Susan Gerstein's Blog - Posts Tagged "mint-theater"
Felicity Strikes Again
Once more a felicitous convergence of experiences occurred, similar to ones I referred to in my post of June 11th of last year.
In early January of this year I happened on a lengthy obituary of the British writer Elizabeth Jane Howard who died at the age of 90. I was surprised to read that she had written a number of books during the past decades, for I don’t recall reading about them; I encountered no major reviews in the publications I follow. What I did remember was reading her novel “Something in Disguise” some forty years ago, loving it and filing away the name of its author as someone whose successive books I should watch out for. Obviously, I hadn’t watched out diligently enough, for it now appeared that not only had she written more novels, but an entire interrelated series of five volumes, collectively known as the “Cazalet Chronicles” that follow the life of a British family from the late nineteen thirties through and beyond the Second World War. So, the first thing I did was get my old copy of “Something in Disguise” off my bookshelf and set about the pleasure of re-reading it, with some apprehension, for – as I said in another of my posts – re-reading is fraught with danger: what if it isn’t as good as I remember it, or is entirely different from what I remember? I needn’t have been concerned: it remains exactly as lovely as it was on the first encounter. It is a wistful, at times sad, at times amusing view of the interlocking lives of a group of people tied together by affection, necessity, economics, family, friendship or sex. No messages, just civilized people trying to live lives often difficult, sometimes heartrending, occasionally delightful for a short time. I then rounded up the five volumes of the “Cazalet Chronicles” and am, at present, blissfully immersed in the lives of the extended Cazalet family circa 1937, 1938; the last inter-war years before the second round of 20th century bloodshed begun. I am looking forward to finding out how the interlocking relationships among the Cazalets develop, for they represent the life of upper middle class Britain at a crucial point of its history. Since I adore multi-volume sagas (see my post of June 26 last summer), I expect to be fully immersed in this one and if the successive volumes are anything like the first one, “The Light Years”, I will be a happy reader for the next couple of months. I hope to report about the accumulated impression once I finish the final volume.
The felicity occurred when, in early February, while reading about the Cazalets, I had once again gone to see a play at the unique small theater, the Mint, whose mission is rescuing forgotten or semi-forgotten plays of the last century. (I wrote about the Mint last June.)This time it was “London Wall”, by John Van Druten. Van Druten falls into the category of the semi-forgotten: born at the very beginning of the 20th century, he was an English playwright with a string of successes in London in the twenties and thirties. In his middle years he decided to move to the US where he had a number of successes: there were a couple of successful plays: “Bell, Book and Candle”, “I Remember Mama”; he adapted “Cabaret” based on Christopher Isherwood’s “ Berlin Stories”, and had a hand in several screenplays, “Gaslight” among them. But his fame had a half-life, and his earlier plays, depicting ordinary people struggling with the difficulties of daily life, of jobs, office romances, women’s position in that world, had slipped into the limbo of the half-forgotten. His plays are rarely if ever performed nowadays; though there had been a revival of his “The Voice of the Turtle” at the Mint several years ago. Now the Mint had decided to revive “London Wall”, one of the earlier plays written while Van Druten still lived in England. Sitting there during this performance of the wonderfully acted, thoroughly engrossing play about a group of people working in a law office, each of whom goes through a small personal crises in the course of the play’s three well constructed acts, so reminded me of Elizabeth Jane Howard's writing that I was struck by my good fortune of having the juxtaposition of both experiences at virtually the same time. Both of these writers worked at a time and in an environment that contained “revolutionary” moderns; after all, there was Becket and Joe Orton, and Elizabeth Jane Howard was actually married for a while to Kingsley Amis, surely one of the angriest writers of the post war period. Yet both Van Druten and Howard chose a different path: they are both naturalists with a gentle, forgiving view of the foibles that make for the daily lives of most of us. They both remind me of the painter Fairfield Porter who had painted in mid-20th century America in an art world that was in thrall to the Jackson Pollocks and Willem de Koonings of the day; Abstract Expressionism ruled. Porter ignored this trend, went his own way, produced superb realist paintings that are a joy to behold, and had a successful professional life doing this. However, refusing to be part of the “revolution” cost him posthumous recognition: although there are examples of his paintings in several museum collections and his work is cherished by those lucky enough to own them, his name is rarely mentioned nowadays and never among the list of the “greats”. Perhaps there will be a Fairfield Porter revival some day.
