Chase Your Doom at Sleep No More

My review of American Repertory Theatre and Punchdrunk Theatre Company's production of Sleep No More: October 18th, 2009.

Punchdrunk Theatre Company’s American debut, Sleep No More, is a constructed reality that affects every part of your body; a sensual experience that excites and unnerves like a foreboding shiver running down your spine. It’s an interactive performance that reaches its most subtle and stirring potential, leaving the audience to alternate between chasing actors down darkened hallways, following them into their despair and madness, and freezing in horror when they turn their hollow eyes upon you.

Audience members are admitted into The Old Lincoln School one by one, pointed through a curtain and left in a pitch-black maze. The pressing darkness breaks at each turn by flickering lights. A series of turns brings you to another curtain where a flapper at Manderlay Bar greets you. You must then wait your turn to be called into the performance hidden behind one final curtain.

Once inside, this nuanced sensory experience will make you feel like you’re watching a movie from within the action, trespassing on private moments, transfixed, breathless, and deeply invested in the world spiraling around you. The other 300 audience members who wander the grounds become part of the experience. Silent and faceless, we’re hidden behind shocking white masks that reduce us to a pair of wide eyes that pierce into the Macbeths, literalizing the crushing gaze of judgment that eats away at this murderous couple....

Read the rest at PlayShakespeare.com

http://www.playshakespeare.com/macbeth-reviews/297-theatrereviews/3876-chase-your-doom-at-sleep-no-more

Gliding

This is a non-fiction story I wrote in the Fall of 2009

The blaring howl of the alarm clock shocked my system and jolted my neck up. I forced my eyelids to part in order to glare at the screeching red luminous numbers that seemed to oscillate in time to the rhythmic, torturous beeping. With a guttural moan that turned into a sigh, I began shifting my weight to edge my body towards the side of the mattress, towards the chill that waited outside my cocoon of flannel, electric blanket and fluffy duvet.

The lamp I switched on illuminated a room of stillness of sleep, the feeble light and the pressing dark playing with the familiar objects in my room. Sitting at the edge of the pool of light, the rocking chair was thrown into relief against the wall, a shadow puppet grown to monstrous proportions. This childhood relic could only be menacing this close to the witching hour, when the whole world transforms under

expectation of being unobserved. The floor was jarringly cold, I expected to leave footprints in the frost as I penguin my way to the bathroom. Behind me the alarm continued to rent the night air, hacking at the fog that fills my head, disconnecting nerves, thoughts and senses. 4:00 in the morning can be agony.

In the bathroom I attended to my scant morning ritual: trying not to fall asleep on the toilet, brushing my teeth while shying away from the cold water, and changing into a set of hospital scrubs and thick socks. I had a choice between my mother’s cheery Birthing Center scrubs, pink, yellow or dotted with fluffy sheep and cutesy ducks, or my father’s ER scrubs- dark blue and angular, too large for me, with the hospital’s logo stitched across the breast pocket. I grabbed the blue pair, tied my hair into a messy clump at the base of my neck and slowly plodded downstairs.

Down in the kitchen, I found my mom already bustling around getting my breakfast ready. I grunted a greeting, grunted thanks, sank down slowly into a chair at the table and glanced indifferently around me as my brain began to process the signals from my eyes. The rounded white kitchen counter ran from one end of the kitchen to the other, crowded with various appliances and a large wicker basket that held stacks of mail not useless enough to throw away, not important enough to ever need. The wall was another cluster of accumulation; about 20 frames line the pink and beige wall that was sponge painted years ago by my mother and me. Decked out in painter’s hats (that I insisted she buy), we had cleared the kitchen and bludgeoned the wall with our pink-stained porous sponges. Atop this interior design masterpiece lay a random assortment of framed images my mother had taken a fancy to. One birthday card I’d donated to the kitchen when she fell in love with it: a photo of a pig in cow slippers captioned Moo-shoe Pork. A small painting from Cheap Art II of a piano perched on a cloud with two pairs of lips floating above the lid of the instrument. A book of sheet music titled: ‘If you beat the L out of Kelly, He’d Still Be Kelly to Me’ with a monkey-ish Irish man grinning up from an impish dance.

