Stranger than Fiction

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Nemeses 

 

by

 

Marc Ellis

Published in Blue Crow Magazine, Vol. 2, October 2010

 

1. Beauty

Marianne was the world’s most famous model. All adored her long hair and flawless skin, her thin wrists and waist. The magazines had featured her for decades and people of both sexes wondered, what was the secret of her youthfulness?

But only Marianne knew.

One day, as Marianne was waiting for her limousine in the foyer of a great hotel, a laundry girl pushed a huge basket full of soiled towels past her towards the service lift. The girl was bent with toil and sweat glistened on her forehead. Marianne’s heart beat like a jackhammer, her face turned raspberry red and her neck muscles went into spasm. The laundry girl was not only her spitting image; she was fifteen years younger and much, much more beautiful. Marianne knew that her moment had come. She followed the girl through the service doors.

“Marianne,” she said softly, investing the girl with her own name. The girl stopped pushing the basket and turned, staring up into the older woman’s face with an expression which revealed the ambition with which she had waited for this very moment.

Marianne felt sorry for her.

Each knew instinctively what to do.

“Swap clothes,” Marianne whispered, reminding her. Wordlessly, the laundry girl complied then, indistinguishable from her mentor, she walked back through the swinging doors into the hotel lobby.

There, she seamlessly continued the legend of the ever-beautiful model, Marianne, while her mentor bent her back to the heavy laundry basket and resumed the life she had known before she became the most beautiful woman in the world.

2. Innocence

Owen was born and bred in the country; he had never been to the city.

He had always been a romantic. His first words were of admiration for a buttercup and, until it died when Owen was six, his terrier had been his best friend. When he was seven he proposed to his mother and when he was twelve his heart was broken when his father entered his favourite sheep in the Hook and Hoof competition at the Agricultural Show.

His romantic disposition made Owen think hard about himself at an unusually early age; he turned his attention away from his pets, and from his parents. He made friends with some of the local lads. He was pleased that they enjoyed his company and after a few tentative sessions in the oast house he certainly enjoyed theirs. They taught him to roll cigarettes of rough tobacco and introduced him to some of the high-spirited local girls. They were dark, broad-beamed women who drank the local brew and were always willing to accommodate Owen, for whom they developed a soft spot.

Nevertheless Owen knew he was missing adventure, city life and romance, real romance with an experienced woman who knew what she was doing and who would show him the way of the world.

On his sixteenth birthday Owen sold his last pet, an enormous, fat and intelligent pig of which he was once fond, and bought a one – way ticket to town. He rented a room above a laundry in a seedy but interesting bohemian neighbourhood. He bought a ghetto blaster a flannel bathrobe, a pair of jeans, a haircut and a pouch of rough tobacco. He hung out in the coffee shops where he chatted to the proprietors and smiled at the hookers and the cops and after a few days he felt that he had come home, that he belonged.

The locals were amused by him. The coffee shop bosses indulged his delusions of sophistication and the women who worked in the laundry were touched by his naïveté; he reminded them of their own sons, so they steadfastly left him alone.

One Saturday night he put on his new jeans, tuned up his ghetto blaster and rolled himself a smoke. A youngish, big-boned woman who cleaned the laundry machines after closing time put her head around his door.

“You better turn that music down young feller,” she said, “else you’ll have to dance with me.”

"Oh?” said Owen. He stared at her and did nothing.

The woman waited for a full minute, staring back at him with fierce mahogany eyes. As the coarse tobacco took hold, Owen became fascinated. Her black curls, shrieking with flame coloured streaks, had been pulled upwards wildly onto the top of her noble head. Her lips were full and her ear lobes were pierced by several dull studs from which escaped an occasional gleam. He had passed this woman each day on his way in and out of the laundry but had never given her a second glance. Now, before him, stood the woman of his dreams.

“So, dance then,” he said, though he hardly dared to speak. He was bound up in the fulfilment of his romantic destiny.

The woman swayed on her strong ankles, reaching long, gnarled hands above her head, behind her back, around her sides, swaying, rippling. She extended her arms towards him.

Owen put down his cigarette, took her hands and began to move with her. Her body was firm, surprisingly firm. Close up, he saw, her eyes were deep and knowing. Her body opened up to him and he moved in, gulping down the experience as greedily as her body was swallowing him. Beneath the smooth fabric of her dress, she was hard against him, angular and tough. His cheek docked in her neck, fitting into the broad sinews which twisted up to support her skull.

“Hey cutie,” she rumbled, sinking her jaw down to his, her strong arms pulling him to her as though he were a bottle from which she needed a drink. Her voice was hoarse and low, close in his ear.

“You be careful. You’re dancing with a real woman now.”

3. Food

Martine loved eating and grew fatter and fatter every day. She enjoyed food at all times and in any location. Hunger would strike her without warning in the oddest places and she was never without food of some description. Chocolate bars, pastry, wine gums and cans of lurid soft drink were inevitably secreted in the voluminous folds of her clothes and in the depths of her ubiquitous handbag. When her holidays arrived she travelled to one provincial city or another where she would take a hotel room and lie in bed eating pizza with the TV on.

One day she fell in love and decided to become thin in order to attract the attention of her beloved. She dieted, she exercised and she took pills which suppressed her appetite. After two months she was as thin as a painter’s ladder. She went to the gym and after another month her body was toned and petite. Then she went to her beloved and made him carry her away on a Pacific cruise.

Before more than a few days the weather turned foul. The ship failed to overcome phenomenal waves and it quickly sank. Martine’s lover was drowned and she found herself in a lifeboat with four enormous German tourists.

The days turned into weeks and Martine was dehydrated and starving. The huge tourists were relatively comfortable. Their bulk kept them warm and, unlike Martine, they had their supplies of chocolate, dried fruit, biscuits, éclairs, and cans of soft drink hidden, as always, in their clothes. They ate and drank and sang folk songs to keep their spirits up as they waited for their ordeal to end.

As her companions enjoyed their adventure and thrived in adversity, Martine lay in the prow of the cramped lifeboat, dying of thirst and starvation and cursed her decision to become thin and beautiful.

4. Family

Nigel lived in poverty with his parents. Their neighbourhood was dangerous and the people next door were smelly and disagreeable. Yet Nigel’s parents were clean, honest and kind and they provided him with every happiness they could afford. But Nigel was ungrateful and he frequently complained.

When he was twelve, Nigel’s mother felt honour-bound to tell him that he had been adopted. Nigel was thrilled.

