Fortune’s Pawn

The Collaborator of Bethlehem by Matt Beynon Rees

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I heard an interview with Matt Beynon Rees on NPR the other day and I am intrigued by his Palestinian detective, Omar Yussef. I like to read well written books about places I may never see. The Yacobian Building was a favorite of mine (and a fave film, too). I look forward to getting to this book and the sequels.

I have just finished the book and I must say I liked it a lot. Rees paints a lush and detailed canvas of Palestine. Bleak yet captivating. His character development is spot-on and his attention to detail is fantastic.

Matt Beynon Rees is the former Jerusalem bureau chief for Time magazine and it shows in his detailed perspective on the political realities of the Middle East. His prose range from the protean to the stunning. Here is a favorite passage of mine:

Yet the gunmen thrived, they whose accomplishments and talents were of the basest nature, they who would have been obliterated had there been law and order and honor in the town. Perhaps Bethlehem was there town after all, and it was Omar Yussef who was the outlaw interloper here, peddling contraband decency and running a clandestine trade in morality.

If you are at all interested in this part of the world, then this book should be on your list.
View all my reviews.

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Pawn had dinner tonight with sister HG and an unexpectedly large number of book titles were spontaneously birthed as a result.  Here are three of them (copyright © 2008, all rights reserved):

Luminary Misfits

A Nasty Tussle in June

Jesus Has Two Mommies

I won’t go into all of the back stories or plot lines of these titles.  But there you have it.

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I wrote back on February 25th, while I was in London, of the growth of the British Surveillance Society.  Well, today in theTelegraph comes news of a Manchester band, The Get Out Clause, which has turned that to their advantage:

Unable to afford a proper camera crew and equipment, The Get Out Clause, an unsigned band from the city, decided to make use of the cameras seen all over British streets.

With an estimated 13 million CCTV cameras in Britain, suitable locations were not hard to come by.

They set up their equipment, drum kit and all, in eighty locations around Manchester – including on a bus – and proceeded to play to the cameras.

The Get Out Clause, Manchester’s stars of CCTV cameras - Telegraph

The resulting video is quite effective, as you can see here:

The Get Out Clause: Paper

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Two people, each a giant in his field, and true pioneers, both passed away recently. Pawn was deeply influenced by both. Joseph Weizenbaum, pioneer in artificial intelligence and skeptic of technology’s role in human affairs passed away on March 5th, and Gus Giordano, pioneer in jazz dance and an extraordinarily gifted correographer passed away on March 9th.

Here is an excerpt from the New York Times obituary of Weizenbaum:

Eliza, written while Mr. Weizenbaum was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964 and 1965 and named after Eliza Doolittle, who learned proper English in “Pygmalion” and “My Fair Lady,” was a groundbreaking experiment in the study of human interaction with machines.

The program made it possible for a person typing in plain English at a computer terminal to interact with a machine in a semblance of a normal conversation. To dispense with the need for a large real-world database of information, the software parodied the part of a Rogerian therapist, frequently reframing a client’s statements as questions.

In fact, the responsiveness of the conversation was an illusion, because Eliza was programmed simply to respond to certain key words and phrases. That would lead to wild non sequiturs and bizarre detours, but Mr. Weizenbaum later said that he was stunned to discover that his students and others became deeply engrossed in conversations with the program, occasionally revealing intimate personal details.
Joseph Weizenbaum, Famed Programmer, Is Dead at 85 - New York Times

A friend and mentor introduced me to Eliza in 1976, about a decade after its conception, and it opened my eyes to what could be done with what are now called human machine interface facilities (commonly referred to as UI). Much of my professional work with technology, whether in computer fields or in exhibit development have been influenced by those early lessons.

In 1980 I had the honor to work on several dance performances with Gus Giordano Dance Chicago, when they came to the humble Metropole Theater in Milwaukee where I did lighting and tech work at the time. Here is an excerpt from the Times’ obituary of Giordano:

Mr. Giordano was best known through the performing of his company, Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago, founded in 1962 and based in Evanston, and through his teaching at dance conventions throughout the United States.

The company, now directed by Nan Giordano, his daughter, is said to have been the first dance troupe to dedicate itself solely to jazz dance. The company’s programs featured pieces by Mr. Giordano and later, as he grew older, included dances by guest choreographers including Mia Michaels and Davis Robertson. The performers became known for their strong training, energy and hard-driving, precise way of moving.

