Jeff Grubb's Blog, page 13

Book: The Little War

The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict by Donald R. Hickey, University of Illinois Press, 1990 

Provenance: This volume has a Half-Price Books price tag on the front cover ($8.49 as of 2/99), but comes to me from the collection of Sacnoth. It has one of his business cards as a bookmark (tagged for "Design, Editing, Research, Proofing"), which is covered with his small, tight handwriting in pencil. It ALSO has another bookmark, saying "This Book Belongs to Rich Baker". Rich was a colleague at Wizards of the Coast with both of us, and is now a colleague with Zenimax Online. So the book has stayed in our orbit all these years.

Review: I've been looking for a long time for a good book on the War of 1812, and this fits the bill nicely. Books on the subject are few and far between, and tend to focus on only one element of the conflict. Part of this is because the war is so granular and diffuse, with many very separated theaters of operation (Great Lakes, Native Nations, New Orleans, the High Seas, Burning Washington) that a high-level view is hard to make. But also because it is a war that we as Americans really want to forget about - our reasons for getting into it are a bit murky, our performance erratic, and the resolution a tie (at best). 

There has been a lot of debate of about how we ended up in the war, possibly because the US usually goes to war as a result of an "inciting incident". Pearl Harbor. The Maine. Gulf of Tonkin. The Zimmerman Telegram. Fort Sumter. 9/11. Sometimes this inciting incident may prove to be fictitious or overblown, but we have it in our constitutional DNA that we don't hit first, but when we're hit, we hit back hard. 

The War of 1812 doesn't really have that. The US declared war first, based on British maritime actions, known as the Orders of Council, that allowed the Royal Navy to intercept and search ships heading for Napoleon's French Ports, and  also against impressment of formerly British sailors on US ships. The Orders of Council were rescinded two days before the vote to go to war, so that dropped away almost immediately. The impressment issue was much greater than it seems from this temporal distance - in the six years before the outbreak of war, some 6000 sailors on US ships were impressed by the British. Because we had a lot of Brits on our merchantmen. The Americans paid better than the British navy, and there was less chance of being shot at, so a lot of British tars came over (The administration estimated were that there were some 9000 British citizens serving on our ships at the start of the war). And there even was an "Incident" - The US Chesapeake affair, where a British  fired on and boarded a US ship to capture supposed deserters, killing four. But this was in 1807, and while it could have created a foundation for war, it didn't. We were not ready, yet.

So why did we go to war? Hickey puts forward the traditional viewpoint - that the Orders of Council and Impressment were the cassus belli. More recent historians push the idea we had a secret agenda to conquer Canada and this was just a cover story. And indeed Hickey notes that we were already building roads north to carry troops before the declaration of war, and during the peace negotiations, the negotiators received instructions to have Britain hand over Canada as one of the terms. So, yeah, we have the declared reasons for war, but if we could get rid of British influence in the New World, that would have been a nice bennie.

I think we declared war because we thought we could get away with it. Britain, with the most powerful navy in the world, was fighting with France, with the most powerful army. Clauswitz said "War is a continuation of policy with other means". The US thought that its issues were not being addressed by the Brits, and declaring war would make them take us seriously (spoiler: It didn't). It should be noted that we did not throw in with the French, but considered "our war" to belong entirely to us. And if it worked, we would get the spoils. 

And we did OK, from a standpoint of reducing British support of Native American tribes in territories we were trying to move into. The battles won were cases where the Brits were at the end of the logistic tether (the biggest navy didn't matter if you were fighting on a lake; one-on-one battles with over-cannoned frigates). But several attempts to invade Upper Canada came to naught, Washington was captured and burned, and the Brits grabbed most of northern Maine (to give them a better route to Newfoundland and their other coastal holdings). The final treaty restored the relationship to its pre-bellum state, and since by that time Napoleon had been contained, that was good enough for the British (No war, no need to stop ships and drag off British Nationals). 