“Oh goody,” he said. “Now I can go and find my real parents and have a good life at last.”

He filled out a form in the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages and waited, waited, and waited, while his parents tried to conceal their grief at the impending loss of their only child beneath a veneer of loving support and understanding.

Eventually an envelope arrived from the Registry. Nigel ripped it open. Imagine his astonishment to learn that his real parents were the smelly, disagreeable couple who lived next door.

“I don’t think I’ll go,” Nigel said to his parents. “I think I’d rather stay here with you.”

“Oh no you don’t,” said his mother and father. “You wanted to find your real parents and now you have. So, be gone.”

And so Nigel had to move to the house next door to live in starvation and squalor with the smelly, disagreeable neighbours while his former parents eventually overcame their grief and lived on in peace and contentment.

5. Marriage

Roberta and Michael were very much in love. When, at their wedding service, they said “with my body I thee worship and with all my worldly goods I thee endow,” they meant it. Hundreds of people came to their wedding breakfast and threw rice at the dove – grey Bentley which drove them to the airport to commence their Hawaiian honeymoon.

No sooner had they settled into a luxurious routine than tragedy struck. Michael went surfing at Waikiki Beach while Roberta sunned herself on the sand. She saw nothing, not even the dorsal fin at which Michael feebly grabbed as his body was ground to fragments by the jaws of a giant shark.

Roberta was inconsolable. She refused to leave Hawaii without her husband. She would not eat and she hid in what had been their honeymoon suite. Eventually she permitted a tray to be delivered to her door and she ate with moderation, hiding her hunger even from herself.

All at once she felt a crunch. She put her hand to her mouth and there she found Michael’s wedding ring, embedded in a mouthful of poisson meuniere. The words of her wedding vows came instantly to mind and she sobbed in the Hawaiian sunset as she hungrily finished her dinner.

6. Motherhood

Wendy was a happy teenager. She obeyed her parents and her teachers and she had a faithful, steady and chaste boyfriend, Errol.

When she had successfully finished High School, her parents rewarded her and two of her girlfriends with a trip to Hawaii where they cast off their innocence and enjoyed themselves in frantic evenings of drink and abandon.

Soon after her return, Wendy’s doctor told her that she was pregnant.

“But I can’t be!” Wendy wailed, “I’m a virgin.”

Her parents made Errol marry her.

“But he hasn’t done anything wrong!” Wendy exclaimed as her father firmly led to the altar. “I’m a virgin and so is he!”

“Balderdash,” her mother said, carefully putting her half empty confetti box back into her handbag.

Errol said nothing. He made no demands and gave her a panty-hose allowance. When the baby came the birth was difficult and Wendy was anaesthetised. Afterwards, when she had come around from the gas, the nurse wheeled up the humidicrib and opened the Perspex lid to show Wendy the little baby’s delicate, golden skin and sweet Japanese features.

“Lovely little nipper,” announced the nurse as she heaved the baby onto Wendy’s painfully inflated bosom.

The medication had not entirely worn off. As if in a dream, Wendy had a vision of that drunken night in Maui. “Oh no,” she wailed, staring at the funny - looking baby, “I’m not a virgin anymore!”

7. Christmas

Towards the end of the year Wayne and Denise lost their home to the interest rates and went to live with Denise’s mother, Iris.

Wayne and Iris did not get along very well but Wayne wasn’t worried because Iris was rich and her house was luxurious. There was a fine swimming pool next to a large barbecue area, so the three planned a hungi for Christmas Eve to which they invited all of the neighbours.

The week before Christmas, Wayne went away on business. When he had not returned by the day of the party, Denise became worried and preoccupied. She lay on a banana lounge drinking neat Blackberry Nip, leaving Iris to attend to all the arrangements alone. The guests arrived and everyone had a good time, except Denise who lay in her chair, standing only when everyone crowded around the hungi as Iris drew it up from the hole which neatly penetrated the turf beside the pool.

Suddenly there was a shriek.

“Murder!” rasped a stifled voice. No – one moved, though Denise trembled sufficiently to spill her Blackberry Nip all over the unwinding sheet in which was revealed Wayne’s baked body.

8. Friends

Damien was a young man of charisma and a rare, dark beauty. He was vastly popular, not only because of his wealth but because of his innocent, child-like charm.

One day Damien noticed lumps on the sides of his knees. The doctors shook their heads sadly and informed him that he had a disease and would die within six months.

Damien tried everything. His friends exhorted him to abandon conventional medicine and to cure himself with crystals. But Damien refused, saying this was nonsense. He sought second, third and fourth opinions from specialists but the diagnosis and prognosis remained the same.

Eventually, in desperation, he allowed his friends to persuade him to abandon the unhelpful remedies prescribed by his doctors and to turn to the crystals. They proudly presented him with splendid examples in blue, green and red and they optimistically waited for signs of improvement.

But all in vain. One day Damien’s dead body was found by his cleaning lady. His friends were dismayed.

“How can the crystals have failed?” they asked each other, incredulous. They felt let down and were too annoyed with Damien even to attend his funeral.

It was only weeks after his death, when the post mortem results were published, that they cheered up. Silly Damien had been eating the crystals ground up in his breakfast egg. It was this which had killed him, not the disease, of which no trace had been found in his remains.

9. Love

One day George decided that he was tired of the way his lover behaved. He told him that his behaviour was intolerable and that he was going to leave.

“But I love you,” said his lover. “Please stay.”

“I can’t,” said George. “The things you do drive me mad,” and he left.

After a few months of living alone, George met someone new and soon enough his new boyfriend accepted George’s invitation to move in with him. They lived happily together for quite some time, but eventually the new lover began to irritate George and the irritation increased until George couldn’t stand it anymore.

“I cannot stand the way you behave,” he said. “The things you do drive me mad.”

“I don’t care,” said his lover. “Get stuffed.”

And nothing changed.

Eventually George complained again, with the same indifferent response. He became exasperated.

“Look here,” said the new lover, “if you dislike me so much, why don’t you leave?”

“Because I love you,” said George, his ardour stifling his indignation at being asked to leave his own house.

“Then you’ll just have to put up with me,” said the new lover, and they continued to live together, to George’s infinite torment.


