Blog Archives

The 50's Can Be Dull

3/14/2016

I love collecting books of plays. Sometimes I find ones that are really cheesy and hard to resist. This play comes from just such a book. It's called Prize Plays for Teenagers: 24 outstanding one-act royalty-free plays for all occasions by Helen Louise Miller, It was published in 1956 and it is very much of its time. The plays are very short, more like sketches or skits, but they are called plays and as such I am going to read them and write about them. Not all at once though. I'll be sprinkling one here and there in among the other plays, I think it will be good to have a short play to do, keep the blog active, keep my hand in.

The first play is under the heading General Comedies and is called Beany's Private Eye. The play begins with Mrs. Reynolds typing when her eldest adult child Stephanie enters, exasperated. Beany, her teenage brother has been following her around town with his friend Wacky. He has been tailing her as part of his new found fascination with becoming a detective. Mr's. Reynolds defends Beany but agrees to talk to him about his antics.Stephanie goes upstairs to prepare for the arrival of Digby her boyfriend, but not before complaining of her worries regarding Digby's flagging attentions. Perhaps he's seeing someone else.

Daisy, the maid, comes in to help Mrs. Reynolds get her typing upstairs. A relative comes to visit to complain of Beany staking out their house. Mr's Reynolds is now determined to speak to her son. She and Daisy leave the stage empty. Beany and Wacky now enter and plan more of their Detective training. Beany is going to get Digby's fingerprints by putting a fingerprint powder on the gumdrop jar,. Wacky is going to practice disguises by wearing a mask and confronting Beany's brother, Chalky. Who names their kids Beany and Chalky?

Wackty frightens Daisy and runs away. Beany is told to get rid of the detective shenanigans. Mr. Reynolds shows up with a new client, Mr Bolton. Mr Bolton turns out to be the father of Sally, a girl with whom Beany is smitten. Mr. Bolton goes for the gumdrops, getting fingerprint power all over his hands and face. Beany is going to get in trouble. Digby arrives but has to break his date with Stephanie. She proceeds to dump him. Beeny intervenes to explain why Digby has been breaking dates. Beany has been tailing him as part of his detective training and knows digby has been moonlighting to save for an engagement ring.

Mr Bolton is also Digby's boss. He is impressed with Digby's work ethic and gives him a raise. The police enter with Wacky. Using his mask and some dumb luck he has foiled an attempt to steal Mr. Reynolds car, Beany gives Wacky the detective kit because he was recently asked by Sally to grow up and stop playing detective. All ends well.

Not much to say about this one. Painless, pleasure-less, reads like a Disney sitcom but with less edge. Just silly less than fun, Might be fun for young teenagers to act, Very bland. More of these to come. I think i'd like to do these way over the top with improv, sketch actors and just mock the hell out of them.

0 Comments

The 60's Can Be Embarrassing

3/11/2016

0 Comments

OK. This was a tough one. I've mentioned it on Facebook because it had some terrible stage directions that compelled me to comment on them. Wow. The play is called The White Whore and the Bit Player by Tom Eyen. It's from a collection of plays from 1968, called New American Plays 2, edited by one William M. Hoffman. The play was originally performed at La Mama in Brooklyn in 1964.

I found this play very difficult to read. It is very short but still, very little of it is compelling. The play is meant to be very experimental. Perhaps in its day, it was, but, reading it today, one feels the playwright never met a cliché he didn't like. And yet, I wanted to give him a pass, because I feel that he was probably creating the clichés, rather than using them as crutches. I mean the play was written in 1964. The embarrassing, pretentious, and often silly antics by today's standards were considered dangerous, boundary-pushing innovations then. They were new and exciting, not trite and old hat. I tried to take that into account as I read the play.

There are two actors both playing different manifestations of one character: an actress in an insane asylum. They are referred to in the script as The Nun and The Whore. They are never spoken to by these names but we know The Nun is a nun because she is dressed as one. The actress represented by these two actors is about to kill herself. The Nun and The Whore relive the events of the actress' life as they flash before her in her final moments.

The script is non-linear and self referential. A narrative emerges that the actress was abandoned by her father, lost her mother to suicide, was raised for a time in an abusive convent, was married and abandoned by her husband, became a sexual object for a multitude of men, parlayed her sexual prowess into a film career, became too old to continue, and was committed to this asylum where she finds death the only way to ease her suffering. That sounds so much more coherent and interesting than it does in the text. The set is simple, a bed, some chairs, and a human-sized neon cross.

