Present Laughter is

the gayest of Coward’s three masterpieces, which is probably why it never gets a decent production. There is one gay character in it (Roland Maule) and then there is the problem of Garry Essendine, the lead, an ageing actor — written for Coward (and which he played in ‘the 40s’, when he was in ‘his 40s’). Also there is the fact that the entire sensibility of the play is gay; which, in this case, means it’s quite honest about love, sex and human relationships in general -- and if played as it should be played, straight people might be unsettled. A couple of years ago there was a production at the Shaw Festival starring an actor (who shall remain nameless, for the following reason) who was known to be gay. He played the role effeminately. This inspired the Globe reviewer J. Kelly Nestruck to write a withering deconstruction of Noel Coward, saying that because Coward was gay he was unqualified to write a play about straight relationships; the problem with Present Laughter being that the heterosexual romantic relationship between Joanna and Garry was not 'well observed,' because the gay Noel Coward knew nothing about such goings-on. That’s what happens when you play Garry Essendine too gay. The alternative is what happens in this BBC production starring Donald Sinden — you play Garry too straight — and it’s not unlike playing Hamlet straight — because straight, to us, means stoic. Hamlet, of course, is a mess, as is Garry Essendine, ranting at one moment and wet with tears the next. So if the actor is resolute throughout -- the result is tedious. Donald Sinden is no Penelope Keith. I don’t know who Sinden is (though I have heard his name) and though he’s handsome enough and the right age he just doesn’t throw himself into Garry’s histrionics -- in fact he actually tends to throw them away. I did see one amazing Garry: Kevin Kline. The secret to playing Garry Essendine is the secret to playing Judith in Hay Fever, the actor must believe their own histrionics; the character is unable to separate fantasy from reality. This, as I hinted in the previous blog, is the essence of what makes us human. A pig knows the difference between a truffle and his nose, whereas humans might fool themselves into thinking a nose is a truffle and vice versa (though God knows why). Shakespeare captured the essence of this in the character of Bottom (he is so named because he is so deep) who during his presentation of Pyramus and Thisbee is afraid the audience might take his death for real. It is a concern, as we are all certifiably nuts. Now the reason Donald Sinden and all the other 'Garries' and 'Hamlets' don’t play up their melodramatics is because being emotional means being effeminate, because it's not just about getting angry (men are allowed to do that) but being vulnerable -- crying -- and being sad, lonely, abandoning oneself to a trivial emotion (ergo, being ‘gay’) — which Garry must do, but Donald Sinden never does. What this production does have--  to make up for this -- is Julian Fellowes as Roland Maule. Roland Maule is a young playwright who idolises Garry, oh let’s not mince words, he is in love with him (Garry at one point muses -- ‘I hope you don’t want to marry me!”). Yes, that’s right, I said Julian Fellowes (of Downton Abbey fame). I had no idea he was such a good actor; after viewing this performance it's hard to believe he's not gay. In 1981 when this was filmed he was only 30. He is magnificent as Roland Maule and receives applause on his first exit (this BBC production was a film of a live play). Roland Maule is too often played as silly, and very unfunny — it was done that way in The Shaw Festival production I saw ( it really was execrable) — which means you just dismiss him from the moment he appears. But Maule and Garry talk about Chekhov several times, and Maule is meant to be a Chekhovian character — tragic and all too human, but irascibly funny. Fellowes looks longingly at Garry and almost cries at one point, and when he says “I thought I’d successfully sublimated you” I could completely identify — the number of young men I tried to ‘sublimate’ — especially back when I was in the closet — are too numerous to mention. These days Maule would be a non-binary, woke victim -- shyly sporting nail polish, proud of his pronouns, but otherwise fading into the woodwork with  pitiable inconsequentialness -- despite his blue hair.  Pretentious losers like these are now having a heyday. But the reason audiences and critics avoid this play -- and directors direct it badly -- goes much deeper than the problematic sexualities of  two of the leading characters. The play is an homage to Coward’s inner circle — that is the actors, designers, and producers that were his friends and amours. Coward had a closely knit group of ‘professional friends’ who he loved very much and who loved him back. Many of them were lesbians (as Monica would be in this play, but instead she is in love with Garry). Coward was at the nexus of a British clique of arty lesbians, in fact Blithe Spirit was inspired by a weekend visit to the lesbian novelist Raclyffe Hall, who resided in Dover — and who was fond of trying to reach her ex-lover (with the help of her present one) in the spirit world. In Present Laughter, Coward successfully recreates his own menage in orbit around a central planet — Garry. They fall in and out of bed with each other, yet nevertheless continue to love each other deeply (in Present Laughter Garry sleeps with an actress, Coward in real life was, for a long time, having an affair with his manager, Jack Wilson). And this is the problem. Coward is married to Liz, Henry is married to Joanna — but they are all having sex with other people, and — though the characters now and then get in a hypocritical snit about it — Coward makes it clear that ultimately no one seems to mind, that though lust and obsession are brief -- and marriage long -- real human affection triumphs over all of these passing fancies. It is uncomfortable for people to see a play which is honest about the facts of life. This is why J. Kelly pretended that Coward didn’t know what he was talking about. Straight people must pretend that monogamy is the answer; I pity them -- always have -- but Coward knew better, that monogamy always loses — and love always wins.

