ENO's Mikado introduces me to the joys of Gilbert and Sullivan

Camp 1920s comedy, 19th century light opera and the Japanese imperial court.  It seems like some bizarre, sake-fuelled mash up, but it's the English National Opera's current production of The Mikado. And it works.

Current is stretching it a bit, actually.  This is a revival of Jonathan Miller's 1986 production, so successful it's dominated how this most popular Gilbert and Sullivan show has been staged for a fifth of its performance life.  (The show debuted 125 years ago and has generally been on stage somewhere ever since.)

I wondered about the setting ... a posh European hotel in the inter-war years ... but it grabs you immediately and makes perfect sense once you're watching.  I think it's the absurdity of the plot that does the trick.  It's pure Jeeves and Wooster.  The ridiculous story, in a nutshell:  The lord high executioner of Japan isn't doing his job, and the emperor gives him a deadline to find and execute a criminal.  Meanwhile, the same official is scheming to marry his pretty ward.  A wandering minstrel, also in love with said ward, turns up hoping to marry her, because life's not worth living without her.  The minstrel strikes a deal.  A week as the girl's husband, then he'll go under the axe.  But post-execution, it turns out our wandering minstrel was actually the emperor's son.  How will the executioner get out of this mess?  Add about three layers of plot complications, the hijinks of a Marx Brothers' film, some fine music and a happy ending and you get the idea.

In fact, had it been in traditional Japanese costume I don't think it would have worked as well for me, as I would have noticed much more how ridiculous and un-Japanese it actually is.  This setting brings it into the realms of complete farce, freeing you to simply enjoy the silliness.

I'd never seen a Gilbert and Sullivan performance live and this was a perfect place to start.  The production is a delight, with music and humour that have stood the test of time.  It's helped by the fact that the tradition when staging Gilbert and Sullivan is to adapt the jokes to the modern age.  Here, the Lord High Executioner's song about making a little list of all he'll eliminate is all current political satire.  Thus though The Mikado is roughly the contemporary of great operas like Tosca and Wagner's Ring Cycle, it feels as modern as a contemporary musical.

At previous outings to the ENO I've complained about the lack of surtitles.  Just because they're singing in English doesn't mean you can grasp every word.  Operatic style often obscures comprehension.  Someone in charge figured this out, and surtitles flashed above the stage.  

Flash is no exaggeration.  I don't think I'd really appreciated what a magnificent wit W.S. Gilbert was.  He uses words with the same cutting, clever mix as his contemporary Oscar Wilde, lines delivered at a manic pace to match Sullivan's prancing tunes.  You wouldn't get half of it without the text before your eyes.  At that speed, even reading every word, I know I was only getting about half the jokes.  My brother-in-law, who saw the original production in the '80s and practically knows the libretto by heart, says he gets something new every time he sees it.  The set was fun, the music was pleasant, but it's the wordplay that has me keen for another go.

Thus a Gilbert (and Sullivan) fan is born.  I'm on the lookout for the Pirates of Penzance next.

V&A's costume exhibit is fun, but is it culture?

As a museum of decorative arts, the Victoria and Albert Museum is the most obviously populist of London's big cultural institutions.  After all, almost everything in its walls ... though now considered art ... was once hip, trendy and fashionable.  This can get the V&A into trouble with critics, who wonder if shows rooted in modern culture are worthy of artistic examination, or a blatant commercial bid to raise some quick cash.

It was, I'll admit, the question on my mind after 15 minutes in the current Hollywood Costume exhibit.  There's no question it's fun.  But it felt more like something decorating the margins of a queue leading up to a ride at Universal Studios than a major exhibition.  I ogled, I sighed, I smiled ... but did I learn anything?  Did I come to a wider understanding of why costume is an art, and how it changes our world?

A little, but not as much as I'd hoped.

There were bits about the costume designer's thought process.  There was a particularly fascinating demonstration of the subtleties of black and white film making, showing how a bright red sequinned dress worked magic because of the way it played with shades of grey.  Another section grouped together a whole series of costumes worn by Meryl Streep and Al DeNiro in different roles, demonstrating how the right clothes help transform one person into many.

