Get Me To the Ark on Time: Children of Eden at Danbury’s Richter Park

David Begelman

 

Stephen Schwartz’s two-act musical Children of Eden (with a book by John Caird)is an enormously popular show in community productions. After a forgettable opening on the London stage, a Broadway debut seemed unlikely. The show has an enormous cast, and production costs in 1991 made it a risky gamble at that time, given its initial poor showing overseas.

All the same, the show has always been a popular one on the local level (including churches and synagogues), although its attraction probably springs from another source entirely. It only looks like an updated version of Old Testament themes. Actually, its musical spin on Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Noah and his brood strikes a more familiar chord than the elemental stuff of scripture, modernized or not. Its characters seem more like our own family members, than they do the archetypal figures of the Bible.

For starters, God is called simply “Father” by the errant Adam (played by Marc Fanning) and Eve (played by Lauren Romeo), while their expulsion from the Garden of Eden seems more like the product of a divine snit than it does a heavenly lesson for the sin of disobedience. And far from accepting Father’s payback in a duly remorseful way, Adam and Eve carry on as if they were indefinitely grounded from internet access by an arbitrary parent. When pressed for an explanation for their expulsion, Father lamely replies, “I have my reasons”—as if he were refusing to own up to actually not having any at all.

In Children of Eden then, Mr. Schwartz seems to be depicting the foibles of modern families, rather than the moral lessons of the stern God of the Old Testament.

The trope is even more apparent in the second act of the musical. When it comes to Noah (Ted Schwartz), his wife (Stacey Snyder), and their three sons, Shem (Stephen Papallo), Ham (Brian Bremmer), and Japheth (Jacob Eventoff), interactions not only become contentious flash-points, they approximate tantrums, as if biblical stories were being morphed into dysfunctional family dynamics.

Even God and Noah finally capitulate to the wishes of Japheth to marry Yonah (Katie Cummings), a woman cursed by the generational mark of Cain. The concession to Japheth seems no more weighty than a contemporary parent tolerating a son who wants to marry a woman with a disagreeable array of tattoos.

The production of the show in the 25th summer of Musicals at Richter had its strengths and weaknesses. Vocally, group numbers like “Generations” and “In the Beginning,” sung by leading characters and Storytellers (who functioned like a Greek chorus) were accomplished.
Walt Cramer as “Father” had a sturdy baritone voice which, while obviously fortified by operatic training, was a bit compromised by a noticeable vibrato. The outstanding vocal number was by Stacey Snyder in Mama Noah’s “Ain’t It Good,” a gospel-style song served well by Ms. Snyder’s belting and energetic style. Other soloists had a tendency to be off pitch, especially in the higher registers.

One of Choreographer Matthew Farina’s clever touches was to represent the evil snake in the Garden of Eden as an undulating line of five performers attired in black derbys and red vests (Annie Bryson, Allie Bukowski, Anna DeMasi, Caitlin Keeler, and Stephen Michaelsson). The device was imaginative, especially when actors synchronized their movements. Mr. Schwartz’s snake (the devil in reptilian form) was not above scoring some points still troubling theologians. He teasingly remarks, “If God made all this, who made God?” Snakes can get under your skin when not intent on shedding their own.

In this reviewer’s opinion, Director Minor and choreographer Farina both missed the opportunity to provide group staging with a more inventive touch than they did. Members of the Storyteller’s group of 26 performers and the 9 actors of the Children’s Ensemble seemed uncomfortably static most of the time. More attention to the creative movement of performers in large groups might have benefited the production.
 
It should be noted that the deluge around Noah’s ark may be a close second to Danbury, Connecticut, when it comes to the weather. “The rain it raineth every day,” said Shakespeare, and July, 2009 in our state is no exception. The area seems to be running neck and neck with the 40 days and 40 nights downpour in Noah’s era in Genesis. So area carpenters, get hopping to build the big vessel. And citizens, start rounding up animals in pairs in the event of the worst case scenario.
Children of Eden opened July 30 and runs until August 15, 2009 at Musicals at Richter, 100 Aunt Hack Road, Danbury, CT, 06811. Performances are on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 8:30 PM.  Tickets are $21 for adults, $16 for seniors, and $13 for Students and Children. Thet can be purchased by calling the box office at 203.748.6873, or online at info@MusicalsatRichter.org.     

