I heard this week that Umberto Eco had died at the age of 84. This was undoubtedly sad news; he was in a rare breed of 'intellectual' personalities who had made a sizeable impact on public life, and, I think for my generation, a personification of a type of italian refinement that had been easy to lose sight of in the face of a decade of mismanagement and depression. I was a huge fan of the wonderful, Conan-Doyle-celebrating, The Name of The Rose, and was just finishing Baudolino, which I had heard was a spiritual sequel of sorts.
The standard comment about Umberto Eco (typically based on the aforementioned The Name Of The Rose, a literary phenomenon) is that the books are great because they are 'hard', packed with references to historical and etymological trivia, and full of linguistic double play. I didn't get that with the Name Of The Rose, and in many sense glanced over the period detail to be swept along by the 'damn good thriller' plot and very slight twists on the classic Sherlock Holmes formula; and to be honest I remain a bit suspicious and incredulous when cultural commentators hold it up as truly 'literary' and urbane. I then tried his 2nd book Foucalt's Pendulum and got thoroughly and unpleasantly lost, without the familiarity of style or setting to help me along.
Baudolino saw me on happily firmer ground; it's to all intents and purposes a cousin to two of my favourite novels, Robert Graves I, Claudius and Count Belisarius, and like these forms a Secret History where our Procopius is the eponymous Baudolino, a court favourite and adviser of Emperor Frederick 'Barbarossa' in the early thirteenth century. Baudolino is a peasant's son, taken to court after a chance encounter with the Emperor, and as a result of his precocious gift for languages and inventive memory. The story centres on Baudolino's upbringing, and life lone fascination and search for Prester John.
[As a bit of background here; Prester John was a popular urban myth in the late middle ages, of a Christian king in the east, inhabiting a land of riches and wonder. The thought went that Christianity had been spread east by the apostle Thomas, and, if the west could find him, the resulting alliance could pincer movement the Muslims and reclaim the Holy Land. In the period of Baudolino he was thought to be in 'The Indies', and into the 15th century this conflated into Ethiopia, whose first emissaries to Europe were referred to as being from the land of Prester John]
For me this is a particularly fascinating period in history, and Eco skilfully weaves in real events as being brought about by Baudolino's wise counsel; effectively he's a consummate liar and politician, and has numerous witty pen-over-sword interventions as Frederick struggles to dominate the Italian Free Cities, including the founding of Eco's own home city Alessandria. We follow Baudolino from a callow youth, to an indulged and carousing student in Paris (where he assemble a memorable group of mismatched friends), and into a key adviser of the Emperor. His story is told as an old man, recounting his tale during the Latin conquest of Constantinople, and the story is predicated on this strange loop. Baudolino is a self-confessed master liar, telling a story about his life of telling stories, with no-one, not even himself, knowing what is true any more. The novel becomes progressively more fantastical; from using clever ruses to raise the siege of his home city, in a witty but well researched historical fiction, Baudolino then is ascribed to having fabricated the (real, false) 'Letter from Prester John' sent to the Byzantine Emperor telling tales of fantastical beasts and riches in a magical kingdom to the East. Baudolino then sets out on a voyage to find Prester John, supported by his student friends, and all of his hyperbole comes true; from having been immersed into the struggles of Frederick with an unruly Milan, we are suddenly fighting Manticores and crossing rivers of flowing stone on a journey to the east.
The book begins to take on the air of a dream sequence, as we explore the land of Prester John with Baudolino. Here he finds a nation of cripples - with a race of one-legged men, another of feminist hippies, another of bunny-eared humans, another of giants, all of whom live in harmony despite following various early Christian heresies. This section must be an allegory of some kind, but the religious subtleties were sufficiently beyond me that I just enjoyed the madness of it. In tow, Baudolino has the cowardly Armenian Ardrouzino, who earns his money faking relics, and the dastardly Zosimos, a Byzantine who practices 'necromancy' by various ingenious magic tricks. The plot delights in skipping in circles around this idea of lies becoming truth, tall tales becoming dogma, and belief being more important than reality, with a cast of self-deceiving and arbitrary courtiers.
