GOOD CANARY A play written by Zach Helm and directed by John Malkovich at the Rose Theatre, Kingston upon Thames

Good Canary, is a play about drug addiction, its consequences on people’s lives and livelihoods. It is about mental deterioration, driving ambition, the precariousness of literary talent, the consequences of sexual abuse and the dubious amoral world of publishing. A powerfully toxic, dark brew that is destined to take us into the dark side of human nature.

Zach Helm, is known in France , Spain and Mexico for his acclaimed productions of Good Canary directed in each case by John Malkovich. The play has been translated into French and Spanish although first written in English. It is now appearing in Britain for the first time and being produced for the first time in English  at the Rose Theater Kingston. Zach Helm is also known for the film, Mr Magoriums Wonder Emporium. He is renowned as a teacher of drama. He has created a technique called ,”open input drama,” which encourages actors to use experiences from the real world.

Zach Helm with his wife, Kiele Sanchez

John Malkovich is famous for starring in Dangerous Liaisons, Being John Malkovich and starring and performing in over seventy films. He has two Academy Award nominations. He speaks both French and Spanish.

The two main characters are Annie, played by Freya Mavor and Jack, played by Harry Lloyd.

Good Canary, begins with Annie and Jack in their New York apartment. Jack has just had his first novel published and has received a good review by a highly regarded New York Times reviewer. Jack reads the review to Annie who is cynical about it and analyses every phrase for its real meaning not believing it could be good. She paces  about the apartment. The discussion changes.There is a lot of arguing and the free use of the F word. Jack  asks Annie how many pills she has taken. Annie is a drug addict and uses amphetamines to function. References to drugs and the world of drugs underpin this whole play. Annie cleans the apartment continually. The computerized scenery allows the windows she cleans at one stage to shrink or enlarge at will and move about on the wall almost trying to avoid Annie’s manic cleaning attempts. “How many times have you cleaned the apartment today?” Jack asks. “Oh three or four times maybe,” Annie replies as though its normal. There is a scene where her drug dealer,Jeff, played energetically and with an element of nervous energy by Ilan Goodman, comes around. He seems to be a friend of the family. Annie buys two enormous bags of pills. He says he has had to search Manhattan to obtain so much in one go. She pays him $2000 for them. The drug dealer is very nervous about letting her have the drugs. A drug dealer with a heart. A dealer with a conscience. His addiction however is money and he can’t resist selling all these drugs to Annie. He wines about her being careful. He pleads with her to not take them all in one go. This is a joke of course. Annie is not good at rationing her drugs and drugs bought to last a fortnight last four or five days. She says she wants to buy in bulk so she doesn’t have to worry the drug dealer so often and to have easy access to drugs whenever she wants. As well as the bulk buying of drugs Annie also, randomly it seems, buys a large steal red box. The audience is immediately drawn into this dark crazy world that Annie and Jack inhabit.

Its not just drugs that are the problem. We assume that Annie has been sexually abused as a child. At a dinner party with a publishing executive and his wife she even hints that sexual abuse for women is the norm.”So when did you first get raped?” She asked Sylvia the executives wife. She goes on to say that she was nine years old when it first happened to her. We begin to discover the root causes of Annies drug addiction. She seems to crave the abusive behavior she had experienced as a child.

Annie ( Freya Mavor) searching for the drugs that Jack has hidden.

Jack,  buys a small yellow canary in a cage for Annie to look after during the day. He thinks this might give her a focus to help take her mind of drugs. Annie is completely taken by this beautiful little piece of life. She loves it. The canary hangs from a stand on the stage throughout the performance. A computerized text appears on a wall that explains the use of canaries down mines to warn of gas. A canary will visibly weaken and die with the onset of gas in the tunnels. We as the audience think this must be of great significance. Being aware of Annie’s fragility this must be the warning  for Annie’s later precariousness or even demise. However, although the canary is there on the stage virtually throughout the performance its actual significance is forgotten and references to it are no longer made.

