The Turn of the Screw (Theatre in the Black 2019)

The Turn of the Screw was one of the first tales by Henry James I read. Unlike Daisy Miller (which I found to be subpar, and which turned my wife off of Henry James completely), James’ atmospheric and influential ghost story caught my imagination. Later writers, such as Shirley Jackson, would cite The Turn of the Screw as a significant influence in their own writing. In particular, the ambiguity as to whether the apparitions are real, or if they are all in the head of the protagonist, has inspired practically a whole genre. 

You can read my thoughts on The Turn of the Screw (and other novellas and short stories) here.  

Bakersfield is blessed with a vibrant local arts scene. In the last few years in particular, there have been a number of outstanding theater productions by several different groups. The newest group is Theatre in the Black, which focuses on darker works, typically with very small casts, and unusual venues. 

This particular version of The Turn of the Screw was Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation for a cast of two. The unnamed protagonist, a young governess, was performed by Caroline Fox. All of the other roles were handled by Bryan Maddern. These included the narrator (brother of the governess), the aristocratic uncle who hires her, the housekeeper, and the young boy. 

The script itself is fairly stripped down, but Theatre in the Black took it a few steps further toward minimalism. The performance was at The Guild House, a historic home transformed into a restaurant and event location. (I have played a few weddings there back in the day.) It certainly looks the part of the old mansion, although it is more Edwardian than Victorian. The larger room, essentially a living room, was used as the location. Roughly 25 chairs set at tables held the audience, and a small area in front of an elegant fireplace served as the stage. The only lighting was the candles and dim lights at the tables and on the walls and so on. One could consider it just a bit brighter than candlelight. There were no special effects. Not even sound effects. There were no costume changes. Everything was done by voice and body language. The apparitions were manifested only in the way the actors reacted to them. 

The play adheres pretty faithfully to the story. Like the original, key details are doled out slowly and incompletely. There are a few minor differences. (The one that came to mind is that the daughter eventually speaks in the original, but not in the play - because she exists only in the mind - no actor portrays her.) James never truly finished the narrative, but instead left it at a tragic point. We never do find out what happened to the other characters, and things are never actually explained. Which is exactly what James intended. 

One difference that was particularly noticeable was in the interpretation of the governess’ actions as connected with her repressed sexuality. This is nothing new, of course. I think it was in the 1930s that this theory was first set forth. The thing of it is, James’ writing is, if anything, about as unsexual as possible. Thinking back on the books of his I have read, it is kind of notable, actually, how he can write so well about emotional entanglement, and yet seem so sexless. There is some evidence that James himself was asexual. He never appears to have had a romantic relationship, although he was quite social and had friends. So, when I read The Turn of the Screw, I didn’t really see it as sexual - although romantic was at least possible. On the other hand, there is an argument to be made in favor of the sexual connection. In Hatcher’s version, the ties to sexuality are obvious - and they work pretty well. 

This was a thoroughly enjoyable production. Both actors were outstanding and compelling. The timing was spot on throughout. The setting enhanced the experience, and everything felt intimate. 

 Caroline Fox and Bryan Maddern

TitB publicity photo

I should also mention the “opening act.” Immediately prior to the play, Rikk Cheshire, performing as Edgar Alan Poe, read “The Raven.” I am always in favor of hearing poetry performed aloud - there is too little of that in our all too prosaic world. Cheshire captured the cadence, and brought the poem to life. I particularly appreciated the fairly deadpan “Nevermore.” In my view, Poe intended that the single word contrast with the increasingly fevered and desperate agony of the grieving man. 

This was my first time seeing a Theatre in Black production, but I think I may have to see some more. The production was of excellent quality, with a strong focus on artistic values. 

One Came Home by Amy Timberlake

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

This book wasn’t a Newbery medalist, but it did win an honorable mention back in 2013. I have mentioned before that we are listening (in no particularly organized manner) to various Newbery books that look interesting. I can’t remember exactly why I added this one to the list, but it probably just sounded interesting. 

