Ophelia, Understudy

I've been thinking a lot about Ophelia ever since I ran into this striking Redon painting first thing at the National Gallery: http://www.wikiart.org/en/odilon-redon/ophelia-1905 . I love it because it's not dreary; for once she gets some color. Not like in the Forensics exhibition on at the Wellcome, which includes an Ophelia-like death mask in wax of a young woman found in the Seine -- blank and totally robbed of any personality in the celebration. So what I want to know is, why isn't the play called the Tragedie of Ophelia? She's the one totally effaced. She doesn't get a lot to say or do -- it's like she's stuck in the dreaded understudy role, without any billing, waiting in the wings the whole time to get out there and actually say some lines, and only when someone else has finally kicked the bucket towards the end does she ever get a word in edgwise -- other than 'Yes/no m'lord' like some kind of secretary. Of course, by that time she's already imploded under the strain of taking endless dictation. 

He tells her what to wear

How to cut her hair

When to sleep, 

What to cook, eat, read, watch

She's playing his hopscotch

But the rules keep changing...         

He tells her when to wash, when to dry,

When to smile, when to lie,

Whom to talk to

When to do it over again

He'd take her for a spin

But she keeps failing..

He tells her when and where to work

As if he's god, not a jerk

When to come, where to go

How to think, what to know,

That he's 'just playing'...

He says his put downs are ruth

But he's redefined the truth 

She thinks that it's her  

Since he's told her, over and over,

Whom to be and whom to love

But it's not working..

(disclaimer: my poem above is based on real life, hence the gendered pronouns -- although, statistically, women and younger people are comparatively interrupted and ignored yet perceived as garrulous...yup...)

Ophelia's effacement and self-effacement, of course, is an unacceptable state of affairs for most of us.

For example, ah, but what if the un-sassy Ophelia had a Sassy Gay Friend? http://youtu.be/jnvgq8STMGM

Taylor Swift has a lot to say about not drowning yourself or anyone http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNoKguSdy4Y

Redon decided Ophelia should get to have some kind of voice, primarily through color:
http://www.wikiart.org/en/odilon-redon/ophelia-2
http://www.wikiart.org/en/odilon-redon/ophelia

The choose your own adventure "To Be or Not To Be" even has an active Ophelia you can play as:
 http://36.media.tumblr.com/41dc210c8421e3942ac02c0f3a73aa22/tumblr_mrlc6kD3fd1qehhkqo1_1280.png

A friend told me about the Ophelia selfies trend. I've so far refused to look at them in case they're too alluring. I think we should celebrate Ophelia in life, in living technicolor rather than in ashy silence. I don't want to fall prey to her siren song, pretending the water is the more welcoming answer... (see if you can spot all the Shakespeare bits I stuck in there ;):

Ophelia, Siren

Come in with me, the water's fine
Underneath its skin set yourself free
Once through the glass it's clear
The world's an inverted fishbowl
And the water is reality.

Take my hand, like the boy in Splash, 
Turst in me and you'll still breathe
Unborn children start life underwater
And merpeople swim uncluttered
Delighting in liquid liberty.

The atmosphere above’s too thin to live

While the sea, la mer, is our mother

The little mermaid lost her voice on land

But I have found mine in the river

Singing, let’s sink into density.

Underwater, light thickens and the odd angles even

Downwards is not murky hell but clear heaven

In this consecrated riverbed all the angels appear

Heartbeats, amplified, echo in my ears

Hear the sea stars quire in harmony.

This muddy vesture of decay

Slowly dissolves, floating away

The nutshell cracks, and the willow boughs sway

Above a land maid no more

Come learn with me what we may be.


Well, that one's easy :) we ought to be stars in our own lives, and not let someone else write them! (At least Cleopatra and Antony got shared billing? ;)

  

Mars and Venus

Cliched title, I know...but I stumbled upon this guy's site today and wanted to reblog it. It is written as open letters on how to be a considerate partner, and it is bittersweet.

