Play five of Ten Short Plays.

Sherwood Anderson's The Triumph of the Egg is the fifth play in this odd little book. It is a silly and highly amusing comedy that calls itself a "slice of life". It concerns the aspirations of a former chicken farmer to attain a fortune running a diner/coffee shop. He is called Father and his sad, long suffering, possibly nagging wife is called Mother. They have a young (4, 5) son Frankie. That Frankie is on stage shows how dated this play is. Producing a play with a 4 year old character almost never happens now because hiring kids that young is difficult on many levels. Father is a dreamer who seems to live in a state of perpetual hope. He decides that entertaining the customers and making them feel at home is the way to make a success of his new venture. 

The play has a divided set of which only casual mention is made but might be helpful in making this play work. Part of the stage is the diner/coffee shop in a train station, the other is a shabby attached apartment in which Father, Mother and Frankie live. The train station is in a small town and apparently everyone in it knows everyone else. Joe Kane, the son of a well known, well off, town member comes into the shop and in him Father sees his chance to entertain his way to riches. This goes horribly awry. Every attempt he makes to endear himself to Joe fails utterly. In the process, he reveals his life story and so offends and upsets Joe that Joe runs from the place. Father is the comforted by a newly sympathetic Mother,who has been listening through apartment wall, as the play ends. 

The set division could be interesting if one could watch Mother react to each of Father's failures. This would add an interesting component to the events. There is a lot of funny stuff going on between Father and Joe, and Father is an endearing, funny little guy. His striving is both amusing and heartbreaking. 

More tomorrow. 

And now, the fourth of 10 Short Plays. 

Today we have a simple comedy called Suppressed Desires by Susan Glaspell, the only woman represented in this early 60's collection. It's a fairly pedestrian domestic comedy. This is the kind of play that would now be found on sit-com television. 

There are three characters, Steve and Henrietta Brewster, a married couple and Henrietta's sister Mabel. Steve and Henrietta are a married couple who live in New York in a Washington Square apartment in those heady days when one could afford to live in Manhattan on a single income. Steve, of course provides that income by designing buildings as an architect. Henrietta has gone to Freudian analysis, I suppose because she has nothing better to do, and has begun to see evidence of suppressed desire everywhere. This is driving Steve crazy.

Henrietta's sister Mabel shows up to visit and immediately becomes the subject of Henrietta's misguided if well-intentioned attempts at psychoanalysis. She analyzes Mabel's dreams which causes Steve to let loose with a bunch of funny one liners. Eventually Steve fools Henrietta into relinquishing her therapeutic aims by making her think he's been to see her analyst who identifies Steve's suppressed desire for Mabel. Henrietta is then reduced to a "woman fighting for her man" and agrees to stop therapy, acquiescing to Steve's need to have a wife whose interests are more in line with his. Ugh. 

This is a trite little play. It could easily be an episode of I Love Lucy. It has it's roots in commedia dell'art and Molliere's anti-medical plays but it's matter of fact 60's sexism is a little grating. Also there are no surprises in the plot or characterizations. That this is the only play by a woman in this collection is also kind of annoying. 

Hey by the way, feel free to "like" or comment on any of these posts. I see that people are looking at them but it would be nice to hear what you think.

Be back with another short one tomorrow, hopefully. 

Onto play number three in 10 Short Plays!

Today's play is Thornton Wilder's The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden, a classic one act play about which much has been written. I am not sure if it was written before Our Town, but it has the same convention of a stage manager character and minimal sets. This stage manager is less involved and appears almost bored throughout the proceedings. The plot is essentially the seemingly mundane trip taken by the Kirby Family to visit their married sister/daughter in Camden, New Jersey. It is a journey by car taken in the early 1900's when such a journey still had some novelty for those involved. The Kirbys argue, joke, sing songs, stop for gas, stop for lunch, chat with those they meet and eventually arrive at Beulah's house. 

Like Our Town, this play is deceptively simple. Lurking within the plain, homespun events of the play are darker more profound subtleties. Unlike Our Town, there is no final act to make these subtleties plain for everyone. That makes it easy to write this off as trite, Yet trite it is not. The early twentieth century jargon makes it feel especially G-rated, but if one takes the effort to imagine theses characters as people and not the archetypes, (Ma, Pa, Jr., and Sis) they have come to be, they can be quite moving. Ma's concern for her eldest Daughter Beulah, who we find out at the end has recently had a miscarriage, which is in fact the reason for the trip and also her embarrassment at finding Beulah's economic status so much higher than hers have secret punches in them. 

I really adore this play, especially as an actor. The trick of making people invest in these people as people and not just ideas is an especially rewarding one to pull off. I also like how Mr. Wilder is able to put all that character information in this play at the same time fooling the reader into thinking he's got these people pegged. They are, in fact, deeper, more real and individual than we think they are at first. As are we all, and that this play contains that lesson makes me happy.

