Voltaire's satire nicks ox of paralyzed, fading America
If I had to point to one single historical episode to explain the entire human condition, I would highlight the little-known fact that a number of survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima Aug. 6, 1945, fled to Nagasaki in time for the second bomb dropped three days later.
This out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire quality, so horrible that it becomes comic -- at least when happening long ago to people far away whom you don't know -- flashed as I sat in the Goodman Theatre Monday for opening night of "Candide."
I loved it.
Then again, I'm an odd mix of deep cynicism and childlike innocence. I enjoyed the way the play's characters were casually butchered, its cities destroyed, sailors drowned, maidens defiled, all with director Mary Zimmerman's full palette of cute theatrical devices -- ships on sticks, stoic red toy sheep, ribbons as blood -- sugar-coating the three hours of musical mayhem. How many plays are there where the line "Throw the Jew into a ditch" draws a hearty laugh from the audience?
For those unfamiliar with the story, Candide is a pleasant young simpleton who gets evicted from the idyllic palace where he was raised. He's forced to wander our world of endless outrage, misery and atrocity, searching for his lost love, Miss Cunegonde (played with show-stealing zest by Lauren Molina).
No experience, no matter how awful, blunts Candide's optimism -- I hate to say it, but he is very Barack Obama-ish in his tendency to place his trust in obvious enemies and his reluctance to let a steady rain of betrayals dampen his worldview.
'A chain of astonishing calamities!'
The music, alas, is not memorable. Bernstein wrote it, but "West Side Story" this ain't. Though when you have lyrics like "What a day for an auto de fe!" who cares about melody? Several of my associates, more experienced theatergoers than myself, complained that Zimmerman's bag of stage tricks has grown stale, so maybe enjoyment reveals a Candide-like naivete on my part. But how could you not love a musical with a number celebrating the transmission of venereal disease, sung by a character with a silver nose? ("Untreated syphilis destroys the cartilage in your nose," I explained to my 14-year-old, eager to show off knowledge that I never thought I'd have the chance to use. "People really did wear those noses.")
That either intrigues or repels you. Now that every new musical seems designed to help 12-year-olds feel good about themselves, it's bracing to be reminded that theater used to be something adults did to make our scary world seem less so.
A few who fled Hiroshima to Nagasaki survived both, by the way, living to face life's fresh horrors. Which is the message of the play. You survive; well, some do.
Deadlocked and Drowning
When Chinese historians someday try to figure out how a great nation such as the United States slid from world preeminence into whatever second-rate position of shamed servility awaits us, assuming we're not there already, dwelling in the ruins of our former glory, they will no doubt focus on our two main political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans.
Of course that would seem suspect to Chinese Communists, with their monolithic single party. Once, I'd have argued they are missing the benefits of our system, the dynamism of two rival schools of thought battling over the helm of power. Should the big labor, bind-up-society's-woes-with-money Democrats get too close to their all-encompassing nanny state, there were always the Republicans to yank them back. And should the big business, funny-you-don't-look-like-an-American Republicans go too far dismantling the government so they won't have to pay for it, the Democrats were there to object.
And there was still a middle ground -- key policies both sides agreed upon. There were pauses, it seemed, when the squabbling stopped and things got done.
No more. Now the partisan eye-gouging and ear-biting never stop, the middle ground has narrowed to a center line, and our pressing problems go unaddressed. The two parties are locked in a mutually destructive embrace, drowning together as the nation plunges over the falls.
When the history books are written in Mandarin, it won't matter whether the Republicans or the Democrats were right. What will matter is that our country was in the soup and, unable to decide what stroke to use, we neglected to swim at all.
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