My eyes considered all these familiar eccentricities in my warm kitchen, an island of movement and purpose in the sea of incoherent night. I turned to the boot rack, grabbed my boots, and began the tedious process of jamming my feet in them and tying up ten stories of laces. When my resisting fingers had finally knotted and double knotted each in place, I sat up in time to watch my mom place my breakfast in front of me. She smiled at me for a moment while I tried to articulate thanks, and then turned away to clear up so she could slip back into her bed. At this point in the morning, when I was barely able to form words, solid food was out of the question. I downed a glass of water and took a few bites of the banana, gathering the second stage of my meal and hurrying to pull on my sweater, coat, neck warmer, hat and gloves.

I headed out into the garage, ignoring the biting sting of the cold air as I grabbed my bag and hauled it out to my car. I didn’t look at the thermometer hanging in the window to my left. I didn’t want to think about negative degrees as I trudged through the ice-crusted snow. The world was silent and veiled in darkness and I stomped through the peace with each crunch of my boot. I started my car, turning the heat to full blast and revving the engine a few times, trying to circulate some warmth into the system. I wrapped my clumsy gloved hands around the ice scraper and began shaving the frost off every inch of the car. Twenty minutes later, when my little car had turned into another island of warmth in the pitch black December morning, I sped off, snow tires scraping along slick empty streets. I glanced at the clock as I turned off my street, I needed to hurry, but also not fly off the road. I raced across town, a ghost of its normal self, up a steep hill, and through the country towards the rink. Up hills I revved the engine, down hills my foot poised above the brake. My car was always barely maintaining purchase as fluffy flakes appeared suddenly in the arch of my high beams, adding another layer to the crunch and slide of the road below. The view during this ride was surreal and unearthly. The flakes that ambled lazily towards the ground streaked against the windshield as my vehicle crashed through them. I reached light speed, the blurring spots of light ahead of me and empty pitch black behind me. There were no streetlights, no lights of any kind save mine, no other cars, no colors, no sounds, no world outside of me, the white road beneath me, the fluffy stars around me, and the growling time machine I sat in.

This isolation lasted until I finally arrived in Northfield, where lights that existed besides and despite me again lined my path. I took the last sip of my hot chocolate and grasped the last handful of dry Cheerios before I turned into the vast, empty parking lot of Norwich. In the building to my left I saw the last rows of a regiment marching out of the cold. The first year cadets at Norwich have to walk in straight lines, turning only at 90˚ angles, for a whole year. They stepped smartly through the door, leaving behind the wide marks of a till in the snow. My car glided around to the side entrance of the largest building. More awake and yet more desolate than my backyard was when I departed, the parking area was flat for hundreds of yards in every direction, my car the last in a small line of vehicles that stood alone on this windswept, man-made plain. Some light was warming the east section of the sky, dark grey now lined one edge of the blackness. I propped my bag and my equipment up on my shoulder, pushed through the doors with my other shoulder, and started down the long hallways towards the locker rooms. The Kreitzberg Arena, beneath the general admissions area, consisted of cold, grey hallways with entrances to the rink on the right and a line of locker rooms on your left. Stomping down, I turned into Locker Room 3 where most of my team was already changing. I smiled as I entered, found a large area at the end of a bench, and began shedding outer layers and strapping on equipment. I exchanged a brief greeting with the two girls on the bench with me, smiling again, and then turned down to concentrate on my cold, smelly layers of equipment.

The entire locker room was filled with the stench of sweaty leather, a smell unique to ice hockey, which I haven’t encountered with any other sport or activity of any kind. The chilly air did keep the smell as just an afterthought, maybe one of the reasons we play on ice. The girls around me chatted and joked, and I remained quiet while I yanked the straps back on my leg pads, bending the padding to contour to my body. This could have been because I was up earlier, arrived later, in a rush and more tired than the other girls. Whatever the reason was, it was one of the first times I would be completely comfortable feeling alone in a large group of people. My mouth was shut and my mind occupied with the intensity of the coming practice. However it happened, morning after morning, 4:00 am four days a week before school, away to games on two other days, I played on this team and exchanged little more social contact than some half-hearted small talk and a few smiles. This morning, like so many others, I found myself filled with a foggy autonomy that was both new and surprising.

