The Grinning Man

So I guess there is another Youtube Channel that I should follow and that is Bristol Old Vic. I just happened to revisit The Show Must Go On for any new offerings but it seems like they are no longer showing full musicals there. And Youtube recommendations are just so fantastic, they gave me BOV and at that time the dark musical The Grinning Man was on. This tragicomedy brought tears to my eyes. Imagine having experienced cruelty at such a a young age! And to think that cruelty will stay with you forever and will almost define your whole being!

Our show begins with Grinpayne, a puppeteer in a freak show, telling his own story using puppets. Part of the audience is a noble, Lord David. The puppet story shows a young boy who is refused admission to a ship because of his mutilated face, a face that is believed to bring ill luck on the sea. This is during a time when a tyrant king reigns. The child walks alone and encounters a baby girl with her dead mother. He ends up in Ursus' house and there grows up with Dea, the baby girl. 

The tyrant king dies and his daughter Angelica is chosen to be the next sovereign. She is set to just displace his father and continue the tyrannical rule her father started. Her sister Josiana and brother David have an incestuous relationship. So when David shares his experience at the freak show, Josiana and the court fool Barkilphedro join him to go to the freak show and there witness the face of Grinpayne, revealed to be forever in a smile, a smile so frightening because it is a smile made from violence which he got during his childhood, but he remembers almost nothing. The sight strikes something in David and Josiana and both claim to see the whole of humanity in Grinpayne's grinning pain.

So anyway blind Dea and Grinpayne fall in love with each other. However things get extra exciting when Josiana and Grinpayne begin to be intimate with each other and when Angelica saw the latter, she is so moved that she named him a Lord, replacing her own brother David whom she cast out to the streets. Barkilphedro becomes Grinpayne's servant much to his dismay as he has been eyeing the title of Lord for quite some time already. Barkilphedro visits Ursus and tortures him, thus the audience learns the truth of the past. Dea overhears the conversation and realizes that the "medicine" being given to Grinpayne is actually to make him forget his past. It turns out that Barkilphedro is actually the one who mutilated the young Grinpayne so as to save his life. Grinpayne is the son of an executed lord whose family was also to be killed but Grinpayne's mother pleaded with Barkilphedro to spare the child. In order for people to never recognize the young lord, he gave him the permanent scar. Ursus knows about it but is helpless to prevent it as his priority is his wife and infant daughter, the latter turning out to be Dea. 

As Grinpayne and Josiana are about to be married following the burning of the fair and with false news of Dea's death, David appears and challenge Grinpayne to a duel. At that time, Grinpayne collapses in pain for want of medicine and Dea arrives to tell him what the potion actually does. Grinpayne remembers Barkilphedro and is about to kill him when his dead mother appears to him and persuades him not to kill. All past secrets are made known and Grinpayne sails off with Dea away from it all.

The songs in this musical remind me a lot of Weber. There is even a line in one of the songs that says "and you'll love like you've never loved before" which seems to be a play on "and you'll live as you've never lived before" in The Phantom of the Opera. I also like the dark gothic feel  of the whole play, the props and costumes making this story very rich visually. And it appeals to one's sense of humanity in so many ways, like how under a dark reign, you will be very touched to find that there will be people who will still show kindness even though in different forms. What Barkilphedro did to Grinpayne is indeed horrible, but as the past unravels itself, we are led to discover that his intention is to save the boy and also himself lest he be branded as traitor for not following the king's orders. This  coincides with my concept of kindness, that most times it takes a cruel form. I explained that to Q one late afternoon during a jogging date in UP. Sensing that he could be a people-pleaser and someone who will not be honest because the truth might come out ugly, I told him that my concept of "good" is very different from other people's, that for me authenticity, integrity, honesty tops normal conceptions of goodness. In the end I was right that he's just one of the normal guys who prefer to preserve a "good boy" image. I have been right in my assessments and it's a good thing I have become better at detecting red flags so I didn't fall hard for him. That was still a good exercise and I am glad all my feelings are right. As I learned before, gut feel does not lie.

