Easter in Insufferably Trivial Detail

I was up before the Easter bunny today, not on the "early to bed and early to rise" principle but on the principle that I like to kick back my heels and stay up into outrageous hours and now that I am on holiday there is no duty for me to be spiritually hungover for.

This year the Easter brunch was particularly munificent. Despite cynical prognostications one of us did shop for Easter eggs and Papa had a secret stash which enriched the table greatly. So we had a little bunch of chocolate eggs, filled or not, and candy eggs with nougat or marzipan or other centres, and sugar eggs that looked like a sunny-side-up egg on our plates and decorating the white tablecloth; our trusty reddish clay pot of tea; two platters of cheese and Schinkenspeck and maybe blood sausage; baskets of soft pretzel sticks and croissants filled with nougat or marzipan or plain and raisin buns and ordinary buns; cold boiled eggs that had been painted red or orange or yellow or green or blue or lilac with watercolours; and fresh soft-boiled eggs. Then there is a large platter of further Easter eggs, and two chocolate bunnies stood at each plate, and chocolate ladybugs interspersed; the centrepiece is a jar with cherry twigs and a scarlet geranium and a yellow and violet pansy, with three of our handpainted hollow eggs hanging from it. Ge. heated milk and there was I think also a pot of hot coffee.

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Before it began we watched the children's show Die Maus. It had a depressing story about the history of the Easter egg hunt; the heroine was a hen who wanted to lay white eggs and could only lay them in different colours. Aside from the quality of the short animation, it was first of all disconcerting that the hen was so conformist and secondly that she was fixated on white skin tones, even if the skin is a shell and belongs to a fictive egg. Mama also thought it was weird . . . Then there was a segment about milking eggs, which was where the real depression set in, because the actor just went in and milked a random cow out of an anonymous row without asking permission or anything, and I was already feeling Charlie Brownish enough when they then showed how the machine milks cows, and anything more loveless, mechanical, and disrespectful can hardly be imagined . . . So to progress further into the children's literary canon I felt like Eeyore at this point.

Then a film crew accompanied our Pope as he went about his daily activities in the Vatican, and it was incredibly boring. There are two cooks and two housekeepers or something in his household, conservatively and formally dressed women who look utterly devoid of cheer (note to self: do not work for Pope unless wish to look like life sucked out of self), and then a secretary and other people, a very closed circle which barely enlivens the minimalist though not modern rooms. He eats breakfast off of specially commissioned plate with his coat of arms on it, presumably eats lunch or dinner off the same, takes a short walk along the same old route to aid his digestion (TMI, I thought!), signs proclamations given to him in a portfolio by someone in a boring office with however a checkerboard pattern in the floor which I found superficially intriguing, and then watches television on one of a set of dusty olive armchairs whose velvety surface looks like it has been vacuumed within an inch of its life twice every day. And in the morning he can appear on the balcony and wave to people and say something in several languages, as the flag waves below him. And so on and so forth. Given the choice of being a mafioso or Catholic grandee the former seems far more fun, though the formal gardens of the Pope's summer palace are like a wormhole in time, and the patch of olive trees where the cows graze and the brood of chickens are endearing. The footage of the Pope himself was captured by the Vatican; our secular Maus production team was permitted to film on the palace grounds.

The short animation about a sheep who runs a farm for a day was far more fun, and I can't presently recall if there was anything else.

Anyway, even an innocuous children's show can apparently feed my cynicism.

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Then Arte showed a production of Händel's Messiah. I missed most of it but it looked like utter tosh. From an environmental perspective it was however most congenial, because it lit only the bottom tenth of the stage, though in antiseptic white glare, everything else being plunged in darkness; an energy-saving measure if I ever saw one.

The action took place on a gigantic revolving stage, which failed to transcend the dignity of a Lazy Susan, and for some reason the thick and towering partitioning walls were given a classisistic flair which did not fit the modern hotel(?) environment.

Which leads me to the dramatis personae, who were all dressed in modern businesswear, grey and black and other dark skirts and tights and jackets, and white shirts for the gentlemen. How is this related to the Messiah? — The secret is shared between the director and god.

By the time I arrived they were stacking dark wood chairs onto a pile in the centre of the Lazy Susan on top of an airport-lounge or hotel-room-y wall-to-wall carpet, and then bending over as if they were all afflicted with stomach cramps or extreme somnolence only to get up again and wilt in subsequent scenes, and Mama mentioned that there was an earlier scene where someone had slit his wrists.

Then the scene shifted to a hotel room where a woman was undressing, going to a crib that clearly had nothing in it and the white curtain above it did nothing to convince me otherwise, and dropping her clothes carefully on the floor!, and then a man in his shirtsleeves who (so Mama informed me) was supposed to be Jesus entered the door quietly backwards like Mr. Bean enacting the world's worst ninja and sat down on the floor before joining the lady in bed after she had peeled off her black stockings for the titillation of the audience.

Being fed up I wandered away from the corner room. When I came back there was a faintly North Korean choreographed group thing where they waved their hands about and so on, and then a woman in a pale nightgown who was presumably something like an angel interpreted the lyrics in sign language. Eventually the stage light narrowed in on the angel, who was terribly obnoxious, and it was somehow over. Then everyone came to take a bow and the audience clapped enthusiastically.

As far as the production goes this could have been any play or opera or oratorio ever written, if you're going to reinvent the tale entirely. In the US this would have been more amusing or genuine, but in Europe these things always reek of trying so, so hard to be cool and avantgarde.

Anyway, didn't see all of it and don't want to set myself up as a critic, but that was my take on the affair. At least the stage lighting, aside from its ecological worth, supports the opthalmological and optometrical trades. Thank you for your contribution to our economy!

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Happy Easter!