The Politician's Husband

He sits down to watch his wife give a TV interview. They'd agreed she would use it to shaft the Prime Minister. But what's this? She's shafting him instead. The traitress!  His fist tightens round his wine glass.

Surely he's not going to crush the glass. That would be just too corny.

Snap!

Oh, he just did.....

I'm as unfond of politicians as the next man but are they really all such reptiles? It would be nice if one could care about these people but one can't.

Pippa Passes

Pippa Passes is a play. Sort of. But I don't think it's ever been staged professionally. It's very static. And the characters monologize for pages at a time. D.W, Griffith made a film of it. I can imagine that working. Sort of.

Pippa is a factory girl. Today is a holiday. She thinks she'll spend it wandering past the houses of the happiest people in town and pretend that she's them. Only they're not happy. As she passes she sings songs and the songs impact decisively on the unhappy lives of the supposedly happy people.

So, High concept. A tad mechanical. Touching in parts. Some of the songs are lovely.

The setting is modern Italy- and the town of Asolo where Browning lived. Italian politics come into the picture. Also prostitution and adultery and ecclesiastical corruption. One of the characters is planning to assassinate an Austrian official and Browning (as a supporter of Italian independence) approves.  This is racy material for a high-Victorian poem. Griffith had to tone it down. Idylls of the King it is not.

There's a very small town in Kentucky named after it.

Pippa Passes by Elizabeth Siddal (showing the incident in which Pippa meets three good-time girls who try to get her to go on the game.)