I used the loud and pungent locker room to think, piling on layer after layer of protective gear in a familiar ritual and running my mind over my two pad stack. Ready and ungainly in my massive suit, I followed the last of my teammates out into the rink, and stepped heavily onto the ice. And here sleep finally left me, the fog whipped away. My brain opened up as I swayed and sliced my way across the ice, gripping and regripping my stick in my right hand, and rolling my wrist in anticipation. The stands that opened up around us were empty, the ice well lit, and the cold air a caress that we rushed through as we circled rink. I felt large and formidable; I stood at over six feet tall in my skates, every inch of my body was extended by 4 inches thanks to my equipment, and I loomed over the other girls. Equipment could not weigh me down and my clumsy nature that normally plagued me shed away in this arena; my every movement was precise and powerful.

Northfield girl’s hockey team was one of the best in the area, and I was their goalie. A month ago I was an unknown quantity, a girl from Montpelier that finagled her way onto the team because her town didn’t have one. Starting off, I had been the second string, a strong second, but new and sometimes liable to mishandle an easy shot and let it slip past. A strong second string who became first string when the other goalie flunked off the team. At this point, I was their goalie, and as the drills began, here, unlike the locker room, I was comfortable with my team. They needed me and I needed them and I trusted and adored them on the ice. Also, I finally became very vocal. Sliding forward into the goal, my anticipation was finally over. We set up a game, the third-string goalie mirroring me at the other end as I centered myself in the goal, smacked the posts with my stick and sank down into my stance. Gliding forward, I sat back, my thighs almost horizontal to the ice, every muscle tense and focused on that one black spot on the vast bright ice. With each move of the puck I readjusted myself, sometimes just the weight slightly from the balls of my feet, sometimes with a few turns of my feet, retreating back towards the net, hands up, tense and ready, stick solidly braced against the ice in front of me, my eyes glued to the puck. A goalie moves far less than the rest of the team, but each muscle carries the weight of the game on it. A single misstep costs the team so much in games where you win or lose by a goal or two. Move too early and expose your weak side for an easy goal. Too late and you’ll watch that puck slide right beneath your legs into the back of the net. I savored this pressure, focusing on every muscle, pushing my eyes onto that puck with a cold and humming intensity. After a few minutes of keeping my stance, during which the puck never crossed the centerline, I was covered with sweat that beaded down my face. All I could see was the geometric shape of my defense, the threatening movements of their forwards, and that small black puck that I desperately wanted to come towards me as much as I wanted my defense to knock it away. A few times I screamed out at my defensemen, banging my stick for emphasis as I yelled for them to get OUT of my line of sight, for them to come back and play D, for them to get it OUT. The goalie’s line of sight is everything. I exhausted myself staring at that puck.

And when it did finally come at me, a clean break away that I both lusted for and feared, the clarity that took over my brain and body was intoxicating. I was ten feet from the goal as she started towards me, and, never moving my hands or my stick, I quickly cut back towards the net, always watching for a slap shot, for a pass, always mirroring her every movement as she descended upon me. Deeking repeatedly, she swooped down on my right and I glided alongside her, aware of every part of my blocking body, elbows turned out, legs ready to splay across the ice, the trapper on my hand opened wide and waiting. She took a shot that banged against my leg pads as I fell into a butterfly split. The punk bounced right back into her reach, and she shot another flick up to the left corner of the net. Swinging my hand down, I snatched the puck out of the air in my trapper, ending play and prompting the shriek of the whistle. With two echoing bangs, my teammates smacked their sticks against the ice in cheer of my save, and, with another whistle blast, we started again.

Back in the locker room I stretched my aching limbs. Looser than ever, I strained my legs to their new elasticity before they could snap back to my normal stiffness. I felt the giddiness of release, having conquered two taxing hours of practice, and actually warmed up to my teammates, but I had to go, out of time. After a snippet or two of small talk I hurried out of the locker room clad again in my arctic winter gear. Beneath the fleece and flannel I was wearing the Vermont uniform of jeans and a sweater, the scrubs and the equipment were a tangle in my bag stuffed in the trunk. I rushed my car back over the hills towards Montpelier and my first class. Life bubbled up through the frost on all sides during this journey, and I slowed as I passed kids shuffling off the cold at the side of the road while waiting for the bus. Vermont was beautiful again, the light opened up the fields around me. I switched on the radio and sang out in the bright morning light and made it just in time for first period at 7:45. I grinned at Max and Dan’s thumb war turned wrestling match as I crossed the room and sank into the chair next to Bekah. She immediately launched into a bit of juicy new gossip. I half-listened while trying to subtly lean away from her. I never had time to shower, and I was acutely aware of the slight stench of that ripe locker room clinging to me. However curiosity quickly trumped self-consciousness and I was soon drawn into the story and the scandal unfolding in our small and incestuous circle of friends. I didn’t notice when the teacher walked in and he had to clear his throat a few times before we turned away from each other, postponing our predictions for our classmates until after we engaged in some book learning to start our day.

