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Behold, a Pineapple!

As we say back in the Old Country, there are no comrades for taste and color. As a reader and a theater goer, I am continuously amazed at how, while there are some acceptable universal truths (who doesn’t like Les Miz?), there are some experiences that are polarizing, and some that elicit just very different emotions in people. For example, the touring production “The Notebook” left me entirely unmoved. Maybe it was everyone saying to bring Kleenex, and I hate when I am expected to love something that everyone seems to love. Whenever I do NOT cry at a tearjerker, I always worry a little, as in, have I become emotionally detached? But no, still wept through the entire performance of a local community theater’s “Come from Away”. I have feelings, and lots of them. They are just not always activated by the same stimuli.

For example, I saw this amazing play in Stratford, “King James Bible Play”. It is almost two related stories, one about the men who were literally translating the King James Bible into English in 1609 in Act I, and one about the women putting on a play about these men in present time in Act II. I found Act I more moving, on every level: touching, funny, soulful. Some of it was the sheer unexpectedness of the depth of feelings expressed, occasionally with some reluctance and wonder, by these 17^th century Englishmen. I mean, there is no shortage of stories about women’s feelings, but men’s, especially so far removed in time, well, that was a surprise to me. What was also surprising is how I reacted to the appearance on stage of a certain tropical fruit.

The pineapple is meant to be a humorous moment in the play, a recurring joke. One of the translators (Henry Savile, played by the charming, versatile Cyrus Lane) procures a rare fruit, a pineapple, which he keeps in a box and shows to the others, to their great amazement. He actually rents it as a prop, for no one would dare to destroy it by eating. There is deeper meaning in this whole pineapple concept, but once I saw it emerge, and as much as I laughed (for who among sophisticated theater goers in North America can imagine that there are folks who have never seen a pineapple?), I was instantly transported to a very different time and place.

I was visiting my mother where she lived in the suburb of our town. I must have been of pre-school age, when I still had some friends in that neighborhood. It was a summer weekend, and I was outside by the transformer substation, a kind of informal gathering place for the kids that lived in the apartment building. I always felt very independent at my mother’s. She did not hover over me, partially because the windows of her apartment were not facing the inner yard and playground, partially because she had better things to do, and mainly because I believed she genuinely trusted me, which is the greatest gift she gave me (she regressed a bit as I got older, but it was too late—the opposite of damage was already done, I had already learned to trust myself, and no one was going to convince me otherwise. I say this with love).

I am not entirely sure what purpose a transformer substation serves, even having looked it up. It was this gray metal structure, right by the apartment building’s entrance #4 (our entrance), and I took its presence for granted. There was a bit of a paved square in front of it, making it perfect for various games involving a ball, after which started the grassy courtyard and the playground. The playground contained a set of swings and a sandbox. It was from this swing that I famously flew (wondering what would happen if I let go of the metal bars onto which I was holding) right into the sandbox, completely unharmed, aged around five, if memory serves—but that is another story for another time.

That day, as I went outside, I saw a crowd of kids already gathered around one boy who was holding a pineapple. I knew what it was because I had seen a picture of it in my grandmother’s Encyclopedia of Home Economics. Among other exciting stuff, it had pictures of all sorts of fruits and vegetables, some of which I have not encountered to this day (such as kohlrabi—what is that?). So yes, I was aware of the existence of certain tropical fruits, but did not expect to run into any of them in the courtyard of an apartment building near a transformer substation where it was much more common to find an occasional stray cat. Some kids got to touch the pineapple—I did not, because I was a latecomer to this spectacle, and generally on the fringe, being just an occasional visit to their patch. I do not remember a single name or face from that crowd, but I vividly recall the general feeling of excitement and awe as this precious exotic fruit was held aloft in all its glory until the lucky kid carried it back to his apartment. Despite the fact that years later, after coming to the U.S., I discovered that I rather hate the taste of pineapple, find its shell extremely irritating to the tongue, and avoid it whenever I encounter it in any fruit salads, that moment stayed with me forever. And so, when I saw it replayed on the stage of Stratford’s Studio Theater, I cried and cried, for my childhood that was so full of wonders and miracles. This might not have been what the author of the play or anyone involved with the production intended or expected, but there it was. Behold, a pineapple!