© Marc Ellis 2010

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The Clinton Tapes; Wrestling History With the President

By Taylor Branch

Simon & Schuster, New York, 2009, illustrated, 707 pages, ISBN 1416543333, 9781416543336

This book held my fascination more than Clinton's own memoirs, which were also fascinating but less personal. I liked Taylor Branch less and less as he revealed himself to be a persistent hanger-on more than a man of any real intellectual purpose or means. It was interesting to see how he began to encroach on his subject by, first, making suggestions about what to discuss, second, telling the President what to do, third, making moral judgements about the President, fourth actually moving into the Queen's Bedroom and complaining that there were insufficient pillows. At the end of the book Branch is freely wandering into the Presidential private quarters and nosing around while Bill Clinton is distracted by a phone call.

Despite Branch’s increasing assumption of intimacy and entitlement, the pithy observations of President Clinton, as well his verbatim observations about the world, its people and what he needed to do, made me swoon with unadulterated adoration. Some percipient, if simple, political statements emerge.  One is that the President needs to remain consistently and personally involved in policy and administration and should not delegate much of the business to advisors (or, as we saw lately, to the Vice President), or he loses much of the integrity of his administration (remind you of anyone?). Clinton also observes that the Republicans are much better at gaining and retaining power because they are not distracted (or divided) by having any other agenda.

Clinton was always criticised for being indifferent to morals or principles, but the book shows that he separated "raw politics" from what he felt he needed to achieve as President. What upset him about the Whitewater investigations was not that they occurred but that he missed the cue that they would form a dangerous weapon of "raw politics." He seems to have regretted this more keenly than he minded his own self-betrayal in ignoring his wife’s expert legal advice not to allow the appointment of a special prosecutor.

Clinton’s relationships with members of his administration emerge as objective and, at times, merciless. His justifiable antipathy towards his unfortunate Attorney - General, who was hog-tied to the FBI, are well known. But his personal disaffection for Madeleine Albright was interesting to discover as was his appropriate ruthlessness in terminating the appointments of members of the administration whose personal behaviour became a liability.

The President’s perspicacity in analysing the personalities with which he engaged is especially interesting. The relationship I enjoyed reading about the most was that between Clinton and Assad of Syria, the notorious old tyrant/terrorist with whom Clinton developed a genuinely close personal rapport. This had significant consequences for Middle East peace efforts but ultimately failed to make a difference because Netanyahu ignored Assad’s phone calls at a critical moment and thus caused irreversible offense. The stories of Boris Yeltsin are simply astounding. Late at night at the Kremlin, Hillary Clinton tells Boris a thing or two about democracy and scolds him for not being close enough to the Duma; in Washington, on a state visit no less, Boris is picked up by the police in Pennsylvania Avenue where he is wandering around in his underwear, totally drunk and demanding a pizza.

"Well," said Clinton with a shrug, "he got his pizza."
Taylor Branch is not a gifted writer and sometimes gets so caught up in his own words that they remain meaningless or unintelligible. But, on the other hand, he has the whimsy and courage to include some telling informal portraits of characters other than Clinton. His account of the second inauguration provides the unforgettable image of Rev. Jesse Jackson positioning himself contrary to all explicit instructions at the top of the steps of the reviewing stand, creating a bottleneck in the form of a "one man receiving line" to greet on his glorious lonesome the President, Speaker, cabinet and judiciary as they were forced past him on the way out.

 Watch an interview with Taylor Branch about "The Clinton Tapes" :

De Profundis: Juan Antonio Samaranch

Juan Antonio Samaranch Torello, Marquess Samaranch,

July 17 1920 – 21 April 2010

Southend’s recording of his September 1993 declaration "the winner is Syd - en - ey" became Australia’s number 1 recording and was played everywhere.

In addition to being Honorary President for Life of the International Olympic Committee, Samaranch was also Fascist Secretary for Sports under Franco, and Governor of Barcelona at a time when garrotting was the preferred form of state execution.

Listen to Samaranch pronounce that the winner is Sydney:  

De Profundis: Malcolm McLaren

22 January 1946 – 8 April 2010

“Our culture has ...become a notion of boredom that is bought and sold, where nothing will happen except that people will become more and more terrified of tomorrow, because the new continues to look old, and the old will always look cute. ”  It was a nice idea, and he did his best to bring it about, but he will probably always be remembered for the Sex Pistols, and not for the recording of "Paris Paris" with Catherine Deneuve, which will forever be an anthem for the unsung, and a beacon for the blind...

Watch Malcolm McLaren and Catherine Deneuve's "Paris, Paris..."

Chelsea Symphony Orchestra

Spring Concert

St Paul's Lutheran Church, West 22nd Street, New York, March 28 2010

I went to an unbelievable concert by the Chelsea Symphony which was excellent because of the performance by these mostly young people who moonlight as students and cosmetics sellers at Saks while writing operas and concertii and singing/performing/conducting them on Sunday afternoons at St Luke's church in Chelsea.

The woman sitting behind me was old and wizened and I said to her as I sat in the pew in front of her, “can you see?”

“No,” she said. “I’m blind.”   She and her friend were talking about the preparation for Passover.

“I’m getting my schmaltz at Tony’s, you know, on 2nd Avenue, but I don’t know why I am having a brisket because Rachel won’t eat it.”

“She won’t? Why am I not surprised? She is losing herself, losing herself.”

“I know. And for why? Just last week I met her in the market for cawfee and there she was like she was the Queen of Sheba with her hair all pouf and a dress up to here.”

“I know, I know. And her attitude... I went up to her at Mannie’s, you know, Mannie’s? Last week? And I went up to her and I said ‘hello Rachel’ I said and she said ‘do I know you?’ ”

“Can you believe that one? I cook a brisket.  She won’t eat a brisket. It’s all going in the trash."

Metropolitan Opera, Attila

By  Giuseppi Verdi

Lincoln Center New York, March 27 2010

Libretto by Temisctocle Solera, based on the play Attla King of the Huns by Zacharias Werner.
Marco Armilato (Conductor), Pierre Audi (Production), Miuccia Prada (Costumes), Herzog & de Meuron (Sets).

Iar Abdrazkov, Russell Thomas, Violeta Urmana, Fraco Vassallo, Ramon Vargas, Samuel Ramey.

Some people think that the Metropolitan Opera is an exclusive enclave wherein the last of the oligarchs pay $400 a seat to tickle each other with ostrich feathers and dance to the music of time. This is of course entirely true but only if you sit in the orchestra seats, front centre, or in what is quaintly named the parterre.

