Phantom of the Opera Les Mis, Mamma Mia!, the Lion King, and Wicked were sold out, so I treated myself to the second night of a revival of Good, a 1981 play commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The new production economizes on the number of actors to an impressive yet also absurd degree. The roles of wife, girlfriend, and mother are all played by the same actor, for example.
Although there are no characters who identify as 2SLGBTQQIA+ or of Color (or 2SLGBTQQIA+ and of Color), the play is timely because it concerns Nazis, who have never been more numerous on Planet Earth (everyone who disagrees with me, for example). The lead is David Tennant, who has played Dr. Who on BBC and this led to every one of the 796 seats in the Harold Pinter Theater having been sold (I got the last one at 7:13 pm for a 7:30 pm show).
One great aspect to the play is that it explores the tendency of academics to embrace whatever political ideology is necessary to hold onto and/or climb to the next run of the university ladder. There is also an exploration of what happens when the fresh young student is competing with the tired wife and mother for a dynamic professor’s attention. The play looks at extremely late term abortion care, i.e., whether it is okay to perform abortion care on the elderly whose quality of life has declined (euthanasia). This is what gets Nazi Party officials interested in the professor, who ultimately wears a fine SS officer’s uniform. The play is at its weakest in showing the audience how this apparently useless literature professor could plausibly have been considered of some importance to the National Socialist cause.
My favorite scene: the professor burns books by Marcel Proust and Thomas Mann (Ron DeSantis is accused on social media of having banned hundreds or thousands of books within the state of Florida and yet these works stubbornly #persist in being available to the unwary).
It is worth spending $150-200 per person on this experience? Maybe, but the seats are pretty uncomfortable if you’re older than 30 or taller than 5’4″. And a musical with 200 singing dancing cast members is a better value on a per-actor/per-skill basis.
Loyal readers will be disappointed if I don’t share some masketology. Perhaps 10 or 20 out of the 796 audience members were wearing masks, about half simple cloth masks and half more elaborate affairs. As readers will recognize, this is a source of confusion for me. They’re afraid enough of COVID-19 to wear a mask, but not afraid enough to stay home and experience something theatrical via streaming video rather in close proximity to 794 strangers? One lady was sitting right in front of me and had the mask off during intermission and then put it back on again for the second act. Apologies for the poor mobile phone image quality in dim light, but here are a couple of folks with the high-end masks walking out:
Soho and Chinatown were packed on a Thursday night following the theater. Pubs all around central London seem to be packed, beer drinkers spilling out and congregating on the sidewalks in front of the pub until at least 10:30 pm. The English economy is going down the tube (so to speak), but these folks still have plenty of money to spend on drinking in pubs? (Maybe this is because the government has promised to borrow money and spend it in such a way that consumers don’t suffer a reduction in lifestyle.)
Also on the way back to the hotel, I went by the Monument to the Women of World War II, which reminds us that it is not going up in a 1,000+ horsepower Spitfire during the Battle of Britain with 100 hours of flying experience that required bravery, but rather staying on the ground.
There were some political posters outside Whitehall.
and here’s a guy nobody talks about anymore:
Nobody is upset if Julian Assange dies in prison without ever having been convicted of anything?
While in the London, you might enjoy a pint of Tetley’s bitter ale. Its my favourite ale, but almost impossible to find outside the UK.
I could be wrong, but I think American interest (at least in terms of the Very General Public) in Julian Assange dropped through the floor and into the basement after Bill Hader stopped playing him on SNL. How many people on Howard Zinn’s website can the media competently cover at any time without industrial-strength namedropping at 30 Rock?
It must be terrible to die in prison, but lots of people are going to do it.
https://youtu.be/md3of7O02e4
It does bother me he’s never been convicted of anything. On the other hand, he once called Sweden “the Saudi Arabia of feminism.” I don’t know how many friends he has left, but apparently not very many. However, if you’re going to keep someone imprisoned in the West, charges should be brought, trials should happen, and so forth.
> Nobody is upset if Julian Assange dies in prison
George Roger Waters (the guy who is now on the Ukro-Nazi kill list for the act of suggesting that it may be better to settle the issues through negotiation) is very vocal in his support for Assange. His fame makes him a very effective messenger, and he does have balls to say what can get him killed by the zealots (ask Darya Dugina…), which makes him very worthy of respect.
https://news.yahoo.com/roger-waters-went-off-lunatic-152154134.html
Assange could have come to the US years ago and had a jury trial trial if that is what he wanted rather than first holing up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and after the Ecuadorians booted him then spending years fighting extradition. Like Edward Snowden, another simple minded individual who thought he had been anointed to decided what information the US should and should not classify, Julian Assange is not a sympathetic character — except to kooks and crackpots.
> could have come to the US… had a jury trial…
This is the funniest thing I’ve heard today. I gather, Ricky, you have zero idea of how things actually work in the so-called American “justice”?
Chelsea Manning is apparently sympathetic enough for Obama to pardon her. I guess that makes him a “kook” and a “crackpot”.
I, for one, am thankful that Assange showed me some of what my government, who purportedly works for me, was up to. Same with Snowden.
@ricky I’m sure the government knows best, or at least John Bolton does. Raining bullets down on open-air Afghan markets is spreading democracy and winning hearts and minds.
I bet a large fraction of those 10-20 people wearing masks were Americans. It’s become comical in Europe’s crowded venues and airports to find out Americans by just spotting who is wearing a mask.
Why is that comical? People are free to wear masks or not to wear them. Why point out someone for doing something that doesn’t harm absolutely no one? I guess this blog and this post are not for me. I was looking for a review of the play. Did not get one!
