Nachtcafé

824: Der Frauen Liebe und Leben.
Das Cello trinkt rasch mal. Die Flöte
rülpst tief drei Takte lang: das schöne Abendbrot.
Die Trommel liest den Kriminalroman zu Ende.

Grüne Zähne, Pickel im Gesicht
winkt einer Lidrandentzündung.

Fett im Haar
spricht zu offenem Mund mit Rachenmandel
Glauge Liebe Hoffnung um den Hals.

Junger Kropf ist Sattelnase gut.
Er Bezahlt für sie drei Biere.

Bartflechte kauft Nelken,
Doppelkinn zu erweichen.

B-moll: die 35. Sonate.
Zwei Augen brüllen auf:
Spritzt nicht das Blut von Chopin in den Saal,
damit das Pack drauf rumlatscht!
Schluß! He, Gigi! -

Die Tür fließt hin: Ein Weib.
Wüste ausgedörrt. Kanaanitisch braun.
Keusch. Höhlenreich. Ein Duft kommt mit.
Kaum Duft.
Es ist nur eine süße Vorwölbung der Luft
gegen mein Gehirn.

Eine Fettleibigkeit trippelt hinterher.

- Gottfried Benn, 1912

- Otto Dix, The Journalist Sylvia von Harden, 1926

- Max Beckmann, Self-Portrait with Champagne Glass, 1919

Night Café

824: Lives and Loves of Women.
The cello takes a quick drink. The flute
belches expansively for three beats: good old dinner.
The timpani is desperate to get to the end of his thriller.

Mossed teeth and pimple face
wave to incipient stye.

Greasy hair
talks to open mouth with adenoids
Faith Love Hope round her neck.

Young goitre has a crush on saddlenose.
He treats her to onetwothree beers.

Sycosis brings carnations
to melt the heart of double chin.

B flat minor: the 35th Sonata.
Two eyes yell:
stop hosing the blood of Chopin round the room
for that rabble to slosh around in!
Enough! Hey, Gigi! -

The door melts away: a woman.
Dry desert. Canaanite tan.
Chaste. Concavities. A scent accompanies her,
less a scent
than a sweet pressure of the air
against my brain.

An obesity waddles after.

- trans. Michael Hofmann

- Otto Dix, The Dancer Anita Berber, 1925

The poor man was quite confused, and when I told this to Balthuz, he replied, “It’s a good thing Mr. Rilke said in his preface that I exist; otherwise Mr. P. wouldn’t have believe it.” – and now I’m obliged to make a present of one of my paintings to Mr. P. to bring him back to life – Oh my friend, does Baltuz exist? I myself suffer from his mischief-making – especially since we’re in the country of Calvin.
- quoted in Nicholas Fox Weber’s Balthus: A Biography, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1999, p. 57

- Balthus, frame 3, Mitsou, 1921

Rilke replies. He refers to the Crac which he identifies with Balthus’s mysterious missing birthdays, on the 29th of February. Rilke has in letters to Balthus told him that to catch up with those lost dates all he need do is slip through the Crac.

As for my friend B., I wasn’t so wrong to advise him not to vanish into the “Crac,” since with regard to school, he was there already. Luckily, he was found in time! I nonetheless remain convinced that “B. exists,” only it will always be extremely difficult to agree upon the place where he exists!
- in ibid.

- Balthus, Mitsou, 1921

Rilke in 1921 on the Crac:

Many years ago I knew an English writer in Cairo, a Mr. Blackwood, who in one of his novels advances a rather attractive hypothesis: he claims that at midnight there always appears a tiny slit between the day ending and the day beginning, and that a very agile person who managed to insert himself into that slit would escape from time and find himself in a realm independent of all the changes we must endure; in such a place are gathered all the things we have lost (Mitsou, for instance) … children’s broken dolls, etc. etc. …

That’s the place, my dear B., into which you must insert yourself on the night of February 28, in order to take possession of your birthday, which is hidden there, coming to light only every four years! (Just think how worn out, in an exhibition of birthdays, other people’s would be compared with this one of yours which is so carefully tended and which is removed only at long intervals, quite resplendent, from its hideaway.)

