War of the Weirlds
Oct. 28th, 2021 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI'm not sure what to make of the theatrical presentation I just saw at Stanford's Bing Concert Hall. Based on Orson Welles' famous 1938 War of the Worlds radio dramatization, it has that for a title and was concocted by something called the Rhum and Clay Theatre Company and premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe two years ago, and that's all I know, because the program is only accessible by QR code and isn't even on the presenter's website.
Four actors, all playing many parts - including all four of them coming out with pipes in mouth to play Welles in turns - combining chunks of the dramatization (the original script, I presume but don't know) with a story (fictional, I presume but don't know) about a reporter visiting present-day Grover's Mills, where the story was set, to research a podcast about whether the stories of wide-spread panic on the day were true or not, and gets involved in the family drama of a woman whose grandparents supposedly fled ... well, it's complicated, and the lies and truths and dramatizations and fictionalizations just pile up and start to involve DT and Qanon, but after a slow start the play does manage to maintain interest.
But two hours of that were enough, so I skipped out on the offer of a post-show panel discussion on media and disinformation, the more so as I've already gotten a surfeit of that from the book I've been reading at meals, The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984 by Dorian Lynskey (Doubleday, 2019). A combination of a biography of Orwell focused on the concerns he expressed in the book, a history of relevant earlier utopian and dystopian literature, an account of the novel's reception from submission up to the present-day, and a consideration of later works inspired by it or on the same theme (highlighting 3 media presentations: Brazil, V for Vendetta, and The Handmaid's Tale), it told me a couple things I hadn't known about Orwell.
1. From the beginning of his work on the novel, he referred to it in letters as his novel about the future, which should put an end to the frequent claim that he originally intended to call it 1948, which I've always doubted anyway.
2. When Orwell was sent as a correspondent to liberated Paris in 1944, one of the things he did there was dine with P.G. Wodehouse. George Orwell meets P.G. Wodehouse. "I inspected my imagination. Jeeves was right. It boggled."
Four actors, all playing many parts - including all four of them coming out with pipes in mouth to play Welles in turns - combining chunks of the dramatization (the original script, I presume but don't know) with a story (fictional, I presume but don't know) about a reporter visiting present-day Grover's Mills, where the story was set, to research a podcast about whether the stories of wide-spread panic on the day were true or not, and gets involved in the family drama of a woman whose grandparents supposedly fled ... well, it's complicated, and the lies and truths and dramatizations and fictionalizations just pile up and start to involve DT and Qanon, but after a slow start the play does manage to maintain interest.
But two hours of that were enough, so I skipped out on the offer of a post-show panel discussion on media and disinformation, the more so as I've already gotten a surfeit of that from the book I've been reading at meals, The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984 by Dorian Lynskey (Doubleday, 2019). A combination of a biography of Orwell focused on the concerns he expressed in the book, a history of relevant earlier utopian and dystopian literature, an account of the novel's reception from submission up to the present-day, and a consideration of later works inspired by it or on the same theme (highlighting 3 media presentations: Brazil, V for Vendetta, and The Handmaid's Tale), it told me a couple things I hadn't known about Orwell.
1. From the beginning of his work on the novel, he referred to it in letters as his novel about the future, which should put an end to the frequent claim that he originally intended to call it 1948, which I've always doubted anyway.
2. When Orwell was sent as a correspondent to liberated Paris in 1944, one of the things he did there was dine with P.G. Wodehouse. George Orwell meets P.G. Wodehouse. "I inspected my imagination. Jeeves was right. It boggled."
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Date: 2021-10-29 08:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-29 09:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-29 10:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-29 11:56 am (UTC)Orwell, who was remarkably sane and balanced in his political commentary, of course never fell for any of that. I expect that his intent to defend Wodehouse is why he sought the man out: my comment was just to note the incongruity of two such utterly different writers meeting.
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Date: 2021-10-29 12:46 pm (UTC)I found it curious that Orwell was not flagged up in Sybil Oldfield's massive study of The Black Book as having been on those lists (when so many of the sandal-wearing pacifists he excoriated were).