Hay Fever is

one of the finest comedies ever written -- if not the finest comedy of all. Coward wrote it in a day or two, apparently --when he was 21. He had been staying at a country home just outside of New York City, with Hartley Manners and his wife Laurette Taylor. That Judith Bliss — the crazy, melodramatic, aging actress in Hay Fever — is based on Laurette Taylor, is a  little known but fascinating tidbit of thespian lore. Laurette Taylor was one of the finest actresses in the American theatre — in fact she is reported by all who saw her perform to have fundamentally changed the face of the art. She created the role of Amanda in The Glass Menagerie, and was, apparently the ‘Marlon Brando ‘of her time (Williams characters had a way of calling up a certain kind of brutal realism from the actors in his plays). Taylor was never in a movie (I found one of her old screen tests somewhere online; it now seems to have disappeared, or is only ‘play for pay’). According to actor Martin Landau (who died at the ripe old age of 89 in 2017) Taylor was so real onstage that it appeared she had just walked off the street and wandered onto the set. In ‘real life’ — whatever she could stand of it — she was often drunk. Judith Bliss (the character in Hay Fever that Coward based upon Taylor)  is the very opposite of of a ‘realistic’ actress — at least if the acting she does when she breaks into a speech from one of her theatrical hits during the course of the play, is any clue. So, somehow, Coward found his inspiration for the over-the-top Judith Bliss in the most naturalistic actress to ever grace the American stage. No doubt he considered the play a trifle. It presented a conundrum for actress Marie Tempest (the first Judith Bliss) who couldn’t get her head around its lack of epigrams. Coward too was terrified by the new, innovative comedy he had invented. Wilde and Maugham were masters at wielding the epigram; actors regaled their audiences with paradoxes — or in the case of Maugham, with weighty, pithy, and balanced pronouncements. Coward’s comedy was, for it’s time, remarkable conversational (though it may seem somewhat mannered to us now). In fact some patrons who saw Coward and Lawrence in Private Lives thought that they were a real life couple improvising on stage. Coward’s genius is related to Shakespeare’s. Shakespeare, too, wrote romances that are both funny and touching — and Shakespeare’s work is replete with wordplay — so much wordplay, that at times it befuddles us. Coward’s wordplay is more modern but no less unbridled —  and "they that dally nicely with words may quickly make them wanton” as Viola suggests in 12th Night. Characters in Coward's plays not only play with language but analyze it. ’And so,’ the critics ask —  ‘where is the drama?’ But Coward’s masterpieces don’t need much action (much to the chagrin of Aristotelians), for the tension is between the words -- as in Hay Fever where 10 minutes of the second act is caught up trying to exactly understand the meaning of the word ‘winsome.’ But there is more than that going on in Hay Fever; it has a big theme, a Shakespearean theme, one that Coward returned to in his two other masterpieces — Private Lives and Present Laughter — and that theme is  very much related to Laurette Taylor and the whole notion of realism. Where does reality end, and fantasy begin? And what if fantasy is more tempting than reality —or worse still, what if we would rather not live in the ‘real world’ at all? And what if, for some reason, we feel we can’t? Shakespeare was obsessed with this issue; this may be why there is now a Noel Coward Theatre at the RSC. The fact that Coward is still dismissed as lightweight is just homophobia mixed with the blind, stupid worship of didacticism (very much a disease now). You can’t wittle a play by Coward or Shakespeare down to a moral or political imperative. And Coward seems to enjoy watching his characters brazenly flout authority and objective morality. As many have pointed out, Coward’s leading characters are the idle rich who quite often display no visible means of support, who are not very ‘nice,’ and  exist in a kind of fantasyland where only words and love and — of course — banter, matter. In Private Lives when Amanda worries people might disapprove of their affair, Elyot says they are still married “according to the Catholics… Catholics don't recognise divorce.” Morality is merely and relatively pragmatic -- and frankly, so are pretty much any ideas about anything. What is not pragmatic about Coward's characters —  but instead transcendent  -- is their addiction to illusion (and, allusion). At the end of Hay Fever's second act everybody falls in love with someone they’re not supposed to, and Judith turns a somewhat awkward situation into a terrifying melodrama -- one which becomes very real to the spectators (i.e. the houseguests). Ultimately we are not sure (as we are not sure with Gary Essendine in Present Laughter) what reality actually consists of for Judith Bliss. Her son Simon says at one point that they all ‘play along with mother’s fantasies.' After all, father is a novelist and mother is an actress -- and the children seem pretty detached from daily life -- so all it takes is for a member of the family to ask ‘Is this a game?” to send them all off into a performance of Loves Whirlwind,  a very bad play with great lines for Judith. She plays it all to the hilt, until we wish it was the truth. The one very profound idea in this play is that we are all quite capable of believing lies, and in fact prefer them to 'the real.' Watching Penelope Keith (The Good Life) as Judith Bliss, alternatively swoon, regard herself in the mirror, and switch from one dream universe to another, allowed me to live for moment during COVID-19. I guarantee that for those few moments my world was just as authentic as yours might ever be. If you disagree, I will show you mine -- and you can show me yours. And as always, the truth will come with that nakedness.