Yaya's 5th Year Death Anniversary

So time indeed flows fast and it's been five years since my yaya passed away. I have yet to finish my thesis proposal and I know I need to work on it soon to finally make my yaya proud. It's not so much the degree, but the pride associated with having completed graduate studies. My yaya knew the importance of education and I feel sorry for her because although she obtained honors when she was a student, she never got to college and had to work. She taught me many things but the most important thing she instilled in me is to be independent and to be specific, to strive for financial independence so that I can do whatever I want to do with life without being a parasite to anyone.

When I was in Spain, I have learned to let go of many things. This lockdown I can very well imagine how she must have felt living with toxic people for many days on end for many many years. I know now because just the first week of the lockdown last March, I wanted so bad to go back to living on my own. I really hate stupid people meddling in other people's affairs when their own lives are so messed up. So I am happy for my yaya now that she is in a pace where there is no suffering nor toxic people. Today I cooked breakfast, lunch, and dinner. For breakfast, I made vegetarian fried rice composed of beans, carrots, tomatoes, and turmeric. For lunch, it's fish stew with tomatoes and chili. There was some rice left from breakfast so I paired it up with the fish resulting in a very colorful meal. For dinner, I made chicken lumpia shanghai. I love healthy food so I put in only a small amount of chicken and threw in carrots and onions as main filling. The critical part is frying it which is a success. I now know how to fry things up in such a way that they stay crunchy later for dinner. My yaya will definitely be super proud of me.

Fish stew with tomatoes over vege fried rice: I always tell my mom I must be half-Mexican half-Indian in my previous life.

Crunchy spring rolls without much guilt because there's more vegetables inside than meat. And I used chicken instead of pork.

I wish Q and I became close when my yaya was still with us. She will be very happy to see me with a gentle man who is very talented and despite that, very humble.

D.H. Lawrence: The Savage Pilgrimage

I first heard of D.H. Lawrence in highschool when we were tasked to be familiar with important Western literary works for our English classes. Lawrence was one of the unforgettable names included because based on our textbooks, he wrote controversial novels which ran counter to the conservative air of his time. Some of the titles that never left my mind are Lady Chatterly's Lover, Sons and Lovers, and Women in Love. In fact, Carswell even notes the criticisms heaped on the last novel mentioned, that it was deemed "a book the police should ban", a "loathsome study of sex depravity--- misleading youth to unspeakable disaster", an "obscene study", a "neurotic production", a "shameless study of sex depravity which in direct proportion to the skill of its literary execution becomes unmentionably vile". I have never read any of his works but there must be something that made me buy Catherine Carswell's biography of this English writer. 2011 was the year I was about to finish my post-graduate studies and I must have been looking forward to a return to fiction then, but for some reason or the other, my life has always been filled with adventures of many kinds thus I keep putting reading off. 

These days, as I have mentioned in my previous posts, I have been trying to free as much space as I can by finally reading my books. I start with fiction because they are easier to give away than non-fiction. And because I have more time now compared to the time before lockdown, I am finally able to write about these books I will be giving away. 

Or maybe I was only attracted to this PHP 10 treat...

The Savage Pilgrimage is about D.H. Lawrence as Carswell knew him. Carswell is a literary critic who highly esteem Lawrence and the two are very close to the point that Carswell defends her writer friend from John Middleton Murry's attacks. While reading this book, I cannot help but think that maybe Carswell fancies Lawrence for herself. But as she mentions in many passages, Lawrence is a believer of marriage and Carswell, also married, must have kept her feelings to herself. From Carswell we learn that Lawrence likes to get busy, that his civility and politeness is such a virtue that even that most displeasing person would never feel that Lawrence is displeased with him or her. He also likes farming and gardening, travels a lot, and finds America hollow. In between writing about Lawrence's writings, Carswell introduces many literary men and women like Katherine Mansfield who is married to Murry, and Aldous Huxley. Unfortunately Huxley is not mentioned much.

Anyway, I think I am the worst person to write a review of this book. I cannot even relate to much of Carswell's writings because I have never read Lawrence. But I am quite glad he also wrote poems and short stories which I might be able to access online. Still, something in me is very curious as to his controversial novels. Well, when censors tell you not to read something, the more it becomes tempting and seductive. Maybe I will just end up reading summaries like what Q does, which I think is also a fine way of educating one's self but the downside is that you don't get to appreciate how well a writer strings words to tell his/her story. 