The War was also the last gasp of the Federalist party as a national force. Originally the "Party in Power", they were during this period overwhelmed by the Virginia-controlled Republican Party(also called the Democratic-Republicans or the Jeffersonian Republicans, which would later split into the Democratic and National Republican (later Whig) parties. Yeah, it's complicated)  The Federalists were strongest in the Northeast, and were taking it more on the chin in the war. There was talk of New England leaving the union and seeking a separate peace with Britain, culminating in the Hartford Convention, where they did not do so, but instead sent a list of demands to Washington - which arrived a couple days AFTER the peace treaty did. That and the fact that the then-Republicans were embracing a lot of the things the Federalists stood for, like strong centralized government and economic controls (because wars are expensive), sort of spelled the end of the Feds as a major force.

Hickey pretty much lays that out in the book, but tends to be more forgiving of the Federalists, pointing out that we don't have any solid records of what went on at the Hartford Convention - as a result the Federalists come across as more hapless than rebellious. Still, like the anticipated invasions of Canada, there is enough evidence to support thoughts of secession. 

Hickey's The War of 1812 is an excellent and concise history of a diverse and far-flung war. It is pretty much what I was looking for. I'd love to find something from the British/Canadian perspective, or of the Native American peoples who fought in the war (Hickey does a better job than most bringing them into the conversation). There have been new editions over the years, but you might be able to find this one at Half-Price. Or in the libraries of other friends.

More later, 

Theatre: Story Time

 Metamorphoses, based on the works of Ovid, Written by Sami Ibrahim, Laura Lomis, & Sabrina Mahfouz, Directed by Shana Cooper, Seattle Rep through Feb 26

About 2000 years ago, a Roman poet named Ovid gathered together a collection of myths, legends, and stories and put them in epic poetry form. Some 250 stories, occupying 15 volumes. Lotta gods, lotta kings, lotta violence. That collection has survived to the present and has become one of our (usually unread) cultural foundation stones.

Here we have is a few of those stories, starting with a creation myth and running through the deification of Augustus Caesar (with Phaeton and the chariot of the sun as a bonus round). We have an Orpheus story (but not the one with Eurydice), Medea, Actaeon watching Diana bathing, Midas, and an argument between Jupiter and Juno arguing about who gets more out of sex - the man or the woman. It is not a "greatest hits" album, and there is a nice mix of the familiar and the forgotten.

And that's part of the problem here - it is a grab-bag of stories, so it starts, stops, and starts again. It doesn't build up a good head of steam, and you're left trying to figure out how everything fits together. The theme is stated as "what it mean to be human", but that doesn't seem to fit snuggly in with the vast variety of stories it contains.

What it does do is present a whole raft of storytelling styles, but it does it subtley, so I'm not sure if that's an intended point. The Juno/Jupiter argument opens up to audience presentation. It is followed by a tale of Bacchus that comes off as a flop-sweat comedian's routine. We have a singalong (geared to the age of most of the audience), a song about how sucky Midas is, and traditional story-telling of friends around a campfire. It is interesting, but uneven. 

What is excellent is the ensemble - Kjerstine Rose Anderson, Meme Garcia, Nike Imoru, and Darragh Kennan. Most have been at the Rep before, and I'm a sucker for returning actors. They also are excellent storytellers, and I could listen to them for much longer than the 90 minutes.

And the set is fine, though is outdone by the rotating platform and beaded scrim in the theater next door. The props are onstage, but come apart and enter into the stories, and in the end, the stage itself is a shambles. Which may be a point as well, but I'm just not sure.

It feels like a missed opportunity. If we're going to delve into various ways we tell stories (and, mind you, Ovid himself was all over the joint on his storytelling), they could expand it out. Daedelus and Icarus as a powerpoint. A point/counterpoint of Noah and Deucalion. The deification of Augustus as letter of recommendation. Something that could bring things together. As I said, 250 stories in the naked Greek isles, and these are just a few of them. AND telling stories in what makes us human.

