Saw a play.
From the New Yorker review:The first scene is a welter of references to Viennese thought and art—Freud, Mahler, Klimt—and the coming destruction of that golden culture is one of the tragedies of the play. Over whiskey, Hermann and his mathematician brother-in-law, Ludwig Jakobovicz... argue about Hermann’s blithe disregard of Austrian anti-Semitism. Hermann is joining the Jockey Club and—a mathematician, you say? Your inner Stoppard gong should ring at that; this is the playwright who taught us chaos theory and probability. When Ludwig later tries to demonstrate coördinate geometry using a cat’s cradle, we can see that one of Stoppard’s famous Knowledge Metaphors is twisting itself into view. And, indeed, like the knots on Ludwig’s cat’s-cradle string, family members change positions yet maintain their connection.Not just connection but — in the cat's cradle configuration — distance.
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32 comments:
Right in Althouse’s wheelhouse.
Broadway, the epicenter of gay worship and the AIDS epidemic, and The New Yorker, one of the most evil purveyors of the Russia collusion hoax.
I spent a lifetime working in the arts, but unlike the prof I’ve had to consider whether play acting is per se evil.
We saw that play in January. It revived my inner Zionist, reflecting my 65 year-long friendship with the only Jewish kid in my hometown and my reading of Leon Uris’s Exodus at an impressionable age. Leopoldstadt is really powerful. It reflects Stoppard’s journey in discovering that he was culturally English, Czech by history, Jewish by birth.
The program notes are interesting. Stoppard’s father was a company doctor for a Czech company with a global footprint. After Munich, the company realized that they had to get their Jewish employees out of CZ. They reposted the family to Singapore. Bad luck! When the Japanese moved on Singapore, Stoppard, his mother, and his brother were evacuated to India. His father as coming to join them when his ship was sunk by the Japanese. Later his mother married an English army officer and Tom and his brother were raised as Englishmen, although they knew they were born in CZ. Stoppard discovered his Jewish ancestry later in life.
Leopoldstadt is brilliant. One act, two and one half hours long, large cast, covers scenes from 1899 to 1955. As I recall there are three family members left at the end, one in Vienna, one in America, one in London.
@ST
We're talking about a play about the Holocaust. In that light:
"Nazi conceptions of race, gender and eugenics dictated the Nazi regime’s hostile policy on homosexuality. Repression against gay men, lesbians and trans people commenced within days of Hitler becoming Chancellor. On 6 May 1933, the Nazis violently looted and closed The Institute for Sexual Science, burning its extensive collection on the streets. Unknown numbers of German gay men, lesbians and trans people fled abroad, and others entered into marriages in order to appear to conform to Nazi ideological norms, experiencing severe psychological trauma. The thriving gay culture in Berlin was lost. The police established lists of homosexually active persons. Significant numbers of gay men were arrested, of whom an estimated 50,000 received severe jail sentences in brutal conditions. Most homosexuals were sent to police prisons, rather than concentration camps, where they were exposed to inhumane treatment. There they could be subjected to hard labour and torture, or they were experimented upon or executed."
“ There they could be subjected to hard labour and torture, or they were experimented upon or executed."
Today Nebraska Medicine in Omaha experiments on children.
@Althouse
It’s one thing to be opposed to genocidal attacks on any group. I don’t want to see any harm come to gays.
It’s quite another to contend that those genocidal attacks confer some sort of virtue upon that group. I don’t want my children and grandchildren being propagandized to be gay or trans, for the purpose of providing future fresh meat.
When I went through LPN training I was forced to watch “And the Band Played On,” while the RN in charge lectured me that Ronald Reagan was responsible for the AIDS epidemic.
FYI, Althouse, my father fought his way through North Africa, Italy, France and Germany and was one of the liberators of Dachua.
My first wife, also deceased, was a second generation Ukrainian/American Jew.
We want Ann’s review.