The two actors trade persona's each playing the actress and the world interacting with her. There are a lot of lines that would be difficult to pull off, like, “I am woman/ all women to all men/ my succulent breasts hanging free/ suspended/ waiting eternally for milk-hungry mankind.” and “Rock? R as in rip? O as is out? C as in clit? K as in knooky-knooky?”. To make matters worse there are appalling stage directions like “[going into heat]”, “[rising like a horny volcano]”, and “[she progresses to cross the the stage like a dancing cannibal...]” among others.

I made a lot of excuses for this play. Ultimately, I think it has some power and resonance in its story but its stage conventions are not so stage worthy any longer. I think there could be a way to make the text work but one would have to scrap a lot of the staging. The corny language and dialogue requires that you find two incredibly skilled actresses each possessing tremendous amounts if charisma. The high level of intensity that is demanded by the script make it a difficult read, It is a loud, emotional piece, meant to be played with irrational, forceful energy. If you could find the right energy in performance you could pull this off on stage.

The trouble is whether its even worth it, The message is confusing. While seeming to write sympathetically about a female experience of the world, the male writer does not draw conclusions that make sense in 2016. Society's expectations of women have changed, as have their expectations of themselves. If one were to be doing just a character piece about one actress, then the archetypal elements of the script interfere. I found this one to be something of a cypher.

0 Comments

A Modern Twist

3/4/2016

1 Comment

This must be my lucky month because I was just asked to audition for another play. It is called Peribanez by Lope De Vega, translated and adapted by Tanya Ronder in 2003. Lope de Vega was a Spanish playwright of Spain's Golden Age. He was a contemporary of Shakespeare and Marlowe and outlived them both, He was freakishly prolific authoring some 2000 plays of which 500 or so survive. He also wrote novels and poetry.

The story is relatively simple and direct, not crowded with comic subplots, as many a Renaissance drama is. That is not to say it is without humor. There's some very funny stuff. It just is more integrated into the work as a whole. Peribanez and Casilda are a newly married couple, so in love with each other it's kinda gross. On their wedding day a bull goes mad, gores a horse and then injures the feudal lord, the Commander. He is brought to Peribanez's house unconscious, possibly dead. Peribanez (also called Pedro) rushes out to get a doctor. In his absence, the Commander awakes to the entreaties of Casilda. He falls into an all consuming love/lust for her.

The Commander then plots some ways to woo Casilda: he give her husband mules and her jewelry; he secretly has her portrait painted; he sends has lackey to woo her cousin. Meanwhile, Pedro is sent to Toledo to get a statue refurbished and sees the portrait. He gets jealous. While Pedro's away, the Commander takes the opportunity to seduce Casilda, only to discover that she is fanatically in love with Peribanez and will not be moved.

Pedro returns, wracked by jealousy and guilt, and discovers his wife to be faithful. He rewards his wife with renewed vows of love. The Commander, now enraged and more than determined to have his way with Casilda, plots to send Perdo off to war as captain of a contingent of peasants. With the husband out of the town he returns to Casilda. Pedro however has suspected this. Armed with a sword and a newly gifted knighthood, he returns from the war in secret and hides himself in Casilda's chambers.

The Commander comes in and proceeds to rape Casilda. Pedro reveals himself after an unaccountable hesitation and kills the Commander, his servant, and Casilda's cousin who abetted the invasion. Peribanez and Casilda flee. The Commander, soon to die, condemns himself and exonerates Pedro, before dying in the arms of his lieutenant.

The lieutenant goes to the King who is looking over his assembled army (needed to drive the Arabs and Moors from Spain), of which Pedro and the Commander were to be part. He explains the Commander's absence due to death for which Pedro must be executed. A search is made for him. Pedro turns himself in and explains why he did what he did. The King, and Queen, are sympathetic, forgive Pedro, and give him command of the entire regiment. Casilda, who has been silent since her near rape is taken under the Queen's protection.

There is a final scene in which Casilda disrobes for Pedro, but only to put her newfound finery. There is a deep and palpable sense that the love they once shared, that was so intense it was nearly comical, has been compromised and lost. End of play.

I liked this play. I would very much like to read another adaptation. This one seemed a trifle modern textually modern. There are nods and hints at what must have been a very heightened speech in the spanish. I imagine this might be what reading Shakespeare in a modern adaptation into another language must be like,. Structurally it decidedly part of its time. The characters are all tropes from the Renaissance theatre, and the soliloquy is much in evidence.

I am curious if the last scene is in the original Lope de Vega. It definitely has a more modern feel to the end. Traditionally, with the marriage saved and wrongs righted the play's ending would be deemed happy. The tinge of loss that haunts that last scene is an excellent addition. As it it wordless I am pretty sure it is a modern touch but if not De Vega was well ahead of his time.

1 Comment

The 50's Can Be Dull

The 60's Can Be Embarrassing

A Modern T﻿wist

Archives

Categories

A Modern Twist