Mr. Blackwood, if I am not mistaken, calls this secret and nocturnal slit the “Crac” …

This discreet birthday which most of the time inhabits an extraterrestrial space certainly entitles you to many things unknown here on earth (it seems to me more important and more exotic than the Brazilian uncle). What I wish for you, my dear B., is that you’ll be capable of acclimatizing some of these things on our planet so that they can grow here, despite the difficulties of our uncertain seasons.

- in ibid., pp. 84-5

Does every one get the biographer they deserve? (and in the case of most of us, none.)

- Balthus, sketch (made fifteen years after The Guitar Lesson), c. 1949

On the evidence of Nicholas Fox Weber’s biography of Balthus, this is a terrifying thought. 603 pages. The poor man – I do feel sorry for him – feels so deeply betrayed by his subject that he carries on in a role not unlike a Minor Inquisitor, a prosecutor, venting his hurt at Balthus’s duplicitousness. For example, considering the painting, The Victim, Nicholas Fox Weber cites its inspiration as Pierre Jean Jouve’s piece of the same name:

Extraordinary how easy it is to stick a knife into a woman, he thought, and when he saw the result – that she fell, eyes rolling back in her head, he withdrew the knife just as easily without any hurry, and tossed it on the floor. … Now that she was dead, he desired her furiously, and would have liked to kiss her on the mouth and make love to her.

- Pierre Jean Jouve, in ibid., p. 310

The biographer seeks out Linda Fairstein, chief of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Sex Crimes Unit, to serve as expert witness in his case against the painter.

- Balthus, incomplete reproduction of La Victime, 1939-1945

“She looks like a sex murder victim,” the prosecutor pronounced – “exsanguinated.” The discolouration of the subject’s skin pointed to her having been “strangled or asphyxiated” – as if the dagger on the ground may have been used to threaten, but not to implement the crime. The conclusion was that this was not the aftermath of a spontaneous act of violence. Rather, it was a setup, which “looks disturbed” and in which “nothing is natural.” The exsanguinated hue, not by accident, was a similar colour to the flesh of Piero’s biblical personages and provided the detachment and remoteness that Balthus had imbibed at age eighteen and would cultivate forever after. Balthus had devised a scene in keeping with Pierre Jean Jouve’s text, but also very much according to his own taste.

- ibid., p. 311

I would like to note two things in this text, remarkable for its begging of the question, its setup, its transparency. Firstly, that “nothing is natural” implies that everything is artificial, that the painting depicts a scene devised by art and not a crime scene. Is there a difference? Wilde said that only bad art corrupts. He is my witness in the defense of this aesthetic act. Secondly, the mention of Piero: nothing is in fact known about Piero della Francesca, not even his date of birth. He is then the inspiration for Balthus’s statement, on being prompted to provide puff for an exhibition catalogue: “Balthus is a painter of whom nothing is known. Now let us look at the paintings.”

- Balthus, Study for The Children, c.1936

His biographer finds – it’s all a matter of literally uncovering the literal truth – Balthus’s models for his five Three Sisters paintings. He meets the eldest, Marie-Pierre Colle, in 1991. She is the girl seated on the sofa, about eleven when she sat for the artist.

As she was recounting this to me forty years later, she was seated, as in her childhood portraits, on a sofa. … Marie-Pierre was an arresting sight in a very tight and short miniskirt. She kept changing the position of her legs – sometimes tucked underneath her buttocks, sometimes crossed in front of her. She appeared to be trying to keep from revealing too much thigh, yet the effort was exposing a provocative amount of leg.

Balthus was “tender, gracious, loving” she told me. He “felt responsible” for her. She went out of her way to make it clear that now he was very much misunderstood by the public at large. Neither she nor her sisters “felt any erotic connection with him; he was completely paternal, and in no way improper.”