Another short play by from 10 Short Plays.

The Case of the Crushed Petunias by Tennesee Williams. This is the second play in the book and it reads like a Tennessee Williams parody. It was written 1948 and is dedicated to Helen Hayes. The Play is about Dorothy Simple who live in Primanproper, MA and runs The Simple Notions Shop. She is 26, very attractive and "has barricaded her house and her heart behind a double row of petunias". Oh Tennessee! I do declare! 

Something is amiss, however, when Dorothy discovers that someone has crushed her petunias during the night, She finds a policeman and complains. Her shop is then visited by the Young Man. It transpires that he is the culprit, but he did to free Dorothy from the shackles of complacency and fear that she has "barricaded" herself behind. She is tempted by him. He arranges to meet her that night on Highway 71 and take her away to a life of adventure. He leaves and Dorothy mulls over the idea of freeing herself. A visit from Mrs. Dull solidifies her choice to run away. She closes the shop and asks that policeman how to get to Highway 71. He warns her how dangerous and immoral that place is but she takes her risk and goes off. End of play. 

This is a fun little play. VERY little. In many ways. It is, however, not without it's charms. The language is sweet and slightly melodramatic in that gentle Williams way. I found the Young Man's exhortations to "Live! Live! Live!" fondly reminiscent of Auntie Mame. A fun read and likely a fun little show to perform.


See ya soon.   

I bought a book called 10 Short Plays at another library sale. It is from the 1960's and has 10 one acts by some fairly well known playwrights. I've decided to do this whole book because the plays are all short and I can knock out ten posts very quickly that way. So, ready? Off we go. 

The first play is by William Saroyan, who is a lovely playwright who writes whimsical plays with big ideas lurking in them. This one is called Coming through the Rye. This is a charming little play that for it's brevity and light tone has some pretty heavy things to say. The play begins in a formless void, a nether world for those about to be born. A rather sardonic, patronizing, disembodied voice sets the stage for us addressing a group of soon to be born souls and explains to them where they are going and where they are coming from. The speech is that sort of New Age stuff about separating from a universal consciousness to enter the "World", but it has a very snarky attitude. That group souls depart and the next group assembles. 

The first to arrive are an old man, Carroll and a nine year old boy, Butch.They are carrying papers describing their professions to come and their general life outlines. They appear in the form that they will eventually take when they die and return to this sphere of existence. Thus Carroll will live a long life on Earth and the boy will die young. Butch is very inquisitive and worried. The Carroll does his best to calm Butch and convince that even though his life will be short it will be worth it. Butch has been talking to another soon to arrive soul, Steve, who is not so enamored of his upcoming trip to this reality. Steve has been filling butch with doubts about the merits of the trip they are about to take. Steve knows,, for instance, that on Earth he will murder another person. He wonders why he is even going, if that is what "fate" has in store for him. 

Others arrive and more funny paradoxes present themselves. Eventually everyone is sent off to "reality" whether they want to go or not. This is a good short play. It has so much to say and, more importantly, raises questions about what our existence even means and offers no easy answers. I also love that it skewers and satirizes some of the wishful thinking that people try to dress death up in to make it more palatable. 


See you tomorrow.

I've been cast in a staged reading and have been working on that script so it took a little longer to finish a play this time. I thought about doing the script I'm cast in but as that was an unpublished work in progress I had best let it be. So this time we've got Playing for Time, A Full-Length Stage Play adapted from the television film by Authur Miller, based on the book by Fania Fenelon. That is what is on the cover of the book. I picked this one up at a library sale.

This play brings up some thorny issues in the nature of reading, writing, and performing plays. It also brings into perspective the differences between a screenplay or teleplay vs. a stage play. The play is about the "girl's orchestra" that was formed at Auschwitz. It is based on a memoir by a woman who was actually in that orchestra. The television film caused some controversy because it starred Vanessa Redgrave as the main character despite being pro-Palestinian and in the author's eye wrong for the role. 

The play is harrowing as one would expect from a play about life in a concentration camp. Humanity's ability to be positively vile in its relations to other is laid bare. The cruelty, degradation, and humiliation the characters endure is hard to imagine and even harder to stomach. The main character, Fania, is a mildly famous night club singer and pianist, at least in Parisian circles. She has been rounded up by the Nazi's toward the end of the war and sent to Auschwitz because she is half Jewish and also because of her involvement with the French Resistance. She befriends a naive and needy young woman, Marianne, on the train.

