I’ve been back from my England/France trip for over a week now, and I’m beginning to settle back in. (Though a quick trip to Kansas City didn’t help, either in terms of jetlag or Putting Stuff Away.) So today’s post will be catching up on this and that, and rather miscellaneous.

JANE AUSTEN MOVIE CLUB

Thank you to everyone who joined in the discussion for our first “meeting” of the Jane Austen Movie Club last week, when we discussed the 1995 Persuasion! What a lot of fun.

Our next meeting will be August 7 (remember, it’s always the first Tuesday of the month), and we will discuss the 1996 Emma (the one starring Gwyneth Paltrow.) It’s short, it’s easy to find, and I know there are differences of opinion on it, so I think it should be fun to discuss! (And Lois already has a copy.) 🙂

KEAN

While in London, Todd and I saw the new production of the 1953 Sartre play Kean (which is itself a reworking of a much earlier Dumas play).

I know very little about the Dumas original, but the Sartre play takes what it wants from Kean’s life, and substitutes fiction for the rest. So the Kean socializing with the Prince of Wales is not only older than Kean was during the Regency, but older than Kean ever lived to be. (And still single!)

So what Sartre did, basically, was take the idea of Kean — a not-terribly-handsome actor from a lowly background, whose passionate and groundbreaking acting style made him an overly-indulged celebrity — and use it to talk about reality vs art (and various other things) in a play (which is nonetheless full of humor).

One choice of director Adrian Noble really threw me in this production: he set it during the 1950’s… I confess, I’d much rather have seen a Regency setting!

Here’s a picture of Antony Sher as Kean. (Photo credit: Tristram Kenton.) Interestingly, Sher is famous on the London stage for playing some of Kean’s favorite roles, including Richard III and Shylock.

Reviews of this production were mixed, with most seeing some problems with it. (For a nice overview, see http://www.theatre.com/story/id/3007600 ). The mixed reviews may have led to the low attendance which is causing the show to close earlier than originally stated…though it’s not the only show in the West End with that problem. (The musical The Drowsy Chaperone, even with Elaine Paige in the lead, is closing six months ahead of schedule, after a miniscule run.)

I confess I was severely jetlagged while watching the play…so perhaps I didn’t give it a fair trial. I found it amusing, and it certainly held the attention (the gentleman next to me who slept through it was, I am convinced, even more jetlagged than I.) But it didn’t seem to entirely succeed as much of anything, in my opinion. Sher was fine, as were the other actors — I’m not sure if I’d blame the script or the direction, but in the end none of it seemed to matter (and there were parts where things seemed to suddenly change, and the audience felt like we’d been lied to a bit, which I hate.)

I’M BACK!

The big news is I survived Heathrow! We flew the day after the terrorist attack on Glasgow — it was insanely confused and stressful (though, come to think of it, most of that was probably just Heathrow being true to itself). Then we flew to Kansas City and back, ending up stuck in our plane on the runway for an extra hour due to an unattended package.

But now I’m back! Back from London and the French Riviera. Back in the land of Mexican restaurants, the land of soft drink refills (and iced tea!), the land of wide streets and too many, too-wide cars. The land of cheap stuff, of smoggy skies, of dollar bills that all look alike, of freeways and Asian groceries and ranch dressing.

So…what do you notice when you come back home from somewhere?

And for those of you going to conference — have a great time!

Cara
Cara King, author of My Lady Gamester, who hasn’t left a bag unattended in a very long time

When I realized my blog day was also the 4th, of course I had to think about the Regency connection. Then I remembered reading somewhere that the stress of the American revolution (along with problems with France and liberal opposition at home) contributed to the breakdown of George III’s health and sanity. His final lapse, of course, resulted in Prinny acting as Regent between 1809-1820.

But actually I have to fess up and admit that linking America’s founding fathers’ actions to the Regency (and its romance subgenre) is pretty far-fetched. Though some scholars in the past have made attempts to psychoanalyse George III, most experts now attribute his mental breakdown to porphyria, a hereditary disease which in extreme form can cause insanity. Recent analysis of the king’s hair indicates his condition was worsened by traces of arsenic in the James’ powder with which he was dosed.

Back to Independence Day. I enjoy it but have to confess it isn’t a particularly special holiday for me. My grandparents and parents came from Lithuania, fleeing communist oppression, and they taught me to appreciate what is great about this country. But they never were really hooked in with American holidays and traditions. Also, I have relatives in Lithuania, Italy, Finland, Canada and Australia, so even besides my galloping Anglophilia, I have ties to other countries besides the U.S.A.

I still think of myself as patriotic. I vote, I sometimes write letters to government officials, I volunteer in my community and I’m trying to raise my children to be good citizens. But I don’t have any family tradition of an annual 4th of July barbecue. I don’t mind if other people swathe themselves head to toe in flag images (anything that makes you happy!) but it’s just not me.

My family and I will celebrate in our own way. Last year at the request of my children I made a red, white and blue dessert with vanilla ice cream, raspberries and blueberries. Apparently this is now a “tradition”. Easy enough, I’ll do it again!

After dinner, weather permitting, we might go to the fireworks show at a local park. It won’t hurt us to listen to the 1812 overture again. Good bombastic fun and well-suited for fireworks, after all. Though I wonder how many people listening know it was composed to celebrate Russia’s victory over Napoleon and includes the Marseillaise, the French national anthem?

So how about you? Do you celebrate Independence Day and how? And can anyone explain how the 1812 Overture became a staple for the occasion?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

We are back from Tennessee, where the scenery basically looks like this. I thought as we drove through the mountains that our Regency characters would have been amazed at the endless trees of the Shenandoah, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Alleghenies.

The family reunion picnic was lovely. We met family we’d never met before and saw folks we had not seen for years. Here we are. All except me, because I’m taking this photo (deliberately distant to protect the family’s privacy) but you can see how many of us came and how lush the picnic area was.

But I got to thinking about the differences in picnics from the Regency time to now . Our picnic was in a public park, not on the grounds of a country estate. We did not have tents erected for shelter from the sun, but the abundant Tennessee trees did a great job of shading our spot. We lugged our own chairs in our own cars and the food was not brought in by servants in horse drawn wagons, rather it arrived in a big SUV. The caterers were certainly not dressed in livery but in Tshirts and bermuda shorts. We ate hot dogs and hamburgers off styrofoam plates and drank (Regency characters may shudder here) iced tea.

There were games for the children – wheelbarrow races, potato sack races, nothing like the decorous maypole dance depicted here.

But I suspect, then as now, we had a wonderful time. The gathering of family and friends is mostly so.

I gave away some of my books. Most of the relatives did not know there was a romance author in the fam. One of my husband’s cousins will be in Dallas at the same time as the Romance Writers Conference and she might come to the booksigning (July 11 5:30 to 7:30 at the Hyatt Regency in Dallas)!

Any family gatherings this summer for any of you? Any family reunion horror stories? Anyone planning to be at the RWA conference or the booksigning?

Maypole image from Jessamyn’s costume pages
Emma photo from the movie Emma