I think the author (who writes from and of a typical 'male' perspective) takes a little too much responsibility and I wish he would write similar letters from the other side too. But on the whole his letters really moved me, on the theme of how one lover's intentions may be valid to them but still leave the other feeling alone; how their communication style may seem reasonable but it's of no use if the beloved doesn't 'get it', which doesn't necessarily make either one stupid but does put a spanner in the works...

Anyway, this letter was my favorite because it pins down the elusive issue of how one half can interpret 'banter' badly, whether well meant or no, and why it's not cool for the other half to accuse the unappreciative recipient of being 'too sensitive' et al.

http://mustbethistalltoride.com/2014/07/21/an-open-letter-to-shitty-husbands-vol-8/

PS Those two very planets often appear in conjunction when seen from Earth ;)

Of Swans and Snow

It has finally started snowing round here and it is both exquisite and confusing. One moment the sun is out and the sky is a crisp blue, and the next the air is all aflurry with swirly flakes and grey clouds, and then both together. If it's a foxes' wedding when it rains + shines, what gets hitched when you add snow to the mix? Mermaids? Platypus(es?pi?)? Perhaps it is the preserve of the arctic fox. Or maybe, another pair of swans somewhere mate for life.

After today's brief flirt with a snowscape, I was walking through the garden looking at the budding snowdrops that mean that hope is here, when I heard a sound like the beating of gigantic dove wings overhead -- and it was a flying swan, followed by another that must have been the mr/s. I did not know that swans could soar, along with snowflakes. I had not attended to Yeats' description of the clamorous wings of the wild ones of Coole.  http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wild_Swans_at_Coole_(poem)

It was probably inevitable that I would soon stumble across comic swan ballet videos. I spent quite a lot of yesterday giggling (well, guffawing) at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsRNDo8Upys and Youtube obviously remembers preferences.

http://youtu.be/1z0UudWrPKY comic relief man-swan

http://youtu.be/WQcMFLpmv7s the Miranda Hart equivalent

http://youtu.be/IW3GAjAKges the original, now ruined for us all ;)

The thing is, that swans don't die like that. The classic poets supposed they died in song, hence the 'swan-song,' but even Shakespeare, the Swan of Avon, got it wrong. Apparently, the swan death making the rounds of the news is of one that died of grief, of its own volition, after losing a swan family member. I would hesitate to believe it but it came out of China and the same country produced the remarkable, groundbreaking Wild Swans memoir. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wild-Swans-Three-Daughters-China/dp/0007463405

The gutsy, wistful protagonist reminds me a little of my godmother, another remarkable woman who left her totalitarian past behind, to teach young ballerinas in small town America. One of these later grew up and became my mother. The Swan Lake theme was de rigeur as a household melody.

Like swans, there is something pensive rather than cheerful about snowfall. I am convinced that the snow on the Kashmir peaks is the real reason why they became the backdrop for India's latest film adaptation of Hamlet or Haider http://youtu.be/OwCZR_15JM0 . It is harder to imagine the fraught soliloquys being murmured to a potted palm, while Hamlet broods against a tropical sunset and swats mosquitoes (although jungle Hamlet has happened, it is not quite the same).

In 'India's Switzerland', the slopes of Kashmir are not neutral but disputed territory; they are also home to the snow leopard, a species as fragile as the region's peace. http://www.livescience.com/18694-endangered-snow-leopards-living-kashmir-photos.html In the film, Haider inherits a heritage that is already ruptured; Kashmir is the last bit of the subcontinent to be Partitioned, the 1947 division that resulted in the largest scale human migration, and accompanying massacre, yet known. Brother, it was said, killed brother: Haider finds the seam of the split, gets under the region's skin and gives its pain an outlet, juxtaposing the personal against the national tragedy.

The film is so moving that it has become a box office hit at home, and so disturbing that it has been banned across the border. It raises issues of not just revenge but of fratricide and sacrifice, ends vs. means, and questions whether the ideologies behind these are worth their cost. While man after man bleeds out in the snow, Haider, like the dying swan, is unsure whether to give into grief profound, or rage against the dying of the light. He struggles to break the cycle, to sacrifice hate; he fights against the normalized insanity of a daily life with no good choices and inextricable consequences, one where pulling the nuclear trigger will only wipe out twinned nations; where taking an eye for an eye will eventually leave everyone blind.  

