Bitter Sauce (Eric Bogosian) & Hydraulics Phat Like Mean (Ntozake Shange)
Although I often get frustrated at the mainstream theatrical community’s dismissal of sketch comedy there is a qualitative difference between sketch comedy and a proper “short play” (although I find the term short play is often applied when sketch would do better.)
A proper short play could theoretically take as long to discuss and dissect as a full-length piece, and so a collection of short plays takes a tremendous amount of thought to analyze, especially if they are by different authors with differing styles.
Love’s Fire is a collection of seven individual works each inspired by a Shakespearean sonnet. I read the first two, which are a short play and a sketch respectively, if you care.
Bitter Sauce sets a tone of tense and damaged love which I hope suffuses the other pieces. Rengin is marrying Herman tomorrow, but she has to confess to carrying on an affair. She claims it’s because Herman is so good and pure that she needed something rough and wrong to sort her out, but when her lover, Red, visits, he puts doubts in Herman’s head. By the end of the short piece we imagine a life of qualified happiness for Herman and we’re not entirely sure if Rengin is sincere when she says why she did what she did.
With the exception of its small cast size it’s a classic opening piece: quick, easy to understand, has humor, but also holds gravitas. The images Bogosian gives us are strong, and the symbols are quick to understand. A strong, but not amazing opening, but it has a lot of promise for what is to come.
I had more trouble with Ntozake Shange’s Hydraulics Phat Like Mean, but I don’t feel too bad, because the director said in his notes that he didn’t really understand the piece until several weeks into rehearsal. It’s all movement and music, which is hard to feel off the page, and the language Shange uses is evocative but hard to parse.
If Bitter Sauce is about love tested and weakened, then Hydraulics is about new lovers discovering each other. Our two characters explore each other’s music and bodies in a sensual dance punctuated by evocative language. I can see how this piece could come alive in rehearsal and with original music, but it’s hard for me to imagine as-is.
The Middle Ages (A.R. Gurney)
I’ve spent time recently thinking about what really draws me into a play so that I can focus my writing in that direction. What was eventually left when I started chipping away at the plays I consider my favorites, is that at the end of the day what I really want are personal-stakes comedies: where there are a few people who aren’t terribly exceptional trying to move through their life and learning something about themselves, and the world, while doing it. A.R. Gurney’s The Middle Ages is that, but it’s also something more, which makes me love it even more than I might otherwise.
Hidden within this decades-spanning story of ill-fated love and a son trying to find his place in a world he wants to rebel against, is a metaphor of America struggling to find what it wants to be: Order or Freedom? Prosperity and Comfort or Passion and Creativity. In the familial story you have Barney, a rambunctious man born uncomfortably into a rich family who wants to be loud and find his own way, in the metaphorical story there is Eleanor who wants to choose to be with Barney but always is pressured to tie herself to his more stable younger brother Billy.
If art allows us to safely experience improper emotions then the love story of Barney and Eleanor is a familiar one: she wants the free-spirited Barney and we want them to be together because despite the fact that we know Barney is ruining his life, embarrassing everyone around him, and squandering his potential we want the two of them to be happy.
But something interesting happens when we hit the 60’s: Barney has been banished from the fancy club where the play takes place and we only get to hear of his exploits from people who have already cast him as a bad seed, and those pranks that he used to pull which were juvenile when he was a teenager and irritating in his 20s sound a lot like political protest as the decade rolls along.
We reconsider whether his father’s dignity at the club was all that worth preserving in the first place. After years of disrupting weddings, ruining Christmases, and being a general nuisance the thing that actually gets Barney exiled from the club is when he lets four black men who gave him a ride swim in the club’s pool as his guests.
The Middle Ages functions as a wonderful small story of Barney trying to get the rich and dignified to accept him as he really is, to earn the respect of his father and the love of Eleanor, and as a bigger story of America in transition: will we let the trappings of comfort make us rigid or will we accept the mess of society and try to do something not everyone will approve of?
It’s a wonderful story that I hope continues to be seen on American stages for many years to come.
Intimate Enemies (Tom Taggart)
If anyone ever reads these Tom Taggart will become a familiar name. I believe I’ve thought of him more than anyone else in the last thirty years, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I have the greatest collection of Tom Taggart paraphernalia outside of the Sam French archives in Massachusetts.