A Midsummer Night's Dream

I was supposed to watch only one play this weekend but I found an outdoors play by Rice University floating on Youtube and curious of how the do it outdoors, I ended up enjoying this play. I especially love that they used the surrounding trees as part of the forest setting. Since childhood, this is the only Shakespearean work that I have always wanted to see because of its promise of fantasy and magic.  Moreover, the moon is an important yet silent element in the play and Shakespeare borrows much from classical mythology. But then for the longest time I was under the impression that I might not be able to understand The Bard's language. Moreover, how apt that I watched exactly on Midsummer's Eve or the summer solstice, that night given to bacchanals.

Honestly I wasn't expecting much but I must say I am supremely awed at the production. I love the design of the settings and the costumes. I can only imagine being actually there and viewing the piece live. AMND tells multiple stories but over-all lunacy may very well be the dominant theme. In this comedy we meet interestingly crazy characters who act foolishly because of love, whether borne of magic or naturally arising from their bosoms. Like Ariel in The Tempest, the sprite Puck who serves the Fairy King Oberon plays with mortals and even the Fairy Queen Titania's heart. He is easily a lovable character for his mischief which gave us this funny narrative of mistaken identities and foolish love. We see the changing objects of affection of our two teenagers Lysander and Demetrius because of him. This might just be the very inspiration of K-Drama's love polygons. [I'm no fan of K-Drama but have watched some episodes of a few series so I am not altogether clueless.]

Titania: "What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?" [I died laughing.]

Aside from Puck, I find Bottom also of interest because of the funny role he plays which is intended as comic relief. In all of The Bard's plays so far, I find the funny characters the most interesting. Although not in the main spotlight, they wittily critique and/or provide no-nonsense insights on what is happening around them. Like Macbeth's Porter, Bottom's character is a surefire way to elicit laughter from the audience. For one, he is part of the bumbling team of craftsmen in the forest who are preparing to perform Pyramus and Thisbe for Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding. Secondly, he becomes the object of affection of the Fairy Queen herself after she is victimized by Puck with Oberon's love potion and even though Bottom's head is turned into a donkey by Puck.

[Shakespeare's Globe happens to also have AMND until June 28. The scene I was excited the most is when Titania falls in love with Bottom. Fortunately, this clip is available. Unfortunately, it does not show the next funny moments wherein Bottom couldn't believe Fairy Queen's proposal and he lowers his body in abjectly demure fashion which is both cute and funny. He then proceeds to reject the queen's advances in utter disbelief of what is going on.]

As in other pieces I have watched so far, the women in Shakespeare's plays are either the immoral controller (Macbeth, King John, Coriolanus) or in most cases, the controlled. Here we see the mortal women suffering because of fickle nature of men, although as audience we are privy to the fact that this is only due to supernatural elements intervening in the love polygon. We also see even a powerful fairy queen's feeling being toyed with by her own lover Oberon as punishment for her resistance to his wish of being given the Indian changeling as his page. But we see in Hermia as someone who will defy her father and her country's rules to be with her beloved Lysander. When Lysander is given the love potion meant for Demetrius and falls for Helena, Hermia fights for her love and will literally fight Helena.

As for Helena, well, she seems to be the exact opposite of her friend Hermia. Throughout the play, she wallows in self-pity that even when Lysander and the now-drugged Demetrius fight each other over her, she does not believe them and accuse them of mocking her. She also seems to subscribe to the idea that women are to be passive, although it is curious that she is willing to chase after Demetrius. Helena to her ex-lover Demetrius: "Ay, in the temple, in the town, the field. You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius! Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex. We cannot fight for love as men may do. We should be wooed and were not made to woo." 

In the end, Lysander is given an antidote to render the potion ineffective and he marries Hermia whereas Demetrius remains under the spell of the love potion and marries Helena. I might be too hasty in judging Shakespeare as misogynistic but in this play he seems to favor strong-willed, courageous girls who are not afraid to go after and fight for what she wants; the Bard gives her a good ending she deserves, one that is real and in the absence of external forces.

