such distressing contrasts. Honest Quoz, who is of the melting mood, shook his head ruefully, and said nothing. I, however, saw the tear of sympathy tremble in his eye, and honored him for his sensibility.
The Merry Andrew went on with his part, and my pity encreased as he progressed; when all of a sudden he exclaimed, “And as to Oldstyle, I wish him to old nick.” My blood mounted into my cheeks at this insolent mention of my name. And what think you of this, friend Quoz? exclaimed I, vehemently; I presume this is one of your “rights of actors.” I suppose we are now to have the stage a vehicle for lampoons and slanders; on which, our fellow citizens are to be caricatured by the clumsy hand of every dauber who can hold a brush!
Let me tell you, Mr. Andrew Quoz, I have known the time when such insolence would have been hooted from the stage.
After some persuasion I resumed my seat, and attempted to listen patiently to the rest of the afterpiece; but I was so disgusted with the Merry Andrew, that in spite of all his skipping, and jumping, and turning on his heel, I could not yield him a smile.
Among the other original characters of the dramatis personæ, we were presented with an ancient maiden; and entertained with jests and remarks from the buffoon and his associates, containing equal wit and novelty. But jesting apart, I think these attempts to injure female happiness, at once cruel and unmanly. I have ever been an enthusiast in my attachment to the fair sex. I have ever thought them possessed of the strongest claims on our admiration, our tenderness and our protection. But when to these are added still stronger claims—when we see them aged and infirm, solitary and neglected, without a partner to support them down the descent of life—cold indeed must be that heart, and unmanly that spirit, that can point the shafts of ridicule at their defenceless bosoms—that can poison the few drops of comfort heaven has poured into their cup.
The form of my sister Dorothy presented itself to my imagination; her hair silvered by time; but her face unwrinkled by sorrow or care.
She “hath borne her faculties so meekly,” that age has marked no traces on her forehead: amiable sister of my heart! cried I, who hast jogged with me through so many years of existence, is this to be the recompense of all thy virtues; art thou who never, in thought or deed, injured the feelings of another, to have thy own massacred, by the jeering insults of those to whom thou shouldst look for honour and protection?
Away with such despicable trumpery—such shallow, worn-out attempts to obtain applause from the unfeeling. I'll no more of it; come along friend Quoz, if we stay much longer, I suppose we shall find our courts of justice insulted, and attempts to ridicule the characters of private persons. Jack Stylish entreated me to stay and see the addition the manager had made to his live stock, of an ass, a goose, and a monkey. Not I, said I, I'll see no more. I accordingly hobbled off with my friend Mr. Andrew Quoz, Jack declaring he would stay behind and see the end of the joke. On our way home, I asked friend Quoz, how he could justify such clumsy attempts at personal satire. He seemed, however, rather reserved in his answers, and informed me he would write his sentiments on the subject.
The next morning Jack Stylish related to me the conclusion of the piece. How several actors went into a wheel one after another, and after a little grinding, were converted into asses, geese and monkeys, except the Merry Andrew, who was found such a tough jockey, that the wheel could not digest him, so he came out as much a Jack-pudding as ever.
[A further set of explanatory notes: the Shakspeare – The Shakespeare box, located at the front of the second tier in the Park Theatre; quiz – An odd or eccentric person, in character or appearance; the play already commenced – The Provoked Husband (1728) by John Vanbrugh (1664-1726), performed at the Park Theatre on 14 January 1803; grid-iron – A flat framework of parallel metal bars used for broiling meat or fish; old nick – the devil.
[The last letter in this series will appear on ROT in a few days.]
[Continuing with his tactic of responding to Oldstyle’s friend Andrew Quoz, Irving’s alter ego returns to the theater for more experiences on which to comment. This time, Quoz is in attendance, too.]
LETTER VII
(published 22 January 1803)
Sir,
I mentioned in my last my intention of visiting the theatre on Monday night. I accordingly reached there, with the assistance of Jack Stylish, who procured for me in one of the boxes an uncomfortable and dirty seat, which, however, I found as good as any of my neighbours. In the pit I was determined never again to venture. The little Frenchman mentioned in my former remarks had adopted the same resolution; for on casting my eyes around the theatre, I recognised his sharp phiz, and pinched up cocked hat, peering over the ledge of the Shakspeare. The poor little fellow had not changed his place for the better; a brawny Irishman was leaning with arms akimbo on his shoulders, and coolly surveying the audience, unmindful of the writhings and expostulations of the irritated little Gaul, whose chin was pressed hard upon the front of the box, and his small black eyes twinkling with fury and suffocation. How he disengaged himself I don’t know, for my attention was just then called away by a different object, and on turning round some time afterwards, little Monsieur had disappeared.
I found every thing wore its old appearance. The same silence, order, and regularity prevailed as on my former visit. The central chandelier hung unmolested in the heavens, setting off to advantage the picture of Mr. Anybody, with which it is adorned, and shedding a melancholy ray into that den in which (if we may judge from the sounds that issue thence) so many troubled spirits are confined.
I had marched into the theatre through rows of tables heaped up with delicacies of every kind—here a pyramid of apples or oranges invited the playful palate of the dainty; while there a regiment of mince pies and custards promised a more substantial regale to the hungry. I entered the box, and looked round with astonishment—not a grinder but had its employment. The crackling of nuts and the craunching of apples saluted my ears on every side. Surely, thought I, never was an employment followed up with more assiduity than that of gormandizing; already it pervades every public place of amusement; nay, it even begins to steal into our churches, where many a mouthful is munched in private; and few have any more objection to eat than laugh in their sleeves.
