Friday, August 10, 2012

The Duchess of Malfi [a.k.a. Hellbent]

photo by Rush

The Bell Shakespeare Company present THE DUCHESS OF MALFI in The Playhouse, at the Sydney Opera House.

The Bell Shakespeare Company presents THE DUCHESS OF MALFI, the cast and collaborators handout and list in the actual program, announces.

It is odd that those "announcements", even the cover page of the actual program, does not register the actual writers' names: Hugh Colman and Ailsa Piper. No mention of the writer of the original play is claimed or made in the advertising, either (although, the theatre program is an exemplar of historical research of background to the John Webster play and Webster and the Jacobean period - not many buy or can afford the program, I venture to observe). For, in truth the Bell Shakespeare did not present John Webster's play THE DUCHESS OF MALFI - of Jacobean historical theatre fame but a contemporary adaptation titled, HELLBENT by Hugh Colman & Ailsa Piper. It was originally presented in 2006 at the Red Stitch Actors Theatre, Melbourne, under the HELLBENT title - and so had some integrity of presentation. Is this not a case, then in Sydney, of product misrepresentation? Call in the authorities!! What is the integrity of this misrepresentation? 

HELLBENT by Hugh Colman and Ailsa Piper. From their notes in the program: 
In adapting THE DUCHESS OF MALFI, we wanted to capture a sense we had of some 'essence' that the piece held, so often obscured by its unwieldy plot and length and the array of less interesting characters. ... ...   our focus came more and more to a narrative point, the closer one gets to power, the more difficult it becomes to resist corruption.
This they admit changed, skewed the plot of the original to a more political reading, underlining the character of Bosola, the low caste thug, which began to interest them most.The original play with some 18 characters became a play with 6 characters. From a running time of usually 3 hours to 1 hour and 45 minutes. THE DUCHESS OF MALFI reduced by our major Classic Company to HELLBENT; not our major Classic Company expanded to the challenge of the original play. An audience underestimated, spoon fed, instead of respected and challenged. HELLBENT is "a chamber piece", they admit.

THE DUCHESS OF MALFI, is based on a true story, history, first published in Bandello's NOVELLE in 1554, and was translated into English, apparently with much embellishment, by William Painter in 1567. The play was first presented in the winter of 1613/14 by the King's Men at the Blackfriars Theatre. It is not estimated by the literary or theatrical critics as a masterpiece, but it is the best regarded play in the John Webster canon. It is a Jacobean tragedy, a Gothic thriller of grotesque stature that dares in all of its grisly twists and turns, to tip into comedy - deep black comedy. 

It has lines that jump out at one with wicked and memorable craft and poetic shape and remarkable imagery :

"A politician is the devil's quilted anvil; he fashions all sins on him, and the blows are never heard." 
"I have this night digg'd up a mandrake. And I  am grown mad with't." 
"We are merely the stars' tennis balls."
"Pull down heaven upon me." 

and language that has occasional Shakespearean flights :
What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut with
Diamonds? or to be smothered with cassia?
Or to be shot to death with pearls?
I know death hath ten thousand several doors
For men to take their exits; and 'tis found
They go on such strange, geometric hinges,
You may open them both ways ... 
Tell my brothers, that I perceive death, now I am well awake, 
Best gift is they can give me, or I can take."

It, also, reveals at the near centre of the play's world, a unique heroine in this period of writing, The Duchess of Malfi (curiously she has no other name), a naturally sensuous woman and spirited feminist way ahead of her time, who has an arc of emotions from gentle humorous tenderness in her love for her servant, Antonio, to a raging despair within the machinations of her vengeful brothers, to a courageous gravity, nobility, in the face of a violent death, by strangulation at the hands of a thug. The Duchess of Malfi is a singular role in the Jacobean canon and like Shakespeare's Cleopatra, is one that any actress, of any ambition, should seek out. 

People this play further with a twin brother, Ferdinand, who lustfully lingers over his sister and descends into possessive psychopathy with symptoms of lycanthropy, a howling madness; and, further, another brother, a Cardinal gleefully steeped in raunchy lust and espionage, a cold concupiscence; and add at the dead centre of this corrupting world, a criminal, life assassin, thinking-thug, Bosola, a servant to the courtly brothers, a thug who develops a conscience, through the horrors of the incidents of the play, in which he is an active bloody participant.