Spouse said, isn’t it like a turnip? He knew!

Tartuffe, Impostor, Hypocrite

To mention, let alone stage, “Tartuffe” (or “The Impostor”, or “The Hypocrite”) in these turbulent times is almost too obvious. There is nothing I can say about this brilliant enduring satire that scholars of history and literature have not already said with significantly greater insight. I will just leave this quote here from the program from the best production of this play that I saw in Stratford in the summer of 2017 (and we thought times were turbulent THEN…):

“Tartuffe” was the first adult play I ever saw live. It was also the only adult play I saw as a child in the Soviet Union, in our externally beautiful, internally uninspired, historic Volkov Theater [https://oldladywriting.com/2020/07/26/all-my-world-is-a-stage/]. Credit goes only and eternally to Molière (and to the translator, whoever he was[1]) that this experience did not sour me on either live theater or French literature. That my enduring love of both has shaped my life is something that could not have been anticipated from that first chaotic encounter.

“Tartuffe” came to town when I was maybe 11, and my mother decided that this will make a fine mother/daughter afternoon of culture. We had fewer such opportunities than one would expect, for reasons that are many, varied, and complicated, ranging from familial to societal. Everything that pertained to cultural development in my childhood, every museum visit, every book about art, came from my mother. I cannot bear to think what my early childhood would have been had we spent less time together, but I used to often wonder what it would have been like if we had spent more. And this is most certainly a story for another time.

In order to prepare for this momentous event, she decided that we will read the play aloud together. It was a great idea. I still remember the first lines spoken by Mme Pernelle to her maid Flipote and Elmire’s response, that opening scene that sets the stage long before the titular character makes his entrance . To me, they are like the iconic opening bars of a musical. We took turns reading it aloud, sitting on the stools in my mother’s kitchen. It was pure joy: the relatable characters with fun names, the dialogue alternately wacky and clever, the ultimate victory of sane minds and loving hearts over liars and cheats. After “Tartuffe”, I read the rest of the plays in the Molière “greatest hits” collection, and liked them all, but none had a lead character as deplorable and deserving of retribution as this one[2]. It aged extremely well, from the day it was written to the day I read it a little over three centuries later to our tense present. My oh my, plus ça change…

And then came the actual day. I do not remember the time of year (but choose to set it on a beautiful springtime day) or what I wore (a good sign; I hold enough grudges from my childhood for not being able to choose what to wear on a special occasion). I remember arriving and heading straight to the theater buffet for a glass of sparkling lemonade and a “basket” pastry. (For how much I keep mentioning this pastry, I should just make it already—there are recipes online. Of course, I fear it will not be as amazing as I remember it from childhood. Nothing ever is.) My mother cannot be credited with coining the phrase “eat dessert first”, but can definitely be trusted to always do it. It was a matinee, the buffet was not crowded, and we enjoyed our pre-show treats before proceeding without undue hurry to our seats. At which point we discovered that we arrived an hour late and missed the entire first act, Mme Pernelle’s opening speech that I memorized being the first, but by far not the only, casualty.

To be honest, I do not recall feeling particular distress at that moment. I was happy to have enjoyed a pastry, and I did not expect much from the spectacle, for I have been to the Volkov before on school field trips. Its reputation at the time was consistent with everything else in our stagnant provincial town. We sat way in the back of the orchestra, under the balcony, a terrible spot in any theater. Either the acoustics or the actors themselves were lacking, but we had trouble making out what was going on; the words were completely unintelligible (and this was back in the days when my young hearing was very keen, so if I could have heard anything, I would have). And thus the second act passed in a haze of confusion.

After the second intermission (first for us), my mother, determined to see and/or hear the rest of the play, searched for better seats. Fortified with more treats from the buffet, I was game. We spotted an empty opera box and moved in, feeling pretty pleased with ourselves. We actually started to enjoy the final act when the door behind us opened and two guys in their 20s rolled in, looking and smelling like they partook of something stronger than sparkling lemonade at the buffet. Checking their tickets with some incredulity, they asked if these were in fact their seats. My mother barked that the seats were ours, and they meekly retreated, presumably back to the buffet. We felt triumphant. It might not seem like much, but it was a perfect coda to a memorable and fun afternoon to which the play was merely an atmospheric backdrop.