The Madness of George III

And so once again I find myself engaging in a work about madness. One month has not even passed since Riven Rock, and now I deal with another elite, the King of UK and Ireland no less, George III (played by Mark Gatiss) who is famous in history for his madness, for losing the American colonies., and for the longest reigning male British monarch. And his wife Queen Charlotte is one mighty woman who bore him 15 children! Now that is almost enough to build a small orchestra! His doctors back then diagnose him with porphyria because of his blue urine, but there seems to be a growing consensus that his madness is a result of the repression of his spontaneous nature while he was being groomed to be king. (Read about the misdiagnosis HERE.)

As pointed by Nottingham Playhouse Artistic Director Adam Penford, "Monarchy by its very nature is theatrical. The royals are giving a performance, it's all the trappings of a theatre, music, costumes, props, staging." (I really took the effort to learn more about the play because I enjoyed it immensely, even more than I had Frankenstein.)

Like in Riven Rock, the king is attended to by many doctors, each with his own specialization, but on modern standards, may be deemed as quacks for the kind of medication they offer which give more of a torturous than a healing effect. At this moment I feel pity for the king whom the world (during his time, the British empire still stands although suffering many blows) looks up to but we the audience become privy to his tormented state as portrayed in this masterpiece by the very talented Alan Bennett. (Ironically, despite his sufferings, history says that he is pro-slavery although his Prime Minister is against it.) As his madness continues, power struggles rise in the government, with the king's son, the Prince of Wales, coming back ready to act as regent. He is backed by those who see opportunity in the situation, on pretext of concern for real and effective government. This poses a threat to Prime Minister Pitt who fears being replaced.

As Prime Minister Pitt laments all the efforts he has done to eliminate waste and save money for the government, news of the king's return to health reaches him. The king is shown together with his queen his usual self. He questions about state affairs and even affairs of other European states, but mostly France. Shortly after he approaches Elizabeth and asks if something has happened between them while he was sick in mind and she answers in the negative to which the king feels a bit of regret. He then shares the bed with his queen and the two are cute in that they again call each other Mr. King and Mrs. King.

The King's pages are sacked, even though they are devoted to him in time of his sickness. Fitzroy enters and is addressed as Captain but he answers "Colonel Fitzroy. You didn't know that? It seems unfair, I agree. But a word of advice, to be kind does not commend you to kings. They see it, as they see any flow of feeling, as a liberty. A blind eye will serve you better. And you will travel further." (Handel's The King Shall Rejoice plays and as final line, George III declares, "The King is himself again.")

******************************************

Memorably witty lines:

King George III in his bed clothes: What is this? The King unattended. Up with you, Papendiek.

Fitzroy: What's the matter, sir?

King George: The matter, sir, is that it is morning. That is the matter. Morning is the matter. Not being attended to is the matter. And don't mutter. Or mutter will be the matter.

Court man: Will Your Majesty not sit down?

King George III: The King never sits when seeing his ministers. Sits, no. Shits, though, yes.

Court man: In your present frame of mind...

King George III: What do you know of my mind? Or its frame? (Grabs a framed mirror) Something is shaking the frame, shaking my mind out of its frame. (chuckles) I am not going out of my mind. My mind is going out of me.

When George III is being bound for medication: I was the verb, the noun and the verb. Verb rules, subject the King. I am not the subject now. Now I am the object, the King governed, the ruler ruled. I am the subordinate clause, the insubordinate George.

George III restrained: I am the King of England!

Court man: No, sir. You are the patient. (Handel's Zadok the Priest plays)

Coriolanus and Hamlet

I think I was around eight years old when I first heard about Hamlet. At that time, I had so many funny conceptions of words, like when I heard my brother asking for a thesaurus, I was wondering why he wanted a specific dinosaur and having Charlie Brown's Encyclopedia volume 3 as my favorite, I also wondered how come the Thesaurus was not included in the book. Around that time, as I was fond of reading my elder siblings' school books (mine are boring), I chanced upon Hamlet and in my mind, Hamlet is somewhat like a small version of Peppa Pig, a brave and courageous leader whose story I never would know until today.