Meanwhile, let us hope for more John Van Druten plays produced and be thankful for the availability of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s fiction.
In early January of this year I happened on a lengthy obituary of the British writer Elizabeth Jane Howard who died at the age of 90. I was surprised to read that she had written a number of books during the past decades, for I don’t recall reading about them; I encountered no major reviews in the publications I follow. What I did remember was reading her novel “Something in Disguise” some forty years ago, loving it and filing away the name of its author as someone whose successive books I should watch out for. Obviously, I hadn’t watched out diligently enough, for it now appeared that not only had she written more novels, but an entire interrelated series of five volumes, collectively known as the “Cazalet Chronicles” that follow the life of a British family from the late nineteen thirties through and beyond the Second World War. So, the first thing I did was get my old copy of “Something in Disguise” off my bookshelf and set about the pleasure of re-reading it, with some apprehension, for – as I said in another of my posts – re-reading is fraught with danger: what if it isn’t as good as I remember it, or is entirely different from what I remember? I needn’t have been concerned: it remains exactly as lovely as it was on the first encounter. It is a wistful, at times sad, at times amusing view of the interlocking lives of a group of people tied together by affection, necessity, economics, family, friendship or sex. No messages, just civilized people trying to live lives often difficult, sometimes heartrending, occasionally delightful for a short time. I then rounded up the five volumes of the “Cazalet Chronicles” and am, at present, blissfully immersed in the lives of the extended Cazalet family circa 1937, 1938; the last inter-war years before the second round of 20th century bloodshed begun. I am looking forward to finding out how the interlocking relationships among the Cazalets develop, for they represent the life of upper middle class Britain at a crucial point of its history. Since I adore multi-volume sagas (see my post of June 26 last summer), I expect to be fully immersed in this one and if the successive volumes are anything like the first one, “The Light Years”, I will be a happy reader for the next couple of months. I hope to report about the accumulated impression once I finish the final volume.
The felicity occurred when, in early February, while reading about the Cazalets, I had once again gone to see a play at the unique small theater, the Mint, whose mission is rescuing forgotten or semi-forgotten plays of the last century. (I wrote about the Mint last June.)This time it was “London Wall”, by John Van Druten. Van Druten falls into the category of the semi-forgotten: born at the very beginning of the 20th century, he was an English playwright with a string of successes in London in the twenties and thirties. In his middle years he decided to move to the US where he had a number of successes: there were a couple of successful plays: “Bell, Book and Candle”, “I Remember Mama”; he adapted “Cabaret” based on Christopher Isherwood’s “ Berlin Stories”, and had a hand in several screenplays, “Gaslight” among them. But his fame had a half-life, and his earlier plays, depicting ordinary people struggling with the difficulties of daily life, of jobs, office romances, women’s position in that world, had slipped into the limbo of the half-forgotten. His plays are rarely if ever performed nowadays; though there had been a revival of his “The Voice of the Turtle” at the Mint several years ago. Now the Mint had decided to revive “London Wall”, one of the earlier plays written while Van Druten still lived in England. Sitting there during this performance of the wonderfully acted, thoroughly engrossing play about a group of people working in a law office, each of whom goes through a small personal crises in the course of the play’s three well constructed acts, so reminded me of Elizabeth Jane Howard's writing that I was struck by my good fortune of having the juxtaposition of both experiences at virtually the same time. Both of these writers worked at a time and in an environment that contained “revolutionary” moderns; after all, there was Becket and Joe Orton, and Elizabeth Jane Howard was actually married for a while to Kingsley Amis, surely one of the angriest writers of the post war period. Yet both Van Druten and Howard chose a different path: they are both naturalists with a gentle, forgiving view of the foibles that make for the daily lives of most of us. They both remind me of the painter Fairfield Porter who had painted in mid-20th century America in an art world that was in thrall to the Jackson Pollocks and Willem de Koonings of the day; Abstract Expressionism ruled. Porter ignored this trend, went his own way, produced superb realist paintings that are a joy to behold, and had a successful professional life doing this. However, refusing to be part of the “revolution” cost him posthumous recognition: although there are examples of his paintings in several museum collections and his work is cherished by those lucky enough to own them, his name is rarely mentioned nowadays and never among the list of the “greats”. Perhaps there will be a Fairfield Porter revival some day.
Meanwhile, let us hope for more John Van Druten plays produced and be thankful for the availability of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s fiction.