It must be admitted that I too paid such prices when I knew no better but since I discovered the $20 seats in the family circle and the $40 seats in the side boxes I have eschewed the ostrich feathers and choose instead to gaze upon them from on high like Garance in Les Enfants du Paradis. Any sense of privilege one experienced in the posh seats is more than replaced by a sense of frugal delight in saving so much money and the fact is the view is better from a long way up.  The view of the wings, that is, or the orchestra, or (from the side boxes) the face of the conductor himself if you are lucky enough to get the director’s box which actually faces the auditorium and not the stage.

www.opera-online.com

On this occasion I had a Family Circle ticket which cost $40 instead of $20 because it was the last performance of the Metropolitan’s first ever production of Attila. It was also the first ever appearance at the Met of Riccardo Mutti who had been engaged to conduct it. However he had left this final performance in the hands of Marco Amiliato (pictured) and although it was disappointing not to see Mutti whose greatness was recently proven when he terminally offended the administration of La Scala as so many musical giants have done before him, Marco Amiliato’s appearances added an additional and unexpected excitement to the evening. He is one of those jobbing opera maestros who do not remain in one place for longer than is necessary to give a unique and much admired season without ever creating a sense of stardom around himself. It could even be said that he is relatively unknown, except that he isn’t. He is widely, yet quietly, admired.

Musically, Attila was superb and Ildar Abdrazakov, Violeta Urmana and Ramón Vargas were in good form even though Urmana (a Lithuanian) announced she had a cold. I heard this production broadcast on the radio twice before I attended it and on each broadcast occasion the audience was asked for its indulgence for Urmana’s cold so I suppose this is her little ritual. If so, it works, as she sang perfectly. Samuel Ramey's appearance as the ghost of the general was a delightful surprise as I did not know he was in it.

The production was another matter entirely. The design was by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, the Swiss architects who designed the Beijing Olympic stadium and lots of other famous buildings, and the costumes were by Miuccia Prada whose program note says she is indifferent to public opinion. The production was directed by Pierre Audi, founder of the Almeida performing arts centre in London, commissioner of many operas by contemporary composers, and artistic director of the Netherlands Opera since 1988. His reputation for exemplary contemporary interpretations of theatre and opera is so established that I can only assume he wanted to give free rein to the experts in architecture and couture and see what emerged, hoping for the best.

What did emerge were sets and costumes which were possibly interesting on an architectural and conceptual basis and were definitely innovative but they sustained little or no relationship to the music and lyrics. I’ve previously mentioned the booing that accompanied the curtain calls of 2009’s new production of Tosca [click here for review] , when the audience demonstrated its resentment for the new production which has displaced its much loved Zefirelli bon bon.  The booing at Attila was just as audible, yet it was not an expression of determined conservatism as it was at Tosca but a response to sets, costumes and stage directions which failed to engage the music or the audience, and possibly alienated both. I was not the only person who kept his eyes closed so as to enjoy the musical performance without having to solve the arcane puzzles posed by the visual absurdities paraded throughout the otherwise enjoyably long evening.

Ken Howard, Metropolitan Opera

The only exception to the directorial failure of this musically brilliant production was Scene 1 (pictured) in which the curtain rose on a vast cross section of ruined Rome, with the victorious Hun planted on the top of layer upon layer of half-recognizable detritus, while the enslaved Romans sang their quiet and sullen chorus on the bottom. It was thrilling, and showed what theatrically inexperienced architects and fashion designers could do to enormous effect if they understood the design from the audience’s perspective instead of remaining locked inside the limited if not inhumane boundaries of professional and slightly egocentric adventurism.

As far as the audience was concerned, I went on the last night, when there was a charity gala requiring evening dress so, for the first time, I mingled with women wearing trains. This taught me that trains have an immediate effect on the the crowd in the foyer because people were trying (at least) not to step on these expensive fabrics, though I have to say the women wearing them made no effort at all to be considerate about the imposition on others of their sartorial extravagance.

I’ve always had reservations about the ushers at the Metropolitan Opera. Like the security guards at the Metropolitan Museum, they show signs of being underpaid and ill-treated as they are often quite abusive, but I had never seen anything like the behaviour that occurred at this performance of Attila. Before it began, an usher in the front of the Family Circle screamed for five minutes at a person sitting thirty rows back, who was taking photos. It would have been perfectly easy for the usher to walk over and speak to the culprit directly, but she preferred to stay where she was and scream at everyone.

As if this was not enough, twenty minutes later, at the first scene change, when we were all sitting quietly in the dark, a latecomer arrived to claim his seat and found someone sitting in it.

“Get out RIGHT NOW,” the usher bellowed. “Go on, MOVE! MOVE! OK? You are not moving? I am CALLING THE POLICE!!”

The elderly woman who had “stolen” the seat was about 80 and could barely stand, so two ushers grabbed her by the shoulders and literally dragged her out, sliding her polyester fabrics and shopping bags across the knees of the German tourists seated beside her.  People were simply appalled.

Looped

By Matthew Lombardo

Rob Ruggiero (Director); Valerie Harper, Brian Hutchison, Michael Mulheren.
Adrian W. Jones (Sets),William Ivey Long (Costumes), Ken Billington (Lighting), Michael Hooker and Peter Fitzgerald (Sound), Charles LaPointe (Wigs), Arthur Siccardi and Patrick Sullivan (Production Supervisors).
Lyceum Theater, 149 West 45th Street, Manhattan, Saturday March 27th 2010.

I attended “Looped,” a play about Tallulah Bankhead, starring Valerie Harper, with my usual determination to find a seat from which I could exit swiftly in the event of a disaster.

Judging by the vicious reviews the play had received in which it and its leading actress were described as if they were secondary attractions in an embalming museum, I would need a Plan B which in my case frequently takes the form of a moderately priced Manhattan at the Algonquin Hotel.

Imagine my surprise to find not only the house packed to the rafters with a rapt audience which howled with laughter for two and a half hours and gave a thunderous ovation at the end, but a small cast of the strongest Broadway actors I have seen in several years, and a leading lady (Valerie Harper a.k.a. Rhoda) whose expert stage craft was exceeded only by her presence in the form of Miss Tallulah Bankhead.

Contrary to the reviews, the character of Miss Bankhead was entirely three dimensional and totally lacked the element of caricature. This was due to Valerie Harper’s superb technical acting skills and her authentic commitment to the role. She found everything about the character that was vulnerable as well as tough, tedious as well as amusing, and sober as well as intoxicated. Naturally, there were plenty of Bankhead’s infamous one liners, but they were tossed off as the eccentric character’s perfectly logical responses to the circumstances in which the play takes place. In fact, from the beginning, the character of Bankhead was communicated to the audience as a woman requiring an explanation, as well as a background by which her public persona could be off-set, balanced and ultimately understood.

