Bags of delay

"You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth" 

- Henrik Ibsen

Almost as unexpected as two wargaming related posts in a row is that we actually played a game last week. It was Novara, the set up of which is as described on James' blog. It's a surprise attack, and it played out in a reliably surprising manner. To allow for what happened historically, but still make a game of it is not easy, but James is rather good at that sort of thing and to be honest I don't think this was any exception; he was just unlucky. The key was that the French Gendarmes were both dismounted and undressed. Piquet is a game of turning cards and then acting on them so in this case the Gendarmes had to turn the Formation Change card - of which they have only one - to get themselves sorted out. It isn't particularly clear from James' blog, but they had to turn it twice: once to put their armour on and once to mount up. The decision before the French commander was therefore whether to arm on the first turn of the card and run the risk of the Swiss arriving while they were still unmounted, or to mount and set of to defend themselves without full harness, or indeed any trousers. An interesting dilemma, or at least under normal circumstances it would have been.

As a digression I must remind you that there are two different types of Piquet: the traditional (we use a version of this heavily amended by Peter and James for the Seven Years War) and one known by the acronym FoB (we use their heavily amended versions of this for Ancient Galleys, Punic Wars, Crusades and Italian Wars). "But," I hear you ask "doesn't that get confusing?". To which I can only answer "Of course it gets bloody confusing!". There a number of differences between the two, but the one which should concern us here is initiative. In the original version it is possible to get large swings of initiative; indeed it is possible, though rather unlikely, for one player to end up with virtually no initiative at all and stand there twiddling their thumbs all night while their opponent burns through their deck. We had a truly terrible SYW game where that happened back in September 2015 should you wish to check out the report. It was just such experiences that apparently led to the design of the revised version, in which both sides always get the same initiative, although you never know whether you might go first or second. If one side goes second then first on successive turns then they might get a run of up to a maximum of twenty card turns, but the opponent will have had ten before they start and will get ten after they finish. The key point is that you turn all your cards each turn and are therefore guaranteed to activate any special conditions such as the one above. Or are you?

Each deck also has a small number of Lull cards. When these are turned each player rolls a dice, if the non-active player wins then he gets to turn a card out of sequence. The law of averages says that it will all even out in the end. However, on this occasion, to represent their sleepiness, the French had a much larger number of Lull cards. The Swiss won a remarkably high proportion of them and ended their first turn through the deck with the French still only part way through theirs. Crucially, one of the unturned cards was Formation Change. I was therefore spared making the wrong decision of whether to mount or dress; instead they did nothing and were cut down still riding their doxies rather than their horses (historically accurate by the way). However, on the plus side Piquet's virtuous side meant that it was in the end a very close game. The Landsknechts - not fully prepared, but not completely déshabillés either - actually bested the fearsome Swiss pike, not least because of the damage done by their cannon (that last part also historically accurate). In fact had their commander not died inopportunely early on, the French might well have won. So, an odd game, but Piquet not entirely disgraced; not as much as the French cavalry anyway.

For the record, Peter's first throw of the New Year was a one on a D12; start as you mean to go on.

Taking things as they come

"The lot assigned to every man is suited to him, and suits him to itself." - Marcus Aurelius

And so to the theatre. I have been to see 'Eden End', a relatively rarely performed play by one of this blog's heroes J.B. Priestley. I rather unexpectedly found myself sitting next to Tom Priestley, the great man's son. Whilst we didn't exchange more than pleasantries it certainly caused me to think that I'd got top value for my ticket money, and I commend the idea to theatres everywhere. I'm seeing some Ibsen soon and I trust that the West Yorkshire Playhouse are already scouring Norway for a descendant of the playwright so as to add that little bit extra to my visit. In the event family influence on my enjoyment of 'Eden End' didn't stop there, because after the show, over coffee and cake, Nicolas Hawkes, Priestley's stepson asked me what I had made of the play, politely listened to my interpretation and then equally courteously told me that I had got it completely wrong. That didn't bother me in itself - no one is more aware than me of the shallowness of the intellectual foundations on which this blog is built - but there is one element that does cause some lingering embarrassment. His take on it, the official view if you will, is that the moral of the play is that one must take things as they come. Given that your bloggist's major affectation is to hide behind the name of an eminent Stoic philosopher you might be forgiven for supposing that I ought to have worked that out for myself.

