I'd Give My Life For You....

Burbling About Miss Saigon….
So during a weekend in London we watched the musical Miss Saigon.  The content, in my opinion, resonated with current news stories about desperate migrants losing their lives in the Mediterranean sea trying to flee to Europe from Africa and the Middle East.  At first, the semi-pornographic bar scenes in the first twenty minutes were jarring in a musical, much the same way the seediness of Cabaret infiltrates the world of Sally Bowles.  But the grotesquery of “Dreamland” was a vivid counterpoint to what I think became the key theme of Miss Saigon: the fierce protectiveness of a mother’s love.

The fall of Saigon
The historical fall of Saigon, a feature of the show, demonstrates the folly of any government’s unsuccessful attempt to interfere in another country’s affairs – a chaotic retreat without a coherent exit strategy and with hundreds of inevitably tragic consequences for individuals.  The recent earthquake in Nepal underlines how poignantly pointless war and violence is for the advancement of the human race – planet Earth has plenty of natural disasters to contend with.

The Engineer

The world of Miss Saigon is a kaleidoscopic portrayal of the mess of war.  The Engineer (originally Jonathan Pryce and now caustically played by Jon Jon Briones) guides us through this world like “the Emcee” of Cabaret or the “Che Guevara” character in Evita.  He engineers deals and exploits the vulnerable women of Vietnam to pimp them to American GIs (and in the second half the businessmen and tourists of Bangkok.)  Although he is a victim some of the time (when he is re-educated) the Engineer’s only motivation is to secure for himself a visa to America where, he hopes, he will be able to live the “American Dream,” shown in this musical as a very trashy goal.    Power ballads (“I Still Believe”) alternate with gaudy chorus numbers (“The Heat Is On In Saigon”) but the first half ends with my favourite song from the show.

Parents and children
“I’d Give My Life For You” begins the process that makes the book of the show, in my opinion, stronger than its main source, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.  Puccini’s music will remain timeless but Boublil and Schönberg have a done a good job, as they did in Les Miserables with Jean Valjean and Cosette, of setting up a parent/child relationship with a resonant back story.

Theatrical coup
The patriarchal love story (with American Chris attempting to “save” Vietnamese Kim) is less important than the mother/son bond and the complications of family honour (Communist Thuy returning to claim his bride.)  The sudden gap of time after we have met the main characters is disconcerting.  We are thrust three years into the future without really knowing what happened to any of the characters.  This strange structure of Miss Saigon is in my view one of its strengths.   Two thirds of the way through the second half Kim then experiences a nightmare which recalls what happened the night Saigon fell and the theatrical power of set, costume, lighting, sound, music and performances creates an unforgettable and upsetting spectacle. The effect in the theatre I found was to make me imagine all the individual stories that are shattered in the chaos of war.

The shout of pain
The photograph above is what inspired the writers of Miss Saigon.  It shows a woman giving up her child at Ho Chi Minh airport in Saigon in the hope the child will have a better life in America.  Schönberg saw the photograph when flicking through a magazine during a writing session at the piano; he says: “The silence of this woman stunned by her grief was a shout of pain louder than any of the earth’s laments.  The child’s tears were the final condemnation of all wars which shatter people who love each other.  The little Vietnamese girl was about to board a plane to America where her father, an ex-GI she had never seen, was waiting for her. Behind the picture lay a background of years of enquiries and bureaucratic formalities in order to find the soldier with whom the woman had shared a brief period of her life…. Was this the ultimate sacrifice, a mother giving up her own happiness to save a child?”

The original box set

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown....

Snappy titles
I am frequently astonished when I contemplate the scale of the sequence of Shakespeare’s history plays. If Shakespeare had been writing today, the credits would have probably had to include “based on Holinshed’s Chronicles with ideas from Edward Halle and Samuel Daniel” with Henry VI Part One (the third written) probably having to admit – “adapted from a play by Thomas Nashe.” The scholarly best-guess is that the first to be written was Henry IV Part Two AKA “The First part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, with the death of the good Duke Humphrey: And the banishment and death of the Duke of Suffolke, and the Tragicall end of the proud Cardinal of Winchester, with the notable Rebellion of Jack Cade: and the Duke of Yorke's first claim unto the crowne” – a snappy title if ever there was one.