Over twenty years ago, the Lovely Bride and I saw another production of  Metamorphoses. Mary Zimmerman's version, presented by the Seattle Rep at the former Intiman stage across the way. It told some of the same tales, and took advantage of the seats rising around a thrust stage to put a swimming pool in the center. And it felt that that production hung together more, though it took some of the same stories as the base. This production was OK, but pales in the memory of that one. It is not bad. It is just OK.

More later,

Theatre: Teenage Wasteland

 I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Isaac Gomez, Based on the novel by Erika L. Sanchez. Directed by Juliette Carrillo, Seattle Rep, through 5 February.

OK, this one works. Full play, large cast, even an intermission.  Yeah, I've had my fill of one-person performances for a while, and a bit of old-school theater (created recently, but in the old forms) is appreciated.  

Here's the basics: Julia is a volcanic fifteen-year-old nerd, half MTV's Daria and half Sam Kinison. She fights with her parents, comments sarcastically on everything, and lives in the shadow of her older sister, Olga, who IS the perfect Mexican daughter. Or WAS, because she got by a truck, while texting. We open with Olga's funeral, and Julia grousing about the mortician's makeup job. 

And the play is about grief and mourning and growing up. Julia blames herself for her sister's death, and for cutting herself off from her. There are a lot of incidents and accidents in the course of her maturing. We have dealing with family and friends. We have sex, drugs, violence, altercations major and minor. 

And it works. The actors across the board are excellent, with a lot of them taking on additional roles to swell this world even further. Karen Rodriguez is excellent a Julia, containing the infinities and pettiness that only a fifteen-year-old can have. Sofia Raquel Sanchez is an excellent Olga, sweet and perfect and flawed in her own right. Jazmin Corona is a tyrant mother in opposition with her willful child, and only when the child understands why does she become more sympathetic. And Marco Antonio Tzunux and Leslie Sophia Perez are stealing scenes right and left as Julia's over-the-top classmates. All of them come across as believable characters.

I usually pick on the business of the set design, but here it is broad and open, a set of moving rings in the center (thanks, Hamilton), with various props (doors, coffins, tables) drifting onto the stage or being dropped from above. The background is a beaded scrim, semi-translucent, with a beautiful hummingbird design on it. The actors have space to move and interact, and it really works. 

We watch Julia grow, fall, and rise again. Only when she recognized the flaws in others and in herself does she understand her world better, when she sees other people's scars in addition to her own. Over the course of the play, she evolves, and we get to grow with her. 

More later, 

Theatre: Nursing in the Times of the Virus

 An Endless Shift, devised by Gloria Alacal, Alma Davenport & Mathew Wright, Directed by Mathew Wright, Arts West, through Feb. 19th

Afterwards, in the car, the Lovely Bride said, "What were those books we had, the ones in which there were collections of interviews about jobs and World War II?"

I responded "The books were "Working" and "The Good War", by Studs Terkel." He compiled a lot of interviews on these subjects (and other subjects as well), edited them, and published them as oral histories.

And An Endless Shift works off the same principle. The three devisers (as opposed to playwrights) interviewed five health care professionals (four nurses and a respiratory technician) about their experiences during the pandemic. The endless shift of the title is both a reflection of the long hours and relentless pressure during the worst of the pandemic, and the shifting opinions on them as the crisis dragged on, from surprise to fear to support to doubt to hostility from some of the same people they were trying to save. 

The performance in one-woman, five characters, five chairs on the stage. Gloria Alacal, one of the devisers is the actor, supported by audio clips of both the news of the day and the women interviewed. And she does a good job, though some of her characters tend to blend and blur in the single-person retelling (I had some trouble telling apart when she was the older African American nurse. and the younger gay male nurse). And there is some repetition in tying it all together at the end, but it holds the (mostly masked) audience for the length of the performance.

