It is therefore not just remarkable, but eerie, that for 30 years he was unmatched in his impersonation of the opposite of all those things. I do not mean to say there was a demon in Carson, or even a haunted soul. But for every non-American who has marvelled at the facile grace of "Have a nice day!" from strangers and walked on wondering what might lie behind that token bonhomie, Johnny Carson was the question mark. He was the man on television in an age when that was becoming the definition of the presidency The comparison with Reagan is fascinating. For the suspicion lurks that beneath the flawless image of charm and cool there was nothing there.d.thomson independent.co.uk.
About 20 years ago I was in South Africa, then still under the iron heel of Apartheid. I went to see at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg a production of Strindberg's Miss Julie, the deadly, destructive play about the valet, engaged to the cook, who is fatally attracted to and seduced by the wilful, beautiful daughter of the absent master, the Count. Jean, the valet, was played by that great black actor John Kani. Miss Julie was played by the leading white, Afrikaner actress Sandra Prinsloo Kani and Prinsloo kiss It is clear in the play that they are going to make love. This being a 19th-century play, that can only take place off stage and the lights go down between the scenes.
But Kani and Prinsloo remained on stage in a clinch, to be illuminated by flickering strobe lighting designed in such a way that what the audience sees is an act of violent copulation. (As Michael Meyer, Strindberg's finest biographer, puts it, Julie's tragedy is that she "does not want to make love with Jean ... she wants - About 20 years ago I was in South Africa, then still under the iron heel of Apartheid. she wants - there is no other word for it - to be fucked by him, like an animal.") I can still hear the shocked gasps of the audience and the noise of seats being tipped up and still see, when the whole stage and the auditorium were again illuminated, the empty spaces from which about a quarter of the audience had left. Sex between different races was still a criminal offence in South Africa and even the sort of liberal minded citizens who would go to see such a play couldn't all cope with it.