My mother always thought she was of German ancestry. Courtesy of Ancestry.com, I have discovered that she had a Jewish grandfather and a Danish grandmother. I have tried, as much as possible, to reclaim my Danish ancestry. I no longer eat chocolate croissants but instead reach for a Danish. It's a start.....I read The New Yorker review. The play doesn't sound very entertaining. Amadeus seems to have had a far more positive experience than the New Yorker critic.....My father was born of Irish immigrants. During WWII, the Germans made several sincere attempts to kill him and one event left him in the hospital for several months. Despite this, he never had any real hatred towards the Germans. Those wacky Germans, always trying to kill you and take over the world. His real hostility was reserved towards the British. Some forms of oppression register on a different scale than others.....I don't think the oppressor/victim identity is binary. We all smoothly transition from victim to oppressor and back again to victim as circumstances and fate allow.
Disclaimer: this is not a tu quoque, but illustrates the fact that there is no daylight whatsoever between fascist oppression and socialist oppression. I will point out that there are many socialist regimes currently in power; I know of no fascist regimes.
Source: Wikipedia, "Socialism and LGBT rights
"The lowest point in the history of the relationship between socialism and homosexuality begins with the rise of Joseph Stalin in the USSR, after Lenin's death, and continues through the era of state socialism in the Soviet Union, East Germany, China and North Korea. In all cases the conditions of sexual minorities and transgender people worsened in communist states after the arrival of Stalin. Hundreds of thousands of homosexuals were interned in gulags during the Great Purge, where many were beaten to death. Some Western intellectuals withdrew their support of Communism after seeing the severity of repression in the USSR, including the gay writer André Gide.
Historian Jennifer Evans reports that the East German government "alternated between the view [of homosexual activity] as a remnant of bourgeois decadence, a sign of moral weakness, and a threat to social and political health of the nation." Homosexuality was legalized in East Germany when Article 174 was repealed in 1968.
In Czechoslovakia, even after homosexuality was decriminalized in 1961 the secret police (StB) used the threat of disclosure to force homosexuals to cooperate. Homesexuality was a taboo subject and first mentioned on Czech Radio in 1986, despite the AIDS epidemic. Those suspected of being homosexual suffered from employment discrimination.
There were a variety of attitudes to homosexuality in the socialist countries. Some states (such as the early Soviet Union prior to 1929–1933) practiced a degree of toleration. Others maintained negative policies towards homosexuals throughout their history, or gradually evolved to positions of relative toleration or official ignorance after the 1960s (East Germany, the USSR, etc.) In less tolerant periods effeminate men and homosexuals were sometimes forced to participate in programs of 'reeducation' involving forced labor, conversion therapy, psychotropic drugs or confinement in psychiatric hospitals.
The revolutionary Cuban gay writer Reinaldo Arenas noted that, shortly after the communist government of Fidel Castro came to power, "persecution began and concentration camps were opened ... the sexual act became taboo while the 'new man' was proclaimed and masculinity exalted." Homosexuality was legalized in Cuba in 1979. Fidel Castro apologized for Cuba's poor historical record on LGBT issues in 2010.
My suspicion is, based on history, that should socialism become the ruling form of governance in this country, LGBTQ et al. will be lumped together with all the other 'useful idiots' whose usefulness ill have been used up, and they will be mistreated even as they have been and are now in those regimes.
Spent a great weekend in NYC a few weeks ago. A good Broadway show is a true spectacle and the energy and talent cannot be translated to a screen. The smaller the bar or restaurant the better it is, as well with the genuineness of the people working there.
It was a great experience and one we intend to do from time to time. But the nice part of cities are for visiting and for the rich to live—they can afford the cost and grind of it all. Anyone else is slowly ground down by the cost and isolation within the crowd.
What a great interplay of red and yellow. The yellow sign, building, cabs, light, and then the red lobsters hanging from the balcony, the traffic signs, the Michael Jackson advertisement, the m&m neon display. The Jewish stars prisoners were forced to wear and the blood that was shed. The whole of New York was preparing you for the play or you picked up on those themes as you snapped the photo. Coincidence or simulation?
