Circumference: Eratosthenes and the Ancient Quest to Measure the Globe

Circumference, by Nicholas Nicastro, tells a story about Eratosthenes and the times in which he lived.  While it purports to be about his remarkable measurement of the circumference of the Earth, it is mostly about other things and at times it  feels like the author has gotten seriously sidetracked.  Surprisingly, the author shies away from math, which is ridiculous, given that Eratosthenes’s method for estimating the Earth’s circumference only depends on elementary geometry.  The method is summed up, incompletely, in one paragraph and a diagram in a sidebar.  The assumption that the Sun’s rays arrive at the Earth as parallel lines is not mentioned.

There are serious problems with evaluating Eratosthenes’s measurement.  His unit of measurement was the stade, whose length we do not know.  We also do not know how accurate was the measurement of the distance between Alexandria and Syene, the basis of his calculation.

None of Eratosthenes original writings survive and what other writers have said about him is sparse.  This does not make him a very promising topic for a book, which perhaps explains the author’s frequent digressions.

The Uncommon Reader

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett is an often funny story about what it means to be a reader. It’s a tale of how the Queen of England stumbles upon a traveling library, takes out a book in a mistaken effort to be polite, and gets hooked on reading. She is guided in her early choices by a gay boy who works in her kitchen and who just happened to be at the library. He knows very little about literature and he prefers to read gay books; so those are the books he recommends to her. She elevates him from the kitchen to her personal assistant for running errands to the library and as someone she can freely talk to about books. Eventually she begins to make her own choices, her advisors arrange to get rid of her assistant, and she finds herself alone in her reading. Her advisors, who think they have regained control over the Queen, discover that she has developed a mind of her own. It’s a very short book, only 120 small pages, and quite delightful.

The Trouble Boy

The Trouble Boy by Tom Dolby was tedious to read.  The main character, and narrator (Toby), is just dumb and boring.  The story is about a guy who is supposedly looking for a permanent partner, while picking up one guy after another, indiscriminately, at gay clubs.  He has no taste about who he brings home.  There is no build up in this book, no development.  Toby is constantly fretting over finding a boyfriend, but he continues to act stupid right up to the end of the book.  A crisis of sorts appears near the end of the book when he’s in a car with some coworkers.  The movie star who is driving (high on drugs) decides (for no apparent reason) to intentionally back the car up into a crowd of people.  She kills one and maims many more.  The star’s publicist pulls everyone aside and gets them to agree to a story that it was an accident.  Toby goes along with this and lies to the police, because he thinks his job, which itself is getting him nowhere, is at stake.  Eventually he turns around and confesses the truth, but not for some time.  The whole incident makes no sense.  It makes no sense that it happened and it makes no sense that he would lie about it and risk a criminal charge.  The person he is protecting is no friend of his, nor are the other people involved.  What it reveals is that he’s lacking in moral sensibility, even a small amount of courage, and common sense.  Even at the end of the book, when he has a boyfriend, it’s clear that it’s not going to last.  He doesn’t change, he doesn’t learn anything about himself, and he’s still thinking in counterproductive ways.  Dolby has a new book out called The Sixth Form.  I won’t be reading it.

Opera and the Morbidity of Music

Opera and the Morbidity of Music by Joseph Kerman is a collection of previously published essays from The New York Review of Books on opera and classical music.  The essays are well written, as one would expect from a Professor Emeritus of Music at UC, Berkeley, and also interesting, especially if one has a particular interest in classical music, or even just in a particular composer.  Much of the book is organized by composer:  three essays on Bach, four essays on Mozart, four essays on Beethoven, two on Verdi, three on Wagner, and the rest single essays on a composer, performer, conductor, or a general theme, such as the sonata form.  People who often read the Review know that the essays there tend to be expansive and not just about the book or books under review.  These are no exception.  One warning:  If you don’t know much about classical music or opera, you are likely to find parts of the essays that you won’t fully understand, since they are written for musically educated listeners.