I do not expect that I will live to see “Tartuffe” again performed in the language in which I first read and loved it, but I would like to someday experience it in the language in which it was written, the original words I studied in college, in the House That Molière Built, where it is allegedly the most produced play (where so far I only keep running into “Cyrano de Bergerac”).

P.S. About translations: I am of the opinion that French and English are not entirely compatible when it comes to literature. Established translations, to my ear, do not convey the lightness of the original—yet some modern translations are too colloquial to retain that time and place that is unmistakably Molière. I have seen some adaptions of his plays that were competent, yet unrecognizable, although for “Tartuffe”, I prefer the crisp, sparkling translation by Ranjit Bolt to Richard Wilbur’s staid and stolid one. This was the translation used in the 2017 production mentioned above.

[1] In this particular case, it was someone by the name of M. Donskoy. I give credit where credit is due.

[2] What were the other plays in this collection, you ask? About what you would expect: “Don Juan”, “L’avare”, “Le Bourgeois gentilhomme”, “Les Fourberies de Scapin”, and “Le Malade imaginaire”. I saw a televised Moscow theater production of “Le Bourgeois gentilhomme” as a child, and never forgot the hilarious part where M. Jourdain discovers that he has been speaking in prose his entire life. Coincidentally, this play remains one of the few on my theater bucket list—I have not seen it live to this day.

All My World Is a Stage

In my pre-plague life, I never had a spare weekend. I [used to] see a lot of live theater. Over the past couple of decades, most other hobbies fell by the wayside as this one escalated.

A few people asked me about the origins of this love. One was Geraint Wyn Davies[1]. He was just being polite and making small talk, but I launched into some inane monologue of sharing a birthplace with the first professional theater in Russia, the Volkov, named after its founder, Fedor Volkov. This is factually true, but really, in my day the Volkov was a disaster. It is a gorgeous classical building of pale yellow, with white columns and ornate façade, second in appearance only to the Bolshoi. Many famous theaters are so nondescript from the outside. The House that Moliere Built is simply stunning in its unimpressiveness, despite being home to the largest and deepest stage I have ever seen. But the Volkov is beautiful, and sits in a strategic location, facing the large round Volkov square containing the statue of Fedor Volkov himself (no surprise),

and one of the oldest historic monuments in town, the 17^th century Banner (Znamenskaya) Tower. It is a spectacle—but a spectacle that used to be entirely external.

Oh, to be sure, it is also magnificent inside—with its marble red-carpeted stairs, frescoed walls, sculpted ceiling, velvet curtains, and a buffet serving delectable pastries. Unfortunately, what used to happen on stage in the ‘70s was either stale plays by Ostrovsky (in all fairness, I have never seen or read any of them), stock Communist plays (I have certainly never seen those either), Nutcracker (with substandard local or traveling cast), and an occasional Moliere or other permissible Western classic (performed in a standard static declamatory style). Before the Young Viewer’s Theater was built (after my time), my class would occasionally troop over to the Volkov on a field trip to see a morality play about the Young Pioneers.

The pastries were always excellent!

Right before we left the Soviet Union forever, my grandmother and I spent a few days in Moscow. The family friend with whom we stayed knew someone who worked at the Satire Theatre, and managed to get us in to see “Pippi Longstocking”. If one was to have such luck as to get into the Satire, or really any Moscow theater in those days, one would be hard pressed to find anything less exciting than “Pippi Longstocking”. Nonetheless, as proverbial beggars cannot be choosers, it was still thrilling. There were a couple of actors whom I knew from TV, and that was enough. I still recall one tune from the musical, for that is indeed what it was, and that is no small measure of an impression it made on me almost 40 years ago. I never heard this tune again except in my head. Those were the days when memories were made.