After the film ended and  the shock wore off slightly, I tried to cope with it all by setting it down in a requiem, a gravedigger's song. Finding it again later, I liked it better than I remembered. The tune is sort of like this: http://youtu.be/BEm0AjTbsac and it goes:

shoveling snow 
laying him low 
soul rises high
up to the sky 

laid in the mud
by his own blood
bullets above
shattering love

brother on brother
from the same mother
rewriting twin fate
to share the same hate

an eye for an eye
still weeps the sky
steeped in a night
stretches out beyond sight

moonlight on snow
mountains below
rivers run red
bones dry in their bed

cradle to grave
chancel to nave
circles of life
broken in strife

to be or to not
to end or bear thought
to take life or live
to let blood or give

to battle with breath
to rage against death
show mercy to pain
fight fire with rain

look life in the face
break the cycle with grace
turn daggers to rust
give honor to dust

melt lead in the sun
teach toddlers to run
meet grief with peace
bury strife with heartsease



After all, if sun and snow, fire and ice can coexist; and a pair of birds can stick together through water and air, and life, then surely the land can hold us all; a little plot of earth is all that we will need in the end, just enough to make a snow angel.  

Cold in Copenhagen

Sod's Law says it is much easier to write a thousand words as part of a blog than as part of a thesis. Despite this I have shunned the one in an attempt to pour the writings into the other. But occasionally I cheat thus :D This year some my family moved to Copenhagen. This is the branch that has the littlest grandkids so the rest of the family naturally congregate there at any excuse, ignoring the cold. For it is cold in Copenhagen. It is so cold that their Christmas color scheme is red and gold, the colors of fire and warmth. Or perhaps the edges of the visible spectrum of light when you squint at them through the icicles that were your eyelashes.

Now Copenhagen in summer is delightful, if not very warm. It has cute cobbled streets, and charming stone buildings shaped like gingerbread houses, colonized by earnest, thoughtful people that dress in black and speak flawless English and ride bikes (unless they are jogging). Everything sits on the safe side of the boundary between the clinical and the picturesque and looks like a non-scary advertisement for the Truman Show. Gentle men with Ken cheekbones and a sense of egalitarianism push prams, and fair haired children smile and are spoken to softly by their mothers. Except for the unreal obsession with licorice (ice cream...ice cream bars...soft, hard, chocolate coated...an entire shop with glowing balls and jars and tubes and soap and cream), and the Danish death glares whenever a tourist pedestrian strays into the bike lane, it is easy to see why Denmark regularly tops the list of 'happiest countries'. No corruption, no pollution. Clean, with just enough salt to keep it from becoming saccharine, and just enough moss and jellyfish on that freezing sea floor to keep all the natural real. If you Image Search 'Copenhagen' you probably won't see the overgrown hippie freeland of Christiania (which made my aunt cry, since it was everything young people dreamed of achieving in the Sixties) but rather the tranquil harbor waters of Nyhavn. Haven, is the key word here in Kobenhavn. Cold hands, warm hearts.

Even Elsinore (Helsingor), with Hamlet's castle an hour away, isn't depressing or forbidding, but merely thoughtful. Kronborg should be sad but it struggles to be pensive. It straddles a crag with cheerful cannons. There is a moat with serene seabirds and a coast that is not stormy but wistful, biding its time till the next seismic shift restores the Swedish landmass just across the way back to the Danish bosom. The castle's patient carved stone over the entrance seems aware of the fact that Amleth's agony occurred before its rebuilding, and that his suicidal sweetheart's stream and grave must be far off in the distance. It is not too cold for the domestic tourists to sunbathe and tan on the cross-country harbor ferry, while enjoying their duty-free licorice liquor. The ice cream sellers are doing a brisk business at the Helsingor cafe outside. 'Horatio' (in full costume) gives a good tour of the strategic spots in the castle, complete with Hamlet's history, embellished by producing a skull out of a cupboard while trying his best to look more like a depressed Dane than sunny and theatrical tour guide. Kronborg's chilly chapel is too chaste for incest; its turret morning room too bright and sweet for frailty; the chessboard marble-floored grand hall too generous for revenge.

