Lachrymosity

..discovered
it was written by George Bernard Shaw – we’ll call him GBS from
now on – and the star, (and executive producer), was none other than Christopher
Plummer, widely pilloried for just being in The Sound of Music,
but a perfect fit for the role of Caesar.
The GBS version of the relationship between Caesar and Cleopatra, (or non-relationship
– GBS clearly considered the age difference to be insurmountable), provoked
my tear glands and before I knew it tears were streaming down my face.
I’m sure there were other contributory factors. Although GBS is out of
fashion, he’s arguably the second greatest playwright in the English language
if you don’t count all the others and he nearly always had philosophical and
political axioms to grind, usually woven into the fabric of the story, or perhaps
the other way around. (Here again, I only studied one GBS play at prep school,
The Chocolate Soldier,* and I can barely remember that, so I’m
certainly no expert).
Anyway, there’s a particularly cogent argument about the futility of war,
ironically spoken by Caesar, one of the most successful and ruthless military
servants of Imperial Rome’s expansionism. You could take issue with portraying
such a person as a ‘reasonable’ man, but as a device it makes the
anti-war message all that more potent. (Let’s see if Google can dredge
it up for me. Yep).
‘Can Rome do less then than slay these slayers too, to show the world
how Rome avenges her sons and her honour? And so, to the end of history, murder
shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honour and peace, until
the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand.’
It’s sad that particular moment hasn’t arrived, but logic, or despair
for the human race, rarely reduces me to tears, even now. A myopic nostalgia
for the peak of my biological potency is far more likely to make me weep.

Now I have a confession. I’m also a sucker for a cheap laugh; the kind
of laugh that you get watching Australia’s Funniest Home Videos.
I mention it to bro’ Dick when he comes round to watch my collection of
‘special’ shows that I’ve recorded on Foxtel and his lip curls
in disgust. There I am, eyes still moist from Cecilia Bartoli’s extraordinary
facial and vocal contortions as she delivers Rossini’s Bel raggio
in Venice, or Daniel Barenboim, looking not unlike a Sontaran in a suit, playing
(and conducting) a Beethoven piano concerto with the Berlin Staatskapelle, and
then I’ll casually mention I’ve recorded a couple of episodes of
AFHV, (actually I record them all), and the air positively chills.
I’m not a totally undiscriminating Funniest Home Videos fan.
I do object to videos that have been ‘set up’ by adults involving
little children for instance, but seeing kids belting dad in the balls with
a baseball bat, idiots falling off and into all manner of things and various
domestic and wild animals doing their amazing thing gets me going. The ultimate
treat is when they have a quickfire series of a dozen or so ball-bashing brats
or drunken people falling off tables at weddings and I’m left gasping
for air – and, funnily enough, quite teary.

* Actually the play was Arms and the Man – The Chocolate Soldier
was the Oscar Straus operetta based on it).