In the US, we were astonished to learn, theater tickets were distributed on a sort of first come, first served basis to those who had the means to pay, rather than on a complicated favoritism scale as a part of a behind the scenes black market economy. That was an incredible concept, although I did not know the actors and did not want to see them. Whenever my mother and I found ourselves in New York at the same time, she dragged me to Times Square to stand in line for half price tickets. The first Broadway play I saw was “Foxfire”, with Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn[2], and Keith Carradine. We must have already been living in the US for a bit, because I knew who Keith Carradine was[3]. I understood almost nothing, as my English was so poor and certainly not theater-ready at the time, but I did understand that I was in the presence of greatness. I held on to the memory and still cherish. I wish I had kept the program…

We saw a few great shows over the years when I was in high school: several G&S productions https://oldladywriting.com/2020/03/29/it-is-a-glorious-thing/, and an amazing production of “As You Like It” in Jackson before Michigan Shakespeare Festival settled there. https://www.michiganshakespearefestival.com/ It is still the gold standard for that play for me. Each act was done in a different setting. The city was all shades of gray and furs and muffs, the forest was all pastels, and the rest I do not remember. Nonetheless, for what was my first encounter with Shakespeare in the language I was still learning, it certainly left a lasting impression. But the real theater life started in Fort Worth.

When I was in college and my parents (I use the term loosely when it includes my late stepfather) lived in Fort Worth, they discovered a small regional theater called Stage West. https://stagewest.org/ In a tiny space of about 100 seats, they used to put on a fantastic variety of plays—and still do. My first exposure was to a dysfunctional comedy at Christmas called “Seasons Greetings”—we still laugh about “Pig number one, pig number two”, although I have never seen it performed since. From then on, every time I visited my parents, we would go to Stage West. It was always a delight, with an underlying feeling of uncomfortable incredulity about how a troop of local actors in some shed on a rough dockyard-like street would do a better artistic job than the permanent staff of the oldest professional theater in all of Russia, working in a gorgeous building with delicious pastries.

As an aside, I had the great fortune of revisiting Stage West a few years ago during a work conference in Dallas. My mother joined me, and we saw Stoppard’s “The Real Thing”. As a purportedly more sophisticated theater goer after the passage of almost three decades, I was still astonished. It was a world-class production. And one of those moments when I said to myself, I am the luckiest girl in the world. Gosh, I just live for those moments!

And then there came Stratford. https://www.stratfordfestival.ca/ This is a story that has been told often, and at almost every Stratford social event. It is just a conversation starter—how long have you been coming, what was your first experience? In my young married life, theater was not a factor, as we had neither time nor money, and never both at the same time. One fine day in 1996, my college friend suggested a girlfriends’ day to see a play. So the three of us drove three hours, arrived on a rain-soaked Saturday in August, ate some weird concoction prepared by one of us (not me!) for lunch in the car, and entered the Festival Theatre to behold the great William Hutt as King Lear. It was unquestionably one of the defining moments of my life. I wish I had kept the program…

Initially it was an annual trip. Initially it was just Shakespeare. Then we added other shows that sounded interesting, and once a season became not enough. Then some years later my friend lost interest and was replaced by my spouse. Then my kids started coming, and several other friends came along, and I even went by myself once when I could not sell anyone on “Fuenteovejuna”[4].

Along the way, I started to go to the theater everywhere I have traveled for work or leisure, and then planning trips with seeing plays as the goal. It became my identity— “I go to the theater”. It is what I do and who I am. For the time being, I do not and I am not. It feels like an intermission of my life. With theaters closed for the foreseeable future, I no longer know who I am and what to do with my after-work life. As I see it, I have two options: (1) reinvent and find some new interests, or (2) hunker down with my memories and wait it out. Or maybe both? Stay tuned…

The new Tom Patterson theater–as of this writing, it has not yet opened…

[1] I am just name dropping here. J

[2] Is it a coincidence that Hume Cronyn is Canadian? I think not.

[3] I saw Keith Carradine on a BroadwayCon panel a few years ago, and he actually mentioned “Foxfire” with fondness. What a full circle!

[4] Anyone who has not seen this Stratford production should be living with regrets. I am just saying.

The Merry Wives of Stratford

Some years ago, I decided that I needed to complete the Shakespeare canon. For a spectator like me, that means only seeing the shows, not acting in them or directing them (I laugh because this is true). As I see several Shakespeare stagings every year, I am ever surprised by the universality as well as timelessness of his works. I mean, after a few centuries, they are not dated (unless the director allows them to be, which is decidedly NOT the goal). I am also occasionally surprised by how my relation to the various plays has changed over the years—the ones I thought I loved I occasionally outgrew, the ones I either did not know or did not much like I grew to appreciate more, and so forth. As of this writing, I have five plays left to see, which seems like a shockingly large number considering how long I have been at it—so, if anyone hears of Henry VI being done anywhere, please let me know. I do mean anywhere, I will travel for this!