The play is an English vision of an Italianate city-state, dripping with the impressions of the works of Seneca and Machiavelli, imagined from the disquietude of the corrupt court of James I - the so-called Jacobean Period. There is much gross ingredient in the recipe of this text, so that, one, has, a play of plump blood-pudding richness - stuffed with chilling stock schlock, that matches any creation of the contemporary horror film industry. Name a contemporary work in any medium, with a plot and set of characters more diabolical, if you can.

 Webster, thought T.S.Eliot, "...was much possessed by death / And saw the skull beneath the skin; ..." I love what Susannah Clapp, writing in the Observer, about the recent Old Vic production in London of THE DUCHESS OF MALFI (March-June, 2012), starring Eve Best, says: " John Webster was for Bernard Shaw the "Tussuad laureate" : a playwright of waxy gore. Today he can look like the Damien Hirst dramatist. Hirst's diamond-studded skull could be an emblem for THE DUCHESS OF MALFI, in which glitter covers corruption and whose memorably shining lines - "Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle: she died young" - greet a garrotting."

And further from Rupert Brooke: "A play of Webster's is full of  the feverish and ghastly turmoil of a nest of maggots. Maggots are what the inhabitants of this universe most suggest and resemble. The sight of their fever is only alleviated by the permanent calm, unfriendly summits and darkness of the background of death and gloom. For that is equally a part of Webster's universe. Human beings are writhing grubs in an immense night. And the night is without stars or moon. But it has a certain quietude in its darkness; but not very much." 

HELLBENT , the adaptation, is, for whatever its virtues are, in experience, in contrast, indeed, a chamber piece; a cleaned-up, diminished version of the play, a bit Charles and Mary Lamb-like, for children; a version that could be published by Reader's Digest easy reading library. Nothing too offensive here, it is barely titivating for the anxious.

The production by John Bell as director is efficient and cool. The set (Stephen Curtis) is on a shallow, triangular black carpeted and walled pattern with invisible door clad entrances, ranged down the set sides, so narrow in aperture, that most of the cast were forced to walk sideways to get in and out. A black clad tube tunnel hung down from the 'flys' of the stage in the central place with the inner, a well, lit bluish/white, aimed onto a white circular ottoman/pouffe centre-stage, the only furniture, that pulsed with a sterile glow (lighting, Hartley T A Kemp). It has the feel of an Anish Kapoor design: coolly, post-modern, frozen in a trim lined tidiness, lacking any air of decadence, of Gothic danger, or sumptuous extremities - no maggots or writhing grubs here- instead, neat, tightly controlled, recently vacuumed, dirt free atmospherics. The opposite to the Mediterranean/Latin pulse of the real play, rather, here, a kind of Scandinavian severity of black minimalism. 

The costumes, too, a stylised relaxed modern dress - dark colours flushed a little with silver or a startling religious pink. This Duchess in lounge clothes of an ordinary, wealthy, young woman, of no formality or status, just casual comfort - lounge gear. This, probably provoked by the adaptors " being struck by the contemporary resonances, which in turn encouraged (them) to remove the references to time and place that lock (the play) into the past. Finally removing the titles of inherent status, to reinforce the contemporaneity." From my experience of this production, it reduced the world to a contemporary neutrality without rank or real wealth, taking away a lot of the power of the Jacobean savagery, and storytelling point, undermining the purpose of the reflecting mirror of the world in THE DUCHESS OF MALFI. There was little visible evidence of corrupting wealth and immense power of any scale, rather, instead, a tasteful extravagance in a narrow range of an upper middle class, living comfortably in a privileged 'gated' community, ruling itself with 'tough' body corporate consequences for bad behaviour. Much like the recent Sport For Jove HAMLET* the world of the staged play was too ordinary to have the weighted impact of the original and, hence the play and its intended affect was gravely diminished.

The acting is executed to reveal generalized emotional states springing from sentence and paragraphed well-springs, rather than argument from specific word to word comprehension and build from delicate syntactical observation for clarity. Most of the actors lacked any real specific imaginative possession of the language and it was rendered to us in dull musical note-range and restraints. It was lacking in keenness of perception and was mostly hollow sounds/noises, rather than verbal images supporting ideas and expressed with true 'seeing' eyes, through the voice. My ears could not see, what the actors were meaning, were attempting to communicate. It was a general cacophony of emotional exhibition. Actors were reciting, without thought, laboriously, through the magnificent complications of the Webster text.

