Perilous Times Here and in Fairyland

In the UK Times, Amanda Craig considers most thoughtfully and intelligently fairyland in some recent books.

Ginia Bellafante’s “Jodi Picoult and the Anxious Parent” in today’s New York Times did not make me any more inclined to read Nineteen Minutes, but it was an interesting piece nonetheless.

Ah, Norman!

I spent most of yesterday at the Circle in the Square Theater watching the three separate plays that make-up Alan Ayckbourn’s  The Norman Conquests trilogy.  I’d seen the original many years ago on television, had seen another of his plays many years ago (of which I only recall that the audience looked down on a couple of rooms as the actors moved between them), and the reviews of this revival just made me want to see it.

It was wonderful.  In his rave New York Times review,  Ben Brantley wrote that:

But the show that pairs off most naturally with Mr. Ayckbourn’s trilogy is one that opened in the fall. That is (and no, I haven’t lost my mind) Ian Rickson’s transcendent interpretation of Chekhov’s “Seagull.” For in its impeccably natural portrayal of tales of ordinary misery, “Conquests” suggests nothing so much as Chekhov pumped full of nitrous oxide. Like “The Seagull” it is built on one of the wonderful paradoxes of theater: deeply unhappy people can generate profound happiness in audiences allowed to eavesdrop on their lives.

You don’t have to see all three plays or see them all on one day as I did, but I agree with Brantley that:

You can’t lose with any one, but you win big if you go to all three. Seeing the entire trilogy in one day, as I did, allowed me the luxurious privilege of getting to know characters in a way that only fat novels allow. I wouldn’t have sacrificed one “oh,” “aah” or pause of those seven hours.

You just get to know the six characters vividly.  Poor Reg. Poor Annie.  Poor Sarah*.  Poor Ruth.  Poor Tom.  And poor, poor Norman.

It was a rainy, rainy day yesterday in NYC.  My dog was unwell and was (as they say in novels), off her food.  She also wasn’t happy at all with my coming and going.  As I did, zipping back and forth between the three plays to walk her.

It was fascinating to see who was also there for all three plays.  Most of the people in my row were there for the duration, but I fixated on others across from me (the play is performed in a theater in the round) as they changed with each play. Most intriguing were the two men with a toddler directly across from me who watched quietly for the first few scenes and fell asleep on one of their laps for the last two.

If you have the interest, time, and bucks I highly recommend spending a day doing this.  It is like being with a character-rich book, you just get to know them over the weekend of the three plays just as you get to know the characters in a good book.

Now you can see video clips of the three plays in the current production here.   But part of the reason for my going was my memory of a television version of the original starring Tom Conti as Norman.  And so below is a taste of that. (Each play takes place in a different part of the house/garden often at the same time, a bit before, or a bit after.  And with each play you learn more about the characters most of all.  Not to mention the witty and clever language is as fresh then as it is now. At least so I think.)

Beginning of  “Table Manners”

Beginning of “Living Together”

Beginning of  “Round and Round the Garden”

* Played by Amanda Root whom I remember with incredible fondness as Anne Eliott in a terrific film-version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion.