Aigai

We were in the second half of our cruise, travelling down the eastern coast of Greece, when the ship stopped at Thessaloniki.  As on other days, there were various land tours we could select, but at this stage in our cruise there was only one choice, to go to Vergina, on an excursion described as In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great.  To be going to Vergina might seem rather odd:  it  is a relatively new town, established in 1922 in the aftermath of the Treaty of Lausanne, an agreement that had officially resolved the conflict that had initially arisen between the Ottoman Empire, and various European countries including Greece.  The treaty delimited the boundaries of Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey, and, among other provisions included the agreement that all the islands, islets and other territories in the Aegean Sea (Eastern Mediterranean in the original text) beyond three miles from the Turkish shores were ceded to Greece, (with some minor exceptions).

If Vergina is a recent establishment, it is best known as the site of ancient Aigai  the first capital of Macedon.  Back in 336 BC Philip II was assassinated in Aigai’s theatre and his son, Alexander the Great, was proclaimed king. While the resting place of Alexander the Great is unknown, researchers uncovered three tombs at Vergina in 1977, in a location that was part of what had been Aigai.

This was to be an extraordinary visit, and even the first stage of the visit was memorable!  The coach trip from Thessaloniki stopped in Vergina, and we had a fairly long walk to a park area, in which all we could see was an open grassy area, and around it several trees, and small modern building, and some slightly raised areas.  Our tour guide went off, and we tried to find shade from a very hot sun.  When were we going to go to the site of the tombs?  The tour guide returned and led us over to an almost invisible entrance that took us inside that slightly raised area:  the tombs had been uncovered by archaeologists and then re-covered once they had been studied.  Just inside, we stopped, to get accustomed to the darkened interior.

This gave us the opportunity to learn about Aigai.  The area where it was built was formerly  covered by a series of  villages, which together formed an important population centre by 1,000 BC.  In the 7th century BC, the Macedonian expansion in the region subdued local populations, establishing the dynasty at Aigai.  Archaeologic research has shown  Aigai developed as an organized collection of villages, a group of aristocratic tribes,  and it never became a large city.  From Aigai the Macedonians spread to the central part of Macedonia.  In the first half of the 5th century BC Aigai became the capital of Macedonia, characterised by court luxury supported by merchants coming from all over the ancient world bringing  valuable goods including perfume, carved ornaments and jewellery.

At the beginning of the 4th century BC, the Macedonian capital was moved northeast to Pella, but Aigai retained its role as the sacred city of the Macedonian kingdom, the site of a royal palace and royal tombs.  However, by the 3^rd Century BC Alexander’s heirs were involved in bitter struggles.  The city never recovered, and visiting mercenaries plundered many of the tombs.  Collapse continued, the Romans overthrew the Macedonian kingdom in 168 BC, and withing the next six hundred years the city disappeared, first by human means and later a landslide destroyed what had been remained or had been rebuilt.  Aigai disappeared.

In the middle of the 19^th Century, archaeologists had become interested in the burial mounds around Vergina, some believing the long-lost site of Aigai was in the vicinity. Excavations began in 1861 but had to be abandoned because of the risk of malaria.  In 1937, the University of Thessaloniki resumed the excavations, by the 1950s and 1960s much of royal capital had been uncovered.  One Greek archaeologist  was convinced that a hill called the Great Tumulus covered the tombs of the Macedonian kings, and in 1977, a dig at the site revealed four buried tombs, two of which had never been disturbed.  It was concluded these were the tombs of Philip II, father of Alexander the Great, and Alexander IV, his son.  Further research in 1987 revealed a burial cluster of  queens, including Queen Euridice (mother of Alexander II, and Grandmother of Alexander the Great).

All this does little to prepare visitors for the treasures that have been found.  The museum of the tumulus of Philip II was built over the tombs,  leaving them in situ and showing the site as it was before the archaeological excavations.  Inside there are four tombs.  The two most important (tombs II and III) had not been ransacked and contained the main treasures of the museum.  The larger room in Tomb II included a marble chest, and in it was a closed coffin (larnax) made of 24-carat gold and weighing 11 kilograms (24 lb). together with a golden wreath of 313 oak leaves and 68 acorns, weighing 717 grams (25.3 oz), the golden grave crown of Philip II.   This room also included the richly carved burial bed on which Philip II was laid, several exquisite silver utensils for the funeral feast, along with such items as gold-adorned suits of armour and weapons.  All are now on display for visitors.