The production opens with Ben Wood as thug, Bosola, standing centre stage and begins the journey of the Colman & Piper devolving. Bosola, in the original, too, evolves as the central interest in the play . As Diana Simmonds in  her Stage Noise blog, tells us, Mr Wood is,"a striking presence, a golden bear in stature, a salt of the earth, roughly spoken but loyal servant". Mr Wood's Bosola's invitation to play with him, as audience, is very seductive indeed, and then he opens his mouth and there is a rough spoken, salt of the earth Australian, a vocal flatness and broadness, with no real musical instinct for the verse or deep imaginative skill in word usage or vocal flexibility to sustain our interest in what he has to say. The play staggers and labours, whenever he is on stage. Sluggish, tedious, producing ennui instead of excitement. Intelligent thinking through the lines, on the lines is substituted by emotional growlings of attenuated meaning of words and sentence structures. It is mostly unpleasant noise. He is the central character. What chance had the play, then?

 In a different way but similarly, Sean O'Shea insinuates his luscious hair and lithesome physicalities in substitution for accurate or imaginative word ownership or line readings. Gross slitherings, slatherings and slurrings of emotion. Matthew Moore as the innocent hero Antonio, seems altogether out of his comfort zone. David Whitney as The Cardinal makes more impact and clarity with his bare bum showing (literally, giving us the arse!) than he did with consistent textual flourish - although there is some shine, sometimes, there as well, truth to tell. The best of the men.

Lucy Bell, as the Duchess of Malfi, alone, seems to be intelligently able to use her vocal machinery to illuminate the text, although her physical squirming and disquiets are a mighty distraction, almost in competition to her verbal wittery. Physical semaphoring of emotional states. A magnificent opportunity dwindled, for, Ms Bell has the gift to deliver this role exquisitely. It just did not happen here. Potential only.

Sexy clothing and daring crutch work, does not make an interesting enough Julia (mashed up from two characters in the original, Cariola and the Cardinal's Mistress - interesting achievement by the adaptors) and Lucia Mastrantone lives more memorably for her physical allures then her verbal ones, tight leather forever. Heave with a sigh!

The Bell production was a disaster to sit through. Genuinely depressing. In fact, I had seen a Red Stitch performance in 2006, of HELLBENT, and may have had a better time with it there, without the Bell Shakespeare reputation expectations. HELLBENT, was well suited to the ambitions of the theatrical adventurers in Melbourne, in their old tiny space, and it was a valiant, if not fully successful presentation. But the leading Classic Company, Bell Shakespeare, at the Sydney Opera House seems to be in a very alarming state, if this production is representative of the best it can do. In no area of creativity and in no perceivable way did this production rise to any International standard or interest. I felt as distressed and angry as I did watching Opera Australia's production of Die tote Stadt. I had often to wince and close my ears.

It was with great bewilderment then, and unpleasant surprise, to read a par in the Sydney Morning Herald (smh) 24 HOURS, The Arts Diary column last week, concerning Performance where "Professional actors who want to extend their Shakespearean skills can tap into the accumulated experience of the country's pre-eminent Shakespeare company. For the first time, Bell Shakespeare is running actor training courses, ... ... including voice and movement (what, NIDA, doesn't do it anymore? Or, not well, enough? Probably, too old fashioned for them? WAPPA,VCA, QUT, either?). There will be a graduate stream for recent acting graduates or early career actors, and a master series for more experienced actors looking to sharpen their skills and work on Shakespeare's plays in greater detail." Let us hope the first enrolments are four or five of the six actors who toiled through THE DUCHESS OF MALFI. Let us hope that are not the role models, exemplar. Or, the teachers.

Bell Shakespeare the "pre-eminent Shakespeare company". Be careful when you believe your own publicity. I reckon, Sport For Jove are pretty lively and imminent, if not yet eminent, in the area of Shakespeare production.

No, no good. No fun at all. Just depression.

