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Principles above public postures

Thursday, October 9, 2008

I’D LIKE TO STEP OUT into - and stay a while in - a medium of expression that's not always included along with the mass media, that of live theater.

Imagine that a bold hero, such as we might see in a stage play, had existed among the ranks of the Bush Administration, one who stood up against the prevailing, disastrous tide during the past eight years.

 

Such a hero, when pressed to fall in line with what everyone else saw as his public duty to his leader, might well have said (allowing for some variation in political labeling, to match today’s common usages):

 

“Is it my place to say ‘good’ to the State’s sickness? Can I help my King by giving him lies?”

 

Or …

 

“I believe, when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties - they lead their country by a short route to chaos.”

 

These are in fact some of the resonant declarations that echo from a Broadway stage this week, spoken by that sterling actor Frank Langella (pictured left) in the role of Sir Thomas More, hero of Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons” (at the American Airlines Theater).

 

More is widely known as the courtier and cabinet official who refused to go along with England’s King Henry the Eighth when the king decided to split off the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church. It was, we all know, a policy initiated for the main purpose of getting the King a divorce, but was later aggrandized - perhaps just obfuscated - with a lot more spurious justifications.

 

More’s story brings to mind some, mostly not-so-lofty members of the Bush team, like James Comey, the Deputy Attorney General who tried to prevent a renewal of the warrantless wire-tapping program (and though valiant, naturally failed - to be relentlessly persecuted thereafter by Veep Dick Cheney).

 

And there was the higher ranking Colin Powell who tried his (self-proclaimed) best to inject caution into the White House’s Iraq war plans, but ended up making a Faustian compromise with the truth over weapons of mass destruction.

 

And ... most tellingly right now, perhaps ... there was Paul O’Neill, the first Treasury Secretary. He warned his boss six years ago that his reckless economic policies could lead (via “a short road to chaos”?) to a deficit of $500 billion – after, let’s not forget, inheriting Bill Clinton’s big surplus. O'Neill was only wrong by under-estimating the final figure for Bush’s legacy, which will be unstoppably boosted far beyond that number by the $700 billion bailout of the lending industries.

 

For his perspicacity, O’Neill was unsurprisingly fired. Back in 1535, More lost more than his job. He lost his life, after a series of hearings and a final trial whose transcripts, along with letters and other documents, form the basis of Bolt’s often formal-sounding but convincing dialogue for “A Man”.

 

Ringing out from the playwright’s text is the phrase “for State reasons”, chiming here as hollow as John McCain's cynical use of “Country First” as a campaign slogan.

 

McCain's efforts now concentrate (if that isn't too strong a word) selling himself as trustworthy - an attempt repeated in this week’s town hall non-debate ("I'm asking the American people to give me another opportunity ... the great honor of my life was always to put my country first"). But his actual response to the country's economic emergency has been so erratic, impulsive, self-serving and yet self-contradictory, that he deserves to be upbraided in just the way More upbraids the hapless Sir Richard Rich. This unprincipled and repeated seeker of preferment, who later turns out to be the perjurer who sends More to his execution, boasts about himself that: “I would be steadfast”.

 

And More points out to him, with sad and tolerant understanding: “Richard, you couldn’t answer for yourself even so far as tonight”.

 

Some people, indeed, will say and do anything to gain office.

 

   

  

 

**A RADIO DISCUSSION OF THIS COLUMN AIRS EVERY WEEK ON CONNECTICUT'S NPR STATION, WHDD (ROBIN HOOD RADIO) - Fridays at 7.35 am, and Saturdays at 4.45 pm.**

 

Listen to THE MEDIA BEAT podcasts by clicking HERE.

 

  

  

 

BEYOND BEING A HISTORICAL PERSONAGE, Thomas More has become an extraordinary artistic creation.

 

An extraordinary artistic creator, who (like More - certainly as portrayed by Langella) is also cerebral though not pointy-headed, and at the same time profoundly emotional but free of mawkishness, is Ricky Ian Gordon (pictured center) the noted composer who featured in a special showcase this week.

 

Joe’s Pub, the more informal performance space (with food and drink) at New York’s Public Theater, founded by the late Joe Papp, is exactly a decade old - and appropriately it chose music by this pre-eminently turn-of-the century artist for its celebrations.

 

A powerful range of talented singers performed songs from Gordon’s extensive canon, including Kelli O’Hara (pictured right), working on her “dark” Monday off from the riotously-received South Pacific production at Lincoln Center. It’s worth noting, too, that Gordon’s work has been regularly performed, and recorded, by high-octane stars like Renee Fleming and Audra McDonald.

 

For all the cushioned, closeted comfort of Joe’s, the Public is nothing if not outward-looking, and the same goes for this composer. Giving us his straight-on look at the human cost of economic recession, Gordon’s opera (with librettist Michael Korie) based on John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath has just been released on CD. It’s a recording of the work’s premiere performance, by the Minnesota Opera earlier this year, and has already been tipped by Opera Today magazine as possibly “the next great American Opera”.

 

On Joe’s small stage, baritone Jesse Blumberg and coloratura soprano Elizabeth Futral provided a heart-catching picture of the young Okie couple, Connie and Rosasharn, with a baby on the way, yearning for the comfort of possessions (including a Lincoln Zephyr car, that costs as much as a house). He sings to her in Gordon's plangent melodic lines, not admonishing but cautionary: “You’re wishing for a lotta stuff”.

 

Since those dire 1930s days we have come to regard such basic material goods as a lot more attainable ... only to see them recede once more for broad swathes of our population.

 

As Gordon himself says frequently, “The American Dream needs to be fixed. It’s severely broken”.

 

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