(Bridge Theatre, 26 April 2022)
The don't hate the player, hate the game maxim is not ambitious enough. According to it, the Eichmann, a clog in a vicious system, would be blameless. If a society is designed well, then one has no responsibility but to passionately be. The system will promote you if it needs you and will discard you otherwise and by virtue of being designed well will deliver good outcomes. If a system is faulty, however, then who one passionately is matters for the system's outcome. If a system promotes you regardless of who you are, then you are responsible for who you are and for the outcomes your being engenders.
Robert Moses was an admirable man---in America, which promotes one on the basis of one's ideas. His stubborn refusal to recognise his blind spots would have made him blameworthy in another system.
Ralph Fiennes's character is a good man, single-minded and determined. The genius of Fiennes the actor is to project a character who is bigger than the part that he has been allotted onstage.
