Theatre of the mind in topsy-turvy-land
View(s):Pinch me, someone. I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming that the Mikado of Topsy-Turvy-Land and his Lords High Poo Bah went to the theatre. And that they saw a play about local politics. They saw their own images, reflected poorly, in a glass darkly. And laughed. Because it was funny. Even though it was about them. But the joke was on us. We who thought that we were laughing at them when we saw the version of the play that was meant for the hoi polloi. The same play.
But why do I feel I am losing you? So let me – very much like that idiot girl in Wonderland (except that this is Cloud Cuckoo Land – begin at the beginning… and go on till I reach the end… and then, hopefully, stop…
It all began when a clever playwright penned a dastardly play about the state of his nation and the laughable political characters who inhabited it. The name of the land was Arsikland, which is a near anagram of Sri Lanka (minus the D), and which sounds suspiciously like “our sick land”. The laughable political characters who inhabited the land – and the play – were suspiciously like the local politicos we all love or love to loathe and fear (with some notable exceptions including Them Who Must Not Be Named). Predictably, audiences lapped it up.
What is not to lap, or like? In a milieu where one man’s media freedom is another man’s artistic licence is another man’s affront to life, liberty, and the pursuit of mammon, a little bit of political slap and tickle was more than welcome. In fact, it was welcomed with open arms and open purses (tickets being a tad pricey to say the least). In the end, it was so hot a political property that the Censors decided to rap one of its incarnations on the knuckles. Which cast something of a pall over the proceedings for a while.
But when the moujiks received the knout, the resultant uproar only made the play more popular and the powers that be more despised for their craven self-centredness. So some savvy savant somewhere evidently managed to persuade an ostensibly all-too-willing Mikado to rap the Censor himself on his esteemed knuckles. And soon the increasingly misnamed satire was back on the boards. And on YouTube. And on video. And in the hearts and minds of the same demographic which is reading this column. So I feel fairly safe in mentioning that I’m at my wit’s end at what has allegedly transpired.
It seems that the play – tagged as satire by the naive and blasé – is poor satire (bad luck, chaps.). It seems that the politicos who secured its release and return into the native heartland are in collusion with the propagandists who want this play staged and seen to be staged (bad form, gents.). It seems that the Mikado and the Lords High Poo-Bah who attended a “speshal pefomance” most unexpectedly enjoyed the production because they thought one of several things or possibly nothing at all. Either that the presentation was not about themselves (good one, fools.). Or that even if the content was intended as a caricature or lampooning of themselves, it wouldn’t make jot or a tittle of a difference anyway because it was in English and no voters would be harmed in the process (bad show, folks.). Or either/or that it didn’t matter anyway because in the end the protagonists and the powers that be and perhaps most importantly the Mikado would emerge from the whole Potemkin Village (oh, stop complaining and look it up – would you?!) smelling of magnanimity, largesse, and yet another victory at the polls, etc. Bad karma, chameleons.
What’s that, it’s all very confusing? Why don’t you join the “I’m at my wit’s end” club, then…
On the one hand, there are those who like the play but not its purpose. On the other, those who think the play has no purpose and is neither good nor bad but just one of those things. And in the far corner, crouching at the door like sin that seeks to master you, the conspiracy theorists who suspect that the whole exercise since the post-censor-passing phase reeks of propaganda and Trojan Horses.
Now I don’t know about you, punters near and dear, but I like my satire pure and simple (though satire is rarely pure and never simple). And I like my politicos simple and pure (though they are always simple and hardly ever pure). Thus when the twain meet in a rambunctious, rip-roaring, regular-sized helping of the latest scandal, very old but good jokes, over-the-top hamming it up, and slightly (all right, all right, egregiously) politically incorrect positions, I’m smiling all the way to Dreamland.
Even though, somewhere, somehow, I can’t help feeling that something is amiss. And that it is not a case of art imitating life, or political life being so comically imitable as to be inimical to mockery; but that someone, in some way, has pulled the wool over our eyes – again. So that while we’re laughing at the Idiotic Other and the Idiotic Others who laugh at us laughing at ourselves, Puss – or the Mikado – or the real Powers That Be – are having the last laugh.