In the antechamber was another chest with another golden coffin containing the bones of a woman wrapped in a golden-purple cloth with a golden diadem decorated with flowers and enamel, indicating a queen,  possibly Philip II’s Thracian wife, Meda, who by tradition sacrificed herself at the funeral.

In 1978 Tomb III was discovered, also near the tomb of Philip, which is thought to belong Alexander IV of Macedon, son of Alexander the Great.  Like Tomb II, but smaller and also undisturbed, the main room contained a cremated body, in a silver funerary urn a golden oak wreath.

As with Tomb II, inside exquisite silver utensils and weaponry indicating royal status were still in place.  A narrow frieze with a chariot race by a great painter decorated the walls of the tomb. The remains of a wooden mortuary couch adorned with gold and ivory is regarded as notable for its exquisite representation of Dionysos with a flute-player and a satyr.

Finally, the tomb has one other remarkable and moderately well-preserved feature.  This is an astonishing mural, dated from around 350 BC.  It depicts the Abduction of Persephone by Hades,  the God of the Underworld, with a silent Demeter and the three unprejudiced Fates present at the event, accompanied by Hermes, the Guide of Souls, leading the way, and a scared nymph witnessing the horrifying event.   Regarded as a unique example of ancient painting, it is believed to be the work of the famous artist Nicomachus of Thebes.  It is also considered to be one of the few surviving depictions of the ancient mystic views of afterlife.  The image below shows part of the painting

The challenge with visiting a site like this is there are so many extraordinary visual images – and they make my words rather superfluous.  Sadly, next to Tombs II and III is another, the remains thought to be those of Philip II, but tomb robbers stole all of Tomb IV’s  contents.

How had these tombs been preserved?  The tumulus was constructed at the beginning of the third century BC by Antigonos Gonatas, perhaps over smaller individual tumuli to protect the royal tombs from further pillaging after marauding Galati had looted and destroyed the cemetery. The hill material contained many earlier funeral stele.  Could Gonatas have imagined that some 2,200 years later his actions had ensured we were able to enter the tumulus and, despite tomb robbers destroying some of the original material, much of the original structure and contents remained, a remarkable testimony to a key historical era.

The King Must Die

What is the skill which allows some writers to take the familiar and represent it in such a way that what we read is refreshed, almost as if we are following a story that is slightly familiar but which we really didn’t know?  I have written before about some great examples, as with the two series of outstanding novels written by Madeline Miller and Claire North, in which they retell familiar myths about Ulysses and people around him.  They do this by highlighting some of the key characters who might not have been so central in other versions.  In her 1958 book The King Must Die, Mary Renault does the same but pulls off another extraordinary trick – as she tells us about Theseus’ early life and adventures, she does so through his eyes, and even does so starting with his life as a boy.  I guess it is fair to say the result is ‘magical’.

At one level, The King Must Die is simply a thrilling story told in five sections.  The first, Book One or Troizen, deals with Theseus’ childhood.  Among other adventures, he learns about the ‘horse sacrifice’ , and for the first time hears the sound of the surging sea, an ability that warns him an earthquake is about to occur.  He grows up entranced by horses, but eventually becomes a skilled wrestler, as much through strategy and agility as opposed to brute strength.  Indeed he is shorter and slighter than many he defeats.  At the age of seventeen, his mother takes him to a sacred grove and explains that his father , whose identity he doesn’t know, made her swear not to tell Theseus who he was until he could pry up a heavy stone. Theseus does this using a lever, finding a sword and sandals underneath.  He also learns he. is the only son and heir of the King of Athens.