The eating mania prevails through every class of society; not a soul but has caught the infection. Eating clubs are established in every street and alley, and it is impossible to turn a corner without hearing the hissing of frying pans, winding the savoury steams of roast and boiled, or seeing some hungry genius bolting raw oysters in the middle of the street. I expect we shall shortly carry our knives and forks, like the Chinese do their chop sticks, in our pockets.
I was interrupted in my meditations by Jack Stylish, who proposed that we might take a peep into the lounging room, the dashing appearance of which Jack described in high terms; I willingly agreed to his proposal.
The room perfectly answered my expectations, and was a piece with the rest of the theatre: the high finish of the walls, the windows fancifully decorated with red baize and painted canvass, and the sumptuous wooden benches placed around it, had a most inviting appearance.
I drew the end of one of them near to an elegant stove that stood in the centre of the room, and seating myself on it, stretched my lame leg over a chair; placing my hands on the head of my cane, and resting my chin upon them, I began to amuse myself by reconnoitering the company, and snuffing up the delightful perfume of French brandy, Holland gin, and Spanish segars.
I found myself in a circle of young gentry, who appeared to have something in agitation, by their winking and nodding: at the same time I heard a confused whispering around me, and could distinguish the words smoke his wig—twig his silver buckles—old quiz—cane—cock'd hat—queer phiz —and a variety of others, by which I soon found I was in bad quarters. Jack Stylish seemed equally uneasy as myself, for though he is fond of fun himself, yet I believe the young dog has too much love for his old relation, to make him the object of his mirth. To get me away, he told me my friend Quoz was at the lower end of the room, and seemed by his looks anxious to speak with me, we accordingly joined him, and finding that the curtain was about rising, we adjourned to the box together.
In our way I exclaimed against the indecorous manner of the young men of the present day; the impertinent remarks on the company in which they continually indulge; and the cant phrases with which their shallow conversation is generally interlarded. Jack observed that I had popp'd among a set of hard boys; yes, master Stylish said I, turning round to him abruptly, and I observed by your winks and grins that you are better acquainted with them than I could wish. Let me tell you honest friend, if ever I catch you indulging in such despicable fopperies, and hankering after the company of these disrespectful youngsters, be assured that I will discard you from my affections entirely. By this time we had reached our box: so I left my cousin Jack to digest what I had just said; and I hope it may have weight with him; though I fear, from the thoughtless gaiety of his disposition, and his knowledge of the strong hold he has in my foolish old heart, my menaces will make but little impression.
We found the play already commenced. I was particularly delighted with the appearance and manners of one of the female performers. What ease, what grace, what elegance of deportment—this is not acting, cousin Jack, said I—this is reality.
After the play, this lady again came forward and delivered a ludicrous epilogue. I was extremely sorry to find her step so far out of that graceful line of character in which she is calculated to shine; and I perceived by the countenances around me that the sentiment was universal.
Ah, said I, how much she forgets what is due to her dignity. That charming countenance was never made to be so unworthily distorted: nor that graceful person and carriage to represent the awkward movements of hobbling decrepitude—take this word of advice fair lady, from an old man and a friend: Never, if you wish to retain that character for elegance you so deservedly possess—never degrade yourself by assuming the part of a mimic.
The curtain rose for the after-piece. Out skipped a jolly Merry Andrew. Aha! said I, here is the Jack-pudding. I see he has forgot his broomstick and grid-iron; he'll compensate for these wants, I suppose, by his wit and humour. But where is his master, the Quack? He'll be here presently, said Jack Stylish; he's a queer old codger; his name's Puffaway; here's to be a rare roasting match, and this quizzical looking fellow turns the spit. The Merry Andrew now began to deal out his speeches with great rapidity; but, on a sudden, pulling off a black hood that covered his face, who should I recognise but my old acquaintance, the portly gentleman.
I started back with astonishment. Sic transit gloria mundi! exclaimed I, with a melancholy shake of the head. Here is a dreary, but true picture, of the vicissitudes of life—one night paraded in regal robes, surrounded with a splendid train of nobility; the next, degraded to a poor Jack-pudding, and without even a grid-iron to help himself. What think you of this, my friend Quoz? said I; think you an actor has any right to sport with the feelings of his audience, by presenting them with such distressing contrasts. Honest Quoz, who is of the melting mood, shook his head ruefully, and said nothing. I, however, saw the tear of sympathy tremble in his eye, and honored him for his sensibility.
The Merry Andrew went on with his part, and my pity encreased as he progressed; when all of a sudden he exclaimed, “And as to Oldstyle, I wish him to old nick.” My blood mounted into my cheeks at this insolent mention of my name. And what think you of this, friend Quoz? exclaimed I, vehemently; I presume this is one of your “rights of actors.” I suppose we are now to have the stage a vehicle for lampoons and slanders; on which, our fellow citizens are to be caricatured by the clumsy hand of every dauber who can hold a brush!
Let me tell you, Mr. Andrew Quoz, I have known the time when such insolence would have been hooted from the stage.
After some persuasion I resumed my seat, and attempted to listen patiently to the rest of the afterpiece; but I was so disgusted with the Merry Andrew, that in spite of all his skipping, and jumping, and turning on his heel, I could not yield him a smile.