In many plays that deal with dark subjects there is dark humour. Zach Helm has put humour into this play but it is intermittent. A more adept playwright would keep an underlying sense of the absurd as a continuous thread throughout a play like this. The scene  where Annie is cleaning the apartment whilst on speed is funny and strange. The scene where she is buying drugs from ,Jeff.her dealer has its light moments. Annie ends up in hospital at one stage because of her attempts to vomit. Jack eventually finds that she has stuffed a hair curler deep down her throat and nearly choked to death. The ridiculousness of it is evident.

Zach Helm has used many playwright’s techniques and strategies. However, they are so obvious it makes much of the play clunky. There are the dramatic pauses, too long at times. I thought the actors had forgotten their lines. We have the theater critic, who every writer is afraid of, because their review can make or break them. The publisher who doesn’t read the books he publishes. He may as well be selling cars as far as he cares. The wife of the wealthy publisher who sits in her expensive high rise Manhattan penthouse and is lonely and is bored with life. These are so obvious techniques, it makes me think that I have seen parts of this play before. 

There is also the matter of computerized text displayed on screens. They provide us with background information at times, for instance explaining the use of canaries in mines. I think modern technology is fine in a play, and I  loved the way projectors and lighting were used to create the scenery in this play but I am not convinced about its use to provide dialogue. This is more appropriate for texts displaying information in museums and galleries perhaps but I am not convinced about its use in a play. The actors spoken dialogue should provide all. There was one other use of computerized text which worried me. There is a tender scene between Jack and Annie. They are holding each other expressing their love.  Their inner thoughts are displayed on screens above their entwined bodies. First Jack’s words appear and then Annie’s. This scene is a prolonged moment. Anybody with poor eyesight might think the play had ended or come to some frozen standstill. Shakespeare would have used a soliloquy spoken to the audience. Voice overs from the actors themselves would have worked much better. The texts displayed above the characters detracted from the dramatic moment.

Jack and Annie with the canary of the title.

 There are moments when we think, why is Jack so dedicated to Annie, he loves her yes, but love can be eroded by a partner living a drug addled existence. Charlie tries to get Jack away from Annie. He sees her as a liability. He tries to persuade Jack to leave Annie at home when Jack attends a party to sign a new  publishing deal. Jack knows that Annie must be there. She is the real author. The audience thinks he is just being admirably loyal to his wife. Annie behaves in a self destructive way at the party.Everybody is shocked and her behaviour appears to have destroyed any chance of a book deal. Charlie, Stuart and Mullholand display  blatant misogyny . Stuart treats his wife badly. We see their marriage self destructing. The men, apart from Jack, all dismiss Annie’s cries for help. Jack is forced to reveal that Annie is the real author to Mullholland. Charlie is informed. The realization that their own existence relies on Annie’s talent , creativity and writing, changes all their outlooks towards her.

 Charlie wants Jack to get Annie to write a second book. Jack can see that Annie's drug habit is getting out of control. The publishers need a follow up novel to the first successful novel.  Jack gets rid of the drugs in the apartment. Annie can’t function. She becomes desperate.  We can think of Dylan Thomas and his drinking or Earnest Hemmingway and his reliance on drink too. The beat poets and writers all took drugs. Ken Keysey and One flew Over The Cookoos nest comes to mind.Annie commits suicide in the apartment when Jack is away. She pours bottle after bottle of  bleach, chrome cleaner, anything she can get her hands on, down her throat. She dies in agonizing convulsions on the floor. It seems that with Annie’s death everybody else’s existence has come to an end too.

Jack is disconsolate sitting in the apartment alone. He sees the red steal box that Annie bought, what seems like ages ago. He manages to get the padlock open. Inside he finds numerous brown paper parcels. As he sits there opening them, we the audience, realise along with Jack that each parcel contains a manuscript. Annie, her days spent high on amphetamines had not only been cleaning the apartment she had been writing prolifically. Screens appear all around the stage displaying the novels, and books of poetry in Annie’s name that all become national best sellers.

John Malkovich

Here Zach Helm tries to attempt dark humour again. Jack and Charlie appear amongst grave stones in a cemetery at Annie's funeral and Charlie says, “ For Christs sakes , she died of kitchen cleaning products, goddam.” I didn’t laugh.

