As the Greater Boston area is over-populated with superb musicians, its students, professionals, semi-professionals, even amateurs- the young and old in one another's arms! -are, whether through compassion for mankind or the iron laws of economics, out there giving us, for little or nothing, performances of masterpieces on a day-to-day basis. By week's end I'd listened to 4 concerts, ( including a Milton Babbitt premiere), 2 excellent lectures in the MIT Astrophysics Building 37, participated in 4 sessions of an on-going poetry seminar,( MIT Building 14 ), benefited from an invaluable 6 hours watching a day-long modern dance festival at the Wang and Shubert Theaters, joined a hefty throng in the Unitarian church at Harvard Square for Jared Diamond's talk on his new doomsday blockbuster, "Collapse", visited the Museum of Fine Arts on one of its free days, and participated in two political events, the first a public hearing on the Biodefense Lab (BSL4) that Boston University wants to build (The Gilded Age of Biodefense, Ferment April 2004), the other a morning-long celebration of the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. at Faneuil Hall.
Total cost: $23 .
Theater was another matter: an entry in the Events Calendar of the Thursday Boston Globe announced a production of "The Rivals" at the Huntingdon Theater on Huntingdon Avenue, ( in the vicinity of the New England Conservatory and Northeastern University) . It gave me the impression that tickets for seniors were available for $15, within the order of magnitude of what I'm able to spend.
On a dreary, soggy late afternoon, on a long day in which rain, snow and chill winds fomented a quasi-unrelenting lugubrious mush, around 6 PM, I left the Cafe Expresso Royale ( a charming hangout filled with idealistic students from the New England Conservatory and Northeastern, hard at work over their books in a darkened room vibrating , from dawn to midnight, with some of the most pestiferous schtinkmusik known to mankind.) and walked across the block to the box office of the Huntingdon Theater ( My apologies: Theatre) to purchase my ticket for the evening's presentation of Sheridan's over-rated chestnut.
The odds were that the young girl behind the wicket was a student at Boston University: BU and the Huntingdon have a symbiotic if not totally co-extensive relationship. Early twenties, straight strawblond hair, slender and pale, well-balanced nose, sour yet friendly smile, soulful rather than witty, roseblend sweater: altogether a charmer.
"Senior ticket please. Here's my proof of seniority" ( A plastic card held up against the window. Sympathetic laughter).
"I'll try to get you a good seat." A brief consultation with the computer monitor.
" How about one in the orchestra? It gives a good view of the stage."
Like an egret from its perch, my wallet surged forth from my shoulder-bag: "How much?"
"With your senior discount it's only $45 ."
"What?!"
" Let me check...That's right: $45. There's a five dollar discount for seniors"
"But... But ... the Boston Globe stated that there are tickets for as little as $15."
A pained look, not really hostile, perhaps a trifle scared, tightened the muscles of her face. In a voice into which a suggestion of harshness had entered she said: " For $15 you can have a seat in the very last row in the balcony. I don't know if any are left."
"Thank you. I've changed my mind."
The expression of shock on her youthful features greatly exceeded mine when she'd quoted me the price.
A few days later the Living Arts section of the Globe displayed a stage photo of the production's Lydia Languish, richly costumed, holding up an enormous pastry-cake headdress, with the kind of smile one expects from Miss Languish, both naughty and demure . It confirmed me in my belief that the potential edification to be obtained from "The Rivals" was not worth $45.
Summarizing: although the cultural portfolio for that week contained 2 concerts, 1 recital, an opera ( Bernstein's "Candide" on WGBH), several excellent poetry seminars, a complete dance festival, important political events, astrophysics lectures delivered by astronomers on the frontlines of research, there was not, nor could there be any theater for anyone cruising the Hub other than members of the well-heeled classes.
The other is that, because commercial theater cannot run the risk of antagonizing its comfortable clientele and wealthy patronage, most of the costly stuff out there is, though admirably technically accomplished and polished, bland, dull, conservative, easily digestible , tame, non-intellectual , politically neutral .
Paradoxically one ends up with a similar finished product in a cognate medium operating under very different economic constraints. Movie prices are cheap, movie houses easily accessible. As was the practice with Shakespeare, they usually have something for everybody. Yet, because the costs of production are godzillian, producers are constrained to reach out to the broadest possible audience. This all to often entails manipulating and gratifying the tastes of the mob, and the result is that the overwhelming majority of films, though technically accomplished and polished, are bland, dull, conservative, easily digestible , tame, non-intellectual and politically neutral . As is so often the case, one can't win, but there are different ways of losing; often enough a complete spectrum of ways .
How is one to deal with this double-bind? Coming or going, the logic of the marketplace censors or stifles almost all original theater. Shows must either have broad popular appeal - the classic "bread and circuses" - or stroke the egos of rich patrons: viz. the silly libretti of Baroque opera drawn from Greek and Roman mythology, or the overflow of dirty underwear in a musical comedy on Broadway for which a successful small-town businessman up from Pennsylvania will be willing to pay $300 for his ticket to rest and relaxation.
Exciting theater exists only in the work of small, avant-garde companies surviving on the margins in big cities, or in student productions, ( "Waiting for Godot" at Wesleyan University about 3 years ago, was as competent a production as anything that bills itself as professional), or in the rare Hollywood(more often foreign) film that manages to surmount popular prejudices and economic hurdles.
I am fortunate to live in the city of Middletown, Connecticut. Its excellent town library, the Russell Library, maintains an extensive archive of videocassettes ( now also DVD's) of films going back a century. There one is always certain of picking up another masterpiece from the hundreds available on its shelves. Louis XIV in Versailles was not as lucky as I am in Middletown.