Going back to Ibsen, Stella Kirby was played here by the same actress who played Nora Helmer in the production of 'A Doll's House' that I saw a few months ago. This production takes Priestley's play and gives it an additional prologue and epilogue in the form of music hall routines featuring her, the purpose of which is to allude to her character's backstory, to reference other works by the author such as 'The Good Companions' and to presage the Great War which shortly followed the play's 1912 setting (*). In the finale she sings and dances while wearing male military uniform, a costume choice which I know some blog readers find titillating, but which others have recently indicated that they see as an abomination of such horror that violence is the only appropriate response. You pays your money and you takes your choice.


(*) In case you think I'm being foolhardy in venturing my own opinions despite having earlier been shot down by someone who knew what they were talking about, be reassured that I got all that from the director, to whom I also spoke at the post show reception.

With groans that thunder love

"Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" 

- Sir Toby Belch, Twelfth Night

These days for Epictetus, I am sad to say, there are indeed neither cakes nor ale, but, on a happier note, virtue has by no means been the result. The events of the last month have not put a stop to theatre going, but they did put me out of mood for writing about it. It's time to catch up.

As you will have guessed I saw the National Theatre Live transmission of "Twelfth Night" and excellent it was. The currently fashionable cross gender casting (Malvolia and Feste) compounded nicely the cross dressing of the plot and the comedy and cruelty of the play were very well brought out. The director's aim seemed to be to highlight our common humanity regardless of gender, sexuality or race (Sebastian and Viola were played by black actors) which put me in mind of "A Doll's House" which I'd seen earlier in the month.

Ibsen has Torvald tell Nora that she is first and foremost a wife and mother, to which she replies that surely she is first and foremost a human being. One of the reasons for not posting about seeing this play before was that I seem to have been living the plot of it for the last few weeks; real life has had a different ending though. A piece which I have also seen and which most certainly bears no relation to my own circumstances is "Rita, Sue and Bob Too"; perish the thought. This was the original play on which the film was, in part, based. Amusing though the film (strap line "Thatcher's Britain with its knickers down") is, it was provided with a more upbeat ending and the play is darker and better. It also contained substantially more nudity. A real car was on stage for certain, shall we say, climactic scenes and from my seat in the circle it was a procession of bare arses and fannies. I must once again provide a translation for US readers and point out that in British English those two words are not synonyms.

The audience for Andrea Dunbar's play were mainly somewhat raucous (that is a euphemism) women on a night out and many of them looked as if they were interchangeable with the characters on the stage. The same was true for Kay Mellor's "A Passionate Woman", where a more normal bunch of theatre goers watched an amusing take on how a middle class woman lived a life of dreariness until reminded of the secret affair that had once brought love into her life, while her husband turned a blind eye to everything. These last three plays were all to an extent about unhappiness within marriage and, perhaps inevitably, it was the men in them that seemed to be to blame. No comment.

What horse?

And so to the theatre. I have been to see the National Theatre broadcast of Hedda Gabler, Ibsen's play about mind games, ennui and overreaction. The title character is horrible, terrifying and unhinged in equal measure, but you can see why female actors like playing her; there is plenty to get your teeth into. In the always interesting filmed interview in the interval the director explained that he updated it to the present day because he wanted to bring out the relevance to the 21st century. As usual I'm not sure that I agree; the issues that the play deals with are surely rooted in the attitude towards and legal position of women at the end of the nineteenth century. Or perhaps one should say the changing attitudes, because part of Hedda's problem (along with being bonkers) is that she clearly doesn't want to embrace the opportunities opening up for women as emancipation develops. She wants to be kept in luxury by her husband - whom she despises - in the same way that she was by her father - whom she adored.

The set deliberately has no doors (a design feature that caused logistical problems at the end when the actors left the stage after taking a bow before returning to take a second. I was very surprised by this; given the ego of theatre folk I always assumed that the curtain call was the very first thing that was rehearsed.) and is meant to make one think of a prison, albeit a rather bourgeois one. The Tesman's money worries are of the sort that still allow them to keep and mistreat a maid. Like all great plays it makes one think. In my case my main thought was the same as on previous occasions that I have seen it: why on earth did they let someone so deranged keep two pistols? It was bound to end in tears.


Unexplained mystery of the evening: why was Rafe Spall wearing trousers two sizes too small for him?