Abby Wood as Ruth Carson and Jim Jorgenson as Dick Wagner, Australian journalist for London Globe (roles originally played in the ’70s by Diana Rigg and John Thawe)
Dear friends and readers,
Brief review: we saw Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day at the WSC last night and despite its manifest decency of perspective, and how well performed it was, the play was tedious. The first by Stoppard I’ve ever found so — though now come to think of it, he is wordy, and very like Shaw in the centrality of debate to his plays. The Admiral pinpointed the problems: how journalism (its subject) as a paying profession had already been ruined when newspapers owned destroyed the unions by moving to Wapping; that the troubles of 1970s are today overtoppled by destruction of profession 20 years later by a combination of advertising and daily immediate articles going to the Net, ruthless destruction of any progressivism in major papers, not to omit (to be fair) the subject of the play: determined murder of journalists who dare to report truths of colonialism, capitalism, militarism. Finally, that Stoppard is unable to present a credible portrait of a sexually aware, awakened, adult woman as the central presence of a play. Most of his plays have few or no women (The Invention of Love is a case in point) or they are marginalized (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead) or we have a 12 year old (Arcadia). It was good to see such a full audience, rejuvenating to see that other areas of this soulless cement building with its hospital-like corridors and white-washed vast spaces were housing dancing, another play and nearby (around the corner from the wide highway right by the place) two restaurants enlivening up the audience. In one corridor drinks and pizza are now served too.
But how hard it is to get up a human cultural people-friendly world in these inhumane spaces and difficult-to-navigate (much less park in) environments. an award was given out to an audience member for being such a devoted goer-to plays for many decades. He made a touching speech about how now he means to get new shoes as his are quite worn out. We do have a wonderful set of repertoire companies in DC and I write often about them (especially the WSC, e.g., on their Richard III and Mary Stuart) in order to support them.
Ellen
Allen M:
“Don’t forget Stoppard’s often-overlooked play “Hapgood.” The title character is an adult woman, a high-ranking professional, a brilliant detective, and well-versed in quantum mechanics. She’s the central character”
I’ve not seen that one. Ruth, the woman character in this, was not credible: a strained portrait which led to melodramatics in the actress. Not her fault I felt.
Izzy has a good take on her blog:
ttp://msisobel.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/washington-shakespeare-night-and-day-wolf-trap-opera-le-donne-curiose/
“Not that any Tom Stoppard play would truly be bad. Night and Day, a play about British reporters trying to cover civil strife in a fictional African country in the early 80s, is very thought-provoking, often funny, and heartbreaking at the end. The characters are well-realized, the conflicts well displayed. But Stoppard shows his early weak spots; as interesting as the monologues he includes are, they’re too long and there are too many of them, and the audience gets bored. The program talked about the difficult and often dangerous work these war correspondents did in an age when they really were the only way the public found out about events in distant countries, and his admiration for them shows clearly, but perhaps he was a little too in love, and didn’t realize the audience wouldn’t be interested in every single thought that could be contemplated on the subject of them. Washington Shakespeare’s production knew well enough what to do with the better aspects of Night and Day, but they didn’t find any solutions to its problems; if this play was to be done more often, it would be wiser to do it with some cuts.”