 

Rabbit Hole at New Milford’s Theatre Works

 

David Begelman

 

“Rabbit hole,” according to the dictionary, is “a bizarre or difficult state or situation.” The phrase comes from the plight of Lewis Carroll’s character, Alice (of Wonderland and Looking Glass fame). After dropping down a hole, Alice describes her ensuing experiences as “curiouser and curiouser.”

 

The same might be said about David Lindsay-Abaire’s drama Rabbit Hole, currently being staged by Theatre Works. Winning the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for drama, it wasn’t even nominated for that award. It became a dark horse candidate for the prize only after judges were at a loss in selecting a winner among dramas actually nominated.

The playwright in personal interviews has downplayed differences among his plays. Yet Rabbit Hole is a cut apart from the others. Fuddy Meers (1999) is about a woman who can’t remember yesterdays; Wonder of the World (2000) is about a wife who has to radically reorganize her life after learning about a husband’s dark secret; and Kimberly Akimbo (2000) deals with a 16 year-old with a disorder causing her to age rapidly, a sort of reverse Benjamin Button.

 

Rabbit Hole is about ordinary people in an ordinary, yet tragic, situation: the accidental death of a child. The playwright considers it to be the result of a challenge to him to author a play about the thing that frightened him the most. One suspects the result was a fantasy spun around what most of us envision as a worse—if not the worst—case family scenario. Mr. Lindsay-Adaire is also a parent.

 

The drama has six characters, all of whose lives revolve around the sudden death of Danny, the 4 year-old son of Becca (played poignantly by Jackie Decho-Holm) and Howie (whose escalating emotion and conflicts over the event are impressively handled by Kevin Sosbe). The boy was accidentally run over by a car driven by Jason (a sorrowful and touchingly contrite Rob Onorato), who attempts to assuage his guilt by expressing his heartfelt sorrow to the parents.

 

Other characters in the drama in one way or another touch upon the same theme. Izzy (in a fetching and humorous portrayal by Heather Nicholson as the dysfunctional, and occasionally combative, but insightful sister), announces to Becca that she has recently become pregnant, news that is bound to underscore the latter’s sense of loss.

 

Little Danny’s grandmother, the sometime intrusive Nat (played with just the right cocktail of seeming insensitivity masking inner grief, by Sonnie Osborne) is a character who repeats the motif. She too has lost a son, Arthur, 11 years prior to her daughter’s loss, and her frequent asides to Becca, while ham-fisted on the surface, come from a sympathetic core. She feels that Becca will eventually recover from the tragedy—quicker, if she would only knuckle down in ways her mother recommends.

 

Ms. Decho-Holm and Mr. Hosbe are impressive in the mounting conflict they experience over things that remind each of them of their son Danny. Howie grows furious over what he interprets as Becca’s intention to erase Danny’s memory, an anger fueled by her withdrawing sexually from him since the accident. She wishes to place the home up for sale, get rid of the dog, and give away Danny’s toys and clothes. She also accidently erases a video of Danny, an act Howie feels is a like-minded effort to nullify the memory of their son.

 

Rabbit Hole, as a drama about a family becoming unglued, is constructed well. It develops dramatic conflict with an appropriately paced momentum, and has the virtue of reechoing different versions of the same theme of loss among its characters. Nonetheless, it tends to radiate a sense of the expectable in scenarios of grief and loss, as if the playwright was fashioning an embodiment of what we all would inevitably go through in similar situations. The play has a tendency to be formulaic in precisely this way, although there is no denying Mr. Lindsay-Abaire’s talent as a craftsman.

 

Director Susan Pettibone was the guiding and accomplished director of the production, while Erik D. Diaz’s scenic design (with the capable assistance Scott Wyshynski’s team) was perfectly suited to the single-set idea of Rabbit Hole. Richard Pettibone’s multi-tasking as producer, builder, light and sound designer, and photographer enhanced production values already in plentiful evidence. Incidental music by John Gromada was also the sound track in the Broadway production of the play.

 

Rabbit Hole opened on February 20, 2009, and continues until March 14, 2009 at New Milford’s Theatre Works, at 5 Brookside Avenue, New Milford, CT. Curtain time is 8:00 PM on Fridays and Saturdays, with a 2:00 PM matinee on March 8. Tickets for all shows are $20.00 for reserved seating. Reservations can be made online at www.theatreworks.us, or by calling the box office at (860)-350-6863.

Rolling in the Aisles with Ayckbourn: Season’s Greetings
at New Milford’s TheatreWorks

 

David Begelman

 

Playwrights aren’t usually as prolific as Alan Ayckbourn. Nor are many of them as successful at the box office. Witness the comedies that seem to tumble out of the Brit’s output of over seventy plays, including Absurd Person Singular (1975), the popular trilogy The Norman Conquests (1973), Woman in Mind (1985), or the more recent Private Fears in Public Places (2004).