On his way to Athens, in Book Two: Eleusis, Theseus is chosen to kill the year-king, and replace him, only to be sacrificed in a year’s time.  He builds up a gang of Eleusinian youths and the Queen of Eleusis realises his aim is to overthrow this system and tries to have him assassinated.  She fails and attempts suicide.  Her eventual fate is left unclear.  After this, Theseus finally goes to Athens (Book Three).  His father, Aigeus, attempts to poisoned him, before he recognises Theseus is his son and proclaims him his son and heir.  However, when a Cretan ship comes to collect a yearly tribute of seven boys and seven girls from Athens, Theseus, based on what he believes Poseidon is asking him to do, offers himself in one boy’s place and becomes a Cretan slave.  Once In Crete, Theseus and the other tributes become bull-dancers.  Now in the Minoan court, Theseus becomes Ariadne’s lover, meeting her in the Labyrinth under the Knossos Palace.

However, now in Book Four, we learn Asterion is gathering power to take the throne, and also plans to marry Ariadne, his half-sister. Theseus slays Minos at his request and promises to marry Ariadne, but Theseus senses a major approaching earthquake and as it strikes, he leads a revolt against the Labyrinth aristocracy.  When Asterion begins the ritual to make himself the new Minos, wearing a bull mask, Theseus interrupts the ceremony and fatally wounds the Minotaur, and sacrifices the dying Asterion, using a sacred axe. In the final part of the book, Theseus and his gang, together with Ariadne set sail for Greece.  Things begin to fall apart.  At one stage Theseus realises Ariadne isn’t quite the woman he had hoped.  Closer to home, by way of foolish logic, he ensures that his father will die.

It is a thrilling story, with many twists and turns.  However, the story isn’t the magic, but the way Mary Renault breathes life into the characters, and imbues events with startling and, at time, horrifying precision.  In her hands Theseus becomes a change agent, lightly built with the agility of a wrestler and the ingenuity of an inventor and entrepreneur.  His skills and abilities are tools to help him achieve what he sees as his destiny, complemented by his belief that he is guided by Poseidon, and an instinctive ability to sense earthquakes, possibly a gift from Poseidon.  As the story evolves, he establishes his own loyal band, the Cranes, seven females and seven males (of whom Theseus is one).

Around Theseus is a dazzling cast of characters.  There’s the beautiful Ariadne, daughter of King Minos, a high priestess revered as a goddess by the Cretans. Apparently gentle and timid, Theseus eventually sees her hidden capacity for violence and abandons her.  Asterion, the Minotauros, is heir to King Minos of Crete, and is getting ready to take the throne.  Another king, the  King of Athens Aigeus, is Theseus’s father, once a dominant leader, he is now losing his power and commitment.  He’s also troubled by Medea, his lover, she wants the Athenian throne for her two sons.  Jointly with Persephone she persuades Aigeus to attempt to poison Theseus in return for the lifting of a curse, before he realises Theseus is his son.

Among many others, another who stands out is Persephone, the 27-year-old queen of Eleusis.  Beautiful and manipulative,  she persuades Theseus kill her current husband the King.  However, Theseus is more than she had assumed, overcomes the rule that the king must die after one year of rule, and starts a revolution,  persuading the men of Eleusis to change the structure of their society to impose their rule on the women.   On four occasions Persephone attempts to end Theseus’ life and even attempts suicide when she fails.

Are the characters what makes this novel read so well?  Yes, in part, but it is more than the story and more the than the individuals.  The King Must Die draws on our love of mythology, the idea that an account is more than just a fiction, but addresses something important about ourselves and our world.  Myths are part of the backbone of society, whether they are about the story of Henry Ford, going from a childhood as part of a family of Irish immigrants to creating one of the world’s major companies, Julius Caesar conquering parts of Western Europe, only to die at the hand of some conspirators.  They are more than stories, they are larger than life, often partially or totally untrue, but embodying themes that matter to the culture.  Henry Ford embodied the view that anyone can make it in business, and Julius Caesar that military might is not the same as universal approbation.