And the play provides a narrative approach to the entire mess of the past three years. We've been buffeted by events and discoveries and reverses and politics. Particularly politics. As we move forward, figuring out what happened and why will be a big chunk of our history of these times, and the living record of those who went through it on the front lines will be a big part of that.

Ultimately as a performance? It's good, and can be better. Yes, the devisers are relaying the words and experiences of their subjects, but they are also choosing the questions and choosing which responses to present and in what order. Terkel presented himself as an author, and Alcal, Davenport, and Wright are similarly empowered to do so. The performance itself needs some editing (I thought we reached the end about three times), yet it was a powerful statement in the words of those that were boots on the ground at the center of this maelstrom.

More later,

This Just In: Holiday Gift Wrapup

This latest batch of games and other stuff is interesting in that they are mostly not things I paid money for. And by that I don't mean I-got-it-on-Kickstarter-so-I-already-paid-for-it (and kicked in a bit more for shipping) but rather stuff that has tumbled into my lap as gifts. Here's the latest batch.

Zenimax Zippered Sweatshirt (Black with Zenimax logo on front)- This was a surprise holiday present from my new employers at Zenimax Online Studios. Oh, yeah, for those that don't follow my LinkedIn account, I have a new gig as a senior writer/designer at Zenimax. working on Elder Scrolls Online. Cool beans (and a nice pullover as well).

Midgard Worldbook (Wolfgang Baur, Richard Green, Dan Dillon, Chris Harris, Jeff Grubb, and Brian Suskind, Edited by Michele Carter, Kobold Press, 464 page hardbound book). I already have a copy of this book. Heck, I wrote (small) parts of this book. When Wolf was cleaning out a work area, he found an extra copy of the leather-bound, gold-foiled stamped edition, and passed it along. Which gave me the excuse to cruise through it again and wonder at how great is it. Midgard, the "home campaign" for Kobold Publishing, is a world full of worlds. Broken down into various broad areas, it not only reflects different cultures, but different styles of play as well. History, species, gods - regardless of your play style, there's something here for you.

Spelljammer (Christopher Perkins, Wizards of the Coast, three 64-page hardbound books with DM's screen, in Slipcase) Hang on, Jeff, I hear you say, didn't you already talk about this one? Well, yes, but Chris Perkins over at WotC was kind enough to pass along the "standard edition" of the setting, which is the same except for the art on the slipcase. I've had more of a chance to peruse what they have, and to a great degree it has grown on me. Yeah, there needs to be a better ship-to-ship combat systems, but back in the day we really did improve the basic system in original Spelljammer set with the later War Captain's Companion. This feels foundational, with a lot of room for individuals to grow and develop it.

Blade Runner RPG (Tomas Harenstam and Joe LeFavi, Free League, 232 page hardbound book) and Blade Runner Starter Set (Tomas Harenstam and Joe LeFavi, Free League, Boxed set w/rules, adventure, dice, cards, maps) I swear that Free League is either getting a subsidy from the Swedish government, or is secretly owned by a printing company/design house, since the company has some of the BEST looking products in the business (In addition to this one, we're looking at The One Ring, Vaasen, and Tales from the Loop as examples). Nice art, great production values, solid rules. Blade Runner pushes itself as being a dystopian SF world, and I don't think you escape a single paragraph in the book without being reminded that the future sucks, in particular for you.

John Company, Second Edition, A Game of Nepotism and Bureaucracy in the British East India Company for One to Six Players  (Cole Wehrle and Drew Wehrle, Wehrlegig Games, Boxed Game ) I've been spotty on doing board games from Kickstarter, if only because I have a couple boxes down in the basement that I intend to get around to playing some day. John Company is one of those games I supported on a whim, and upon delivery, I realize I may have bitten off more than I can chew. The box is crammed to the point where the lid does not quite fit. And the intro rules strongly recommend I spend a quiet hour, undisturbed, with a pot of coffee (what, no tea?) to puzzle them out. In the game you control a British family working for the East India Company (the John Company of the title), and maneuvering around others in order to set your familial line up for success and avoid total disaster. This is quite simply a labor of love - the game components and impressive and well-rendered, and even the box itself it artistically rendered. However, I am daunted by its sheer impressiveness. Reminds me of those long, engaging SPI/AH games I have on the shelves downstairs.

