I've written here before about National Theatre Live, which streams live (or delayed) productions into movie houses across the country.  Yesterday, I went to a matinee of their production of The Lehman Trilogy.  It’s about the three Lehman Brothers who came to America in 1844 and takes us through the firm and family’s life until it went out of business in the 2008 crash. My TV showrtunner friend Jeff Melvoin -- who's in London working on Killing Eve -- saw the show there in the theatre a few weeks back and raved about, so I figured I should be in for a good afternoon
 
It was spectacular.  It’s now on the list of “best plays and productions I’ve seen.”  Yes, it was that wonderful.
 
The script by Ben Power, adapted for a much-longer original by Stefano Missini, is magnificent and eloquent, almost poetic in its language.  It's 3-1/2 hours adapted from an eight-hour Italian radio production, which Missini turned into a four-hour French production.  (To be clear, it's one play, not three despite being called a "trilogy."  That's a reference to how the story is broken up by its three acts.)

The acting is remarkable – just three actors who play over 100 parts:  the brothers, their sons and grandsons, wives and daughters, and business associates and many others, narrating the play perhaps even more than doing its dialogue.  One of them is Simon Russell Beale who was one of my dad’s favorite actors from my folks trips to London over the years.  Another is Ben Miles who, if you watched The Crown played the government minister Peter Townsend who Princess Margaret wanted to marry but was never allowed.  The third is Adam Godley who has three Olivier nominations and a Tony nomination.  They were all brilliant, and it’s a Master Class in acting.  In fact, all three actors were nominated as Best Actor at the Olivier Awards – no, not individually, but together as a three-person “Best Actor”!!  They are that intertwined.  And onstage together literally the entire time.

The direction by the acclaimed Sam Mendes is enthralling – it’s basically performed in a large box onstage that tends to rotate the entire show, employs a fascinating use of back projections has the ever-swirling actors moving file boxes around as props the whole evening.  I told my friend in London last night that while many have described the production as being like a Homeric epic poem (and I understand the comparison), I looked at it more as a ballet in the form of a dramatic play, since it is so “intertwined” and flowing.  Jeff thought it a good observation, and then when watching an interview this morning with director Mendes and Power, Mendes says it was the “most choreographed work I’ve ever done.”  So, I was closer than I thought...

When raving about the play to some friends last night, I first checked to see if they had a chance of seeing it.  Fortunately, the National Theatre Live productions don't sync up with one another everywhere and some get repeated, so there are still some productions to catch, hopefully in your area.  Just go here and enter your zip code into the location box and hope for the best.  As of this morning, there were two additional screening in Los Angeles on the UCLA campus over the next two months -- though one is sold out and the other only had seven seats left.  But there's also one in February in Irvine, in Orange County.  On the more hopeful side, they do tend to repeat shows every few years, so it's worth checking.  But then, you might as well look regularly just to see what other great things they have going.  (And to anyone back in Chicago, there's a September encore downtown and one at Northwestern University in November, and there appear to be seats available.)
 
This is a trailer for the play.  It doesn’t come even remotely close to doing the 3-1/2-hour flowing masterpiece justice, but you’ll see the craft and also what I mean about the rotating box.  (Below, that's Simon Russell Beale on the left, Miles in the center and Godley on the right.) 

In TrumpWorld, if you wait a few days to write about his latest meltdown then there's a good chance that that will zip past you as the next one comes crashing in -- and then the next.  So, it's almost belated that I didn't write about Trump's crazed China comments on only this past Friday, three days ago.  But since it was the weekend, sometimes you have to take a breather.  Still, though, the words remain active and substantive. 

And all I can think when I read them is that they're from a person who once describes himself as a "very stable genius."  The only word there that doesn't apply is "very."

As a starting point, and one that continues to resonate, we had Trump tweet about China that the United States is "better off without them. The vast amounts of money made and stolen by China from the United States, year after year, for decades, will and must STOP. Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China".

By the way, for the record, here's a fun note to keep in mind -- if the U.S. economy was actually "better off without" China, then American corporations would have stopped doing business selling to China long ago.  And the tag "Made in China" would be a relic from the past.

