Dr. and Mrs. Anton Chekov

One of the most dazzling of Shakespeare’s attributes was his ability to write brilliantly and often in so many different genres. Comedy, tragedy, history – and in many different variations. It’s as if all the Emmys of an evening were won by the same writer. In this, no one can touch him.

We close our 12^th season with a full production of two wonderful comedies, written by another classical master. Many know  Anton Chekov for his more serious work – The Seagull, The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters – written toward the end of the 19^th Century. In them he tells stories of sheltered households living in bubbles, ignoring the grim realities of the outside world. GB Shaw applauded Chekov’s ability to illuminate characters, like those in his own “Heartbreak House”, who sadly refused to acknowledge the coming of World War I. For many, pathos and tragedy underscore Chekov’s work, but I believe many productions miss his inherent comic, Chaplinesque tones. Is Constantin’s little play in The Seagull “dreadful” as his mother Arkadina describes, or – though painfully and comically earnest – a brilliant and prophetic attempt at a new form of theater?

In young Chekov’s “The Boor” and “The Marriage Proposal” we have “vaudeville” sketches in the direct line from the ancient Greeks to today’s stage, film and television. Yes, blindness to our blindness can be tragic – “Oedipus Rex” – but can also be comic – “The Office”. And lovers’ quarrels have been a delightful source of entertainment from “Lysistrata” to “Modern Family”. Human frailty is universal and timeless. We hear in the squabbling of Stepanovna and Lomov our own righteous exchanges. We know that as Popova and Smirnov scream at each other they’re tearing away the self imposed barriers to their own buried passion.

This is, above all else, what the classics give us – the reassurance that we are not alone. We learn, grow, and life goes on. Please join us and get to know these “trivial” masterpieces.

“Chekov Farces” “The Boor” and “The Marriage Proposal”

One hour oh so funny adaptation by Lance Davis

Featuring Barry Gordon, Dorothy Brooks, Marisa Chandler, James Calvert and Lance Davis

Saturday and Sunday Matinees at 2 PM.

April 21,22,28,29,May 5,6

Saturday Soirees at 7 PM. April 21, 29,May 5.

Lineage Performing Arts Center, 89 S. Fair Oaks Avenue, Old Pasadena, CA 91105

Buy tickets at www.parsonsnose.tix.com or call 626-403-7667

Ages 9 +. Seniors and Students especially welcome.

Parson’s Nose Readers’ Theater Series

“Quality” by John Galsworthy

“A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift

Saturday Soiree, March 17 @ 7 PM/ Sunday Matinee, March 18 @ 2 PM

Lineage Performing Arts Center, 89 S. Fair Oaks, Pasadena, CA. 91105

Ages 11+ suggested. Seniors especially welcome.

Tickets: http://www.parsonsnose.tix.com

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Theater is dramatic storytelling. We have two great examples in this month’s Readers’ Theater offerings.

John Galsworthy (1867-1933) was born in Surrey, England to a solicitor father, John, and his wife Blanche. Like Moliere, he gave up a career in law to become a novelist and playwright, and though independently wealthy espoused liberal causes, such as penal reform, censorship and the protection of wildlife. He refused knighthood when it was offered, saying the writing itself was reward enough. In his most popular work, The Forsyte Trilogy, he examines the values of three generations of a wealthy Victorian family. A successful television production by the BBC in 1967 was the precursor to today’s immensely popular “Downton Abbey”.

In “Quality”, a simple depiction of an event in Victorian life, Galsworthy examines the dilemma of 19^th Century “progress”. The Industrial Revolution charges forward, at what price to society? What do we sacrifice for a modern world racing toward material consumption and disposability?