As she was saying this, suddenly this attractive, youthful woman – impressively svelte and smooth-skinned at fifty – began, with her right hand, to massage her left breast: the one nearer to me. She was wearing a loose-fitting, silky blouse that was unbuttoned to mid-chest, and she had reached through the opening and under her bra. She looked unconscious of the act, as if she were in a trance.

- ibid., pp. 460-461

Nicholas Fox Weber bravely recounts this episode, giving also that he is unsure of whether Marie-Pierre is trying to “lure” him or is prompted to stroke her breast by the memory of sitting for Balthus.

In 1992, Nicholas Fox Weber meets Sylvia Colle Lorant, the youngest of the Three Sisters. He quotes her as saying:

As a person, he was tender, present. He amused himself with us; he joked a lot. The paintings were enigmatic, but he was not. There was never any danger: the sexuality was in his head. His cerebral world was different from the world out there in the painting. He had the audacity to express his ideas in his art.

- in ibid., p. 464

I have made this big, because I think it contains greater insight into the artist, Balthus, than all of his biographer’s 603 pages put together. It is in short asides like the following that Nicholas Fox Weber gives us any indication that he is capable of objective examination of his subject, or has, indeed, looked at the paintings for any reason except to strengthen his case for the prosecution.

When Balthus’s line wavers, it is because ambiguity is a truer state than clarity is.

- ibid., p. 542

Gae Aulenti, an architect the biographer meets in 1999, tells him the story of Balthus receiving the Imperial Prize from Prince Masahito Hitachi, in 1991.

Balthus, although naturally “very tall – I think he was one metre ninety, ” was further elevated by the unusual leather clogs with thick wooden heels that he was wearing with his evening clothes. … “Balthus went in front of the prince to take the prize, and he had more height because of these shoes. And the Japanese prince was very short.” The architect’s attention was further drawn to these black clogs because of the “violet socks” Balthus was wearing. … “Balthus kneeled in front of the prince at ninety degrees.” Once he had lowered himself to the ground, he was down “for two minutes. I the complete silence you could hear his bones: crack, crack, crack. It was like something out of a Japanese play, Noh theatre.” …

“He couldn’t get up.” The suspense was palpable as the notables assembled in Tokyo looked on, while no one uttered a sound. …

By Aulenti’s calculation, it took the artist “three minutes to come back.” … As she imitated Balthus taking that seemingly interminable time to straighten up his body, she said it seemed as if he would never rise again. In Gae Aulenti’s eyes, “the most elegant man in the world,” Balthus, had stolen the show.

- ibid., pp. 595-596

Notice how Nicholas Fox Weber barbs the end of the story, as if Balthus’s intention had been to steal the show, as if it was his show and not a ceremonial occasion, as if in his biographer’s mind Gae Aulenti’s eyes are mistaken. Notice the inelegance of the prose.

- Balthus, Alice dans le miroir, 1933

A little more on Pierre Jean Jouve, the owner of Balthus’s Alice dans le miroir, who wrote, in fact, of his obsession with the painting. Balthus’s Alice is not to be confused with Carroll’s: the former possesses the only hairy vulva in the painter’s oeuvre. She is not a little girl.

In Jouve’s eyes, an element of death inspired both the invention of Balthus’s paintings and their execution. He found that their candid morbidity provided both authentic grandeur and a constantly tragic character. Jouve revered Balthus’s art for this revelation of a world other than the absurd one in which we pretend to live, for its rich mixture of anguish and splendour.

- ibid., p. 308

I like this. It is surprising on rereading it how it recalls Eliot’s belief that tragedy is no longer possible in the modern world. Now, the biographer-as-prosecutor intervenes:

With Alice hanging where it did – alongside the bed in his wood-panelled bed chamber – he experienced the cold, enticing, nasty lust of Balthus’s vision full force, unadorned and unrepentant.

- ibid.