“Their sleek lines and high, silent jumps had the feel of a well-oiled 1958 Chevrolet Impala, a pure expression of another era and something we remember as historically sexy,” Erika Kinetz wrote in 2005 in The New York Times, reviewing “Giordano Moves,” a tribute presented at the 14th annual Jazz Dance World Congress in Chicago.
Gus Giordano, 84, Innovator of Modern Jazz Dance, Is Dead - New York Times

Pawn remembers Gus as friendly and open, and very respectful. He had already won his Emmy award by the time I met him, but was gracious and down to earth. His company loved him, and it showed in the enthusiasm of their performances. I always looked forward to their arrival at the theater, and learned a lot about lighting design working on those shows.

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A little over a week past I heard an interview on BBC with Gay Soper, a frequent habitué of stage and screen here, on the subject of her latest show, The Sister Wendy Musical. The title was all I needed to hear, I ordered a ticket right off.

For those of you unfamiliar with Sister Wendy, she was a nun who made a vow of hermitage, lived in a caravan on the grounds of a convent, and turned into possibly the most influential television art critic ever. She was treated with contempt by many in the art world for her naivete, but greeted with joy by many more laypeople who welcomed her singular enthusiasm for art and her almost evangelical fervour. I couldn’t pass this up.

The show is at the Hackney Empire Studio, by Hackney Central station. This is a couple of stops past the Dunston/Kingsroad station which serves Arcola Theatre, so a bit of a haul. On a Sunday night, when the overground trains run only every half hour, this is significant. I got there with plenty of time, and had the chance to have a quick bowl of chow mein before the show. That was my first mistake.

The show was poorly attended. It had opened while I was gone, and I hadn’t read any of the reviews. Now that I have I can tell why. It was not well received. I can agree with much of what has been written by the critics, although I feel that some of them (Guardian, Times) brought their critical bias against Sister Wendy to bear upon the production as well. I think that unfair. That being said, however, the show was weak.

The book and lyrics are good, as is most of Gay Soper’s performance, though she must learn her lines better — a shortfall shared by many in the cast. It is the direction, staging, music and enthusiastic but amateurish supporting ensemble which drag this otherwise uplifting show down with the weight of their failings.

Staging a broad musical in an intimate setting (the theatre seats only a few dozen) is difficult. The broad strokes with which most characters in a musical are painted look cartoonish and foolish to a viewer only ten feet away. No adjustment for this was made, excepting on Soper’s part, and the result was a disappointment. Were this a fund-raising performance by a church group, it would have been impressive. As an off-West End show, with tickets going for £12, it failed. The blame for this, I feel, can be laid at the feet of Okai Collier company who produced the work. Omar Okai, direction/staging/choreography deserves much of this, though with an obviously thin budget one feels Simon James Colier gets his share of blame, as well.

I do feel I must address the seeming inconsistency in my opinion of this piece, with the amateurish appearance of so much of it, and my glowing review of The Grapes Of Wrath, which had a similarly amateurish cast. Well, where to begin… For one thing, Only Connect was right up front that they are a non-professional company. They are almost boastful of this, and of the nature of their work. I went into that performance not expecting anything better than a church fund-raiser. This show, in contrast, was promoted as an off-West End show, and I approached it with that level of expectation. Only Connect are a charity, and the show, besides its own good works factor, is a fund raiser. I gladly dropped a twenty in the basket on the way out, confident that it would be put to good use. Lastly, even though it was not a musical, the music in Grapes was better, better performed, and had a much greater impact in the show than anything in tonight’s show.

In all fairness, I must admit to having had to leave the theatre about 20 minutes before the end of the show (see the chow mein, above). I cannot believe, however, that any miracle prevailed in fixing the many flaws in the production that I witnessed while I was there. The final twenty minutes of a show may redeem an apparently weak script, but cannot make up for a poor performance or conception.

My final word? If you have £15 or less to spend on theatre in London, go see any of the other off-West End shows I have reviewed on these pages; Thin Toes, Last Living Unknown Soldier, A Prayer For My Daughter, The Harder They Come or even Double Portrait. Or, see a show in a bigger venue, like The Peacock where Sadler Wells stage its big productions, with a ticket from the half price booth in Leicester Square.

I wish Okai Collier well on their future productions, but hope they rethink their approach.

Oh, and a final note - as penance I had to wait nearly half and hour in the cold for the train.