A century before Galsworthy, Jonathan Swift, the greatest satirist in the English speaking world, also addressed social reform. Born in Dublin in 1667, he was a student at Trinity College, Dublin, and later became Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral there. In his “anonymous” pamphlet “A Modest Proposal” the Anglo-English writer (“Gulliver’s Travels”"Tale of the Tub”) not only underscores the deplorable economic conditions in Ireland, but also lampoons the heartless social engineering theories espoused by his contemporary William Petty and others. Swift’s grotesque suggestion that the impoverished and persecuted Irish population might provide an excellent source of nutrition and culinary delight to the upper classes, in return gaining a prosperous solution to their problem of overpopulation, was published in 1729. Again, as in all “classics”, we see relationships echoing other societies, from the Greece of Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” to the America of “South Park”.

Both Galsworthy and Swift use the dramatic power of their pens to challenge us to question the ideas and values around us. Their art is to present a lens through which we view the world and hopefully change it for the better. What better contemplation for the Lenten season of our Christian society? – Lance Davis

"Does it make me look fat?"

Jean Baptiste Poquelin was born and raised in Paris, about five blocks from the Louvre, which was, at the time, one of several Royal Palaces. His father was an upholsterer to the King. His mother died when he was about ten years old, and his grandfather took him often to the carnival-like atmosphere of puppet shows and sideshows along the Seine, where his love of theater began. In his early twenties, young Jean Baptiste rejected his study of law and his father’s dream of following in his footsteps – though he remained a member of his father’s guild – to become an actor, at the time a disreputable occupation. He joined the Bejart Company after falling in love with its leading lady, young Madeline Bejart. A new company, Le Theatre Illustre, was formed, and Jean Baptiste took the name “Moliere” to save his family from dishonor. Their attempts at tragedy failed and to avoid further debt the company left Paris, touring the provinces and developing their own work for the next seventeen years.

Now here’s where we come – “at last”, you might say – to our February presentation.  My interpretations of Moliere favor the spirit of these early works, in which I believe his comic genius came to fruition. He was very much influenced by the touring Italian troupes, the “commedia dell arte” players, and their robust, irreverent and physical style of acting. Language is minimized, absurd plots and characters emphasized. Curmudgeonly old men are stingy, and eager to get a good deal in arranged marriages for their children. Young lovers are self- absorbed, but extremely willful. And oppressed servants are inevitably co-opted into some arcane scheme to thwart the parents and restore True Love to its rightful preeminence. Norman Lear and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”, say thank you.

Among Moliere’s provincial works were “The Flying Doctor” (1645) and “The Ridiculous Young Ladies” (1650). Under cover of comedy Moliere pokes fun at the gullibility of the old, the sham of false medicine, and the absurdity of extreme fashion. In “The Flying Doctor” old Gorgibus is ready to sacrifice all at the suggestion of servant Sganarelle’s “Doctor” in order to match his daughter to his wealthy old friend. In “The Ridiculous Young Ladies” two narcissistic girls from the provinces are prepared to do whatever necessary to take Paris by storm. Both themes were ripe for comedy in the provinces of France in 1650, proved so again in its capital in 1658, and are alive and well in Archie Bunker and Kim Kardashian today.

Moliere wrote the comedy of Obsession. In that way he was very much a conservative, believing in balance and order, and after his triumphant return to Paris in 1658 he became the theater darling of a resourceful, young Louis XIV, who knew a rapier when he saw one. He served the King in Paris, at Versailles and Fontainebleau for the next fifteen years, dying after a performance of “The Imaginary Invalid” in Paris on February 17, 1673. Because he was an actor it took the King’s special dispensation to allow his Christian burial, by night, in an unmarked cemetery plot in a Paris churchyard.

About arts education….I was standing in awe in the 13th Century Sainte Chapelle in Paris a couple of years ago. Built by (Saint) Louis IX to house the relics of the Crown of Thorns that he brought back from the Crusades. Towering walls of glass, stories high, in a relatively small chapel. The crowd was very quiet. An American father came up the entrance stairs with his 10 year old son. A moment’s silence, then a hushed conversation between them. The intensity built until the father finally said, a little too loudly, “No, they don’t do anything! They’re windows!”

Everyman is the most popular play we have from the 15th Century. We don’t know the English playwright. It may have been adapted from a Dutch work. It is a “morality” play, very popular in the medieval theater and which, like all official art of the period, promoted religious themes.