If Copenhagen is delightful in summer, it's magical in winter. It snows when it's not supposed to. People look even more thoughtful and produce an extra layer of black clothing. Everything is awash with swells of frost, crisp smells of roasted almonds and wood fires overlaid with a frozen salt tang, faint music and muffled footsteps on ice, all alit in a glow of red and gold (Image Search 'Copenhagen Christmas'). Over the four or so days of Jul (little and big Christmas and several eves?), the streets get quieter and the content more pronounced. On day 3, all the Christmas trees in the harbor get set aside, along with the once cozy frozen bales of hay and the layers of ice that melt to produce striated evidence of limited Christmas life in reverse chronology: Metro ticket stubs, bits of dropped, crushed chocolate, maps of the city, cigarettes smoked down to the filter and ignored by enterprising seagulls. On day 4, there is a great surge of humanity as everyone ventures outdoors to exchange greetings and unwanted gifts at the mall. The stores and cafes reopen. All of these stock tulips; Ikea, en masse. None of these popular flowers are to be seen through the customarily curtainless rear apartment windows, so multiple they make one feel like Jimmy Stewart with a hangover...presumably the bouquets are presented to beloveds in secret. The cafes have a hierarchy of chocolate snobbery: the most common one provides hot chocolate in the form of dip sticks -- dark, milk, white, or all three. It is so cold that after melting and dissolving in the frothy hot milk, their dregs harden all over again into edible dessert.

For a true ramble, ignore the Little Mermaid tour shuttle and take bus 11A from outside Copenhagen Central/Kobenhavn H. The minibus creeps like a snail through the back and side streets, waits for no one at the Tivoli Hotel and then loops back by San Francisco cafe with its cheesecake, the driver playing 70s rock in the empty cabin and listing the landmarks as they pass in slow motion. Or, get a citypass and ride the harbor water bus up and down; or stroll through Tivoli, with its markets, fake and real snow, screaming thrill-riders and turtle play scupltures, popcorn smells and Japanese pagoda, lake boats, glowing swans and light ropes. Or go to the national museum and chill by its ancient runed grave stones, chariots, Viking ships and elk skeletons, then warm up in the neighboring Glyptotek with its tropical winter garden, Impressionist paintings and desert mummies. Watch the nighttime fireworks, or the 9am sunrise. Or go sledding in the park and then have a 'Danish' pastry, if you can choose one. Or just sit inside with glogg by the fire. For it's Copenhagen, Baby, and it's cold outside.

Love, Actually

Love Actually, if you haven't seen it, is a movie about all different kinds of love. This post, likewise, includes an assortment of my favorite things I've seen on the web recently, all about love:

Part 1. sultry voices reading love poetry: http://8tracks.com/sadarcy/british-men-poetry-prose/#

random acts of kindness: http://www.pleated-jeans.com/2013/11/05/21-heart-warming-random-acts-of-kindness/

a lifelong love story from the Bronx: http://storycorps.org/animation/danny-and-annie/

the hedge-mog baby!:  http://www.capitalbay.com/news/468104-abandoned-baby-hedgehog-that-is-being-raised-by-a-cat.html

Whether love, for you, represents Romeo and Juliet, or Up, or someone making you pancakes or mowing the grass, the big things or the small things, your friends or your family; a spa day out, a quiet book at home alone; love definitely makes the world go round :D

But what is love, actually?

Searching the web or asking someone yields an avalanche of opinions: It is spiritual, carnal. Friendship, romance. Selflessness, partnership. Sacrifice, compromise. War buddies. In-laws. The first girl you kissed. The last girl you kissed. All you need is love. Everything is love; love is in all. Love feels good; love doesn't hurt. Love is trust. Love is truth. Love is unity. Love is all you need.

One of my favorite (non)explanations is here: http://homepaddock.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/dairy-10008.jpg . In case you can't load it, it is a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, the gist of which goes:

Calvin (age 6): MOM! WAKE UP! COME QUICK!
Mom (panicking): What's wrong? What's the matter?
Calvin (also panicking): Do you think love is nothing but a biochemical reaction designed to make sure our genes get passed on?
Mom (sleepily): Whatever it is, it's all that's keeping me from strangling you right now.