This book is a historical novel, set in Wisconsin in 1871. Actually, the whole book was inspired by the author reading a history of the Passenger Pigeon, a bird that once numbered in the billions in the North America, but was exterminated by the early 1900s by a combination of hunting and habitat destruction. It was one of the first ecological disasters to come to the attention of Americans, and was one of the forces behind the movement to protect places and species. 

 Audubon's illustration of the Passenger Pigeon. Audubon's book is referenced in One Came Home.

Anyway, Amy Timberlake read about the pigeons, and the idea for a novel started taking shape. The book centers around one of the last big pigeon migrations and nestings. Pigeons are worked into the narrative from beginning to end, as is the question of the ethics of killing.

The book, though, isn’t primarily a story about birds. It is a mystery and psychological coming of age story. It opens in kind of the middle of the story with the funeral of young Agatha Burkhardt. The story is told by Georgie Burkhardt, the younger sister. She is, to put it mildly, an unreliable narrator, and delightfully lacking in self-awareness.

Georgie is convinced that the body that was found isn’t her sister, and that Agatha is alive. The book in fact opens with that idea:

“So it comes to this, I remember thinking on Wednesday, June 7, 1871. The date sticks in my mind because it was the day of my sister’s first funeral, and I knew it wasn’t her last - which is why I left.”

We don’t find out the rest of the back story until near the end of the book though. Georgie tells of the past through a series of flashbacks, but the actions of other characters are hidden for longer. What is clear early on, however, is that there is a love triangle of sorts. Well, more like a love quadrilateral if you count Georgie, who isn’t eager to have her sister marry and move away.

Billy McCabe, the eldest son of the Sheriff, has proposed to Agatha, and she turned him down. Not too long after, the banker, the richest man in town, Mr. Benjamin Olmstead, comes courting Agatha. He has money, and a fantastic library, and Agatha seems smitten.

Then Georgie sees Agatha kiss Billy, and squeals to Mr. Olmstead, who throws Agatha over. Soon afterward, Agatha runs away from home with some pigeon hunters, and a few weeks later, and badly decayed and scavenged body wearing Agatha’s dress is discovered several dozen miles out of town.

Georgie is both sure that Agatha is alive and worried that if Agatha really is dead, that she is responsible for the death. But she isn’t the only one. Georgie runs away herself, having attempted to rent a horse. Instead, Billy McCabe lends her a mule and insists on accompanying her on her quest to find the truth. And Billy has his own secrets and his own guilt.

By the end of the book, the two will have survived a cougar, had a run-in with counterfeiters, discovered useful information, found out just how good of a shot Georgie is, and spent most of the time fighting.

Georgie isn’t the most pleasant character. She is actually fairly obnoxious, honestly, with a perpetual chip on her shoulder. But she does kind of have reasons. She has unresolved guilt, and grief she can’t really face. And she is all of thirteen and has faced with a lot of adversity and responsibility before she can really handle it.

Billy is a great character. He is by no means a perfect person, but he is pretty steady for nineteen. He also has a lot of patience for Georgie, even when she is frustrating. He also has a kind of laconic way of communicating which seems both realistic and suited to his place in the story.

I’ll stop with that as far as plot goes. There are a number of twists, and that is part of the fun. It is quite a suspenseful book - and definitely on the young adult side of the violence line, at least for modern books. My kids were okay with decayed bodies with faces eaten by wild animals, and screaming cougars, and broken ribs, and thumbs shot off. But your kids might vary.

This book started off kind of dark and weird in some ways. (When MY kids mention that it is dark, you know it really is.) But after the start, the mystery took hold, and the humor started showing through. By the end, we were really engrossed in the story, and really cared about the characters. I thought it was a strong book in a year in which we have listened to a lot of good ones. Anyone who says that children’s fiction is all junk this century, unlike the supposed glory days of the 1950s and 1960s probably needs to visit a library and ask for Newbery books. Sure, there is fluff, as there always has been. But the best of today’s fiction has strong, memorable characters, imaginative settings (who saw pigeons as the basis for a story?), and psychologically astute writing. 