I think that myths are usually seen as part of folklore, narratives that play a fundamental role in society.  As such their importance is not in their veracity, though many do involve supernatural being and impossible feats.  Rather they justify and explain origins of nations, religions, groups and families, as well as their defining values, symbols and central practices.  Honko, a Finnish folklorist is quoted in Wikipedia as offering a succinct explanation of myth:

“Myth, a story of the gods, a religious account of the beginning of the world and creation, fundamental events, the exemplary deeds of the gods as a result of which the world, nature and culture were created together with all parts thereof and given their order, which still obtains. A myth expresses and confirms society’s religious values and norms, it provides a pattern of behaviour to be imitated, testifies to the efficacy of ritual with its practical ends and establishes the sanctity of a cult”.    (pages 41-2 of Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth, UC Press, 1984).

As commonly used by social anthropologists, to use the word ‘myth’ is not to imply whether the narrative may be understood as true or otherwise.  In the mid-20th Levi  Strauss proposed a structuralist theory of mythology, argued that myths reflect patterns in the mind and interpreted those patterns more as fixed mental structures, specifically pairs of opposites (good/evil, compassionate/callous), rather than about unconscious feelings or urges.  This was a little after Malinowski had developed an approach to analysing myths in rather more functional terms.  Today both these perspectives have been important in treating myth as a form of narrative that can be studied, interpreted, and analysed like ideology, history, and culture. In other words, “myth is a form of understanding and telling stories that are connected to power, political structures, and political and economic interests”.  However, outside of social science, many hold that myth has some type of essential connection to ultimate sacred meanings that transcend cultural specifics.

How does all this help us understand the attraction of a book like The King Must Die.  In part, of course, Mary Renault is an excellent writer.  Her command of narrative, description and plot complexity is superb.  Through that clever device of speaking through Theseus, we are easily swept up, living with him through adventures, dangers and moments of triumph and delight.  However, it is more than that.  By taking and re-introducing us to an old myth, she is also re-animating the Theseus myth.

First of all, she does this by creating a character who is both unlike anyone else, but also extraordinary.  He can hear Poseidon, anticipate earthquakes, and discover secrets.  In addition to these skills, he also embodies opposites:  a lonely and somewhat isolated boy who is the son of a king, a smaller man he excels in some sports, especially wrestling, using intelligence and strategy to outwit those stronger than himself.  He is the ideal character to capture our attention:  we want to be like him, an outsider, capable of achieving remarkable feats, willing to take risks.  A natural leader, who attracts others to follow him because of his achievements and insights, not because he is the strongest, boldest or toughest in the group.

In the 21^st Century, Theseus is best known for killing the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull monster that lived in the Labyrinth.   The standard story is that  Theseus volunteered to go to Crete, stripped of his weapons.  On his arrival Ariadne, King Minos’ daughter, fell in love with him and, on the advice of Daedalus (who had designed the Labyrinth), she gave him a ball of thread to unwind as he travelled to meet the monster and by which  he could find his way out  As soon as Theseus entered the Labyrinth, he tied one end of the ball of string to the doorpost and brandished his sword which he had kept hidden from the guards inside his tunic. Theseus followed Ariadne had learnt from Daedalus, to go forwards, always down, and never left or right, and finally met  the sleeping Minotaur. The beast awoke and following a tremendous fight Theseus overpowered the Minotaur with his strength and stabbed the beast in the throat with his sword (although in some accounts, Theseus strangled it).

The magic that Mary Renault weaves is to take a story that we ‘know’, a familiar legend, and then retell it in a way that does more than refresh the basic tale, but actually makes it new again.  Such a retelling process is the way in which myths are passed on from one generation to another.  The basic story that the myth embodies is always there, but it is offered to a new audience  – refreshed and made current and timely.

It isn’t always in books, of course.  Romeo and Juliet  is a well-known Shakespearean romantic  tragedy about  two lovers each from one of two bitterly opposed families.  Written between 1591 and 1595, it was first published a quarto version in 1597 (and later amended).  Romeo and Juliet fall in love, initially unaware they come from the two rival families.  The stage is set for their desperate attempt to get away, to get away from their families and to get away from the tensions that have kept the families in constant warfare.  We hope, forlornly, they will succeed, but we sense from early on this is going to have a tragic ending.

