@George,
My goodness, there's our Latin love back. Sorry I missed your song, Boston. What a beautiful tribute to your daughter. I can picture in my mind your reading to her when she was little. How dear. I used to do the same with my daughter. Bud wasn't much for reading, so I read to him as well.
For some reason, my Dave was afraid of lions, so I always tried to sing this one to him to ease him before he went to sleep.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwy5uqemp6c
@Raggedyaggie,
Wow! This is one of those "gone astray" days. Love that puppy in a warm sweater picture, puppy. That song by Bobby was supposed to be I'm a Drifter. Guess we're all thinking of snow drifts today.
Ah, if you have a paper boy on a bicycle, no wonder you're waiting, Raggedy. I guess those delivery boys are a thing of the past.
Funny song about the morning paper, y'all. Did I mention terrible?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nugVA3RYQII&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXy44Ra8H7c
Good day, folks. Just returned from work. About one Sunday per month we have to meet with the owner. I gots Elvis and Jerry Lee - Just a Little Talk With Jesus.
Be back shortly. Need coffee.
Houston's Alley Theater is presenting Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession
By EVERETT EVANS
Mrs. Warren’s Profession is prostitution.
There. I’ve said it.
Now you understand why this George Bernard Shaw classic, written in 1894, was banned from public performance until well into the 1920s and still may raise a few eyebrows when the Alley Theatre opens its production Wednesday.
Though the play contains not a single questionable word or deed, the fact of prostitution is at the heart of its argument and its central mother-daughter relationship.
Proper Victorian-era daughter Vivie is startled to learn that her comfortable life and respectable place in society have been attained through her mother’s career running a string of European brothels.
Mrs. Warren, you see, after watching her sister die of lead poisoning doing factory work, decided to do better for herself than the limited “respectable” opportunities available to women in that time. Beginning as a practitioner, she has used her shrewd business sense to rise to managerial heights.
Having maintained a distant relationship with her daughter, Mrs. Warren decides it is time for Vivie to learn the truth, and for them to have a closer relationship. The revelation complicates Vivie’s life as she faces decisions about her own career and marital prospects.
Ever the gadfly and provocateur, Shaw used the premise to challenge societal convention and hypocrisy. An outspoken socialist and feminist (not to mention a vegetarian " talk about being ahead of his time), he made the play an implicit critique of capitalism, viewing it as complicit in enabling the “profession” to flourish.
Shaw wrote the play (as stated in its Preface) “to draw attention to the truth that prostitution is caused, not by female depravity and male licentiousness, but simply by underpaying, undervaluing and overworking women so shamefully that the poorest of them are forced to resort to prostitution to keep body and soul together.”
After a 1902 rendition at a private club in London (the only way it could be seen there), the play made its public premiere in a 1905 New York staging. The police closed it down, arresting the cast. The New York American’s coverage took its cue from a clergyman’s assessment: “From beginning to end, it is a veritable abyss of the vile and the infamous.” (If the Alley wants a stampede at the box office, maybe they should put that in advertisements.)
Mrs. Warren is one of Shaw’s three earliest plays, published in 1898 as Plays Unpleasant. He wrote them “to force the spectator to face unpleasant facts” " the other “social horrors” treated being slumlords (in Widowers’ Houses) and infidelity (in The Philanderer.)
He simultaneously published four Plays Pleasant, depicting “romantic follies.” He expected these to be more popular and they were " including his first major hits, Arms and the Man and Candida.
If never ranked alongside such masterworks as Major Barbara, Pygmalion, St. Joan and Heartbreak House, Mrs. Warren eventually came to be regarded as a second-tier Shaw classic. Like the playwright, it’s had a somewhat mixed reputation in recent years. Some consider it “a masterpiece of realism” while others find its lead characters more “living arguments” than people.
Anders Cato, a New York-based freelance director who has worked from San Francisco’s Magic Theatre to London’s Royal Court, makes his Alley debut directing Mrs. Warren.
“It’s with this play that Shaw came into his own as a playwright,” Cato says. “He was creating a new relationship between audience and play, a way to make theater a tool for social change. Influenced by the theatrical realism of Ibsen, he was determined to present life as it is. But where Ibsen was working through drama and tragedy, Shaw at some level is always a comedic writer.
“Mrs. Warren still feels fresh, still holds the stage and offers superb material for actors to go far into their characters.”
Far from viewing the central mother-daughter standoff as a didactic argument, Cato feels Shaw made the two leads “flesh-and-blood characters for whom these issues are life and death.”
Cato’s Shaw productions include Candida, Heartbreak House and an earlier Mrs. Warren, all at the Berkshire Theatre Festival.
