The Intelligent Conversationalist

by Imogen Lloyd Webber

  It was my editor’s idea that I write about this subject. He was right, of course, culture being the bedrock of civilization and all. It reflects us as we are today. And since I’ve spent my entire adult life working in it, most recently as senior editor at Broadway.com, panelist on Imus’s Hollywood and Vine, and my whole life observing it (yes, I’m one of those Lloyd Webbers, the cat phans), I actually know something about it. For a change.

  Of course, if you’re a sophisticated type, you may not find the next Cheat Sheets to your taste and believe that I’ve made it too philistine friendly. Wait, before you go, though, do you know who composed the British Airways signature tune or the now-defunct X-Factor theme music (you definitely saw a promo for it if not the show itself)? If you’re wavering, then I suggest having a quick skim of this subject. I did even come up with something about Puccini that his greatest fan (my dad) didn’t know about …

  Our first Cultural Cheat Sheets are comprised of a series of grids: authors, artists, and composers you should have on your radar. We follow this with a standard Cheat Sheet on theater before having some fun and ending the book on awards season conversation.

  In regards to authors, I am presuming some level of ability here. I’m not going to go on about Agatha Christie, Roald Dahl, or even Charles Dickens. You’ve seen Oliver! F. Scott Fitzgerald recently got the Baz Luhrmann treatment with The Great Gatsby, so I’m sure you’ve got a semblance of a talking point on that one. Jane Austen does make the cut on the basis that I’m concerned you might confuse her with Charlotte Brontë in front of a Janeite, who are up there with Star Trek fans for unhinged behavior. I’ve also neglected those authors who crop up elsewhere—the feminists have their day in the sun in their own Cheat Sheet, as does George Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four in Cheat Sheet 16.

  The art Cheat Sheet is—well, to put it bluntly, I’m here to remind you that Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo are not turtles. And unlike the turtle creators, you always knew that Michelangelo isn’t spelled Michaelangelo. No, really, I’m not joking there. It is also worth noting that an Old Master is a painter who was renowned before 1800. And if you want to placate someone who is really arty when you quite clearly know nothing, simply quote Oscar Wilde: “The artist should never try to be popular. The public should try to be more artistic.” They’ll probably snog you on the spot.

  In regards to composers, I keep it old school. We take a quick tour of some notable composers from the Medieval, Renaissance, Classical, and Romantic periods and from the twentieth century. Embarrassingly, I have to say, they are all men, which has thoroughly raised my feminist hackles, but at the same time, the most prominent of these eras had a Y chromosome. Of course they did.

  Bearing in mind my current occupation and the fact I actually produced a play in the West End and wish to do so on Broadway, the theater Cheat Sheet does go on a bit. If you really can’t be bothered to read it, merely mutter something about the Brunetière law of the theater—drama must deal with an exercise of the human will, and therefore a struggle of some sort is an essential element in the pleasure we take in a production.

  Why no film, modern music, or television? you ask. These all come under awards season conversation. If you bump into someone who goes to Sundance or Toronto for the film festivals or is into the Grammys or Emmys, this Cheat Sheet will see you through. If it feels like too much of a challenge, then just sprinkle your chat with them with the following phrases: “Oscar/Emmy/Tony/Grammy bait,” “shrewd marketing campaigns,” “Harvey Weinstein,” and “whisper campaigns against early front-runners.” Oh, incidentally, do what you can to become friends with someone who can vote for the Golden Globes, BAFTAs, or Oscars. They get screeners and you’ll save a FORTUNE on movie tickets. What this Cheat Sheet doesn’t cover is the MTV Video Music Awards. Seriously. Are you twelve? No. All you need to remember for them is that you don’t have a leg to stand on if there’s a “shocking” performance. Madonna started that. It’s de rigueur for that awards show.

  Before we start, I will take pity on you as these composers didn’t make it onto Cheat Sheet 29, as there were too many others we needed to cover. The British Airways signature tune is the “Flower Duet” from Lakmé by Leo Delibes and the X Factor theme music is from Carmina Burana by Carl Orff.

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  WISE WORDS

  No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.

  —Mahatma Gandhi

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  CHEAT SHEET 27—AUTHORS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT

  SOCIAL SURVIVAL STRATEGY

  Argument: “I’m with Nietzsche, ‘There are no facts, only interpretations.’”

  This will serve you in pretty much any setting, but he is a literary figure, so he may as well go here. It’s a clever put-down when you’re in the company of a bombastic buffoon.

  Crisp Fact: “George Bernard Shaw is the only Oscar winner (Pygmalion) to have also won the Nobel Prize in Literature.”

  This is a good one to have up your sleeve as you can serve it up at multiple venues—from an Academy Award viewing party to a pre-theater supper to a gathering of a bunch of scientists (the Nobel is their Oscar).

  Pivot: “As Truman Capote put it, ‘I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.’ Shall we go hover by the kitchen to see if we can be first to grab the hors d’oeuvres? I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I’m all cardio, no carbs.”

