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Tag: Marilyn Monroe
August 15, 2023
if you’ve listened to the pieces I’ve
November 11, 2018
“A Delicate Balance” – Edward Albee
“Theatre Drama“
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin
___________
there are only a very few 20th-Century
American playwrights who’ve weathered
the rigours of time, two with several
successes, Eugene O’Neill, and
Tennessee Williams, but only one to
tower above those two with only one
work to outmatch them, Edward Albee,
his “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?“
is every inch a king
this is not an impossible feat, Margaret
Mitchell wrote her only book, “Gone
with the Wind“, a contemporary “Iliad“,
which will find its rightful place again
in world literature, note, when our own
too reverberant still times cede to the
concerns of another, less pertinently
fraught era, like reading “War and
Peace“, for instance, now that
Napoleon is long gone
“Gone with the Wind“, quick, name
another 20th-Century novel to top it,
seconds are too long, “Gone with
the Wind” is in our bloodstream,
like Walt Disney or Marilyn Monroe,
even if you’ve never read it, which
you should
but Edward Albee wrote another play
which deserves some attention, and
with redoubtable performances from
both the consummate ever Katharine
Hepburn, and from our own Canadian
tower of unutterable talent, Kate Reid,
abetted by masterful presentations
from no less than the revered Paul
Scofield and the iconic Joseph Cotten
when their supporting numbers come
up, here is a show to watch for, if
nothing else, those individual stellar
contributions
but “A Delicate Balance“, also an
incontestable masterpiece, is about
friendship, and tells a lesson you’ll
not soon forget, friendship is more
than, for better or for worse, just
knowing each other, it says, an
idiosyncratic, indeed recurrent,
Albee theme
cinematography, note, is, here,
dreadful, though actually in that
manner conceived, however
improbably, by an otherwise
noteworthy director, you’ll even
think they’ve shrunk his frame
but visual style shouldn’t let you
forego the play’s profound substance,
nor the triumphant work of its illustrious
cast, at the very top, mostly, of their
considerable, even defining, powers
watch
R ! chard
May 17, 2014
Saint Apollonia
“Saint Apollonia“ (1636)
___________
who ‘s Saint Apollonia, I asked my dentist
when he suggested I call on her to intercede
in this present mortification, I was sitting in
his chair undergoing treatment for a painful
abscess for which he’d aligned already
several instruments along my lower lip
the patron saint of toothaches, he replied,
as though she were a fairy
who knew, I marvelled, I’d only ever heard
of Saint Jude otherwise, patron saint of
lost causes, memorably
you must’ve been raised Catholic, I
interjected, Protestants don’t have
saints
yes, he stated, suggesting the shared
impact of an, however privately
relinquished, or distant, religion,
upbringing
he didn’t know about her time or place,
and counseled I should look into it
who wouldn’t
principally she lived in Alexandria, her
name alone could have given that away,
if Greeks had become Christian anywhere
it would’ve been in Alexandria then, 250,
a city close to the Christian source,
Palestine, and teeming with international
attention, though ruled long by Greeks,
you’ll remember Cleopatra had been of
Greek origin
in a wave of atrocities perpetrated by
Alexandrian mobs, unleashed during
commemorative festivities – see, for
instance, the Vancouver hockey game
riots to compare – roused by prophecies
of ill winds towards their city, set upon
Christians to appease their more raucous
gods, among them Apollonia
in Vancouver she was London Drugs
and the Bay
they pulled out her teeth, one by one,
which is why she’s represented with
pincers, that done they threatened to
burn her alive should she not repeat
their profanities
she jumped, instead, herself, onto the
pyre
Jesus, Mary, Joseph, I exclaimed, quite,
quite uncharacteristically, but only other
too objectionable imprecations could’ve
reflected the extent of my consternation,
after that, I thought, what’s an abscess
later I brought him gratefully a bottle of
fine wine, to the fortified gate, however,
of his impervious secretary, though
serenely be she ever smiling, for having
tended with speed and alacrity to my
distress, however unworthy it may
have been of beatification
a French wine or a Marilyn Merlot, Napa
Valley, I had to ponder, bought both,
couldn’t resist, kept for myself, however,
not to render the choice to the intermediate
secretary, the Marilyn, my more familiar, and
headier, saint
cheers
Richard
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