Edgar Drake, the lead character in Daniel Mason's best-selling 2002 novel The Piano Tuner -- a book now receiving a wonderfully evocative world premiere stage adaptation -- is a classic case.
February 15, 2007 (Press Release) --
As Noel Coward reminded us, only "mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun." Yet for as long as the sun never set on the British Empire, such Englishmen wandered the far reaches of the globe and suffered the sort of heat strokes that had more to do with culture shock and altered consciousness than hyperthermia or crisped skin.
This phenomenon was, of course, not restricted to the English. Take a French diplomat or an American soldier and put him in Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq -- or, for that matter, take any intrepid traveler and put her in Mexico, North Africa or even Italy -- and a spell might very well be cast, a transformation set in motion.
Back home in England, he's a rather timid if latently romantic middle-class Victorian -- childless after a long marriage to a seemingly passionate woman, and quite obsessive about his work as a piano tuner, even if he consistently underplays his musical abilities.
Drake has never traveled beyond the borders of his own island nation. But then, in 1886, something akin to an official order comes to him by way of the British War Office -- a request that he head to the most remote and embattled jungles of Burma, where he is to tune an Erard grand. He obeys. It is a fateful decision.
The piano, originally transported under the most treacherous conditions, is the property of Dr. Anthony Carroll, a British major with the unique distinction of being able to maintain some sort of alliance with local tribes and thereby prevent the French colonialists from taking control of the region. Carroll has a near- mythic reputation (think of Marlon Brando's Col. Kurtz in the film "Apocalypse Now"), and for the moment at least, he must be humored. Some even believe it is his music that has beguiled the restless locals.
Source: http://www.msn.com
POSTED BY HEDY WEISS
This phenomenon was, of course, not restricted to the English. Take a French diplomat or an American soldier and put him in Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq -- or, for that matter, take any intrepid traveler and put her in Mexico, North Africa or even Italy -- and a spell might very well be cast, a transformation set in motion.
Back home in England, he's a rather timid if latently romantic middle-class Victorian -- childless after a long marriage to a seemingly passionate woman, and quite obsessive about his work as a piano tuner, even if he consistently underplays his musical abilities.
Drake has never traveled beyond the borders of his own island nation. But then, in 1886, something akin to an official order comes to him by way of the British War Office -- a request that he head to the most remote and embattled jungles of Burma, where he is to tune an Erard grand. He obeys. It is a fateful decision.
The piano, originally transported under the most treacherous conditions, is the property of Dr. Anthony Carroll, a British major with the unique distinction of being able to maintain some sort of alliance with local tribes and thereby prevent the French colonialists from taking control of the region. Carroll has a near- mythic reputation (think of Marlon Brando's Col. Kurtz in the film "Apocalypse Now"), and for the moment at least, he must be humored. Some even believe it is his music that has beguiled the restless locals.
Source: http://www.msn.com
POSTED BY HEDY WEISS
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