P.S. : Why, then did the  Bell company feel the need to re-title the adaptation from HELLBENT to THE DUCHESS OF MALFI ? It seems the company, in common with the recent artistic management at Belvoir practice, do feel able to appropriate the name of a famous play and author's reputation, and having adapted the original text, presumably, sell more tickets, based on the fame of the originals, and 'trick' or 'dupe' the unwary to attend what should have been an interesting presentation of a great 'curiosity' of dramatic literature that has never, in my life time, been presented on the professional stage in Sydney (e.g. I have seen THE WILD DUCK, THE DUCHESS OF MALFI in University and Amateur and Drama School productions, only. Never, ever, STRANGE INTERLUDE, still, despite the Belvoir program announcements). 

The fact that Sydney audiences have not seen the intentions of the writing of other great hallmarks of theatre history, although they believe they have (and loved the play and the writer, they saw, I understand ), for example: Edward Albee's WHO'S AFARID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? 'mangled' by Benedict Andrews, and, likewise his treatment of Chekov's THE SEAGULL, not to mention the scuttled text of Botho Strausss' GROSS UND KIND; Simon Stone's appropriation of Ibsen's, THE WILD DUCK, O'Neill's, STRANGE INTERLUDE, and Arthur Miller's, DEATH OF A SALESMAN; and now Webster's THE DUCHESS OF MALFI by John Bell. Is there a conspiracy, a kind of dumbing down, parochial trick being played on the trusting subscriber, and otherwise, audience? The history books will have these titles recorded, cursorily, as having been produced, seen in Sydney, that 'vibrant' cultural world centre (?!) , but  at a closer read, examination find the actual content covered by these titles was not shown, revealed. "Wow, to have seen: THE WILD DUCK, STRANGE INTERLUDE, THE DUCHESS OF MALFI", future generations may read. - Not!!!  I cannot see why in the case of Bell that they didn't use the title HELLBENT, except, I suspect for ease of selling the show for box office purposes.  Do I understand the reasoning behind a similar conscious choice by Belvoir to call Simon Stone's play of Ibsen's text THE WILD DUCK ,THE WILD DUCK when clearly it wasn't - Why not DUCK VARIATIONS ?- (oops, a Mamet play)? After all, he did call his adaptation of Ibsen's LITTLE EYOLF, THE ONLY CHILD, an original title (Did it sell? It was only in the Downstairs venue). Why not call STRANGE INTERLUDE, 'INTERLUDE' by Simon Stone' or DEATH OF A SALESMAN , 'SALESMAN -the LOSER' by Simon Stone'?

I re-iterate: Was the choice based around falsely selling tickets to a famous play title and author's reputation, and in several cases, including the name of a must see actor, make a sell out killing at the box office, and then, willy-nilly, reduce the original writer's expression of life to the adaptor's psychological  response to the world he lives in, to the expression urges of the adaptor, writer, whatever different couch he might be occupying??

What of the up coming PRIVATE LIVES? - it seems that Ralph Myers, I have it on authority, he said so last Sunday at the Sunday Belvoir Forum I understand, that the text he is working with is not the work of the writer Noel Coward but an adaptation by an anonymous stage manager - and therefore he has licence to ignore any 'incidentals' in the published text, and supersede the writer and just follow whatever whim he wants. He does have it on written authority from the present publishers, doesn't he, that the text he has is an adulterated writer's work? The presentation of Agatha Christie's THE MOUSETRAP, did not seem the need to adapt the play to sell seats.It was allowed to stand on its own merits - and guess what? It did and shone AND entertained an audience, as well. 

Sydney an International Centre of The Performing Arts?

I don't think, so. Reduce the Tall Poppies of Dramatic Literature to something the Sydney audience can understand - their own backyard. What? What none of us comprehend foreign ( I include the the films from USA and Great Britain _English speaking) films or novels or television programs.?And the Aussie film does so well, with it's familiar landscape and Aussie sound., doesn't it? That's why, I suppose we have such great reality TV shows. Big Brother, again.

Enough, for now.