Over more than 400 hundred years the play has entranced and devastated audiences across the globe, and offered directors a challenge as to how to refresh the story.  Just as Mary Renault does with Theseus, among many others, two 20^th Century directors found a novel ways to ‘re-present’ Romeo and Juliet, in both cases transforming the action to the present.

One of these clever contemporary versions was West Side Story, which first appeared as a 1957 Broadway production, directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins,   The show had an even longer-running West End season, and was followed by a 1961 film adaptation of the musical.  The musical converts the rivalry between the Montagues and Capulets families into a tale based on ethnic confrontations.  Now the story is about fights between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs – The Sharks, recent migrants from Puerto Rico, and the Jets, New York City whites.  In this version, Tony, a former member of the Jets and best friend of the gang’s leader, Riff, falls in love with Maria, the sister of Bernardo, the leader of the Sharks. The dark theme, sophisticated music, extended dance scenes, tragic love story, and focus on social problems marked a turning point in musical theatre.

Baz Luhrman’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet) is another take on the familiar story shifting the action to Verona Beach, a fictional location in Miami.  In Verona Beach, the Capulets and Montagues are two rival business empires. The animosity of the older generation, Fulgencio and Gloria Capulet and Ted and Caroline Montague, is felt by their younger relatives.  Benvolio and Romeo learn of a Capulet party that evening, which they might be able to gate-crash.  Romeo agrees to this as Rosaline, with whom he is madly in love, is attending. They meet their friend Mercutio, who is able to get them into to the party. Romeo takes ecstasy, and the effects of the drug and the party overwhelm him.  On his way to the restroom, Romeo meets Juliet, and the two instantly fall in love, both unaware of who the other is. Tybalt spots Romeo and vows to kill him for trespassing into his family’s home.

Despite these different setups, West Side Story and Romeo + Juliet  remain true to the original in most key respects, with death, misunderstandings and fatal fights slowly ensuring things will come to a ‘sticky end’.  We watch these ‘new’ versions, already knowing that the path of this love affair, will be shaped by family tensions and circumstances beyond the control of either lover.  No matter: the power of the story ensures we remain entranced.

Mary Renault does the same.  The legend of Theseus, the Minotaur, and the Labyrinth is at the centre of many stories, and a basis ripe for retelling for a contemporary audience.  It is impossible to go past Cretan King Minos and his wife Pasiphae, who fell in love with a white bull; how her husband’s architect, Daedalus, built a cow-like contrivance in which Pasiphae crouched to fulfill her desire; and how a child, half bull and half human, Asterion or the Minotaur, was born to the queen.  A  “Labyrinth” is built to imprison the Minotaur, who craved meat and demanded human victims.  In the original story Minos’s daughter, Ariadne, betrayed her half-brother by showing the Athenian prince, Theseus, how to negotiate the Labyrinth and kill the monster.   As the relentless logic of a tragedy continued, Theseus abandoned Ariadne and married Ariadne’s sister, Phaedra, who, tragically, fell in love with Theseus’s son as a result of  an earlier entanglement. It’s quite a story.

Mary Renault is a compelling story-teller.  She takes the myth, changes it in some critical and exciting ways.  She offers an eminently  believable historical setting.  Moreover, by subtly changing the fantastical elements in the original concerning monsters and the appearances of gods, she presents us with an archaeologically and anthropologically plausible story, a version of what really happened that was to develop into the myth.  It’s a ‘tour de force’.

1993 – Angels in Australia.

One of the joys of life is to experience worlds beyond your own.  I don’t mean looking at the universe, although that is profound in a different sense.  Rather it is experiencing another world through a book, a play, or an opera.  Music, the visual arts and literature can take you away from your day-to-day life, offering a window into other lives, experiences and emotions.  I can, and often do, spend hours listening to music or reading a novel, sometimes reaching the end of a book with a shock:  time has passed, and I have been in another place, among people who, briefly, had been as real as those in my normal existence, sometimes even more involving and demanding.  Not just a shock, but a compelling desire to return:  surely the author has written another book, taking those lives further, even if it’s been a detective novel and the murderer has been caught.  That can’t be the end, there must be more!