Noel Coward wrote

The Vortex in 1924, the same year he wrote Hay Fever. I just watched The Vortex on YouTube with Margaret Leighton —who is marvelously competent, but not amazing; she’s no Gertie Lawrence -- but then again her character Florence is no Amanda Prynne. I am setting myself the task of watching old BBC productions of Noel Coward plays on YouTube. I did my doctoral thesis on Coward. No one cares, of course. I worked on that damn thing for five years with a publisher -- Wilfred Laurier University Press -- and was unceremoniously dumped by them for no apparent reason. Obviously they detested me and/or my book. I have no problem trashing them as they were beastly to me (to use a Noel Coward word). I worked with some woman endlessly, disemboweling my thesis for her, I did everything but have it drawn and quartered by horses at her bidding, I just wanted that thing published. Her most consistent criticism was that I loved Coward too much. This was not ‘scholarly.’ Well, I spent every chapter writing critically, but sometimes at the end of each I would let myself go and start rattling on about how brilliant he was. No, she wouldn’t have it.  Well, anyway, the central concept of  my thesis was ‘the queer feminine’ a term borrowed from one of my advisors Michael Cobb. I owe him that. I owe Alexander Leggatt ‘Pinter.’  I’ll never forget walking into his office for the usual scholarly advice and having him say — much like the older businessman to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate: ‘plastics’ -- “I have one word for you — Pinter.” He was right  and I devoted a whole chapter to Coward and Pinter. Anyway, I’m not saying my thesis was perfect --  and  I went on to apply the concept of the queer feminine to Shakespeare, which I’ve been doing for roughly the last 15 years. Get that bee out of your bonnet -- that doesn’t mean Shakespeare was gay—but it does mean I’m obsessed with a certain style of writing —over-figured, lush rhetoric -- so weighty with wordplay that it sometimes gets on your nerves. Speaking of nerves, 'nerves' are the central issue in The Vortex. Nicky Lanacaster (what a name for a grown man!) has just come home from the war, and  he is quite 'nervy.' In the BBC version  Richard Warwick plays Nicky. He is just lovely in every way (Franco Zeffirelli stuffed him into a codpiece for Romeo and Juliet -- very wise). But one must imagine Noel Coward in the role. He wrote it for himself (he was only 24 at the time) so he could become a big star -- and he did. The play was a ‘success du scandal’ which is undoubtedly what Coward intended, that is, to be talked about. It’s not a particularly good play, in fact it’s pretty much as good as its models — the later plays of Somerset Maugham, and the Oscar Wilde melodramas. The scandal  is that the young nervy Nicky is a coke addict, and that his mother has traumatized him by falling in love with men his age and ignoring him. But what’s really going on in the play is incest, it’s one of those things that everyone knows about a play like this -- but no one ever talks about. It’s all very 'Gertrude and Hamlet.' Leighton is still gorgeous at 47; so when she is crying in bed, and he climbs in with her and hugs her, it is deliciously inappropriate. I can identify  because I was in love with my mother — but I didn’t want to kill my father, I just wanted to kill her (that’s what separates homosexuals from heterosexuals, psychologically — see Deleuze and Guarrari). In the final act Leighton mainly cries, which she does very well, but I bet the original Florence (Lilian Breaithwaite) — did not cry all the time. I’m sure the young Coward was as brittle as a shaft of hay in the part. Speaking of which, Coward wrote Hay Fever and The Vortex at the same time hoping one of them would be a hit; he wasn’t sure which one it wuld be. The Vortex won, but interestingly — and this is part of Coward’s genius — he didn’t follow it up with other similar plays (or he did, once or twice, but failed miserably). He knew which side his bread was buttered on: wit. You can see a little bit of Coward the homosexual -- and also the influence of Oscar Wilde -- in Pawnie, a gay character in The Vortex who appears early on, and then disappears (as all gay characters did before AIDS, AIDS became a dramaturgical device that made it more convenient to excise them). Pawnie is quite funny, and the actor playing him resembles Coward in visage and tone. Pawnie enters and immediately comments on the decor — placing him as the Oscar Wilde simulacrum: “Oh God, look at this lampshade!” Coward detests Pawnie, just as he detested his own sexuality (he told Gertrude Lawrence that -- though he was attracted to boys -- he would never ‘do those awful things they do with each other.’ He never 'came out,' formally, saying near the end, something like -- “I’d rather not, after all, there is some nice old lady in Newmarket-On-Thyme who does not yet know"). So immediately after the lamp comment, Coward exposes Wilde (and Pawnie) as gay-as-the-day, when Pawnie spies a photo and asks: “Who’s this ahh…boy?” Pawnie's obsessions are aesthetics and the male form; he is a copy of the villainous  leading character in The Green Bay Tree (a homophobic melodrama — one of the first ever gay plays — produced in London and on Broadway in 1931-- Lawrence Olivier was in it -- it was a play that Coward had some hand in producing). I don’t blame Coward — though he went on to write a parody of Wildean closet cases in the song 'We All Wear A Green Carnation' (in Cavalcade), and he would continue to lampoon gay characters, and psychiatry, all the things that threatened him. He did write one gay play -- which I think I will watch on BBC -- called Song at Twilight, and it’s good in the way The Vortex is good, which means not good enough. It’s intended as a critique of Somerset Maugham. Maugham, when very old, submitted to being injected with bull’s testicles — fashionable at the time -- and didn’t look a day over sixty when he was 90. It was disconcerting to this friends, as he had lost his mind, but not his face. More to come….

