Wryday Tandem Wren

At The Brick now. My dialup service at home is now a no-go -- I just get an error message from AOL saying that my AOL account is not authorized to use dialup, which is the only service I have. I've had the AOL account for years, I'm used to my email address (though I have another for certain things), and I like the mail interface, so I want to keep the account. It started, however, as a secondary name on my mother's account, so when there are problems, she has to call them up and fix it.


It's impossible, apparently, to call up AOL and get a human being anymore. Some surfing around while waiting for service instead showed her that we could move to DSL (on my phone line) for as much as the normal dialup service, so we ordered it, and I should have service at home again by Tuesday. We checked on cable, too, but the provider in our area won't do just internet, you have to take cable TV too (which is more expensive, of course, and we don't want it in any case).


So, we'll be faster at home soon, and with a wireless router, too, so Berit can use her iMac online again. In the meantime, I have to drive over here to The Brick to check in, jamming myself behind the bar in an uncomfortable position. While also listening to the iPod to get out this week's selection of randomness:


1. "Les Bras en Croix" - Johnny Hallyday - Souvenirs Souvenirs

French pop-rock with a bit of kitsch, but less than I usually expect from Hallyday. Good vocal and guitar work. Almost rock 'n' roll.

I like knowing enough French to catch words and phrases here and there in songs like this, but only enough to make what they're singing about sound seriously surreal.


2. "The Horse Bit Me" - Wesley Willis - Greatest Hits Volume 3

A little piece of life from our favorite rockin' schizophrenic (except maybe for Wild Man Fischer). I'm torn between amusement and admiration for Willis and discomfort and worry at how he may have been used by those promoting his "music." Being torn about it makes it more interesting.


3. "Through These Architect's Eyes" - David Bowie - Outside

Can't think of many artists of the popular musics (and aftershocks) who, even in an "art-based" concept album like this one (which includes sections about Joseph Beuys, Mark Rothko, and Ron Athey in the short story included as liner notes), who would do a song name-checking Philip Johnson and Richard Rogers.

Not as great an album as I thought when it first came out, and I was just happy that Bowie had made a good album at all, but if not great, it is indeed a REALLY GOOD one, with many high points, many good ones (like this song) and no actual "duds."


4. "A Certain Kinda Hurtin'" - Johnny Cash - Man in Black 1963-69

Would be silly from anyone else, Cash gives it gravitas. I swear his voice can make almost anything sound significant, rich and deep. Though I've also recently acquired his reading of the bathetic ballad "Old Shep," but haven't heard it yet. That song might win over Cash's excellence (as it did to Elvis when he did it).


5. "Vaquero Galactico (Ahora Vaquera)" - Ultrasonicas - Mexican Madness

Crunchy guitar instrumental from a collection of recent Mexican bands working in the classic nasty south-of the-border style you can hear in bands from decades ago. They all do a good job of doing work in the style without sounding like embalmed homages or ripoffs. Nice dropins of what sound like a a promo for an upcoming horror film on a Spanish-speaking UHF station.


6. "Strange Feeling" - Johnny Nash - Go Go Power

Good pop-dance single. Well sung, with odd bits of instrumentation/harmonies that seem to be there to represent the title of the song. I could start a game of music artist "word golf" now, with Johnny Cash followed by Johnny Nash . . . where could you go then?


7. "Fire on Babylon (live)" - Sinead O'Connor - Lilith Fair: A Celebration of Women in Song

I miss having more new Sinead as Sinead, not singing traditional Irish songs or doing Reggae (though I love her big band album). Maybe she'll get back to this kind of sensitively belted rock at some point.

This song just gets better and bigger, with a great fiddle break. Jesus, I miss having new albums from her.


8. "Brazilianaires Theme" - Lisbon Raincoat Mojo - 69 Plunderphonics 96

An anagrammed artist reperforms their work as edited and processed by John Oswald (Plunderphonics). Becomes almost Phil Glass-like in the minimalism and repetition. Lovely and, yeah, hypnotic.


9. "We'll Have a Chance" - Rosie & Originals - Rato's Nostalgia Collection 28

Trivial poop.


10. "Charva" - Frank Zappa - The Lost Episodes

AH! And speaking of trivial poop, here's a very young Mr. Zappa in the early 60s on a short-lived late night radio show he had ("The Uncle Frankie Show") playing those classic 50s chords and singing a stupid love song to a girl whose dad owns a liquor store. The proto-Cruising with Ruben and the Jets.


Okay, time to clean up after last night's Tiny Theater show and have the space nice for The Present Perfect. Another entry in a little bit when I get done with that.


No cats today. Can't upload photos. Sorry.

An Email Exchange with Peter Brown

PB,


Some answers below. Thanks for being on top of some of the textual issues. It's good to have a couple of people remind me of these things (Aaron Baker has also been on top of some of this).

