THE Q&A: DAVID LEVEAUX
Tom Stoppard's 1993 play "Arcadia" is about so many things: physics, love, romanticism, poetry, academia, gardening, history and determinism. This sweeping story takes place on a single English estate during two periods, the early 19th century and the present day. The play features two versions of a single narrative—the original events as they unfolded in the past, and a reconstructed account painstakingly pieced together by modern-day historians. Central to the story is a precocious young girl, Thomasina Coverly, who realises before her time that just as one can't un-stir jam from rice pudding, Newtonian equations can't run backwards. As the world of the play moves forward, relics from the past accumulate on stage in an entropic collage. The two eras ultimately collide in a beautiful waltz.
Mr Stoppard's impressive epic of a play is now enjoying a revival on Broadway. David Leveaux, the director, has already been nominated for two Tony awards for Stoppard plays, "Jumpers" and "The Right Thing". (He has also garnered nominations for his direction of "Nine", "Anna Christie" and "A Moon for the Misbegotten", all on Broadway.) Mr Leveaux's production of "Arcadia", which first opened in London in 2009, is now at New York's Barrymore Theatre with a new ensemble cast, including Raúl Esparza, Byron Jennings and Billy Crudup (who starred in the original Broadway show as Thomasina's tutor, Septimus; he returns as Bernard, a rather weaselly academic). read more »
LOW-TECH GENIUS
One of the best new games doesn't require a game console, an iPad or even a smartphone. After one quick download, everyone reading this can be knee-deep in "Digital: A Love Story", enjoying a surprisingly robust recreation of what it was like to be "online" in the late 1980s.
At first it seems that there is no real game at all, but simply a low-resolution computer desktop screen, controls for the background music and a single icon labeled "messages". Upon clicking the latter, players quickly gain access to an old-fashioned, phone-based modem dialer, as well as the phone number for a local BBS—ie, a Bulletin Board System, the message boards that pre-web modem users could use to communicate with other like-minded early adopters.
From this point, the plot develops rapidly—the player strikes up an online friendship that soon blossoms into love, all conveyed via the increasingly personal, flirty and emotional text responses the player receives from one particular BBS member (note that the romance narrative presumes players will be enticed by a mysterious female pen-pal). Almost immediately, this nascent relationship is endangered by a complex conspiracy of high-level hackers, the federal government and hitherto unknown Artificial Intelligence programs. The plot is too intriguing for me to spoil it. But the real charm of this game comes from its unique approach to gameplay and its quirky evocation of early computer use. read more »
THE FEED: APR 13TH
What we're reading:
Ten most frequently challenged library books of the year
(GalleyCat): The list is topped by an award-winning children’s book about two male penguins who hatch and care for a baby chick; Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed" also makes the list, as does "The Hunger Games". Don't people know that the best way to lure readers is to make a book controversial?
Orange prize shortlist announced
(Independent): The list of six books by women includes three first-time novelists "tackling macabre subjects"; the award ceremony takes place in June
Salter and sex
(Paris Review): Alexander Chee on James Salter's sexy realism: "Too much writing about sex tries to either make it prettier or more serious, sexier or funnier or shocking, or anything, really, except what it is. On its own terms, sex is information. This I learned from reading Salter."
Today's quote:
"Someone has to speak up for the London skyline. It is being viciously attacked, invaded by philistines, and a nation stunned into acceptance of every monstrosity so long as we are told it is modern seems happy to see taste, style and proportion go out of the window. Why are we putting up with the Shard?" read more »
AUCTION HOUSES BITE BACK
For decades the Meiyintang collection had been a source of mystery. Widely believed to be the finest trove of imperial Chinese treasures still in private hands in the West, it had rarely ever been seen in full. Little was known about the two brothers who had built it up—ultra-discreet Swiss businessmen with long-standing interests in the pharmaceutical industry in the Philippines and the Asian hinterland. They were, says Roger Keverne, a London dealer who occasionally sold to them, “interested, knowledgeable, passionate and possessed of impeccable taste and the utmost discretion.”
So when an initial selection of Meiyintang porcelain was put up for auction at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong last week, it was billed as the sale of the century—an opportunity to acquire works that might never find their way onto the market again. Even in the current overheated market for imperial Chinese wares, the Meiyintang sale was widely expected to achieve new records.
The reality, though, turned out to be quite different.
Of the 77 lots offered at the April 7th sale, 23 failed to reach the reserve price and did not sell. Half the “premium” lots—those with estimates of at least HK$6m—were also bought in, including the two most important pieces. An auction that had been expected to raise as much as HK$1 billion ($128.6m) fetched barely a third of that. So what happened?
read more »
A HORSE THAT TRAVELS WELL
Four years after it first opened on London’s Southbank, “War Horse” has gone stateside. Based on a children’s novel by Michael Morpurgo, the play conveys the chaos and tragedy of the first world war through the experiences of a young English boy and his horse Joey. It is a moving tale, spectacularly staged, particularly for the way it dramatises a revolutionary shift in warfare, when machines began replacing horses on the battlefield. One the most impressive scenes sees Joey go head to head with an armoured tank.
The star performance is delivered by an impressively lifelike puppet made of cane and gauze, which is animated by three agile puppeteers trained by the Handspring Puppet Company (whose South African founders Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones spoke at the TED conference last month). One quickly forgets that there are no real animals on stage. The play is set to some beautiful music, and the new all-American cast nailed their Devonshire accents.
