Kristol Clear #64 -- D-Day and All That : The worst production of a play ever?

[Fay Dickson-- AKA doofs]

As I write on Sunday morning, I'm still reeling from attending (only until intermission) perhaps the worst production of a play I've ever seen, the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Tartuffe (trigger warning !). We've been subscribers to the Shakespeare Theatre for perhaps 25 years, and they've had their ups and downs, but more ups than downs (that's why we've remained subscribers--plus, it's an excuse to have dinner beforehand with good friends who also subscribe). In any case, the STC managed in this instance to take a classic play by probably the greatest French playwright, Moliere, and make it unwatchable. Moliere's deft comedy became ridiculously heavy-handed, and now featured massive and at once off-putting and uninteresting doses of homoerotic sado-masochism. Ugh.      http://www.shakespearetheatre.org/plays/evt_detail.aspx?id=412&...

We leave at intermission maybe once every five years, but did so last night--and were joined by others doing so as well. Sometimes you can go home and put something like this out of your mind. The trouble this time was that the production was so annoying and grating it was hard to just forget about it. Even watching replays of American Pharoah's victory (why, incidentally, is his name misspelled?) didn't fully exorcise the unpleasant aftertaste. Only now, thanks to this diatribe in this newsletter, do I think I've gotten it out of my system. Thanks to you all for allowing this (not that you had much choice!).     http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/06/us/belmont-stakes-american-pharoah/?u...

I might add that we'll be told this is the price we pay for living in a free society. In a way, that's of course the case. But still. Must we agree to the complacent liberal line that this is what our boys were fighting for when, for example, they scaled the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc 71 years ago to the day before we saw the play?

Speaking of which, it's not too late, a couple of days after the anniversary, to reflect on D-Day. After all, as Leo Strauss suggests, "It is safer to try to understand the low in the light of the high than the high in light of the low. In doing the latter one necessarily distorts the high, whereas in doing the former one does not deprive the low of the freedom to reveal itself as fully as what it is."

So to help understand D-Day, one of the high points of American history, here's a link to a post from Saturday that you might have missed . It's a compilation of my tweets from earlier that morning, the 71st anniversary of D-Day, where linked to speeches by FDR, Eisenhower, King George VI, Reagan (on the 40th anniversary), and more. The post includes the links. I think you'll find clicking on some of them interesting and enjoyable. And far, far better, than going to the Shakespeare Theatre's Tartuffe!     http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/d-day-anniversary_966319.html?u...