Inevitably, there is a 'locked room' mystery embedded in the story, and a clever explanation at the end which rounds off the story, but in reality this is a classic entertaining picaresque; and just like (if not quite as good as) The Name of The Rose, Eco has created a book that, for all it's intricate weaving, is just really good fun.
Saturday 12 March 2016
Play - Welcome Home, Captain Fox! - Donmar Warehouse
I am very excited at having been able to secure tickets to all 3 shows in the Donmar's spring season, with Nick Payne's new Elegy something I'm sure I'll enjoy.
First up was the mysterious Welcome Back, Captain Fox!; a translation of a french play, based on the true story of an amnesiac soldier, back from being lost in a foreign prison, with no memory of home or family, and sufficiently aged to not be immediately recognizable to family. I had never heard of the original, and have no idea as to whether it constitutes such a silly and broad comedy as this new version.
In this version, the action has been (somewhat inexplicably) moved to a long hot summer in 1950's Long Island. The setting, with it's oppressive, prickly, heat and the entitled langour of the characters, evokes Eugene O'Neill, and the play makes this joke itself in a particularly knowing aside. However the tone and script could not be more different, with existential misery pushed aside in favour of sitcom stylings and caricatured accents.
The antagonist, Gene, is delivered to the house of the Fox's, in the wealthy Hamptons, by the scheming DuPont DuFort's, an odious couple reminiscent of Thenardier and wife. Mrs DuPont DuFort (last time I'm writing that, let's say dPdF) has 'found' Gene in an asylum in New Jersey, and has assembled a short list of 24 families missing lost boys from WW2, based on his Long Island accent and clear 'good breeding'. Gene has no memories from before his capture by the Nazi's. Mrs dPdF has her hopes set on the Fox's being his real family, seeing the story, of her reuniting the son of a wealthy family, as her chance to elevate herself socially. Her weaselish husband just wants her to stop fussing over the 'nutjob' they have driven across the whole state for the rendezvous. They are played with gleeful uncouth, strictly for laughs, as petty and middle class idiots. I was surprised to see the play immediately take this jocular tone; this was clearly to be no sensitive exploration of Gene's condition.
What ensues is a delicate back-and-forth between the frightened and confused Gene and his 'family'. The matriarchal Mrs Fox immediately recognizes him as her son, his dull and reserved brother George is not sure, the flirtatious maid Juliette is delighted to have the 'young master' back, and George's sotted wife Val is unsettled at the thought of "Jack's" return. It emerges that Jack Fox was not a terribly nice young man; sleeping with the maid and running up gambling debts that have crippled the family since his 'death'. Gene, whilst delighted at the thought of 'family' and the Fox's easy and wealthy lifestyle, is disoriented by the thought that he might have been a 'bad' man in his past life, and Jack's philandering and boorish ways (he is a keen hunter) are clearly offputting. These exchanges, despite the psychological bent, are played as a set of sketches - the uncertain and confused Gene confronted with a series of caricatures - the thoughtful and proud black butler, the skittish and libidinous young maid, the stiff and clottish elder brother, the narcissist mother and, most interestingly, the breathless and bored sister-in-law, Val. Played by an unrecognizable Fenella Woolgar, she is two parts Curley's wife and one part Edina Monsoon. It transpires that Val and Jack had been conducting an affair before he left for war, and her current reduced state, of being constantly two gin's ahead in the family home, in a passionless marriage, would be pitiable where she not such a rude and flighty character. The whole family are unveiled to be something of a bunch of gargoyles, and whether or not their madness was the cause or symptom of Jack's story, Gene begins to wonder whether he's really escaped the asylum at all...
The play escalates as many of the other 24 families get wind of the story and come seeking Gene as their own son, forcing him to make a decision between the wealth and madness of the Fox household, or the penury and normality of another family. This is played, like the rest of the play as a farce, and, to my view, not a particularly amusing one. None of the character's are likeable or redeemable, and the lines aren't waspish enough to make up for the sneers with which they are delivered.