Latin was the “official” language of the Roman church and Western Europe. The Bible and the Christian liturgy were written in Latin, though few outside the clergy could read or understand it. How then might the populace be educated in godly action? Enter the “morality” and “mystery” plays, which told the stories of the Bible, in plain Middle English, to the common man – Every man – much like the images in the stained glass windows in the church he attended.

It’s a simple play, a “journey” play, an allegorical play. Virtues, vices, and ideas, are personified as characters. God is upset with mankind, and sends Death to summon Everyman to his judgement. He must bring his Book of Accounts with him, the ledger of good and bad deeds we all must carry.

Of course Everyman is completely unprepared. His book is empty of Good Deeds. Death tells him he may bring with him whomever he can find to plead his case. One by one his loyal “friends” desert him. His Good Deeds are too weak to accompany him. But through Knowledge he finds Confession and is lead on the path to salvation, and we are told that this is the path we all may choose, but now, for after death is too late.

I was raised in Catholicism, left it after college, and am now an Episcopalian. I’ve recently been reading C.S. Lewis, and I must say I again find the concept of “salvation” mysterious and oddly comforting. The Christian people of the 15th Century believed whole-heartedly in heaven, hell, and a final judgement in which all wrongs would be put right. In heaven each Christian would have a room saved by Jesus just for him/her if he lived a good life. Heaven was where the injustice of this world would be balanced. The first would be last. The meek would inherit. Harsh daily life would be made plentiful and joyful. It was why the church was usually the first structure built in a new town, and made the most beautiful. Lenny Bruce explained the peasant’s reasoning, “I live in a crap hole, I don’t want to worship God in one.”

Today we don’t hear a lot about heaven and hell in non-fundamentalist religion. We’re allowed to believe in them or not. But the medieval thinking is, I think, one of the chief comforts of today’s fundamentalism, whether Christian or Islamic or Jewish – the certainty that if you follow the rules, say the prayers, give support, do good, your spirit will be saved and be with God. And don’t our spiritual tradings today seem disquietingly like the “quid pro quo” buying of relics and “indulgences”, and other corruptions so prevalent in the 15th Century that a Reformation became inevitable.

“Everyman” is a holy play. It talks to us about  life and death, and hope, and the urgency of action. It is wise, touching, surprisingly funny and a direct appeal to the imagination. Storytelling at its best. We are delighted to introduce it to you. Please join us.

Sainte Chapelle, Paris, 13th Century

“A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens in a one hour, Readers’ Theater adaptation by Lance Davis

Saturday December 17 at 2 PM and 7 PM; Sunday,  December 18 at 2 PM

Lineage Performing Arts Center, 89 S. Fair Oaks, Pasadena, CA 91005

PayWhatYouWill, but reservations necessary. Go to www.parsonsnose.com or call 626-403-7667.

Remember how you hated Dickens when you were in high school because you had to have fifty pages of “Great Expectations” read by Monday and his descriptions just went on and on and on? Well I have a suggestion, and you’ll really thank me. Call your local bookseller (this really is a hardcover worth owning) and order Michael Patrick Hearn’s “An Annotated Christmas Carol”.

When you get it, block out an hour in the evening, make yourself a cocoa with whipped cream, or maybe even a glass of port and piece of Stilton, and begin to read one of the greatest writers the English language has ever known. Guess what? You don’t have to rush. You don’t have a deadline. It won’t be on the test. You are now an educated adult, and you have earned the license to take your time and savor something you won’t get on television…language. Your language.

Immerse yourself in the world of London, 1842. Hear the horses, the shop bells, the chatter. Smell the smoking fires, horse dung and burnt chestnuts. Feel the chill on your nose, and maybe the drip. Feel the emotions, the pain of Belle’s parting, the loneliness of the boy Scrooge, never sent for at Chrismas.