"We want Ann’s review."
I don't do reviews, but an idea I expressed firmly and passionately after I saw this is the American Players Theater would do this better. I base that on seeing "Travesties" (and all sorts of other things).
I presume they'll do this play eventually.
I thought it had a lot of potential but it was staged and acted mushily. It needed better clarity and sharpness. It had a crowd of people on stage much of the time, and that needed to be orchestrated with precision. I don't think they really even tried to produce the dance-like beauty that was possible.
"I thought it had a lot of potential but it was staged and acted mushily. It needed better clarity and sharpness. It had a crowd of people on stage much of the time, and that needed to be orchestrated with precision. I don't think they really even tried to produce the dance-like beauty that was possible."
Good and useful non-review :)!
Oh, that cat's in the cradle song always makes me cry.
Part of the point is that the crowd on stage got smaller and smaller, even though at the beginning the two families were assimilating as hard as anyone could. Note: it is clear that Hermann was never going to be admitted into o the Jockey Club.
I don't disagree with Althouse's comments, but I took a lot from the evening.
Stoppard's plays don't perform themselves. We saw Rock and Roll in London and later at the Goodman in Chicago. It is fair to say the Goodman destroyed the meaning of the play.
Any Tom Stoppard play would be WAY OVER my head.
@Althouse (8:44), you have a useful second career as a theater critic if you want it.
One of the striking things about Victor Klemperer's memoir of life in Nazi Dresden is how the Jews, even living on the edge and watching their fellows being taken away, would argue with one another, especially about Germans and being German.
"Pro-Germans" like Klemperer tended to be, saw Nazism as an aberration from normal Germanness; while others argued that Nazism was the purest expression of innate Germanness.
Stoppard is an absolute genius and I will have to read the script for this. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
I liked everyone's commentary about this production and others by Stoppard as well.
Harry Frazee built the Longacre. Frazee is the guy what bought the Red Sox and supposedly traded Babe Ruth to finance No No Nanette A myth, like most good sports stories. Ruth did have some choice words to say about Frazee though...
and then the red lobsters hanging from the balcony
@Eva Marie, I believe those are meant to be crabs. A useful metaphor for sex in New York.
There were 2.5 million American Soldiers in the ETO, and I think everyone of them "liberated" a German Concentration camps. And at least 25 WWII journalists have claimed to be the first one to enter Buchenwald or Dachau. Even the blacks have gotten into the act. You had half-dozen African American TD battalions/Tank battalions in the ETO. Every one of them liberated at least one German concentrataion camp. Supposedly.
And since the 60s Broadway plays have been designed to attract one or more of the key demographics - Jews, Gays, and white women. Looks like the play Althouse saw, hit 2 out 3. It reminds me of John Simon's remark that the Ultimate Broadway play would be “A loud, vulgar musical about Jewish Negroes."
@rcocean
My father only talked to me once about his experience at Dachau.
He pulled out a shoebox of his Brownie photos of the camp, and showed me the pictures of the stacked bodies.
My father suffered his entire life both from what we now called PTSD, but then called shell shock. His descent into Alzheimer’s was, I believe, directly related to his combat experience and his experience at Dachau.
My father was an extremely modest man who hated war and never bragged about his experience in it. You can read a three part series I wrote about him recently here.
One of my campus colleagues (I almost became a G.A. for the man, in PoliSci before I chose History) was a Vienna-born Jew whose parents had fled with him in '38. He translated, edited and published the letters his grandparents sent out before they were murdered in '42. (H.P. Secher, Left Behind in Nazi Vienna, available at a portal near you.)
As for concentration camps, since little camps and subcamps were basically everywhere in the Reich, it was hard for GIs who made it there to NOT see and sometimes smell evidence of a major crime spree; it's an interesting contrast, between the US veterans putting themselves in a spotlight, and the Germans all, "Vaaassss? Ve hatt no idea!"
