"Oh, what a beautiful mornin'"! And, as it happens, it is indeed a beautiful morning here, all the more so given what seems like in retrospect six months of cloud, rain, snow and a non-stop freezing wind from even further 'ooop north' than the usual 'ooop north'. Even so, I am provoked to the opening quote not by the sunshine but by a filmed version of Oklahoma produced by the Royal National Theatre back in 1999 and which was shown on Sky Arts last night. I was curious to see it because it starred (a much younger) Hugh Jackman who later played Jean Valjean in the film of Les Misérables. I remarked at the time that whilst I had heard of him I had never seen him before. Well now I have seen him twice with a fourteen year gap in his career and I now realize what the rest of the world already knew, that he is tremendously talented. Unfortunately, Oklahoma suffers a little, as so many of those earlier musicals do, from thudding dialog whose only advantage is that it gives one time to get up and make a cup of tea before the next brilliant, moving and/or witty song begins. In retrospect, what an act of genius it was when the producers of Les Mis decided to forego spoken dialog and just let the songs tell the story. Even so, Oklahoma from the RNT was a superb piece of theater and the director, Trever Nunn, is quite simply the very best.
Sometimes it gets personal: This morning, quite properly, the news bulletins are full of details concerning the Chinese earthquake with 200+/- killed and God knows how many injured and thousands bereaved and mourning. And yes, for a moment one is moved to pity and sympathy before moving on to the next story of the day. To be thus is to be human. But sometimes, somehow, a tragedy sticks beneath the skin and it will not be moved. For me, it is the tragedy of the man and his family - wife, two sons and a daughter - who went to the Boston marathon. The father was taking part in the run and his family were close to the finishing line to cheer him in. And then - personal apocalypse! The bomb went off, one son killed outright, a daughter maimed by the loss of a leg and a wife in hospital with brain damage. It beggars understanding. At one moment you are this, a happy family tied together with mutual love and affection; and the next moment you are that, a wreckage of hopes and expectations blown apart. "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport."
More rumbles later . . .
