Junior Senator (P.M. Clepper)

Junior Senator sent me down a familiar path last night after finishing it, one that is annoyingly common with many of these older (but not old enough!) plays: overall I think this is a good play trapped inside of an ok one, but there’s no safe and legal way to either revise it or actually produce it.

While the play just celebrated its 50th birthday, meaning that the writer Patrick Clepper may still walk this Earth, he was no online presence, and company who published my copy (the Dramatic Publishing Company) does not list Junior Senator among its titles to license.

Unfortunately for me I’m not an expert in contract law, but I would guess the following happened: PM Clepper wrote this play and licensed it to DPC for a set period (probably 25 years) after which they chose not to renew it because it wasn’t popular, meaning the rights reverted back to Clepper (or his estate), meaning that if I wanted to do it I would need to find his estate (which may or may not exist,) and make arrangements with them.

While I could likely put the show up without fear of repercussion, the cost if I’m wrong is quite high and as the copyright page tells me "it is dishonest and illegal to do a royalty work without paying the author”.

Why did I go through all this with you? Partially to ground how much I do think about these older plays, and partly to demonstrate how disposable a lot of our theatrical culture is. Many of the plays I’ve found are interesting, but illegal to do anything with, which is a bummer.

It’s also because I want this play to be better than it is, and I think it could be: Junior Senator is a light American comedy where the governor has gotten himself into a mighty pickle… kinda.

From the back of the play “A United States Senator unexpectedly resigns, and the governor wants the job himself… the stunt naming of his own young daughter to the Senate… however young people go for the idea of a young person in the office, and Women’s Liberationists like the idea of a female lawmaker. Unfortunately, the Governor fits neither category!”

I took out a lot of text, but perhaps you, like I, filled in some blanks, and thought he starts the show pondering this issue, names his daughter, she’s unexpectedly popular, and he works the rest of the show to prove that he’s still valuable so he can get elected himself. That is not the case.

Strictly speaking everything does happen, but in an 88-page play he doesn’t learn the senate position is open until page 30, doesn’t name his daughter until page 65, and she doesn’t become popular until page 87! While the play is filled with events, with us learning about the situation, with us meeting characters, etc. nothing really happens until the second act, and even then the Governor (whose name is never given) hardly makes any active decisions in the play!

That’s not to say it isn’t interesting, but if we’re given a clear ambition for the governor: he wants to run for senate once his term is up, and a clear problem: he has to nominate someone right now, that his clever “solution” would create more problems for him that would be staged instead of leaving the story spiraling into the future.

The play is reasonably funny for one of its age and theme, and even if the women’s lib jokes go on a bit long, I never felt as though the women were the butt of the joke so it doesn’t suffer from as many outdated modes of thinking as one might presume, but it is a little overstuffed with characters, and understuffed with decisions or consequences regrettably.

Hopscotch & the 75th (Israel Horovitz)

Hopscotch and the 75th is an odd collection in that they are half of a four play cycle, and I don’t know the other two, so I can’t evaluate the cycle as a whole, nor its relevance to this small town in Massachusetts in which they are set.

These two plays though are clearly related through their opposition: both are two person scenes, but Hopscotch is about two young people we think are strangers, who are actually well known to each other moving further apart; and The 75th is about two old people we think are familiar, but are probably strangers coming closer together.

Tonally the show is unexpected: we see Hopscotch first, but it is a dark and slow story that ends uncomfortably as we realize that the entire scene is a cruel, extended harassment of a young women who has already been treated poorly, while The 75th is far more comedic and light. I don’t know how I’d feel if I were in the audience watching these one after the other.

There isn’t a whole lot to say: the collection is well-written if brutal, and it holds one’s attention without ever quite distinguishing itself as a work to be revisited in a market full of similar works.

Need To Know (Johnathan Caren)

If you’re reading these posts in order (which is unlikely,) you may realize that this play is from the same library trip as the two Cariani plays, meaning this is the juiciest of theatrical fruits: a play I don’t know from an author I don’t know.

Need to Know follows a young couple moving back to New York from LA and their snap judgment of a neighbor. They learn in short order that the walls of the apartment are thin enough that their neighbor probably heard them, and so they seek to make amends which does not go well.

As the Audience
I’m of two minds on this play- which I should say I’d love to see someone do (in Houston it feels like a cross between a Fourth Wall and Dirt Dogs show: a little too empty for one, and a little too tame for the other): on one hand it feels like a short idea which has been stretched for time: you’re not holding my interest because I want to hear what comes next, but rather because you’re stretching out what I know you’re going to, which takes a lot of skill to pull off.

The tension is the game, and Caren doesn’t let that tension go easily, but man if you find the wrong audience this is going to not be a good night of theater.

At the same time, dribbles of information keeps popping up in unexpected places, so even though everything happens as I largely expect it to: we say something mean, feel bad about it, get dragged for it, apologize, move on with our lives, my understanding of why they’re doing these things keeps progressing, not necessarily at the pace I want it to, but in an interesting fashion none-the-less.

Caren wants this show, in some ways, to be about class consciousness, and while I don’t buy it, it’s not a great meditation that theme, there’s enough there, especially at the end, to give all of us something to think about in regards to some people’s floor is other people’s ceiling.

As a Designer
Eh, there isn’t much: this is a realistic, contemporary play where the lights will brighten people’s faces, the costumes will look like people in their 30’s, and the sound (if it exists) will be street noise and music between scenes. Our one point of interest is for scenery where the challenge of showing some, but not all, of both apartments could yield some intriguing choices.

