October 2, 2011

Blue Ridge Pride was more fun than one anticipated. We sang not well, but well enough for the occasion. The occasion itself was light-hearted and beset with bitterly cold winds, so one came away with the tingle on one’s skin remembered from autumn afternoons long ago, when one played outside until it was too cold and too dark, but that didn’t matter. There are about a hundred photos of us, now on the web, and I am not in a single one.

When I was asked to read Lear for the Bardathon my heart leapt up, but that didn’t turn out as I imagined. Some of the best young actors in the city were assembled, and I was happy to be among them, but the spirit of inanity settled on the room almost at the outset, after the first actor committed the first blooper and tried to joke it off as of no account. The laughing-it-off-never stopped after that. The performance spiraled down until, had I been watching, I would have left the room, and even as I was acting it was difficult not to throw down the script and creep defeated out into the starless night. Giggling, cat-calls, ad-libs, unwritten mocking asides, almost page-by-page descent into helpless hilarity, indeed anything and everything that could take away from the majesty of the English language’s supreme achievement. I had to begin “Howl, Howl. Howl. Howl. Howl” with the dead sisters writhing on the floor–just having died– laughing as though there had just been a good one at the Comedy Club. I don't think anyone would accuse me of over-seriousness, or even meet seriousness, but I think some things must be beyond mockery, and if anything is, it’s Lear– letting alone simple courtesy to actors who are still trying to speak tragic lines in a monkey house. Cornwall and the Fool and my Cordelia tried to play it straight with me, but the tide could not be turned. A long run in a bad production is, I suppose, worse, but for three and a half hours, this was the worst theatrical experience of my life. I tried to figure out what happened. My best guess is that many did not prepare, and tried to disguise ineptitude as nonchalance, with nonchalance sliding gradually into the deliberate effort to sabotage. If I am not good, nothing shall be. It was far too forced and enforced to be simple silliness, which might have been attractive in a way, or even a kind of homage to the unapproachability of the text. I did the best I could even amid the monkey house, and probably came off looking like a fool who was not in on the joke.