The critics were right when they said as they did with one scornful voice that the play would appeal to that generation of movie fans who spend their lives watching “Lifeboat” and proving the truth of Miss Bankhead’s notorious statement that she only ever met people who “want to f**k me or be me.” There they were at the ornate Lyceum Theatre: rows of now elderly men who, thirty years ago, were the exotic strangers in the shadows, former objects of desire who now resembled Karl Lagerfeld, to various degrees. But behind them and above them and beside them was the inevitable Bridge and Tunnel crowd from New Jersey and Westchester and White Plains, along with another enormous crowd of young theatre goers who would have had no congenital knowledge of Bankhead. She made her last film shortly before her death almost 45 years ago, decades before these people were born, yet they were leading the cheers and laughter.

One such person sat beside me and like almost everyone else was incapable of silent concentration. “Oh no!” he yelled. “Oh Jesus,” he hissed and “oh my goodness gracious” was his occasional and somewhat eccentric median remark. In between he simply roared with laughter. I myself relapsed into a permanent snigger, being far too lazy to laugh out loud as doing so for so long would have been exhausting. At the end, after many curtain calls, this heterogeneous crowd fell into the street chattering with the sort of bonhomie induced by sharing an exceptionally rewarding performance.

So much for the critics. Yet, inevitably, it was announced yesterday that “Looped” would close on Sunday, April 11 after barely 55 performances. Full houses of roaring, appreciative, theatre goers who depart in a tiddly state of euphoria are not enough to provide the advance bookings that keep a show afloat on Broadway, and advance bookings respond to good reviews.

The reviews of this play were not only mean and nasty; they were wrong. The play was not an anachronistic re-hash of a camp stereotype more suited to drag cabaret. Valerie Harper was not a fading TV star trying to turn a Pasadena Playhouse success into a Broadway spectacular and the script was not a one dimensional litany of oft-quoted one liners. If anything, thanks to Valerie Harper’s performance, the play was not really about Tallulah Bankhead, but about how the innocence and vulnerability of each individual can be manipulated or nurtured by others. It touched the audience, who loved it. Where are the New York critics coming from when they not only condemn it but following the announcement of its early closing take the trouble to print further condemnatory notices about it, daring people to attend its last week?

These elitists who determine what stays and what goes on Broadway are not only malevolent; they are duplicitous. It is not uncommon for them to bestow Tony Awards on plays they have previously ordered out of existence, and it would not be in the least bit surprising if that happens to “Looped,” which has all the characteristics of a Tony nominee. Stay tuned. You heard it here first.

Watch Valerie Harper as Tallulah Bankhead in "Looped" :

All About ME

Dame Edna Everage and Michael Feinstein
Henry Miller’s Theatre, 124 West 43rd Street, New York, Wednesday, March 24 2010

I was glad to be sitting with the paupers at Henry Miller’s Theatre last week because Dame Edna has if anything intensified her obsessive interest in the clothing, interiors and personal lives of those unfortunate enough to sit in the front row or anywhere near it. My sister did this once, in a red dress, and was informed that she had been mistaken for a Royal Mail letterbox. This was nothing compared to Dame Edna’s malevolent (if kindly - meant) fascination with two ladies from New Jersey and Westchester, respectively, who un-self-consciously supplied the Dame with ammunition which was instantly turned back upon them, to devastating effect.

With regard to what’s new in Edna’s life, she has adopted an African baby. If that isn’t enough, it’s named “K-K-K” (“K” for short). Edna has been reunited with her late husband Norm, who died over 20 years ago, because he is in the “Bodies” exhibition which has enthralled Manhattan for several months now. Her admiration for Beyonce broke its banks and overflowed in a performance of “Single Lady” replete with muscle toned dancers, deafening music and an ebonic booty dancing chorus led by the Dame herself. Thirty minutes later she performed Sondheim’s “Ladies Who Lunch,” accompanied by two vast martinis and a lot of concern for Sondheim after whom Henry Miller’s Theatre is about to be renamed (it is not clear why). Edna worried that Sondheim was suffering from over - exposure, so she was temporarily taking his place.

If all this was not enough the show was competing with Michael Feinstein’s big band cabaret, also named “All About ME” which happened to be on the same stage of the same theatre at the same time. Edna’s response to this invasion of her space was to have her minders lock him in a closet from which he escaped (not without innuendo on Edna’s part) to accompany Edna who, as a soubrette, launched her new torch song, “The Dingo Ate My Baby,” astride his white grand piano.

Although I did not actually pinch myself I understood what it was like to want to do so. The concept of the dual yet unblended performance created some of the most bizarre, even surreal, theatrical spectacles I have seen since I first saw Barry Humphries metamorphose into Edna Everage before our very eyes at the Princess Theatre in Launceston in 1970. The schizophrenic duality of Everage and Feinstein was accentuated by Feinstein’s unadulterated sincerity and perfectionist, even earnest, professionalism. His dimension of the show comprised some staggering performances in which an enormous orchestra accompanied his unique cabaret piano virtuosity. One song in particular, “What Did I Have Then That I Don’t Have Now?” from “On A Clear Day You Can See Forever” was sung (as it was in the film) as a simple, perplexed question of self betrayal, while the enormous ramifications of which were struck home by a crashing, almost Wagnerian, orchestral accompaniment.  This number typified the standard and tone for Feinstein’s programme which competed in every sense with the Dame’s continual and very welcome narcissistic interruptions.

After an hour of bitter dispute, collaboration was achieved in the last twenty minutes, which comprised an upbeat medley from the American Song Book. “Collaboration” amounted to dire competition for vocal domination as well as stage space, and ultimately, Edna’s signature paean to gladioli which forms the finale to all of her shows, was commandeered by Michael Feinstein. Some genuine sharing must have taken place in rehearsal as Feinstein was able to get the gladdies almost as far as Edna who for decades has for decades been able to land them in the pauper’s rows at the back of the balcony, as well as the ashtrays on the sides, with a mere flick of the wrist.

Inevitably, the show was dismissed by the New York critics, as a nonsensical mis - match. As usual, they did not get the joke, or did not want to get it, or found it inappropriate for Broadway (they really set themselves up as judge and jury).  Unlike other shows upon which they cast the same verdict of doom (such as “Avenue Q” which is still running after 6 years), "All About ME" did not survive. It closes today, April 4, two weeks after opening.

