Mirvish's Lord of the Rings

Back in March, before I began this blog I went to see a preview of the Mirvish's Musical version of Lord of the Rings. I was on vacation and went into Toronto for the first time in years to brave busloads of high school students for a weekday matineé performance. All attempts to adapt J. R. R. Tolkien's 1500 page masterpiece suffer from the same problems--a story with over 150 characters; 9 orders of creatures who each have their own languages, customs, history, and living arrangements; an invented world that sprawls over hundreds of square miles under and above the earth and even in the trees; that takes place over the course of several years with flash backs to events thousands of years before. Every attempt at adaptation has had to face the same dilemma: only those who already know the storyline can hope to follow a plot this complicated; but Tolkien aficionados will always be disappointed by the number of their favourite scenes and plot-lines that are inevitably cut in order to make the result a workable length. Over the years I've seen several attempts; on stage, animated and live action movies; at adapting both the Ring Trilogy and it's prequel, The Hobbit. Of course anyone interested in attending the Mirvish Production will probably have seen Peter Jackson's 12 hour, $700,000,000 magnum opus. Modern computer techniques have made possible what previous versions couldn't possibly accomplish but even this version was forced to be selective about the plot lines it covered.

The first thing that strikes anyone who goes to the Princess of Wales theatre is the thirty-foot gold ring plunked in the centre of the security curtain onstage. Backed by scrim and surrounded by intertwining twigs which extend on all sides right to the first seats in the side balconies and the dome in the ceiling this ring dominated the theatre. Given the production's three and one-half hour running time with 2 intermissions the second impression is made upon the seat of one's pants. Thanks to battery packs, radio mikes, and a state of the art sound system no number of unruly students prevents one from hearing what happens onstage. As usual there is a live orchestra but only the conductor is visible to the audience. The action onstage begins immediately as the first audience members are admitted to the theatre with Hobbits wandering up the aisles and performing business onstage culminating in the chasing of laser fireflies with various sized nets; and continues unbroken as the house lights dim and the lights come up onstage.

This was, after all, a musical and musical numbers and choreographed business predominate. Enough 'smoke' is used during the course of 3 and a half hours that they must be buying the oil by the 45 gallon drum. When the balrog appears, just before the first intermission, smoke and fire in the form of black crepe are blown out over the audience in a 60 mph gale of hot air that could only have been created by firemen's smoke evacuators or a small jet engine. The bits of crepe reached our seats in the 'gods'. The revolving stage is sectioned into elements that can be raised up to 20 feet above stage level or dropped below it. The lighting effects boggle the mind. For $17,000,000, we get impressive set-piece highlights of the story but no sense of the whole.

At the time I wrote that as a musical this production was lacking in any memorable melodies, as a play the action was interrupted by too many extended periods of song and dance to be cohesive, and as a representation of Lord of the Rings the storyline didn't hold together. I was gratified to see that professional critics from Toronto to New York to London agreed with me. When less than a month later I was offered the opportunity to buy half-price tickets for myself and all my family and friends to come back to see it again it became obvious this production was in trouble. This past week it was announced that it is closing prematurely at the end of August for major retooling before a planned opening in London. As a production that had to run a minimum of 9 months just to break even, this gamble has definitely not paid off.

I will confess that as a genre musicals are not my thing. I love opera, but as musicals go I find that too often the action of the play is broken up by song and dance and as music too often the numbers are performed by actors whose musical ability is lacking or the play is performed by singers who can't act. That said I went to Lord of the Rings with hopes of seeing a reasonable adaptation of a story I love. That I and so many others were disappointed saddens me. The Mirvishes and their financial backers took a bath on this one and one can only hope their next production garners more success. Not even they can have pockets deep enough to weather too many flops such as this one.

Carnage in the Iliad

If it's graphic violence you want the Iliad has it covered in spades. The battle descriptions are about as visceral as it can get:

"Antilochus thrust first, speared the horsehair helmet
right at the ridge, and the bronze spearpoint lodged
in the man's forehead, smashing through his skull
and the dark came whirling down across his eyes--"

"the spearhead punched his back between the shoulders,
gouging his flesh and jutting out through his ribs--"

"flailed with a sword, slashed the Trojan's shoulder
and lopped away the massive bulk of Hypesonor's arm..."

"One he stabbed with a bronze lance above the nipple,
the other his heavy sword hacked at the collarbone,
right on the shoulder, cleaving the whole shoulder
clear of neck and back. "

It would seem Steven Spielberg didn't invent realism in the portrayal of war. What was different in Homer's day was that the combatants fought face to face, hand to hand.

Back to the Stone Age

My dissertation today will be about the dangers inherent in the hold technology has over our lives. Just ask the people of Louisiana about that one in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The more dependent we become upon technology over which we have no control and no ability to repair if it breaks down the more vulnerable we become. For two weeks we enjoyed almost daily thunderstorms and at some point a charge entered the electrical system of our building. It blew several fluorescent tubes, fried the PA System, and knocked out the office's connection to the trunk internet line. Several other systems were also affected.