Put yourself in Dickens’ hands, for they are very capable. Maybe on the next night you’ll pass the book back and forth with someone, taking turns reading a paragraph or two. Mark the voices and try the dialects. I’m betting it may even become a new tradition.
Merry Christmas. I hope to see you at our readings, and please, if you can, remember us in your donations.  God bless. – LD

Follow us on Twitter, if you can figure it out. (I know I’m having trouble. In Dickens’ day you would send a note in the post if you were wealthy, or one of your kids if you were not!

ParsonsNoseProd; https://twitter.com/#!/ParsonsNoseProd/

#Pasadena

Saturdays November 12, 19 and 26 at 2 PM and 7 PM

Sundays November 13, 20 and 27 at 2 PM

Tickets $20 Adults; $10 Students and Over 60

Tickets: www.parsonsnose.com or 626-403-7667

Lineage Performing Arts Center, 89 South Fair Oaks Ave., Pasadena, CA 91105

Running time 1 hour plus intermission

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Some years ago I toured in a summer stock production of “The Streets of New York” with Farley Granger and Orson Bean. (Stories to tell there!)  It was a great favorite on the circuit. Today’s audiences readily enjoyed the interactive “boos” and “yays” of the melodramatic form.

“Streets” was written in 1857 by the great 19th Century Irish actor and playwright Dionysus Boucicault, taken from a French play, “The Poor of Paris” by Edward Nus. Boucicault added a “fire” scene to accommodate the popular demand for spectacle, and also changed the local references to the city it played, in London “The Poor of London,” “The Poor of Liverpool,” “The Poor of Dublin.” The word “Poor” was also changed to “Streets” in several productions.

Boucicault was a true man of the theater. Born in 1820 in Dublin to a relatively well –to –do family, he became an actor, then playwright and producer with a keen sense of the audience’s taste. The stock market crashes of 1837 and 1857 set the scene for the play. As in Dickens, the shocking financial reversals of the wealthy and their newfound appreciation for the core values of the impoverished were favorite themes of the melodramas of the day. Boucicault also had an innate sense of comedy which we see not only in “Streets” but in his hit comedy “London Assurance” – revived on Broadway in 2009 – and his career vehicle for the great 19th Century American star Joseph Jefferson, “Rip Van Winkle,” which Parson’s Nose revived in 2005.

I hope you enjoy my version of the play. I think it’s in the spirit of Boucicault, though admittedly I’ve incorporated Parson’s Nose “panto” touches. It’s been great fun to insert, as he did, local references, to Pasadena and its citizens. I’ve tried to offer it with a kind humor, and trust our audiences to receive with same. Thanks in advance to Mayor Bill Bogaard for allowing the use of his name as the villain banker. I assured him that though Aloysius receives most of the “boos” in the piece his actions can be attributed not only to greed but to a misplaced love of his wicked daughter.

Please join us for an hour, bring your whole family, and relish the interactive cheers and hisses of our theater heritage. This is what theater does best. No screens!

Mayor Bogaard visits Parson's Nose!

In 1835 the Ukrainian writer Nicolai Gogol asked his friend Pushkin for a Russian story he could develop into a play. Pushkin gave him a true incident in which he was mistaken for a Government Inspector, Gogol seized the moment and in a whirlwind of brilliance penned a comedy of farcical greed that became a classic, finding new interpretations from Meyerhold to Basil Fawlty.

Classics resonate far beyond their original intention. This story of small town corruption, paranoia and arrogance is as relevant to today’s audience as to that of Czarist Russia. A tyrranical mayor and his cronies rule with iron fists, taking advantage of the citizenry and the equally corrupt business class. The mistaken visitor is just as arrogant and shallow as his hosts, and it is pointed out by D.R. Mirsky “The great originality of its plan consisted in the absence of all love interest and of sympathetic characters.”

We are all pushing and shoving at the trough, and move from victim to oppressor with remarkable dexterity, not only in government, but in all our social institutions and activities. The light Gogol shines on a rural town on the road to St. Petersburg spreads across societies and centuries to blind us here and now. Luckily, he does it with humor and sympathy.