Edna Everage has failed before in New York and on television this morning she was sanguine, even amused, by this sad outcome. For twenty years in the 70s and 80s she was completely ignored by the American public who did not comprehend her short-lived Broadway performances at all. Although she is now a famous, even adored, gigastar in the USA as well as the UK and Australia, this is not enough to keep her quirky show open in the economic wasteland of Broadway where a critic’s pomposity determines what we all get to see unless we are smart enough to go to previews.

Throughout the entire winter Broadway shows have been half empty and half priced tickets are so easy to buy directly from the theatres that there is no need to book on line and pay the ludicrous “convenience” fees or to spend two hours in the cheap tickets line in Times Square (not that this stops the thousands of tourists who seem to like standing there all afternoon in the freezing cold). Last week the only tickets which were hard to find were for “Wicked,” which is solidly booked for months and “Promises, Promises,” which is the latest nostalgia revival starring Kristin Chenoweth and Sean Hayes. It would probably be unforgettable should it be possible to see the stage through the shoulder pads and big hair of the bridge and tunnel crowd, all of whom flocked to Edna when things were good just as they have abandoned her now that times are tough.

Watch Dame Edna and Michael Feinstein discuss "All About ME."

The Ghost Writer

Roman Polanski (Producer, Director, Screenplay), 2010:

Ewan McGregor, Kim Cattrall, Amelia Bly, Olivia Williams, Ruth Lang, Pierce Brosnan, Adam Lang.
Robert Harris (Screenplay), Robert Benmussa, Alain Sarde, Timothy Burrill, Henning Molfenter (Producers), Daniel Champagnon (Production Supervisor), Michael Schaefer (Studio Executive).

Anyone who wonders why the USA continues to pursue Roman Polanski with such bitter determination might go and see “The Ghost Writer” to find the answer. The film stands resolutely on a political base which is refreshingly reactionary after what seemed like the dark ages of the disgraceful Bush administration in which many of the world’s governments behaved as if they knew no better. First and foremost among them was the now busily-reconstructed Tony Blair’s government at Whitehall to whom it must be said any resemblance in this film is purely coincidental. So, in essence, the plot is banal but enjoyable given the murderous rubbish to which we were subjected in reality.

The most essential point about this film is that it is everything “A Single Man” is not. Both films overcome mediocre scripts and staging (if not to say indifferent acting) by conveying an elementary plotline through the hypnotic effect of superb cinematography. In both films the camera and direction create tableaux of such crisp, beautifully lit perfection that all senses are suspended beyond the visual. Tom Ford’s film more or less stops with this extraordinary achievement, after which one leaves the theatre feeling satisfied but capable of wanting more. Polanski’s film goes further. His ability to infuse his brilliant shots with visual clues and hidden meaning, and to coordinate them with what intriguing nuances the threadbare script provides, adds so much more to the experience of seeing this film that one remains trapped in its mood and under its spell for some time afterwards.

This is an amazing accomplishment considering the average standards of acting. Ewan McGregor steadfastly occupies the role he has always occupied throughout his career of being entirely himself. Ditto Pierce Brosnan, who seems to be miscast until the denouement which I will not give away declares him to be entirely right for the part, but even this jarring effect casts doubt on his suitability. Kim Cattrall’s screen image sucks up Polanski’s superb treatment of the femme fatale and she is amazing, as always, until she opens her mouth.

At that point all her hard work is wasted because the worst and most puzzling lapse in this film is the old problem of Americans trying to do English accents. They can’t, and they should stop trying because they all sound like Dick Van Dyke in “Mary Poppins” (a performance which remains one of the most appalling cinematic vandalisms of all time).

Even Pierce Brosnan, a lapsed Irishman, is incapable of adopting a certain Prime Minister’s regrettable command of English, no matter how coincidental the likeness is intended to be. At the beginning of the film he sounds like Ian Carmichael in “What Would I Do Without Jeeves?” and by the end of the movie he is no other than a half ga-ga Harold Macmillan giving the “Winds of Change” speech. In the middle he simply reverts to the Malibu argot as do all the other non - English actors who must have realized, correctly, that Polanski’s direction and cinematography would outweigh all negative distractions.

Watch the trailer:

Journeys With George

Alexandra Pelosi (Producer, Screnwiter, Cinematographer), 2002

George W. Bush, Alexandra Pelosi, Wayne Slater.
Aaron Lubarsky (Editor), Coll Anderson (Sound), Aaron Lubarsky (Producer).

This is a homemade documentary filmed by an NBC journalist (daughter of Nancy Pelosi, incidentally) while she was in the press corps covering George W.’s first campaign for president.

In the close confines of the campaign plane and under the scrutiny of the press corps, Bush comes across as much more intelligent and sharp (even witty) than his public image, which of course makes him even more culpable and mean. It’s easy to see the “side” of him which would be quite frightening and literally pernicious.

His warmth and charm are palpable. One of the journalists complains that they are all failing in their duties because while Gore’s press pack keep reporting objectively on Gore’s faults and failures, Bush’s press team were rendered pathetically uncomplaining because he charmed the pants off them.

Three quarters of the way through the film, when Bush wins the Republican nomination, he changes completely, establishes distance, alters his physical stance, and becomes excruciatingly self aware. The film is a monumental reproach, and a warning, to us all.

Royal Prerogatives: The Principality of Hutt River

Fortieth Anniversary of Hutt River Province, April 21 2010

The Principality of Hutt River will celebrate its 40th anniversary on April 21.

A special coin is being minted and a commemorative stamp will be issued. The Ruling Prince Leonard (pictured) and his wife Princess Shirley along with their sons, Princes Ian, Wayne, Richard and Graeme are planning the largest celebrations the Principality has seen.

Already the capital, Nain, has seen the construction of a new ablution block as well as a new caravan and camping area which Prince Leonard describes as “just part of the works already underway.”

Prince Leonard recently announced his 89th birthday honours list. Sixteen recipients were honoured, variously, with the Principality’s Illustrious Order of Merit, Red Cross of Hutt, Serene Order of Leonard and Order of Wisdom and Learning.

Further details of the 40th anniversary celebrations are available on the Principality's website. .

Remarkable Creatures

By Tracy Chevalier

HarperCollins Publishers Limited, 2010, 352 pags, Fiction/Biographical, Fiction/Historical 
ISBN 0007178387, 9780007178384

Before the persistent and modest efforts of the heroine of this story the world had no concept of extinction and therefore could not understand fossils which were explained by myths.