Whatever it is, sometimes it's easier to tell what it isn't. Actually. What isn't love? Let me count the ways. I've been wanting to write this post on abuse for a long time. So here goes. It is sort of like the movie Life is Beautiful -- the first half is love and joy and the second is love and pain. So if you have triggers, you might want to stop here and stay with the first part, above.

Part 2. Here's an example of a normal Valentine's Day quiz, on what is and isn't a healthy relationship: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/avril-carruthers/think-youve-found-true-love-this-valentines-day_b_4778291.html?view=print&comm_ref=false . The author ends the first half by saying "If this describes even part of your relationship, it's not based on love -- it's actually a war zone."

Actually, a war zone relationship looks a little more like some of the below:

Love isn't being verbally abused.  I'm on this website somewhere. http://www.ihollaback.org/ .

Love isn't being belittled for feeling the way you do. i.e., the "nice guy" who calls you hurtful names and then blames you, "Don't take me so seriously." http://cmhc.utexas.edu/fightingfair.html

Love isn't being controlled, or anywhere on this wheel. http://www.ianrpubs.unl.edu/pages/publicationD.jsp?publicationId=912

Love isn't feeling mixed pleasure and pain. 1 in 4 people will experience sexual assault or abuse. Like my best friend did. http://projectunbreakable.tumblr.com/ .

Love isn't having to believe only one religious 'Truth'. www.csj.org/infoserv_cult101/checklis.htm

Love isn't having to love whom you're told. http://report-it.org.uk/

Love isn't being afraid. Like 1 in 3 women will feel in one of their relationship. Like my grandmother did, my aunt did, I did. whenlovehurts.ca/2014/01/28/warning-signs-for-young-women/

Love isn't doing any of this to someone. Or being made to feel ashamed, punishment-worthy and at fault if it happens to you. http://www.respect.uk.net/

Part 3. In conclusion, love is actually hard to define. If you're still reading, here are 57 entries www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/love. After reading this http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/god-of-cake.html  I think love might be laughter. Or kids. Or cake. Or life. If I learn more I will let you know.

Happy St Valentine's Day.

Love Comforteth Like Sunshine After Rain

Oh yeah, I totally stole that title from Shakespeare :) because it's all his fault, as usual. I went to see one of his plays again, and it all boiled down to...it was just...it was the way he looked at her.

Last night me and a friend went to see As You Like It. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qpEqv7DAPV4#!  The highlight of my evening was not a) when my friend spotted the lead heading down the road for the stage door and let out a yip and he stared at us nor b) when I was chatting to the barman during interval drinks about how I liked the (other) lead's acting, and the same popped up eavesdropping behind me. No, being me, such embarrassing events I am accustomed to. The highlight of the evening was simply Mr. Shakespeare. Where to start?

There was fire, there was rain. Oh, yes there was, for real. There were lovers, oh, lovers. There were all the married male lovers in the audience who yelled out on the clown's command, followed by a saucy order (presumably followed?) to 'stroke the inner thigh of the woman next to you...who hopefully came with you'. If I knew more about famous clowns, he'd be compared to all of them, right here. There were the onstage lovers -- all four couples of them, plus odds and ends and triangles. There were dirty lovers -- dusty, muddy, matted dreads -- bloody lovers, lovers in nearly see-through white dresses (I told you there was rain). They were not all romantic lovers - there were brother-lovers, music-lovers, freedom-lovers, sadness-lovers...Shakespeare lovers.

What's not to love? There were love songs hurled into the audience. There was a shirtless, balding clown with a large red nose and a cigarette who began his discussion of marriage with the single rasping word 'Courage' and still managed to lead all the single men in the audience in a cheer. There was an Orlando (the hero) who for ONCE was not a sap. There was the way he looked at her... Rosalind, his lover, who spends most of the play in drag. As my friend said, before she started to cry at a play for the first time ever, this story was as much Orlando's as it was Rosalind's.