Kepler's Intergalactic Guide to Spaceships (Jake Parker, JP Creative, 128 page softbound book) I've also been hit and miss with art books - some good, some just average. Kepler's is just really, really good, and I found it a delight leafing through it. It is collection of various ship types, with commentary by Kepler, a four-armed starship mechanic. The ships themselves are pretty cool-looking and the world that is revealed by their descriptions (and the comic story that threads them together) is intriguing. My one regret is that these need more stats and a system for interactions (like ship-to-ship combat). In short, it would be a perfect setting for an RPG. Came with a calendar, two stickers (one bumper, one laptop) as Kickstarter tchotchkes. 

Court of Blades (Shawn and Navi Drake, A Couple of Drakes Publishing, 328 page hardbound book). There's a lot of discussion going on about D&D's OGL right now, but one thing it accomplished in the past 20 years is set the limits of the d20 system. And in doing so it allowed for a new generation of radically different RPGs. The Forged in the Dark system is one such solar system of RPGs, which depowers the GM, increases continual player interaction, and creates a more cinematic space of play. I've had the chance to play a few of these, and while I think it would a challenge for my grognard nature to run them, I really appreciate them. The system itself concentrates on one type of adventure, but as a result allows a wide variety of games to evolve from the core system. We have heists, military campaigns, space smuggling, and in this case, courtly intrigue. It describes itself as Gunpowder Diplomacy, the coterie of players represents servants of a particular noble house they are supporting, and would be comfortable from Shakespearean tales to the Three Musketeers. The rules follow the formatting of other Blades products, so if you are familiar with one, you will be able to follow along here, and the artwork is excellent. 

Downtime in Zyan ( Ben Laurence, Through Ultan's Door, 36 page pamphlet 'zine). After raving about the art and production values of the previous three items, I have to come clean and admit the art for this latest addition to Through Ultan's Door is below the quality of its predecessors. It is drawings of fantasy mole rats in a style similar to Adventure Time cartoons. But the subject matter and quality redeems all things. The entire subject involves what do do in the down time between adventures, including investment, social relationships, training, carousing, and spell research. We've all taken stabs at doing things between the sword-swinging, and this gives a great structure and some room for thought about entire process. Recommended. 

Secrets of Los Angeles (Peter Aperlo, Chaosium, 2007, 192 page softbound book) This was a gift from fellow creative Steve Winter, who discovered he had two copies and offered me one. My affection for the Call of Cthulhu RPG is well-know, and my shelves are starting to groan with the wide variety of products published over the years. But I have a special place in my heart of the layout and graphic design of the black and white sourcebooks they produced. Texturally dense but divided into bite-sized nuggets, with photos of the era and a large amount of sidebars, this is a grand tour of 1920s LA, along with two short scenarios to drive you players mad with. Yeah, I'm a softy for the presentation, the subject and the era (spilling over into the hard-boiled 1930s).

That's enough rambling for now. I think I need to settle down with a little light reading in Midgard at the moment.  

More later,

Happy Holidays from Grubb Street

 Wishing everyone a safe and happy Holiday Season from Grubb Street.

Merson - Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1879)
More later,

Theatre: Dueling Carols, Part 2

Mr. Dickens and His Carol by Samantha Silva, Developed and Directed by Braden Abraham. Seattle Rep, through December 23rd.

And here is the other Dickensian play on my docket (there is a third in the Seattle area, from the ACT company, which looks fairly traditional, but I am not engaging with it). And I regret to say Mr. Dickens is disappointing. 