The problem when you work for a nationwide bureaucracy is that you have no control over the repair process. All you can do is attempt to figure out who has to be called to report the problem and at that point you're at the mercy of the technical department's priorities and contracts. The fact that no one can get paid, no reports filed, no E-mail read, no customer complaints dealt with, no data up-linked or down-linked, no document printed is no concern of theirs. All you can do is wait and attempt to do what you can without the aid of 21st Century technology. I do find it ironic that an agency whose basic thrust is the delivery of mail door to door on foot is so tied to so many high tech devices that it can be paralyzed when they break down.

What Happened to Family Values?

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time you'd be right if you've gotten the impression that I don't have much time for current TV programming. I realize that I'm at present watching a programme that aired in the seventies and was set in the forties. Yes life was simpler back then, at least in hindsight, and the setting is backwoods rural. But at least those who watched this programme were given some idea of how a family with healthy relationships functioned.

I realize that having multi-generations of a family living under the same roof may no longer be practical in our modern lifestyle but if you look through the current TV schedule and remember that the average child spends more time in front of the TV than with its parents what kind of familial standard is being held up as the ideal given the programming available. Does our ideal family have a divorced, wise-cracking Mother, an older son who deals drugs and packs a gun, a daughter that hops in and out of her boyfriends' beds if they make it that far, live on social assistance, abuse drugs prescription or otherwise, use foul language, and display a total lack of respect for one another?

Does this profile reflect our concept of the ideal family? Is it necessary that TV play to the lowest common denominator? Don't get me wrong; I find Bible-thumping goodie-two shoes born-again programming as nauseating as anyone but I do long for programming that represents the 50% of the population that manage to stay married past 20 years, keep their kids off drugs, and stay on the right side of the law. Surely someone can come up with story-lines that make a family that actually functions look exciting. Surely programming can be interesting without a body count, kids on drugs, sexual impropriety, foul language, and bad manners.

How I spent my Long Weekend

A pipe organ with 30,000 pipes located in the grand court of a department store makes an interesting backdrop to reading a book about baseball. But then I suppose some ballparks actually have theatre organs so it's not as crazy as it sounds. I bought Billy Bean's Going the Other Way because of the gay angle but I'm surprised at myself that I'm more interested, in the first chapters at least, at how a small scrawny overactive kid threw himself into team sports despite the discouragement and derision of those around him. Having waited over a decade to top a yard stick and weighing all of 130 lbs when I joined the Post Office 34 years ago I can identify with the scrawny part, if not the athletic ability. I can also identify with being a lonely outsider who excelled in school and enjoyed reading and writing. The insight into the use of sports as a ticket to get out and the camaraderie of team participation even interest me though I can't in any way identify with either. I've even gotten interested in baseball though I won't be sitting down to watch a game on TV any time soon.

Denied a place to park by the cleaning of my underground garage I went out for early supper at a local pub called the Niblick on Friday. They served me Moosehead Lager--I prefer the ale mind you--and a mixture of chicken, cheese sauce and asparagus in a bed of Yorkshire Pudding. I spent Saturday reading, surfing the web, and watching TV. Guess I missed the episode in which John-Boy Walton acquired Blue, the white mule the first time round. Sunday I helped a friend, actually he's my immediate supervisor but I've always marched to my own drummer, move. Luckily there wasn't any particularly heavy furniture as the day hit over 30º C and the new house had some ugly stairs. Getting a king-sized mattress into the second storey would have been an impossibility. Today I should run the dishwasher, the vacuum, and think about baking muffins--though in this heat I may demure.

In the Iliad I've moved on to book 3, the duel between Meneleus and Paris. Yes, I ploughed through the muster of the troops in book 2. Before the invention of gunpowder invading armies laid siege to walled cities and fortresses. Troy's walls were apparently 60 to 70 feet thick therefore unless its defenders were inept enough to leave those walls the only means of defeating them was to encircle the walls and starve them out; hence the 10 year siege we read of. A city that had sufficient stores and an internal source of water could hold out for years particularly if it had access to water that enabled ships to run the blockade. Being under blockade may not have been comfortable but it was the countryside that suffered. If, as legend has it, 100,000 men arrived aboard 1000 ships and stayed for 10 years their campfires would have consumed every source of wood for hundreds of miles around along with every animal and other source of food. You may remember that Mount Calm lost the Battle of Quebec to James Wolf because he was imprudent enough to march his troops outside the walls of the Quebec Citadel. Whether he wished to spare his citizens a protracted siege, his city the damage from the cannon Wolf dragged up the cliff face, or pride demanded he meet his enemy on the Plains of Abraham neither combatant lived to explain his tactics. In the case of Troy, it was the Trojan Horse, which today lives on as a name for internet malware, that led to their eventual defeat.

Have Respect for Thunderstorms

Southern Ontario has experienced more than its share of thunderstorms in the last couple weeks. In fact, in the last two weeks they've been almost a daily occurrence. A single bolt of lightening can carry 10 million times the current that flows through the wires to power your home and enough energy to supply a small city for a month. Although thunder cells most commonly develop in the late afternoon, when conditions are right thunderstorms can occur any time of day any day of the year. A thunder snow storm is an unique sight but I've witnessed two.

