Serious Sweets
Opulence in Sugar! Fornum & Mason’s own housemade marshmallows!
In pastel Queen Mum colors and flavors.
more reflections on England, to be continued….
directing a superstar
Director Lyndsey Turner had her hands full with the historic production of Hamlet that closes next week. Building a production around a high-wattage celebrity must bring a unique set of challenges.
Here she was with the reigning theater superstar Benedict Cumberbatch, whose personal arsenal of dramatic weaponry stresses physical and vocal dazzle. Pitted against the young Prince of Denmark was gifted Irish actor Ciaran Hinds, a veteran of stage, screen and TV who brings both emotional thunder and intelligence to his role as Claudius, the new King.
The play clearly pits the young prince against his murderous uncle—the dynamic chosen by director Turner. Yet the hefty cast of supporting players—the strong-headed and duplicitous mother Gertrude, the naive maid Ophelia, (more…)
Stellar Pinot from Muns
What a pleasure to re-discover a favorite pinot noir. I’ve never found anything from Muns Vineyard less than interesting, and in the case of the 2009 Santa Cruz Mountains Estate Pinot Noir, both interesting and accessible.
Balanced tannins and nuanced fruit, an optimum 14.1% alcohol, and lots of unfolding flavor notes ranging from earth and sassafras to spice and plums. I managed to save a few bottles, and now wish I had a boatload of this wonderful example of SC Mtn. terroir.
Thanks to Ed Muns and Tony Craig! (You can find this wine at the Muns Vineyard website.)
Knowing a hawk from a handsaw
Finally, after months of anticipation, I was there at London’s Barbican Theatre watching the much-heralded Benedict Cumberbatch bedazzle the well-worn coinage of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Was the experience worth traveling 5000 miles and 400 years to savor? In a word, yes. In another word, unforgettable.
Cutting to the chase, the world’s most famous (and highly groupied) actor sinks his panther teeth into the plight of Denmark’s prince and unleashes gossamer revelations, nuanced depths, and an uncanny physical ability to translate psychological trickery into gymnastic grace.
Buffed to a chiseled gloss, Cumberbatch is sexy, savvy, and endlessly watchable—speeding, dancing, and stunning his way through the murky bits of dialogue and plot business, while slowing down and taking all the time in the world to explore each one of the celebrated speeches. For example, when he comes down smartly on the “is” of, “that is the question,” the entire soliloquy pivots and becomes an intimate aside to us, the listener. He is considering the tantalizing prospect of suicide, as well as the possible negative entailments of ending his life, and letting us consider each step of the inner argument along with him. This Hamlet confides that he knows that we know he’s only feigning madness in order to entrap his opportunistic uncle Claudius (played with oleoginous charm and lethal intelligence by renowned Irish actor Ciaran Hinds, of Rome fame.)
Those who witnessed his astonishing physical abilities in the theatrical Frankenstein last season will already be convinced that Cumberbatch is an actor gifted with moves that Barishnikov might envy. And he uses his body as another linguistic vehicle, (more…)
about the liveness of live theater
So, anyway, yes it was and always is worth whatever you can pay to be in the theater, in the moment that the play’s the thing.
Digital images of a van Gogh painting will give you the basic nuts and bolts of color, composition, and overall import. But they will never give you the history of the painter’s marks, the choices of when to make this gesture, or when to use cobalt instead of ultramarine. The exact thickness of an agonized brush stroke. For that you need to be face to face with the actual oil painting.
It is a mutual pact of energy between the actors and the audience. To be in a darkened theater, feeling the collective breathing of the audience as it responds to the smallest, sudden, unique gesture of the actor’s voice and body. To be completely there, and ready when the smallest new innovation, and unplanned physical grace note erupts, only that once, from the ensemble on the stage—this searing fairytale intimacy is why you endure arduous travel, long hours, uncomfortable seats, a paucity of ladies rooms, whatever it takes, because in the living moment of performance the artwork becomes immortal.
The actors work not only with cerebral intelligence, but with bodily intelligence. The intelligence of the fingers, the feet, the voice. At any unplanned moment they may deliver a line through the raising of one eyebrow. The audience murmurs its agreement. In the case of Cumberbatch last week, he may reinforce the anger of a decision with a single leap onto the table, or the slowing, growling, snarl of a single word.
We are there. We are with him. Our bodies hum. And he can sense it. It is an intense dance—when it’s done right. That’s why you’re in that seat, that darkened camera obscura of the imagination. The man who put the definitive sheen on the English language (Wm. Shakespeare) lives most fully in those moments of performance. All the rest is archival recording. Sweet and important, but nowhere near the eros and eternity of live performance.
You know what I’m talking about. You know I’m right. I worked hard and saved up. It was worth the trouble and the planning. The problem with it all is that once you experience this level of theatrical performance, you can’t go back.
To Play or Not To Play?
Is it too late for Shakespeare? I don’t mean the powerful texts themselves, the probing psychological depths, and brilliant literary analysis of what it is to be human—you know, the stuff that William Shakespeare, hard-working playwright, bequeathed to everyone who loves the English language.
No. What I’m asking is, is it too late for young, Selfie Generation audiences to actually sit through a performance of a Shakespeare play? Have they the attention span? Are they capable of submitting themselves to un-ironic moments of joy, sorrow, terror? Do they even know what the words (or scenarios) mean?
Since I’m asking, I’ll answer: not “no they don’t,” but “hell no they don’t!”
Given what I’ve seen lately in a certain redwood glen very very close (more…)
Inside the Flame
A book of sensory adventure: The rituals, passions and discoveries of an engaged life.