L’art est délivrance, même dans la souffrance; mais aux yeux de ceux, parias, qui n’ont pas le sens intime de la liberté de l’esprit, l’art est le crime.

- Georges Rouault

John Smythe:

Thank you Simon. I shall attempt to address the points I think you want answered.

“England-cum-Great Britain”: As I understand it, King James was the first monarch to declare himself “King of Great Brittaine” (as well as France and Ireland) in 1604, although England and Scotland remained separate countries with their own parliaments until 1707.

I have never said the only thing NZ theatre companies should produce is NZ work, just that is their core responsibility. Who else in the world should do it? And where in the world do those other plays come from if not from cultures (that word again) that create their own theatre as well as recreate that of others? In contributing to an international arts festival it seems especially appropriate to stage something homegrown – doesn’t it?

If that is “a facile agenda” then we might as well renounce any claim to distinction in either sense of the word, and resign ourselves to the ‘culture’ of a refugee camp or transit lounge. Do we really lack the root systems to contribute positively to the global ecology of theatre.

It is to our benefit that we are more aware of other cultures – English-speaking ones especially – than they are of us. No day passes without our hearing their voices though one medium or another. But we’re not prisoners in our own land. We have a voice too, the right and a responsibility to use it, and the failure to do so is wimpish and pathetic.

The live theatres that do ‘originals’ are a great deal more vital – in all senses of that word – than those which specialise in ‘covers’. My argument is that our better resourced companies (thanks to tax-payer funding) should either be leading the way, or building on the groundswell created by the creative co-ops whose often extraordinary works are celebrated on this website, or both. And I am claiming that Circa is especially lax in this regard. They don’t have a literary unit, or similar, and I would be interested to know how they go about keeping up with the new material coming through and factoring it into their considerations when developing their programme of productions.

Simon Taylor:

Thanks, John. That firms up your critique of Circa. I don’t think it does theatre any good to put the playwright at the centre of the debate regarding theatre’s cultural role. The play’s not the thing, certainly not a cultural thing, until it’s performed; as for a New Zealand play, what’s that?

Theatre companies should be asking this question as well as attempting to find answers to it. It appears to me that there is still insufficient critical input into this question, that it usually devolves to the level of sheer expediency, on the part of funding bodies, and the good intentions of strangers, and that your review adds nothing to this debate. That there are more NZ plays performed than ever before does not contribute a cultural value in itself; after all, there’s Thomas Sainsbury.

A literary or academic assumption underlies your view that NZ theatre companies ought to be obliged to produce NZ plays, what one might call the authorial preference, as much as something else far less appetising. A hint as to what this something else might be is given by Maryanne Cathro in a review also available on this site (here), thus:

There are two adjectives describing shows I am beginning to dread as an audience goer: “devised” and “experimental”.

To which the only answer is the question: Where were you for the twentieth century? (Living in dread, as we all were, that the century would have to begin again, and again, and again.)

… then we might as well renounce any claim to distinction in either sense of the word, and resign ourselves to the ‘culture’ of a refugee camp or transit lounge. Do we really lack the root systems to contribute positively to the global ecology of theatre.

In a second we will grow the topic to include the sustainability of theatre, the luminous word-spores that pass from the playwright’s over- rather than inter-active screen too quickly to critique before they fill the stages with the vitality of homespun pastiches. Does every culture really need its great social-realist work? … again and again and again. Again and again, for each generation, for each immediate cultural context. Because? No history.

And yes, therefore renounce. To clarify: where can we look to find the history that we’ve lost by waging a cultural war on the institution of theatre in New Zealand? Because we won’t find it among the ‘many superb but neglected plays’ languishing on the shelves of Playmarket. Although, I concede that that would be a start.

To further clarify: the ‘transit lounge’ or ‘refugee camp’ culture to which we resign ourselves having renounced our deference to the bloodlines of the author refers to a sense of time rather than a sense of place.

