Saturday, February 25, 2006

Saturday scene

Off to the climbing gym, with my good friend and longtime climbing partner; we've been friends for several years; she has an ailing couple of aging parents, and we seem to understand one another very well. I feel so fortunate to have several female "jock" friends, we have such good times together when we manage to meet.
We had a pleasant set of warm up leads, then I decided to try harder problems again. What with being sick a couple of weeks ago, then having this medical crisis with my mom, I just haven't had my mind on my training, other than the grunt work of running and weights. Another friend checked in with me today about a possible foray to Indian Creek, Utah, for some crack climbing. Who knows...
Beloved spouse rounded up tickets to a play for this evening: David Mamet's "Boston Marriage," from 1999. It was a local premiere, at the Bath House Theatre, a public venue over on the other side of Green Lake. One critic described the play as "Mamet meets Beckett meets Wilde." That about covered it, and it was an unexpected delight for me. I would say it was existential, with humor. My experiences with reading and/or seeing the existential playrights, such as Beckett or Pinter, was that they were not rife with humor or wit. The play we just saw had a very peculiar yet winning wittiness, general fucking about with language that cracked me up. And a maidservant with a Scottish accent who about stole the show at several points. After a particularly long-winded speech by her mistress, this gawky minx rolled her eyes, and said,"Yes, mum, although I doon't know what the foook yer talkin' aboot." Out of the blue, as the atmosphere was kind of faux 19th century high-falutin'-ness. Yet every so often, there'd be a kind of sincere moment. The mistress was lamenting the lack of open-mindedness generally abounding, and said,"Oh, what has happened to liberalness, to progressive thought?" Her female companion, the other half of the "Boston Marriage," responded, "Gone, at the first sign of trouble." A condensation of our woes?
A "Boston Marriage", by the way, is a term familiarized by Henry James, and referred to two unmarried women keeping a household together, but not necessarily sexually involved with one another.
We hastened down around the lake to get there, but had a more leisurely paced walk back home. The night was calm, the lake was dark and shimmied like a mylar film wherer light fell on it. There were bizarre effects of reflection, trees looking as if they had enormous roots going down into a bottomless hole; an entire drowned neighborhood of illuminated looking glass houses; and the strangest of all, reflected lights from across the lake which resembled hundreds of campfires around a huge amphitheater.

5 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Ah, yes. The Boston Marriage - how apropos. I think the term sprung up from the settlement houses that did some fantastic charity work in the early 1900s. They have since gone by the wayside.

Incidentially, one of my favorite plays where they run rings around the languag is the "Importence of Being Earnest." It's a good one - that is if it is done well of course.

Oh, and there are a number of Billy Shakespeare's works that do similar things with the language, but they are not altogether contemporary -even though they are salient for the times.

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave...."

11:23 AM  
Blogger isabelita said...

Yes, old Oscar was a witty one! This Mamet play wasn't quite in Wilde's league, but it was very good.
Despite Shakespeare's non-contemporary use of language - thank goodness, today's is so bankrupt it's pathetic! - I really appreciate it, whether listening or reading it.
And yeah, talk about applicable: Open Richard III to ANY page...

2:40 PM  
Blogger Neil Shakespeare said...

Oh, dear. You aren't really thinking of going crack climbing again, are you, I.? Don't you know how dangerous that is? I must hasten to repeat the government warning: "Friends don't let friends climb on crack!" Sure, maybe it gives you a boost of energy, but in the long run it will destroy you! Stop now!

4:51 PM  
Blogger isabelita said...

kathy, go check out Mr. Perils' review of "Boston Marriage." He's teh much more articlualte of the two of us...we really liked the play. Who is Rebecca Pidgeon? is she related to Walter Pidgeon, of old?
The first production of it had Martha Plimpton and Kate Burton...

Oh, now, neil, crack climbing is safer than driving around in Indiana on the effin' freeways! Besides, the demonic forces of capitalism want to open this area up to mining, and I'd like to see it before it gets blown to kingdom come...

5:52 PM  
Blogger Phil said...

I R Ticlet here.

Rebecca Pidgeon is David Mamet's second (and current, I believe) wife.

5:57 PM  

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