Zach Helm's writing makes the  themes, of drug abuse, misogyny, the affects of sexual abuse and hidden talent, appear to be derivative and contrived. Its strength however is the realisation that our existence, our world can be founded on the weakest of things. John Malkovich has made a creditable attempt at producing the play. There is a lack of pace at moments.The actors do their very best injecting  energy and some moving and emotional parts, especially from Freya Mavor as Annie. John Malkovich, needs to get a better play script for the world to work out whether or not he can be a good stage directer. It seems he has only produced this one play. Perhaps he should try an Edward Albee or an Arthur Miller, or even Shakespeare. If Malkovich is over here dipping his toes into the world of British stage production to test the waters, he needs something better. He has some way to go.

Reference: https://www.rosetheatrekingston.org/

THE TRIAL OF QUEEN CAROLINE IN 1820

Recently Marilyn and I went in to the center of London, initially to attend a lunchtime free concert at St Martins in The Fields. We heard Emma Stannard, a Mezzo Soprano, singing Grieg, Schumann, De Falla and Copeland accompanied by Keval Shah on the piano. They were superb displaying so much personality. The lunchtime concerts begin a 1pm and last for about one hour. When we came out onto a sunny Trafalgar Square we thought we would like to have a look in the National Portrait Gallery and see if any exhibitions were on.

There is a photographic portrait exhibition on at the moment. We first looked at pictures  created by the Bloomsbury group and portraits of artists,writers and the famous from the 20^th century. We looked at the Tudor and Stuart galleries populated by portraits of the ,”God ordained”,  and eventually wandered into the Georgian period galleries sauntering past that little sketch of Jane Austen created by her sister Cassandra and portraits of the great writers and poets of the late 18^th and early 19^th century, Sir Walter Scott, Shelley, Byron and so forth. There are very few women represented in the older periods. Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots appears in the Tudor period. Some of Charles II’s mistresses are hung in the Stuart galleries but the Georgian period is when women start to become ,”really serious.”

The great majority of paintings in the Georgian Galleries are still of men but  there are a substantial number of women, Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, Hannah More, Fanny Burney, Hester Lynch (Mrs Thrale) and Dorothy Jordan, writers, artists, actors, philosophers, playwrights, society hosts and emancipationists. These women began to push the boundaries of society showing what women could do in the world and they were brave and often revolutionary. They were intellectuals and thinkers of the highest order.They all suffered one way or the other for their causes in a very strongly male orientated world. They were courageous pioneers. 

  The Trial of Queen Caroline 1820 by Sir George Hayter oil on canvas, 1820-1823 (National Portrait gallery)

But there is one painting, with a woman in it, which could be described as even more inspirational and in some ways is more powerful than the rest and gets to the heart of what it was to be a woman in the early 19^th century. This woman had courage, determination and a will to live her life the way she wanted. She was prepared to break the law, courted approbation from everybody, even her friends and supporters, those who might be on her side were often repulsed regarding her morals and choices in life. In acting in such a liberating way, she was perhaps even stronger than all the rest. “The trial of Queen Caroline in 1820,” by Sir George Hayters, is vast. It consists of hundreds of miniature portraits of men. They are the great men of the early 19^th century. There is William Adams, lawyer and diplomat, Shute Barrington,the Bishop of Durham, William Cavendish the Lord Chancellor,  William Wyndham Greville the Prime Minister, the Duke of York, George IV’s brother, William Howley, The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Nelson, 1^st Earl Nelson, Lord Nelson’s brother, Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington. There are lawyers, landowners, statesmen, the Governor General of India and various other governor generals. There are Field Marshalls, bishops and archbishops. Thomas Barnes, the editor of The Times newspaper is there, politicians of every hue, agriculturalists, bankers, sportsmen, Lords, Earls and Dukes. The world was run by these men and women were second class citizens and had to do what they were told. Almost unnoticed, in the midst of this mass of manhood, sitting calmly and still and unmoved is Queen Caroline of Brunswick, the estranged wife of George IV. 