Among the other original characters of the dramatis personæ, we were presented with an ancient maiden; and entertained with jests and remarks from the buffoon and his associates, containing equal wit and novelty. But jesting apart, I think these attempts to injure female happiness, at once cruel and unmanly. I have ever been an enthusiast in my attachment to the fair sex. I have ever thought them possessed of the strongest claims on our admiration, our tenderness and our protection. But when to these are added still stronger claims—when we see them aged and infirm, solitary and neglected, without a partner to support them down the descent of life—cold indeed must be that heart, and unmanly that spirit, that can point the shafts of ridicule at their defenceless bosoms—that can poison the few drops of comfort heaven has poured into their cup.
The form of my sister Dorothy presented itself to my imagination; her hair silvered by time; but her face unwrinkled by sorrow or care.
She “hath borne her faculties so meekly,” that age has marked no traces on her forehead: amiable sister of my heart! cried I, who hast jogged with me through so many years of existence, is this to be the recompense of all thy virtues; art thou who never, in thought or deed, injured the feelings of another, to have thy own massacred, by the jeering insults of those to whom thou shouldst look for honour and protection?
Away with such despicable trumpery—such shallow, worn-out attempts to obtain applause from the unfeeling. I'll no more of it; come along friend Quoz, if we stay much longer, I suppose we shall find our courts of justice insulted, and attempts to ridicule the characters of private persons. Jack Stylish entreated me to stay and see the addition the manager had made to his live stock, of an ass, a goose, and a monkey. Not I, said I, I'll see no more. I accordingly hobbled off with my friend Mr. Andrew Quoz, Jack declaring he would stay behind and see the end of the joke. On our way home, I asked friend Quoz, how he could justify such clumsy attempts at personal satire. He seemed, however, rather reserved in his answers, and informed me he would write his sentiments on the subject.
The next morning Jack Stylish related to me the conclusion of the piece. How several actors went into a wheel one after another, and after a little grinding, were converted into asses, geese and monkeys, except the Merry Andrew, who was found such a tough jockey, that the wheel could not digest him, so he came out as much a Jack-pudding as ever.
JONATHAN OLDSTYLE.
* * * *
[A further set of explanatory notes: the Shakspeare – The Shakespeare box, located at the front of the second tier in the Park Theatre; quiz – An odd or eccentric person, in character or appearance; the play already commenced – The Provoked Husband (1728) by John Vanbrugh (1664-1726), performed at the Park Theatre on 14 January 1803; grid-iron – A flat framework of parallel metal bars used for broiling meat or fish; old nick – the devil.
[The last letter in this series will appear on ROT in a few days.]
22 August 2010
Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle (Letter VI)
By Washington Irving
[Beginning with Letter VI, Irving begins the conceit of Jonathan Oldstyle’s replying to the responses of a friend, Andrew Quoz. Quoz takes exception to some of Oldstyle’s remarks and writes his own letters to the editors of the Morning Chronicle which Oldstyle answers in turn. This allows Irving the opportunity of defending his own opinions at the same time that he continues his good-natured criticism of the theater scene in New York. As we’ll see, Iriving especially expands his remarks about the reviewers—a topic to which he will return in Letter VIII.]
[The following communication from our correspondent, OLDSTYLE, and his friend, will, we hope, induce a number to attend the benefit performance this evening, and see the diverting farce alluded to in the latter part of Mr. Quoz’s letter]
Sir,
As I was sitting quietly by my fireside the other morning, nursing my wounded shin, and reading to my cousin, Jack Stylish, a chapter or two from Chesterfield's Letters, I received the following epistle from my friend Andrew Quoz: who, hearing that I talked of paying the actors a visit, and shaking my cane over their heads, has written the following letter, part of which is strongly in their defence.
My Dear Friend,
I perceive by the late papers you have been entertaining the town with remarks on the Theatre. As you do not seem from your writings to be much of an adept in the Thespian arcana, permit me to give you a few hints for your information.
The theatre, you observe, begins to answer all the purposes of a coffee-house. Here you are right: it is the polite lounge, where the idle and curious resort, to pick up the news of the fashionable world; to meet their acquaintances, and to shew themselves off to advantage. As to the dull souls who go for the sake of the play, why if their attention is interrupted by the conversation of their neighbors, they must bear it with patience—it is a custom authorized by fashion. Persons who go for the purpose of chatting with their friends are not to be deprived of their amusement; they have paid their dollar, and have a right to entertain themselves as well as they can. As to those who are annoyed by their talking, why they need not listen to it—let them mind their own business.
You were surprized at so many persons using opera glasses; & wished to know whether they were all near sighted. Your cousin, Jack Stylish, has not explained that matter sufficiently—for though many mount glasses because it is the go, yet I am told that several do it to enable them to distinguish the countenances of their friends across our scantily illumined theatre. I was considerably amused the other evening with an honest tar, who had stationed himself in front of the gallery, with an air of affected foppishness, & was reconnoitering the house thro’ a pocket telescope. I could not but like his notion, for really the gods are so elevated among the clouds, that unless they are unusually strong of vision, I can't tell how they manage to discern with the naked eye what is passing in the little painted world below them.
I think you complain of the deficiency of the music; and say that we want a greater variety and more of it. But you must know that, though this might have been a grievance in old times, when people attended to the musicians, it is a thing of but little moment at present.—Our orchestra is kept principally for form sake. There is such a continual noise and bustle between the acts that it is difficult to hear a note; and if the musicians were to get up a new piece of the finest melody, so nicely tuned are the ears of their auditors, that I doubt whether nine hearers out of ten would not complain, on leaving the house, that they had been bored with the same old pieces they have heard these two or three years back. Indeed, many who go to the theatre carry their own music with them; and we are so often delighted with the crying of children by way of glee, and such coughing and sneezing from various parts of the house, by way of chorus—not to mention the regale of a sweet symphony from a sweep or two in the gallery—and occasionally a full piece, in which nasal, vocal, whistling and thumping powers are admirably exerted and blended, that what want we of an orchestra?