Ayckbourn’s all over the place, from a being notable presence on the other side of the Atlantic in London, Scarborough, and the Royal Shakespeare Company, to Broadway (where he is in the habit of collecting Tony awards). He’s been translated into over 35 languages, and seems to be on a creative binge with no end in sight. In a word, he’s unstoppable.

Some of his comedies, like Season’s Greetings, are less attractive when read than when they are performed. So they’re on another level of enjoyment when seasoned troupers do their Ayckbourn thing in real time. Performances of other literature (Shakespeare comes to mind) are often judged by the way they rise to the majesty of the written drama, whereas many of Ayckbourn’s comedies are fully realized only when staged.

The current production of Season’s Greetings at TheatreWorks is no exception. You can read the script and come away convinced it’s exceedingly cornball—until you see how a cast of savvy performers does its thing. Then hilarity takes over, as if the really funny aspects of the show on paper had been playing hide and seek.

Director Glenn R. Couture’s production of the Ayckbourn comedy is a delight, and for several reasons. Its cast of capable performers work extremely well together. A highlight of their frenetic interactions are separate vignettes unfolding on the stage at the same time.

The disparate types gathering for an annual Christmas Eve’s celebration somewhere in England include Belinda (played by Tracy Hurd with a mounting sense of sexual longing and frustration at keeping her guests and husband in tow) and hubby Neville (played by Viv Berger with a composure oddly out of sync with the frantic goings on in his home). He’s obviously under the thumb of his spouse, preferring to disregard her compromising position with a young aspiring novelist, Clive.

Then there is Harvey (played by Matt McQuail with a swagger brash enough to let you know that the gladiator has not only arrived, he’s ready for bear with a gun and a 6-inch knife, to boot). Harvey’s an Archie Bunker type addicted to viewing shark attacks and homicides on T.V. He’s wary of Clive whom he suspects is out to burglarize the home. Bernard (played delightfully with nervous impatience by Philip Cook) undertakes to entertain family members with an annual puppet show that has too many fumbled moments for a smallish audience, including the bellowing and captious Harvey, to find  enjoyable.

Bernard’s puppet show is assisted by Pattie, the very pregnant wife of Eddy. She is played by Mikki Harkin, who is successful at portraying the put upon spouse. She irritates Bernard by handing him the wrong sequence of the Three Little Pigs who do battle with the Big Bad Wolf in his puppet show. Eddy (played hilariously by Tom Libonate) often seems astonished by the goings-on at the Christmas Eve party—when   he is not retreating into his X-Man comic book to escape his wife’s hectoring or the zaniness of the goings on swirling around him.

Phyllis (played uproariously by Janice Connor) becomes progressively inebriated after a series of accidents requiring first aid while cooking a leg of lamb in the kitchen. Coming on strong to Clive, a young novelist (played disarmingly by Nicholas Pollifrone), she leaves Christmas presents in disarray before collapsing on the stairs to the upper bedrooms of the home.

Lastly, Rachel (played with delicious vulnerability by Alison Bernhardt) has a hard time with the sexual challenges of her relationship with novelist Clive. He, in turn, is drawn amorously to Belinda, and the two are caught horizontal on a couch by others at the end of the First Act. But not before their dalliance is interrupted by blaring music and Christmas tree lights suddenly activated by a remote control.

The script reads like a farce or a less than polished soap opera that pulls out all stops. But the performance of a well integrated cast in the New Milford production delivers something more. Even the aptly simulated British accents of all actors enhance the humor of the show.
The backstage production crew of Renee Purdy, Scott Wyshynski, Richard Pettibone, John Bolster, and Jon Ross contributed to the success of the comedy, but the biggest accolades belong to Director Glenn R. Coutoure for bringing it all off with style. If the audience reaction on opening night is any indication, Season’s Greetings at TheatreWorks is a resounding success.

Season’s Greetings opened at New Milford’s TheatreWorks, 5 Brookside Avenue, New Milford, CT, just off Route 202, on December 4th and runs until January 2. Curtain time is 8:00 PM on Fridays and Saturdays, and Sunday matinees are at 2:00 PM. Tickets may be purchased by calling the box office at 860.360.6963 or online at WWW.THEATREWORKS.US.