Well Met by Disco's Light: The Donkey Show

My review of The American Repertory Theatre's production of The Donkey Show which was also published at PlayShakespeare.com

Upon entering “Oberon,” the American Repertory Theatre’s theatrical club space, we quickly meet its namesake, the ringmaster of the drugs, sex and madness who sends the rest of the cast spiraling and gyrating out of control in The Donkey Show. Mr. Oberon is center ring controlling everything in this disco dancing adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream—a sort of Studio 54 meets the circus. The audience halts mid-drink or dance step to gasp in awe at the impressive choreography, acrobatics and ribbon dancing performed all around.

Glitter and sequins dominate the décor, costumes, and even the air in the club; everywhere you turn there’s more glam to gawk at. Tytania’s fabulous fairy quartet of sexy male dancers is clad only in sequined hot pants and glitter. They mount the stage, the bar, even the audience members that they pull up to share the dance platforms. The DJ, like the bouncers, dons an open chest, gold chains and yellow tinted sunglasses, and blasts ‘Play That Funky Music” as Helen chases Dimitri across the dance floor and Mr. Oberon gets friendly with the ladies in the crowd while Tytania looks on, purse-lipped. The Donkey Show, directed by Diane Paulus and Randy Weiner (Weiner also conceived this baby) offers an immensely entertaining night of music, dancing, singing and acrobatics all wrapped up in a well-choreographed bundle of joy.

There are but few lines in this very physical production, and each bit of dialogue quickly leads quickly into a tightly choreographed song and dance routine that often delves into slapstick. Original 70’s music blares and the performers sing along whenever their passion draws them to it. This interesting divergence from a normal musical works very well, though at first we are not sure whether their interrupted singing is intended. One shining moment when the karaoke nature of the show adds to the performance is when Mia, played by Heather Gordon, attempting to woo back her Sander, revealing frilly panties while drunkenly butchering a song, a bottle in each fist. Erin Mcshane, as Helen, hilariously plays out the role of the unrequited lover. Shakespeare’s Helena becomes very lame and desperate in her hands, with wonderful physical comedy as a result. When standard practices of dedicating songs and seductively offering cherries our of her drink do nothing to spark interest in her Dimitri, she wails out her case through Thelma Houston’s “Don’t Leave Me This Way”, grinding up against him and attempting to carry him away, and we, cringing with laughter, cheer her on.

Scotty Morgan as a Puck, or Dr Wheelgood, brings to mind the dark side of this debauchery as he tempts dancers into his glowing disco room for a snort or two of fairy dust and sends them gleefully on their randy way. There is something sinister and magnetic about his silent mischief and his agile roller acrobatics as he mutely enjoys the havoc he creates. He is certainly something a bit more than us mortals looking up at him from the dance floor. The same sense of impressed wonder and wariness accompanies every sensual move of Tytania, played by Rebecca Whitehurst, and the audience can’t keep their eyes off her as she is caressed by her fairies, flaunts Oberon, and eventually falls under the spell of the drugs fed to her in a giant glow-in-the-dark spoon.

The music, set and costume design deserve shared applause for an overwhelming audio and visual experience. The drugged transformation of each of Puck’s victims is accompanied by Also Sprach Zarathustra performed by Eumir Deodato, bringing to mind the otherworldly wonder of 2001 A Space Odyssey (and Peter Sellers in Being There). Tytania’s costume: butterfly pasties, knee high boots, and blue plastic hot pants that match her fairies, leaves little to the imagination, yet makes her all the more mysterious and untouchable. The only drawback is when the Vinnies share the role of Bottom the ass and the magical fantasy of the productions lets off a little. Though his braying is uproarious, the Vinnie creature looks like the front Vinnie’s wig is falling off, and the back Vinnie is hiding. Considering the quick costume changes that other characters undergo out of sight, the audience’s suspension of disbelief is not quite enough to make a crouching pair seem like a donkey.