In your remarks on the actors, my dear friend let me beg of you to be cautious. I would not for the world that you should degenerate into a critic. The critics, my dear Jonathan, are the very pests of society: they rob the actor of his reputation; the public of their amusement: they open the eyes of their readers to a full perception of the faults of our performers, they reduce our feelings to a state of miserable refinement, and destroy entirely all the enjoyments in which our coarser sensations delighted. I can remember the time when I could hardly keep my seat thro’ laughing at the wretched buffoonery, the merry-andrew tricks, and the unnatural grimaces played off by one of our theatric Jack Puddings: when I was struck with awful admiration at the roaring and ranting of a buskined hero, and hung with rapture on every word, while he was “tearing a passion to tatters—to very rags!” I remember the time when he who could make the queerest mouth, roll his eyes, and twist his body with the most hideous distortions, was surest to please. Alas! how changed the times, or rather how changed the tastes. I can now sit with the gravest countenance, and look without a smile on all such mimicry; their skipping, their squinting, their shrugging, their snuffling, delight not me; and as to their ranting and roaring,
“I'd rather hear a brazen candlestick turned,
Or a dry wheel grate on the axle tree,”
than any such fustian efforts to attain a shallow gallery applause.
Now, though I confess these critics have reformed the manners of the actors as well as the tastes of the audience; so that these absurdities are almost banished from the New-York stage; yet do I think they have employed a most unwarrantable liberty.
A critic, my dear sir, has no more right to expose the faults of an actor, than he has to detect the deceptions of a juggler, or the impositions of a quack. All trades must live; and, as long as the public are satisfied to admire the tricks of the juggler, to swallow the drugs of the quack, or to applaud the fustian of the actor, whoever attempts to undeceive them, does but curtail the pleasures of the latter, and deprive the former of their bread.
Ods-bud, hath not an actor eyes and shall he not wink?—hath not an actor teeth and shall he not grin?—feet and shall he not stamp?—lungs and shall he not roar?—breast and shall he not slap it?—hair and shall he not club it? Is he not fed with plaudits from the gods? delighted with thumpings from the groundlings? annoyed by hisses from the boxes?
If you censure his follies, does he not complain? If you take away his bread will he not starve? If you starve him will he not die? And if you kill him will not his wife and seven small infants, six at her back and one at her breast, rise up and cry vengeance against you? Ponder these things seriously my friend Oldstyle, and you will agree with me that, as the actor is the most meritorious and faultless, so is the critic the most cruel and sanguinary character in the world. “As I will show you more fully in my next.” Your loving friend,
From the tenor and conclusion of these remarks of my friend Mr. Andrew Quoz, they may not improperly be called the “Rights of Actors;” his arguments are, I confess, very forcible, but, as they are entirely new to me, I shall not hastily make up my mind. In the mean time, as my leg is much better, I believe I shall hobble to the theatre on Monday evening, borrow a seat in a side-box, and observe how the actors conduct themselves.
[A further set of explanatory notes: my wounded shin – The Morning Chronicle of two days before had carried the following item: “We have received a note from our correspondent Jonathan Oldstyle. The old gentleman . . . states that he has been confined to his house since the famous Battle of Hexham, in which engagement he received a broken shin, in a skirmish with some impudent boys, who assailed him for his check of admittance during the interval between the play and the farce”; Chesterfield's Letters – Letters to His Son (1774) by Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773), written to his illegitimate son, Philip Stanhope (1732-68); tar – sailor; regale – an entertainment or fête; merry-andrew – clown or buffoon; Jack Puddings – buffoon characters appearing in stage and street performances; buskined – wearing buskins, the traditional footwear of Greek tragedians; fustian – pretentious speech or writing; pompous language; Ods-bud – a corruption of “God’s blood,” an oath; club it – make into a knot or tail, a hairstyle common for men in the late 18th century.
[New York City had only 65,000 inhabitants at the time that Irving wrote these letters. The theater district was, of course, not located uptown (which didn’t even exist yet in any case); the Park Theater, which housed the play Jonathan Oldstyle first went to see, was downtown at 23 Park Row, between Beekman and Ann Streets. (The park in the name is what’s now City Hall Park. The theater, at one time the only one in New York City, opened in 1798 and burned down in 1848.) The last two letters I’ve selected to reproduce will be published on ROT within the next week. Please return to see how Irving wraps up his critical remarks about New York theater in the earliest years of the 19th century.]
[Beginning with Letter VI, Irving begins the conceit of Jonathan Oldstyle’s replying to the responses of a friend, Andrew Quoz. Quoz takes exception to some of Oldstyle’s remarks and writes his own letters to the editors of the Morning Chronicle which Oldstyle answers in turn. This allows Irving the opportunity of defending his own opinions at the same time that he continues his good-natured criticism of the theater scene in New York. As we’ll see, Iriving especially expands his remarks about the reviewers—a topic to which he will return in Letter VIII.]