But mainly, it was just a chance to walk through the fantasy land of your favourite films.  And on this front, nobody could be disappointed, as the collection of more than 100 outfits had many of the most iconic costumes of all time.  Indiana Jones.  Darth Vader.  Guinevere's wedding dress from Camelot.  Jack Sparrow.  Dorothy.  (Ruby slippers re-created.  I didn't think the Smithsonian would let go of those.) John Wayne's cowboy kit.  Most of the main super heroes.  And on.  It was vastly entertaining.

I don't criticise the V&A for hosting.  Films are the art of our time, and costumes are a big part of that.  Lord knows, it brought in the cash during a mostly sold-out run, cash that can be used for less popular but equally important stuff.  I do think that in this case, however, a commercial enterprise might have done a better job.

Put it in an exhibition hall.  Pump up the glitz and glamour.  Entertain us more.  Spread it out and put more of the information in places we can see it.  (Each costume in this phenomenally crowded exhibition only had a short paragraph of descriptive copy, positioned at waist height, so you had to push through crowds to see it.)  Forgetting even the pretence of taking this seriously would have made it better, I think.

At the end of the day I indeed felt like I'd been to Hollywood ... but not like I'd been to the V&A.

Baseball's perfect knight can teach us all a lot about life

Stan Musial died yesterday, at the ripe age of 92.

If you're amongst my British readers, you've probably never heard of him.  Some younger Americans might not recognise the name.  But if you're a baseball fan, you know him.  He's "The Man".  And if you're a St. Louisan, you love and respect him.

If you're a St. Louisan, wherever you are in the world today, you're in mourning.

The sports writers will lead with the statistics.  He was, after all, one of the greatest players of all time. 3,630 career hits, 4th on the all time list.  Three-time National League MVP.  Lifetime .331 batting average.  Played in the All Star Game every year of his career, and elected into the Hall of Fame the moment he was eligible.  Winner of three World Series as a player, and a fourth the one year he served as a team General Manager.

As legendary as his career was, however, that's not what I'll remember first.

It's that Stan was a good guy.

What an innocuous, overused phrase that is.  But let's think about what it means, embodied by the man baseball commissioner Ford C. Frick called "baseball's perfect knight" on the day he retired.  Here's a guy who played for the same team, the St. Louis Cardinals, from first game to last.  He stayed married to the wonderful Lil from the age of 19 until she died last year.  He roomed with his best buddy, Red Schoendienst, all the years they played together, and made him his manager the year he was GM.  Faithful to all he believed in.

He was famous for his positive attitude.  Excited to go to work every day, convinced anything was possible.  Famous for constantly putting others above himself.  Humble, never seeking publicity even though it always sought him. Never a cross word.  No scandals.  No affairs.  No dirty dealing.  No enemies.

And that was no act.  No clever PR manipulation for the fans.  St. Louis is too small for that.  After playing for us for 22 years, Stan kept his roots firmly anchored in town, growing into a pillar of the community.  He was famed for his charitable work and that infectious enthusiasm that always surrounded him.  If St. Louisans could elect a king, it would have been Stan.

I was lucky enough to have crossed his path multiple times.  When I was perhaps 8 or 9 ... long before I fully appreciated his baseball legend status ... he was just one of the dads of a student in my Mom's art history class.  Mom was organising a class trip to the museums in Chicago.  Stan, who had some business interest in the upscale Palmer House Hotel, made sure Mom got a ridiculously low rate for the whole class, so that the girls could have a little treat.  He made sure we kept that deal as long as Mom hosted that annual trip.  Decades.  I remember him meeting with her in the early days.  A big guy with a big smile, who just radiated gentleness and goodness.  Every time I was fortunate enough to be in the same place with him over the years, thanks to school-related activities, it was the same.  There was something about simply being near him that made you feel happy.

Unsurprisingly, St. Louisans use Stan Musial as an example of how to live a good life.  Turn up on time.  Do your best.  Never say a bad thing about anybody.  Believe anything is possible.  Give back to your community.  That's why almost every St. Louis kid gets his or her photo taken with Stan's statue in front of Busch Stadium.  It's my niece Abby's turn in the shot here.

Two years ago President Obama recognised the merits of the man, not just the baseball player, and awarded Stan the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  That's the highest civilian honour, for contributions to society.  Because Stan Musial was a good guy.  Easy to say, hard to achieve.

May we all strive to follow.

NPG's "Lost Prince" brings Jacobean superstar to life

When a national portrait gallery is really doing its job, it revives those long dead, and explains their impact on the world.  That's exactly what London's gallery is doing now with the little known prince Henry Stuart.