Oh, by the way, the Sydney Opera House is still charging us a 'tax' of $5 to buy a ticket at their own box office with cash. A good lurk- I have no receipt for that extra 5 bucks. Just how much a year do they make on this demand, I wonder? If I refused to pay it, does that mean I don't get to see the show. Does Bell know this? Why isn't it in the ticket price? I wouldn't be affronted then and would blithely hand it over. Better all round - the staff wouldn't cop any wrath at all then. A case that ignorance of my being charged, would be a kind of bliss, for the staff and myself, I guess.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

The best comment on Sydney theatre I have read in years. We are wankers, a pack of self indulgent wankers. Why can't we just take a good play and do it without feeling like we have to f&^k with it. Belvoir are a disgrace! Noel Coward, Arthur Miller- Belvoir are right! they can't write good plays. They need the help of Belvoirs artistic team to make them a worthwhile theatre experience. You are right! They are dumbing our audiences. What of the actors? Kevin do you think Toby Schmitz is thrilled to be taking on the tremendous role he is about to delve into and having to make it a performance of private lives set on the Gold Coast? Belvoir won't audition new faces, they don't go out and see the wonderful work done by indie theatres to look for new talent, they don't respond to emails, they don't care about anything that is happening outside their theatre- and that is a heartbreaking.

That Guy said...

I'm sorry, Kevin, some of this is nonsense puffed up in the name of inflating your own rhetoric. I have four different translations of Chekov on my shelf (Michael Frayn, Elizaveta Fen, Tom Stoppard and Benedit Andrews). Andrew's translation varies from the others only in the sense that there are three-four minor Australianising references.

Similarly, I have a copy of Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller on my shelf. Simon Stone's production contained virtually all the dialogue within it (barring the epilogue) - yes, it ignored the stage directions, but as any theatre historian will be able to tell you, those stage directions were based on Elia Kazan's origional production. Arthur Miller didn't come up with them.

It's nice that you get to hear random rehearsal room rumours of how "Private Lives" is proceeding. If they prove mistaken and all the words are Noel Coward's, will you be offering an apology to Belvoir management?

"Wild Duck", I will admit, I had issues with, but it was fairly credited as a version "after" the Ibsen play (in the manner of, say, Patrick Marber's "After Miss Julie"). The reduction of Gregers' character from the protagonist to an incidental character is something I think weakened the piece substantially.

If you really object to these productions, the only thing you can do is to stop giving them your money, and rant online. I think the first option is going to have greater impact than the second, myself...

Kevin Kackson said...

Dear That Guy,

Thanks for your input.

I thoroughly agree that the published text of Benedict Andrew's version of THE SEAGULL* is very good. There are more, by the way, to be pedantic, than three or four Australianising changes, but so far as I was concerned, I thought they were good ones, all. So good, did I think the adaptation, that it is the version that I encourage young actors to use in the annual audition process for Drama schools. It provides an excellent entry point for the Australian actor, without deviating, from what I believe Chekhov is after. What I did find curious, which I made clear in my post on the production, was that what Mr Andrews had written as adaptor of the text, was not what he attended to as Director. Enormous liberties from Mr Andrew's written text were taken, by Mr Andrews, including the off-stage suicide of Kostia (Treplev), for instance. He ignored his written text in the act of staging it. A huge mis-representation of what Chekhov was attempting to explore as a writer. The written, published text absolutely wonderful in revealing the vision of Chekhov. The production not so good.

I only saw DEATH OF A SALESMAN last week and have not yet written a response to it yet, which you seemed to have anticipated.

However, I too, have a copy of the text on my shelf. I, too, have read it, recently. I am not sure which Theatre Historian tells us that the published directions in the publication are Kazan's or the anonymous Stage Manager's and not Mr Miller's. Can you help? I am most keen to have it cleared up.

However, one of the directions in the text, I find very interesting and hugely problematic in the recent Belvoir/Simon Stone production, because of the huge difference in creating the ultimate turning incident of the play, for the audience, and so different if you were just a reader of the the play, is: page 108 of the Penguin edition of the first published edition -1949- and re-published over the years many times, my issue being 1985 :

Linda : Willy?
[There is no answer. LINDA waits. BIFF gets up off his bed. He is still in his clothes. HAPPY stands listening]

LINDA: [with real fear] Willy, answer me ! Willy !
[There is the sound of a car starting and moving away at full speed.]
LINDA: No !
BIFF [rushing down the stairs] : Pop !
[As the car speeds off, the music crashes down a frenzy of sound, which becomes the pulsation of a single 'cello's string....... ] etc etc.