Elyotto, the young

creator/performer of the new pop hit Sugar Crash is only 17. He had to ask his mother if it was okay to swear in the video. He appears to be angry. About something. The imagery is violent, there is blood, and when he is not walking the empty COVID-19 streets he’s talking about ripping part of his brain out, and self-hatred, and his bong. The song is to some degree about addiction — but because of the canny title, he could of course be speaking of his addiction to candy. But we know better. With the mounting death toll from opioids it is clear that meth is the unmentionable subtext  — and if it isn’t, it should be, as that’s the way addicted teens will take it. The single has been labelled ‘hyperpop’ which means precisely nothing, it certainly looks/sounds like any pop hit released in the last 20 years, only perhaps catchier. Elyotto’s vid is a response to  COVID-19 isolation. Wow, on the one hand I’m amazed that anyone is actually speaking about their frustration with COVID-19. This reminds me of condoms. Early on during AIDS some Public Health Dimwit came up with the brilliant idea that condoms were ‘fun’ and ‘sexy,’ and there were videos of pretty girls shoving bananas down their throats that then emerged, magically, ‘condom protected.’ This was appealing because most penises are not quite as big as bananas — even when erect — and then the lovely allusion to bendy penises, which no one talks about. (Penises that bend down, slide into your throat with remarkable ease — I’m sure you already know that.)But the sexy girls and their bananas were to no avail; condoms are not fun, never will be, and the kindergarten condescension that inevitably accompanies such infantile jabberwocky was insulting to anyone who had ever had sex with a penis — bendy or not. What is most torturous about COVID-19 is that we are expected to enjoy it, and complaining about lockdowns is a thought crime, we are not only trapped in the prison of our homes — many of us with abusive significant others, and children now crazy from lack of stimulation — but we have to pretend to like it, because after all, ‘we’re all in this together.’ The truth is very different; what COVID-19 has done is rip us apart — beyond the illness is the crippling isolation that has birthed QAnon, mass opioid deaths, and the insane polarisation that comes from a computer telling you that you are right all the time. But I don’t wish to leave the subject of the young. Could you get it into you silly heads that when I talk about the cultural effects of COVID-19 lockdowns the assumption is not that I am against lockdowns (although I certainly am) but that they are bad for us, period. Could we just admit that? I worry most about the very old and the very young. Life is a bowl of cherries when you are between the ages of 30-60 — you’ve got a job, and love affairs and/or marriage, and kids, and before you know it you’re old. But to those under 30, and over 60, every moment is precious. And contrary to what you may have heard you are only young once, that is, when you are actually young in years. You can act young when you are old, but it’s not the same; you don’t have the young body or energy or drive — never mind the sheer newness of everything — that initial thrilling discovery of who you are and what you want. I am particularly sensitive to this issue as I lost about 17 years of my life to homophobia; I was in the closet from age 12 to age 29. That  screws you up forever. It was all fine and good for me to come out and start acting like a teenager at a late age — 30— (which is what a lot of gay men do) but it was not the same, and half the time I was just acting like an numskull at 30 because I skipped acting like a numskull at 18. (I still am quite ridiculous.) That’s because it’s not right to miss out on your youth. I never had a ‘first kiss’ at 14 (or I did, with a girl who I didn’t want to kiss) and that left a huge aporia — it’s a giant hole like the ones you find in a Mark Rothko painting (Rothko’s paintings look silly on your computer but when you are standing in front of one at a gallery you are afraid you will fall in). What has been taken from these teenagers during this year of COVID-19 is irreplaceable; it is cruel of us to pretend that it’s been good for them, or fun, or redeeming.  But the discomfort I have with Elyotto’s video — though I am happy there is some sort of response from ‘the youth’ — is that it’s certainly not angry or violent enough. Elyotto is winsome, thin, and wears big sweaters, he looks vulnerable and is not quite handsome, and his eyebrows are painted way too heavily. He’s probably gay, but in this day you can say you are non-binary until you are blue in the face and people will believe you’re not gay, because they don’t want you to be gay, because being gay is still the worst thing in the world. I’m not saying Elyotto is gay, of course -- if he was it would be great -- only that the song is just a bit too twee and innocent for my liking. I worry that this COVID-19 response manifests itself as victimisation and helplessness; and a wallowing in drugs to boot. I myself am now completely obliterated on weekends, hastening my own death, and I have aged so much in this past year that at the moment I can barely walk. I’ve ‘barely-been-able-to-walk-from-arthritis' before, it will likely pass, but all I can think of is that the COVID-19 nightmare will be over and I won’t be able to get out of bed. But I will always have this writing — just as poor whining Elyotto has his music, though it frightens me that he had to ask his mother about swearing. What youth needs is real revolt, real anger, none of this candy crash pap. I remember sit-ins, and kids getting shot at Kent State, and having sex in public, and marching to overthrow the government. I remember real violence— that is the SDS, and bombs and guns. Depression, as any therapist will tell you, is just repressed anger, so for God's sake kids, don’t kill anybody or yourself —or obliterate yourself with drugs — just please cause some real trouble. Gee whiz somebody needs to, before we all die of boredom and ‘the pipe.’