Who, you ask?

Unless you're a history buff with an interest in the 17th century, you probably don't know about poor Henry.  Once a glittering superstar and the hope of his generation, a paragon of noble virtues regarded with esteem by all the crowns of Europe ... but dead a few weeks short of his 19th birthday.  Thus did his far less prepared, but now far more famous brother come to the throne.  And start down a path that led to civil war, regicide and protectorate.

Charles I hardly gets a mention here, however, though the broader show goes a long way to explaining why he might have had such a massive chip on his narrow shoulders.  Henry was a hard act to follow.

The NPG mixes the expected portraits with bits and pieces from Henry's life to explore who he was, why he developed as he did and what his loss meant to the country.  His school notebooks are here, showing the depth and rigour of his classical education in his exquisite handwriting.  There are designs for the gardens he was planning at Richmond Palace.  Exquisite Inigo Jones drawings of the sets and costumes of the lavish court masques he appeared in.  Suits of armour displayed next to testimonials of his military prowess.  Bronzes, paintings and books from the art collection he'd started to assemble.

Finally, and tragically, items from his funeral.  There's a drawing of the lavish and detailed monument carried to the ceremony, complete with lifelike waxwork atop, positioned across the room from the headless, woodworm-riddled figure that's all that remains.  Over the sound system, the music written specifically for the funeral plays.  It's suitably depressing.

So who was Henry?  These four rooms present a remarkable young man.  He was clearly both a scholar and an athlete who excelled in the martial arts.  He was praised for his diplomatic skills, and seems to have been good at mixing and mingling at big state events.  He was bred from infancy to be serious, and do an adult's job, and it seems he never rebelled.  Like all worthy Renaissance princes, he was deeply interested in the arts and was already collecting with the eye and ardour of someone twice his age.  In fact, the overall impression is of someone who skipped childhood altogether, and was emerging into manhood as a fully-matured 40-something male.  He was, it seemed, all you'd want from someone born to leadership.  Although you had the feeling the poor kid never had much fun.

Certainly, the course of British history might have run very differently had he lived.  Imagine the consequences of no civil war.  Consider the impact Henry IX could have had on architecture and the arts.  How much greater might Great Britain have been if those middle years of the 17th century had been spent as a player on the world stage, rather than internally focused?  Proper historians hate the "what if" game, but here I think they missed a trick.  Indulging in a little guided exploration of those issues at the end of the show would have given that much more significance to his death.

That's a small quibble, however, for a show that does a great job of illuminating a dim bit of history with beautiful things to look at, given fine context.  There's just a week left to see it, so drop in if you get a chance.

Farewell 2012, the year of clinging to the cup half full

When my husband pokes loving fun at my national roots, he often lambasts cheerful optimism.  Bloody Americans, with all their "have a nice days", Disney outlooks and need for happy endings.  Harrumph.

Thank God, I say.  If it weren't for that outlook, 2012 would have been a miserable year, and this blog might have been deeply gloomy.

I focused on the positives.  And there were plenty.  The Jubilee and the Olympics, of course, made England the finest place in the world to live this year.  We had a great holiday in Virginia, Washington and Maryland in the spring. We moved into our dream home in August.  We took in a delightful round of cooking classes, operas and fine restaurants.  And best of all, there is that delightful pronoun ... we.  My first full year going through life with another half to complete me and make it all worth while.

Behind all of that, however, was the year of bad health.  And, as I've always understood but never experienced, if you don't have your health, everything else is problematic.  You can work around financial challenges, job issues, family stresses and the host of other irritations that plague everyday life, but if your body isn't working, it subverts every moment of your existence.

I haven't dwelled upon it in these pages, but make no mistake:  chemotherapy is a bitch.  It turns you into an old woman before your time and ... the thing I didn't expect ... recovery takes as long as, if not longer than, the treatment.  Let's not forget mine was complicated by a serious bout of pneumonia.  That lingers beyond expectations, too.  Eight months after the last chemo dose I am just starting to feel capable of the movement and energy levels necessary for real recovery.

So good riddance, 2012.  Bring on the new year.  Regular exercise, a serious return to Weight Watchers, much fruit and veg, cutting down on that alcohol.  Sure, everyone makes the health and fitness resolution today.  But I, with the spectre of its loss just behind me, have the will to take it more seriously than most.

The sun is out, and we're off for a long walk.  Here's to 2013.