Because of her singing and playing skills she joins the "girls orchestra". This orchestra is a hot bed of status and power plays. Fania and the conductor Alma, the two most accomplished musicians there, have a wary relationship, each wanting to be in control but begrudgingly realizing that need each other to make the Orchestra work. This play is interesting in that there are no clear good characters. Psychological realism rules the day. No character is truly evil, or at least presented as such. Mengele is a character, someone who may be the embodiment of evil, but here he is fairly benign, wanting only to hear good music. 

Miller's dialogue is terse and clear and the play is gripping and intense. Now we come to the thorns. I once worked with a director who said that one must throw out all the stage directions. I have worked with ones who too slavishly followed the stage directions. Ah, stage directions. What does one does with them? Should a writer put a lot in to maintain the clarity of his vision? Late 19th and early 20th century play are packed with stage directions. Shakespeare, Moliere, and their contemporaries used almost none. Most modern plays are have few of them. Beckett and Pinter are famous for having one frequent one: (Pause). 

Then there is the issue of who is writing these things. Is it the playwright? Or the stage manager? In editions of plays published by Dramatist Services, Baker's Plays, Samuel French, and their ilk the text often comes from the stage manager's book and has been annotated with actual blocking notes: (crosses DR in front of the divan).These are published with an eye to producing a show that closely resembles earlier productions. They often include a set diagram and prop lists. Plays published by book publishers usually only include the stage directions written by the playwright so as to make his concept of the play clear to the actors and directors. 

Hey! I got another play read today. The one posted earlier today I actually finished last night, 8/11/14. This one I read on 8/12/14 and may actually post that same day. This is fun!

Today's play is called That Summer-That Fall by Frank D. Gilroy. Mr. Gilroy won a Pulitzer prize for his earlier play, The Subject Was Roses. This play was written in 1966 and was apparently controversial when it was presented on Broadway in 1967. How strange that what was controversial then is so utterly tame today. It is a short, brittle, emotionally tense play.  

The play is comprised of 13 short scenes with an act break after scene 8. It has five characters, the Capuano's, an Italian family from New York, Angelina and Victor, Angelina's aunt Zia, a neighborhood girl, Josie, and Victor's estranged son, Steven. Angelina has been unhappily married to Victor for some time. He is a successful restaurateur. She sees a beautiful young man in the park and falls in love with him or perhaps just lust; it's hard to tell exactly. He turns out to be Steven the son of victor and a woman from his past. He has shown up looking for his father. They had never met before. Victor is totally taken with him and invites him to stay for the summer: That Summer. 

As the play progresses, dirty laundry is aired but never made clean and the play ends sadly. Exactly what is or was controversial about the play is unclear to me. One could get the impression that Steven might be gay, but if so, it is couched in the most successful camouflage I've encountered. There are a number of very good charged moments and the characters are very well drawn. They manage to be multifaceted and likable at the same time, a rare feat. The one character who remains a bit of a cipher is Steven. It is unclear exactly why he wanted to meet his father or whether he feels the same desire for Angelina. 

There is a strong, almost melodramatic finish that, ultimately I think, undercuts the emotional virility of the piece. Apparently it was not as successful as his earlier play as it only ran for 12 performances of Broadway. Interesting side note, A very young and beautiful Jon Voight and Tyne Daley were in the original cast. 

How soon will the next one be?

Back again much more quickly. This play is a lovely farce/ comedy called The Play's the Thing. It, like the Last one, came from Twenty Best European Plays On the American Stage. The play is written by one Ferenc Molnar. It also has the good fortune of being translated and adapted by P.G. Wodehouse so it is witty and VERY funny, and there are some great meta-theatrical moments.

It makes you want to see it as a film directed by Ernst Lubitsch. It's about a three theatre people, a playwright and producer and their new composer/protege. They have arrived at a count's castle to raise money for the show and confer with their usual prima donna  star. She is engaged to the composer. Things get a little crazy when they discover a former lover of the prima donna is also there to revisit old times. His appearance threatens the engagement and hence the upcoming production. The playwright conceives of a way out for everyone, he writes a play. 

This is a great play. Talk about a show that needs to be re-staged. It has a light, playful tone and some fabulous double entendre's. The final scene is just great. I wish this play was easily obtained so that you all could read it. Maybe I'll just have to do a production of it.  

Wow. Less than a week. I am impressed with myself. But then I've had a Gin Rickey and a Flower Girl so I'm  a little tipsy. The best time to write a blog, no?

So, while guzzling gin and having a small nosh, I read the last four pages of the most recent play for this blog, Tiger at the Gates by Jean Giradeaux in Translation by Christopher Fry. It is included in a book called Twenty Best European Play on the American Stage edited by John Gassner. The text is that used in the acclaimed production by Harold Clurman in both a London and Broadway run in 1955 with Michael Redgrave in the role of Hector. 

