Sunny Sunday after theatre

Last night at Hannah Playhouse was an excellent innovative production written by a local couple of  guys, one of Indian parentage. They made fun, in the best possible way, of the Indian culture and its multitude of foibles, but underlined by the serious world situation where the best comedy survives so well. It also had the telling lesson that after seeing the world the best place to return to is home.

The play was also a lament on the ever-increasing technological world and the awful elimination of some of the world's most important animals, in this case, the much loved and much abused elephant. It was a touching tribute to this wonderful beast, and beautifully rendered with original music and acting of the highest calibre, with a story that would not have been out of place in a smart University Revue.

At the same time I am reading a fascinating memoir by Paul Monette, a writer I had heard of but not read, and I see now why, as he died in 1995 at a young age from the AIDS virus complications. He was the same age as me, but had a vastly different formation in the New England of the fifties and sixties, where he was a scholarship boy at the prestigious and snobby Andover Academy. He went on to study at Yale and finally 'came out' at age twenty-five in California and began his real ife as a gay man. Another tragic loss to the writing world, this time in the US, where so many artists were lost. And I am still here, there must be something else for me to do, I wonder where it will be?