But even repeating the sense of your sentence I find that same unappetising taste in my mouth: refugee camp? transit lounge? don’t they in turn refer to the catastrophe of history we are at present witnessing globally? the numbers forced into involuntary exile, dispossessed, refused entry…?

Where are the NZ plays bearing witness to what is happening on a world stage? or are those playwrights in turn forced into internal exile, dispossessed and refused entry, in a way which although kinder is no less decisive?

Corus:

Is SImon Taylor drunk?

Simon Taylor:

Not so as he cannot refrain from hitting the upper-case button. Nice of you to ask. Cheers.

David Murray:

The role of Theatre – including local theatre companies such as Circa Theatre is to entertain, to enlighten, and to educate.

[link]
[link]

How any particular troupe decides to do that – either by choosing to perform plays written by New Zealanders or plays written by persons of any other nationality – is their prerogative. Surely this play – an international story written in German and translated into English – is a perfect choice for the International Festival due to its multi-faceted international character and, not least, because it entertains.

John Smythe:

I do not ask for “the great social-realist work” Simon. Just one example of a long neglected work penned with ebullient creative skill is Bruce Masons Hongi (first written for radio in 1968, revised for stage by 1974). His view of the role of British royalty in facilitating the musket wars is something we should all be familiar with. Is anyone?

Nor have I specified the “bloodlines of playwrights”. Roger Hall, who has done more than anyone to hold the mirror up to NZ society, is English born. Leo Gen Peters, who led and directed the devising of last year’s excellent Death and the Dreamlife of Elephants – set in central Wellington – is American.

There have been many NZ plays involving immigrants (Pacific Island, Indian, Chinese, Arabic …) and of course that is a distinctive and important part of the NZ experience. And when they distill the particular well, they are universal.

NZ playwrights have also addressed global themes. Dean Parker’s Baghdad, Baby! springs to mind. I venture to suggest that what is simultaneously homegrown yet exotic to white middle-class theatre audiences and international festivals (e.g. Maori and Pacific Island theatre especially) gets more of a chance in better funded productions than Pakeha stories, which are easily supplanted by British, American and Australian ones.

David, your argument is more valid for totally commercial privately owned theatre companies. I think there is more responsibility with public funding. And all theatre companies will tell you their biggest commercial successes have been with NZ plays. It is a sad day if we see the performing arts as no different than any other item of trade.

Simon Taylor:

John, a touch of lèse majesté to say “I do not ask for the great social-realist work”! Well, I certainly don’t. But perhaps if you’re in a position to say “I do not ask” & so on, you’re in a position to ask Circa why it chose this play. And not Hongi, which surely ought to have sprung to mind directly. Had you suggested it.

I don’t essentially agree with you. Because if state funded theatres are obliged to produce NZ plays – and I still think the question needs to be considered, What is a NZ play? – then New Zealanders are obliged to ensure that state funded theatres not only survive but flourish.

The issue is equally political and economic. While the funder, or patron, does not oblige the theatres it funds to produce NZ plays… then… and while the funder, or patron, does not provide for a dramaturg or give the director(s) enough time to engage in dramaturgy, then, it is hardly surprising nobody’s dusting off Bruce Mason or The Wind and the Rain, or what have you.

We have, in other words, to ask for policy, which while not restrictive is realistic in generating a vital theatre that includes the NZ playwright’s contribution as much as anyone’s, without giving it precedence. I object to the precedence you give the playwright. It smacks of the easy answer with an aftertaste of the ideological: since he is an Englishman! Scrub that, A NZ playwright, then it is a NZ play! As I said, the authorial preference.

The Circa production is a NZ work of a German play. You say you’re not concerned with bloodlines?

The state funds on the bases of cultural identity and proximity – to what is readily understood because it has been done before. More should be asked of the funder.

And, John, I refuse to be drawn into the argument over whether Roger Hall has done more than anyone to hold the mirror up to NZ society, presented here with inimitable flippancy. He has of course done nothing more (nor less) than hold the mirror up to himself.