I saw the play on a preview night, and it's possible that with some snappier comic timing that the laughs will flow more freely. More likely, I reckon, is that it will stand as an interesting example of a brave writer trying to create a modern homage to the out-of-fashion farce. Ultimately, I think Captain Fox succeeds in capturing the grotesque and the silliness of those productions, but not the magic.
First up was the mysterious Welcome Back, Captain Fox!; a translation of a french play, based on the true story of an amnesiac soldier, back from being lost in a foreign prison, with no memory of home or family, and sufficiently aged to not be immediately recognizable to family. I had never heard of the original, and have no idea as to whether it constitutes such a silly and broad comedy as this new version.
In this version, the action has been (somewhat inexplicably) moved to a long hot summer in 1950's Long Island. The setting, with it's oppressive, prickly, heat and the entitled langour of the characters, evokes Eugene O'Neill, and the play makes this joke itself in a particularly knowing aside. However the tone and script could not be more different, with existential misery pushed aside in favour of sitcom stylings and caricatured accents.
The antagonist, Gene, is delivered to the house of the Fox's, in the wealthy Hamptons, by the scheming DuPont DuFort's, an odious couple reminiscent of Thenardier and wife. Mrs DuPont DuFort (last time I'm writing that, let's say dPdF) has 'found' Gene in an asylum in New Jersey, and has assembled a short list of 24 families missing lost boys from WW2, based on his Long Island accent and clear 'good breeding'. Gene has no memories from before his capture by the Nazi's. Mrs dPdF has her hopes set on the Fox's being his real family, seeing the story, of her reuniting the son of a wealthy family, as her chance to elevate herself socially. Her weaselish husband just wants her to stop fussing over the 'nutjob' they have driven across the whole state for the rendezvous. They are played with gleeful uncouth, strictly for laughs, as petty and middle class idiots. I was surprised to see the play immediately take this jocular tone; this was clearly to be no sensitive exploration of Gene's condition.
What ensues is a delicate back-and-forth between the frightened and confused Gene and his 'family'. The matriarchal Mrs Fox immediately recognizes him as her son, his dull and reserved brother George is not sure, the flirtatious maid Juliette is delighted to have the 'young master' back, and George's sotted wife Val is unsettled at the thought of "Jack's" return. It emerges that Jack Fox was not a terribly nice young man; sleeping with the maid and running up gambling debts that have crippled the family since his 'death'. Gene, whilst delighted at the thought of 'family' and the Fox's easy and wealthy lifestyle, is disoriented by the thought that he might have been a 'bad' man in his past life, and Jack's philandering and boorish ways (he is a keen hunter) are clearly offputting. These exchanges, despite the psychological bent, are played as a set of sketches - the uncertain and confused Gene confronted with a series of caricatures - the thoughtful and proud black butler, the skittish and libidinous young maid, the stiff and clottish elder brother, the narcissist mother and, most interestingly, the breathless and bored sister-in-law, Val. Played by an unrecognizable Fenella Woolgar, she is two parts Curley's wife and one part Edina Monsoon. It transpires that Val and Jack had been conducting an affair before he left for war, and her current reduced state, of being constantly two gin's ahead in the family home, in a passionless marriage, would be pitiable where she not such a rude and flighty character. The whole family are unveiled to be something of a bunch of gargoyles, and whether or not their madness was the cause or symptom of Jack's story, Gene begins to wonder whether he's really escaped the asylum at all...
The play escalates as many of the other 24 families get wind of the story and come seeking Gene as their own son, forcing him to make a decision between the wealth and madness of the Fox household, or the penury and normality of another family. This is played, like the rest of the play as a farce, and, to my view, not a particularly amusing one. None of the character's are likeable or redeemable, and the lines aren't waspish enough to make up for the sneers with which they are delivered.
I saw the play on a preview night, and it's possible that with some snappier comic timing that the laughs will flow more freely. More likely, I reckon, is that it will stand as an interesting example of a brave writer trying to create a modern homage to the out-of-fashion farce. Ultimately, I think Captain Fox succeeds in capturing the grotesque and the silliness of those productions, but not the magic.
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