Among those wonderful, thrilling and emotionally demanding experiences, theatre holds a special place.  Now the story takes place in front of you, with flesh and blood people, often so close it seems you are with them in the same room.  Yes, I love falling under the spell of theatre.  There have been many times I have sat in a darkened theatre and been transported for a couple of hours or longer, witnessing lives unfold, tragedies develop, living through joy, disaster and heartbreak.  Great staging and great actors create magic.  Sometimes I have been so immersed that I have had to sit for a minute as I slowly re-enter the world around me.  At the end of a production of Peter Weiss’s Marat Sade (aka The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade), performed at the 1990 Adelaide Festival, I sat for at least two minutes at the end, stunned by the SA State Theatre Company production.  I wasn’t alone.  Not only were others in the audience as totally absorbed as I was, but I saw an actor so deeply embedded in her role she was unable to participate in the usual cast acknowledgement with her colleagues:  the play was over, but on stage she was still one of the asylum inmates.

When I saw that play, I had no idea as to what I was about to witness, and it has remained one of my most unforgettable experiences.  Equally extraordinary, and again in a way I could not have anticipated, was an evening at the Russell Street Theatre in Melbourne in late 1993.  I was a regular subscriber to seasons put on by the Melbourne Theatre Company.  The Russell Street Theatre was old, somewhat out of place among the modern corporate offices and hotels.  I had been there several times before, and entered looking forward to another professionally presented play, albeit something modern and about which I knew nothing.  No curtains shrouding the stage, there was a bed, some furniture, and it looked a little unfinished, as if the set designer and stagehands hadn’t been able to complete their work.  Slightly odd?  Normally I would have read the programme at this point, but the play was about to begin, and moments later, Angels in America began.  This was confronting, brilliant and disturbing, magical-realist theatre at its best.  Like many others in the audience, I remained in my seat at the end, not applauding, but simply transfixed by the experience.

To put that evening in context, I was aware of AIDS and the havoc it had wreaked in many communities, especially among gay men.  However, that knowledge was, to use a theatre phrase, ‘through a glass darkly’.  I was living in Australia, and in that somewhat isolated place, AIDS seemed rather distant, even though one of the early centres was St Kilda, not far from the central business district.  The truth of the matter is I was the one who was rather isolated from much of what was happening.  Tony Kushner’s play quickly changed that.

Angels in American, subtitled ‘A Gay Fantasia on National Themes’, was a complex play about AIDS and homosexuality in the USA, reflecting on events in the preceding decade.  The play is in two parts, Millennium Approaches, and Perestroika (the latter was finished in 1993).  Certainly complex, as there were parts for angels and ghosts as well as the main characters of the story, each actors played more than one role, and the set was deliberately incomplete.  Many years later I read Kushner’s views on the staging: “The plays benefit from a pared-down style of presentation, with scenery kept to an evocative and informative minimum. … I recommend rapid scene shifts (no blackouts!), employing the cast as well as stagehands in shifting the scene. This must be an actor-driven event. … The moments of magic … are to be fully imagined and realized, as wonderful theatrical illusions – which means it’s OK if the wires show, and maybe it’s good that they do.”  We are so blasé about this approach to staging thirty years later it is hard  to convey what a shock it was back then.

That night, I was about to see Millennium Approaches, directed by Neil Armfield, who later established Company B at Sydney’s Belvoir Street Theatre, which with Melbourne’s Playbox Theatre drove new directions in theatrical productions.  Armfield had seen the play in the US, and his production closely followed the original.  I was stunned, so immersed in what was happening, I don’t remember any interval breaks.  I checked:  there were two!  It’s possibly the play of the decade:  if you haven’t seen it, a 2003 HBO miniseries version is available, directed by Mike Nichols, with a stellar cast including Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson and several other outstanding actors.  It’s still amazing.