Caroline of Brunswick.by Sir Thomas Lawrence oil on canvas, 1804. (National Portrait Gallery)

Caroline was born on the 17^th May 1768, a Princess of Brunswick. Her father was Charles William, Duke of Brunswick and her mother was Princess Augusta of Great Britain and eldest sister of George III. Her father and mother had a difficult relationship. Her father had a mistress, who lived with them, called Louise Hertefeld. Caroline was put in a difficult situation. If she was civil to one the other reprimanded her. She was also unable to lead the life she would have liked to live while she was within the same household as her parents. She was forbidden to attend grand balls except on very rare occasions. She was strictly chaperoned everywhere by her governess and some elderly ladies of the court. She was refused any contact with the opposite sex. She was even forbidden to dine with her own brother. This caused her great anguish and torment. Caroline was not averse to trying some extreme tricks. She feigned being pregnant on one occasion to challenge her parents. There were rumours about her from an early age that she had given birth at the age of fifteen. She often visited the cottages of the peasantry and it was claimed that on one of these occasions she had got pregnant.

Her mother and father considered many suitors for her from1782 onwards. Prince of Orange, Prince George of Hesse and Charles Duke of Mecklenberg were all suggested but nothing came of this. Her mother had always hope for a marriage to one of her English cousins. In 1794 Caroline became engaged to the Prince of Wales, her cousin. The reason for this were mostly political. Britain was at war with France and an Alliance with Brunswick would help Britain’s  cause. Also George was heavily in debt and if he married an eligible princess, parliament would increase his allowance. So Caroline was a political pawn. 

 John Stanley saw Caroline in 1781 and thought she was an attractive girl. In 1784 she was described as a beauty and she was also described as amiable, lively witty and handsome by others. On the.20^th November 1794 Lord Malmesbury arrived in Brunswick to escort her to Britain. He wrote in his diary that, she lacked judgement, decorum and tact, spoke her mind, acted indiscreetly and often neglected to wash or change her dirty clothes. She appeared to have no innate notions of morality or the need for it. Malmesbury gives a damning account of her. It appears to be a subjective account. Caroline perhaps did not wash on purpose to deliberately repel Malmesbury. She was noted. for taking baths at other times, notoriously with her lover Bergami.

Carolines betrothal to The Prince Regent was a strange arrangement from the start. When Caroline arrived in Greenwich with Malmesbury on Easter Sunday 5^th April 1795 she was met by Frances Villiers, Countess of Jersey and Georges mistress. Frances Villiers had been appointed as Caroline’s Lady of the Bedchamber. Caroline and George were married in the chapel Royal in St James’s Palace on the 8^th April 1795. Her new husband was drunk and had to be assisted throughout the ceremony. He thought Caroline unattractive and unhygienic. He himself had already married Maria Fitzherbert. It was an illegal marriage because Maria Fitzherbert was a Roman Catholic and through the Marriages act of 1772 was not legally valid. George, in a letter to a friend claimed that he had sexual intercourse with his new wife only three times, twice the first night and once on the second night. He said that he had to make a great effort to overcome his aversion to her. Caroline later claimed that on their wedding night George was so drunk he spent the night in the fireplace where he fell. They must have had sexual intercourse on at least one occasion because they had a daughter together, Princess Charlotte, George’s only legitimate child, born at Carlton House on the 7^th January 1796.

George’s abuse of Caroline began almost immediately. Three days after Charlotte’s birth George made  out a new will in which he left all his property to “Maria Fitzherbert, my wife.” But Caroline could give as good as she got. Caroline was feisty and fought for her rights from the start. Caroline told Malmesbury that she was disappointed with George because he  was,”very fat and he’s nothing like as handsome as his portrait.” On the other hand George, didn’t like Caroline’s jibes and jokes about Lady Jersey. As he was expressing his dislike and aversion to Caroline, George was having an affair with Lady Jersey. The relationship with Caroline was becoming a disaster.  George also had to contend with public opinion. The press vilified him for his extravagant tastes especially at a time of war. The public also took sides with Caroline and portrayed her as the wronged wife and public opinion only grew in support of her. People liked her because of her ,”winning familiarity and easy open nature.”  George became dismayed at her popularity and his own unpopularity.