And, John, Roger entered the profession when there was one, not the “items of trade” you so rightly decry. As a playwright he benefitted from his engagement with professional community theatres inestimably, when there were such things. He was fostered by and in a milieu that simply does not exist, that has in fact been undone.

Knowing how it was undone might help us put it back together, so long as we don’t stitch ourselves up with the exercise of false conscience, pursuing shibboleths like ‘the obligation to produce New Zealand plays.’ RNZ’s state is about to get a lot sorrier and there was a time it was the nursery and provided the necessaries for NZ writers, many playwrights among them, of criticism and encouragement. We ought not to let what’s left pass without a fight. [link]

Corus:

He is drunk.

Michael Smythe:

Corus – don’t be unkind – Simon’s incoherent rambling may simply be the natural and inevitable outcome of attempting to avoid stitching himself up with the exercise of false conscience and /or pursuing shibboleths.

Simon – It’s hard to reconcile your nostalgia for the good old days of theatre companies and your championing of National Radio with your not very successful efforts to pour scorn on John’s very legitimate, and clearly communicated, concerns. His key questions are dead simple – If tax-payer funded theatres do not get new New Zealand plays to the stage who will? And is there a more legitimate time to do it than as a contribution to an international arts festival?

The ‘what is a New Zealand play anyway’ question is a red herring swimming down a cul-de-sac. All that is relevant to this discussion is that the work being reviewed is clearly not a New Zealand play.

Simon Taylor:

Michael, perhaps you heard it on the bloodline and can extrapolate the dead simplicity of John’s Key Questions naturally and inevitably. I am happy to read that they are:

If tax-payer funded theatres do not get new New Zealand plays to the stage who will?

And is there a more legitimate time to do it than as a contribution to an international arts festival?

The first question is surely answered by John’s

the groundswell created by the creative co-ops whose often extraordinary works are celebrated on this website.

The second question, desperately seeking legitimacy on Circa’s behalf for Circa’s contribution to an international arts festival, Circa should be asked to answer.

The shame and crime here, on which I drunkenly pour my incoherent scorn, is both that there no longer exists a national “ecology of theatre” because of the way public funds are dispensed, because CNZ [link] lacks policy directives, among other and less important factors, AND that when in a position to condemn the agency that funds Circa, from the public coffer, John would rather lead the critique, the discussion, down the cul-de-sac to chase the red herring of moral (read ‘cultural’) rectitude – in an arena that is already ethically compromised – by chorusing that it ought to have done the right thing by us, and, with unwitting irony, suggesting that

the role of New Zealand companies is to produce New Zealand work, especially of the kind that might be attractive to other international festivals.

It is for me, Michael, to reconcile my nostalgia for “the good old days of theatre companies [sic!] and [my] championing of National Radio with [my] not very successful efforts to pour scorn on John’s very legitimate, and clearly communicated, concerns.” I think I’ll pour another.

Cheers.

A couple of statements stick out at odd angles from this review so I feel compelled to comment. To wit, the first line:

Since Shakespeare died many playwrights have attempted to add to the library of plays about the kings and queens of England-cum-Great Britain.

No. It’s really the first three words I have a problem with, “Since Shakespeare died”… Does John Smythe mean ’since 1616′ or ‘because of the death’ and therefore having to take it into account, the death, or that he did die; or, additionally, and to gloss, ‘Since Shakespeare did die in 1616, young, only 52, because of that and ever since many, many playwrights have both tried to emulate him and to enter the canon, add to the library, with plays about British kings and queens’? (What is England-cum-Great Britain? A sort of metaphorical fluffer? connoting a white-out? … a fluff, nonetheless.) The statement is to say the least disingenuous. And as unworthy as the following of inclusion in a serious review with a serious message. But ought we to believe John Smythe?

Surely the role of New Zealand companies is to produce New Zealand work, especially of the kind that might be attractive to other international festivals.