 

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Locker Room Tales: That Championship Season at Westport Country Playhouse

 

David Begelman

 

In Jason Miller’s 1973 Pulitzer Prize winning drama, That Championship Season, five men have at each other like a swarm of furious bees too attached to avoid stinging each other relentlessly. Except the occasion is the reunion of four former basketball players and their coach. Their team won the 1957 Pennsylvania State championship twenty years earlier.

The four include the inept mayor of a small town, George (played by Robert Clohessy), whose notable achievement was to provide the local zoo with an elephant which promptly dies shortly after delivery. Then there is James (played by Lou Liberatore), a junior high school principal soured on his job, who has been George’s campaign manager. Phil (Skipp Sudduth) is a wheeler-dealer, a philandering strip-miner who lives in the fast lane, drives expensive cars, and who is secretly wavering in his support of George’s campaign, while Tom (played by Tom Nells), who has missed three reunions of the group in the past, is an inebriate with a flair for acerbic one-liners. Tom denies he has a drinking problem, observing, “I get all the booze I want.”

Finally, there is Coach (played by John Doman), the titular head of the group, a self-styled sage who goads the others into holding on to past glory that is the glue binding them together.
Coach is given to high sounding speeches about the value of aggressive manhood and dirty politics. He spews ethnic slurs with abandon, and extols the virtues of such figures as Senator Joseph McCarthy and Father Coughlin, a radio personality who railed against the Jewish influence in national affairs.

Ironically enough, basketball, among the most popular pastimes in suburban high schools of small communities of the era, was also a sport most resistant to integration at the time of the play’s action.

Although much older than the others, Coach is not above putting on a display of push-ups for them, despite the fact that he is occasionally wracked with the pain of stomach adhesions resulting from an operation. His advice to the others takes the form of pep-talks, pumped up as if he were back in the good old days of shouting orders to his team in play on the court.
Mr. Miller’s script may have enjoyed more popularity when it was originally produced at the Public Theater in 1972. Today, the macho swaggering of Coach and his underlings might well strike some of us as a bit over the top as stage-setting for the conflicts among its five characters. After all, the Archie Bunker mentality has long since forfeited any claim to a sympathetic hearing.

Broadsides in the play against Jews, Poles, Italians, African-Americans, and women, even while expressing the attitudes of fictional characters, are delivered like cannon shots. Audiences in all likelihood wince at these salvos, peppered as they are throughout the script. One example would be the fun George and Tom have recalling the “humping” of an epileptic girl in the former’s garage. George gleefully reminds Tom she was retarded, not epileptic. A hilarious moment for them; hardly one for any audience with a modicum of feeling for the less fortunate. 
When George, sick to his stomach at one point in the play, vomits into the trophy symbolizing the team’s past victory, a metaphor is born. Things are not what they seem to be under the surface of bravado and glory symbolized by the trophy; they are considerably worse than imagined.

Coach’s avuncular stance provides the cover under which the club hides its moral failings. His exhortations, never far from bullying, are seemingly the only antidote to the bickering and back-stabbing that breaks out among its members when freed from its seductive cloud of unknowing. Tom sees this better than the others, although through his alcoholic haze. As in the later O’Neill plays, it is the fiction that keeps the characters going.

Director Mark Lamos has his five performers take their respective roles head-on, and there is little in the way of repose between clashes that would serve to build up to them in a more nuanced way. As a result, all five characters are so broadly delineated, traces of caricature inevitably creep in. Yet it is often hard to determine how much of this lies in the script or individual portrayals. In the current production, action is perhaps a bit too fast-paced for comfort, while the show seems to lack the innovative touch we are accustomed to in Mr. Lamos’ previous projects.

There is also a lot of milling around when characters are not doing push-ups (Coach), falling down stairs (Tom), or being felled by a roundhouse punch (James). It’s as though dialogue had to be delivered standing up, despite there being some pretty comfortable furniture adorning David Gallo’s impressive set (and one faithful to original script).

Playwright Miller’s exposé of the American myth of rugged masculinity, sports mania, intolerance, and Vince Lombardi pieties may have a point. But it is old hat for most of us nowadays.