In April 1796, George wrote to Caroline, 

“ We have unfortunately been obliged to acknowledge to each other that we cannot find happiness in our union. Let me therefore beg you to make the best of a situation unfortunate for us both.”

In August 1797 Caroline moved to the Vicarage in Charlton, near Greenwich, on the outskirts of, London. She then moved  to Montagu House in Blackheath. Caroline felt free from the constraints of her marriage. She had liaisons with Admiral Sir Sidney Smith and Captain George Manby. She may also have had a fling with the politician George Canning. Her daughter was put into the care of a governess and lived in a mansion near  Montague House. 

It appears that Caroline had strong maternal instincts and she adopted a number of poor children who had been fostered out in the Blackheath area. In 1802 she adopted a three month old boy, William Austin. Caroline fell out with her neighbours Sir John and Lady Douglas. They claimed that Caroline had sent them obscene letters. Lady Douglas accused Caroline of infidelity and said that William Austen was Caroline's illegitimate son. In 1806 a secret commission was set up to investigate the accusations. Lady Douglas testified to the commission that Caroline had admitted to her that William Austin was her son.She also told the commission that Caroline had been rude about the Royal Family and she alleged that Caroline had also touched her in an inappropriate sexual manner. The accounts of Caroline’s behaviour could not have been more lurid and frank. More lovers were added to the list, Sir Thomas Lawrence , the artist who had painted Carolines portrait and also Henry Hood the son of Lord Hood were implicated.  Carolines own servants could not or would not confirm any of these allegations. As for William Austin, his real mother, Sophia Austin came forward to testify that she had given birth to William. The evidence that was being stacked up against Caroline appeared more and more fictional and fabricated.The commission set up to investigate the initial claims by Lady Douglas announced that there was no foundation for them.

By the end of 1811, George III was declared permanently insane and the Prince of Wales was made Regent. George restricted Caroline’s access to Charlotte, their daughter,  further. Caroline became more socially isolated. She moved to Connaught House in Bayswater. In league with Henry Broughton, an ambitious Whig politician who wanted reform, she began a propaganda campaign against George. George, in response, leaked the testimony of Lady Douglas to the Commission that had investigated Caroline but Broughton counteracted these allegations by releasing the testimony of the servants and Mrs Austin. Their daughter, Charlotte sided with her mother as did the public.

Jane Austen, who was an avid reader of news journals, wrote of Caroline, 

“ Poor woman, I shall support her as long as I can, because she is a woman and because I hate her husband.” 

After the defeat of Napoleon in 1814 George tried to restrict his daughter’s visits to her mother even more. Charlotte ran away to be with her mother. She was eventually persuaded to return to her father. There was a risk of public disorder which would make it more difficult for Charlotte in the long run.

Caroline now negotiated a deal with the Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh. She agreed to leave the country for an annual allowance of £35,000.  

On 8^th August 1814 Caroline left Britain. She travelled to Brunswick and then to Italy through Switzerland. Probably in Milan she hired Bartolomeo Pergami as a servant. He soon became the head of Caroline’s household.. In 1815 Caroline bought a house on the shores of Lake Como. From early 1816, she and Pergami cruised the Mediterranean. Their relationship became closer and closer. By now gossip about Caroline was rife and even Lord Byron wrote to his publisher that Caroline and Pergami were lovers. By 1817, Carolines debts were growing and she moved from the Villa d’Este to the smaller Villa Caprile near Pesaro. Meanwhile Caroline's daughter, Princess Charlotte had married Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg. In November 1817 Charlotte gave birth to a stillborn son and then unfortunately died soon after. George refused to inform Caroline of her daughter’s death. Caroline heard the devastating news from an official sent by George to inform the Pope. This was a cruel way to discover the news.

A salacious cartoon depicting Caroline bathing with her lover Bartolomeo Pergami.