I’m celebrating my

antibodies tonight, we’re having another party. Yes, I was vaccinated two weeks ago and the antibodies to COVID-19 are raging in my blood. I can’t catch it — that’s impossible —and I can’t pass it on. This is the truth. I know because I have a doctor friend who told me. Apparently the Public Health equivocation is this: they are afraid that if they tell people that they are free to mingle — un-infectious and un-infectable — apres vaccination, this will create a segregated society in which the vaccinated are given certain rights that the un-vaccinated are not. Well, first of all, that’s going to happen anyway. But a much more important issue is the way Public Health treats us — with condescension, as if we were children. Well, we are. I get it. But you have no right to treat us that way; the whole premise of democracy is you treat people as if they are not stupid animals, even if they are. Of course these manipulations get Public Health in big trouble because vaccines were supposed to be the end of COVID-19, and now instead we are being told: ’Wait a minute, one in five million people might have a side effect, so watch out!” And — “Oh yes, mutations and variations might might outsmart the vaccines, so you still have to wear a mask." Right. People don’t like that. But again, that’s not the real problem, the real problem is not just that people don’t like being condescended or lied to, but that Public Health should be telling us the truth. They are not artists; it is not their job to mystify or dwell in precious, allusive obscurity. Their mission should be to give us ‘just the facts ma’am,' which they do not. And I speak not only of their manipulations. Also (some woman on CNN said this months ago,  and then they wouldn’t let her on again -- or that’s my suspicion) Public Health does not only withhold information from us, but they offer us information, willy-nilly, we should not under any circumstances be privy to. When Public Health is doing their job in the Public Health offices (do they all have funny teeth like Theresa Tam? Are they generally unwashed? I suspect so, all those late nights, worrying….) they are allowed to, and very much should practice the ‘There’s always a chance that….’ ethic. In other words, they must consider even the remotest, minutest possibility that certain awful things might happen. This they need to do in order to institute effective public health measures. But they don't need to and shouldn't in fact tell us everything. We don’t need to know (for instance) about vaccinations, that 1 in 5 million women between the ages of 30 and 50 might die of a blood clot from Astra-Zeneca. That may be a fact, but it is actually misinformation, because we will misinterpret it, and blow it out of proportion. What I'm saying may seem contradictory; but it's fundamentally not.  Public Health must not condescend to us, but on the other hand they must not give us irrelevant information that will be of no use to us, 'information' that just gets the media all hysterical. Have you heard anything on the news lately except blood clots blood clots BLOOD CLOTS!!!!? Anyway, I’m sorry I can’t invite you to the little party tonight celebrating my antibodies. The theme of my ‘antibody party’ will be — you guessed it —that if you are a beautiful man you might try pressing your gorgeous hunky body against mine, as I am now un-infectious and un-infectable. I think I’m horny; I’m not sure because I’m so incredibly old that it’s hard to tell. Last night I had a drink with a friend and his paramour — I was quite jealous about this young prince from Brazil -- who was just my type. The Brazilian’s name was Kyle  —which does not in any shape or form sound Brazliian — but he did. Kyle had no accent, but there was definitely a type of cultural difference going on that I could learn from. He was from Sao Paulo, which is to me, amazing, as my understanding is this: Sao Paulo is one of the poorest and most dangerous cities in the world — but Kyle opened my eyes to the fact that it isn’t so bad to live there. Nevertheless he is here, which says something. Kyle was wearing a hat that said BRAD, which I found charming. Only to find out that the BRAD hat was a ‘brand’ he had been trying to market recently. That immediately aroused me sexually. The word BRAD that is.  I would buy something that was sold under the BRAD brand, because BRAD to me is just hot, especially when followed by 'Pitt.' (I’ll never forget seeing him in his first movie — Thelma and Louise. He, of course, removed his clothes lickety-split, and we wanted to lick him immediately while he was doing the splits.) Speaking of which, Kyle was wearing artfully ripped jeans, and he kept rubbing his naked knees (something akin to Aladdin’s lamp?). And I did just happen to notice -- because I have a sharp eye for these things -- that he had magnificent thighs. I kept looking at his thighs, tightly encased by his jeans, and it did occur to me that they would be stupendous, as thighs go, and all I could think of was how wonderful it would be if Kyle were to sit on my face. “Sit on my face, and tell me that you love me!” is a song by Monty Python. I m not as fond of the ‘tell me that you love me’ part -- I find that intimidating. But I have always adored having certain people — and only certain ones — sit on my face. Kyle would be one such person. I am hoping therefore, tonight, that some face sitting happens -- before or after -- my party. No one has sat on my face in -- like — well,  months — at least since last summer — and it’s definitely a significant component in my sexual bag of tricks. Please join me in praying that I get laid at my antibody party tonight  -- that someone takes the hint, and presses his lovely (young?) body against mine -- or a certain part of his lovely young body, against my mouth. Sorry this blog has been so pornographic (no, I’m not). Blame it on COVID-19. Or on doctors not telling us the truth. The truth is so complicated -- of course -- and deeper than any doctor can ever imagine, and terribly difficult to communicate, for each and everyone one of us. But you, Theresa Tam, must -- in a very different manner than myself -- at least, try.