Before I Lose My Style

Before I Lose My Style, the first novel by Mike Kaspar, is hard to get into, because the characters aren’t very interesting and there’s not much of a plot. Some of the characters are eccentric and sometimes slightly amusing, but there is very little depth to them and it’s often unclear what they contribute to the story, apart from amusing eccentricities.

The story is told in the first person by Damon, who has recently been dumped by his boyfriend. He’s picking up guys for one-night stands when the book begins. They are so inconsequential that we usually just hear that he had a date. He doesn’t seem to be especially distraught by his situation. He’s not moping or getting all depressed. He is responsibly holding down a job. His friends sometimes try to set him up with a date, but he doesn’t really seem to need the help. By the end of the book he’s in a relationship again, with a friend who has suddenly, out of the blue, realized that he’s in love with Damon. Yet this all happens without any crisis in Damon’s life. He’s intelligent, well educated, travels, hangs out with his friends, etc., but none of this is interesting enough to write a novel about, because there is no compelling plot.

There are, of course, the other characters. For example, Travis is a close friend of Damon’s who seems to be psychologically incapable of having sex. You might think that that would be interesting. The problem with it is that it’s not explored. It’s simply a fact. Travis is in love with Nathan, purely platonically, and he encourages Nathan and Damon to hook up so that Nathan’s and Damon’s sexual needs will be satisfied. All three of them are okay with this arrangement, but it’s not part of any further development of Travis’s character. He’s just a weirdo who doesn’t want to have sex, for no apparent reason.

All of the characters are like this, quirky in some way, occasionally amusing (perhaps), never very funny, and mostly just part of the landscape of Damon’s life. What their influence on him might be is hard to say. They are more like slightly interesting paintings on the wall, but they are not causal forces of any significance.

The Scene

I saw a wonderful reading, produced by Amphibian Stage Productions, of Theresa Rebeck’s comedy The Scene at the Modern Art Museum.  From the beginning of the play the audience was laughing, and they kept laughing for most of the play.  That was in part due to the nice performance by Lydia Mackay as Clea, a young woman from Ohio who has newly entered the social scene in New York City.  She meets a couple of old friends, Charlie and Lewis (played by Richard Ercole and Evan Mueller, respectively), at a party and as soon as she starts talking they (and the audience) conclude that she’s ditzy.  Still, she’s good looking and Lewis is interested in dating her, which is the innocent cause of all future troubles.

She tells them about an interview she had with a magazine and complains in fairly rude terms about the woman who interviewed her.  Charlie and Lewis quickly realize she’s talking about Stella, Charlie’s wife (played by Elizabeth Mason).  She talks about how surreal the air and river look from the high-rise where they are and quickly gets into a argument with Charlie over the use of the term “surreal”.   Clea can hardly have a conversation that she doesn’t quickly turn into a defensive argument, primarily because she is so sensitive to the slightest negative vibes from others, real or imagined.  Still, she’s never really embarrassed and always thinks the problem is the attitudes of others, and she doesn’t hesitate to say so.

As empty-headed as Clea seemingly is, what makes the play interesting is how well she gets what she wants.  Men apparently cannot resist her, which makes one wonder who is the most clueless.  By the end of the play she has toyed with and hurt Lewis, had an affair with out-of-work actor Charlie, destroying his 14 year marriage and leaving him homeless, disrupted Stella’s plans to adopt a baby, and landed a job with a TV director who used to be a friend of Charlie’s.

The actors did a really good job with this reading.  Although they had scripts in hand, they knew many of their lines.  The play moved right along, every scene is an essential part of the story, and it’s never boring. If you ever get a chance to see this play, I highly recommend it.

If you’re interested in knowing more details about the play, you can read this review of a NYC production back in January, 2007: “All About Ego, Showbiz, and a Little Black Dress.”