Sequels and prequels
This roaring success was followed by the sequel with another memorable title: “The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, and the death of good King Henrie the Sixt, with the Whole Contention betweene the two Houses, Lancaster and Yorke.” (PS Shakespeare couldn’t spell for toffee, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere.) A collaboration with (or adaptation of) Thomas Nashe's earlier material then rushed in the PREQUEL to this pair of plays in order to cash in on the popularity of the first two. The First Part Of Henry The Sixth appeared and the earlier-written plays were then re-titled Henry VI Part Two and Henry VI Part Three. This sequence of three plays became the first entertainment franchise since Ancient Greek times, topped off with a quadrilogy when Richard III roared onto the stage. Richard III was Shakespeare’s breakthrough work, popular immediately and increasingly popular all the way through to the present time.

“that bottled spider… that poisonous bunchback’d toad”

Four famous Richard IIIs: Ian McKellen, Antony Sher, Simon Russell Beale and Jonjo O'Neill

Mind-boggling!
Four plays, twelve hours of stage entertainment recreating the Wars of the Roses in a series of blistering set-pieces, comic interludes, heartbreaking anti-war speeches alongside patriotic calls to arms. It shows a whole nation. Some scenes are set in France. It presents Joan of Arc, Jack Cade, Margaret of Anjou, Richard Duke of York, Richard Duke of Gloucester, Warwick the Kingmaker, Suffolk, the saintly Henry VI, the charismatic Edward IV, the pitiful Edward V…. characters that come to vivid life whenever the plays are staged even metaphorical characters like A Son that has Killed his Father and A Father that has Killed his Son echoing each other in their grief and anguish at the horrors of civil war.

Memorable moments: Katy Stephens as Joan of Arc and, later, as Margaret of Anjou

Four successes; why not four prequels?
Not content with a quadrilogy, Shakespeare then went on to write four even more successful plays. In historical terms, these prequels led up to the events of the Wars of the Roses, starting with the lyrical Richard II, continuing with the sweep and grandeur of Henry IV Parts One and Two and the play that WInston Churchill and Laurence Olivier purloined for the British efforts in the Second World War, Henry V and the point at which Henry VI Part One takes off and the two quadrilogies become an octology. Characters have teemed from this second quadilogy into the national subconscious: Northumberland, Bolingbroke, John of Gaunt, Hal, Falstaff, Mistress Quickly, Poins, Bardolph, Hotspur, Glendower, Lady Percy, Pistol, Silence, Shallow, Fluellen, the Dauphin and Princess/Queen Katherine – not to mention the three very different titular kings.

A state of the nation series of plays
At the end of Richard III, Queen Elizabeth I’s grandfather is crowned saviour of the realm (a propagandist portrayal to flatter the queen and slander the Yorkist line.) Through the eight plays we see the rise and fall of great figures in history, both men and women; we see the disorder and chaos of a country in the throes of a civil war; we see the lurch from medieval to modern times; we see what it means to be a strong leader and a weak leader; we see murders, plots, secrets, betrayals, invasions, sieges, riots, miracles, political scheming, religious hypocrisy, family loyalty and family tragedy, the burden of power, the abuse of power; we see virtues and vices, reasons to be patriotic and reasons to attack your government.

Not-so-long-ago
The Wars of the Roses, the underlying political tension in eight of Shakespeare’s English history plays, was as far removed from the English citizens during Shakespeare’s time as the Boer War is from us.  Richard III died in 1485 and the plays were written between 1590 and 1601.  The way we perceive the late Victorian and Edwardian period is how the original audiences would have thought and felt about the events that were being portrayed at the jam-packed outdoor playhouses. At the premieres of these plays there would have been people whose grandparents had lived through (or indeed been killed) in the convulsive events depicted on stage. The nearest equivalent to their cultural spirit in modern times, to my knowledge, is Rona Munro’s glorious James Plays first shown at the Edinburgh Festival in 2014.

If I should tell my history....