So a mouse

ate my crackers today. I got up at precisely 6:45 a.m. to eat them. I had been anticipating them all night; I dreamed about those crackers! But I opened the cupboard door and the plastic package I had carefully sealed with rubber bands was almost empty, and the rubber bands had been chewed through. My go-to was anger at my boyfriend — but then I realised that — though he is a very very odd fellow — it was unlikely he chewed through those rubber bands. So the day started badly.  (Please remember that my favourite cheese crackers are called Cheez-Its, there are no others like them, they are made by ‘Sunshine’ and only recently became available in Canada, and if you want to send me some, do. I won’t tell you my address but if you have my email you can email me, and I will give you my home address I promise.) Last night I watched The White Crow — a movie about Rudolf Nureyev, This movie is alluring, because of course, the guy playing Nureyev is hot, and is glimpsed ‘pretty-much, naked' at least once, and of course he sleeps with a lot of hot young men (and some women — this was annoying -- I’m sure it’s a fact that Nureyev slept with a woman or two -- but why do we have to see it? The next thing you know they’ll be claiming he was bisexual!). I always tell the story about the time I almost slept with Nureyev at the baths (The Romans)—I’ve told it about 1000 times. Suffice it to say I didn’t, but I could have. (So there.) Anyway the movie is pretty hypnotizing because of all the male buttoxess on display — in and out of tights — but also due to Ralph Fiennes lovely performance as Nureyev’s favourite acting teacher (Fiennes also directed the excellent script by David Hare). And then there was Nureyev’s dilemma, which was that he wanted to get out of Russia. I realized though, after awhile, that I was getting far too involved in the movie emotionally. I mean, I’m not trapped in Russia, am I? But then again. The last scene  — at the Paris airport — was so riveting— ‘Just tell them you want asylum Rudi. But you have to approach them — they won’t approach you.’ And the Russians are trying to grab him back, but he does finally escape to Paris. So I identified, because I do live in Soviet Russia now, that is all writers do, ever since the ‘woke folk’ decided that certain language is violence. Hate speech was the thin edge of the wedge. I never liked the concept of hate speech. What are we to do with Patti Smith’s fab song ‘Rock 'N Roll N-word?’ I guess we have to throw it in the garbage, now eh? And this is after years of me owning the word 'faggot' and calling myself that quite proudly.  It’s tragic to see the death of what I call ‘reverse appropriation,’’ taking back a term of abuse and anointing as our own. The problem with hate speech is that no language or thought should be illegal, period. I can see censoring children’s books but that’s about it. However I think children should stop reading children’s books at age 12. There should be no such thing as ‘teen’ literature. If you’ve got hair on your 'you-know-what' then man-up (or woman-up) and start reading the tough stuff, I suggest Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer to start (though I’ve never been able to read the damn thing, so maybe it will put you off pornography -- which is what the puritans want, anyway). No. Adults should be able to read anything, or say anything, they like. If somebody kills somebody because that person is a trans person, what difference does it make? (Please don’t take that sentence out of context.) What I mean by that is -- they should go to jail for killing someone, period, it doesn’t matter the reason they did it, unless they are mentally ill. Then they had no reason and should be acquitted. If anyone has a reason for killing someone then they should be locked up, period. And what if the killer says: ‘I didn’t kill them because they were trans but because they were an odious person?” Why disbelieve the killer? What do you know about what goes on inside the brain of a twisted, evil, skunk who would kill anyone, for any so-called, blasted reason? And the problem with hate speech is that it -- like beauty -- is in the eye of the beholder. One man’s hate speech is another man’s poetry. As a writer I am appalled by any attempt to limit anyone’s vocabulary; we need words, all of them — no matter how disgusting or offensive — so we can somehow make sense of this crazy world. But the concept of  ‘hate speech’ was a step away from ‘words as violence.’ When I was ‘exorcised’ from Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Evalyn Parry kept telling me I had a responsibility to the people who read my blog because I had ‘hurt’ them. Go away, Evalyn! (Thank Heaven, she did!) No writer is responsible for the responses of the reading or viewing public. If we thought we were responsible for the effects of our work we wouldn’t write. How could we? People are nuts, and great poetry is polysemous (which means it has many meanings). And if you are a good poet, or novelist, or playwright, no single meaning can be extracted from your work anyway. The concept of speech as violence is equivalent to book burning, and will kill poetry, okay? Which brings me again to why I found Rudi’s dilemma so compelling — because every time I write these days, I write in fear. I am afraid. In fact I am afraid now. I am afraid I have ‘gone too far’ and will finally be permanently cancelled in one way or another. That’s a good thing probably, I mean it’s probably good for my writing; I have no doubt Rudi was a better dancer because he was terrified that the Russians would take 'the dance' away from him. Oppression/repression invites urgency and adds desperation, and if you create desperately you may, in my view, create something a little closer to the truth. (Whatever that is.) So yes, yes, truth be told, every word I write may be my last word, but that’s okay, because a writer should write like that anyway, and, with that in mind, I say goodbye. It was nice knowing you. If I am banned, please remember that when I dressed in drag, I really wanted to look attractive —it was an accident when I did not. And remember I tried to write, not wisely, but too well. (But it didn’t quite work.)

