IT’S
NOT THE WINNING So no Tony for Bennett. The Gods did not smile and the
prize went not to Tracie but to Nina Arianda for her performance in Venus in Furs. Ms Arianda apparently
squealed with delight several times during her acceptance speech, also telling
Christopher Plummer who presented the award to her that he was her first crush,
which is the sort of vital information we are so fortunate to have bestowed on
us on such occasions. Ms Arianda’s coy screeches were met with universal groans
of misery by fans of Rainbow and
particularly by the fervent admirers of the simply luminous Ms Bennett, who
although no shoe-in was considered by an awful lot of people to be the correct
and logical choice for the prize. But then prizes such as these have no
connection with logic, sense or rationality, the results being based on purely
subjective judgement, whimsicality, parochialism, fancifulness and any other
bias you care to mention, at least when the results are unfavourable. If on the
other hand our choice sweeps past the post in first place, up in the air go our
hats and we cheer fair-mindedness, parity, objectivity and any other virtue you
care to name. Personally
as I have said before I can do without prize giving, although on occasion in
the past like all humbugs I could be heard practising my BAFTA acceptance
speech in the bath. But now in the prime of my great age of wisdom - a state into
which you know you have arrived when you realise how foolish you once were – now
I say socks to prizes, and medals, to
honours and gilded tin statues. Yes, yes I know there is no point in coming
second because no one ever remembers the also-rans, only the winner, but I say socks to that as well, because I’ll bet
you my penny to your pound that unless you’re one of those really very odd
people with a funny shaped head who do pub quizzes and the like you don’t know
who won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1987, the Tony for Best Actress in 1996 or a
BAFTA for anything whatsoever in any year whatsoever. But what you will
remember and never ever forget is having seen something utterly remarkable,
like Paul Scofield in King Lear, the
Ellington Band playing Rockin’ in Rhythm,
Meryl Streep in practically anything, a Turner seascape or Tracie Bennett
as Judy Garland. I
was talking to a friend of mine about this yesterday, someone who has been more
than a little unwell, is now a whole lot better but has in that meantime been
there and back and seen how far it is. He wondered what I felt at Ms Bennett
not being awarded a Tony for Best Actress in a Play and I confessed to feeling
despair, despondency, dismay, dejection, depression and desolation. First he
observed how odd it was that all these emotions expressing disappointment began
with the letter D, including even disappointment itself, suggesting that
instead of being the fourth letter of the alphabet it should be the last, in keeping
with the final thing that befalls us all, the only experience according to
Wittgenstein that we cannot actually go through,
before reminding me of the Baron Coubertin’s famous adage, that the important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the
essential thing being not to have conquered but to have fought well. Most of all, occasions such as Awards contests
are not contests that we enter voluntarily other than incidentally – that is by
being in a play, or a film, or a television series, or having written a book,
painted a picture, learned to play a musical instrument or invented a cure for
something we may perchance find ourselves in line for so-called glittering prizes.
We cannot put our names down as entrants for such tournaments because it is other
people who think us worthy of these honours and enter accordingly. So therefore when we find ourselves or those
we love and admire to be in competition we should take the long view and say
this is not about you or them or us – this is abstract, notional and purely speculative.
No one can give you Swing and it don’t
mean a thing if you ain’t got it. If we have a gift, whatever sort of talent it
may be, then it is up to us all, each and every one of us to understand what we
can do, what we wish to do and what we are doing it for, and then to try and do
it to the very best of our ability. If those are our aspirations, what need therefore
of the gilded trophies? Everyone who succeeds in bringing joy, comfort,
succour, exhilaration, excitement, bliss and rapture to the lives of others is
a winner. Anyone who selflessly works themselves to a standstill to try and
make total strangers forget their misery and woe, to feel better for a moment
or even for ever – they have won the biggest prize life can award – and they
have no need of any cups, awards, medals, plaques, plates, statuettes, gongs ,
shields, mementoes or titles to demonstrate their excellence. And
the same goes for winning. If you or someone you love to admire does get called
up to a stage, a podium or summoned to a Palace then this time we must remember
Kipling and treat this impostor in just the same way, realising the award is something
estimated and hypothetical and not in the least bit real. What is real is the
effect of the performance, contest, act, composition or invention, not the
accolade it carries with it. Bask in the tributes and you will drown from esteem.
Acknowledge the pretence and your achievement will ever grow the greater. My
friend quoted me several recent instances of awards going a little lateral,
reminding me how recently we cavilled at the so called result of the Young
Musician of the Year, a competition in which the prodigious talent of the
participants, especially the finalists was never in doubt. Their excellence was
undoubted, their gifts indisputable. And everyone thought there was only one
winner – the very young man – little more than a boy really, who played the
Liszt Piano Concerto faultlessly and quite brilliantly. So too did the ultimate
winner perform William Walton’s little performed Cello Concerto and it was to
her that the prize went - not we all thought because of her superior musician-ship
flawless although it had been, but because the judges considered the Walton
less of an old musical warhorse than
the Liszt – so Walton won and Liszt lost, which is another fine illustration as
to how impossible it is to judge talent. The
great musician and philosopher Sir Yehudi Menuhin abhorred musical talent
contests, not only because of this impossibility to evaluate endowment but
because of the very real harm it often inflicted on the competitors. I
don’t think any such harm will befall those on Broadway who didn’t get a gilded
trophy this week, but there may well be some sort of sense of having somehow failed
and that would be a shame. Nor do I think – although this is probably
presumptuous – that Ms Bennett will do a lot of furniture kicking, lip biting
and/or fainting in coils because she seems to be a lady with her head on right.
Of course she wanted to win – that is the nature of such events – when it comes
down to the wire nobody wants to lose – but I suspect the real reason she
wanted to win and why she might well have suffered an attack of the glums is
that she wanted it for her wonderful and supportive family, Mum in the
particular. We all of us ‘do it’ for someone, for someone we love, even if
sometimes it’s the audience who becomes the parent or partner – but whatever Ms
Bennett was feeling she must never ever even contemplate failure because the
little gilded figure rests not on her fireplace but on that of another, since the
one thing Ms Bennett cannot do is fail. And now the red carpet has been rolled
back up and stuffed under stairs somewhere, and the hired tuxedos and borrowed
frocks have been returned and the press gone to frenzy-feed elsewhere, the real
memories will be of the excellence of achievement, of the so-called winners and
so-called losers both – those lucky enough to have seen the work of artists such
as Tracie Bennett and James Corden will remember the magic they weave and the
spells they cast rather than the awards they won or did not win. Great battles
are remembered for acts of heroism and sacrifice – they are not recalled by the
medals. Great art remains in our minds. Trophies tarnish. So all that remains to be said and finally concluded
is that to beat Tracie Bennett to the trophy Ms Nina Arianda has to be one of
the greatest performers Broadway has ever seen because as those of us who have
seen The End of the Rainbow can
attest, the star of that show, the person Ms Arianda overcame to win her Tony was
and still is and always will be all of that and then an awful lot more. May the road always rise up to meet you, Ms Bennett
and may your shadow never grow less. And I certainly don’t see that happening. |
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CategoriesBrendan BehanCannes Film Festival 2012 community police Dance, art and healing End of the Rainbow Films and filming humour, books music OLYMPICS AND THE FUTURE Sexual innocence The Nanny State the price of fame Vision why do you write? |
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