Yesterday was an early St. Pat's celebration. Great corned beef and cabbage at "86". Thank you Dottie and Kathy. Good wine too, my favorite, Coppola's Claret.
Saw the matinee of "Molly Sweeney" at the Irish Rep. A wonderful play by one of my favorites, the great Irish playwright, Brian Friel. I've seen "Aristocrats", "Philadelphia here I come", "Dancing at Lunasa", "Faith Healer" and now "Molly Sweeney". The critic of the Wall Street Journal, Teachout, saw the play exactly as I did. Teachout calls Friel, the Chekhov of our time. I would add that he is also the Eugene O'Neill of our time. He surely has the touch of the Poet. That great Irish gift with words.
What I remember:
1. The doctor says: "I did the surgery, no I'm not to say that, the surgery is not 'done', it is performed. What I do is as much an art. I do a performance"
2. Molly says: " I heard a women at the end of the corridor sobbing, no lamenting"
3. Molly says as explanation of her sadness at gaining her sight: "There is power in the tactile sense and it's a great loss when you are bombarded by the visual."
I've also been thinking more about Tom Stoppard's works and Arcadia in particular. Of his work, I've seen the trilogy "The Coast of Utopia", plus "Travesties", "The Invention of Love", "Rock and Roll", and now, "Arcadia". These plays dramatically integrate history, science, and relationships. In "Arcadia" he explores many areas of mathematics, history, art, and related theories. He presents them as paradoxes. Central in "Arcadia" is chaos versus order and the paradox that order can come out of chaos. Historically, Arcadia was a pastoral region of ancient Greece. Pastoral meaning it was left free and wild, to be formed by nature. In reality the wild/chaotic garden is finely tuned, ecologically sound and perfectly self sustaining environment.
"Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos".
Stephen Sondheim
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