This is the

last you will hear of N.C. Hunter. His name has been forever erased from theatrical history. He was destroyed by critic Kenneth Tynan, who did away with him — it seems — with some relish, and his usual flair, and in one lethal swipe. I don’t so much blame Tynan, though his review of Hunter’s A Touch of the Sun was infamous for it’s lack of generosity, citing “the vacuity of the author's attitude towards life.” Hunter was guilty of nothing except being old at a time when being young was all that mattered. I don’t so much blame Kenneth Tynan as I do John Osborne, for they were oo-conspirators in the 1950s — heterosexist assholes (if I may be so bold) who plotted and planned to rid London's ‘West End’ of homosexual influence. The pretense was that they would create a new kind of theatre; indeed — they did — as they wished to see fine theatre written by homosexuals replaced by bad theatre written by heterosexuals. Of course they faced no opposition. Osborne and Tynan got rid of not only N.C. Hunter, but also Terence Rattigan, Noel Coward, and the producer Binkie Beaumont (one can’t helping loving him just for his name). These 4 were thought to be a ‘gay theatre mafia’ (Osborne is quite frank about this in his letters) and indeed they were, but this was no reason to destroy them, as in this iteration 'mafia' just means ‘special interest group,’ and indeed the four men had a kind of unwritten pact to pursue a certain kind of theatre, even though they were not particularly friends.  Yes of course, Coward’s powers as a writer had waned by the 50s, but it was Hunter and Rattigan’s heyday. And it was Osborne who started the ‘angry young man’ movement in theatre with his horrifying ‘Look Back in Anger,’ and who would not rest until the ‘gay theatre mafia’ was extinguished. I don’t suggest you read Look Back in Anger, as it is a shitty play. The only redeeming thing  is Jimmy Porter’s speeches: they have a certain unhinged violence, but are, sadly, lousy with didacticism. In other words Jimmy’s preaching at those who were at the time -- most decidedly not the converted -- is what made the work so-called 'revolutionary.' But if you analyse Osborne's play it is simply a misogynist misreading of A Streetcar Named Desire. Williams gorgeous play was written 9 years earlier, which means that Osborne had time to concoct his sexist retort. Look Back in Anger is essentially Streetcar from Stanley’s point of view. Alison is a Blanche-like, upper-class lady who falls for the sexy, gritty, angry, young, working class Jimmy. He verbally abuses her and eventually does so, physically, too — and utilizes his climactic final speech to justify it. Tennessee Williams had the genius to pit the body and soul against each other (welcome to my life!) --  in the form of Stanley and Blanche -- and then have them fight it out, in a rape, only to leave the audience's judgement suspended (but Blanche really wins, because Williams’ play is fundamentally not didactic; we are seduced by her poetry, and poetry is all that matters). Jimmy in Look Back in Anger -- though somewhat more eloquent than his fellow characters -- is no poet, mainly because he is hectoring us and lecturing us with the author's point of view. I doubt you will ever see a revival of Look Back in Anger, at least not in this 'Post-#Metoo' era. But N.C. Hunter’s A Picture of Autumn has just been released to the Mint Theatre website --