As bizarre as the being "better off without them is, though, it's the last half of the tweet that goes flying off the rails.

The first reaction when reading it is -- just on general principal, who rationally thinks U.S. business is "better off" not trading with the largest country in the world??!

But more than that is the uncertainty if this was this an Official Order or just yammering?  Which is never a good place for a president to be.

Does this "order" mean -- corporate interests aside (which is where most media analyst landed) -- that no American should buy products made in China?  That would seem to be the clear intent.  Just imagine how that would disrupt the U.S. economy enough corporations could tool back up in new factories.

Imagine if any Democratic President made such an "order" to all U.S. companies that they should not only cut all ties with China...but do so "immediately."  Imagine if that president making such an order to American business was Barack Obama!

But the thing is, of course this "order" was just yammering.  There was absolutely nothing official about it, nor will there be.  Trump subsequently tried to point out that he has the right to declare such an economic "emergency", but he's not going to do so, it would devastate the U.S. economy.  And if he did declare an "emergency," it would be a bad news/worse news situation.  For the bad news, Not only does Trump have a terrible historic record trying to convince the courts that his "emergencies" are really emergencies, but there is pretty clearly no "emergency" here,.so he's likely to lose again -- if he tried.  But the worse news is if he won in court.  Because the damage to the economy and the fury from the business community would come crashing down on Trump and destroy even his dream of a second term.

In the end, this is just what Trump does, try to create a crisis so that the public will rally around him.  But they didn't in 2018 when he warned of an "invasion" by migrants, and they aren't going to here.  The only people who will rally around Trump on this are his far-right acolyte base, who have already rallied around him so tightly that there's nowhere else to rally.

Who knew the Pottery Barn Rule was so prescient?  If you break the China, you really do own it.

And none of this even touches on her other horrific tweet on Friday, one that I think is even worse.  After all, this one above was more idiotic than damaging, since nothing will come of it.  But he also tweeted --

"My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?"

This is not normal. It is also absurd. For the record: keep in mind, too, that Jay Powell (the U.S. Fed Chairman) -- who is not an "enemy" in ANY way -- was appointed to his job by Trump!  And to compare his own appointment, the U.S. Fed Chairman, to the despotic dictator of China, is dangerous and sick.

Not to mention that it's Trump's own policies that resulted in the announcement the day before that the U.S. now has a trillion dollar deficit.
​
As always -- this pathetic "order" to American business and the psychotic charge against his own Fed Chairman is not about Trump, because we know who he is. This is about Republicans in Congress who enable him, are silent about all this and are complicit.

Ultimately, every Republican in Congress should be asked if they agree with a U.S. president making such an "order" to American business.  And if they think the U.S. Fed. Chairman is an "enemy" to the country.

​They should be asked -- because this is about them.  Not the very stable genius.

The guest contestant this week for the 'Not My Job' game on the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me! ​is Henry Winkler, who makes a return-visit to the show.  His interview with host Peter Sagal is very personable and ingratiating (and occasionally funny), and it focuses much more on his Emmy-winning role in Barry, than...oh, that other one..  

This week's Ron Burgundy podcast is a big treat -- at least for me.  But I also think it should be for most people, especially is they like history.  She's always a wonderful, lively interview, but far more than that Is one of my handful of favorite historians, Doris Kearns Goodwin -- who Ron describes as his ex-girlfriend...which they actually discuss at length.  She wrote the wonderful book Team of Rivals, which served as the foundation for the Spielberg film, Lincoln.  Won the Pulitzer Prize for No Ordinary Time about FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt.  And the paperback edition of her latest history, Leadership: In Turbulent Times, has recently been released.  The interview is full of wonderful stories, a great deal of charm, and much humor.

From the archives.  This week's contestant is Cynthia Sibitzky from Haslett, Texas.  I don't get the sense that the hidden song is really all that hidden, and you get it in about three seconds -- and only that long because there's a bit of an introduction into the piece.  Though it's very lovely.  As for the composer style, I had a choice between three people who are somewhat similar.  The contestant's first guess was mine, as well, but...we were wrong.