Regarding the things I've done to the text, having worked on it for 15 years, I sometimes can't remember the reasons I did what I did to the play anymore. I've been living mainly with the cutting that I've been doing for all that time, not bothering to look at a "complete" version of the play. When I moved my pen and pencil cuts from the paperback I'd been working with to an electronic version in 2001, other problems may have come up (the online version I went to was a different combination of Q2 and F1 than the book I'd been using). The dropping of "observation" from my line that you pointed out last night is a good example of errors that should be corrected.

At the same time, some of the cuts that apparently change the meaning of the text are intended (I'd think of it not so much as changing as I would 'clarifying"). While things that might be confusing should be brought up, at the same time the text as it stands should be approached as a "Q3," in a way. This is the play we're doing, and variants should only be brought in when needed (as one would in doing a F1 production but bringing in Q1 or Q2 where it actually makes more "sense").

The show is Ian W. Hill's Hamlet not only out of ego, promotion, and pretension, but also to indicate an individual's specific point-of-view on the play. Hamlet, a masterpiece, is not a masterpiece like King Lear, or a damned great play like Macbeth, both of which work as dramatic pieces if you just stage them as is and stage them well. Hamlet is a big, brilliant, sprawling monster that works best as a play on its feet when a focus is given to it -- and many different focii will work -- but an unfocused version without a point of view becomes a tedious museum piece or a collection of "Billy Shakepeare's Greatest Hits!"

I haven't gone as far as Charles Marowitz, whose views on the play were very influential on my own, though ultimately towards different ends -- he cut it to a 90-minute collage and called it The Marowitz Hamlet -- but it is a WAY of looking at Hamlet. Which is what any production is, after all; it's just a question of HOW you choose to place your gaze.

But sometimes I need to reconsider whether I've looked the wrong way, even for what I want to do. Thanks for the ombudmanism.


Hey, Ian.  Got your note about Saturday.  A couple of "Hamlet" thoughts, FYI, or for the blog.


In rehearsing the speech to the players last night, I was struck when you pointed out how obnoxious is Hamlet's greeting to Horatio in the very next scene.  How Hamlet assures Horatio that his effusive greeting is not meant as flattery, for the simple, if mercenary reason that Horatio has no "revenue" to bestow upon flatterers.  Apart from his "good spirits," of course.

I just wanted to be sure you're aware that you've trimmed a large subsequent portion of that speech which places Hamlet's blithe snobbery in context.  After the initial comment about Horatio's "revenue," Hamlet goes on to praise Horatio for his even temper, a trait much more highly prized.


Yeah, here's a place where I didn't remember the cut at all - but this is the way it should be for this production. Whether I knew it when I made the cut, it's a vital part of this Hamlet.

I could have maybe used the "even temper" part to make the point that ultimately this is NOT a good thing for Horatio, one of the reasons he is NOT A GOOD FRIEND to Hamlet -- he accepts things in his friend that he shouldn't stand by for.

But in the end, dramatically speaking, we don't need it here, for this production, and it goes.


Also, you may want to consider trimming Gertrude's "Lady doth protest too much" line.  In the folio text, it comes after the spoken dialogue of the play-within-the-play, a large chunk of which involves the Player Queen declaring her undying love and loyalty to the King--BEFORE he's killed.  In your version, you have it coming after the dumbshow, which presents the entire plot of the play, ending with the Queen taking up with the Poisoner.  So the only thing the Player Queen can be protesting too much of now is either her grief over the dead Player King, or her refusal to take up with the Poisoner. 

Do you mean for Gertrude to be saying, in effect, that the Player Queen should've grieved less and fallen for the Poisoner more quickly?


In the case of this version as it's developed and focused, it's more about our Gertrude's royal reaction to a pretend Queen's very unroyal histrionics -- not even so much that Adam's Player Queen performance is bad, but it goes against Gertrude's opinion of how royalty behaves, which has become an important part of this production.

Also, Gertrude is holding back lots of anger -- the dumb show is more than enough to get across to almost everyone in the room what Hamlet is saying, before the Players speak a word, and Gertrude is having to keep a stiff upper lip in extremely unpleasant conditions.


Just one other note: in the spoken section of the play-within-the-play, Lucianus' first line is "Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing."  Not "The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge."  The raven line is not a quote from the PWP, but a continuation of Hamlet's last speech hurrying the actor to leave his damnable faces and begin the next part of the play.

Because, of course, the poisoner Lucianus is not seeking revenge on anybody.  He's about to secretly poison the king for his own gain.  So may I suggest you cutting me off on "hands apt?"


-PB


And here's exactly the kind of correction we need. Yes, of course, you're right on all counts here. That's how we'll do it.


thanks
IWH