I should also mention Tara Sands, whose voice in the audiobook edition is fantastic. She went beyond the printed words to bring the characters to life. Billy in particular was marvelous, sounding like the character should, and totally different from the others. I also appreciated the Wisconsin dialect and accent. This particular book is one of the best audiobooks I have heard this year, and Sands is the reason why.

If your kids can take the unpleasant stuff, give this a try. Otherwise, teens would likely find this one interesting.

I strongly recommend reading the author’s note at the end, which tells of the pigeon inspiration, gives some of the history, and explains what is fiction and what is fact in the book. She certainly did outstanding research, and writes about pigeons with a genuine affection.

Peter and the Shadow Thieves by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson

Source of book: Audiobook from the library.

This is the second in what has become a pretty long (and undoubtedly lucrative) series. I previously reviewed Peter and the Starcatchers here. I recommend reading the other review first, as I will not duplicate much.

As a basic matter, this series is a spinoff of prequels to Peter Pan, based largely on Barrie’s book, but also on the Disney movie, which is much better known. My eldest daughter loves these books, and she is the one who requested we listen to them. We have books one and three (from a library sale) but not this one. 

Peter and the Shadow Thieves continues the story from the first book, and reveals some of the mysteries. The “star stuff” that ended up on Mollusk Island (aka Neverland) has been sent back to England under the careful watch of senior starcatcher Leonard Aster, the father of Molly, who was a major character in the first book. It is to be held until the proper time for the “return,” where the stuff goes back to, I guess, where it came from.

However, things go awry. First Mate Slank returns to the island with a new captain (Nerezza) and a mysterious, non-human villain, Lord Ombra. (That this sounds like “Umbra” is not coincidental, although I wonder why the authors didn’t just go with the latter.) He is the “shadow thief” of the title, able to turn creatures into zombies and read their minds if he can just access their shadows. He is, naturally, after the star stuff himself.

After he learns that the star stuff went back to England, he leaves the island. Peter decides to hitch a ride (with Tinkerbell along to help) to warn the Asters, and attempt to prevent the capture of the star stuff before it can be returned.

That’s about as far as I will go with the plot, as this is a plot-driven series.

I had a few thoughts listening to this book in connection with how it compares to the first one. On the positive side, I felt that the action was less of the “set piece” nature than the first book. It read more like a, well, book, and less like an action movie. That’s an improvement. Particularly since it didn’t feel like the action scenes went on too long as it did in the first book. (I think the authors could have cut about half of the last big scene and the book would have been better.) Also good was the idea of Ombra. A nice horror/zombie trope, well executed. Also, Ombra makes a good villain for this sort of book. It isn’t intended to have particularly nuanced characters. There are good ones, and evil ones. And not a lot of gray. So Ombra works well, because he isn’t human, and can thus be unadulterated evil.

The setting of much of the book in England is also rather fun. Nothing against the island, but London is more familiar to me, shall we say, and it also has a better variety of characters.

Another thing I liked was that Tinkerbell becomes more of a major character, and one that does have some complexity. She is insanely jealous of other females, but usually does the right thing anyways. She is also resourceful and intelligent, and thus a strong female character.

On the other hand, though, Molly is a total disappointment in this book. It is hard to believe she is the same character. In the first one, she was a real match for Peter - even better than he, actually. She generally shows sound judgment, thinks clearly, and contributes to the good result at the end. Peter is the hero, of course, and must be because of the source material. But Molly was a good counterpart. In this book, however, Tink takes the role as competent female and Molly ends up making bad decision after bad decision. Despite Leonard’s claim at the end that she saved him, it is pretty clear she did her level best to mess everything up, leaving Peter to bail her out. It’s pretty clear why, too. In this book, she is too emotional and worried about her mother to actually use her brain. It would have been one thing if she had been written that way from the beginning, but she was such a good character in the first book that this was a real disappointment.

I will also note one odd thing about the plot. For much of the first half, there is a second parallel plot involving the Lost Boys back on the island. Then, in the second half, this plot just disappears, leaving things in suspense. While I am sure it will eventually be picked up in a later book, it was weird that it just disappeared, rather than being teased. (The Wikipedia article is inaccurate in this sense - at least about the audiobook. The book clearly ends before the actual return to the island.)