LETTER VI
(published 17 January 1803)
[The following communication from our correspondent, OLDSTYLE, and his friend, will, we hope, induce a number to attend the benefit performance this evening, and see the diverting farce alluded to in the latter part of Mr. Quoz’s letter]
TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING CHRONICLE
Sir,
As I was sitting quietly by my fireside the other morning, nursing my wounded shin, and reading to my cousin, Jack Stylish, a chapter or two from Chesterfield's Letters, I received the following epistle from my friend Andrew Quoz: who, hearing that I talked of paying the actors a visit, and shaking my cane over their heads, has written the following letter, part of which is strongly in their defence.
________
To JONATHAN OLDSTYLE, Gent.
My Dear Friend,
I perceive by the late papers you have been entertaining the town with remarks on the Theatre. As you do not seem from your writings to be much of an adept in the Thespian arcana, permit me to give you a few hints for your information.
The theatre, you observe, begins to answer all the purposes of a coffee-house. Here you are right: it is the polite lounge, where the idle and curious resort, to pick up the news of the fashionable world; to meet their acquaintances, and to shew themselves off to advantage. As to the dull souls who go for the sake of the play, why if their attention is interrupted by the conversation of their neighbors, they must bear it with patience—it is a custom authorized by fashion. Persons who go for the purpose of chatting with their friends are not to be deprived of their amusement; they have paid their dollar, and have a right to entertain themselves as well as they can. As to those who are annoyed by their talking, why they need not listen to it—let them mind their own business.
You were surprized at so many persons using opera glasses; & wished to know whether they were all near sighted. Your cousin, Jack Stylish, has not explained that matter sufficiently—for though many mount glasses because it is the go, yet I am told that several do it to enable them to distinguish the countenances of their friends across our scantily illumined theatre. I was considerably amused the other evening with an honest tar, who had stationed himself in front of the gallery, with an air of affected foppishness, & was reconnoitering the house thro’ a pocket telescope. I could not but like his notion, for really the gods are so elevated among the clouds, that unless they are unusually strong of vision, I can't tell how they manage to discern with the naked eye what is passing in the little painted world below them.
I think you complain of the deficiency of the music; and say that we want a greater variety and more of it. But you must know that, though this might have been a grievance in old times, when people attended to the musicians, it is a thing of but little moment at present.—Our orchestra is kept principally for form sake. There is such a continual noise and bustle between the acts that it is difficult to hear a note; and if the musicians were to get up a new piece of the finest melody, so nicely tuned are the ears of their auditors, that I doubt whether nine hearers out of ten would not complain, on leaving the house, that they had been bored with the same old pieces they have heard these two or three years back. Indeed, many who go to the theatre carry their own music with them; and we are so often delighted with the crying of children by way of glee, and such coughing and sneezing from various parts of the house, by way of chorus—not to mention the regale of a sweet symphony from a sweep or two in the gallery—and occasionally a full piece, in which nasal, vocal, whistling and thumping powers are admirably exerted and blended, that what want we of an orchestra?
In your remarks on the actors, my dear friend let me beg of you to be cautious. I would not for the world that you should degenerate into a critic. The critics, my dear Jonathan, are the very pests of society: they rob the actor of his reputation; the public of their amusement: they open the eyes of their readers to a full perception of the faults of our performers, they reduce our feelings to a state of miserable refinement, and destroy entirely all the enjoyments in which our coarser sensations delighted. I can remember the time when I could hardly keep my seat thro’ laughing at the wretched buffoonery, the merry-andrew tricks, and the unnatural grimaces played off by one of our theatric Jack Puddings: when I was struck with awful admiration at the roaring and ranting of a buskined hero, and hung with rapture on every word, while he was “tearing a passion to tatters—to very rags!” I remember the time when he who could make the queerest mouth, roll his eyes, and twist his body with the most hideous distortions, was surest to please. Alas! how changed the times, or rather how changed the tastes. I can now sit with the gravest countenance, and look without a smile on all such mimicry; their skipping, their squinting, their shrugging, their snuffling, delight not me; and as to their ranting and roaring,
“I'd rather hear a brazen candlestick turned,
Or a dry wheel grate on the axle tree,”
than any such fustian efforts to attain a shallow gallery applause.
Now, though I confess these critics have reformed the manners of the actors as well as the tastes of the audience; so that these absurdities are almost banished from the New-York stage; yet do I think they have employed a most unwarrantable liberty.
A critic, my dear sir, has no more right to expose the faults of an actor, than he has to detect the deceptions of a juggler, or the impositions of a quack. All trades must live; and, as long as the public are satisfied to admire the tricks of the juggler, to swallow the drugs of the quack, or to applaud the fustian of the actor, whoever attempts to undeceive them, does but curtail the pleasures of the latter, and deprive the former of their bread.
Ods-bud, hath not an actor eyes and shall he not wink?—hath not an actor teeth and shall he not grin?—feet and shall he not stamp?—lungs and shall he not roar?—breast and shall he not slap it?—hair and shall he not club it? Is he not fed with plaudits from the gods? delighted with thumpings from the groundlings? annoyed by hisses from the boxes?
If you censure his follies, does he not complain? If you take away his bread will he not starve? If you starve him will he not die? And if you kill him will not his wife and seven small infants, six at her back and one at her breast, rise up and cry vengeance against you? Ponder these things seriously my friend Oldstyle, and you will agree with me that, as the actor is the most meritorious and faultless, so is the critic the most cruel and sanguinary character in the world. “As I will show you more fully in my next.” Your loving friend,
ANDREW QUOZ.