With the ever increasing background noise we are accustomed to in our bustling cities thunderstorms often lack the impact they had in the rural Nova Scotia where I grew up in the 50ies and 60ies. There among the steep hillsides thunder rolled on and on as it echoed and re-echoed and homes built on hills were frequently struck by lightening along with lone trees, wash lines, telephone and power wires, and wire fences. TV aerials were common targets along with chimneys and stove pipes. Stories abound of kitchen stoves that popped open as a bolt of lightening headed for the nearest door or window.

With most of our telephone wires buried we don't observe my Mother's dictum that you don't go near the phone during a thunderstorm. Nor do we scurry round and unplug every major appliance at the first sign of thunder--reprogramming all those timers is too complicated. When power lines were struck lightening could course through a home and knock every fuse out of the panel and every light-bulb from its socket. Lightening struck my cousin's fence and for half a mile the wires hung loose as every staple had been driven from the fence posts to which they were attached. My Aunt Ruth discovered that her wash line had been struck when she was hanging her wash. The surging current had burnt out the wire inside but the plastic covering held until the weight of the wet clothes caused it to give way. While my father huddled under a road culvert a maple which stood on a nearby hill was struck and the trunk split four ways as if Paul Bunyon had attacked it with his axe and giant roots were knocked out of the ground for forty feet around its base.

City dwellers are more likely to scurry for cover from the rain but by the time the downpour arrives one has already been in mortal danger for some time. We've all heard about the herd of cows found huddled under a tree dead, but people are still dumb enough to shelter under a tree during a storm. I've been out riding a bike under a clear sky when I felt the hair on my head start to separate and stand on end. While delivering mail for the last 30 years I've frequently felt the hairs on my arms tingle and known it was time to seek shelter. Interesting the people you meet in such circumstances. A couple in Toronto the evening of July 1st are lucky to be alive after both were struck while waiting for fireworks to start in a local park. Lightening was attracted to their metal lawn chairs as they ran for cover. Mother Nature seems to have a way of letting us know that she's still in charge.

No Bull about Billy Bean

I won't insult baseball lovers by expanding upon my lack of interest in the boys of summer. My interest here is in the life of a muscular, athletic, macho sports figure who managed to survive in the big leagues without being outed. I've previously read Bob Paris' Straight from the Heart, which wasn't ghost written; and will probably read fellow Canadian Mark Tewksbury's Inside Out about the life of a gay Olympian. Ironic, given the historic Greek attitude toward sex that an Olympic athlete would feel forced to stay in the closet.

I find it sad that so many still believe that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice rather than an expression of the essence of an individual over which that individual has no control. It's also sad that so many are so insecure that they feel threatened by the idea of non-heterosexual relationships. Fundamentalists seem to forget that the reason the Bible proscribes any male sexual stimulation that would not lead to procreation was that it would not result in breeding of little Isrealites who would grow up to defend the Jewish cause. In a world that is rapidly becoming over-populated to the point that it no longer looks down on childless couples, it is hard to understand why other unions that will not lead to procreation are still looked down on by so many. The fact that there are gay sexual predators seems to grab headlines but those headlines seem to neglect the fact that there is even more sexual perversion in the straight world.

I feel sad for people who are so insecure that they feel compelled to define their self-worth in terms of the people to whom they feel superior. In the US South there are still vast pockets of people who mourn the economic engine that slavery provided and target people of colour with resentment for their continued reduced economic conditions. Another sector of the world population continues to scapegoat the Jews as the cause for their economic woes and either deny the Holocaust or claim that Hitler had the right idea. Wouldn't it be more productive if the people who expend so much energy resisting the idea of gay and lesbian unions concentrated their efforts on doing something about the fact that nearly 50% of marriages end in divorce?

The Iliad

I've finished the lengthy scholarly introduction to The Iliad and after that wade the actual poem is a pleasure to read. At the present time, however I happen to be negotiating the roster of the Greek Troops in Canto Two. Most of the place names no longer exist on a modern map of the Aegean and the names of both people and places are largely unpronounceable making this section about as exciting as the begats in Numbers in the Biblical Old Testament. I'm not moved to add up all the boats to see if they actually total a thousand ships but I would ask; if all those men sat around outside the walls of Troy for over ten years, who was minding the store back home?

Superman?

I've been watching Lois and Clark, Season Three. It's just coincidence that the new Superman Returns has just hit the theatres, as far as I'm concerned. Mind you the fact that this set of DVD's was released just before this big opening probably isn't coincidence. I don't seem to remember seeing most of these episodes the first time round and furthermore given my reaction to the weak plot lines and long-running will they, won't they scenario I'm not surprised.

Back with avengence

A Joke.

So you're the Congressional Chaplain, do you pray for the Republicans or the Democrats?

Neither, I pray for the people who elected them.

I've been neglecting my blog in the aftermath of my summer cold. The ending of the school term is also a busy time in the mail business as advertisers take this last opportunity to catch people's attention before they go off on summer holidays.