The audiobook was, like the first, narrated by Jim Dale, who does a fine job. These books are meant to be suspenseful, and that quality makes them a bit nerve wracking as driving books (although they ARE effective at keeping one awake and alert). Dale maintains the suspense while also dialing the tension back to a reasonable degree, the way an effective storyteller does. The words create the suspense, not the edge of the reader’s voice.

The 39 Steps as adapted by Patrick Barlow

Perhaps most people are familiar with this story because of the Alfred Hitchcock movie from 1935. A few, like my wife, read the original book by John Buchan (I haven’t, I’ll admit), which naturally contains additional scenes that didn’t make it into the story.

Hitchcock’s film is one of the best known from his earlier British period, and is a definite classic. (For what it’s worth, my favorite early Hitchcock is I Confess, which explores the conflict between conscience, confidentiality, and self preservation.)

This adaptation of the movie (which is already an adaptation of the book) dates from 2005. Barlow’s twist was to make a serious spy suspense movie into a comedy, and have all the parts played by only four actors. This means that the lead part is played by one, the three younger female parts are played by one, and the remaining two actors have to cover everyone else, man, woman, and child. In some productions, this can run to nearly 100 characters. As one might imagine, this requires lightning quick costume changes, and several scenes were the change of a hat alone changes the character.

The particular production that my wife and I went to see was a local one here in Bakersfield, at the Stars Theatre Restaurant, a local dinner theater which specializes primarily in musicals. The major draw for me was the fact that Kevin McDonald would be playing the lead part. I have mentioned his work at The Empty Space in You Can’t Take It With You as the uptight parent of the normal daughter’s love interest, and his outstanding turn as Malvolio in Twelfth Night.

Also in this production was Bethany Rowlee, playing Annabella, Pamela, and Margaret, and Bob Anderson and Bruce Saathoff playing everyone else. I hadn’t seen Saathoff in anything in quite some time, but I recall in my pre-kid days (late 1990s?) playing in the orchestra for a production of Hello Dolly in which he portrayed Cornelius. Good memories. 

Kevin McDonald, Bruce Saathoff, Bethany Rowlee, and Bob Anderson

Photo by Peter Beckman, Stars promotional photo. 

Anyway, all four members of the case were solid, and brought the requisite degree of physical comedy to a play that lacks enough witty dialogue to rely solely on that for laughs. This isn’t due to lack of skill on Barlow’s part, but is more because the original source contains more suspense and atmosphere than dialogue.

What Barlow does bring to the script is an abundance of clever references to other Hitchcock works, and careful and creative staging to bring out the humor of the multiple parts.

The story is something like O Henry in one of his darker moods might write: Richard Hannay, a nondescript Englishman with a pencil mustache (this is played for definite laughs) is at the theater, when a shot rings out. The beautiful and foreign woman next to him appears to be terrified, and talks him into taking her home for the night. She tells a tale of dangerous spies and a secret vital to national security. Hannay thinks she is crazy, and sleeps on the couch. Later in the night, she staggers in, morally stabbed, and warns him of “The 39 Steps” and a man missing part of a finger, and urges him to go to Scotland to save England.

The rest of the movie is spent with Hannay on the run from the police, who think he murdered the woman, while at the same time trying to foil the spies so he can clear his name. This was, of course, a fertile idea for suspense and thrills, as well as psychological drama. After all, the veneer of civilization is thin, as Hannay discovers when he must do things he would never have dreamed in order to stay alive. Likewise, few people are who they seem at first glance, from the fake “policemen” that work for the 39 Steps to the country bumpkin married to a ravishingly beautiful woman half his age. Hannay himself is unbelievable - except that he is telling the truth. So he has to tell lies because those are more plausible than what he has actually experienced and done.

