Some Theater

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

[Le] Poisson Rouge

I've joined this music club which is located in the village.  It's actually in the space once occupied by the Village Gate.  Last night I heard  a concert of Gyorgy Ligeti's music, previously unknown to me.  Kubrick used his music in 2001 A Space Odyssey, the Shining and Eyes Wide Shut. This is one area of the Arts that I could use a good education.  I know very little about "classical" music.  They did 5 pieces.  Not a lot of harmony, very   modern, lots of dissonance.  I did enjoy:  'Trio for Violin, Horn, and Piano,  Hommage a Brahms' [1982],  and the cello playing in some other pieces.
   
Saw Merchant of Venice over the weekend.  It is done in modern dress and the merchants are Wall Street brokers.  So there are cell phones, video ticker tapes, high fives, belly bumps, and apple computers as part of the "scenery".  It worked very well for me because it brought humor and wit to a very "heavy" play.   Judith Dench in her new memoir says it is her least liked play of Shakespeare's because no one behaves well.
F. Murray Abraham plays it  natural not in the classic, declamatory style.  His final exit was wonderful.

I still want to write about Arcadia and I will soon.
I'm reading Thomas Merton's 'The Sign Of Jonas'.  A diary of his life in a Trappist monastery.
At one point he asks the reverend Father what made a particular brother so saintly.  Is it meditation, prayer, fasting, obedience?  Reverend Father said he didn't know, but the Brother was always working.  If you sent him to feed the cattle he did and then he would pick berries on his way back.  He didn't know how to be idle.  "Busy hands are happy hands" and saintly, too.

Best Documentary

Yesterday was movie night: "Inside Job".  It won the academy award for best documentary.  It tells the story of the financial crisis clearly.
It is not just disturbing that none of these people went to jail.
Three of them are now:
#1 is the President of Harvard University & on the board of I think Chase or Citicorp or both.
#2 is the Head of Columbia University's Business School.
#3 is a professor at Stanford.
Their rationalizations:   "I was just giving my opinion"; "It's part of my ideological belief".  They rated Iceland  AA, 2 days before the country collapsed and were paid over $100,000 for that opinion.  Iceland's banks lent 10x the national GNP to people who went out and bought 25 million dollar yachts.  So now these 'advisers' are all in academia teaching the next generation.
"Baby you're a rich man
Baby you're a rich man, now
You keep all your money in a big brown bag inside the door
What is it for"?
The B side of "All You Need is Love" by Lennon/McCartney.

Sunday Morning

Went to Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and "The Merchant of Venice" starring F. Murray Abraham.  Both excellent, but can't write about anything, except what is happening in Japan: earthquakes, tsunami,
and burning nuclear power plants.
That nation has given the world so much, Noh drama, Haiku, Kurosawa, Mishima, and Zen Buddhism.    
It has also survived two atomic bombs to become a world economic power.  They are an extraordinary people.
From today's Times:
"The few shops open have people queuing nicely," Mr. Tonge, a teacher from Britain said, "with no pushing or fighting or anything."   He lives in Sendai [the hardest hit of the coastal cities,1.4 million homes without electricity, and 500,000 without water].  "People are not panicking - typical of a nation accustomed to order and schooled to stay calm and constructive."   His hope is that this does not become the Sendai earthquake because: "This is a beautiful city with nice people.  A great place to live." 
Dominus vobiscum.