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Can you count to a million billion trillion?
Let us all agree that I would make the world's worst theater critic, at least in terms of timing. But if you have no plans for tomorrow afternoon, I strongly recommend you catch the last performance of Carole Braverman's The Margaret Ghost as performed by Theatre@First, because I went with no expectations but historical curiosity and good memories of last season's The Winter's Tale and what I got was as smart as Stoppard and reminded me intermittently of certain webcomics I love. The play is a three-act semi-fantasia on the life of Margaret Fuller; it is subtitled A Transcendentalist Love Story and indeed there is a triangle of emotions at its heart, although really it's sort of a pentangle, or maybe it has nine points, one for each actor in the cast. If you have ever wanted to see Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet-prophet of Concord, saint of the Transcendentalists, utterly and completely wrong-footed by a woman who's got a classical education and isn't afraid to use it, this is your play. This is also your play if you want to hear Horace Greeley talking socialism with Nathaniel Hawthorne, a chair-throwing argument in Italian, the world's least informative crash course in sex ed, or just if you want complex relationships between fully human beings, meaning that none of them are without moments of sympathy and all of them are flawed, including the heroine. Quite a lot of it is quotably funny. ("Then the Dark Vision is a blabbermouth!") It even passes a kind of reverse Bechdel test—when two male characters talk, they are just as likely to be talking about Margaret as about politics or philosophy or art. She shouldn't have died at age forty, but neither should many extraordinary people at the ages they did. I am sorry her writings were censored; I am glad enough survived to attest to her brilliance and incidentally to construct this play. I think I am about to continue my long tradition of fiction-inspired research. And I also think that I may have to pick up a subscription to Theatre@First, because I was told after the show that their upcoming season will include Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not for Burning. Maybe I'll even get to see it not on the next-to-last night . . .
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I thought it was awesome. It was being filmed from the audience, so maybe there will be a DVD.
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I am so glad you had such a wonderful time. This production was part of a year-long celebration of Margaret Fuller and there are more chances to learn about her throughout the country at that website, I believe.
Thank you so much for coming!
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Awesome. There were several people I would have liked to show this play to and at least two of them were inconveniently out of town.
You're making me think we should offer them online.
You should. Also, if you're the person to talk to about this: given that the published script already includes an introduction by the director, you could consider collecting the actors' notes in print as well. I was pointed in their direction by John Olson and they're more personal and more striking perspectives—on the dramatic characters, the historical figures, and the two different productions—than one gets from things like program notes; they're worth preserving somewhere more permanent than Google.
Thank you so much for coming!
Thank you for the show!
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Boston, pleasantly surprised! I saw The Lady's Not for Burning at the Theater at Monmouth in Maine in 1995 and I've never seen it performed anywhere since. It's one of my oldest favorite plays.
(They will also be doing Equus, which is not my favorite Peter Shaffer—that would be Amadeus or The Royal Hunt of the Sun—but I'll still go see it, seriously.)
Whose production did you own on video?
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I had the '87 version with Kenneth Branagh and Cherie Lunghi; a friend of mine borrowed and lost it, and I still haven't forgiven her, esp. since there's been no DVD release. I don't know if it was a good production or not, but I loved it.
Thank you!!
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Based on my experience of The Winter's Tale and The Margaret Ghost, you totally should.
I had the '87 version with Kenneth Branagh and Cherie Lunghi; a friend of mine borrowed and lost it, and I still haven't forgiven her, esp. since there's been no DVD release. I don't know if it was a good production or not, but I loved it.
That's the one I was guessing—I've wanted to see it for years, but I've never even seen a videocassette. I wouldn't forgive your friend, either.
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The videotape's still available used on Amazon, but I don't imagine the things are still actually viewable after twenty-three years.
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You're welcome. Perhaps I will see you in person at one of the performances.
The videotape's still available used on Amazon, but I don't imagine the things are still actually viewable after twenty-three years.
Up until last year, my parents had videotapes from my childhood that still played. Now the VCR doesn't interface with the HD cable box and all bets are off.
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My long tradition of fiction-inspired research Yay! That's the only research I ever do with enthusiasm.
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Nobody in the play is a straw man, and not all the characters' problems have to do with early nineteenth century sexism.
(I think you would have liked their Hawthorne and Emerson: the former tall, dark, and as drawlingly epigrammatic as a hero by Noël Coward or Wilde; the latter something over six feet and thin as a lath, with the kind of pained, fine-cut face that would do very well in bronze. They looked like their respective genres. They were neither of their books.)
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Note to self: always look at the current music
Elvis Perkins in Dearland did a version of Gypsy Davy?
I am going to go listen to more clips of that group.
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Yep.
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I think I LOVE this band.
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I don't know if it's my favorite, but I love how it fuses "Gypsy Davy" and "Sixteen Come Sunday" and maybe an echo of "The House Carpenter"; it's definitely folk from the next worldline over.
in the department of things I didn't know...
[Elvis] Perkins is the son of actor Anthony Perkins.
.... wow.
Annnyway. What I was originally going to say, before I got distracted into researching Elvis Perkins, was that you said it so true about his sound. Next worldline over for very sure.
couple more
"Chains, Chains, Chains"
"Ash Wednesday"
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Yeah; I didn't know Anthony Perkins had children, much less that one of them's an actor and the other a musician. This was the day after I discovered Robin Sachs' father in Nineteen Eighty-Four. I'm waiting to find out who else's family is going to fall out of the woodwork.
"Ash Wednesday"
Eliot, w00t.
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Well, Mervyn Peake's grandson (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TJOjIgxxWY) is a musician.
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That's cool!
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I have to think more about this idea of the reverse Bechdel test. Isn't it interesting that we think about men as talking about philosophy or art, etc. all the time such that when they talk lovingly about a woman they know it's a big deal, when the reverse is generally true for women? I'm also trying to figure out if I should apply the Bechdel/reverse Bechel to real people, or just fictional characters.
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It may be completely invalid for wider application—I was just struck by the thought halfway through the first act.
(I believe the play also passes the Bechdel test itself, since it opens with a conversation between two women whose topics include chronic pain, creativity, and the physical mechanics of sex.)
I'm also trying to figure out if I should apply the Bechdel/reverse Bechel to real people, or just fictional characters.
I'm not as sure of what its application tells you about a group of people in real life, other than that they might be boring to hang out with.
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Though at the musical party I went to last night, someone sang Bunthorne's song from Patience, and at the lines "you must get up all the germs of the Transcendental terms and plant them everywhere" my mind went straight to " . . . people who think the Transcendentalists are a kind of railroad!"
I have been gleefully re-reading my copy of the script ever since I got it. I very much hope there's a video.
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They were filming last night, so we can hope.
(I was told they always make archival copies, but given this production was part of the Margaret Fuller Bicentennial, the video might be made more widely available. Which I would approve of.)
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I acquired a copy at the first intermission.
Thank you for coming and for enjoying it so thoroughly.
Thank you for reviving it. I was in completely the wrong state (geographically; I was living in Connecticut in 2006) for the original production, and in retrospect I think I would have been very sorry to have gone through life entirely unaware of The Margaret Ghost.