And that's a pity the play addresses directly a lot of my concerns about theatre in general. It has burgeoning cast in an era where four-person comedies and one-person monologues abound. It has a lot of familiar faces on the stage (If you call yourself a Rep, you should have a Repertory). It actually takes the time to be a full play, clocking in at 2 and half hours. But it all fell flat for me.

This is not Dickens "A Christmas Carol" but is more "A-Christmas-Carol-Adjacent". It tells a story about how "A Christmas Carol" was written. Here is the precis: Dickens hits a literary bump in his career. After early successes, his current serial is fizzling, and in addition he is a soft touch for every needy charity as well as his ever-growing family. Christmas spirit for him is reduced to opening his purse and watching his dwindling savings drain away. His agent proposes he write a quick Christmas book. Dickens hates the idea, drags his feet, and engages with it only because of his financial difficulties. He gets writer's block. He comes to embrace his inner Scrooge, chases friends and family away, and goes doggo, takes up with a local seamstress as his muse, acts horrible to all, then realizes he is being a ass, quickly reforms, writes the damned book and everyone once more rejoices in his talent. 

I'm not publicly fact-checking any of this, but let us say it plays fast and loose with the particulars of the situation and leave it at that.

Dickens, as portrayed by Adam Standley, is overmatched by the role. His Dickens is shallow, egotistic, and unlikable, full of himself at the start, his key literary being able to come up with funny names and grind out popular plots. As he slides into Scroogedom he becomes progressively worse and more unpleasant, and he is well into the second act, after two hours of being snarling at the world, before having his epiphany, doing the job, and being filled once more with Christmas spirit. Sequence after sequence of Dickens being put upon and snapping back in return tends to plod after a while.

Plus, the writing is as baroque and ornate as the interior of Westminster Abbey. At the interval I overheard one of the other patrons saying that she felt like English was no longer her first language. Plus, we get a lot of titles, characters, and references to other Dicksenian works, so if you're a fan, you'll get the jokes. And the act of writing is a basically lonely and boring task, so we see a lot of Dickens sitting down to write, and twenty seconds later saying "Ahah! I am finished!" (Would that this be always so - and "A Christmas Carol" WAS written in about six weeks).

The rest of the company is quite good - their characters are broad and they engage fully with them. As I said, familiar faces ease some of the pain, and Cheyenne Casebier as Dickens most recent muse was particularly good. I liked the children as well, both for the young actors portraying them and the fact the play actually gave them things to do, as opposed to using them as mobile set design.

The stagecraft is literally Hamiltonian, down to the rotating stage that allows the huge cast to bustle through it, recreating an extremely crowded London. The ensemble got their steps in as they moved continually through a crowded set, pulling on and off all sorts of props as the scenes changed. The first act is dominated by an spinning erector set of iron piping in the center, which combines neck-craning for the audience with various railings blocking line of sight. Yet there are a few scenes that are inspired in their presentation, that I think were marvelous, but they are badly outnumbered.

I dunno. Maybe it is the sudden snowfall, or the parking situation in the Seattle Center, or being under the weather right now, or the fact the show itself started late and "paused" for a bit with a tech problem, but the Lovely Bride and I were drained of our Christmas spirit by the end of this. The short version? Go check out the Q Brothers Christmas Carol for your cup of holiday cheer.

More later,

Theatre: Dueling Carols, Part 1

 Q Brothers Christmas Carol, a musical by Q Brothers Collective, Directed by Daniel Cruz. Arts West through  December 23rd

Ah, the Holiday Season in the Theatre, when the standard, go-to, feel-good performance pieces pulls from a writer who died 150 years ago, and whose work has nestled the Victorian Era firmly into our Christmas Spirit. I speak of  Charles Dickena and A Christmas Carol. Both Arts West and the Seattle Rep are doing versions this year, so I (and you) are subjected to dueling Carols.

