The Emerging Majority

Broadway Night(s)

We had the chance on Saturday night to catch a performance of the Broadway revival of Boeing Boeing, the French (who knew?) farce about an architect who juggles three fiance who are flight attendants flying in and out of Paris. Based on a 1960's play (and film) the play is headlined by West Wing alum Bradley Whitford, but the night belongs to London stage maven Mark Rylance.

Rylance is hysterical as Robert Lambert, the best friend who arrives in Paris just as the architest's carefully planned liaison are falling apart because of the advent of a new Boeing superliner that makes the turnaround shorter and Bernard's life more com;icated. Completing the cast are four wonderful women including familiar faces Mary McCormack, Gina Gershon, Kathryn Hahn and Christine Baranski. The play consists of scene after scene dealing with the national stereotypes of the women and the sexual mores of the "swinging 60's." The cast does it with such energy and good humor that there is little concern for the potential to offend. Just good clean fun. With the performances of Rylance and McCormack they are nominees for tonight's Tony awards, as well as a slew of other nominees for direction and design and costuming.

One of my favorite theatre experiences of recent years, Tom Stoppard's "Rock N Roll" is also nominated for a number of Tony awards. I saw the London production from the summer of 2007 that was moved en masse to Broadway with Rufus Sewell, Brian Cox and Sinead Cusack. As the central character Jan, Sewell does a strong job following the story of Stoppard's central character from the Soviet invasion of 1968 through the Velvet Revolution and aftermath. The central question in the play revolves around whether politics (Vaclav Havel and Company) or culture (The Plastic People of the Universe) are more important forces struggling against the opression of the post-1968 stalinist state. (Please note...no where is there a discussion of Ronald Reagan or the US military build up of the 1980's.)

For those who aren't aware, Stoppard, the British playwright is actually Czech, whose family left after the communist coup of 1948. This is one of his most personal work. It is a thoroughly enjoyable play which also follows themes of friendship and betrayal, love and loss, and freedom and expression. He cleverly weaves in the music of the era including lots of selections from Pink Floyd. The unfortunate aspect of the play was the short run on Broadway, but the book is available through your favorite bookstore.

40 Years Ago

We are looking back on 40 years of missed opportunities as we reflect on the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. My friend Harold Meyerson has a poignant piece in The Washington Post. Harold reflects from the perspective of a Gene McCarthy backer talking about the opportunity they never had to bring the progressive forces together after the primaries. On the NPR program Fresh Air, Terry Gross has an amazing discussion with Pete Hamill regarding the events at The Ambassador Hotel. Hamill was working on the Kennnedy campaign and reminds us that it was the late director John Frankenheimer who hosted Bobby Kennedy at his home the night before the primary.

If we do the work between now and November then in Senator Obama's stirring words ....we will look back another 40 years from now and say this was the moment. We ended a war, we brought universal health care, we brought dignity back to work...and we brought to life the dream of Bobby Kennedy, the dream that Teddy promised us would not die...has life and breath and depth.

For me, I will give another $50 to Senator Obama and reflect once again on Senator Kennedy's life and work and words.

From a speech at the University of Kansas March, 1968

I think there's more that we can do internally here, I think there's more that we can do in South Vietnam.  I don't think we have to accept the situation, as we have it at the moment.  I think that we can do better, and I think the American people think that we can do better.
     George Bernard Shaw once wrote, "Some people see things as they are and say why?  I dream things that never were and say, why not?"
     So I come here to Kansas to ask for your help.  In the difficult five months ahead, before the convention in Chicago, I ask for your help and for your assistance.  If you believe that the United States can do better.  If you believe that we should change our course of action.  If you believe that the United States stands for something here internally as well as elsewhere around the globe, I ask for your help and your assistance and your hand over the period of the next five months.
     And when we win in November, and when we win in November, and we begin a new period of time for the United States of America - I want the next generation of Americans to look back upon this period and say as they said of Plato: "Joy was in those days, but to live."  Thank you very much.