I travelled into the unchartered waters of Hackney in East London for the first time since the Patio Set, the band my friend James Grant was then a member of had a record launch there, around 15 years ago! Today’s visit involved records, but more record keeping, as my local NHS surgery in Bloomsbury sent me off to Saint Leonard’s Hospital in the Borough of Hackney to clarify some record keeping and, possibly, get my Covid-19 Booster. Part year residents, it seems, get special treatment. When my Uber driver turned into this place, my only thought was of Paddy Chayefsky’s 1971 dark comic classic movie, “The Hospital.”
I wondered how long my future would be. From the barred front entrance, there was adequate signage to both the Covid clinic, for me, and the Polio vaccination clinic for the nice Romanian family I met. After our excursion around the huge complex, we found our way inside and the always remarkably friendly and capable NHS staff helped me through the paperwork process. Two different women were patient with me as I tried to remember my UK post code, a jumble of letters and numbers that I always struggle with and then trying to find my UK pay-as-you-go phone’s number. This is my ’emergency phone that I only bought for NHS calls because they can’t call international numbers. Anyway, I finally found it and eventually, was able to be jabbed! Its Moderna this time, a big change for this guy. I’d been a Pfizer man before this.
As I mentioned, this is an old hospital. It has roots as a workhouse for the poor of Shore ditch, London. The building where the clinic was held was a grand old 19th Century one. I noticed the details of the high ceilings and large windows. I mentioned this to the woman who was about to “jab” me. She told me that
the room was once the hospital cafeteria.
The jab search completed; it was on to the cultural activity of the day. Today, this involved a trip to the Southbank of Thames to the National Theatre complex where I would be seeing a matinee performance of Arthur Miller’s classic, “The Crucible” at the Olivier Theatre. This play, for people of my age, is one of those touchstones. I was born during the McCarthy era. Senator Joseph “Tail Gunner Joe” McCarthy, his henchman Roy Cohn, and journalist Edward R. Murrow and the roles they played in the tragedy and triumphs of the rise and fall of McCarthy’s bizarre crusade against non-existent communist cells in the Federal government, including the U.S. Army were the place and time where Arthur Miller saw history repeating itself. His words, as true today, as they were when Mr. Miller first published the play in 1953. Generations of people have seen its relevance in America, and I am sure, around the world. We certainly turned to it during the Viet Nam War and Civil Rights Protests of the 1960s and early 1970s, the attempts at political repression culminating with the police riot at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968. Many have seen the parallels again when free speech has been denied to the people of countries around the world From Russia to China, to the Middle East. Today, Americans, again feel that our freedoms are again being threatened by the hysteria of those who claim to wish to protect the civil law by using what they believe to be their holy laws.
This was a good production. I lament the diminution of the character of Tituba, the young, enslaved girl who, in earlier version was given a much clearer role in bringing the magic and spells she had learned from her elders to the young Puritan daughters. chafing under the restrictions under the restrictions on which they lived. This was a “Crucible,” focused on the crime of failing to see what one does not wish to see and the sins of omission that often worse than commission. These, of course are the problems that we see eating our societies and democracies away today. I cannot stress, enough, though, that any production of this particular work still has the words of this great American playwright to sustain it. Whatever the issues may have been with accents, I left that theatre, reminded that we must find a way to awaken the minds of those who cannot see where we are headed or we, too will live with devastating consequences.
Mark In London 