New York
The concept of creativity and invention can be a doubled-edged sword. It can be fresh, uplifting and original, like the off-Broadway play directed by Michael Mailer that I’ve just seen, or it can be a phoney rip-off of a Shakespeare classic, a terrible modern take on Hamlet, blackness and homosexuality that I have not seen and do not plan to. What makes me laugh is the reviewer at the Bagel Times who gave a good one to the latter, Fat Ham, as objective a judgment as, say, an appraisal of Mao’s Little Red Book would have been in a Beijing daily circa 1964.
Favouring the message over the fun is in vogue nowadays, but Michael’s Darkness of Light: Confessions of a Russian Traveler eschews the norm, and takes flight. The play is based on the life of the painter Alexander Kaletski, who is also its playwright and co-director. He happens to be a very good friend of mine, too, as Michael has been for more than 30 years. Alexander went on to a highly successful career in stage and film production in Russia, as well as putting on underground concerts of his songs and art shows. He emigrated to America in 1975 as Russki heavies were closing in.
As Alexander’s painting career was taking off, around 30 years ago, Michael was coming down from Harvard and embarking on a career in film. Both have struck it rich since: Alexander’s autobiographical novel Metro was a bestseller, and his paintings go for lotsa moolah. He has a beautiful wife, Anna, who runs their gallery, and once upon a time discovered a young painter, an Austro-Greek by the name of John Taki. She invited him to come to New York and exhibit some of his latest art but he felt unready for the challenge. I suspect the fear of failure runs in the family on his father’s side.
My old buddy Michael Mailer has written, produced and directed more than 25 feature films, but this play was his first foray on to the stage. I don’t know how he did it, but I suppose it has something to do with talent. As with style or beauty, one’s either got it or they don’t. As of late, the ones without it seem to be everywhere – on screen, on the stage, and certainly on the written page. Something’s going on and the bad guys are winning. The moral foundation of civilisation is being undermined, not by politics but by culture. The idea that a wonderful and original off-Broadway play is ignored by the powers that be, but some politically correct garbage is praised is proof that my fears are not simple paranoia. (Incidentally, Adrian Wooldridge’s piece in 15 April issue of The Spectator, ‘The attack on meritocracy’, is by far the most important warning about this. It is not to be missed.)
But back to the play, where my buddies and I occupied the front row and roared the cast on. The challenge for Michael the director was that theatre is a language-based medium, whereas film is visual. In theatre the story needs to transport the audience beyond the walls, and the director managed it with a very good cast. Darkness of Light is a tragicomic romp through the existential crises of a fictional man’s life, but with enough true-life experiences to feel factual and real.
My favourite scene, among many, was when the hero, who is sent to the Gulag, seduces a rather obese and ugly female guard by painting her portrait. The extremely aggressive screw slowly melts and becomes his slave. After the show we all met the cast in a bar for food and booze, and I met the Gulag guard. She could not have been more pleasant, attractive even, such are the powers of Thespis, the Greek poet who was said to be the inventor of Greek tragedy in that he was the first to appear on the Athenian stage as an actor separated from the chorus. He also introduced the prologue and set speeches, as well as the mask. I started to tell the sweet young actress who played the Gulag screw all that but then I somehow lost my thread. Never mind.
There were other memorable moments and one that sticks out – no pun intended – is when the hero is asked if he’s circumcised, a procedure he has never heard of. He is shown in pantomime what it entails whereupon he screams and runs away. This takes place in Italy, where the action moves to after Russia. What I’d love is for the play to become a musical and be turned into a film or Broadway hit. I don’t know why, but it seems to me that the comic lightness of what is actually a dramatic tale would work well in a musical. And if Alexander and Michael cannot come up with the musical goods, the great Cole can always come to the rescue. When, say, Alexander is being pushed around by the Gulag guard, he can serenade her with: ‘It’s the wrong time and the wrong place/ Though your face is charming it’s the wrong face…’ or ‘I am dejected/ I am depressed/ Yet resurrected and sailing the crest/ Why this elation, mixed with deflation/ What explanation?/ I am in love.’
See what I mean? Make way, Broadway; here we come.
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