He stresses Shaw’s use of the unexpected, whether bursts of comedy or melodrama, or turning a key argument back on itself. After reading some of Shaw’s lengthy, self-explanatory and self-congratulatory Prefaces, one suspects the playwright would take all sides of a debate just to hear himself make the argument.
“You have to realize,” Cato says, “that besides being deeply engaged with the social issues of his day, he was a public figure before he was a playwright: a critic and essayist, a public speaker, a leader of the Fabian Society. You have to take some of what he writes in his Prefaces with a grain of salt. He was addressing specific individuals, certain powers of the day " and not above exaggerating or role-playing to make a point or get a reaction.”
Cato feels Shaw wanted the audience’s sympathy to be torn between Mrs. Warren and Vivie.
“Where that ends up can be mixed, he says. “Shaw wants us to see Vivie’s point of view. Yet Mrs. Warren has such extraordinary and forceful arguments that it’s hard not to feel for her.”
As to the play’s contemporary relevance, Cato says: “A lot has changed. But where Shaw addresses the relationship between the sexes, the realities of economics and women’s identity issues, that’s where I feel some of his points are as relevant today as they were 100 years ago.”
@edgarblythe,
edgar, thanks for the gospel hymn by Elvis and Jerry Lee. Love gospel, Texas.
That commentary on George Bernard Shaw always reminds me of my Irish friend, Al. (he called him "pshaw") I did a check on that Irishman/Brit and found that I had forgotten a great deal about him. Shaw did not like his stuff turned into musicals, but I had no idea that Candida was the forerunner of My Fair Lady.
Obviously, Shaw was an iconclast when it came to Victorian England. (still wonder about the Romanov trust), and your explanation about "ladies of the evening" having been poor, destitute women explains a lot.
Here are a couple of followups, folks.
First, The Celtic Woman and Bach
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPeVIuRjUi4&feature=related
Then one by Tony Orlando and Dawn (wonder if it was inspired by Shaw?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXIykBsqcoA
George Bernard(pronounced BERnard, I think) would approve of the misunderstood lyrics. See if our listeners can find which ones.
Sunday evening... and before going to bed something German but not too German...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJCbpLDdH0o
@urs53,
Oh, I like that urs53! Here is something similar by Freddie Bell and the Bell Boys.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=G1aY7xEcE_c
Goodnight, Urs. I couldn't get your contribution to play, but I found another by the same group.
Dutchy, always good to see you, buddy. Thanks for the Ding Dong song. Didn't know them, but do recall "bell boys".
Rock, I just checked out Freddy Fender. Sad commentary on his life. Thanks for playing Wasted Days and Wasted Nights.
Here's a great one by Urs' group.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4HKymWt-po&feature=related
MD and JM are all right, so the animals are still with us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uplzeKCUOVw
First team's decided for the Superbowl. Arizona Cardinals.
@edgarblythe,
Never heard of The Kings of Leon, edgar, but I see that they're from Tennessee. Thanks for introducing them to your PD.
Time for me to say goodnight, and I think that I will do it with an oldie and a newbie.
First, Bob May, the robot from Lost in Space, has died at age 69
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VGDwwzE7jo
Now a new tenor that I have never heard before, sings one of my favorites.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF6wA5PXjLU
Tomorrow, all
From Letty with love
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrclRelKUno
I at one time loved Robbie. Here is Joaquin Phoenix rapping. Ahem.
Good morning, WA2K folks.
edgar, that was possibly the worst thing by Joaquin that I have ever seen. Rap?
Thanks, Rocky, for the Crow song. Hmmm. That leads to the Poe song, because today two fantastic guys were born.
First a tribute to Poe and we'll dedicate this to all of the former Realmers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATynvn6IgQg
Now for one of America's greatest generals from Virginia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEXIKzNoF_A&NR=1
@Letty,
Letty, you picked a very good one by Dick Brave and the Backbeats. We saw them live a couple of years ago. Lots of fun!
@urs53,
Urs, I loved them, and thanks for the acknowledgement. Been so long since I went to a concert. The last was the LSO.
Ah, today is Janis Joplin's birthday. This is my favorite by her. So many songs have been written about Janis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WISX2oSExIA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApfKglyNjyA
I was a big Janis Joplin fan. Me n Robert McGee was great, but, here is my favorite by her.
@edgarblythe,
Thanks, edgar. Loved that one by Janis. Also love the one about"O Lord Won't ya Buy me a Mercedes Benz.."
Ah, my Mamma's Ragtime. Love that one, too, Texas.
My goodness, folks, today is Desi Arnaz's birthday.
Great song by a duo. Let's listen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXCgIx2Bycs