 https://minttheater.org/ 

-- and quite honestly it is worth, well two hours of your COVID-19 lockdown time Yes, it’s a play about old people, set in an old house, and all they do, really is talk. And yes they are rich, highly educated, and upper class, steeped in privilege (sorry). But Hunter’s work is eminently Chekhovian and utterly gorgeous. It may take awhile to grow on you, but what Kenneth Tynan called ‘vacuity’ is actually depth. How could he be so stupid as to confuse the two? But Tynan was only stupid in believing that one had to come out of a play humming it’s moral lesson. A Picture of Autumn is replete with accidentally poignant images, musings, paradoxes, and laughter at human failing, and yes it is to some degree about ageing and death. It offers no resolution; it merely sits in a very sad and funny place, which -- if you think about it -- is where we all sit, really, right now, and ultimately, forever. A Picture of Autumn knows ageing and death are inevitable and quite unpleasant, and it doesn’t offer any way out. There is — in other words — no vaccine. It’s amusing to watch people imagine they have a way out, to fantasize that death is ubiquitous but extinguishable, we will never 'go gentle into that goodnight' because if we follow COVID-19 guidelines, we may avoid night altogether. It’s pleasing that the end of COVID-19 is so near, of course, but one feels the end will forever be just around the corner, and one is never sure if one really wants to chomp on that limp carrot being dangled at the end of that mangy string. The stasis that N.C. Hunter offers is inevitably human, it's something we perennially fight to get out of, but there is no escape. So why would you want to see such a hopeless play? I don’t know how to tell you this, but hope is a panacea; there is no hope, we are all going to die. There is no heaven either, there are only these bodies, which you find, as you grow older, have nothing to do with what lives — so briefly — inside them. As I drag these half dead old legs of mine about I am perpetually astounded by the complete and utter lack of a relationship between the physical body and the human soul. How can my mind be so alive and my body be so dead? But that's the way it goes, existentially speaking, and this life will gradually leave behind a hollow shell, and though I took solace recently in reading Ovid’s Metamorphosis for the very first time, I am absolutely not reassured by the possibility of someday returning as a rock, a flower or a rhesus monkey. The only transformation is this. I have created it for you here -- this fantasy of a cranky old man, who is only a very small part of who I am — you’ll never know me, you’ll only know this. This is a mystery, I am am mystery, you are a mystery, and the biggest mystery of all is art. I didn’t want to say goodbye to the characters in N.C. Hunters play. A Picture of Autumn. No, they are still here. They never actually lived; or did they? But they will not die, because my imagination says so.