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My last Sunday in London and I decided to spend it seeing some more art, some more crowds, some more parks and some more theatre.  First, the art.  The Royal Academy has two blockbuster shows on right now, From Russia, great works from Russian collections, and  Cranach, a medieval artist.

The image above was used in the RA promotions for the event, and generated quite the storm of press when Transport for London initially refused to allow its use in tube stations, bus stands, etc.  The public reaction was so universally against TfL that they ultimately relented and this image has joined the ranks of so many others to be vandalised on a regular basis by passengers.

I knew that these shows were already largely sold out, and that very long lines of people turned out for the limited number of same-day tickets which went for sale early each day.  So, like with so many other cultural attractions I passed on those exhibitions.  Call me a heathen, but to stand on line for an hour in the hope of getting a ticket only to then try to admire artwork from a thicket of fellow art lovers.  No thank you.  I opted instead to enjoy the permanent collection exhibits which occupied the rest of the galleries.  Many fewer people to contend with, which heightened my enjoyment.

Next I wandered down to St. James Park to enjoy what had become a very nice day.  I had brought with me a bag of pumpkin seeds which I purchased at Tesco weeks ago, but don’t really fancy.  I thought the birds would like them, and figured that might make for some fun photos.

It is a gorgeous day in the park, and there are large crowds everywhere.  I have gotten pretty good at figuring out the language in use by a gaggle of tourists and then using the proper “pardon”, “perdon”,  “scusi” or “entschuldigung” as appropriate (having consulted the web for tips).  That comes in handy with this navigational challenge.  Almost all of these gaggles are students on tour, and they hang together tightly, sometimes ignorant or oblivious of the other users of the pavement.

I find my way to the narrow pond which bisects the park east to west and then to a properly gravelled area in which to toss my pumpkin seeds.  There are signs along the railings around the water which admonish you not to feed the wildlife, but then explaining that to do so anywhere damages the grass, so please find a gravelled area.  I start to throw the seeds, and am soon surrounded by flocks of pigeons, geese, ducks and a curious (but aloof) swan or two.  And humans.  A flock of humans wielding camera also descend upon me.  In short order the birds have had all of the pumpkin seeds and then they just follow me as I resume my walk around the pond.  I feel like the pied piper.

I trudge on through the neighbourhoods below St. James.  I found a string of roads I particularly liked.  Along the southern edge of the park is Birdcage Walk (which is a roadway, not a walking path), a short jog off of Birdcage is Old Queen Street, which turns a sharp left to Cockpit Stairs (yes, they name those as well).  I kind of liked that set.

A bunch more photos later I wandered into Pimlico station and caught a train up to Oxford Circus, and found a nice little pub to get Sunday Roast.  Football was on, FA Cup action.  The BBC got themselves in a lot of trouble for committing 14 hours out of a 24 hour period to either FA Cup soccer or 6 Nations rugby this past weekend.  You can’t win for trying.  I saw the last 20 minutes or so  of Barnsley spanking Chelsea on Saturday, and managed to see the only goal scored in the match.  It was quite the upset.  Sunday I saw Cardiff score two goals against Middlesborough in another upset.  I have watched plenty of soccer in my life, but in this one 24 hour period I think I may have witnessed more goals than in the past 45 years.  And I saw two out of three of the upsets that will lead to the first FA Cup final in 106 years to have no “Premeirship” level teams competing. (Manchester United had been unceremoniously dispensed with earlier).

Back home to clean up my photo galleries before tonight’s theatre.  You can see photos from today’s travels here

Ta!

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I am currently uploading all the photos I shot in Prague over the last several days.  This will take a while as there are nearly 500 of them.  They can be found here.

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When I left London for Prague the sunniest, and one of the warmest, Februaries on record had just ended. It was in the mid fifties and sunny as I rode the train to Gatwick. Not any more! It is still warm, got up to 50F today, but windy and drizzly. Tomorrow will be worse. It is predicted that we will have gales up to 80 mph by evening. People are being told to stay home, and the home office just hopes that the worst is over before the Monday morning commute.

And I have a ticket to see a musical treatment of the life of Sister Wendy in Hackney! I hope I don’t get blown off the platform waiting for the overground.

Today I went by tube to Monument to take a stroll by the Tower of London, across Tower Bridge, to visit the Design Museum. Monument (Bank and Monument) is so named for the monument to the Great Fire of London found next door. Not too much to look at right now:

I liked the walk down Lower Thames to Custom House and then along the embankment to the visitor centre for Tower of London. The Tower itself is more interesting to me for what the site and architecture hold than for the inners. I’m sure this comes as no surprise to those who have been reading these accounts for any time at all. I walked the perimeter of the site and took loads of snaps. Check the Day 27 Gallery for more shots.

