I am confused about theatre on many levels. One level of confusion makes itselfpronounced here as a "third voice" to the dialogue established by David'sresponse to Chuck's posting on his website about "Phaedre." To begin, I wasseated beside Chuck (his guest) when we saw the movie/play together. I felt sograteful to Chuck (someone who the theatre community continues to owe a greatdebt to) because he had invited me to witness something I afterwards felt wasVERY EXCITING for our community. I'll try to explian this, and it's difficult,largely because I don't in this moment know what I need, let alone what ourcommunity might need, as regards an aesthetic theatrical quality, and along theway I'll maybe respond to some of the points I'm remembering about the posteddialogue. It would be easier, maybe, to simply add a third "comparison" totheir two voices on David's site, but something tells me this is the better wayto express my view.I agree almost in entirely with Chuck's response and I agree with more than halfof David's. And I read them just now in the same sitting! How can this be? Apart from own confusion, apart from each of their responses being directedtoward different aspects (Chuck on the production as theatre/film and David onthe production as individual actor accomplishments/casting) there is my feelingthat I may be torn by not knowing whether I saw something new, something old,something in between (more likely) or what. I don't just mean the form of anHD film edited play, I mean "contemporary classical Greek theatre" --What excited me: it was different than most play productions or movies. I thinkof David's comment about not thinking theatre like this existed anymore. Iwould be all for more of it, the "extreme passion" sort (but I'm paraphrasingand generalizing poorly), because I think so much out there now is way too coldand minimal these days and that all the arts, maybe especially literature andfilm and plays, i.e narrative genres (yes, Howard! plays too are narratives!)are not going for the "extreme" of emotion. Partly for fear of sentimentality. But sentimentality is the underside, not the overside of emotion. "Pheadre" asperformed might be melodramatic but that is the more, not the less, of emotion,and I'd rather have the more.I agree with David's comments about Theseus (the actor) and Hyppolitus (theactor) and the real specific support David provides to back this up. (David isgood with specifics!)As for the rest of the cast, I always felt engaged, even when they were handwringing, and Helen Mirren, in particular, did a lot of this. But, as I findhands to be the second most expressive human feature, I was glad to have amedium (play film) that allowed me to watch her hands, up close, as much as Iwanted. (A whole discussion could ensue about the "medium" choices being made,i.e. when there were closeups or not, and Chuck remarks on some of this, and italways felt "good" when the camera did its thing, but we need Howard to jointhis part of the discussion, at least!)I'm reminded that to my left sat a woman who was mortified that a small group ofothers to the right of Chuck found a good number of the scenes laughable. Theylaughed out loud, at admissions of guilt, lust, incest, etc. Even here I wasconfused. At first I thought, hey, lady, let them laugh if they want, it's afree country. More and more though, I realized that the mortified woman wastaking the seriousness (call it melodrama if you want, but I don't think itwas) to heart and that the people laughing simply could not "buy" the goingson. What was it about extremes of human family dynamics they couldn't acceptas such? I have to say I don't think they were laughing at the acting (it'sjust my feeling) so much as laughing at the occurences. Here is maybe the onepoint I disagree with Chuck, if I'm remembering correctly something he saidabout the story not being plot driven . . . (again, a poor paraphrase) In myview, I thought: FINALLY! a play that goes for extreme twists, not just of fateor by fate, or even of actions, but by utterances of dialogue that turneverything, very often, on a dime, so to speak. In other words, I had theimpression they were laughing at the play. I don't think they believed thelines.Some things I really liked: The title character, played by Mirren, would feeland express one thing and almost overlappingly feel and say another,diametrically opposed, emotion. Ah, but this was the real strength (of theplay, of the production): they weren't diammetically opposed at all. Only ourreason finds them to be conflicting. Somewhere deep down inside the seeminglycontradictory feelings we feel and rarely express are all one. It's that big"one" (I don't know how else to say it just now) that is at the bottom of ourhearts that we are so incapable of uttering. That sounds so sappy. I don'tknow if I even know what I mean. But I think it relates to the notion of whatDavid brings up about the gods. Maybe what is "up there" is also "deep inside"(okay, again, maybe sappy, maybe obvious) and that we have to shout that muchlouder to reach it / tap into it. I don't know. But I do think this speaks toDavid's objections about feeling the people were "determined" by the godswhenever they let their emotions fly . . . this may be what gods are,manifestations of our inner feelings, and certainly, much of the rest of theworld sees them as such. I.e. maybe we have too "westernized" the greek godsand think them existing up there (okay, Mt. Olympus and all) when actually theyare the same but different "spirits" residing within. I came away from themovie liking that there was this kind of "down to earth, as in, inside me"aspects to the gods, EXCEPT, of course when Theseus addresses his speech toPoseiden (bad "acting") the way he did . . . Yes, there may have been too manyinstances of this, but more generally, I thought the actors were speaking tothe forces within each other, not elsewhere and maybe this was the"contemporary classical thing" I'd like to see more of?I'm reminded of something. I once saw Patrick Stewart, on film, render a longspeech by Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus (when he wails about "being the sea"as he cradles his raped and mutilated daughter) I always thought thespeech--the lines, the amount of them, the poetry, in their context--waspreposterous. Until I saw him do them. Actually, I still think the speech ispreposterous. But the actor "made them" not only believable, but riveting.Racine's lines are not "over the top" like this, but actually deal verydirectly with deeply troubling emotions. What am I trying to say? I've lostit. Maybe that in our revered Shakespeare, there is plenty that isoutrageously "unactable" and yet actors make it happen. In Racine, it's allquite close to the bone, and still people found it ludicrous? I don't know.Oh, well, one more thing. About Ted Hughes: I think his retelling of Ovid's"Metamorphoses" (poems which were among the last he wrote) are stunning. Here,in "Phaedre," I heard unevenness in the lines of the play. I can't technicallyexplain it, except to say that I heard places where the modern idiomaticexpressions didn't jive with the rest of the whole. I would want to visit theRacine on the page, see Hughes's changes, and say more, but . . .Thanks to Chuck and David for their insights.
Patrick
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