Aside from Dr. Wheelgood and the fairy escorts, all the main roles are played by women, which accentuates the parody of their super sexualized male characters. Paulus and Weiner offer some hilarious dance club adaptations of Shakespeare’s themes. The Vinnies, for example, as lower class rude mechanicals, are really no ruder than the other human characters, but they interrupt their own song with gruff homophobic comments. Puck’s remedy for the lovers’ confused affections looks suspiciously like giant roofie pills. And Tytania’s love for an ass takes on a hilarious, if cring-worthy, literal turn.
The Donkey Show is a fantastic taboo-free wonderland. The audience is so enthralled they add their own soundtrack of cheering and catcalling to the production. This show thrives on obscenity and with every cheeky nipple flash, every arm lick, and every crotch dive, the audience screeches with pleasure, goading on the sexuality and the madness, demanding more and more. And the production complies, and takes the obscenity very, very far as we learn the reason that the production is called The Donkey Show.

Don’t forget, you have to be 18 to enter, and, of course, 21 to drink. The Donkey Show runs through October 31, 2009 at The American Repertory Theater, 2 Arrow Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. Tickets are $25 - $49. Reservations and information can be found at americanrepertorytheater.org

http://www.playshakespeare.com/a-midsummer-nights-dream-reviews/284-theatre-reviews/3857-well-met-by-discos-light-the-donkey-show

Review of Commonwealth Shakespeare Company's The Comedy of Errors

Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s The Comedy of Errors was performed on the Boston Common on a warm summer night that followed a sweltering summer day. The entire atmosphere was reminiscent of a weekend music festival. Hot greasy food on thin paper plates was available behind the vast expanse of grass crammed with summer Shakespeare revelers. The slight majority of the crowd was younger, in their 20’s, casual and sitting on an assortment of blankets and popping up to wave at friends. However, seating directly in front of me was a quintet of adults in their 50’s in beach chairs, impeccably dressed and passing around slices of baguettes topped with cheese, olives, and sun dried tomatoes. The variety and volume of the audience that arrived two hours before curtain demonstrates Director Steven Maler’s success at restoring to the masses a playwright that he tells us in the program, has “lost (his) populist roots” . The Comedy of Errors was the perfect production to appeal to the hundreds in the crowd, as a visually stunning set and Ensemble complimented actors delivering Shakespeare’s sharp wit with flawless comedic timing. Of course one couldn’t forget the slapstick comedy and plethora of sexual innuendos that delighted the parts of us that would have, long ago stood in the Pit at The Globe Theatre.

The atmosphere in this production was of a racy nightlife in a city ignoring the Depression in their pursuit of pleasure. It’s The Comedy of Errors in Miami of the 1930’s, the speculation boom has ended, the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 has left thousands homeless and the city, teetering on a precipice of Depression, has become obsessed with everything lavish. The set design, costume design and dancing Ensemble succinctly and colorfully demonstrated the effervescence of the time and the love for everything gaudy in the Art Deco architecture, fashion and lifestyle. Dance routines between and within scenes consisted of various groups interrupting and overtaking others, as lifeguards, nuns, police officers, mobsters, drunks, flappers and lovers fought to dominate the scene and each other. Order is on the losing side, as we saw policemen and nuns seduced by the crime, sex, and more than anything else the chaos that governs the mishaps in this play. A sense of urgency was palpable in The Comedy of Errors set in an era where crime, not jobs brings money into the city. Everything was visually stunning on the outside, seedy on the inside, and the confusion that erupted when two sets of twins with matching names collide with each others’ lives seemed like just another side show on a wild Miami night.

Fitting for this setting, the source of authority in the play is a top gangster and Dmetrius Conley-Williams’s performance as Solinus brought together the Shakespearian speech with the Art Deco setting in the opening scene. The nobility and authority he conveyed was tempered by the raspy tones of a formidable mobster (complete with his own theme music). His harsh sentence of death for a trespassing foreigner was put on hold when he, along with the audience, were placated by the tragic tale told by Egeon, played by Fred Sullivan Jr. Egeon’s description of the tragedy that left him “severed from bliss” captivated the Duke and citizens of Miami who are still reeling from the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926.