Dark Play or Stories for Boys

Carlos Murillo’s play, Dark Play or Stories for Boys, is currently being produced by Amphibian Stage Productions in the Sanders Theatre of the Fort Worth Community Arts Center.  It is an emotionally intense play about a teenager (Nick) who creates a fantasy persona in an internet chat room, establishes a relationship between this fantasy character and another teen online, and then tries to take his fantasy into real (i.e., non-internet) life and succeeds far too well.  He begins to identify with his fantasy character to such an extent that he imagines the other teen’s love for the fantasy character to be love for himself.  The catch is that both teens are male, while the fantasy character Nick has created is female.  Don’t jump to the conclusion that Nick is gay.  The play opens as Nick and his new girlfriend have just finished having sex.  The girlfriend asks him about some unusual marks on his stomach and this launches the story into one of many flashbacks.

This play has the most elaborate set of any I’ve seen in an Amphibian production, which is not saying all that much.  Five circular, raised platforms are spread across the stage and are connected by cables that emit a soft blue light.  The platforms represent nodes on the internet, but there are no computers on-stage.  The characters stand on these nodes when they are communicating in the chat room.  The characters do not look at each other when talking in the chat room, because they cannot physically see the people they are chatting with in the chat room.  The largest of the circular platforms is also the site of the real life interaction between Nick and his girlfriend.  At the back of the stage is a large translucent wall that is backlit at appropriate times with zeros and ones (the basic language of computers).

The acting is pretty good.  Nick has the majority of lines in the play, because he’s telling the story, which is largely his creation.  He’s played by Jason Cruz.  When the play begins, Nick is a college student and Jason looks the part.  He’s also credible in his role as a psychologically messed up 14 year old (in the flashbacks).  The other characters include Adam (the other kid in the chat room, Joshua Heard), Rachel (Nick’s fantasy girl, Reyna de Courcy), and an assortment of other chat room participants played by two other actors (Richard Ercole and Elizabeth Mason).

It’s a one act play that ran about an hour and forty minutes.  The puzzle of what those marks are on Nick’s stomach is the recurring theme of the play and as the story is told you get closer and closer to the truth, which you may think you know at the beginning, but you don’t, not even if you have looked at the Director’s Notes in the program.  The intensity builds right to the end.  I thought the play returned to the question of those marks perhaps a bit too often, but it’s the mechanism the author uses to keep the audience focussed on the primary plot question.

There are many issues dealt with in this play.  One, of course, is whether the internet is dangerous for kids.  There are no adult predators in this play, but there is a very naive drama teacher.  The kids here do the damage to themselves.  They are too young and too unsupervised.  Another question is whether it is a good idea that people can be anonymous on the internet.  There are benefits to that sometimes.  Two that come to mind:  (1) people who wish to access legal porn may have legitimate reasons to be anonymous and (2) people who may be persecuted for being gay, HIV+, etc. can safely get access to information, advice, support, etc. by being able to use the internet anonymously.  In this play, though, anonymity makes it possible for one person to take psychological advantage of and to manipulate another.  Only hinted at in the play is the question of the fluidity of sexual orientation.  You will leave this play not knowing whether Nick is gay, straight, or bisexual, even though sex plays a prominent role in what happens.

The play is very disturbing.  I was thinking at the end, “It’s hard to believe anyone would do what Nick does, even a messed up 14 year old.”  Yet, I do believe that a messed up kid could do what Nick does.  It’s a good play.  I was a little skeptical before the play began.  I wondered if it was going to be a bash the internet play, raising all kinds of exaggerated fears about the safety of kids.  Well, it certainly doesn’t present kids in too good a light, but I don’t think it’s a bash the internet play.  Dark Play is playing through Oct. 5 in Fort Worth.

Gutenberg! The Musical!

Amphibian Stage Productions is currently doing Gutenberg! The Musical! in the Sanders Theatre (a black box theater) in the Community Arts Center in Fort Worth.

The set consists of a piano at stage left, a table with various props at stage right, a two-level rack holding lots of lined-up baseball caps with the characters’ names on them at up stage center, and a stool that is moved around as needed.  Each of the two actors plays many characters, indicated by which baseball cap(s) they were wearing at the time.  There is a lot of switching of caps throughout the musical, sometimes very rapidly.  The simple lighting works pretty well.  Aside from general lighting, they have fixed spots on several places on the stage where the actors stand when they needed to be esp. highlighted.