"War Horse" is the eighth production the National Theatre has brought to America since 2003, when it set up its partnership with Bob Boyett, a New York producer. Some have travelled better than others. Alan Bennett’s “History Boys”, which opened on Broadway in 2006, proved a roaring success. A production of “Coram Boy” the following year, about abandoned children in Dickensian Britain, fared less well. read more »
THE MORE THE MERRIER
Events in London last week proved that competition can be good for business, at least in the art world. The three leading auction houses—Sotheby’s, Bonhams and Christie’s—were full of Islamic and Indian art. Some rarities, some masterpieces; most of it a treat to see. Sotheby’s announcement late last year that it was going to sell a chunk of the late Stuart Cary Welch’s famous collection (written about in this week’s Economist) must have prodded the others to get moving. After all, few collectors, curators and dealers were likely to miss the Welch sale. An active collector for over 70 years, Welch’s eye was good, his approach bold, his judgments acute. Last week Sotheby’s auctioned off his Islamic pieces, saving his Hindu material for another splash in May.
read more »
THE FEED: APRIL 11TH
What we're reading:
People of the eye
(Boston Globe): Authors of a new book on deaf culture argue that the hereditary deaf should be understood as an ethnic group
Sidney Lumet dies at 86
(Los Angeles Times): "It was the messy business of simply being human that the filmmaker found so compelling"
Why even read poetry?
(NPR): David Orr, the poetry critic for the New York Times, on whether one should read poems: "I don't know that people ought to bother"
Today's quote:
"Discussions of technology and media tend to focus on speed—what’s the fastest way to break the story, consume the story, influence the story? After all, media consumers today seem like info-rats chewing through heaps of micro-facts and instant-expiration data points. But the other interesting thing about media these days is that it can stand perfectly still. In fact it loiters: shows don’t simply spill over the airwaves and evaporate; they linger on DVRs, DVDs, various online services. Newspaper articles pile up in Web 'archives'."
~ Rob Walker, "How 'Radiolab' is Transforming the Airwaves" (New York Times Magazine)
AN EDUCATION, COURTESY OF MICHAEL MORPURGO
Michael Morpurgo’s young companion, Flora Fergusson, didn’t just write an article about the trip: she produced a 32-page book, complete with maps, photos and a note about the author (her, not him). “I knew nothing about Ypres,” she writes. “All I knew was that I was allowed to miss a day of school as it was going to be a very ‘educational’ trip.”
Flora’s tale is full of telling details, from the 6.10am start: “Michael was getting his sat-nav ready…he was anxious about getting the train, but [his wife] Clare was very laid-back about it. This contrast carried on all weekend.”
Once in Ypres, Flora notes the “exceedingly polite” drivers, the “delicious” fried eggs and “enormous” chips. The museum is “fascinating”, but she is most struck by the outdoor sites. “We visited the site of the Christmas truce and I found it truly amazing. I looked down the valley and wondered what a soldier in 1914 would have thought, standing in the same place.”
Later, she goes on, “I saw Private Peaceful’s grave...It was heart-breaking seeing all the names on the graves, some with messages from their families, some with no message at all…[At the Menin Gate] My mouth hung limply open as I stared at the rows and rows of names…I will always vividly remember my weekend and what the soldiers did to save their countries and loved ones.”
Flora ends on a lighter note. “A lady checking the passports said, ‘Are you the Michael Morpurgo?’ and Michael replied, ‘Yes’. As we left, she shrieked ‘WOW!’.”
THE CREEPINESS OF BRADLEY COOPER
Bradley Cooper is a 36-year old American actor with textbook good looks: a wavy mane, tanned limbs and eyes so blue they're nearly pastel. He has enjoyed romances with Jennifer Aniston and Renée Zellweger. His shoulders are broad and his smile dazzling. Yet there is also something of the psychopath about him. Rob Delaney, comedian, recently tweeted: "I bet Bradley Cooper & Jared Leto text photos of women they've murdered to each other & have a good laugh". Over 100 people retweeted Delaney's speculation. Never mind Jared Leto for now. Whence Mr Cooper's creepiness?
Sure, plenty of actors pack a dose of darkness. Robert Downey, junior, Russell Brand and Matthew McConaughey are all easy examples of men who are murky yet unthreatening, more inclined to harm themselves than others. Sean Penn and Russell Crowe are dark in an impulsive, paparazzi-punching way. (By contrast, the flailing Mel Gibsons and Charlie Sheens of the celebrity world are not dark, because darkness is an adult quality. With their tantrums and whining, Messrs Gibson and Sheen remain—in every sense but dermatologically—children.) But there's a certain darkness that few leading men boast: the kind that leads to secret body parts discovered in a freezer. read more »
ACCESSIBILITY AND PUNK FASHION
One of the perks of National Poetry Month in America is the sudden ubiquity of poetic sound-bytes, interviews, poems and archives—all of it like crocuses in the April damp.
Here's a particularly good bit, from a 1983 Paris Review interview with John Ashbery, a formidable American poet. The interviewer, Peter Stitt, asks Ashbery whether he likes to tease or play games with the reader. His answer, like many a good poem, spans widely. It dips into sartorial sense, and acts as a small treatise on writing and humanity.
It’s all right if it’s done affectionately, though how can this be with someone you don’t know? I would like to please the reader, and I think that surprise has to be an element of this, and that may necessitate a certain amount of teasing. To shock the reader is something else again. That has to be handled with great care if you’re not going to alienate and hurt him, and I’m firmly against that, just as I disapprove of people who dress with that in mind—dye their hair blue and stick safety pins through their noses and so on. The message here seems to be merely aggression—“hey, you can’t be part of my strangeness” sort of thing. At the same time I try to dress in a way that is just slightly off, so the spectator, if he notices, will feel slightly bemused but not excluded, remembering his own imperfect mode of dress.
Comment of the moment
quote As the author of A River Runs Through It noted, its rhythms march with its casually Calvinistic economy of the unneeded. Witness the 23d Psalem, with only two adjectives: Still waters and Green pastures. ...