  This works whether you’re a gym god(dess) or not. You end a difficult discussion by seemingly putting yourself down, when of course you’re not, since you’ve just cited Capote, plus you can go stand by the kitchen. And as every seasoned partygoer knows, you will always meet the best people by the kitchen; they, like you, have been through this rodeo before.

  CHEAT SHEET 28—ARTISTS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT

  SOCIAL SURVIVAL STRATEGY

  Argument: “Maybe it will take time to fully grasp the work of X. After all, it took two hundred and fifty years for El Greco to be properly appreciated as a prophet of modern art.”

  You may be looking at something you perceive as frightful and your neighbor delightful, or vice versa, but this concept works for both. It sparks a debate and yet takes the sting out of it.

  Crisp Fact: “Leonardo never delivered the Mona Lisa to its commissioner—he held on to it until he died.”

  Drop this one in if you’re with someone buying art (and by art, it could be a postcard in a gift shop). It’s food for thought.

  Pivot: “Legend has it that Picasso’s first words were ‘piz, piz,’ from the Spanish for pencil. I’m sure mine was drink. Shall we go find (another) one?”

  There are geniuses and then there’s the rest of us, including the person you’re talking to, who will have an opinion on the current status of their wineglass. They will either accompany you to find a refill or release you so you can both find someone more agreeable to talk to.

  CHEAT SHEET 29—COMPOSERS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT

  SOCIAL SURVIVAL STRATEGY

  Argument: “Don’t be snobbish. Just because a piece of music is popular, it doesn’t mean that it lacks artistic merit. Puccini, Tchaikovsky, even Gershwin all suffered at the hands of the critics, but the people loved their work.”

  You are within your rights to call out a music snob, and if you’re being one, expect to be challenged. Don’t be an elitist old fogy.

  Crisp Fact: “It’s believed Beethoven was briefly taught by both Mozart and Haydn. Greatness breeds greatness, they egg each other on.”

  Say this and you can then open up the exchange to other disciplines, such as sport—John McEnroe and Björn Borg in tennis being a classic example.

  Pivot: “I’m hungry, it feels like I last ate a Wagner opera ago. What shall we do for food?”

  The joke being, of course, that Wagner operas go on for days.

  CHEAT SHEET 30—THEATER

  BACKGROUND BRIEFING

  I do on some levels respect Americans for their alternative use of spelling. I
understand that you want to break free from the mother country, own your own language, and all that. But there is no justification for your implementation of the word theater. It’s the bane of my life as the senior editor at Broadway.com. Because your use of the word theater isn’t consistent. You name the bricks and mortar of so many of your theaters theatre. So you go to the theater at the XXX Theatre. Honestly. Even arty insiders don’t get it right.

  This is the American publication of my book, so however much it pains me to do it, I employ the word theater. Except when I can’t, as it’s about a building called theatre. Sigh.

  The word theater comes from the Greek theatron, a place for viewing, along with theasthai, to look at, and is related to the Greek thauma, meaning wonder, miracle. It miraculously encompasses everything from plays to ballets to musicals to opera (the latter two forms having their own mini-drama about their differences and definition). Incidentally, the word drama also comes from a Greek word meaning action.

  All that being said, theater actually predates the Greeks. For with civilization comes culture, which is the argument you deploy when a politician objects to artistic funding. Passion plays were performed in Egypt for the legendary king-divinity Osiris.

  The Greeks, of course, is where theater really got going. They were all about the theatrical competition and loved pitting the talents of the time against one another. Drama was made up of tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play, with an emphasis more often than not on Greek mythology. The plays evolved so that however many characters there were, only three actors were allowed to perform, so there was also a chorus, which was often underscored by music. The actors wore masks (which they changed, along with their costumes, when they switched roles) so the audience could see them; comic masks were grinning, the tragic versions were, well, unhappy. The masks were actually a form of ancient microphone—they amplified the actor’s voice.

  Thespis (ah yes, you cry, you understand—thespian also comes from the Greek) has ended up with the reputation of being the first Greek “actor” and the originator of tragedy. Greek playwrights’ names you should casually drop into conversation if discussing the origins of theater include the father of all modern drama, Euripides, along with Sophocles and Aeschylus.

  The Romans, ever an empire about improving itself, latched onto Greek theater and got into the business of doing wholesale adaptations—think what Hollywood does to French cinema. That’s not the only link between Roman theater and Tinseltown. Stock characters in Roman comedy included the parasite (parasitus), a selfish liar, along with the love interest, a young maiden (virgo), who has little personality and doesn’t get much stage time. Nothing changes.

  When the Roman empire fell around AD 600, everything did, well, fall apart a bit. The period between Rome and the Renaissance is labeled the Dark Ages for a reason (although some historians claim that dark is not an appropriate term for all of those centuries—but really, you don’t want to be stuck with someone who’s going to debate you on this point—they will be dull). The Catholic Church was the power of the day, so traveling troupes of performers who were viewed as potentially sinful suffered, but the staging of liturgical drama found a platform. This was the era of cycle plays, morality plays, that sort of thing.