_______
From the tenor and conclusion of these remarks of my friend Mr. Andrew Quoz, they may not improperly be called the “Rights of Actors;” his arguments are, I confess, very forcible, but, as they are entirely new to me, I shall not hastily make up my mind. In the mean time, as my leg is much better, I believe I shall hobble to the theatre on Monday evening, borrow a seat in a side-box, and observe how the actors conduct themselves.
JONATHAN OLDSTYLE.
* * * *
[A further set of explanatory notes: my wounded shin – The Morning Chronicle of two days before had carried the following item: “We have received a note from our correspondent Jonathan Oldstyle. The old gentleman . . . states that he has been confined to his house since the famous Battle of Hexham, in which engagement he received a broken shin, in a skirmish with some impudent boys, who assailed him for his check of admittance during the interval between the play and the farce”; Chesterfield's Letters – Letters to His Son (1774) by Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773), written to his illegitimate son, Philip Stanhope (1732-68); tar – sailor; regale – an entertainment or fête; merry-andrew – clown or buffoon; Jack Puddings – buffoon characters appearing in stage and street performances; buskined – wearing buskins, the traditional footwear of Greek tragedians; fustian – pretentious speech or writing; pompous language; Ods-bud – a corruption of “God’s blood,” an oath; club it – make into a knot or tail, a hairstyle common for men in the late 18th century.
[New York City had only 65,000 inhabitants at the time that Irving wrote these letters. The theater district was, of course, not located uptown (which didn’t even exist yet in any case); the Park Theater, which housed the play Jonathan Oldstyle first went to see, was downtown at 23 Park Row, between Beekman and Ann Streets. (The park in the name is what’s now City Hall Park. The theater, at one time the only one in New York City, opened in 1798 and burned down in 1848.) The last two letters I’ve selected to reproduce will be published on ROT within the next week. Please return to see how Irving wraps up his critical remarks about New York theater in the earliest years of the 19th century.]
19 August 2010
Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle (Letter V)
By Washington Irving
[Letter V, the final one in Oldstyle’s series which Irving intended to address New York theater directly, continues to poke fun at several aspects of New York theater. Readers, however, were delighted and Charles Brockden Brown, a novelist and editor, even sought out Oldstyle to ask his help in starting a literary journal which Brown was planning to publish in Philadelphia. Oldstyle’s letters were Irving’s début in print and brought the 19-year-old his first recognition as a writer. All but the first of the Oldstyle letters were immediately republished, slightly revised and corrected, in the Chronicle Express, the paper’s country edition.]
Mr. Editor,
I shall now conclude my remarks on the theatre, which I am afraid you will think are spun out to an unreasonable length; for this I can give no other excuse, than that it is the privilege of old folks to be tiresome, and so I shall proceed.
I had chosen a seat in the pit, as least subject to annoyance from a habit of talking loud that has lately crept into our theatres, and which particularly prevails in the boxes. In old times people went to the theatre for the sake of the play and acting; but I now find it begins to answer the purpose of a coffee-house, or fashionable lounge, where many indulge in loud conversation, without any regard to the pain it inflicts on their more attentive neighbors. As this conversation is generally of the most trifling kind, it seldom repays the latter for the inconvenience they suffer, of not hearing one half of the play.
I found, however, that I had not much bettered my situation; but that every part of the house has its share of evils. Besides those I had already suffered, I was yet to undergo a new kind of torment. I had got in the neighborhood of a very obliging personage, who had seen the play before, and was kindly anticipating every scene, and informing those about him what was to take place; to prevent, I suppose, any disagreeable surprise to which they would otherwise have been liable. Had there been any thing of a plot to the play, this might have been a serious inconvenience; but as the piece was entirely innocent of every thing of the kind, it was not of so much importance. As I generally contrive to extract amusement from every incident that happens, I now entertained myself with remarks on the self-important air with which he delivered his information, and the distressed and impatient looks of his unwilling auditors. I also observed that he made several mistakes in the course of his communications: “Now you’ll see,” said he, “the queen, in all her glory, surrounded with her courtiers, fine as fiddles, and ranged on each side of the stage, like rows of pewter dishes.” On the contrary, we were presented with the portly gentleman and his ragged regiment of banditti. Another time he promised us a regale from the fool; but we were presented with a very fine speech from the queen’s grinning counsellor.
My country neighbor was exceedingly delighted with the performance, though he did not half the time understand what was going forward. He sat staring with open mouth at the portly gentleman, as he strode across the stage, and in furious rage drew his sword on the white lion. “By George but that’s a brave fellow,” said he when the act was over, “that’s what you call first rate acting, I suppose.”
Yes, said I, it is what the critics of the present day admire, but it is not altogether what I like; you should have seen an actor of the old school do this part; he would have given it to some purpose; you’d have had such ranting and roaring, and stamping and storming; to be sure this honest man gives us a bounce now and then in the true old style, but in the main he seems to prefer walking on plain ground to strutting on the stilts used by the tragic heroes of my day.
This is the chief of what passed between me and my companion during the play and entertainment, except an observation of his, that it would be well if the manager was to drill his nobility and gentry now and then, to enable them to go through their evolution with more grace and spirit. This put me in mind of something my cousin Jack said to the same purpose, though he went too far in his zeal for reformation. He declared, “he wished sincerely, one of the critics of the day would take all the slab shabs of the theatre in a body (like cats in a bag) and twig the whole bunch.” I can’t say but I like Jack’s idea well enough, though it is rather a severe one.