Last week, I watched National Theatre's Coriolanus which had Tom Hiddleston of Marvel's Loki fame playing the Roman general whose tragic life invites both contempt and sympathy depending on perhaps the background of the reader/ audience. I greatly sympathize with his character, a victim of cunning but incompetent politicians who hold power to sway the people to to choose Barrabas over Jesus. Of course, Coriolanus is not your perfect main character, being himself clothed with pride, although I would say he possesses merit by single-handedly dealt with the Volscians of Corioli. When he gains power he withholds grain from those without military service, and we as reader/ audience can understand fully well where he is coming from. During the siege of Corioli, he is abandoned by cowards. And indeed it is always a timeless story of how competent people's virtues are overshadowed by what is to the average person "hubris" but for the competent one, fairness and justice. To say that the play was executed marvelously is an understatement. We see with our own eyes how the fit Tom Hiddleston perfectly plays the role of the proud general. The ending was a real WOW with him chained upside down as Aufidius kills him. What really stands out in this Shakespearean play is how powerful women, or in particular the mother, can be in influencing even the most skilled warrior that she makes her son quit the plan to ransack the city that exiled him. (We also remember how Macbeth himself was persuaded by his wife to carry out the king's murder...) 

This weekend, my first choice is Stratford Festival's Hamlet. It seems that by the end of this year I will have gained much familiarity with The Bard's works. This is the fifth Shakespearean work I engage in and its theme of betrayals and usurpation. Here we deal with the son of a king who seeks revenge. Hamlet's father as ghost in the play reveals to his son that he is killed by his own brother Claudius who now reigns as king. Claudius even marries Queen Gertrude shortly after, leading to Hamlet's anger at the indecency. In Hamlet, we find The Bard's versatility for his ability to weave comic scenarios in an over-all morbid and tragic story as when Hamlet, pretending to be mad, playfully mocks Polonius. 

For all the lengthy soliloquies and dialogues, there are many questions that are sure to arise in the minds of careful readers/ audience. For instance, how come Gertrude agreed to marry her brother-in-law? Why did Ophelia become mad? Now if we are to believe the Ghost (Hamlet's father) we can see that Gertrude is a lustful woman but who probably is unaware that the brother killed her husband. I remember something Q told me though, that a decade ago, his close friend (also my classmate) liked me and so as respect for their friendship that means he could not like me. I have heard of the same thing from my male friends and the Bro Code dictates that a friend's ex may not be your lover or something like that. What more siblings. And especially a brother who kills his own brother. To give Gertrude the benefit of the doubt, she does not seem to have any idea about her husband's killer. But then with Claudius claiming her for his wife speaks a lot about his nature. Which leads us to our second question. When Ophelia suddenly appears as a madwoman, she is sweet even to Gertrude but is seemingly cold to Claudius. Her lines are wrapped in ambiguity but it is not hard to extrapolate that she is a victim of sexual assault, most likely by Claudius himself. In a later scene when she gives out flowers to people around her, she gives the rue to Claudius: "There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me. We may call it “herb of grace” o' Sundays.—Oh, you must wear your rue with a difference." This insinuates that she knows of his crimes, most probably because she herself is a victim. 

I wish Q and I can watch something together. He's a very witty man and I would love to hear his thoughts on literary works. We both have short attention span but I think his condition is worse. (In retrospect, I think maybe that's the reason why he declined my invite to attend the Indian Film festival last year...) I at least was able to watch (although admittedly I fell asleep for some 15-20 minutes or so) Lav Diaz's five-hour film Norte Hangganan ng Kasaysayan and his nine-hour Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis thanks to UPFI, which I miss terribly. I hope UPFI also puts up a Youtube channel where they make Filipino films available for everyone.

The Robber Bride

Margaret Atwood is well-known for her dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale which I read while in college but was super bored with it that now I do not remember much about the story except that it's about women who are forced into social engineering under a dictatorship. I must thank my friends at the literature forum I joined in college. Finding like-minded friends was very difficult so I turned to online forums to seek out people who love to read and who discuss literature in a very intelligent manner. It was thanks to some people I've become close to there that I started to read up on dystopia.

So it shouldn't be a surprise that in 2009 I would not have a second thought about buying The Robber Bride, and at only PHP35 it was a very cheap bargain. And like Riven Rock, this fiction will happily land in someone's lap and I hope whoever it is will ponder about this book many times just as I did.

My copy had this card with impressionist painting...

