Tragicomedy

February 26, 2009 Blog

It wasn't a State of the Union speech because Presidents don't give these until they have been in office for a while.

What we saw was a modern production of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

When Robert Louis Stevenson first published this work in 1886, it was an instant success and became the subject of street conversation, sermons and political speeches. The term Jekyll and Hyde  has since become part of our vocabulary and is used to describe a person with a split personality.

To date, at least 125 films and innumerable stage plays have been produced based on Stevenson's work, and Obama's production was a fitting substitute for American Idol, which 25 million Americans missed.

Typical to Stevenson's main character, Obama's theatrical rendition of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was at once both a monologue and a dialogue, taking the form of a tragicomedy, also fitting to Stevenson's work.  Some of the tragic and comic elements were not readily distinguishable by those unfamiliar with political jargon (see my last blog), but there can be no doubt about Barack Obama's mastery of this art. An enthusiastic audience, which I am told paid no admission, rewarded him with many standing ovations.

American tax-payers will be paying for decades to come.

Matt Welch aptly commented on the production <http://www.reason.com/news/show/131863.html>, "All night long, with equally sonorous vigor, he served up confident assertions, only to state moments later, with equal conviction, their near opposite."