On
the Port Ginesta side of the Paseo I noticed a police car awkwardly stopped in
the middle of the road. As I approached
I saw that the police were speaking to a grandfather who had his small Viral Assassin
with him, clearly out of the allotted time slot for such things. Unfortunately, I did not see any movement on
the part of the police to leave their car and give a multa to the offending adult.
Still, it was encouraging to see that they were not letting flagrant ignoring
of restrictions pass.
In fact on my bike ride this morning I saw
more police cars than usual. There were
four or five on the Marine road, but none at the Gavà part of my ride, so I
took advantage of the absence and added the Gavà loop to my cycle. I felt very virtuous at the end of my ride,
which is more than I can say for my bum.
I have not idea how the more dedicated cycle riders manage 50k or more. They must either have buttocks like hardened
steel or they are dyed in the wool masochists.
On a
rather more elevated note, the Lyric Hammersmith is going to screen a version
of A Doll’s House by Ibsen for today
only.
I was tricked into first reading Ibsen by
the enticing title of his play Ghosts
that I rather expected to live up to its Gothic promise. I enjoyed reading the play, in spite of their
being no ghosts of a variety that I could shiver to and I also entirely failed
to pick up on the unstated, but essential component of the narrative of the
play, syphilis. Given the fact that the
main plot of the play passed me by, I now wonder what it was that kept my
interest!
Ghosts
is one of those plays that I have seen where different productions have given
me entirely different views. The first
live production of Ghosts that I saw
was played as a serious tragedy, while another that I went to see with my
mother in the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff, was played as a comedy. And both worked.
The same thing happened with two productions
of Death of a Salesman that I saw in
relatively quick succession. The first,
again in The Sherman, left me feeling depressed and border suicidal, while the
second in the West End left me with a happy smile on my face. All four of the productions I should add were
well produced and exceptionally well acted and I knew both plays well through
academic study.
The Lyric’s production of A Doll’s House
is set in late C19th Calcutta (is it still ok to write the city like that?) and
is listed as an adaptation of the text so it will be interesting to see how far
the writer and director depart from the original. But it got good reviews and this is an
opportunity not to be missed. It is only
available from 2.30pm to midnight.
I don’t know if this is true, but I was
told that all West End productions lodge a ‘reference’ video of their
productions with the National Theatre Museum and the videos or films are
available for academic study. Given that
copies of play no longer have to be registered by law with the Lord
Chamberlain’s office so that the Recorder of Plays can authorize them for
public showings, it would be a criminal lack of intelligence to let the
unparalleled collection of plays in Britain be wasted by not continuing some
sort of archive.
Perhaps in the future, theatres will make
a video of their productions to augment their takings from on-line views. Some Opera Houses and theatres have
productions live streamed to cinemas around the world, but on-line could be
(perhaps given the virus ‘must be’) one of the financial ways forward to keep,
oddly, live theatre alive!
I know that plays do not translate
directly to film and a play in a theatre is altogether different from a film
but, as my father was fond of saying, “anything is better than nothing” and a
theatre audience, even given a long run, is in total tiny compared with a
single showing on line. Perhaps this
virus will prompt a whole new generation of ‘theatre goers’ who take their
pleasure on line!
The
confusion, disinformation, misdirection and outright lying continue to confuse
the ‘back to school’ impetus of governments in Spain and in the UK. It does seem to me that without adequate
testing and contact tracing there can be no safe way of returning to school.
Blair did make the point that the children
of the rich and privileged will have been ‘educated’ during the lockdown and
the missed school for the underprivileged not only in terms of education but
also in nutrition cannot and should not be ignored. However, the solution to the problem of
inequality is not to put teachers in the firing line and allow them to
die. I do realize that the ancestors of
the public school boys who run the country probably had no qualms as they drew
up their plans for the battles of The First World War, but one rather hoped
that we had progressed somewhat during the last century!
I do not trust the government in England
to have due care and attention when it comes to restarting schools. The politicians who run the government are in
place because they subscribed to the self-harm of Brexit in spite of the
overwhelming evidence that such an action would be disastrous. We should always remember Cummings “Let them
die!” as the modus operandi of the Conservatives. “Money above lives” always has, and always
will be their mantra.
I am
sure that there are ways in which schools can be opened with a liberal
application of the fruits of the money tree that the Conservatives found to
combat the virus – vegetation that was signally absent during the years of
austerity and which made the present situation so much worse than it needed to
be. Smaller classes; more teachers; more
school building; better facilities – all the things that teacher unions have
been asking for, pleading for, for years!
Let us never forget that this government
has deaths on its ‘conscience’ and they must be held accountable. I do not want to see the mortality total
swollen with avoidable deaths of colleagues.
More
and more people seem to be taking advantage of exercise time, especially more
and more cyclists, but you get the sense that the people who are out are
getting progressively freer in the way that they are treating the virus. On the beach the construction of various
kiosks has begun, though I think these are for the renting of sunbeds rather
than the beach cafes that we have each summer – but they are a sign that
Castelldefels is gearing up for the influx of visitors on which the town
depends.
I do not think that there is convincing
evidence that the warmer weather will kill off the virus, so I really fear
about what is going to happen in the future and the way that things are going
and the general attitude of people a second spike in numbers of people infected
buy the virus is almost unavoidable.
The
free performance of A Doll’s House in
the Lyric Hammersmith was very much an archive performance and lacked the
polish of the NT Thursday performances, but the artistic director made the type
of filmed performance clear in her introduction. It is still very much worth watching and, at
the time of writing, you have three and a half hours left to watch it for
free. You should!
Tomorrow A Streetcar Named Desire.
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