He might have remarked another fault that prevails among our performers (though I don’t know whether it occurred this evening) of dressing for the same piece in the fashions of different ages and countries, so that while one actor is strutting about the stage in the cuirass and helmet of Alexander, another dressed up in a gold-laced coat and a bag-wig, with chapeau de bras under his arm, is taking snuff in the fashion of one or two centuries back, and perhaps a third figuring with Suwarrow boots, in the true style of modem buckism.
But what, pray, has become of the noble marquis of Montague, and earl of Warwick? (said the countryman, after the entertainments were concluded). Their names make a great appearance on the bill, but I do not recollect having seen them in the course of the evening.
Very true—I had quite forgot those worthy personages but I suspect they have been behind the scene, smoaking pipe with our other friends, incog. the Tripolitans. We must not be particular now-a-days, my friend. When we are presented with a Battle of Hexham without fighting, and a Tripolitan after-piece without even a Mahometan whisker, we need not be surprised at having an invisible marquis or two thrown into the bargain.
“But what is your opinion of the house,” said I, “don’t you think it a very substantial, solid-looking building, both inside and out? Observe what a fine effect the dark colouring of the wall has upon the white faces of the audience, which glare like the stars in a dark night. And then what can be more pretty than the paintings on the front of the boxes; those little masters and misses sucking their thumbs and making mouths at the audience?”
Very fine, upon my word—and what, pray, is the use of that chandelier, as you call it, that is hung up among the clouds, and has showered down its favors on my coat?
Oh, that is to illumine the heavens and to set off, to advantage, the little perriwig’d cupids, tumbling head over heels, with which the painter has decorated the dome. You see we have no need of the chandelier below, as here, the house is perfectly well illuminated: but I think it would have been a great saving of candle-light, if the manager had ordered the painter, among his other pretty designs, to paint a moon up there, or if he was to hang up that sun with whose intense light our eyes were greatly annoyed in the beginning of the after-piece.
But don’t you think, after all, there is rather a—sort of a—kind of a heavyishness about the house; don’t you think it has a little of an under groundish appearance.
To this I could make no answer: I must confess I have often thought myself the house had a dungeon-like look; so I proposed to him to make our exit, as the candles were putting out, and we should be left in the dark. Accordingly, groping our way through the dismal subterraneous passage that leads from the pit, and passing through the ragged bridewell looking anti-chamber, we once more emerged into the purer air of the park, when bidding my honest countryman good night, I repaired home considerably pleased with the amusements of the evening.
Thus, Mr. Editor, have I given you an account of the chief incidents that occurred in my visit to the theatre. I have shewn you a few of its accommodations and its imperfections. Those who visit it more frequently may be able to give you a better statement.
I shall conclude with a few words of advice for the benefit of every department of it.
I would recommend,
To the actors—less etiquette—less fustian—less buckram.
To the orchestra—new music and more of it.
To the pit—patience—clean benches and umbrellas.
To the boxes—less affectation—less noise—less coxcombs.
To the gallery—less grog and better constables—and,
To the whole house—inside and out, a total reformation.—-And so much for the theatre.
[A further set of explanatory notes: the white lion – The Earl of Warwick in The Battle of Hexham; slab shabs – A glutton or foulmouthed person; possibly from the Dutch slabbaerd (one who cannot hold his spittle, a driveller, an idiot); plus the slang shab, a low fellow or mean trickster; twig – to beat with or as with a twig; Suwarrow boots – Cavalry boots named for the Russian field marshal Alexander Vasilyevich Suvarov (1720-1800; buckism – the practice of a ‘buck’ or dandy); making mouths – making scornful faces, being contemptuous.
[The sixth through eighth letters of Jonathan Oldstyle also deal with theater, though Irving’s tack is different. I’ll be posting the next three Oldstyle letters on ROT over the next several days.]
[Letter V, the final one in Oldstyle’s series which Irving intended to address New York theater directly, continues to poke fun at several aspects of New York theater. Readers, however, were delighted and Charles Brockden Brown, a novelist and editor, even sought out Oldstyle to ask his help in starting a literary journal which Brown was planning to publish in Philadelphia. Oldstyle’s letters were Irving’s début in print and brought the 19-year-old his first recognition as a writer. All but the first of the Oldstyle letters were immediately republished, slightly revised and corrected, in the Chronicle Express, the paper’s country edition.]
LETTER V
(published 11 December 1802)
Mr. Editor,
I shall now conclude my remarks on the theatre, which I am afraid you will think are spun out to an unreasonable length; for this I can give no other excuse, than that it is the privilege of old folks to be tiresome, and so I shall proceed.
I had chosen a seat in the pit, as least subject to annoyance from a habit of talking loud that has lately crept into our theatres, and which particularly prevails in the boxes. In old times people went to the theatre for the sake of the play and acting; but I now find it begins to answer the purpose of a coffee-house, or fashionable lounge, where many indulge in loud conversation, without any regard to the pain it inflicts on their more attentive neighbors. As this conversation is generally of the most trifling kind, it seldom repays the latter for the inconvenience they suffer, of not hearing one half of the play.
I found, however, that I had not much bettered my situation; but that every part of the house has its share of evils. Besides those I had already suffered, I was yet to undergo a new kind of torment. I had got in the neighborhood of a very obliging personage, who had seen the play before, and was kindly anticipating every scene, and informing those about him what was to take place; to prevent, I suppose, any disagreeable surprise to which they would otherwise have been liable. Had there been any thing of a plot to the play, this might have been a serious inconvenience; but as the piece was entirely innocent of every thing of the kind, it was not of so much importance. As I generally contrive to extract amusement from every incident that happens, I now entertained myself with remarks on the self-important air with which he delivered his information, and the distressed and impatient looks of his unwilling auditors. I also observed that he made several mistakes in the course of his communications: “Now you’ll see,” said he, “the queen, in all her glory, surrounded with her courtiers, fine as fiddles, and ranged on each side of the stage, like rows of pewter dishes.” On the contrary, we were presented with the portly gentleman and his ragged regiment of banditti. Another time he promised us a regale from the fool; but we were presented with a very fine speech from the queen’s grinning counsellor.