And inside is a note... the card is most likely from Canada because Pierre Belvedere is in that country as per a quick Google search

The Robber Bride tells the story of three friends with very different personalities and interests but who come together because of a common frenemy named Zenia, a woman who for them is the very personification of pure evil. Tony, Charis/Karen, and Roz knew each other from college but were not close at that time until Zenia entered each of their lives to ruin each woman's relationship with their men. War nerd and palindrome addict Tony married her best friend West who was so manipulated by Zenia but when the evil woman reappeared in their lives later on, West left Tony for Zenia. Tony was aloof and West and Zenia became her most intimate friends in college so Tony shared her personal stories like how her mother left her and her father one day. She also wrote a history paper for Zenia, feeling sorry for her many struggles in life. In the end during the confrontation after discovering Zenia faked her death, Zenia tried to blackmail her again by threatening to expose Tony's academic dishonesty and undermine the latter's teaching credibility, but Tony just walked away.

Of the three friends, I feel the most sorry for Charis/Karen. Her mother seemed to have some sort of mental illness thus Karen grew up a battered child. She eventually came to live with her grandmother and later on with her aunt and her husband who sexually abused her. The uncle also robbed her of her inheritance, a small amount she got after her grandmother's death, but she was able to recuperate it in the end and filed a case against her uncle. Charis, which Karen has come to be known, was a new age spiritualist whose superior empathy made her a perfect target for Zenia who came to live with her and her partner Billy and eventually succeeded in seducing Billy to go away with her. Zenia faked having a grave illness and Charis took extra care of her, which was very very sweet, yet the ungrateful Zenia really had to make a fool out of her. During the confrontation, Zenia told Charis that it was Billy who killed her two chickens that day they decided to leave Charis.

Roz came from a humble background. Her mother leased space to boarders in their house and was a very hardworking woman. Her father was first introduced as a special agent during the war but eventually Roz learned from her dad's friends that these men were actually looters and part of an underground group. Roz eventually had an affluent life thanks to her father's illicit activities. She married a lawyer named Mitch whom Zenia seduced and the two ran away together. Zenia then took cheques signed by Mitch and disappeared, leaving Mitch hunting for her until he met his death in the yacht. During the confrontation, Zenia threatened to expose Roz's son Larry as being a drug pusher and asked for a sum of money. Roz almost gave in to protect her son but she consulted with her friends and was spared being fooled again. 

So after each confrontation, the three decided to go back to the hotel but learned that Zenia died. She was seen to be floating in the fountain, most likely having fallen from her room above.

Atwood's writing style is boring, but her story is very interesting. I lost count of the number of times I cursed in my mind because she wrote so many descriptions of the settings and there is very little action in the stories. I had to be extra patient until I get to the point where Tony and Zenia began sharing stories and that was when things got very interesting. Zenia's life holds the most interest and even at the end the reader is left wondering what is Zenia's real life story, is there any grain of truth in what she tells the three friends, that she just saved them all from terrible men. Well to give her credit, I personally think that if a man is weak enough to be seduced by another woman and betray his supposed "love", then a woman is better off without him. However, Zenia seems to be a very powerful manipulative woman who can wreak havoc on even the sweetest person's life and this fact is enough to prove that she is pure evil personified.

If there is one character I would have loved to be given more role, it is Boyce. So it's no secret that I have been following Stratford Festival and I was surprised to find in their videos that Atwood is actually a fan of Shakespeare. (Okay, I know I shouldn't be surprised because as I recently discovered, The Bard's claim to fame is very legitimate, no questions asked. But maybe I just find it super awesome that the books I read and the plays I watch recently all are connected in one way or the other. Like, Caille Millner's The Golden Road, T. C. Boyle's Riven Rock, and now Atwood's The Robber Bride... the one thing in common is they show immigrants' determination and will in making their dreams come true in North America.) So anyway, back to Boyce. I find him a funny guy, someone I'd like to converse with because of his witty lines and he quotes great poets like Shakespeare, Blake, and even Stevie Smith. While Roz was learning about Larry being gay, there is a funny moment wherein Boyce quoted Smith and Larry told him to shut up. 

I just wished I read this way back in 2009 so I would know how to handle manipulative and evil people. But oh well, I was able to overcome those terrible moments and it's never too late to learn something about human nature. Then again, had I read this at a younger age, I would have saved myself from many heartaches.