The story itself has incredibly plasticity over the years. I have encountered the original version, along with musical versions, deconstructed versions, back-stage comedy versions, innumerable TV show episodes, and all manner in between. It has been performed by Albert Phinney, George C Scott, Bill Murray, Patrick Stewart, Scrooge McDuck, Tim Curry Michael Caine (with the Muppets), and Mr. Magoo. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is running version where the Christmas Spirits are played by the Marx Brothers. And here we have a hip-hop version of this timeless classic. 

Hang on, don't click away from here in fear. These are friendly spirits,  filled with good cheer, and this actually is a really good presentation of the story.

You all know the drill on this - everyone knows the drill. Ebeneezer Scrooge is wealthy rat fink who is visited by three spirits on Christmas Eve and from the lessons of the Past, Present, and Future, chooses to become less of a rat fink. It breaks down into pretty manageable chunks. We see Scrooge as a rat, then he gets a heads-up from his dead partner Marley that he is about to be ghosted, then we ratchet through the ghosts and end up with Scrooge so relieved by his change of heart that he makes people worry about his mental health. 

And yeah, this is hip-hop, all the way through. We are in the modern era, and this Scrooge is a former math nerd who turned to his capitalistic dark side. Marley is Bob, not Jacob. Christmas Past is Run DMCish with bucket hat and chunky chains, Christmas present echoes cooking-show era Snoop Dog, and the  spirits of Christmas Future invokes  the dance troupe Jabberwock. You don't need to know the history of the art form to enjoy it all as its sprawls out with hep beats and solid rhymes. Yeah, it is hip hop hooked to an ancient carriage, or perhaps a venerable vehicle with fresh horses, but it works.

We caught it on opening night, which had a late curtain and the program only available with a QR code. The house was friends, families, and financial supporters of the theater, and could be literally assumed to be "friendly". Yet the actors earned their many applauses, and bounced through the proceedings with a contagious energy that you can't help to embrace.

Christopher Kehoe Is Scrooge and portrays him in that white-boy-forced-to-be-funky dance moves when he cuts loose. The rest of the talented team (Dre Anderson, Jerik Fernandez, and Lola Rei Fukushima, who I will now think of as a "regular" for Arts West) get the good stuff, shimmering through proceedings as the ghosts, Marley's family, old friends, and encounters, often playing a couple parts simultaneously. The silliness gets contagious, and the performances are solid.

And they play it, for the most part, pretty straight. Scrooge talks to a sack of money he carries around and replaces "Bah Humbug" with "Chris-my-ASS-mis" as a tag line, and there is some Swiftian hints of cannibalism in the Marley household, but for the most part the really nail the beat, both narrative and musically.

I was going to wait for the Seattle Rep version to compare/contrast, but this was good enough to give you a good heads-up at the get-go. It is an enthusiastic entrance into the Holiday Season, and good rendition of the old Dickens chestnut. Go check it out.

More later,

Shulz Centennial

 

Oh, Good Grief.

Psychiatric Help 5 Cents. Fussbudget. Slugs. Rats! Security Blanket. Kite-Eating Tree. Great Pumpkin. Sweet Baboo. Snicker-Snacks. Blockhead. Joe Shlabotnik. Round-Headed Kid. Supertime Dance. Sidney or the Bush. Cat Next Door. Beethoven. World War One Flying Ace. Sopwith Camel. Red Baron. Vincent Van Gogh. Joe Cool. Vulture. Miss Othmar. Lazy Eye. It Was a Dark and Stormy Night. The Six Bunny-Wunnies. I Got a Rock. Don't Call Me Sir. Naturally Curly Hair. Woodstock. 

Good Old Charlie Brown.

This weekend marks the 100th Birthday of Charles Shulz, creator of Peanuts. Peanuts was a touchstone for much of my generation and and for generations before and after us. It was incredibly popular, expanding from the daily and Sunday strips to movies, TV shows, comic books, records, songs and Broadway shows. Even its huxtering brought attention to Dolly Madison Cakes and Met Life. Its Christmas Special is one of the wonders of its age. 