Assange, who is not a U.S. citizen and a journalist, is being indicted under the espionage act and faces 175 years in prison:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indictment_and_arrest_of_Julian_Assange
Biden, while vice president, called him a “terrorist”. President Obama on the other hand pardoned Chelsea Manning, who performed the actual leaks and is a U.S. citizen.
I do not recall that anyone was indicted, extradited, or faced 175 years in prison for tapping Merkel’s phone:
https://www.reuters.com/article/germany-usa-spying-idUSL5N0IG0B320131026
I’ll be following the Nord Stream sabotage investigations with great interest!
Regarding the tapping of Merkel’s phone, few details are available about how, and unless someone educates me, I will assume the Germans were complicit in giving the Americans access to their communications infrastructure.
It is just that they thought there was a gentleman’s agreement that the Americans would only tap the phones of “bad people”.
Some of the memorialised women delivered the aircraft under hardly less taxing circumstances (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Air_Transport_Auxiliary§ion=5#Women_pilots), not to mention those who built the aircraft, tracked the enemy air fleets, and analysed the returned reconnaissance imagery. As current events are reminding us, there are many opportunities for heroism in wartime short of front-line action. Beatrice Shilling invented the device (her “Orifice”) that prevented the Merlin engine from stalling under negative “g”, such as when diving after a fuel-injected Me109.
Tetley’s bitter is a Northern thing, originally brewed in Hunslet, Leeds, but now in the less northerly Wolverhampton under the umbrella of Carlsberg.
Fuller’s London Pride bitter is still brewed in W London (the Heathrow coach or taxi will pass the Griffin Brewery), though it’s now owned by Asahi, and there are many craft-/micro-breweries. Fruity IPAs now seem to be in.
/df: I think you’re answering the question in https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2017/06/12/are-women-the-new-children/ by equating doing one takeoff and one landing (ferrying an airplane) to participating in an aerobatic dogfight until at least one participant is dead.
Obviously my point was tinged with devilish advocacy, but just flying the aircraft of WW2 was risky enough (though less than in WW1), even before engaging the enemy. Aircrew were quite likely to be killed or injured and that included the ferry pilots, who might also be targeted by returning enemy bombers if not actual intruder sorties.
The active fighter and bomber crews were certainly more deserving of memorials and they have them. You might have seen the gigantic Bomber Command memorial in Green Park, or the Battle of Britain monument on Victoria Embankment. A day trip to the Kent coast would take you to an entire Battle of Britain memorial site. And we have actual flying aircraft that salute the monarch on state occasions (and overfly us a couple of minutes later).
Something further to ponder. Are those 10-20 people wearing the masks to protect the other 776-786 theater goers? If not, why aren’t they wearing more comfortable vented masks? Why have I never seen a vented mask in the wild?
Do people who think that germs can’t go around the edges of a surgical, cloth mask or unfitted real mask think that the vent unacceptably compromises their otherwise comprehensive defensive strategy?
These people don’t think. They just do what they are told by CDC, which at some point declared vented masks unacceptable during their ridiculous “you’re not protecting yourself, you’re protecting others” campaign.
Ironically, the only kind of masks somewhat effective agaist virus-carrying aerosols are respirators, and these are always vented to reduce respiratory muscle fatigue.
I just walked into a gun shop in Texas to send fingerprints via digital kiosk to the ATF as part of a suppressor purchase (swallowing yet another violation of my constitutional right to own anything from a rock to an F-35 without government interference). Guy in front of me was wearing a cloth mask while picking up an AR-15 ordered from GunBroker.com while cowering at home. I guess he is now as safe from a tyrannical government as he is from a microscopic virus! Meanwhile, I will have to wait an average of 7 months for ATF approval to shoot quietly on my own property while a criminal can get 4 suppressors same day no questions asked… https://www.reddit.com/r/NFA/comments/aq46iw/suppressors_stolen/
@philg: “One great aspect to the play is that it explores the tendency of academics to embrace whatever political ideology is necessary to hold onto and/or climb to the next run [sic] of the university ladder.”
If anyone is waiting for me to supply an exegesis about how this tendency is amplified in the United States – to a degree not even seen in Nazi Germany – they’ll have to wait. I’ve witnessed enough to judge for myself, but since I am not a credentialed expert on this subject, citing my analysis wouldn’t be appropriate.
Having said that: I’m not an historian, but think it’s worse. Academia in the US now behaves as an almost monolithic block. What are the numbers? Probably 90/10. It’s just not even a contest of ideas anymore, and there are many fields (the numbers are growing) where political indoctrination isn’t even optional.
Addendum: It would be interesting to list the political and party affiliations and backgrounds of University and (gasp! choke!) College professors across the fruited plain. I’m sure Google has a very good idea, and so do Twitter and Facebook – but a concise analysis isn’t available.
But Sergey knows. And so does Mark. And so will Elon (if he doesn’t already.) I’ll bet that when Sergey Brin is done being dazzled for the day by the fact that his new AI didn’t just paint a picture of a chicken but also produced an entire chicken farm of academics with names and titles attached according to breed and/or tribe, he’s really impressed all over again.
Over and out.
So you are reviewing a play and feel ok to publicise pictures of people wearing masks? People can wear masks, or not. This is not relevant to a play review. I am sorry, but this seems out of line.
You might prefer my review of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matilda_the_Musical : A pregnant person in his/her/zir/their 9th month of pregnancy is cruelly denied abortion care from a reproductive health care provider and the expected negative consequences ensue.
(the abortion care that the pregnant character expresses a desire for would be perfectly legal under Maskachusetts law. See https://www.mass.gov/info-details/massachusetts-law-about-abortion )
I think you are mixing up abortion and euthanasia. It is the latter which was the subject of the professor’s novel