Today's play is called Parents are People (A Guidance Play) by M. Jerry Weiss. I do not know what a guidance play is exactly. I looked it up on the internet and although I could find examples of them, including this one, I could not find a working definition anywhere. I am assuming that it is meant to be instructive in some manner, or possibly designed to be a catalyst for discussion. Any way this is a strange play.

It is the story of a family. Bill and Sylvia Donlevy, their children, college aged Carol, high school senior Mike, and nine year old Les. The play opens with Bill and Sylvia preparing to go to a Lodge meeting where he is to be invested with some honor. The baby sitter calls and, alas ,she cannot make it. What to do? It looks like Sylvia will not be able to go. Carol, their daughter, who is away at college, shows up to complain that her parents won't buy her a ticket to a fancy dance, The Donlevy's are not financially well off, in fact they will not be able to keep Carol at the fancy, private college and will expect her to finish at the local state school, especially as Mike will be going to college and he needs to go pre-med to qualify for an exemption from the draft. Carol will be staying the weekend, so she enlisted her to watch Les, Mike already having a date on for that night. 

Mike and Les return home greet their sister and much cheerful family teasing ensues. Bill and Sylvia leave, as does Mike. Les calls his friend, Jimmy, to come over and play. Carol receives a phone call from members of her old gang. They have a date for her. She decides to go promising to bring the two boys ice cream as long as they will not tell on her. She leaves. Les and Jimmy begin playing Cowboys and Indians which involves a lot of dangerous play. They light a fire in a trash can, prepare to hang Jimmy, and threaten each other with a kitchen knife, Jimmy's mother Mrs. Herbertson arrives in time to avert disaster. 

Bill and Sylvia come home to find Mrs. Herbertson who calls the terrible parents for leaving Les in the care of a 20 year old girl. She leaves in a huff with Jimmy. Sylvia says that they must reprimand Carol. Bill says there is no point. Carol shows up and to prove Bill right shows no sense of guilt or remorse for having left Les alone. She is in a romantic state of mind having just met the All-American, Carl Ruthers and had a wonderful time. She goes to her room and Bill and Sylvia agree there is no way to punish her as she is incapable of learning a lesson. Play ends.

What the!? Very odd, Whatever moral is there is unclear, so I guess this play must exist to inspire discussion, because I believe one could talk about what happened and its implications for some time. It all seems fairly like innocuous family life drama until the end. Then things go suddenly off. There is the strange implication that Mrs. Herbertson is right and that Bill and Sylvia are terrible parents. Also Carol's near sociopathic need to go out once she hears that the boy intended for her is an All-American is very creepy. If these characters weren't so clearly archetypes you could call it an individual quirk. That late 50's, early 60's sexism is back. Unmarried 20 year old "girls" are not to be trusted and there is nothing that can be done about it. 

Be back soon, 

Ok. Back again. Two things kept me away. The play I was reading was a slog even though it was short and I had some domestic issues concerning my room. I took a long time to get it tidy but I finally did. 

So the play. Bloody awful mess. It's called Quare Medicine by Paul Green. Mr. Green received a Pulitzer Prize for something he wrote. I sure hope it was better than this. 

This play was written in some kind of dialect for the most part. When characters want say "are" it is spelled "air" to help give the reader and or actor a sense of how they speak. This is very hard to read and part of why this took so long. Every time I looked at the book the idea of trying to decipher the text made me not want to pick it up. 

Even the title is infected with this nonsense. "Quare" is how some of these characters say the word Queer. So "Queer Medicine". Oh, the thing is awful. The play takes place in "The Country", some rural american kind of place where most people talk in some rube-ish, rural way. Henry Jerrigan lives with his father and his wife, Mattie in a farmhouse. I guess he's a hard working farmer. There is unrest in the household because Mattie has recently found religion and forbade the use of chewing tobacco in the house and demands that the men keep it clean. She has women over regularly to sew old clothes to send to "the heathen." Both Father and Henry dislike this state of affairs but neither has the guts to tell Mattie. 

Father regularly buys some snake oil medicine from a Dr. Immanuel. He shows up while Mattie is gone and gives Henry some medicine that will restore the male dominance in the house. It does. Wa hoo. This play is just awful. Sexist and stupid. I had a feeling where it was headed and I just didn't want to go there which is another reason why I found it hard to finish. It is unclear why the medicine works. Henry takes the vial intended for Mattie, one that will make her weak and submissive (or him if he took it, presumably) and he forces her physically to drink the medicine intended for him. This being true one wonders what the moral was. Henry also say that the medicine was just water. He goes on a howling rampage after taking it and chases Mattie's church women in to a mud hole. This seemingly important bit of action happens offstage. 

Oh, it just terrible. Dr Immanuel talks in phony poetry. Mattie ends up a cowering mess clutching Henry's knees as he and Father chew tobacco and tramp mud all over the kitchen. I don't honestly know what the point is. I think it is meant to be a comedy, but it isn't funny. This is the second play from this 1963 publication in which women are put in their place and thus order and happiness is restored. Ugh. 

I hope the next one is better.

 

Got a little delayed by the start of my half marathon training. 

Play six from 10 Short Plays. 

Oh man. This one is a doozie. The Feast of Ortolans by Maxwell Anderson. This is a strange play. A bunch of French bourgeoisie and nobility sit around discussing the prospects for the revolution. The date is July 14th, soon to be known as Bastille day. They are celebrating the Feast of Ortolans, an old family tradition of the host in which several specially prepared and bred hens, Ortolans, are presented for all assembled to eat. The guests are excited. The Revolution is under way and the are expecting good things to come. All of the characters are actual historical figures. The cast is huge for a small play, 20 characters, but then it is Maxwell Anderson who is known for giant casts. Everyone chats cattily about the revolution until La Harpe, the Prophet of the Revolution as he is listed in the Cast of Characters, tells everyone about the Terror and how awful the revolution is actually going to be for a while, how basically everyone at table is going to beheaded. He even alludes to a machine which be used. Everyone is shocked. 

Meanwhile the woodcutters haven't supplied the chef's with wood to cook the Ortolans. everyone is getting antsy because the food hasn't arrived. The chefs are beside themselves because the the Ortolans will spoil. A soldier arrives with news of riots in Paris and an attempt to open the Bastille which the guests receive with mild anxiety. Surely the Bastille is impregnable. The wood cutters have gathered outside and are revolting. Are they ever. The Host is killed and the servants have abandoned our cast leaving them without Ortolans and a bunch of angry peasants and working folk to contend with. It looks like all those predictions of La Harpe may turn out right after all. 

One interesting feature of this play is that once La Harpe begins prophesying, he speaks in blank verse, That's something that Maxwell Anderson is also known for. His verse writing is pretty good without reverting to fake Shakespearean syntax or vocabulary. Max has always been good at writing in verse. The play is a little silly and if you know anything about the history of the French Revolution, kind of obvious. It reads like a well written history lesson and as such it might be somewhat informative. The cast is so big that one wonders where it would be performed. I once recommended Maxwell Anderson play to a high school drama teacher friend because the large casts would give more students a chance to act. That fact coupled with the didactic nature of the text would make this play a good teaching tool both for theatre and history. Otherwise I can't imagine it would be that interesting to watch,