The director said that they fall in love instantly because both are orphans and see themself in the other. But that's not exactly accurate -- Rosalind's father is still alive in the forest. Both of them have given up at the start, though -- Orlando suicidally wrestles a killer (you have to see it) -- Rosalind stands aloof from the court dancing. OK so it might be a bit gendered. That's all forgotten in the couple's first kiss, when he still thinks she's a boy.

The kiss before the actress started crying at a totally random part in the play, when she realized it was all coming together. Before the cast started pouring the sodas over each other (from a handy mini-fridge), or corpsing when falling through the beach chairs on the first night, or cathartically dabbing mud on one another's faces (I told you there was rain). Before the globe lights came down or the string lights went up, before the audience got that goofy look on their faces, a look which had been stealing over them ever since Orlando came out with an accordion and some mangled rhymes, a look like they'd just had their first kiss. Before the clown bride came out in a matching red nose. Or Hymen, wearing gigantic Herne-like horns of courage. Before the rasta priest came out, or the torches, or the rain. Before my other friend in the front row put down the raincoat she'd brought and gave herself up to the play. Before Orlando listened to himself telling the implausible story of a magician's boy and an appearing maiden. Before the magic happened and it was too late to go back to the way we were.

You sly rogue, Shakespeare. As if we wouldn't like it.

Mad World, Mad Kings, Mad Composition...

Bloodlust. Incest. Child murder. Beheading. Knife fights. Gunfights. Suicide. Excommunication. Adultery. Illegitimacy. Royalty. Commodity. Partying. Wedding. Poisoning. War.

Mad world, mad rulers, insanely brilliant composition...Not Scorsese's Godfather, but Shakespeare's King John. King John, King John at the RSC. And here's my two cents.

'What's not to love?' says one usher, the day before I go to see the last show of the run of one of my new favorite plays. 'We stiff the French, Alex (Waldmann) gets his shirt off, and there's Dirty Dancing!' 'But this is _Stratford_!' sputtered another, traditionalist theatre-goer in the post-show talkback. 'That was brilliant, amazing. I'm in awe..I'm 16, and that was the best poisoning scene I've ever seen.' responds another (in an age where the average elementary-leaving student has statistically seen over 8,000 TV murders). 'I don't need pop culture overlaid on my Shakespeare to understand it!' huffs the white-haired doyen of Shakespeare studies, who left at the interval and then tweeted about it. Truly, this is a very modern, Pulp Fiction-esque take on Shakespeare -- Swedish director Aberg at 32 isn't much older than her leads, and fashion critic Indigo has written up the costumes on her blog  http://loveindigoblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/party-like-king.html . 'Whether you hate or love it, as long as you're not bored', says Waldmann in the talkback, 'I consider us a success...we've had a blast with it, Maria (Aberg) asked in rehearsal if she should turn the [very loud!] music down, and Pippa (Nixon) and I were like, 'Nooooo, turn it up!!!'

There's a lot to love in a production that gets, if not through your ears, under your skin and into your blood. Besides sexing up the action in love and war by setting it in a seedy, modern-day, balloon- champagne- potted plant- and confetti-filled hotel, complete with rock music soundtrack and a neon 'for god and england' [sic] sign, Aberg's most controversial and powerful amendment has been to alter the Supporting Actor as it were, or the Bastard, into a fantastic female character (into which she also rather unfortunately merges the weaker character of Hubert, or the glorified babysitter). Pippa Nixon, wearing fluorescent tights, gold sneakers, and dark red lipstick, gets all the best moments. She opens the action by drawing us into a god-awful singalong of 'Land of Hope and Glory' as she plays on the ukulele, with a pick she clownishly materializes out of her mouth; she buoys it in the middle by triumphantly brandishing the King of Austria's bloody head and laying it at our feet, like a cat thrilled with its kill, or by making our hair stand on end while singing Wye Oak's piercing, evocative 'Civilian' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh3Z43HsbpE&feature=related , a tribute to dying youth and dying youths, famous from the Walking Dead zombie TV series; she gets to deliver the great speeches -- on 'commodity' and 'be great in thought as you have in deed' and 'if England to itself do rest but true' -- and she closes the action by wailing, devastated, over her fragilely defiant king convulsing in her arms, undone by his own cocky bloodiness come back to ravage him with startling fatality, like the Python Holy Grail's killer rabbit's grrreeeat nasty big pointy teeth.