A lot of people (in particular other cartoonists) are commemorating the centennial, but I just want to note how much of our childhood language was influenced by his comic strips. Words, history, and situations have taken on an extended life in our memories after being incorporated into his strips. The kids were kids, but they were very smart, generally well-informed kids.  Snoopy had an incredibly detailed alternate life, ranging from the coolest guy on campus to being a lawyer to an astronaut to captaining the Starship Enterprise. All of this formed a common ground for our generation, a shared experience told in four panels per day, with color versions in the Sunday paper. 

Shulz passed on in 2000, the day after his last comic strip was published. Yet his reprinted strips are still often the most amusing thing on the comic pages, and reach far beyond the nostalgia of our youth. Charles Shulz was one of the most influential writers of the later 20th Cent. He just did it while drawing the pictures as well.

More later, 

Theatre: Scottish Play

 Macbeth By William Shakespeare, Directed by John Langs, Seattle Shakespeare, Center Theatre at Seattle Center, through 20 November 2022

Wow, this was good.

While I appreciate a lot of what is happening in "today's theatre", offering a variety of performance styles and new works, I do really long for some meat-and-potatoes old-time-rock-n-roll type theatrical plays. And you don't get more Original Gangster Playwrite than Willy Shakes.

And there has been a lot of Shakespeare variants and Shakespeare-related works out there, but it takes a lot of effort to strike close to the original source material and make it stick. I've seen about a half-dozen Macbeths in my life, the most recent being one transported to a group of schoolgirls in a vacant lot (which was really good), but this is the real deal, the original flavor version and it is so good. 

Sacnoth and his lovely bride, Janice, were going and invited me along. The venue is in the basement of the Armory in the heart of the Seattle Center (large building between the fountain and the space needle - the one with the food court). The space itself is relatively low-ceilings and intimate, which brings the players right up to the actors. I've been there before, for a performance of Mother Courage from Book-It, which also uses the space. 

You should know the basics of the play by now. Three witches appear to warriors Macbeth and Banquo. They prophesy that Macbeth gets to be king, but Banquo's descendants get to be a lot of kings. Macbeth, along with his wife, choose to speed up the coronation by killing the current King, then turn on Banquo to try to foil the prophesy. That trick doesn't work, Macbeth and his wife go crazy in very different ways, and Macbeth's former allies overthrow the mad king in the name of Banquo's child, who goes on to become the ancestor of many kings of Scotland and James I of England (who just HAPPENED to be King of England when the play was written).

The performers are top notch.   Reginald Andre Jackson is a thoughtful Macbeth, determine to create his own fate, and increasingly losing control. Alexandra Tavares is an excellent Lady MacB. Both their natures are warm, turning to negatives as the full consequences of their actions descend on them. Banquo is gender-swapped, played spot-on by Jonelle Jordan, and that swap works so much better in this male-dominated play. The rest of the company are fine, and we spent part of the intermission checking the credit lists to see what else they had been in locally (another plus for this performance - local talent as opposed to being "thrilled to be in Seattle for the first time." in the credits). 

The direction was excellent, and John Langs chooses to embrace the supernatural fully, moving the play into the half-realm where the mystic meets the real. The witches don't just do their bits and get off, but rather remain as they see their prophesies become true. They evolve to become the Fates/Norns, embodying the destinies of the characters. Many productions banish Banquo from our sight, letting Macbeth react to nothing on the stage. Here Banquo is a guest at the worst dinner party ever, and Macbeth's terror feels earned. Plus, Lady Macbeth's ghost makes a curtain call right before her death is announced (Shakespeare has a tendency to let his female characters die off-stage).  Bringing the supernatural fully onto the stage is one of the things that really grounds this version of Macbeth. It is not one single ghost or haunt or phantasm, but rather an entire world overlapping on our own.

So, this is one to hunt down in the coming weekend and take a look. Seattle Shakespeare does not do a lot of plays each year, but when they do, they are worth it. Check it out.

More later,