Briefly, if you don’t know the story, Millennium Approaches is set in the Reagan years in New York in the latter half of 1985 and early 1986.  It centres around Louis Ironson, and his lover Prior Walter, who has AIDS.  As Prior’s illness worsens, Louis becomes unable to cope and abandons Prior.  Working in the same office as Louis is Joe, whose wife has become a drug addict.  Joe and Louis begin an affair, while Roy, Joe’s boss, discovers he is dying from AIDS.  Meanwhile Prior begins hearing an angelic voice telling him to prepare for her arrival and receives visits from a pair of ghosts who claim to be his ancestors, and who inform him he is a prophet.  Prior, and we in the audience, do not know if these visitations are caused by an emotional breakdown or if they are real. Enough?  I did say it was complex, and it come to a crashing conclusion at the end of the play.  I can’t even begin to summarise the key plot elements of Perestroika, the second part of Angels in America, in which the ravages of AIDS work their way through the group, and somewhere on the periphery, the Berlin Wall falls.

I don’t want to spoil the story.  If you haven’t seen the plays, you should; if you have, you will know that it’s like a magical-realist novel.  Despite angels and ghosts, it makes compelling sense.  However, it is also a work in progress.  I have little doubt that Kushner wrote it to explain that the AIDS crisis was still unfolding, as was still the case in the early 1990s, with more to be understood and resolved.  Despite its outdated view, (AIDS exclusive to homosexuality and the gay community), Angels in America offers an unsettling window into people in a pandemic, relevant today as we are confronting the ravages of COVID-19.  I don’t want to claim too much.  Angels in America was a great production when I saw it in Melbourne, and remained so, little changed, when made into a film.  By that I mean I doubt it is a play for the ages, but it was a great play play at the time; a recent revival in Melbourne acknowledged that.  That’s rather different from talking about a stunning interpretation of a masterpiece.  At the risk of sounding  like an old-fashioned white Anglo-Saxon male (which I am!), this isn’t a Hamlet or a Lear.  Those are plays that can be staged anew countless times, and their underlying story transmuted into contemporary settings and situations.

Perhaps this is what fascinates me about Angels in America.  For me, and for the early 1990s, it was a compelling and unforgettable experience.  As much in evidence of my ignorance, Kushner thrust the complexities of the gay community, drag, American health care, and the politics of the 1980s all into the limelight.  Theatrical tricks and clever staging served to make the same point:  ‘Wake up, the world is changing’!’  It was, and Tony Kushner made certain I realised.  He also did an excellent job of pushing homosexuality, the horror of illness, and the confusions of love in front of a sheltered heterosexual male

The image of the angel is a strong one in Kushner’s play.  Without detracting from the story, I can mention that the second part of the play ends with some of the characters gathering before the Angel of the Waters statue in the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, to discuss the fall of the Soviet Union and what the future might hold.  Earlier in the play an Angel brings a message for mankind to ‘stop moving!’, articulating the belief that ‘if man ceases to progress, Heaven will be restored’.  I can’t help but believe that Kushner was also influenced by the concept of ‘our better angel’.  Apparently, the phrase ‘better angel’ is from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 144 “The better angel is a man right fair” (although unfortunately he followed that with “The worser spirit a woman colored ill” in the next line!).  More to the point, for a US citizen, it appears in Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address, which concluded:  “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

This is at the core of so much theatre.  What we see played out in front of us is men and women battling events and relationships while attempting to hang on to the better angels of their nature or succumbing to the temptations of those opposing and malevolent dark angels.  Certainly, the plays I remember are the ones where the playwright gives us the opportunity to live through the emotional lives and psychology of the characters, even if the plots are relatively prosaic.  Just think of the simple story of Othello, in which a guy is tricked into believing his wife is unfaithful and kills her, but around that tale hangs a compelling account of how people misunderstand, are misled, and are goaded into irreversible, fateful actions.

Kushner’s views about the staging of Angels in America reiterated an important but familiar truth:  he wanted it to be a “pared-down style of presentation, with scenery kept to an evocative and informative minimum”.  Just so.  We know this is a play, the setting is artificial, and our focus is on the people and what they have to say.  I still recall a Bell Shakespeare production of Hamlet, back in 1991, in a tent.  Like every other member of the audience, I didn’t notice as I was completely absorbed by John Bell and the other actors.  Turning Hamlet into a ‘realistic’ film often robs the play of its force.  Indeed, much as I like the HBO film of Angels in America, that Melbourne Theatre Company production was at least as involving, and did so without the star-power the film version included.