  We shouldn’t write medieval theater and the church’s penchant for script approval completely off. The period did contain some breakthroughs: Shows started to be done in the vernacular, not just in Greek and Latin. As the era went on, theater moved away from the religious. Farce—making fun of authority and getting away with it—began to be seen. Also the spectacle side of performances developed—sets, costume, music, and dance. All rather crucial to getting us to Broadway today.

  When the Renaissance hit in the fifteenth century, so did a renewed interest in the Greeks and Romans—and professional actors took to the stage. And so we reach the sixteenth century. Now, Britain’s Henry VIII loved a masque and established the Office of Revels in 1545, but let’s face it, it was in his daughter’s era, the first Elizabethan age, that everything got going. In 1567, almost ten years into Elizabeth I’s reign, the Red Lion, the first English theater, opened. (Shakespeare would have been twelve.) As it had done in ancient Greece, theater developed rapidly. Since religion was not exactly the ideal talking point after Henry VIII split with Rome and all of that, a vacuum was created for … oh, I don’t know, someone to write some tragedies, comedies, and histories. To completely revolutionize theater.

  Hello, Shakespeare. And professional theater troupes. And healthy rivalry between theaters. Just watch Shakespeare in Love, it’s one of those movies (or indeed, as of 2014, plays) that can be trusted for historically accurate brilliant asides—Tom Stoppard, playwright and intellect extraordinaire, cowrote the screenplay.

  During Shakespeare’s period, the plays were the property not of the author, but of the acting companies. Aside from the costly costumes, they formed the most valuable part of the company’s capital. So Shakespeare was in pauper-ville? Well, not always. He did make some cash because he was also an actor and, more crucially, a shareholder in the company for which he acted and in the theaters they used. By 1595 he was actor and shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s Company (later the King’s Men). After 1599, he was a shareholder at the newly opened Globe Theatre, which now has a fully functioning replica that you can visit in London today.

  An important footnote that’s appearing in the main body of the text, as maybe it’s not a footnote. Despite the fact there was a woman successfully ruling England, there were no female professional dramatists or actresses.

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  NOTEWORTHY NUGGETS: SHAKESPEARE (1564–1616)

  • Shakespeare produced fewer than forty solo plays in a career that spanned more than two decades.

  Play names you should throw about include the histories, such as Henry IV, V, VI, VIII, Richard II, Richard III; the tragedies—Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth; and the comedies—Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Comedy of Errors.

  • His reputation during his lifetime was probably lower than that of, say, Ben Jonson (1572–1637). There was also Christopher Marlowe, who died a premature death at age twenty-one, supposedly in a pub brawl. Marlowe’s big work was Doctor Faustus, who sells his soul to the devil.

  • The first publication of Shakespeare’s plays came in 1623, called the First Folio.

  • Shakespeare was all about great stories, illumination of the human experience, compelling characters, and oh, his ability to turn a phrase. He came up with the following lines: We band of brothers. The green-eyed monster. What’s in a name? Now is the winter of our discontent. If music be the food of love. Beware the ides of March. We are such stuff as dreams are made on. It’s Greek to me. More sinned against than sinning. Salad days. Act more in sorrow than in anger. Refuse to budge an inch. Tongue-tied. Played fast and loose. Laughed yourself into stitches. Had short shrift. The long and the short of it. Teeth set on edge. If the truth were known.

  • Supposedly, of the 17,000 words Shakespeare used, he invented about 1,700 of them. My name, Imogen, is one of them.

  • Shakespeare was born and died on April 23 (1564 and 1616, respectively).

  * * *

  Shakespeare died in 1616, well into King James I’s reign. Mirroring what went on in other arenas (see Cheat Sheet 15), the theater of the period under James I and his son Charles I (the one who managed to get his head chopped off, so England was a republic for a bit) was far from the Elizabethan glory days. Theatrical works from this time are referred to as Jacobean and Caroline drama, and their decadence is exemplified in, for instance, John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore.

  The Puritans (the ones who didn’t like Charles I) were not theater’s biggest fans. Nutty religious types have always had a problem with art. And fun. Theaters were closed in 1642. And Christmas was canceled in 1644.

  English theater was restored along with the restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660. Much of the drama
had French influences, since Charlie had been stuck with the “frogs” for so long in exile. The French Molière had made a name for himself with his satiric comedies—his plays, such as The Misanthrope, are still performed today. The Restoration play The Plain Dealer by William Wycherley was an English version of The Misanthrope. And naturally there was that extraordinary back catalogue of Elizabethan drama to tap into.

  It was also at this time that the red-blooded male Charles II allowed women to play women’s parts on stage. Before then, adolescent boys (to much acclaim) had. A French company had tried to put women onstage in England in 1629, but they were pippin-pelted and hissed off. A few women playwrights rose to prominence—Mrs. Aphra Behn (1640–1689) saw some success.

  What you need to know from there is that theater, after flirtations with melodrama (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—the characters end up in danger) and Romanticism (peak time 1800–1850—a counterreaction to the Industrial Revolution and the rise of science, emphasizing the imagination, the irrational, and the individual), plays (as opposed to opera) and stagecraft began to move toward realism, which continued into the twentieth century.

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