Mythical Histories
In honour of Shakespeare's April 23rd birthday, this post is about his sensational History plays. They feel more relevant than ever because of the popularity of Game of Thrones and George RR Martin’s acknowledgement of the influence of Shakespeare's Wars of the Roses sequence.

Power of Eleven
Shakespeare wrote eleven plays dealing with English History (King John, much of Edward III, Richard II, Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2, Henry V, Henry VI Part 1, Henry VI Part 2, Henry VI Part 3, Richard III and most of Henry VIII.) Shakespeare also wrote four historical tragedies set in Ancient Rome (Titus Andronicus, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra.)

Pseudo-history
Some of the other tragedies contain historical aspects: Titus Andronicus, for example, with the wars between the Romans and Goths or Othello with the Venetian/Turkish tensions. King Lear, Macbeth and Cymbeline (a comedy?!) might fall under the banner of Shakespearean history because they are based on legendary, pseudo-historical figures; and they were included in one of Shakespeare’s key source books, Holinshed’s Chronicles, a history of Britain, although even contemporary commentators thought Holinshed was inventing much of his “history.”

There weren't no mechanical clocks in Ancient Rome, not never
But how far did Shakespeare’s exploration of history colour subsequent interpretation? Richard III and Cleopatra in popular culture certainly derive from Shakespearian characterisation. There are wild inaccuracies and anachronisms in the history plays. These howlers occur either for dramatic effect or as a result of Shakespeare’s patronage and the need to stay in favour with the aristocratic sponsors of the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre. But no theatre fan has ever claimed the History plays are documentaries. Modern TV and film dramas play equally fast and loose with police work, legal proceedings and medical treatments.

Box office hits
With the printing press still a relatively new invention, and newspapers still an invention of the unimagined future, world events in the late sixteenth century might well vanish from memory – unless they had been turned into legends, handed down mainly through oral tradition, or presented in drama. For the majority of the illiterate English populace, plays provided a vivid introduction to the history of their grandparents, piecing together the oral anecdotes that had been passed down. The original audiences flocked to the early performances of these plays; Henslowe’s diary includes fantastic box office receipts for Shakespeare’s histories.  

Elizabethan and Jacobean propaganda
But the plays also served another purpose. Even an invigorated England could not quell the growing fear and uncertainty surrounding the last years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. The question on people’s minds was what would happen to England when their queen died? A series of plots to assassinate Elizabeth, combined with the knowledge that there was no obvious heir to the throne, sent nervous tremors throughout the country. Would the power struggle reignite a civil strife between a new set of contenders like Henry VI, Edward IV and Richard III or would the country unite as it did behind Henry V and Henry VII? 

Universal truth interwoven into the fictional history
Using history as a foundation, Shakespeare built characters and events that explored the rich complexity of human nature. His ability to craft stories of human emotion, motivation, bravery and vulnerability is a legacy that is astonishing in its richness and variety. Thanks, fellah! And happy birthday for April 23rd.

I will hold you and watch you grow in beauty

A wedding in the family….

From The Bridge Across Forever by Richard Bach:
A soul mate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise. Our soul mate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we’re two balloons and together our direction is up, chances are we’ve found the right person. Our soul mate is the one who makes life come to life.

I Will Be Here by Steven Curtis Chapman
Tomorrow morning if you wake up
And the sun does not appear,
I will be here.
If in the dark we lose sight of love,
Hold my hand and have no fear,
‘Cause I will be here.

I will be here,
When you feel like being quiet,
When you need to speak your mind I will listen.
And I will be here
When the laughter turns to crying
Through the winning, losing and trying we'll be together,
‘Cause I will be here.

Tomorrow morning if you wake up
And the future is unclear,
I will be here.
As sure as seasons are made for change,
Our lifetimes are made for years,
So I will be here.

I will be here,
And you can cry on my shoulder,
When the mirror tells us we're older.
I will hold you and watch you grow in beauty,
And tell you all the things you are to me.
I will be here.

I will be true to the promises I've made,
To you and to the One who gave you to me.
I will be here.

Or, as Shakespeare wrote in King John:

He is the half part of a blessed man,

Left to be finished by such as she;

And she a fair divided excellence

Whose fulness of perfection lies in him.