Did I buy a 1946 copy of his autograph off eBay? Yes, I did. Why was an old check receipt from a long forgotten playwright on eBay? I don’t know.
The man isn’t very good, he’s not some lost genius or someone who was ahead of his time, and I struggle to put into words why I’m so obsessed with learning about him, but I am, so there.
Intimate Enemies is less farcical than most of his work, though still comedic. And it’s character based comedy so it’s the sort of thing that tends to age well.
As I read it I kept being put in mind of Mary Poppins, which is interesting because both were published at about the same time: There is a banker who is the patriarch of his family and rules austerely with an iron will, taking his wife and two children for granted. One fateful day a woman comes into his life that he cannot dislodge and she inspires his family to be their best selves, and eventually starts to thaw him out.
The big differences are that the children are grown, Ainsworthy Alcott is verbally abusive instead of merely being aloof, and it takes blackmail and the threat of jail time to get him to get off his high horse.
We meet the Alcotts, a timid family ruled imperiously by patriarch Ainsworthy who fires people flippantly, won’t let his nineteen year old daughter go to a dance, and reads Charles Dickens aloud to the family every Wednesday. Every Wednesday.
Each member of the family has their own problems: Lucinda is whipped, daughter Rhoda wants to date a boy her father disapproves of, and son Ronnie’s (Ronald, as his father insists he be called,) is sweet on a girl his father just fired. Although they all think their aunt Christina dead, she appears one night, captures the heart of the children, and starts to set things right.
It’s a strong comedy of lively characters, difficult situations, and clever feints. It’s not quite as fast or zany as screwball comedy (which would have been in vogue then,) but it’s as quick as anything today and I think would entertain audiences (theater audiences anyway.)
Like a lot of Taggart work this show has great and complicated roles for women and terrible act breaks. I would never suggest copyright infringement (perish the thought,) but I don’t know if the copyright on this was renewed so it’s entirely possible that you could just perform this show willynilly if you were able to get ahold of the script.
A surprise delight!
The Book of Will (Lauren Gunderson)
If I waited a year to read The Squirrels because I knew I’d love it, I’ve put off reading The Book of Will because I feared it’d be another frustrating, self-congratulatory, same-sounding historical “comedy” from Lauren Gunderson. It’s as though I wished on a monkey’s paw and Gunderson was created. The most produced playwright in America writes comedies! But they always talk about how comedy isn’t of any use to anyone. She deals in historical fiction! But all of the characters have modern attitudes about everything and sound like they’re from today. The plays move briskly, aren’t boring, and are genuinely funny! But it’s written a quippy-style which makes every character stay the same.
I don’t like her, is my point, and I don’t like Book of Will, but this work actually avoids her worst excesses for most of the text, and is a play that I’m merely disappointed in rather than actively angry at. So, that’s something.
The Book of Will follows Shakespeare Contemporaries Henry Condell and John Heminges attempts to posthumously publish the First Folio dealing with piracy, lack of funds, and their own mortal frailty along the way. Remembering the dead is a common and persistent theme.
So if I dislike most of Gunderson’s tendencies, how does this play stack up?
Derision of comedy while using it? Mostly absent. There are a few times when a character talks about her love of comedies and everyone mostly ignores her.
Modern dialogue in an historical setting? Basically absent. Our more prominent characters have relaxed ways of speaking to each other, but it doesn’t sound like you’re in a college dorm this time around.
Modern attitudes that likely wouldn’t have been shared by that society? Largely contained to opinions about Shakespeare. Although it’s mentioned we don’t have anyone decry how women aren’t allowed to act, and other things which were commonly accepted at the time. However, just about everyone falls to their knees to worship Shakespeare, and the people who don’t are greedy businessman. They even, thankfully, have the same opinions on “the problem plays,” etc. as we do here. The past! It’s just like us!
Gunderson still has indulgent sequences, she hammers the same ideas scene after scene without building on them (how many times must we hear that death comes for us all)?
The play waves away the part of the story I’d be most interested in: how did they reconstruct the plays from memory, or choose what to keep or throw out. It’s a persistent concern but we’re not shown the actual mechanisms of it, but that would be hard to stage, and certainly would be subject to the kind of revisionism that I’m usually against from her.