That Championship Season opened at the Westport Country Playhouse, 25 Powers Court, Westport, CT 06880 off Route 1, on August 25, 2009 and runs until September 12, 2009. Tickets range from $35 to $55. Students and educators are eligible for 50% discounts. Groups of 10 or more save up to 30%. Tickets may be purchased by calling the box office at (203)-227-4177, or toll-free at 1-888-927-7529 on the Internet at www.westportplayhouse.org

 

Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution

 

David Begelman

 

            Ang Lee’s most recent film Lust, Caution is a thriller about lives interwoven during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in World War II. It was adapted from Eileen Chang’s short story by scriptwriters Wang Hui Ling and James Schamus, and the dialogue is in Mandarin, with English subtitles, like the director’s masterpiece, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Mr. Lee is not always an accomplished master of cinema; witness his comic book extravaganza gone amok, The Hulk, and the overrated Brokeback Mountain. (Substitute two straight people for lovers who take to the mountains to consummate their extramarital fling, and you have the ordinary effort the film is without the gay cachet glorifying it as far more.) 

Lust, Caution concerns a group of resistance fighters who target a Chinese collaborator, Mr. Yee, played by the popular Asian star, Tony Leung. Yee is also the resident chief of the secret police. The activists undertake the nerve-wracking business of dispatching him. Some of them are also members of a student theater group, and while they take orders from above, it is clear none of them is an old hand at the killing game. Putting Mr. Yee away not only promises to be a daunting challenge, it taxes their talent for undercover theatrics. To accomplish the mission, the group enlists the aid of Wong Chia Chi, played by the strikingly beautiful Tang Wei in her film debut. A master plan is hatched for her to seduce Yee in order to finish him off when he is at his most vulnerable. Having framed the premise of the film, how does it fare on balance?

Lust, Caution is overly long, principally because it is front-loaded with bootless narrative. Consequently, its first section idles mercilessly. There is little in scenes of women gathering in Yee’s home other than the “laughter that tinkles among the tea cups,” and Mah Jong. If Ang Lee imagined that the annoyingly protracted cloche was build up to what eventually ensues, he leaves us clueless. Then the film takes off, hitting you right between the eyes.

Tee corners Wong Chia Chi in a secret rendezvous and proceeds to rape her. The stone-faced official’s viciousness is fueled by the tensions of being a collaborator and being a secret police torturer. But most of all, it gets unleashed because of the loss of control he experiences in allowing this particular woman to unsettle him like no other, bringing down his defenses. But what is the cautionary tale told in Lust, Caution?

The gymnastic sex scenes between the two principal characters undergo  transformations in both directions. Lust morphs into something else entirely.  It is difficult to determine when, in the ongoing scenario of steamy sexuality, Wong Chia Chi stops acting or when Yee becomes enamored of her in another, more significant way. There are scenes in which this attachment is highlighted: Wong Chia Chi sings to Yee at a Geisha house on an occasion he has scheduled for more than sexual purposes. (Japanese Geishas cater to male sensibility on many more levels than the purely erotic.) He also arranges to give her a six carat diamond ring as a token of commitment he is unable to suppress. And Wong Chia Chi cannot bring herself to follow through on the plan to kill her lover. At the eleventh hour, she signals him that his life is in danger, permitting him to escape the assassination attempt. Her tender mercies result in all conspirators, herself included, being rounded up and sent to a quarry to be executed. Mr. Yee morosely returns to his official duties, only to learn that he too has been under suspicion because of the relationship with his activist lover.

The film won the Golden Lion Prize at the Venice Film Festival, and appears to have been better received by European than American critics. It received a NC-17 (no one under 17 admitted, even when accompanied by an adult) by The Motion Picture Association of America. This gatekeeper is ever ready to shield the youth of Athens from corruption—except for the insalubrious fare given a free pass when its theme is aggressive carnage and bloodletting, rather than sexuality.

There are stretches of the film that are wonderfully handled, both in terms of the acting, narrative lines, and Ang Lee’s skilled eye for the polished frame. Exquisite street scenes are an additional blessing, as they were in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the acting in this film is uniformly accomplished. The director dodged questions about whether the sex scenes were or were not simulated, a wariness perhaps supplying an answer to the question. Parts of Lust, Caution may be late in coming; but they are far from too little when they finally arrive.   

      

“Amour:” Life, Love and the Unawarded Oscar

 

AT THE MOVIES

With

David Begelman

 

“Things will go on as they have done up until now. They’ll go from bad to worse. Things will go on, and then one day it will all be over.”

So intones Georges, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant, in the searing film about the ravages of old age, “Amour.” The actor looks much older than he did when his French star began to rise playing opposite Brigitte Bardot in Roger Vadim’s “And God Created Woman” or in other films by Bertolucci, Rohmer, Truffaut, not to mention Claude LeLouch’s art-house classic, “A Man and a Woman.” He plays one of the three central characters in Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke’s 2012 movie.