So did Arthur Miller, or in your understanding, Mr Kazan or the Stage Manger intend Willy to drive off at speed to repeat his effort to kill himself in a car accident, or, was it what Mr Stone gave us, that Willy elaborately gassed himself inside his car in the family garage? (By the way the gas piping we saw for this action was very different to the proffered piping shown us by BIFF earlier).The difference is enormous. The audience leave Belvoir with the impression that Arthur Miller intended Willy to gas himself rather than kill himself with speed.

Continued …

Kevin Jackson said...

…continued

Just dramaturgically – three question:
If the boys can hear dad in their bedrooms in the first scenes why can't they, in the dead of night, hear the car engine downstairs, and put two an two together and rescue Willy?
We, by the way, can, in the scene as presented at Belvoir hear Linda in the garage, so I Imagined Linda should be able to hear the noise in the garage to.
Do you think the Insurance payout likely to be forthcoming when the cause of death is known? Do you think a car accident at speed a better chance, for a pay out?
Or do you think that this is another intended revelation that Willy really is a really stupid Aussie, plodder or loser? (In the program notes Willy is referred to as a loser). His death is also a failure to ensure his family, BIFF, particularly, will have some inheritance?
The re-writing of the directions in this part of the play, whether they be Mr Miller's or Mr Kazan's or the Stage Manager's seems to be amazingly perverse to me and enormously mis-leading.

To then, cut the Epilogue seems to me, again dramaturgically a huge, huge decision, concerning what Mr Miller, with not only stage directions but spoken words was attempting to achieve. Don't you think? Clearly, you do not, having read it and able to accept it's exclusion. I wonder what Arthur Miller or his property rights or estate guardians would think? Do you know whether the Belvoir had informed the Miller Estate of these changes? If they approved then I should just pull my dramaturgical head in, I guess. Should we ask them just to settle my umbrage at directorial liberties with published text? Misrepresentation of another artist's work !?

Those school kids I saw it with must be mightily confused and full of debate about what they have read as Dramatic Literature and what they saw as a staged version. Let alone the audience that have never read the play or barely remember it. Ignorance is bliss, I'm discovering.

The title of the Patrick Marber text is AFTER MISS JULIE. The text of Simon Stone and Chris Ryan's adaptation of THE WILD DUCK is THE WILD DUCK. If it, too, had been called AFTER THE WILD DUCK that may have been more acceptable. Besides, comparatively the Patrick Marber adaptation of MIss Julie is a more faithful account of the Strindberg than the Stone and Ryan adaptation is of the Ibsen. Just begin with the size of the cast list. Although there is much more to compare the differences in approach. The Stone-Ryan adaptation is almost a new play. The Marber is very, very close to the integrity of the original


Like you, I imagine, I have no privy to the rehearsal process or gossip in the PRIVATE LIVES evolving. Just a report of a public conversation at the Belvoir Sunday Forum, last week.
In fact, the only gossip I have heard is, and that only last night, that the South of France honeymoon hotel in the original play is now on the Gold Coast. Ha, I thought, I know where I, even as an Australian today, would prefer to Honeymoon or even just holiday - certainly the air fares would encourage me to consider the South of France over the Gold Coast - sorry, to the Australian Tourist Industry.

As to your final paragraph I go to the theatre and I diarise my response because I have a passion for it, always have, and if it is partial, in support of the writer's craft and art, so be it. If that makes my observations "political'' I can't help that reading. I pay up because I anticipate great stuff. THYESTES , for instance.

Partial, Passionate and Political they are not so bad a reasons to write, even if it is "nonsense, puffed up in the name of inflating (my) own rhetoric".

It takes a long time and I enjoy it. Thanks for your writing. And even more, thanks for reading, it makes the effort feel worthwhile.

Inside Man said...

Hello Kevin
It appears you friend has been misled in regards to Private Lives. The script cast are working from is one of Cowards later editions. What has been removed completely are the stage directions but the dialogue remains the same. I also can tell you that it has not been set on the Gold Coast , it is still very much set at the hotel in France and in Amanda's apartment in Paris.

That Guy said...

Just to clarify the "stage directions were Kazans", that's ... actually a slight misreading on my part. But they're not Arthur Miller's either. On p. 361 of "Elia Kazan: A Life" (Alfred A. Knopf 1988 edition), Kazan states that the original manuscript did not include the house as a scenic element - that was something that came from the scene designer, Jo Mielziner.

Kevin Jackson said...

To Inside Man,
Phew.