This week finds me surrounded by crime, criminals and ghosts - appropriately casting a sinister and spooky feel over the month of October.
With Charles's brother Danny and his wife Donna in town, a trip to Alcatraz was in order. We have lived here for 10 years and I had never made the trip out there, so I was as excited as they were to visit the famous island penitentiary.
It's quite something to be able to walk the halls which housed such infamous names such as Al Capone, The Birdman, and Machine-Gun Kelley. The island itself is peaceful and rather idyllic, with the sound of the waves and birds carried over the winds of the bay. The cell house looks like something out of a movie, 3 stories of cells in rows named after city streets - Michigan Avenue, Broadway. The cells are tiny and dingy, with each possession carefully arranged in the small space.
It was easy to imagine being confined there, with a view of San Francisco just out of reach, stripped of everything but the bare essentials. Some privileges (mail, books, time in the yard) could be earned through good behavior - but mostly prisoners had to sit by themselves and think. Many plotted escapes, and some may have gotten away. It is not really the conditions that would be the punishment, it is the removal of control in a man's life. Being owned by the state, not being able to make choices. The danger of being around the other inmates must have been very hard - nowhere to hide, and no one to call on for protection. I am reading a book by a former inmate, who I met at the end of the tour, and he said the biggest danger was being sodomized by other prisoners. That alone is far more scary than metal bars, any day - in fact, it may make me want to hide behind them.
Later in the week, I was able to get a half-price ticket to A.C.T.'s "Sweeney Todd" at the Geary Theater.
"Sweeney Todd" has been my favorite musical for many years, ever since I first saw it in London in the 1980's. That was the Angela Landsbury era, so productions were staged elaborately to be on par with the big shows of the time such as Les Miz and Miss Saigon. But it was not the sets or costumes that hooked me - it was the story. The Demon Barber of Fleet Street - a tortured soul carrying out his own version of justice in a putrid, festering, desperate London - and his lover Mrs. Lovett, a calculating, opportunistic, and tenacious woman. Pure evil? Well, it would seem so, yet we have some sympathy for these characters. It is with both apprehension and glee that you watch Sweeney Todd slice throat after throat of his victims, crooning to his "friend", a gleaming blade.
I saw the show again in New York in the '90's and was reminded of how much I loved it. The music, by Stephen Sondheim, is original, catchy and clever - a relief from the tediousness of the Andrew Lloyd Weber McMusicals (don't get me started on "Phantom of the Opera"...ugh).
This new version, fresh from Broadway, was my favorite yet. The director John Doyle created a brilliant twist - instead of a full orchestra, he had the actors playing all of the instruments. It created a more intimate staging, and quite an intense exercise for all of the players. The set was minimal as well, with the creative use of props and furniture to help the audience visualize the scenes. And the characters were a beautiful showcase of oddities - from their sunken cheeks and hollow eyes straight out of a Charles Addams cartoon, to their quirky gestures and movements. This was evident especially in the characters of Joanna and Anthony, previously conceived as the expected beautiful young lovers, now realized as broken characters in their own right. It's easy to see why Tim Burton was drawn to this story, and it will be interesting to see how the movie turns out this winter.
So, I can't help but wonder what separates the rest of us from criminals, if anything? All of us started out life in the same way...some with more, some with less. Is it a lack of morals? A addiction to taking something from others? Psychosis? Ignorance? An overabundance of anger, with a lack of respect for human life? Or just a turn down the wrong path?
Could it be that our fascination with these people merely an exploration of the darkness that lives in our own hearts?