After Egeon’s exposition and temporary pardon, the action moved to the sets of twins being dragged into each other’s roles and their higher and higher-pitched confusion was hilarious. Dromio of Ephesus (Remo Airaldi) got the audience laughing quickly, and he and brother Dromio of Syracuse (played by Larry Coen) slipped, cowered, farted and squealed their way through their misadventures. They held the monopoly on the best moments of physical comedy, one shining example was Dromio of Ephesus fleeing to the comfort between a lifeguard’s legs to escape Antipholus of Ephesus’s punishments of spanking and nipple twists. However their physical comedy is nothing to the non-stop sexual innuendos Shakespeare has written into this raucous comedy. Clarified by exaggerated gesticulation, Dromio of Ephesus likened the woman claiming to be his wife to various Gothic monsters, including Dracula and Frankenstein. Both Dromios were clad in Technicolor golfing outfits that are reminiscent of Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dum, or, in this comedy of doubles, more likely Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dee.

Antipholus of Ephesus (Josh Stamell) joined in on the physical comedy, and his determination that witchcraft caused his confusion leads to hilarious moments of terror for him and his servant. Beyond the comedy he is the Prince Charming of the brothers, whose impassioned addresses to Luciana temporarily interrupted the laughter of the audience and the unforgiving ridicule that occupied most of the action onstage. We were instead charmed by breathlessly delivered ardor and heartfelt romantic advances. His twin, played by Dan Roach, seemed far less noble, from his first appearance he is carefree and droll and we suspect, along with his wife, that he has been indulging in the charms of the Miami women who intermittently parade across the stage.

Meanwhile Jennifer Ellis, as Adriana is the one most distressed by the twins switching places, after all she is married to one. Her jealous assumptions make for amazing physical comedy and when she hears a man identical to her husband claim he does not know her, she follows in hot pursuit; jealousy and despair leading her to crazily stomp after him all over the stage and beach. Disheveled, distressed, and navigating her pursuit with high heels on sand, she is briefly the picture of the archetypal psychotically jealous housewife. She is joined by her sister Luciana and together the women drive Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus running away from what they believe to be screeching, terrifying fairy women.

Adriana is pitiable, all around her try to convince her that it is not her place to mistrust her husband, and she is later blamed for nagging him into madness. Zofia Gozynska as Luciana countered her loyal yet anxious stage sister by acting like a blithe coquette, whose movements often brought Marilyn Monroe to mind. She was fabulously fickle, preaching patience to her anxious sister and fidelity to Anitpholus of Ephesus in one moment, and swooning and squeaking with pleasure the next. Her inner-Marilyn came out whenever she was touched by a man, at which point she threw off her own words of advice and embraced the flirtation of the man she believes to be her brother in law.


At times the play’s physicality caused audio problems and some dialogue was lost. Clothing occasionally muffled the microphones; once we lost Antipholus of Syracuse’s wit for an entire scene and at other points they were turned up alarmingly high. In general however I was very impressed by the sound, the only other time that I became aware of the amplification was during the final song. Rebecca Whitehurst gave a wonderful performance as a self-serving and alluring courtesan. The closing song was a bit anticlimactic and though the dance routine was visually stunning, her complex dance steps caused some of Whitehurst’s vocals to be strained.

The production as a whole was enjoyable and light, and the moments of tragedy fail to quite touch us after all of the jokes and dancing. When Adriana is accused of driving her husband mad in front of a crowd of people, she seems crushed with guilt, broken by the idea of her failing destroying her husband’s mind. However minutes later, the few characters that are not already on stage, enter, including the other set of Antipholus and Dromio, and we forget the accusation and the reaction of the accused. Was Adriana unreasonably jealous before the arrival of the Ephesus twins? The quick dismissal of this moral is indicative of the play as a whole, there is not much to learn from the predicaments of a pair of identical twins who are repeatedly mistaken for each other. A true comedy, the play ends with an exchange of love and a marriage on the horizon. Even Egeon who entered as a grief stricken, broken old man ready to die is given his own piece of happiness in the last scene. Everyone dances offstage with many pairs reunited and happiness, though certainly not order, is promised for all.