Sometimes preferring musical art and visual art over theatre art, it was with a little hesitation that all of us attended the well-known comedy Hay Fever at the Noel Coward Theatre in the West End of London. Going early to the area, the Tucker family indulged in Jamie Oliver's Restaurant where we ate rabbit, turkey, spaghetti, and lots of great bread. Full and happy, we walked to the theatre. My misgivings over certain kinds of theatre are related partly to the delivery of lines by the actors. If overly affected, I lose interest by virtue of its glossy plasticity. If understated, I lose interest by virtue of its boredom. Without intending to be harshly judgmental, I often find myself working hard to relate to the events on stage. That said, a well-performed, meaningful play is at that height of artistic moments and such was the case with Hay Fever.
Hay Fever is a comedy dating back to 1920 about a family of four where each family member invites a guest to the house for the weekend. Each family member is involved in some sort of way with the person invited and what follows is a comical farce of personality, relationship confusion, and human manipulation. Hilarious at times with moments of bittersweet, the play is a comedic romp through dysfunctional and often unpredictable family members. As each family member uses various guests to inflict pain upon the others, the guest are caught up in a maelstrom of malevolence and misdirected goals.
It all sounds absurd, does it not? And it is, except that we know people with many of the same traits. We see all around us those who over-dramatize every event and situation and use others to advance their own silly theatrical moment. I see this nearly everyday in London and will be watching for it when I return to Texas. From the mother who posed each time she spoke to the daughter whose extremes of emotions zipped around the room with random zeal, the play seemed to remind the audience of how people like these manipulate us in the world. Even more frightening, the play had times that seemed like a gigantic mirror, forcing us to see ourselves on stage.
And this is crux of the culture of the arts. The arts, with all their complexity including theatre, visual art, and music, find ways to teach us more about ourselves, our absurdities, our emotions, our pain, our joys, our laughter, and our relationships. In doing so, we learn and hopefully grow, improving ourselves in the process and often cleansing ourselves of the difficulties that pervade our lives each day. In the case of Hay Fever, we get a chance to laugh at the absurdities on stage, which in turn makes us laugh at the people around us, and also an opportunity to laugh at ourselves. This then reminds us not to take ourselves so seriously and to avoid the viciousness of manipulating others for our own selfish dramatic purposes.
When we saw Phantom of the Opera, we did not necessarily see ourselves on the stage but maybe recognized the resulting pain of ostracizing those different from ourselves. We also are strangely reminded that love is greater than our own personal agendas and it is difficult, if not wrong, to try to hold back the tide and power of love. The torturing anguish of the Phantom is balanced by the love that he shows toward Christine. This is complicated by the love she has for Raoul and the ambiguity she feels toward the Phantom. Evil in practice, harsh in delivery, the Phantom, in spite of his lifetime of isolation born of disfigurement, has a warm, sensitive nature that is ultimately victorious over his darkness. In his victory, he gives up and loses his love Christine in an artistic expression of great emotional depth. All good stuff and it would be difficult to find a better musical than Phantom of the Opera on a London Westend stage.
London embraces the arts and in the process refines itself as a society. Far from being perfect, the arts completes this city of complexity, making it a progressive place with a strong heritage packed full of artistic understanding and enrichment. The power of arts to refine, to transform, and to shape a nation is remarkable and worthwhile. I propose we never relegate the arts to an incidental event in our culture but instead make the arts integral to our lives at all levels.
No comments:
Post a Comment