A few notorious camps get a lot of attention but there were hundreds, at least, where all manner of shit was done to all kinds of people.
A history prof of mine was a paraplegic from a wound received in Germany in early April '45. He claimed numerous times to have been a liberator of Dachau. As it turns out, my suspicions (as a precocious self-taught WWII expert) that some of his details were hinky turned out to be right--he had been in a hospital for weeks by the time his division, the 42nd, reached Dachau.
I don't judge him, and realized only later that he had been a mentor in a lot of ways. Perhaps the only true mentor I had.
Saw it a couple of weeks ago. I'm a huge Stoppard fan; the play raised interesting questions but it was perhaps my least favorite. The characters aged as the play proceeded so the same people were played by different actors (younger/older) as the years passed. I found it difficult to track--maybe reading it ahead of time would have helped. Seeing it again would also work, but not at several hundred dollars for 2 tix. Agree with Althouse that the staging/acting were meh.
The evening is divided into five scenes, all set in the same room in the family house in Vienna--1899, 1900, 1923, 1938, and 1955. In the final scene, the survivors ticked off for the young relative from London (an obvious stand-in for Stoppard) what happened to the family members who were present in the preceding scene set in 1938. Many, many died at Auschwitz.
The program notes say that Stoppard in the course of learning his family's history found that all four of his grandparents died in the death camps.
Never again.
I've never understood this phrase "liberated a concentration camp". If you read the history of these camps, you'll see most of the guards took off when an enemy army was approaching. These camps were rarely the scene of fighting. Why would they be? They weren't set up as defensive strongholds, the guards were rarely combat troops, they were there to keep the Prisoners in - not the enemy out.
So, what happened is the guards would take off, and some USA recon troops or an advancing Armor battalion, maybe with some infantry would show up and take possession. After that, I'm sure other USA soldiers showed up to look at what was going on. Or maybe their officers sent them to look at the camps to "See what we're fighting". And these tours continued after VE days. And also got reported on the radio and in Stars and stripes.
I'm sure all this, 30-40 years later got exaggerated into "I liberated a concentration camp". The same thing is true of Army units, I'm sure every Unit within 20 miles Dachau, now claims "X Division" liberted Dachau.
Martha Gellhorn claimed for years, she was one of the first at Dachau or Buchenwald and talked of "corpses piled high". But her biographer reveled she didn't visit until a week after the camp was "liberated". And she did see a FEW bodies, because people were still dying of malnutrition.
There's nothing wrong with all this exaggeration, it just gets annoying, because a lot of people didn't care about all this until the 70s, when the Holocaust became a "thing"
Any Tom Stoppard play would be WAY OVER my head.
I know what you mean.
On the other hand, Tom Stoppard also wrote a screenplay that is not elitist or difficult. In fact it's fucking awesome.
If you're trying to get your kids to read Shakespeare, I would start with that movie. Brilliant stuff. Thank you, Tom Stoppard.
"I don’t want my children and grandchildren being propagandized to be gay or trans, for the purpose of providing future fresh meat."
Only idiots imagine that "children and grandchildren" grow up and become (sic) gay because of social propaganda.
"It was a great experience and one we intend to do from time to time. But the nice part of cities are for visiting and for the rich to live—they can afford the cost and grind of it all. Anyone else is slowly ground down by the cost and isolation within the crowd."
I lived in NYC for 40 years and seven months, and was not rich--just a working stiff--and I loved NYC until the day we moved. I never felt I was being "ground down," never felt "isolation within the crowd," (though, I rather enjoy being alone in a crowd, so that's a matter of temperament). NYC was a wonderful place to live for every year I lived there, and, to the end, I would look at the city around me as I walked the streets and think, "I can't believe I live here!" Our move was my wife's preference; I would never have thought of leaving otherwise.
"Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
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