One Movie, Three Plays and a Good Meal (5 cents)

One of the weirdest movies I have seen is, in English, "One Hand Can't Clap", a Czech film shown at the Avalon. What is it about? Is it about the suave vegetarian Prague restaurater who, in the cellar of his restaurant has another, even fancier restaurant, where he serves exotic protected species? Or his wife, who is against anything having to do with eating or wearing animals, who insists that their house have neither TV nor computer, who homeschools their kids and obviously knows nothing about her husbands underground proclivities. Or the two children, one a pre-teen boy who dresses like a girl and the other a pre-teen girl, who attempts to murder her brother? Or the host of the TV show, which is a voyeur's version of Candid Camera, or his daughter who has been embarrassed on the show irretrievably. Or the fellow who goes to jail for transporting, without knowing it, endangered species for the restaurant, who gets out of prison and who, in spite of having a good heart, is befriended by a more mischievous ne'er-do-well, and who meets the daughter of the TV host, and who seeks to find out why these birds were coming into the country. Oh, yes, it is a comedy.

Much less weird are "Either/Or" and "Shylock" at Theater J. "Either/Or is of course Tom Keneally's story of Kurt Gerstein, the German Nazi who decides that his party is not always in the right, but who wants to be in the thick of things to act as a witness, but for whom the killing of Jews and others is too much. He becomes an unsuccessful whistle blower, but his papers are presented to the victorious English, although Gerstein is either murdered or commits suicide in prison before any trial can be held. Well acted, well written. But is it the best material for a play? Somehow, it would make a better movie, I think.

As to Arnold Wesker's "Shylock", a reworking of the story found in "Merchant of Venice", starring Theodore Bikel, in a modified stage reading formulation, it starts out very well, with a sympathetic Shylock, good friend to Antonio, and for whom the bond of a pound of flesh is meant to be a joke. But when Antonio's ships are lost at sea, even though all government parties are willing to forget the entire deal, Antonio and Shylock agree that the precedent would be potentially dangerous to the fragile Jewish community and insist on going through with the bargain. Of course, it does not happen because of the non-lawyer discovering the legal problems with the contract. The play deteriorates, I thought, in the second act. I don't think Wesker knew how to end it. I think he stuck too close the story line, something he did not need to do.


Before Shylock, we ate at Merkado. Very nice supper. Fish all around.

We also went to Theater J for the Friday afternoon reading of "The Milliner" by Susan Glass. An English playwright it is loosely (very loosely) the story of her grandfather, for whom English exile during the war did not end his love of Berlin, to which he returned. I think that he found out that while he remained a Berliner and always will, he was clearly no longer the German he thought he was.