The line, though, between thrill and suspense on the one hand, and comedy on the other, is fine indeed - the reason that spoof movies remain endlessly popular. Hannay’s journey is nothing if not ludicrous, and the sinister characters practically parody themselves. The distance of years, too, makes a difference. In 1935, Nazi Germany was on the rise, but the full extent of the threat and looming disaster for the world was not yet realized. But it was entirely plausible that German agents would seek to steal British technology. Here, from the safety of 2016, when “German” and “technology scandal” brings to mind not ruthless spies, but cheating auto emissions programmers, there is a whiff of the ridiculous to what was once deadly serious. And so the comedy fits.

In addition to the character changes, which were well executed and quite amusing, I must mention one joke that is perhaps specific to this production. Richard Hannay is described in the police bulletins as being dashingly handsome, about six feet tall, with dark hair and piercing blue eyes, and, let us not forget, “a very attractive pencil mustache.” But Hannay isn’t these things at all. Kevin McDonald does indeed sport the mustache, but he has lighter brown hair, is, well, not quite leading man material, and most importantly, is the shortest member of the cast by an obvious margin. As a “fun sized” guy myself, I sympathize. But it is quite hilarious to hear those attributes accompanied by McDonald hamming it up on the suave and dashing as he is described. Good fun.

I’ve said before that Bakersfield has a vibrant local theater scene for years, and this production was a good example. We are located close to Los Angeles and the Bay Area, and Utah is a mere day’s drive away. But don’t forget the local productions, intimate venues, and reasonable prices. There’s good stuff here too: you just have to get out and see it.

Introduction to Wilkie Collins - Book Club 2013

For those new to my blog, I am participating for the second year in an online book club, hosted by my friend Carrie, who has a popular book blog, Reading to Know. I am no longer the token male member, as she has convinced her husband to participate this year. My selection is No Name by Wilkie Collins.  If you want to join in or see what we are reading, the link to that post is here:

Wilkie Collins (named William Wilkie after his father) was one of the most influential authors of the Victorian era, yet his name is often just a side note. He is known for The Woman in White and maybe The Moonstone, but little else. During his lifetime, his best known novels were classified as “sensation novels.” We now recognized them as early examples of detective and suspense fiction. Although Edgar Allan Poe wrote the first true detective story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” which set the conventions of the genre that would eventually be associated primarily with Sherlock Holmes, it was Collins who expanded the form into the full length mystery. The Woman in White is his first effort, containing most of the usual elements; but it was The Moonstone that is the fully developed prototype of the genre. T. S. Eliot and Dorothy Sayers (herself a master of the mystery) both gave high praise to The Moonstone.

No Name belongs to the other side of Collins’ writing: suspense fiction. There is no mystery to be solved - unless you count the mystery of what will happen next. The book begins a bit slowly, and appears to be a novel of domestic manners, perhaps in the vein of Jane Austen, or Anthony Trollope (one of my favorite authors); but it eventually goes completely off the tracks as tragedy strikes. The two daughters are orphaned, left without an inheritance or means of support and must fend for themselves. The elder, Nora, is quiet and staid - completely the conventional Victorian female. She finds work as a governess. Magdalen, on the other hand, is a force of nature. It is her adventures that are chronicled in this book. Actually, “chronicled” is a completely insufficient description of what happens. Magdalen drags the author and the reader along on her outrageous escapades at a breathtaking pace. When I first read this book in my late teens, I found myself gasping at the crazy things she does, and her supreme force of will. Whether she is a heroine or an antihero is an open question, but she is unforgettable.

Collins and Charles Dickens were close friends throughout a good part of their lifetimes. They were each influenced by the other, collaborated on several projects, and probably influenced each other’s writing. Certainly they both shared a concern for social issues, and brought servants from their roles as background figures to the forefront as human, sympathetic characters. Although Dickens was more successful in his social criticism, Collins has some good points to make in this book. The ending (which I will not disclose) would have been affirming to many Victorians, but it is about as convincing as the living statue in A Winter’s Tale. I believe Collins, like Shakespeare before him, backed away from the more realistic tragic ending, while understanding that those of his readers that would look beneath the surface would find the underlying injustice readily apparent.

You don’t have to be an official member of the book club to read along. We post our reviews the last week of April. Feel free to link your thoughts on my page in the comments.