A Blog of Bosh

The Sunday Herald for 29 August 2004 reports on a new stage version of The Owl and the Pussy-cat:

Edward Lear would be proud. Tall Stories (who previously staged The Gruffalo) have managed to stretch The Owl And The Pussycat, his most famous nonsense poem, to over an hour. On the page it takes barely a minute to read, but in this adaptation, Lear’s tale of interspecies nautical frisson is a sleek, polished production that manages to find new angles and charming nuggets within a slight tale.

The company have added the themes of acceptance and overcoming fear, which the feathered and furry characters find in each other. And, in an inventive twist, Turkey and Pig – inhabitants of the the bong tree covered island on which the famous pea-green boat runs aground – narrate the Owl and Pussycat’s tale of honey, money and dancing by the light of the moon, the moon.

The acting is tight and effervescent, even in the face of screeching toddlers, while the sparse stage is used to good effect. Even when Owl and Pussycat are confined to their boat for the play’s initial 20 minutes the action doesn’t remain static. It’s a play for all, regardless of age, gender or breed.

The long-time children’s theatre director and writer has adapted Edward Lear’s quirky poem The Owl And the Pussycat, which he first staged at the Central Theatre, now home to the SiLo Theatre, in 1992.

“This time, the show’s director, Amanda Rees, wanted more poppy tunes,” Bray says. “Christine White has written new songs and lyrics.”

Kneel Halt plays the owl, Abigail Greenwood the pussycat and Bray himself is the narrator, piggy-wiggy, parrot and turkey.

from Nigel Gearing’s review in The New Zealand Herald | 1 July 2004

Meanwhile, in Britain, the Shropshire Star reports the Owl has been seen with a new companion…

Is he trying to forget the untimely death of his first love? For details, see The Children of the Owl and the Pussy-cat. (1 July 2004)

In the Daily Star Web Edition, vol. 5 no. 16, Khademul Islam reviews the Hobson-Jobson, A Glossary of Anglo-Indian Words or Phrases and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical Geographical and Discursive. After an interesting discussion of how many Indian words entered English and viceversa — which also includes a hypotesis on the creation of nonsense words — he concludes quoting “The Cummerbund” in full; here is what he has to say of Lear’s poem:

Rushdie ended his article on Hobson-Jobson with a play on the last words spoken by Clark Gable in Gone With The Wind: ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’ It deserves to be quoted in full:

‘To spend a few days with Hobson-Jobson is, almost, to regret the passing of the intimate connections that made this linguistic kedgeree possible. But then one remembers what sort of connection it was, and is moved to remark–as Rhett Butler once said to Scarlett O’Hara–‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a small copper coin weighing one tolah, eight mashas and seven surkhs, being the fortieth part of a rupee.’ Or, to put it more precisely, a dam.’

Ha ha ha!
I can’t end my piece that well–just not that good a writer–and so I’m going to simply end with an Edward Lear poem first published in Times of India, July 1874. And readers please, don’t give it the old post-colonial reading (you know, the apocalyptic forefinger raised to the heavens and the high-pitched: “Aha, I knew it, white woman goes missing, brown man is ‘nailed to the wall'”). It will so spoil the fun!

The 1903 edition of the dictionary is online and can be used for free thanks to the University of Chicago: Henry Yule, A. C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: a glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms, etymological, historical, geographical and discursive. London: Murray, 1903. 1021 pp. New edn by William Crooke.

The Guardian reports about a protest at Downing Street to introduce legislation banning wild bird imports:

One of those on the brink of extinction is the Lear’s macaw, a long-tailed blue parrot named after Edward Lear, the author of nonsense verse whose painting of a captive specimen led to the first description of the species. The only known wild population of the bird was discovered in 1967 on the Raso de Catarina plateau in north-eastern Brazil. As few as 250 birds are thought to exist in the wild.