Please join us October 8 and 9 for a one hour look at this marvelous comedy, adapted by Lance Davis. Go to Tickets on this website, or call 626-403-7667 for reservations.

The Dromio Twins

Language was the television of everyday life in Elizabethan times. People delighted in hearing new words and phrases, then using them in their own speech. In Love’s Labors Lost and Twelfth Night characters carry notepads to write down new words and phrases they can incorporate. Much like our “whatever…”.

We can understand many of the 400-year-old words just by their usage. “Hast” means “has”. “Doth” means “does”. “Ne’er” means “never”. And some, once we know their meaning, add a whole new understanding. For example “wherefore” doesn’t mean “where”, it means “why”. So when Juliet in Romeo and Juliet leans out on her balcony and says “Romeo, O Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?,” she’s not saying “Where are you?” but “O why do you have to be Romeo Montague whom I can never marry?”

The leading Elizabethan playwrights were poets, and used poetic imagery and technique in their work. (Can you imagine if TV was in poetry form? “Glee” is considered radical enough!) In an example from this month’s reading of “A Comedy of Errors”, Shakespeare doesn’t just say Aegeon’s wife is “pregnant”. He says she is under “the pleasing punishment that women bear.” The image adds the much richer idea that “yes, pregnancy’s brutal, but worth it”.

Of course some of his vocabulary is new to us, but quickly becomes familiar and part of the fun of language. Several words found in many of his works are: Ducats = gold coins; Marks = larger gold coins!; Cozenage = trickery; Mountebank = swindler; Signior = Mister; Coxcomb = dandy; Pate = head; Tartar = Mongolian tribesman.

Come join us for the new season, this Saturday and Sunday! You’ll love it.

Click here:

Henry V \”Ceremony\”

(image: lautrec: bernhardt in Phedre)

Just on a lark I was listening to some Edison cylinders made in early 20th century. One was a recording of Sarah Bernhardt’s “Phedre” by Racine, a contemporary of Moliere. Moliere didn’t have much luck with tragedy. It was performed, in the 17th Century, in a declamatory style that his comedies were praised for avoiding. Indeed his style was a brilliant mixture of outrageous Italian “commedia dell arte” and everyday, almost naturalistic delivery, which we try to incorporate into our work at Parson’s Nose.

But it was fascinating to listen to Bernhardt building her speeches, especially as she crescendoes at the end. Though at first her delivery seems formal – it is rhymed 17th century poetry after all – you can hear the absolute commitment and passion, masterfully calibrated, that pours from her soul.This is the incorporation of technique and suppressed emotion that so many of our “method” actors can’t do, and what the classics demand. A film script gives at the most ten lines of a monologue to work through, with as many takes as the director allows. A classic theater monologue demands the ability to deliver three times that – (read below) – and make it understood, without microphones, in a 1500 seat house, and make it believable, and do it again for the evening performance. As in musical comedy, you have to be an athlete.

I’ve always thought France must be a wonderful place to be an actress. They do madness so well. Isabelle Adjani’s made a career of it (see “Claudine Claudel” or was that Huppert?, “La Reine Margot”) and Kristin Scott Thomas has always had a lot of fun over there. She seems to return to England and America when she wants to do something relatively staid. Adjani, as I recall, was one of the youngest actresses admitted to the Comedie Francaise, from its school, but preferred going into film. And now Scott Thomas is returning to her theater roots.

So grab a wine, or an iced tea, have a listen, read along, and see if you can keep up. She’s quite something.

