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| L-R: Andrew Strafford-Baker, Andy McLeod, Olivia Hirst, Stella Taylor, Richard Delaney in SECRET LIFE OF HUMANS. Photo by Richard Davenport |
Yuval
Haran’s Sapiens: A Brief History of
Humankind is an extraordinary book.
An International best-seller, it took a fresh look at what it means to
be human and raised such questions as: If there were half a dozen different
species of humans inhabiting the Earth 100,000 years ago, why is there only one
– homo sapiens – still around today?
What happened to the Neanderthals and all the others? Was our tribe, homo sapiens, guilty of some
form of genocide against those rival species?
And if so, does that suggest that such vestigial tribal genocidal traits
may have remained within us - with who knows what implications for our own
future survival? A rather pessimistic
outlook on life.
Jacob
“Bruno” Bronowski was truly a “renaissance man” of the last century. A brilliant mathematician and outstanding
chess player, he also co-edited the literary magazine Experiment while at Cambridge and, during the Second World War,
worked in operations research for the United Kingdom to enhance its bombing
strategies. After the war, he turned to
biology in an attempt to better comprehend the nature of violence in man. In the 1950s, he appeared on the BBC’s
television version of The BrainTrust but
he remains best known for The Ascent of
Man – the documentary about the history of humanity that he produced in
1973 which, in his words, showed “our progression from our primitive ancestors
to the masters of science and technology and art that we are today” – a work as
optimistic in its interpretation of man’s evolution as Sapiens is pessimistic.
David
Byrne’s Secret Life of Humans,
currently being staged at 59E59 Theaters as part of this year’s Brits Off Broadway program, represents
something of an amalgam between The
Ascent of Man and Sapiens and is
a remarkably original work. To be sure,
man’s evolution can be interpreted (as The
Ascent of Man does) as having consisted of continuing and sustained advancement
– just think, for example, of indoor plumbing, the steam engine, the
automobile, air travel, antibiotics, the internet, the smart-phone…. Yes, there
have been setbacks from time to time but isn’t it unquestionably true that,
overall, man’s health, wealth, longevity, and quality of life have all improved
dramatically over time?
On
the other hand, there appears to be no denying that man’s inhumanity to man
has, in many ways persisted undiminished.
Thousands of years after primitive tribes engaged in human sacrifice,
the supposedly civilized citizens of Nazi Germany allowed the Holocaust to
occur, culminating in the genocidal extermination of six million Jews. And even now, three-quarters of a century
later, we are witnessing Islamist terrorism, genocidal inter-tribal wars in
Africa, inexplicable school shootings, biological warfare, nuclear
saber-rattling, and the persistence of brutal dictatorships around the
world. The League of Nations failed and
the United Nations is not doing much better, the Arab Spring petered out, and
it is not difficult to argue, as Sapiens
might, that in many ways man is devolving and regressing, rather that evolving
and progressing.
Secret Life of Humans addresses this
disconnect through the life of Jacob “Bruno” Bronowski (Richard Delaney) who bears
full responsibility for the sentiments expressed inThe Ascent of Man but whose own actions during the Second World War
may have fallen short of that. (Bronowski
may or may not have participated in the Manhattan Project but he assuredly did
contribute to the deaths of innocent German civilians by calculating how to
cause the most damage through fire-raising, i.e. dropping small incendiary
bombs on German cities.) How might we
reconcile such an apparent inconsistency (which is played out on a larger scale
when one considers the disconnect between mankind’s economic progress and its
socio-political shortcomings)?
Well,
for starters, The Ascent of Man does
provide a good description of mankind’s continued progress over time. But that progress is not in a “straight,
unbroken line” as Bronowski contends.
Rather, it occurs despite occasional temporary backsliding. Similarly, Bronowski himself may simply have
evidenced his own temporary fallibility in his actions during the Second World
War but that does not change the fact that, overall, he was a decent and moral
man.
Additionally,
It is possible that what is true in the spheres of economics and technology
does not necessarily carry over into the spheres of social and political
activity. The Ascent of Man is certainly correct in describing man’s economic
and technological history as an upward-sloping straight line but that does not
necessarily entail similar uninterrupted advances in politics and social
relations. In Bronowski’s personal case,
that would suggest his continued progress in mathematics, technology and
science despite any shortcomings he might have exhibited in other areas. As Bronowski himself expresses it when
grappling with the problem of whether or not to assist his Government in
improving its bombing strategies during the Second World War:
“There are three
questions to my mind. Should we do
this? Well, maths, itself, cannot be
good or evil. It is either correct or
incorrect, regardless of any later applications. Must we do this? The alternative is unimaginable. And can we do this?"
Finally,
there is the possibility that it all depends on our differing value
systems. Ava (Stella Taylor) is a
soon-to-be-unemployed teacher who has a one-night stand with Bronowski’s
grandson, Jamie (Andrew Strafford-Baker), in the course of which she prevails
on him to provide her with the previously undisclosed material she needs in
order to publish something “meaty.” But
Ava’s role in the play is more than that: she is also something of a narrator
or one-woman Greek chorus and it is she who frequently raises the issues we’ve
been discussing. Thus it is she who
claims that we all retain our “vestigial” traits, that “we’ve progressed, but
we’ve not changed,” that The Ascent of
Man was “pretty lightweight,” that Bronowski’s “view of the world is a
little simplistic,” and that, in short:
“None of this is
real….But it’s no less real than the value of the money in your pocket. Or the
laws we decide to follow. Or the borders
of countries we’ve drawn on maps. Or
even human rights. All only real because
we’ve decided to believe in them."
But
if human rights or any of our other values are only real because we’ve decided
to believe in them, and not for any objective reason, then Bronowski’s wartime
activities were only right (or wrong) if one believes them to have been so. And capitalism or communism, democracy or
dictatorship, terrorism or tolerance, globalization or xenophobia, genocide or
foreign aid, are all only right or wrong because you think they are. Quite a stretch and not one I’m able to make.
Richard
Delaney is superb as Jacob “Bruno” Bronowski, initially supremely confident in
his world view and the rightness of his actions but apparently ultimately
coming to question his wartime activities.
Stella Taylor, as Ava, proves to be a formidable adversary and Andrew
Strafford-Baker as Jamie provides the necessary linkage between the two and their
conflicting philosophies. Olivia Hirst
is effective as Bronowski’s devoted wife, Rita, and Andy McLeod, as Bronowski’s
wartime gay co-worker succeeds in deftly personalizing the emotionally
devastating unintended consequences of wartime bombing when he loses his
longtime partner, Martyn.
Secret Life of Humans
is
very creatively structured both in time and space with the characters, both
alive and dead, in reality and in their own minds, communicating with one
another over a period of decades, and with the simple re-arrangement of
bookcases conjuring up images of offices, homes and libraries. The play raises deep and thought-provoking
questions and while no real answers are provided (how could there be?), it all
makes for a more than satisfactory theatrical experience.
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