As a Writer
Need to Know is a shiny new nickel in the bucket of “plays with difficult, if not excruciating, characters,” which continues to be a good reminder to make these people as difficult as possible and trust the charisma of the actors to help pull it all off.

That’s not entirely fair, as Caren’s characters have a lot of humanity to go along with their big ol’ scoop of character’s flaw (it rhymes with cole slaw, keep up), and in fact this play has one of the loveliest moments of being a couple I’ve seen committed to paper; don’t tell the kids, but early on when the husband comes home their is an extended moment of non-plot relevant, shameless (and shameful) flirting: the kind of thing that only two people who are used to playing with each other would do, it’s lovely and endearing, and necessary since they go on to be pretty rude, all things considered.

All though each individual moment feels good: the pacing is solid, the characters are interesting, the dialog engages the reader, at the end of the day the simplicity of the plot means that I’m not holding onto the work like I want to. We could compare this to something like Really Really which also has a simple plot, but enough character perspectives (especially from both sides of the main issue) that it gives us a handle, which is a little lacking in Caren’s work here.

Last Gas (John Cariani)

I found two Cariani plays at the same time! Alphabetical sorting is a wondrous thing.

I’ve known about Last Gas for a long time, though nothing about the plot, and since I love Almost, Maine I was intrigued to see what Cariani would choose to focus on for a full-length plot.

It’s been two months since I read the play, and the frustration I felt upon first reading has mellowed, though I will still stake my claim on a potentially controversial opinion…

Like Almost, Maine we find ourselves about as far north as you can get without hitting Canada: at the last gas station (and convenience store) before the great timber fields of Northern Maine. The proprietor, Nat Paradis (who shares his name with the town,) is a slightly sad, mostly content individual who is about to have a birthday.

We see his struggles, how his son doesn’t respect him, his ex-wife (local law enforcement) needles him (presumably as a pre-text to stay close,) and his father is disappointed that his son seems to lack drive. Nat’s life isn’t bad per se, but it’s not one I’d want to have, and the only easy thing he’s got is the companionship of his buddy Guy, who got him tickets to a baseball game down in Boston.

Nat comes alive when he learns his high school girlfriend is back in town, and we quickly see their breakup as an odd junction in Nat’s life: everything seemed to go well, until he suddenly broke it off. With a second chance in sight Nat tries his best to make up for lost time and to make himself presentable to take her to a dance that night (even though it means blowing off Guy and the baseball game.)

Nat and the woman get drunk and spend the night together, but when it comes to follow-through Nat again falters. In the final act of the play we learn that Nat and Guy are both closeted, and have been seeing each other in secret and shame for decades. Nat, uncomfortable with that piece of himself, sought women out, but the relationships never felt right and soon disbanded.

While upon first reading I thought we didn’t necessarily need another story like this (or rather, that I wasn’t interested in it,) I’ve reevaluated the ending somewhat after talking with others and considering how the exposure is handled by each generation of characters: Nat’s son, the youngest character, is conflicted but ultimately proud that his dad can be who he is; Nat’s two ex-lovers are embarrassed, frustrated, and angry, but accepting of this aspect; while Nat’s dad (who still owns the store,) is furious and throws his son out and fires him. The balance of both generational opinion and the pain each character individually feels is well handled and is a good crystallization of a moment in time.

The aspect I still dislike though is Guy’s character, and it stems from a belief that worn tropes aren’t better simply for a swapping of formerly standard identity characteristics. The story from Guy’s perspective is that of an old friend holding a flame for someone who (presumably) sees them as just a friend, who eventually gets his shot as the old friend also realizes that they should be together.

If this story were told with Guy being a female character we would consider it uninteresting, predictable, and possibly even regressive. For me, the novelty of it being a gay character does not change the fundamental tiredness of this plot line (and while I didn’t think Nat was gay until later in the show, Guy’s fixation on Nat was obvious from early on, certainly before the end of act one.)

Outside of that storyline however, Last Gas is a humanely written, sedate look at life on the fringes of American life where things are always a little sad, a little hopeless, but ultimately OK.

Love/Sick (John Cariani)

While work on actual productions has slowed my reading down considerably, I haven’t abandoned reading plays so much as I have much less to say about them, and less time in which to say it. So as a way to clear the slate I’m going to temporarily abandon my usual format and focus in on what I find interesting about each work.

I was excited to find Love/Sick by John Cariani at the library: Cariani wrote the enduring community staple Almost, Maine, and this is a follow-up of sorts: a sketch show (sorry, “short play collection”) about love, but from a decidedly destructive POV. Almost, Maine didn’t lack heartbreak, but Love/Sick has no joy to be found.

In fact, one could describe Love/Sick as a collection of scenes about the moment when a couple realizes it needs to break apart and how there is no shame in that. Some people may recognize this as the description of the show I just wrote and produced Start Your Endings. So yes I found this play with excitement, but I also was concerned.

Photo from Sacramento College Production

Luckily, the sketches are extraordinarily dissimilar: Cariani prefers to find a single dominant image or action and build out the scene from there giving each scene a gimmick (a word I use without judgement). While Cariani’s characters are in pain, and rarely want to leave the stable relationships they’re in, I felt a little too voyeuristic while reading: as though I and Cariani were taking too much glee at seeing what was unfolding onstage.

While I’d likely only look to produce Love/Sick if I felt that Almost, Maine had been done too recently, I always applaud the development of more sketch comedy shows masquerading as something else and am glad this show exists.