Novels and plays offer very different experiences.  When I am reading an outstanding book, even a good one, I inhabit the world the author has created.  Carefully delineated characters and settings leave me with ample room to imagine this territory into which I’ve been invited.  Sometimes the author sets the events in places I know.  I’ve just read a murder mystery partially set in Cambridge, referring to streets and places I recall with the pleasure of familiarity, but even in this case, I am still allowed plenty of space to ‘fill in’ details as I read.

Indeed, I wonder what you do when offered the chance to watch a film or television series based on works by an author you know and love.  I find it’s a dilemma.  If what’s on offer is a version of a book I’ve already read, then I can watch the visual version, switching it on while making the assumption that it will be similar – but not the same as – the version I have read.  It’s as if I am reading a familiar story, but this is a version that is pleasantly new and different.  My only rule is that I am always determined to read or reread the book first, because I know once I see the film the characters have been filled in for me, the settings made concrete.  I have been working through P D James series of murder investigations by Adam Dalgleish recently, for the third or fourth time, but, having seen the television series, now I find it hard not to see Dalgleish as portrayed by Roy Marsden.  He wasn’t the right person to suit my imagination, and I was far more comfortable with Martin Shaw for the last two in the series (how confusing to have two different actors!).  Too late:  after the first few episodes Roy Marsden was Dalgleish, and Martin Shaw appeared an interloper.  It’s for that reason that if an upcoming film is based on a book I haven’t read, I want to read the book first, so my enjoyment of the story isn’t shaped by the actors and the settings that are used.

Of course, that leaves the third possibility, which is that this is based on a familiar character but involves a plot that hasn’t appeared in a book.  This proved to be a continuing challenge when the television series based on the murder investigations by Peter Robinson’s Inspector Banks began to drift further and further away from the novels.  I liked Banks, and I enjoyed the first three seasons, but as time went on, I lost enthusiasm:  it wasn’t because I didn’t like some of the episodes, but this was no longer the Banks I had come to know and love.  Right now, I am facing the same dilemma over the various seasons of Shetland, based on Ann Cleeves’ books.  So far, the portrayal of Jimmy Perez by Douglas Henshaw has worked so well I am happy to be travelling down a different path from the books, but I wonder for how many more seasons that will last?

I suppose the truth is that all novels have a magical-realism element to them.  Clearly, that doesn’t mean all novels contain angels, ghosts or other imagined creatures (although I should admit I am fond of many that include witches and the like). What I mean is that the novel is by its nature magical:  it creates a world, people, events, that have never existed, and yet which can seem as real as the physical world that surrounds us.

Are the better angels of our nature sufficient?  Perhaps we need more.  Legislation helps.  In the US, this was the year Clinton put Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Supreme Court:  perhaps she wasn’t an angel, but she certainly sought to pursue what she saw as our better nature.  One thing is certain.  Angel or not, we need more RBGs as judges to keep the focus on what matters, free of ideological distortions and pedantic literalism.

Some other evidence of our better nature in 1993 comes from Australia.  Following the High Court’s Mabo ruling in 1992, the Native Title Act was passed into law at the end of the year, in order to “provide a national system for the recognition and protection of native title and  for its co-existence with the national land management system”.  The Act established processes to “determine where native title exists, how future activity impacting upon native title may be undertaken, and to provide compensation where native title is impaired or extinguished, giving Indigenous Australians who hold native title rights and interests, or who have made a native title claim, the right to be consulted and, in some cases, to participate in decisions about activities proposed to be undertaken on the land”.  Once the Act was passed, in 1993 the Australian Government began to provide funding to help resolve native title issues.  It seems there were some ‘better angels’ to be found in Australia establishing rights for indigenous Australians, even if they were 205 years late.  Who could have imagined we would find Angels in Australia?