The Vice Chancellor John Leach was asked to set up a commission to gather evidence of Carolines adultery. This was the only way George could obtain a divorce from Caroline. Leach sent three commissioners to Milan to interview Caroline’s servants.. He sent his own brother James to the Villa Caprile. He reported back that Pergami and Caroline were living as husband and wife. The Milan commission was gathering more and more evidence. Caroline informed James Broughton that she would agree to a divorce in exchange for money. Divorce by mutual consent was illegal however. On the 29^th January 1820 King George III died. George became King and as such she was the Queen. George demanded that his ministers get rid of her. George now was determined to divorce Caroline. The best and least painful way to divorce Caroline  was through an act of Parliament which would make their marriage annulled. Her name was removed from the liturgy of the Church. but he had to be very careful. His own infidelities and excesses did not deem him an innocent party in the affair. He could only divorce Caroline if it was proved she had been unfaithful. He had mistresses and an illegal wife after all.Divorce proceedings would only bring to light his own misdemeanors. Rather than run the risk Caroline was offered an increase in her annuity to £50,000 if she stayed abroad. Caroline rejected the government's offer. She returned to England on the 5^th June. Riots broke out in support of her. She became the figurehead of a growing radical reform group who demanded change. The new King still wanted a divorce and submitted the evidence collected by his commission to Parliamnet in two green bags. They were opend on the 27^th June. Fifteen peers examined the contents and regarded the contents as scandalous. The government introduced a bill in Parliament, the Pains and Penalties Bill 1820 intended to take the title of Queen away from Caroline and to dissolve the marriage. It claimed that Caroline had committed adultery with a low born man, Bartolomeo Pergami. Various witnesses, including Theodore Majocchi,one of Caroline’s servants were brought to be questioned.All sorts of salacious  details were revealed. Caroline came to the reading of the Bill which although not a trail was virtually a trial and sat there in the middle of this maelstrom. This is the scene portrayed in , “The Trial of Queen Caroline.” 

There Caroline sits, calmly, impassively while the Whig Party lawyers Henry Broughton and Thomas Denham strongly defend her. In the painting, Broughton, arm outstretched, gestures and argues vehemently her case. If you look close lawyers animatedly discuss and Carolines detractors thump their fists on oaken tables. They seem to be dissecting what womanhood is. 

 All the witnesses for the prosecution were countered and their evidence shown to be untrue in many cases and eventually there was little prospect that the bill could be passed. During the trial Caroline remained immensely popular.

Caroline stated,

“All classes will ever find in me a sincere friend to their liberties, and a zealous advocate of their rights.”

She tried to attend the coronation on the 19^th July 1821 but was barred from entering Westminster Abbey. Caroline became ill soon after. She died three weeks later on the 7^th August 1821 at the age of 53. She may have had cancer.

Caroline of Brunswick broke ordinary moral standards, she challenged the laws of the land, she broke through the barriers between different social strata. She lived the way she wanted and not the way society or the church or the monarchy would want her to. She was a true radical,  not taking any side but just being herself, come what may. 

 “ 'There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.' 

  She was her own person and did what she wanted.

She also connects with Mary Wollstonecraft’s ideas about women.

“I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.” 

Wollstonecraft also stated,

“It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.” 

A lot of what Caroline was charged with was hearsay. A lot of what she was charged with was highly emotive, salacious and at the extremes of what could be imagined by her contemporaries and truly shocking to many. Her attackers were out to destroy her and stop her breaking social codes and beliefs. She was very much a woman alone. In her private life she does  seem to have been  highly sexual, full of fun and a very warm motherly type who showed her emotions. These traits, good and bad,  make her a real person I think. Recalling her upbringing, when she was restrained from interacting with other people. in any meaningful way and seeing how naturally vivacious and social she obviously was she must have had a a store of pent up feelings and emotions ready to explode. She did let them out and in so doing challenged the world. I think she was a very brave person. She challenged society.
George Sand. another independent woman who challenged society as an independent woman, wrote,

“There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved,” 

I hope Caroline found this. 

References: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_of_Brunswick

http://www.royalhistorian.com/the-trial-of-queen-caroline-in-1820-and-the-birth-of-british-tabloid-coverage-of-royalty/

http://www.npg.org.uk/