The other two are Isabelle Huppert and Emmanuele Riva. We save the best for last.

Huppert, the brilliant actress who has appeared in over 90 film and T.V. productions since the early seventies, was one of four women who won the Best Actress Award at Cannes more than once, and one of two who accomplished the same feat at the Venice film festival. This reviewer was flattened in his seat by her performance in the 1978 “La Dentellière” (The Lacemaker), for which she received the 1978 César Award. The accolades keep coming. She took to the stage in Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler,” and has been designated by one critic as “arguably the world’s greatest screen actress.”

Emmanuele Riva has appeared in 18 films, including Alain Resnais’ “Hiroshima mon amour.” Her starring role in “Amour” is the most recent for her, the oldest woman (86 years) to have been nominated for an Oscar. That she didn’t receive it for her portrayal of Anne in this film may tell you more about the standards of tinseltown than it ever could about the actress’s performance. She plays the role of a woman stricken with a stroke and dementia, a characterization greeted with stony silence on the part of the audience attending the Bantam movie house the day this reviewer saw the film. The impact of the portrayal was evidently touching and profound.

Anne and Georges are retired pianists. Their story unfolds in an artfully designed series of flashbacks by director Haneke, starting with a scene of Anne lying deceased on a bed, her corpse adorned with flower petals.

Flashbacks involve a scene of both partners attending a concert by one of Anne’s former pupils, a visit to their Parisian apartment by the same student, visits by the couple’s daughter, Eva (Huppert), who remonstrates with Georges about the necessity of placing Anne in a hospital or nursing home given her deteriorating condition, and ministrations by two nurses hired by Georges to care for Anne. He fires the second one (Dinara Drukarova) for treating Anne is a less than acceptable manner, given her compromised condition.

Despite Eva’s entreaties, Georges has promised Anne he will never place her in an institution despite her illness, and his commitment to her as well as his undertaking the onerous responsibility for her care, is the haunting theme of the film.

Some of Haneke’s touches in “Amour” seem at first blush to be redundant, like scenes of Georges attempting to capture a pigeon which has accidentally flown into the apartment. But they symbolically highlight Georges’s feeble attempts to cope with more important challenges posed by Anne’s condition. In a second attempt to corner the pigeon with a blanket, he is seen struggling to rise up clutching the wrapped up bird to his chest.  

“Amour” won the 2012 Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or, not to mention numerous other awards and nominations. If you are looking for astonishing performances by an actress, look no further. Emmanuelle Riva wins, hands down. Ironies in any case abound. Today it is an 86 year-old French actress. Yesterday it was a six year-old with no acting experience at all: Quvenzhane Wallis in “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” Maybe some day Hollywood will prove to be other than clueless. But don’t bank on it. Unlike the heroine of “Amour,” it may need a nursing home—yesterday.

PITFALLS OF MEMORY

To the Editors:

In Oliver Sacks’s otherwise beneficial essay on the ways our memory of the past may mislead us [NYR, February 21], he maintains that such phenomena as “source confusions,” “autoplagiarisms” and “cryptomnesias” document its frailties. What we sometimes consider to be veridical memories of events may be no such thing and may, in fact, be false. He references the disastrous legacy of the so-called “recovered memory” movement in psychology, aimed at uncovering repressed memories of early sexual abuse. Unfortunately, it is still with us. Assuring us that we possess no cortical mechanisms for determining the truth or accuracy of our recollections, Sacks goes on to underscore the often elusive character of “historical” as opposed to “narrative” truth: what we deem to be past realities may be constructions of our imagination. But then he avers that such aberrations are “relatively rare” and that our memories are for the most part “solid and reliable.”

            You cannot have it both ways. If we lack inborn mechanisms to determine the truth or falsity of our memories, on what basis can we be sure that most of them are, as Sacks insists, reliable? He takes pains to illustrate the vagaries of memory by referring to Freud’s contribution to the subject, indicating that the father of psychoanalysis uncovered “grosser distortions” of memory when he realized that patient accounts of early sexual abuse were “fantasies.” Commentary on the subject in recent years has raised doubts over whether Freud really obtained “reports” or was actually confusing patient memories with interpretations he forced upon them. If the latter, then memory distortion can even assail investigators pioneering the study of the subject. Accordingly, if false memories can infiltrate hallowed corridors of received wisdom, maybe sometimes it’s not better to let sleeping dogmatists lie.

 

D. A. Begelman

New Milford, Connecticut