After crossing Tower Bridge in a brisk wind I strolled along Shad Thames and the southern embankment to the Design Museum. They are hosting two shows, “Jean Prouvé: The Poetics of the Technical Object” and “Brit Insurance Design Award Winners, 2008.” Both good exhibits. I particularly enjoyed the award winners. This was quite the contrast to the unfulfilling show I saw in Prague.

I then high-tailed it up to the Barbican Theatre for a matinee of The Harder They Come, a new musical based on the 70’s movie of the same name. What a good time that was. I was lucky to check the web site this morning and get a last minute 5th row seat in stalls for only £10! The book has its problems, but the staging was innovative, the cast energetic and enchanting, the music expertly played and sung, and the whole works was lushly lit. High praise, and the longest standing ovation I have witnessed here, from a standing room only crowd.

That standing room only crowd was part of “2008 East: a festival championing the best of East London” This comprises dozens of arts groups, shops, restaurants, museums, etc. all trying to bring focus to the lively arts, entertainment and life styles of this vibrant part of the city. I thoroughly enjoyed my part of it, and would have gone to another show, “Marilyn and Ella” in Stratford, but with train works going on, and the weather threatening, I thought better of it and headed home. A quick stop for Kabob and then settle in to write and listen to the Beeb.

I’ll leave you with this interesting view of a shop window being (un)dressed in The City:

Ta!

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Back in the UK and I spent only a brief time in the flat before heading up to Hackney, and the Arcola Theatre again, this time for another piece of new theatre, “Double Portrait” written and directed by Tom Shkolnik, a young film maker. This is a two-hander starring Jodie McNee and Nicole Scott in a tense character study.

The script is spare, the production interesting, and the acting is above par. What is missing is an end — there just isn’t one. The whole piece has the feel of a test, like Shkolnik is trying out some story ideas, and wanted to do so with audience support. The story is simple enough, and all too complex. A pair of sisters are separated by miles, and by lives lived. Nicole is a teacher in London, Jodie is wayward in Liverpool. Jodie is suicidal and misses her sister, who has taken care of her during the ugly split of their parents. Nicole is gaining independence away from home, and just starting to recover from a broken relationship.

To watch these two spiral both towards and away from each other is difficult, but we are drawn. McNee’s performance as Jodie is haunting and powerful. Her neediness is palpable, and the opening scene literally made me shiver, something which no other theatre experience has done on this trip. Scott’s performance as the more responsible sister is just as moving. She is a giver, in her family, her job and her relationship. In a telling scene she has an awkward visit from her ex, come to pick up his stuff. He wants to comfort her over Jodie, but she finds the strength to send him packing and stand on her own. This is a difficult scene under the best of circumstances, but made more so here by the fact that Scott must play the scene with a non-existent partner.

An especially effective device in this production is the presence of the two characters on the same stage (set by Agnes Treplin) the same space, but separated by hundreds of miles and their own, very different needs. This is especially effective under Neil Brinkworth’s thoughtful lighting design. These sisters do need each other, and the director makes us feel this deeply by placing them so close together on the stage while the distances between them grow.

This is a good bit of theatre, but it is only a bit. Presented in the smaller Studio 2 of Arcola’s unique energy-efficient building, such a short and as yet under realised production really should have been promoted more as a work in progress, and billed accordingly. The performances and directing would hold a longer show well, all that’s needed is the rest of the script.

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Sunny and warmer today, after a Wednesday of alternating sun and snow flurries on top of 2-3 °C temperatures, the warmer, sunnier weather was welcome. I don’t know an official high temp., but I would guess 8-9 °C.

It was a nice day, then, to stroll around a lot. I did just that, starting out towards Old Town Square where preparations are well under way for the Spring festivities which start with Easter and really launch the tourist high season:

I then meandered through Old Town over just about every street. I finally got to the eastern end of Kurlov Most, Charles Bridge, and took some snaps before brunch. Here is a shot of the bridge, and one taken from the eastern end:

I did not cross the bridge because with that many people it just didn’t look very inviting. Besides, I like looking at bridges in profile. A word about food here. Along the main drag, like where I was yesterday, there are a lot of little stands selling pastry, sausage, chicken sandwiches, etc. Most of these are open early till late, and offer easy eat as you go options. In Old Town, and the other big tourist areas, these options are not really available. Instead there are a lot of restaurants, but they want you to sit down and spend quite a lot for a meal, comparatively.

