Saturday David and I attended an interview with Trevor Noah of the Daily Show. We both enjoy watching this program. I especially enjoy seeing it in Chicago since it airs at 10:00 pm rather than 11:00 as it does in the East.
Trevor is a very bright, witty young man who has written a book about his growing up in apparteid South Africa with a black mother and a white father.
This was a part of a book tour he is making throughout the country. He had many amusing and wise things to say about our recent disastrous election, comparing it to politics in South Africa. An interesting afternoon.
Last night we saw King Charles III by Mike Bartlett at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. This play was written, rather oddly, in iambic pentameter and concerns a plot by the real William and Kate to get the Prince of Wales to abdicate in their favor after the death of Queen Elizabeth.
I doubt very much that Her Majesty was amused!
It is difficult to accept a contemporary play about real persons that is written in blank verse with the odd rhyme at the end of an important speech. For one thing we have seen and read about these people for years and this distorted image of them did not ring true.
Possibly behind the scenes this sort of plot is being hatched. I have heard rumors that many in Britain would prefer to skip over Charles in favor of William but I don't think the Government is actually planning to follow this procedure.
The large cast was headed by Robert Bathurst as King Charles III, Kate Skinner as Camilla, Jordan Dean as William, Amanda Drinkall as Catherine, and Alec Manley Wilson as Harry.
The last contemporary play I saw that was in blank verse was The Lady's Not For Burning, by Christopher Fry in 1950. It had a Medieval setting about a witch and starred Richard Burton and Claire Bloom. Fry was a much better poet! I also put on The Coming of Christ by John Masefield (blank verse) with music by Gustave Holst at the Red Bank, NJ Methodist Church in 1958. Also a better poet.
