P for Poppy producers

In the mid nineteen seventies, when Margaret Thatcher was barely more than an idea, the playwright Peter Nichols wrote ten satirical songs that he called Jungle Jamboree.

He later asked his friend, Antonia Fraser, whether Privates on Parade would be a better title.

She said it would - and thereafter the author of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg and The National Health came to prefer titles beginning with a P.

There came Passion Play, Piece of My Mind, Pursued by a Bear and a new musical satire with military and imperialist targets, Poppy, which has been intelligently and spectacularly revived by the young actors of RADA this week.

In 1982, when Nichols wrote Poppy, the choice of Victorian pantomime to mock Victorian values was a masterstroke. Queen Victoria herself was at the centre of his stage. The whole show is a subversive Thatcher-fest, a tableau of country bumpkins oppressed by industrialist masters, a Dick Whittington inspired to make his fortune in the New Britain, and Chinese magicians crushed by the Queen's own opium traders - with music by Monty Norman, the man who gave us the theme from James Bond.

Britain's prize for victory in the Opium Wars was our great colony of Hong Kong - which, sad to say and to her great regret, Mrs Thatcher saw no option in the early 1980s but to agree to hand back to China. The terms for that deal were being much argued when audiences in London saw Poppy for the first time.

In favour of 'standing up to China' were those who wanted no apologies for using hard drugs to pay for Chinese tea: after all, there had never been anything really wrong with a war for free trade. Alongside them were fellow conservatives of the 'let's-spread-democracy' school, for whom one murderous Chinese regime was much like another and the post-Maoists worse than the Manchus.

Against them were Tory realists: we didn't seem to have enough gun boats any more. And there was the liberal crowd who thought we should never have had Hong Kong anyway. The Chinese were not exactly being flexible in their requirements.

The theatrical power of Nichols's Poppy was in its subversion of all the most comfortable pantomime conventions. In this form of theatre the audience has not only to know what side it is on but to shout its boos and cheers out loud. This certainty was both frequently demanded and never wholly clear. When the aisles divided, which side felt more comfortable? Did either? No one was on as strong a ground as they would have liked. In political conversation, opium was mentioned as little as possible. In the playhouse, it was centre stage.

Now this one of Nichols's P-pieces is a 'period piece', occasionally discussed for a big professional revival. There is a wonderful show to be had. We can only wait and see.

Meanwhile, an aspiring Poppy producer ought to take great heart from RADA this week. Director Tim Luscombe has well drilled his cast in the anti-pantomime arts. Morgan Watkins as the Chinese Emperor (top) shrinks smoothly, scene by scene, in his magical and imperial powers. Carlyss Peer sinks from busty singing bible-teacher to wheel-chair-bound addict. Lest we forget the basics of principle boyishness, Kelly Burke is a body-perfect Dick Whittington. Over this whole upturned world of fantasies, Lydia Wilson (above) reigns as an obey-me eyed, extremely lissom young Queen Victoria, as magnetic as the monarch of a small country in search of global domination must ideally be.

Comments

[Dion Per Sona]

Just as I thought, or rather, fear:
Someone is ingognito here...
The mighty Burns might have a twin
Or speak both minds with which he's in.

[Heteraetcaetera]

It cannot be said to be strange
That most writers fail to bring change,
But a comma, a colon,
And a thinker like Solon
Can, for all, a new future arrange.

[Clayton Burns]

At The New York Times "Shell" Extra Home Page, Celia W. Dugger's excellent "Cholera Is Raging..." is linked to the analysis at The Times. However, as I have noted in an unposted comment at The Times, the video is not available to Vancouver. Guardian video works fine. Often NYT will do a dead-end link to The Times of this kind.

The Times does not link back to Dugger's article, as it should if it wants to improve its weak Internet practices for international stories. Unlike TLS and CJR, The Times online politics has not been able to find a good formula for reader comment. The Globe and Mail is undertaking a major review of reader comment online, by the thoughtful and helpful Mathew Ingram. The Times should do likewise.

If I were to choose a Zimbabwe (cholera) news source for a live Geography program in the schools all over the world, it would certainly be The New York Times.

Philip Bobbitt (of "Terror and Consent") and Jimmy Carter should participate in an international committee to set up new legal frameworks to work on all the evils, terror, dictators, tax havens, the mess in Mexico with drugs, and the inherent weakness of international law and policy.

In parallel, special forces of the UK, France, US, Canada, and Australia should lead in displacing the dictator in Zimbabwe, arresting him or killing him without any more loitering.

The TLS should consider a special report on the quality of writing on Zimbabwe, fiction and non-fiction, and on the failure of the writing to effect change.

[Clayton Burns]

I can't wait any longer to ask (from an Internet source):

Sorry, the word 'destroy' was wrong, wasn't it? I should have said 'smite them hip and thigh'.

That sounds unnervingly Principle Boyish.

*cough* I probably meant Principal Boyish. May I blame my one contact lens?

It's just a lead in. Sir Peter might consider a focus on South Asia. Reuters. AP. LA Times. The Washington Post. Collate with Times of India and NDTV. Telephone hoax. Next 48 hours critical.

It seems that Western reporters just hang a South Asian story out there and abandon it. What do they do after the story and before the next one? Is this representative of Western reporting about what does not happen in New York, London, or Washington?

The post that Sir Peter has yet to write is about Victor Davis Hanson on the distorting effect of B.C.-A.D. on our perceptions of ancient Greek history. That is the long view of it. Equally bizarre is the International Date Line, the zone of deep time confusion. Conrad's hero should have aspired to plant a bomb in the un-find-able centre of the IDL.

The mime looks fascinating, even if the RADAical website is a bit disorganized. However, China to one side. What are these Western reporters in India and Pakistan up to? Are they journalists or CIA officers? We may find the answer at the IDL.