Absolute power supposedly corrupts absolutely -- Aberg makes bones about this, a lot of them. In a court reminiscent of a jaded Monaguesqe society, there doesn't seem to be much to do besides fight and have raucous, circus-like parties. John (that same cowardly king in Disney's Robin Hood that was scared of snakes, and sucked his thumb) like the rest of the English and the French court and their hangers-on, is as much a victim of his own charisma and lack of scruples as his own reckless, devious, escapist angst. The royal women want war just as badly as the men; one 'speaks not from her faith, but from her need' accuses gentle Blanche (Natalie Klamar), pleading to the Pope, vainly trying to stem Mafia-like family infighting and warmongering on her wedding day. Klamar plays the 'Baby' figure who nails the lift in a gorgeous Dirty Dancing reprise http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpmILPAcRQo, and the Barbie-like political bride in a blonde wig and frilly dress who also nails the difference between faith and need as she gets put in a corner by all of them, dreams crushed as John stamps on her bouquet.

The 'Holy Legate of the Pope' has also been gender-crossed by Aberg, and played appropriately by Italian Paola Dionisotti in the latest black & white & shades fashion of Milan - she's also the only one able to get John's shirt off, in a visceral repentance scene that shows off his lion and crown, nape and bicep, royal tattoos, baring body and soul while making you wonder whether the authoritarian sadism really lies in church or in crown. Nixon, who has earlier declared 'gain be my lord, and I will worship thee' also gets to decide whether to follow authority and commodity, or truth; whether to put out young Arthur's eyes on command with a hot poker (innocent as ever, the several children that played it on the three nights I saw it), and thus conveniently clear the line of succession; or, whether to remain true to herself -- or to whatever's left of it after she's done playing at being a royal bastard, hero, murderer, musician, and victim of molestation.

The only things not to love here are the war chorus -- who are arguably supposed to represent the fragmentation of war and madness, yet come across in a jangle of voices as pure cacophony - and the fact that, like the wall of shiny balloons that finally get out to tumble (and burst) all over us during the second half, this zany production has a 'self-destruct' button written into it by the necessity of theatre contracts.

The production works because it is true both to itself and its history, pleasant and sickening, ancient and current, showy and stark. Pippa Nixon's costumes were designed around her own personal wardrobe; during the Olympics, in a nod to either patriotism, pop culture, commodity, or probably just for fun, the cast worked in the 'Mobot' move. While the insertion of Dirty Dancing was criticized by the doyen for 'not being Shakespeare' , it was true to the spirit, if not the letter, of his scene of the joy of two hearts coming together (besides, I have a soft spot for Swayze, as a once bratty Texan kid in the ballet class where his mother taught my own). John's final plea for redemption is a similar redux, set to the lyrics of Madcon's Beggin', a song remixed from the 1967 original and later used by Adidas ads - 'I'm beggin', beggin' you, put your loving hand out, baby...ridin' high, when I was king, played it hard and fast, cause I had everything...tried so hard to be your man...a broken man, that I don't know, won't even stand the devil's dance to win my soul' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EubynGPvNNg It may not have been meant to, but the lyrics reminded me of Shakespeare's Dream epilogue and plea for applause 'Give me your hands, if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends.' At the final show, they had to turn on the lights to stop the endless applause. 

For all its bling, King John bared its core of angst and darkness and the inevitable loss of love and life brought on by selfishness and war. The twin Tories in party hats, and the French politician with his carry bag of Big Ben souvenirs from across the Channel, while they got laughs, heightened a sense of carpe diem among the party culture, a sense that grows sharper in the age of 9/11 and WMD and a world still mad. Shakespeare was on to something, as always -- whether we want him to be our popular contemporary or dignified ancestor -- and the RSC's sniffed out the method in the madness and then rubbed our noses in it, whether we love it or not.