Final curtain?

Reader question:

Please explain “final curtain will fully fall” in this sentence: “I’ve set the commenting period to expire on all current posts 14 days after publication, so that’s when the final curtain will fully fall.”

My comments:

In other words, you’ve got two weeks to post a comment on a story. After 14 days, comments will cease to be allowed.

Here, the speaker likens the commenting period to a drama in theater, where you see a giant curtain, a large piece of heavy cloth, rise and fall.

In theater, before each act, the curtain is raised for the audience to watch the play. After each act, the curtain is lowered again to the floor. Behind the curtain, actors and actresses make changes and prepare for the next act, but the audiences won’t be able to see any of this because their view is blocked by the curtain.

When the next act begins, the curtain rises again.

Needless to say, after the final or last act, the curtain falls for the last time. That’s the final curtain, signaling that the whole show is over.

The end, in other words.

So, in short, the final curtain coming down means metaphorically that some event, usually a lengthy one that’s been going on for some time, is coming to an end, or to use theater terminology again, drawing to a close.

Here are media examples of the curtain falling or coming down in the theater and elsewhere:

1. When “The Glass Menagerie” opened on Broadway in March 1945, the actress cast as Southern matriarch Amanda Wingfield got so drunk before the show that a bucket was placed in the wings so she could throw up between scenes.

Seated six rows from the stage was the 34-year-old playwright, Tennessee Williams, who was struck by Laurette Taylor’s “supernatural quality on stage.” When the final curtain came down, the cast took 24 curtain calls to thunderous applause, and Williams, wearing a gray flannel suit with a missing button, mounted the stage to repeated cries of “author, author.”

John Lahr, the former chief theater critic for The New Yorker, begins his definitive new biography of the great American playwright with this vivid anecdote, then manages (for the most part) to sustain the momentum for the next 600 pages.

The culmination of 12 years of work, “Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh” is a dazzling, deeply sympathetic and psychologically acute look at the life and work of a tortured genius who rocketed to fame after World War II with a new kind of play that reflected his “haunted interior”: dreamy and poetic, passionate and tender, sensual and spiritual, desperate for recognition and more than slightly tinged by the family madness. “On stage and off it,” Lahr writes, “hysteria was Williams’s idiom.”

- Brilliant new biography of Tennessee Williams, September 22, 2014.

2. Ronda Rousey’s sister says she saw her sister die in defeat against Holly Holm—and then painfully watched as so many celebrities took joy in her younger sibling’s fall.

“I saw how horrible people can be to someone they don’t even know,” Maria Burns Ortiz writes at Vice, “which made me even more appreciative when I saw how wonderfully Ronda’s friends and family treated her.”

Donald Trump, 50 Cent, and Lady Gaga all used social media to mock Rousey in the aftermath of Holly Holm’s left leg relieving her of consciousness. Rousey’s failure to touch gloves with Holm immediately before the fight and provocation of a skirmish at the weigh-in staredown left many seeing her as a poor sport. The behavior followed a pattern: Rowdy previously laughed at Bethe Correia after knocking her out and refused to shake hands after her second fight with Miesha Tate. Her entrance music, after all, informs: “I don’t give a damn about my bad reputation.”

Two-thousand and fifteen was the year Ronda Rousey conquered the world—and was conquered by her conquests. Like so many rulers, she extended her empire too far and it collapsed back on her.

“Then there was Australia, where we expected Ronda to win,” Burns Ortiz reflects on the UFC 193 shocking defeat. “Just like we always do. Just like we always will. But she didn’t.

“I haven’t rewatched it. I haven’t read about it. I won’t. I don’t see a point in reliving the moment when a part of my loved one died, when I saw someone I cared about have her soul crushed.”

Rousey appeared in Entourage and Furious 7 this year and released an autobiography. When Breitbart Sports asked her in January whether the extracurricular activities might distract from her main job, Rousey reacted with great hostility, saying: “The reason why you doubt the ability that it could ever be done is the reason why you will never do anything that great.”

But all the balls up in the air eventually dropped to the floor in November when the curtain closed on Rousey’s juggling act. Her sister offers the outside-of-the-Octagon activities as a reason for Rousey losing the UFC women’s 135-pound strap:

“Three fights on three continents in the span of nine months. A book tour. Hollywood meetings. Scripts to read. Photo shoots. The cover of Sports Illustrated, Self, Shape, and magazines I’ve never even heard of. Hosting on ESPN. A pair of ESPYs. Film premieres. UFC promotion. Training camps. Flights. Appearances on Ellen, Kelly and Michael, Good Morning America, The Tonight Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live! Her image plastered on TV screens everywhere. Interviews and interviews and interviews. Training camps. It’s a lot. It’s not an excuse. It’s just a fact.”

- Ronda Rousey’s Sister: ‘Horrible People’ Gleeful Over Knockout, Breitbart.com, January 1, 2016.

3. Chelsea re-signed David Luiz and Premier League champions Leicester City broke their transfer record for striker Islam Slimani as Premier League clubs exceeded the one billion pounds barrier when the curtain fell on transfer deadline day.

Arsenal and England midfielder Jack Wilshere completed an unexpected loan move to Bournemouth, while Tottenham Hotspur pipped Everton to Newcastle United’s Moussa Sissoko in a deal said to be worth 30 million pounds ($39.41 million).

Fees paid by Premier League clubs passed one billion pounds for the first time, according to financial analysts Deloitte.

That was inflated by the world record 89 million pounds that Manchester United paid Juventus for France midfielder Paul Pogba earlier in the window. United also got one of the close-season bargains in Zlatan Ibrahimovic who joined as a free agent.

The highest fee on deadline day, reported to be about 34 million pounds, was paid by Chelsea for Brazil defender Luiz who had left the London club to join Paris Saint-Germain two years ago for 50 million pounds.

Chelsea also completed the signing of Spanish left back Marcos Alonso from Fiorentina for 24 million pounds, making them the Premier League's biggest spenders on the final day.

- Luiz back at Chelsea, Leicester splash the cash as records tumble, Reuters, August 31, 2016.

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.