This novel concerns Mary Anning (1799 – 1847), an uneducated, working class resident of Lyme Regis, Dorset, who discovered fossils of pre-historic marine reptiles, such as that ichthyosaur, in the cliffs near the town. Her determination to establish the authenticity of her discoveries caused her to be a major influence on the maturity of marine palaeontology which, within a few years, completely altered the human perspective on the past and on Biblical notions of creation.

Tracy Chevalier positions Mary Anning’s story as an epic with a romantic sub - plot. A humble, strong-willed character successfully pursues an historic mission beyond her station, education and means, despite almost overwhelming defamation and exploitation by those who stand to profit most from her efforts. It does not give too much away to say that in the process of overcoming these obstacles she experiences romantic fulfilment, of the sort she requires, and achieves the respect of her peers, in every sense. This elegant and anachronistic structure gives a 19th century flavour to the novel, redolent of classics by Hardy and George Eliot.

However, Tracy Chevalier’s unique accomplishment is her ability to consistently focus on the physical properties of a universally admired object or curiosity (such as, in this case, a seaside fossil), while, through fiction, expanding the reader’s sense of the object and its place in our culture with the result that we see it no longer as a curiosity but as a comprehensive and beloved part of our every-day existence. While doing so she magnifies not only the importance of the object, but the historical significance of the ordinary lives which have evolved and revolved around it.

Chevalier’s previous books perform this feat with regard to the paintings of Vermeer, the tapestries known as La Dame a la Licorne (now at la Musee National du Moyen Age in Paris) and the Victorian memorial sculptures at Highgate Cemetery. As with her other books, Remarkable Creatures gently and irreversibly enhances our understanding of Mary Anning’s fossil discoveries without being in the slightest didactic or detracting from the inherent value of these now well-known objects of fascination. In engaging us in fiction she inevitably enhances our interest in the facts.

Visit Tracy Chevalier's website

De Profundis: Alexander Haig

December 2 1924 - February 20 2010

"The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood. "

De Profundis: Walter Morrison

January 23, 1920 – February 9, 2010

Walter Fredrick Morrison died on February 9 aged 90.

He invented the Frisbee, originally known as the Pluto Platter, out of a desire to make cake tins fly more smoothly when he threw them at people.

The name came from the Frisbie Pie Co., a California bakery whose empty tins he used to toss.

A Single Man

Fade to Black Productions, Tom Ford (Producer, Director & Screenplay), 2010

Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Nicholas Hoult, Matthew Goode;
David Scearce (Screenplay), Chris Weitz, Andrew Miano, Robert Salerno, Jason Alisharan (Producers); based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood

The Tom Ford film. “A Single Man” resembles an animated version of a Gucci catalogue. Every frame is like a page from one of those gentlemen’s magazines in which $2,000 shoes and $500 ties are laid out on a finely threaded throw while in the background, in soft focus, a slinky blonde reclines before a fireplace.

I have never seen a university English Department that resembles the first class lounge of Etihad Airways before, but no doubt they do in Ford's world.

I quite enjoyed the film as it is certainly makes a unique contribution to cinema because of its eccentric obsession with the form of the frame rather than what is actually going on inside it. I also enjoyed some of the effects of the script, such as the implication that the character of the boy played by Nicholas Hoult may be more than a mere student significant in the metaphysial schemeof things.  While the script certainly does its bit, this implication is most strongly conveyed by the use of a deliciously fine, off-white boat necked mohair sweater, with just a hint of the texture of feathers about it.

Afterwards I read the reviews to see what the movie industry made of it. Most were sycophantic, pusillanimous paeans of praise. Even “Variety” glossed over a serious review and simply said Tom Ford was a genius.

I had no idea he had such power but it is clear that Hollywood is terrified of upsetting him. The New York Times, which doesn't give a damn, simply dismissed the film, saying it was pretty and dull. It was more than that, as it effectively conveys something of the emotion of significant loss. It may even be great art, as original fashion and design can be, but it is not a great film.

Listen to a National Public Radio interview with Tom Ford about "A Single Man."

Watch the trailer :

Royal Prerogatives: The 10:32 to Kings Cross

The Queen takes the train home from Sandringham.

She's done it again. The Queen hopped on the 10:32 from Kings Lynn to Kings Cross on Monday after her winter break at Sandringham.

First Capital Connect said her ticket cost 44 pounds 50p.  She would have been given the pensioner's discount of 29.30 had she asked for it.

Next time she'll probably take the bus, which is 10 pounds.

Royal Prerogatives: Archduchess Regina von Habsburg

Princess Regina Helene Elizabeth Margarete of Saxe-Meiningen, Crown Princess of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia

6 January 1925 – 3 February 2010.

Had history taken a different turn, she would have been Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary. She was born in Würzburg, Germany, on January 6 1925, the youngest of four daughters of Duke Georg III of Saxe-Meiningen, and his wife, Countess Klara-Marie von Korff genannt Schmissing-Kerssenbrock. Her father joined the Nazi party in 1933 and died in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp. Her brother, Prince Anton Ulrich, was killed in action in 1940. Another brother became a Carthusian monk.

She married Archduke Otto von Habsburg on May 10 1951 at the Eglise des Cordeliers in Nancy (the burial place of several members of the House of Lorraine), with the blessing of Pope Pius XII. Although Otto was the legitimate heir to the Austrian Empire, he was unusual among "pretenders" in electing to ignore his aristocratic title and sit in the European parliament as Dr Otto von Habsburg, Christian Democrat member for North Bavaria. He never claimed the throne of Austria.

The Archduchess was Protectress of the Order of the Starry Cross, an all-female Roman Catholic order founded in the 17th century; Grand Mistress of the Order of Elisabeth, a similar organisation; and an Honorary Lady Grand Cross of the Sovereign Order of Malta. The Archduchess died at Pöcking über Starnberg, Bavaria, where she had lived with her husband since 1953.

 Watch newsreel of the wedding of Princess Regina of Saxe-Meiningen to Archduke Otto von Habsburg:

Show Business: The Road to Broadway

Dori Berenstein (Director and Producer), 2007.

Alan Cumming, Chris Boneau, Nancy Coyne, William Goldman, Rocco Landesman, Ben Brantley, Charles Isherwood, John Lahr, Patrick Pacheco, Michael Riedel, Jacques le Sourd, Linda Winer.
Jeanine Tesori (Music); Alan S. Deutsch (Photography); Richard Hankin, A.C.E. (Supervising Editor); Dori Berinstein & Richard Hankin (Writers).