Full Disclosure: I was in a production of this play in high school (I know, heady stuff for high school but it's one of the reasons I am who I am and the actor I am) playing the part of Priam. The play is a retelling of the beginning of the Trojan War in that grand French style of Racine and others. Neo-classical it is called. I am not sure if we used this translation, High school being so long ago. This production however gave me one of my most profound and long lasting acting lessons of my life. 

The play, whose original French title is La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu or The Trojan War Will Not Take Place, is an anti-war plea. My character Priam is very pro-war. I was and am very anti-war. I did not want to be perceived as pro-war by the audience and in order to do so conceived of a very convoluted motivation where Priam was saying all the pro-war stuff in order to stay in favor with the masses, while at the same time manipulating his son, Hector to stop the war. It was a very pointless, confusing and horribly muddled performance. When my beloved director and theatre teacher, Robin Wood, pointed this out to me, I had an epiphany: I am not the character and I must be true to the character's motivations even if they seem to reflect on me. They do not.  A pro-war character must be played as pro-war, a stupid character must be played as stupid, an evil character must be played as evil, etc., etc. If people believe me to be evil based solely on the performance, so much the better. I have convinced them and conveyed the character faithfully. It has helped me immeasurably. I played an amoral, child killing monster, and even a pedophilic stepfather to great effect because of this.  

Anyway, the play is brilliant. It is witty and mercilessly satiric. It has moving, poignant social commentary and stinging polemics. It is truly Neo-classical in this sense. It is a play of ideas, beautifully written and presented. 

The plot is simple. Hector, Prince of Troy, returns from a war happy to finally be at peace, only to find that his brother, Paris, has abducted Helen, the wife of Menelaus, a Greek king. Unless she is returned there will be war. Paris is reluctant to give her up, as are all the elder men of Troy, including King Priam, Hector and Paris' father. Hector is insistent and Helen is consulted. She is fascinatingly conceived and may be the best thing in this play. I love the arguments and language in this play. Hector eventually has a parley with Ulysses in another great and fantastically written scene. It all ends with an inevitability that is at once known and frustrating. 

I am very curious to read other translations of this play. To modern ears this play would likely seem bloated and talky. Perhaps it is only this translation. I am curious to know. Also knowing the story of The Iliad helps to
drive the desperation and irony of the play. I really liked this play.  Next one sooner.

Well, I moved last week, so it took me a while to read a play. I did manage to in the midst of all that craziness. It's called Really Really by Paul Downs Colazio. It was given to me by a friend to read. She had just worked on a scene from it at her summer theatre program. 

It's a very Mamet/Labute kind of play. It has a kind of moral ambiguity that passes for depth these days. The play is chock full of unlikable characters and the one character you want to believe is telling the truth manages to become entirely suspect. I think the thing that bothered me most about the play is the, I want to use the word suggestion but that is not strong enough, implication perhaps, that date rape is sought out and used to manipulate society to achieve one's ends. 

It's all about the Generation Me, which I guess is the name for the current generation of young people disillusioned with the status quo. most of the characters are students at an unnamed college or university which caters to the children of wealthy families but is nice enough to allow a pleb or two in their midst. There was a party and sex was had by Leah and Davis. Leah is dating Jimmy, the son of a powerful member of the school's board. Davis is an all around nice guy. The central conflict revolves around whether or not the sex that Leah had was consensual or was it rape. 

There are a handful of characters all designed to give a certain point of view. All are basically straw men for the position they espouse and have no real depth as characters. Like Mamet and Labute, Colazio is very good at writing shallow, morally reprobate men. The banter of college "bros" talking about their conquests and sharing homophobic moments for shock and hilarity while failing to connect in any meaningful way is on full display here. 

And like Mamet and Labute, the women in the play are very poorly drawn. They feel false and seem to talk like the male nightmare of women willing to do anything to get ahead. including faking date rape. Maybe even twice. 

The play ends with a poorly described theatrical "montage" which flashes forward to show the snapshot version of future events, so we have some idea of the outcomes of some of these character's lives. I found the device kinda cheap. My biggest gripe is that there are no middle ground in these characters. There are the rich hedonists content to have a wealthy aristocratic life either living off the trust fund or working for dad after college. Just content rich assholes. The other class depiction is of Leah and her sister Haley, a truly awful character worthy of the Mamet's worst nightmare. They were raised in a broken home with a drunk father who beat and possibly raped them leaving disfiguring scars and a mother who also drank and wouldn't feed them lunch because they were too poor or she too cruel. These people are hard to believe. 

The play annoyed me by failing to allow any empathy or concern for any character, like Labute, and by setting up characters to completely support the authors premise without an artifice, like Mamet. Also by trivializing date rape and rape by making it just another playing piece in the game of "get me what I want" that all women of the lower class mercilessly engage in.  


Next one sooner I promise.