At the end of the day this is the best play I’ve read by Gunderson, but that is faint praise from me.
As a Producer
Surprisingly, I’d probably be fairly happy to produce this play. It generally fits within our mandate, it’s historical (which I like,) and it is the kind of show that would be easy to sell to prospective audiences.
As a Designer
There is ample opportunity, as much as any other play, for designers here, but sound design in particular would be a treat. Gunderson makes special mention of the sounds of presses constructing the first Folio, and the play ends with a chorus of Shakespeare from around the world being spoken that would be a wondrous theatrical moment to pull off.
As a Writer
Even in the depths of my distaste for her finished work, Gunderson has always excelled at writing snappy dialogue that doesn’t falter and moves the plot along briskly. The cost of that benefit is everyone feeling quippy and little feeling important though, so I don’t know how much I want to emulate it.
The Squirrels (Robert Askins)
Often if I think I’ll like something, especially a play, I’ll delay reading it, because I know it will be easy to convince myself to read it if I ever want to. That’s why despite being excited to read Robert Askins The Squirrels for over a year now I didn’t do so until today.
It’s a comedy. It’s silly. It’s dramatic. It’s about anthropomorphized animals. It’s a satire about something I care about! It really has everything going for it.
But, much like Eureka Day from earlier this week I was left wanting. I don’t fully know why. Maybe I’ll learn to love it later.
It doesn’t help that it’s billed as a satire about wealth inequality, and it’s really not. It is a proper (and unexpected) epic, following two battling factions, betrayal, and the danger of faltering power, or seeking power. As a result it’s not just “one” thing, but it’s clearly more a story about race relations (and other forms of tribalism) than it is about wealth inequality.
I suppose we should get to something as banal as the plot before thinking about the themes.
Introduced by a “Cartoon Scientist” we’re introduced to some squirrels in a maple tree. Sciurus once was the greatest squirrel in the tree, maybe he still is, but he’s getting older, his mind is getting more feeble, and he’s not feeling as adored as he once was. He’s also a grey squirrel carrying a lot of prejudice towards the fox squirrels, who he thinks are lower-class, dirty, and lazy.
His daughter and her fox squirrel friend plead for him to give up some of his massive stores of nuts to help the other squirrels through the winter. His adopted and selfish fox squirrel adopted daughter and a shifty conman out to make his nut persuade him that they’re trying to take advantage of him. What follows is an epic squirrel war for survival and relevance that leaves many dead (and gruesomely injured.)
It’s hysterical. Especially in a world where we’ve been beating up on the intelligence of the wealthy for a year, the wealthy and the “powerful” come across as scared and desperate to retain standing. The cycle of mistrust and violence is portrayed powerfully, decried, then indulged in by those who decry it. It gets a little too silly at times, many words are substituted for others and I got a little tired of it, but if you like the gravitas of Succession and the humor of The Play That Goes Wrong you’re going to find something special in this play. It’s Squirrel King Lear, and the world is better off for it.
Still, there is something missing, and I have no idea what it is. I’d love to realize this play, or to see it, but I can’t say for all of its successes that it gets me excited, at least not yet. If at the end of the year this is the best play I’ve read, I’ll be a little disappointed.
As a Producer
More than any other play I’ve read this year (heh,) this fits the Pronoia mold perfectly. It’s my style of humor and the satire does an excellent job of making you think and look at things. It’s definitely the sort of show I’d produce, or insist others produce.
As a Designer
Dear lord, is this a designer’s dream. Obviously costumes has a lot to do: everyone is a squirrel, what does a cartoon scientist look like, do we want to rip squirrel testicles off; but scenery can either build a beautiful tree for the squirrels to play in, or seek to make something more like our own; the almost melodramatic stakes gives lighting and sound as much to indulge as the director will allow. It’s a playground of opportunity.
As a Writer
I’ve never tried to write a proper Juvenalian satire, something with big stakes and a lot to say about the world. Partly it’s because I most enjoy smaller stories, and that sort of satire tends to take things to epic proportions (as seen here,) and partly it’s because I don’t have a lot to say. I do have a few ideas that I think could reach the energy found here, but mostly I admire the vision to see this project through and the courage to mix the stupid and profound in such a magical way.