The story is about two guys who have written a musical.  They are giving a “reading” of it to an audience of potential producers and we happen to be in that audience.  This explains the lack of a full cast (represented by the caps) and the minimal set.  It also explains why the actors occasionally break out of their roles in the musical and talk to the audience, esp. to the supposed producers in the audience, about their lives, their aims for their musical, etc.  This is an elaborate sales pitch.  Since there are non-theatre people present in their audience, they occasionally explain what they are doing, what the roles of the songs are, how they fit into the tradition of musicals, the meanings of technical terms used by theatre people, etc.  This is all rather humorous.

The musical they are “reading” is about Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press.  They explain that in writing the musical they used Google to do their research and found that little was known about the invention of the printing press; so they describe their musical as a “historical fiction,”  i.e., they just made it up.  The goal of their Gutenberg is to foster literacy by means of making books—the Bible will be the first one—available to the masses.  His antagonist is a monk who is not interested in the masses being able to read the Bible for themselves.  The monk persuades a female assistant of Gutenberg to destroy the first printing press.  Subsequently the town turns against Gutenberg and everything turns out badly for him.  The story is humorously absurd.

The actors were decent and not bad singers, but not good enough to suit me.  Of course, they were playing the writers of the musical, so one might not expect them to be wonderful singers.  Nevertheless, better singing would have made a better show.  I enjoyed it, though.  It was funny, although some of the jokes were strained.  There was some humor based on one of the writers supposedly being gay.  I didn’t think that worked very well.  In part it was because of the difficulty of keeping in mind that when the actors broke out of being characters in the Gutenberg play and talked to the audience, they were still just characters in our play.  I had the feeling that our audience didn’t always get that.  I noticed that one of the actors wore his wedding ring in Act 1 and was not wearing it in Act 2, when he revealed he was gay.  Oops!  

As is my custom in such settings, I sat on the front row, in the center, so I would have no audience distractions, other than audible ones.  When down stage, the actors were right in front of me.  I had a great view of everything.

Gutenberg! The Musical! was written by Scott Brown, Anthony King, and T. O. Sterret and was originally produced at the Jermyn Street Theatre, London, January 2006.  It was produced Off-Broadway in 2007.

Full Gallop

Amphibian Stage Productions‘ reading (not a full production) of Mark Hampton and Mary Louise Wilson’s play Full Gallop was done at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth today.  The play is about Diana Vreeland, shortly after she was fired as fashion editor of Vogue, and it’s based on her memoirs.  It portrays a woman in her 70s who was used to a life of high society luxury who suddenly finds herself without material resources.  Her family and friends are trying to help by getting her a job in a museum, which she views as a way of putting her aside in a safe place out of the limelight that she was used to and loved.  The play takes place in just a few hours, during which she is planning a dinner party and talking with friends and family on the phone.  She has an assistant with her, but this is basically a one person play.  Anne-Lynn Kettles played the part of Diana and Judy Norman read stage directions and played the assistant, Yvonne.  Kettles knew the role very well and was able to do most of it without the script.  The play is quite funny and I very much enjoyed the reading; so did the rest of the audience.

Steep (2007)

Mark Obenhaus’s documentary film Steep (2007) is about the sport of extreme skiing and about the men and women who routinely ski the most dangerous slopes in the world, places that people didn’t imagine could be skied at all, until these guys did it.  They ski slopes of 50 degrees and runs that end with a plunge off the side of a mountain.  Often they get dropped onto the top of a mountain from a helicopter.  The documentary begins with the stories of the earliest pioneers and traces the sport to the current best extreme skiers in the world.  The footage is amazing.  Everyone shown in the film acknowledges that they risk their lives every time they go out and one of the guys you will grow to like the best doesn’t live to see the end of the film.  See it on a big screen if you can.