This engaging documentary follows four major Broadway shows from conception to opening and the aftermath of the 2004 Tony Awards. As well as providing an obvious source of enjoyment for fans of "the roar of the greasepaint" etc., the film made me realise how many charlatans there are in show business and what a grind it must be to remain focused on the work while having to put up with them. The director of “Caroline or Change” is a case in point, though several other termagants fascinate with the horror of their egocentric self indulgence. Inevitably, behind-the-scenes thrills are provided by internecine conflict. Some of the collaborators HATED each other, and said so, but kept at it, loathing each other, right to the successful end.

Throughout the film, the reviewers of the New York press provide a Furies' chorus, seated at a large dinner table which they enjoy with evident appetite. Their frank exchange of opinions leaves little doubt that they believe their job is to make life as difficult as possible for anyone trying to put a play on Broadway. When some plays (such as "Wicked") succeed despite their condemation, they do not hide their self-righteous indignation, though the New York Post reviewer wastes no time regretting his misjudgements. After he condemns "Avenue Q" as a childish fantasy lacking a discernable audience, the play cleans out the 2004 Tony Awards and becomes one of the biggest Broadway successes ever; but this critic simply changes sides, saying he had liked it all along.

The most horrifying scene involves the critics' discussion of the demise of “Taboo.” Anyone who reads the New York Times will never forget the 2004 theatre critics’ press fracas over Rosi O’Donnell’s competence as a producer, which finished off the play before it had even opened. Although Ms O’Donnell certainly helped by being unable to keep her mouth shut, the critics appear to have desired little more than victory in a negative argument, irrespective of the production’s theatrical merits. Their vitriol, of course, had prematurely fatal consequences for “Taboo,” which they themselves admit with excruciating pomposity was “the play that should have been.”

At the end of the film one of the "Taboo" cast admits with the self-disciplined nonchalance of the professional actor that the failure of the play is hardly a tragedy, considering what else is going on in the world. But, he says, “it’s just that this was my entire life,” and starts to weep.

Watch the trailer of “Showbusiness; The Road to Broadway”

Royal Prerogatives: HIRH Princess Liala Farouk of Egypt

HIRH Princess Liala Farouk of Egypt, Grand Duchess of Alexandria

Princess Liala claims to be the daughter of HM King Farouk of Egypt and HRH Princess Mafalda of Savoy, who was killed in Buchenwald in 1944, 13 years before the Princess' birth.

HRH has enthroned herself in Melbourne, and her website (currently suspended by its server) shows she's having a right royal old time.

Present Laughter

By Noel Coward

American Airlines Theatre, 227 West 2nd Street, New York
January 22 2010


I broke my own rules and paid full price for an orchestra seat at the revival of Noel Coward’s “Present Laughter.” This play is the latest vehicle for Victor Garber whose manifold talents were said to brighten even Broadway’s lights. The play had a RAVE review in the New York Times and I was itching to see something truly wonderful and this seemed to be it.

All of the actors, and Victor Garber most particularly, walked through the play, speaking their lines in monotone. There was no energy, no interpretation, no acting, no presence, and no laughter.

I don’t understand it. Everyone in it, not only Mr. Garber, was a famous actor with years of experience. The only explanation I can come up with is that the play was regarded as an iconic set piece which had to be delivered with starched postures and clipped English vowels typical of the more tawdry Sunday night broadcasts on Masterpiece Theatre. In these travesties, evidence of proper delivery is provided when the performance is as stilted as an amateur production in which no one knows where to stand and takes a prompt for each line. Thus was "Present Laughter."

No matter; the success of my evening was assured because I left at the first interval, abandoning my $116 to the ill gotten gains of the Broadway machine and wantonly threw good money after bad at dinner at the luxe (and louche) Standard Hotel down near W13th Street instead. There I celebrated my relief at being out of the pit of despair that was orchestra row G seat 37.

Judging by the envious glances given by my fellow sufferers who were less brazen about making their escape, I was not the only one who felt this way.

New York City Ballet, All Russian Program

Lincoln Center, New York, Tuesday January 19 2010

I had a lovely evening at the New York City Ballet watching deliriously beautiful new works plus one old one by Balanchine who learned it from Fokine.

The mid town dame on my right said “Do me a favour and slap me if I snore” and the Polish Jew on my left nudged me and said “so far I am not asking for my money back eh?”

At interval the mid town broad woke up and put on her lipstick and said of the ballet we’d just sat through “that was DISGUSTING.” The Polish Jew’s wife yelled at her husband how appalled she was that she saw the rabbi eating a ham sandwich in the diner on 2nd Avenue and the mid town woman said “WHERE on 2nd Avenue, where EXACTLY?” and then leaned across me and discussed tuna melts for about ten minutes before she said to me “and what’s YOUR story?”

One is never alone in New York, yet never intruded upon. E. B. White said it all.

Save Me

Robert Cary (Director)

Drama, USA, 2008, 1 hour, 36 minutes.
Robert Desiderio (Screenplay), Rodney Taylor (Photograph), Phillip Bartell (Editor), Jeff Cardoni (Music), Christopher Racster, Herb Hamsher, Chad Allen, Robert Gant and Judith Light (Producers).

“Save Me” is a brilliantly written, acted and directed screen play about all the people involved in an evangelical centre devoted to curing gay men of their homosexuality.

This is a topical subject in the USA where mainstream politicians openly proselytize the religious righteousness of anti-gay attitudes while an extraordinary proportion of them are themselves caught participating in sexual practices which are at the least deviant (by their own standards).

However the film deftly addresses both sides of the story in a way that links the motives of all parties involved to the pursuit of the highest forms of love. The evangelists who run the centre, the men who live there, the family members who commit their siblings and children to its care and even one father who damns his gay son to hell shortly before he expires and makes his own merry way to that destination, are all exposed as humble humans trying to do what they think is best.

Yet the film makes no excuses for its characters. It reflects the bitter divisions that exist between people who are gay and those who condemn them, but its greatest achievement is in bringing understanding to the motives of those who truly (if preposterously) believe they can cure homosexuality through a life lived in reflection of Christ. The role of the mother played with exacting fortitude by Judith Light is a moving expose of a mother’s anguish, the denouement of which is slightly reminiscent of the end of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”

It’s an engaging and touching film which makes its point without risking reason through vitriol, from which emanates a droll kind of compassion for the perpetrators of the tyranny of Jesus even as the heroes, mercifully, ride off into the sunset (together).

December 2009