Click here for Sarah Bernhardt\’s \”Phedre\” on Edison cylinder

PHEDRE
Oui, Prince, je languis, je brûle pour Thésée.
Je l’aime, non point tel que l’ont vu les enfers,
Volage adorateur de mille objets divers,
Qui va du Dieu des morts déshonorer la couche ;
Mais fidèle, mais fier, et même un peu farouche,
Charmant, jeune, traînant tous les coeurs après soi,
Tel qu’on dépeint nos Dieux, ou tel que je vous voi.
Il avait votre port, vos yeux, votre langage,
Cette noble pudeur colorait son visage,
Lorsque de notre Crète il traversa les flots,
Digne sujet des voeux des filles de Minos.
Que faisiez-vous alors ? Pourquoi sans Hyppolyte
Des héros de la Grèce assembla-t-il l’élite ?
Pourquoi, trop jeune encor, ne pûtes-vous alors
Entrer dans le vaisseau qui le mit sur nos bords ?
Par vous aurait péri le monstre de la Crète,
Malgré tous les détours de sa vaste retraite.
Pour en développer l’embarras incertain,
Ma soeur du fil fatal eût armé votre main.
Mais non, dans ce dessein je l’aurais devancée :
L’amour m’en eût d’abord inspiré la pensée.
C’est moi, Prince, c’est moi dont l’utile secours
Vous eût du Labyrinthe enseigné les détours.
Que de soins m’eût coûté cette tête charmante !
Un fil n’eût point assez rassuré votre amante.
Compagne du péril qu’il vous fallait chercher,
Moi-même devant vous j’aurais voulu marcher ;
Et Phèdre, au Labyrinthe avec vous descendue,
Se serait avec vous retrouvée ou perdue.

HIPPOLYTE
Dieux ! qu’est-ce que j’entends ? Madame, oubliez-vous
Que Thésée est mon père et qu’il est votre époux ?

PHEDRE
Et sur quoi jugez-vous que j’en perds la mémoire,
Prince ? Aurais-je perdu tout le soin de ma gloire; ?

HIPPOLYTE
Madame, pardonnez. J’avoue, en rougissant,
Que j’accusais à tort un discours innocent.
Ma honte ne peut plus soutenir votre vue ;
Et je vais…

PHEDRE
Ah ! cruel, tu m’as trop entendue.
Je t’en ai dit assez pour te tirer d’erreur.
Hé bien ! connais donc Phèdre et toute sa fureur.
J’aime. Ne pense pas qu’au moment que je t’aime,
Innocente à mes yeux je m’approuve moi-même,
Ni que du fol amour qui trouble ma raison
Ma lâche complaisance ait nourri le poison.
Objet infortuné des vengeances célestes,
Je m’abhorre encor plus que tu ne me détestes.
Les Dieux m’en sont témoins, ces Dieux qui dans mon flanc
Ont allumé le feu fatal à tout mon sang,
Ces Dieux qui se sont fait une gloire; cruelle
De séduire le coeur d’une faible mortelle.
Toi-même en ton esprit rappelle le passé.
C’est peu de t’avoir fui, cruel, je t’ai chassé.
J’ai voulu te paraître odieuse, inhumaine.
Pour mieux te résister, j’ai recherché ta haine.
De quoi m’ont profité mes inutiles soins ?
Tu me haïssais plus, je ne t’aimais pas moins.
Tes malheurs te prêtaient encor de nouveaux charmes.
J’ai langui, j’ai séché, dans les feux, dans les larmes.
Il suffit de tes yeux pour t’en persuader,
Si tes yeux un moment pouvaient me regarder.
Que dis-je ? Cet aveu que je viens de te faire,
Cet aveu si honteux, le crois-tu volontaire ?
Tremblante pour un fils que je n’osais trahir,
Je te venais prier de ne le point haïr.
Faibles projets d’un coeur trop plein de ce qu’il aime !
Hélas ! je ne t’ai pu parler que de toi-même.
Venge-toi, punis-moi d’un odieux amour.
Digne fils du héros qui t’a donné le jour,
Délivre l’univers d’un monstre qui t’irrite.
La veuve de Thésée ose aimer Hippolyte !
Crois-moi, ce monstre affreux ne doit point t’échapper.
Voilà mon coeur. C’est là que ta main doit frapper.
Impatient déjà d’expier son offense,
Au-devant de ton bras je le sens qui s’avance.
Frappe. Ou si tu le crois indigne de tes coups,
Si ta haine m’envie un supplice si doux,
Ou si d’un sang trop vil ta main serait trempée,
Au défaut de ton bras prête-moi ton épée.
Donne.