It has become something of a strategy or model for theatre companies in NZ to produce work to appeal to international festivals. There are cultural as well as economic reasons for this: these reasons warrant examination beyond John Smythe’s self-complacent sureness about the role of NZ companies being to produce NZ work. (I’m thinking particularly of Red Leap Theatre’s The Arrival, here.) About that notional role, what makes John Smythe so sure?

What irks me most, I suppose, since I don’t agree with the message, is the reviewer’s presumption to being able to suspend our disbelief for us. For example, in lines like this:

I must suppose the way director Ross Jolly and his cast have rehearsed this play has not exploited its true qualities.

What a bizarre thing to say! Since Shakespeare died I have not heard attempted such additions to the library of bizarre things as assayed here in the name of John Smythe and under the guise of a review. The failure of the review lies in direct proportion to the degree to which it oversteps itself in finding a critical point of view. Yes, such a rare state of affairs, that the pitfall of commonplace is not avoided. Or, ought one to take seriously that the role of NZ companies is to produce NZ work? After all, what was Downstage Upfront but a protracted promotion of this facile agenda? [here]

It’s never fun to watch or read backstory, but as has become the rule, the review duly and dully provides us with its own, in a series of paragraphs commencing with one that shouts:

To backtrack: …

I’ve an interest in criticising the writing of theatrical reviews but the standard has slipped so far – or trickled down so deep, as we will see – that it has become hard to find anything worth holding onto, anything worth salvaging. My interest in these lines is the inspiration behind the review, just as for the review it is the inspiration behind the choice against staging a NZ play… or NZ-cum-Aotea roa-cum what may.

Returning to the question of why Circa chose Mary Stuart as their Festival play, yes, I accept it is part of our own cultural heritage.

Whose? There’s that word ‘culture’ being bandied about again, and the reviewer clearly does not accept that the choice of play meets with the standards he imputes to the professional culture, or cultural heritage, of our theatres! To gloss once more: ‘Our theatres do our plays to serve our culture’… out of respect for what? To attract the interest of international festivals?

The concession the reviewer makes is a sham, a nod to the ‘Let’s-acknowledge-but-then-pass-quickly-over-the-whole-issue’ crowd ‘That Blighty too is in one’s blood, with its bloody kings and queens, if not in one’s England-cum-Great Britain.’ The issue of belonging is as important here, in NZ, as the issue of what art is, because it’s about what art does and whether it can or ought to have ongoing relevance.

The ad for Playmarket bores me, as if, as in the review’s self-conscious rhetoric – an attempt at pointedness? – the directors of Circa can possibly not be aware of the ‘many superb but neglected plays by proven [how?] New Zealand playwrights that languish on [its] shelves.’ [sic & here]

Or do they just find it easier to ride on the coat-tails of international companies and be a ‘cover band’ for their cultures?

Sends a shiver down my spine just to think of it! Circa, Downstage, Court, Fortune, ATC, ‘cover bands’?! The suggestion is diabolical. And, again, what are the cultures of these international companies? Since they have coat-tails, must be something élitist.

The reviewer saves his graceless coup de grace – of what I wish to entertain is a far more blooded subject than he gives it credit for being – until the last when names are named:

I find it [...] strange that Peter Biggs, an ex chair of Creative New Zealand, should be sponsoring this production. I am just as bemused that Chris Finlayson, an ex-chair of the CNZ Arts Board and now our Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage, has only ever sponsored Circa productions of non-New Zealand plays.

Oh? I was hoping for so much more, that the criticism might ground itself beyond the tired stories we tell ourselves in order we may sleep at night, AKA ‘Telling our own stories in our own words.’ The living discussion of WHY DO THIS PLAY NOW? still seems to be one in which we are unwilling and perhaps incapable of engaging, at least, as per the evidence given here. Too soon mired in the side issue of NZ bolsterism.

To end:

The failure to recognise the fundamental responsibility of state-funded theatres trickles down from the top, it seems, and now runs very deep.

… We visit and take pictures of the Grand Canyon because we don’t have our own one. But at least we understand how it was formed.