I have deliberately been avoiding The Merry Wives of Windsor for years. I glimpsed it once on TV, must have been on Masterpiece Theater, and I hated it. It seemed like a lot of commotion of people running around in bonnets and pumpkin pants, laughing at jokes that made no sense, and the language itself was unintelligible to me. It also had Falstaff, a character many like, but I kind of hate. I just do not find him funny or endearing or charismatic in any way. I just find him annoying.

But, with so few plays left to complete the canon, and with Stratford Festival—the greatest theater in North America, if not the world—staging Merry Wives this season, I decided to bite the proverbial bullet. Spoiler alert: I am glad I did, but I am still not crazy about this play.

Antoni Cimolino, the Artistic Director of the Festival who directed the play, set it in 1953. It was the year the festival was founded by Tom Patterson. Is it weird that I immediately thought that it was the year that Stalin died? Seems like it was a much more carefree year in Canada than in the USSR, but maybe not so much when it came to women’s rights. Frankly, though, I did not find the story to be too offensive in the #MeToo era. Falstaff is lecherous and pushy, but easily confounded and disarmed. Mr. Ford is jealous not like Othello, but like Moliere’s clueless and pompous husband characters. The women outsmart and outplay the men with ease, plus great humor and spirit. So, I am inclined to just view this story as a harmless farce rather than a statement on gender relations.

And what a farce it is—but I am not against farces. I am an easy laugh, but what of it? A peculiar mix of Monty Python and I Love Lucy is not the worst to which a comedy can aspire—and achieve. In this particular production, the stars of Stratford are out in full force. Brigit Wilson as Mrs. Page is just the most luminous wide-eyed Lucille Ball impersonation ever, and I mean that in the best way possible. The incomparable Geraint Wyn Davies is possibly the only Falstaff I can stomach, and he actually made me feel sorry for the fat buffoon at the end. Aww, Geraint with that sparkle in his eyes, his Falstaff exuding the benign mirth that reduces the creep factor almost to zero! And Lucy Peacock as Miss Quickly is channeling the comic relief housekeepers straight out of the Soviet comedies of the death-of-Stalin era, whose kerchief, ankle boots like my grandmother would wear, and intermittent snacking made me feel all warm and fuzzy and nostalgic. Ben Carlson, as the Welsh parson, is the funniest I have ever seen him be–and Ben is usually witty funny, not ha-ha funny, so this was a joy to behold. When he agrees with Mr. Ford that Falstaff in drag as the old woman of Brentford must be a witch because she has whiskers and a beard, I died laughing! (I use this phrase to excess; I guarantee you will see it again.) Graham Abbey as Mr. Ford, while very funny as well, is basically Tartuffe’s Orgon, whom he played on the same stage two years ago. It is not his fault that this part is so similar—after all, I have seen Geraint Wyn Davies play Falstaff before, which is literally the same character. I am just saying it was not a surprise, that’s all.

The Monty Python theme plows through the play in the character of Dr. Caius. Gordon Miller plays him essentially as the French Taunter from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, complete with pronouncing every letter in “knight”. When you hear it, you just can’t unhear it. He even throws in John Cleese’s silly walk. It’s all very funny, but a bit much, including the exaggerated French accent that is at times utterly unintelligible, although every second word is “bugger”.

So, I walked out of the theater not feeling that I saw a Shakespearean play. Is that necessarily a bad thing? I do not think so. I laughed a lot, I had a good time, and that is a value in itself. The fact that a comedy written 400 years ago still retains the humor of a much more modern piece is astonishing. When Antoni Cimolino mentioned that Merry Wives has funnier jokes than Neil Simon he was not kidding (see what I did there?). If there was a deeper message, I might not have gotten it. But, in the words of John Cleese’s Pope in the Penultimate Supper sketch, “I may not know much about art, but I know what I like!”

P.S. E.B. Smith needs to have a bigger part in this play, and really in every play.