Hasn’t it been a lovely fall? Weather-wise, at least. The news, not so much. Still, Monday was sultry and beautiful — I had a fire going in the backyard when my wife came home from work, and we enjoyed a rare November weenie roast. Hot dogs just taste better grilled over an open fire.
Over the past few weeks, when the trees were aflame themselves, all orange and yellow and red, it was almost possible to forget what’s coming. The three months of bitterness and cold. Maybe four. Five, tops.
The leaves are mostly fallen now, the branches quite bare. The bright colors once above us now turned to dun and lining the gutter, a sodden mass.
Except of course for those oaks and beeches and other varieties of trees that are marcescent — not a word that gets in the paper much. Marcescence is the ability of certain trees to hold onto their leaves.
Nobody is sure exactly why they do it. Though scientists have been studying this tree business for a long time, botanists aren’t sure what value marcescence has: perhaps something to do with tree growth, as younger trees tend to be more marcescent than older. Maybe the leaves shield the tender branches from the killing wind. Maybe they provide a second wave of mulch.
Holding on is an undervalued quality. We’re so fixated on fame, we forget about tenacity. Neil Young was wrong; it’s better to fade away than to burn out.
Once you notice them, it’s easy to feel solidarity with those lingering leaves. To cheer them on. There’s a poignant Tom Waits song, “Last Leaf,” where the plucky flat arboreal appendage speaks. “I’m the last leaf on the tree,” it sings. “The autumn took the rest/But they won’t take me.” Kinda like being among the last regular columnists for a daily newspaper in Chicago. Waits also has a song called “Hold On.” That sounds like a plan. Defy the wind. Sometimes the best you can do is squinch your eyes shut, cling to that branch with all your might, and wait for better days.
Play is needed diversion for troubled times
Generally, I’m more of a Hamlet/King Lear/Richard III sort — I want to see characters whose problems are greater than mine, on a stage littered with bodies at the end. “Venom, do thy work!”
But that’s when the news isn’t already supplying carnage aplenty, which makes our time perfect to unwind with one of Shakespeare’s daft comedies, such as “Twelfth Night,” on stage now at Chicago Shakespeare Theater at Navy Pier.
I’m not a drama critic. That would be Sheri Flanders, whose spot-on review in the Sun-Times calls the production “vibrant, warm and nourishing.” But it would be negligent of me to know of something that could help those despairing at the current state of the world — and really, at this point, who isn’t? — and not do my part to bang two garbage can lids together on its behalf.
Shakespeare’s confection of forged letters, concealed identities and gender swapping is strangely current in a production jammed with talent and music and the warm tones of the Caribbean. Not to mention being really, really funny. The Bard is loved for his language, and I can’t recall a Shakespeare production where so many silent gestures set the house aroar, from Justen Ross’s Sebastian mouthing, “What the f--- is this?” to the whatever shrug Christiana Clark’s Olivia gives at “You would have been contracted to a maid” to every moment Alex Goodrich is on stage: he doesn’t have to speak — he can just stand funny.
The reggae music meshes with the play — directed by Jamaican-born Tyrone Phillips — perfectly, and with our sorry times. Israel Erron Ford, as Feste, the fool, is the wisest person on stage, naturally, and soars in the final song, Sting’s “Fragile”: “Nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could/For all those born beneath an angry star/Lest we forget how fragile we are.”
At a moment when everybody seems to have forgotten that, big time, this production comes as blessed relief to anybody trying to put on our own show of resilience. It’s the first play I can recall being sincerely grateful to have seen. If you’re looking for something to lighten your burden for a couple hours and then linger in a good way, get thee to “Twelfth Night” at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. It runs through Nov. 26.