My country neighbor was exceedingly delighted with the performance, though he did not half the time understand what was going forward. He sat staring with open mouth at the portly gentleman, as he strode across the stage, and in furious rage drew his sword on the white lion. “By George but that’s a brave fellow,” said he when the act was over, “that’s what you call first rate acting, I suppose.”
Yes, said I, it is what the critics of the present day admire, but it is not altogether what I like; you should have seen an actor of the old school do this part; he would have given it to some purpose; you’d have had such ranting and roaring, and stamping and storming; to be sure this honest man gives us a bounce now and then in the true old style, but in the main he seems to prefer walking on plain ground to strutting on the stilts used by the tragic heroes of my day.
This is the chief of what passed between me and my companion during the play and entertainment, except an observation of his, that it would be well if the manager was to drill his nobility and gentry now and then, to enable them to go through their evolution with more grace and spirit. This put me in mind of something my cousin Jack said to the same purpose, though he went too far in his zeal for reformation. He declared, “he wished sincerely, one of the critics of the day would take all the slab shabs of the theatre in a body (like cats in a bag) and twig the whole bunch.” I can’t say but I like Jack’s idea well enough, though it is rather a severe one.
He might have remarked another fault that prevails among our performers (though I don’t know whether it occurred this evening) of dressing for the same piece in the fashions of different ages and countries, so that while one actor is strutting about the stage in the cuirass and helmet of Alexander, another dressed up in a gold-laced coat and a bag-wig, with chapeau de bras under his arm, is taking snuff in the fashion of one or two centuries back, and perhaps a third figuring with Suwarrow boots, in the true style of modem buckism.
But what, pray, has become of the noble marquis of Montague, and earl of Warwick? (said the countryman, after the entertainments were concluded). Their names make a great appearance on the bill, but I do not recollect having seen them in the course of the evening.
Very true—I had quite forgot those worthy personages but I suspect they have been behind the scene, smoaking pipe with our other friends, incog. the Tripolitans. We must not be particular now-a-days, my friend. When we are presented with a Battle of Hexham without fighting, and a Tripolitan after-piece without even a Mahometan whisker, we need not be surprised at having an invisible marquis or two thrown into the bargain.
“But what is your opinion of the house,” said I, “don’t you think it a very substantial, solid-looking building, both inside and out? Observe what a fine effect the dark colouring of the wall has upon the white faces of the audience, which glare like the stars in a dark night. And then what can be more pretty than the paintings on the front of the boxes; those little masters and misses sucking their thumbs and making mouths at the audience?”
Very fine, upon my word—and what, pray, is the use of that chandelier, as you call it, that is hung up among the clouds, and has showered down its favors on my coat?
Oh, that is to illumine the heavens and to set off, to advantage, the little perriwig’d cupids, tumbling head over heels, with which the painter has decorated the dome. You see we have no need of the chandelier below, as here, the house is perfectly well illuminated: but I think it would have been a great saving of candle-light, if the manager had ordered the painter, among his other pretty designs, to paint a moon up there, or if he was to hang up that sun with whose intense light our eyes were greatly annoyed in the beginning of the after-piece.
But don’t you think, after all, there is rather a—sort of a—kind of a heavyishness about the house; don’t you think it has a little of an under groundish appearance.
To this I could make no answer: I must confess I have often thought myself the house had a dungeon-like look; so I proposed to him to make our exit, as the candles were putting out, and we should be left in the dark. Accordingly, groping our way through the dismal subterraneous passage that leads from the pit, and passing through the ragged bridewell looking anti-chamber, we once more emerged into the purer air of the park, when bidding my honest countryman good night, I repaired home considerably pleased with the amusements of the evening.
Thus, Mr. Editor, have I given you an account of the chief incidents that occurred in my visit to the theatre. I have shewn you a few of its accommodations and its imperfections. Those who visit it more frequently may be able to give you a better statement.
I shall conclude with a few words of advice for the benefit of every department of it.
I would recommend,
To the actors—less etiquette—less fustian—less buckram.
To the orchestra—new music and more of it.
To the pit—patience—clean benches and umbrellas.
To the boxes—less affectation—less noise—less coxcombs.
To the gallery—less grog and better constables—and,
To the whole house—inside and out, a total reformation.—-And so much for the theatre.
JONATHAN OLDSTYLE.
* * * *
[A further set of explanatory notes: the white lion – The Earl of Warwick in The Battle of Hexham; slab shabs – A glutton or foulmouthed person; possibly from the Dutch slabbaerd (one who cannot hold his spittle, a driveller, an idiot); plus the slang shab, a low fellow or mean trickster; twig – to beat with or as with a twig; Suwarrow boots – Cavalry boots named for the Russian field marshal Alexander Vasilyevich Suvarov (1720-1800; buckism – the practice of a ‘buck’ or dandy); making mouths – making scornful faces, being contemptuous.
[The sixth through eighth letters of Jonathan Oldstyle also deal with theater, though Irving’s tack is different. I’ll be posting the next three Oldstyle letters on ROT over the next several days.]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)