There seems to be no limit — or sense of perspective — to Twitter’s calls for summary judgement and execution
It’s not enough, it seems, that theatre has been cancelled for most of the last 14 months. Now, in the cannibalistic way of Twitter, people are determined to cancel each other, too, sometimes without mercy. Less than a week after his suicide, theatre maker Chris Goode (as I wrote here the other day, https://shentonstage.com/that-was-the-week-that-was-4/), Twitter had acted as judge, jury and executioner — even though he was already dead, so I still can’t work out what more it wanted.
“Every Day a Little Death” is one of Sondheim’s most plangent and bitter lyrics, speaking to a life creaking with disappointment, as a lonely wife sings of her philandering absent husband:
Every day a little sting
In the heart and in the head
Every move and every breath
And you hardly feel a thing
Brings a perfect little death
He smiles sweetly
Strokes my hair, says he misses me
I would murder him right there
But first I die
He talks softly of his wars
And his horses and his whores
I think love’s a dirty business
So do I, so do I.
I think about this song a lot, not because (thank God) I’m being cheated on, but because every day does seem to bring a little death of reason and common sense, as every day brings a(nother) outrage, whether real or manufactured in the parallel universe of twitter, and they way it likes to bring historic transgressions to light that, in today’s more enlightened world, are no longer considered acceptable or appropriate.
Not a day goes by (to quote another Sondheim song title) without the engulfing sense of someone else being cancelled for words misspoken or behaviour revealed, often long ago, that is now deemed unpardonable.
Of course some of these actions and behaviours should have been challenged before now: when was it ever acceptable that someone like Harvey Weinstein or Scott Rudin could use and/or abuse actors and staff as they did, for sexual and or sadistic pleasure of exerting control over people not as powerful as they are?
So it is right and proper that, in the case of Weinstein, he is now behind bars, and in the case of Rudin, he is now professionally discredited (and removed from the billing of his former and future productions, though we still don’t know whether he will still have a silent interest in any or all of these).
But there does seem to be a lack of a sense of proportion to the reaction to the “crime” in other cases.
Just yesterday we had the case of England cricketer Ollie Robinson being suspended from international cricket by the ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board) after historic tweets emerged that had been published in 2012 and 2013.
Culture and sports minster Oliver Dowden tweeted in response,
And Robinson has himself publicly apologised, saying: “On the biggest day of my career so far, I am embarrassed by the racist and sexist tweets that I posted over eight years ago, which have today become public,” he said. “I want to make it clear that I’m not racist and I’m not sexist. I deeply regret my actions, and I am ashamed of making such remarks. I was thoughtless and irresponsible, and regardless of my state of mind at the time, my actions were inexcusable. Since that period, I have matured as a person and fully regret the tweets.”
But the high court of Twitter has already cancelled him, and no amount of atonement, it seems, will suffice.
Also yesterday, historical footage emerged of beloved Broadway darling Sutton Foster doing an impersonation of fellow Tony winner Jennifer Holliday singing her signature song from Dreamgirls “And I Am Telling You I’m not Going”:
Theatre Twitter has decided, too, that this is a cardinal offence, and calling for Foster’s imminent run in Anything Goes at the Barbican (pictured below, when she did the show on Broadway) to be cancelled. (“And I am telling you you are cancelled&rdquo
.
Composer, musical director and performer Nick Barstow tweeted:
But first of all — can we pause for a little context?
Not to excuse the deed, but (a) this was, by the look of it, some time ago (Foster is now 46, and certainly doesn’t look it in this video); and (b) she was NOT doing a generalised re-interpretation of a song standard that belongs to a black performer in the show, but a specific impersonation of Holliday’s unique, idiosyncratic phrasing. THAT’S the joke.