For example: one can get a plate with kiobasa, bread, mustard and sauerkraut for about 60Kc, which is less than $4. In contrast, a similar meal in a sit-down will cost at least 150Kc, but the bread basket which will be dropped on your table unrequested will cost another 35Kc. By the time you add a beverage you’re lucky to get out of the sit-down for less than 225Kc, about $14. If the sit-down is in a tourist area expect to pay a 100Kc premium on top.

Another example: this afternoon I wanted a soda or juice. I stopped into a little coffee shop which advertised soda for 39Kc, about $2.30. I went to the cooler and picked up a little tiny bottle of ginger ale, maybe 140ml. “75 crown” the proprietor told me - about $4.50. I put it back in the cooler and walked outside. I took a seat at one of the outdoor café and ordered a 500ml lager for 90Kc. That’s not a bad price anywhere, and I was sitting in the sun on Old Town Square, watching the crowd mill around in front of the clock tower, and feeling pretty good about not having my ginger ale.

In this context then, understand why I was having brunch at 12:30. I had been wandering all over Old Town looking for some place where I could just get a cappuccino and croissant, which one typically sees for 99Kc. There is nothing like that in Old Town. By the time I got to Charles Bridge I gave up and enetered a restaurant. I ordered off a set-price menu, chicken soup, beef goulash with dumplings and dessert for 155Kc. I accepted the offer of a dry sherry aperitif for an additional 60Kc, the bread basket added another 35Kc (the first place to charge me for the bread, grr) the calculated tip at 10% and I had a bill for 284Kc — $17.20.

After brunch I went to the Museum of Decorative Arts. I had high hopes for this, but was kind of let down. They had a featured exhibition on awards in Czech Design which was underwhelming to say the least. It was poorly laid out, and unfulfilling. Next was the permanent collection, which is where my interest really lay. This museum was started by a union of artist and artisan in 1850, inspired by similar groups that had recently been started in Great Britain (now the Victoria & Albert) and another in Vienna. The collection runs to the hundreds of thousands of pieces, of which about a quarter are on display, either here or at the National Museum, at any given time. The current exhibit of the Permanent Collection was curated in honor of the centenary of the current site (a stunningly ornate old mansion).

Well, there are certainly things they like to show off and others they just don’t seem to care about. I think this might be most reflective of national pride — those items from times where the country was closest to self-governed are much more likely to be featured. So there is a lot of cut and engraved glass from the 15th to 18th centuries, but Art Nouveau glass and ceramics gets a total of about a dozen pieces in two small display cabinets. I have half as much on display in my own living room as they have here. Harrumph!

The high point? The collections of commercial art and photography are wonderful. They have a great collection of photographs by Josef Sudek and Frantisek Drtikol, amongst others. The room is very dim, however, which I think is due to a lack of good conservation materials for these delicate media.

After exhausting those displays, I struck off to the Jewish Quarter to admire some of the oldest buildings in the area. Since I went to see the oldest Christian worship in England, it is only fitting that I visit the oldest Synagogue in Prague. The Old New Synagogue, from the 13th century, is so named because it replaced an older synagogue, and was then superseded by a newer one which later burnt down. So, old new it is. Here’s a snap:

Next back to Old Town Square, and my lager, then into a private exhibition of posters and other commercial graphics from Alfons Maria Mucha, a favorite son here. He was one of the most influential graphic artists in the Art Nouveau movement and his work appeared on everything from biscuit packages to theatre posters (he was a favored illustrator of Sarah Bernhardt). You have seen his stuff even if you don’t know it, that is how pervasive his work is.

This show, with over 300 pieces (granted, many are postcards and menus) is hefty, and the 150Kc admission was better spent than the 120Kc I dropped at the Museum of Decorative Arts. I passed on the option of the Salvatore Dali add-on for another 100Kc. I’ve seen enough Dali to hold me for a while, and can see a large collection of originals in London if I wish, as opposed to the piles of reproductions and prints here.

You’re now up to date. I will go out shortly to post this, and then I think I may catch some jazz in a local club tonight. Tomorrow I head back to London. My trip here was short, but surprisingly I am happy with how it has worked out, and don’t feel too rushed. I think it helps that since I knew it was short I have been willing to make cuts and shoot for the best.

Ciao ciao!

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