I finished this one quickly. It is a very good, if dated, play called Staircase by Charles Dyer. It was written in 1966 and first performed, in a production directed by Peter Hall, by Paul Scofield and Patrick Magee, two of my favorite actors. It also had great success in a New York production in 1968 starring Milo O'Shea and Eli Wallach. It is definitely a play for actors to stretch their muscles in.

It concerns the relationship of two aging homosexuals in the mid-1960's England, where there existed the constant threat of a Morals Charge; where asking the wrong man to make out could result in two years of jail or at the absolute worst chemical castration. A terrible time indeed. This is an old school gay play of the Boys in the Band mold, where the characters are compelled to be who there are but hate themselves and society for their exclusion. It makes for a kind of period piece of a play. The gay pride movement has banished this kind of simpering self pity to the shadows where it rightfully belongs. That is not to say however that there isn't great merit in revisiting this play.

The two characters are Harry and Charlie, a pair of gay hairdressers who live together in Harry's shop. Charlie is an out-sized personality, full of a litany of personal slang and invective thrown randomly and nearly constantly at everything and everyone within range. Harry is more reserved and meek, but his meekness rest on a kind comfort in who and what he is. The two love each other and support each other in their own ways, although Charlie is often so harsh, one wonders exactly what there is about him that keeps Harry with him. Is it perhaps the desperation of that time's less permissive acceptance of homosexuality? I actually like that whatever is lovable about Charlie needs to be found and engendered by the actor graced with the role.

The play takes place over a long drunken evening, as was a fashion of a number of plays of the mid to late 1960's. Charlie receives a summons to report to court for a morals charge. This is the germ of the conflict. Through two short acts of bitchy, witty caterwauling new personal revelations are uncovered and bonds of love tested, bent, and stretched to the breaking point but ultimately recoil and remain in tact. The play is funny. Both roles require very different qualities and I think it would be fun to find a couple of solid character actors with decent range to do this show switching roles up every couple of performances.

I really like this play. 

Visions by Louis Nowra. Louis Nowra is a prolific, Australian playwright who is virtually unknown in the US. I was in one of his plays back in my Trinity days. I really liked it, so I was very excited to read this play of his. It is from 1979 and is very interesting.

The play concerns the Paraguayan War, or the War of the Triple Alliance, as it is also known. The war took place in the 1870's and was a complete debacle on all fronts. It lasted nearly ten years and the Paraguayan casualties numbered over 500,000. The Play shares many themes with the one I did at Trinity. That one was called The Precious Woman and concerned a different time of historical strife, that being the Warlord Era of China in the early 1900's. The two plays also feature a woman who is misplaced culturally, and a father and son who each reach incredible levels of despotic madness.

Visions is very episodic. It consists if two acts; the first, 15 scenes long, and the second, 8 scenes long. At first we meet the Juana, a young woman in the throws of some kind of visionary madness. She runs about in a storm pursued by her brother. We then meet Lopez and his Parisian wife Madame Lynch. They are the driving forces of the horrors that ensue. Both driven in different ways by their pride and vanity, they wreak havoc upon everyone around them.

Lopez's father is “treated” to death by some doctors clearing the way for Lopez to become El Presidente. Madame Lynch tortures her sisters-in-law mercilessly. One senses fairly early on in this play that is will not end well for any of the characters and that assumption is proved true. Only Juana who is subsumed into the royal household after a failed attempt to heal her retains a semblance of dignity and it is barely a semblance. Her visions, which can only be interpreted by her brother, are slowly revealed to have been prophetic as the each assume a kind of reality, giving her a Casandra like gravitas.

I imagine the play would be difficult to stage. Some of the brutality is very graphically described and that alone would make it difficult. Add to that a proliferation of locations and numerous people who are just there, and you'd would definitely have a tough time. The play would be something of an ordeal to sit through, but it is powerful, has something important to say about the human condition, and is cruelly funny as well. 

So I auditioned for this play this week. I read it again since I always like to read plays before auditioning for them. So. Here is my second Arhur Miller play in this blog. It's a justly famous one. The Crucible.

Written mostly as an indictment of the McCarthy and the Blacklist of the 1950's, it is a powerful and well crafted work. It is fictionalized history and in a small way that bothers me. The motives of the girls in the story are entirely invented to serve the purpose of the play and, while effective dramatically, it lends a patina of explanation to the historical events it deals with that is lacking in fact.

Those historical events are the Salem Witch trials. In 1692 and 1693, a group of young girls claimed to be tortured by witches. They accused people in their community of being those witches resulting in the execution of 20 people and the imprisonment of many more. Miller does play fast and loose with the facts, inventing an adulterous relationship between one of the main accusers Abagail Williams and the play de facto lead male character, John Proctor. He also ages her 6 years to accomadate this.

In Act I we learn that the girls and a Caribbean slave, Tituba, were dancing naked in the woods. On of the girls is in a mysterious trance. The girls led by Abagail Williams begin to accuse people of witchcraft. Eventually, John Proctor's wife is accused, so that once she is dead John will be free to return to Abagail. He doesn't want this and tries to expose Abagail's hypocrisy. He fails and is killed. Basically.

There are, of course, more nuances than this but that is the scaffold of the the drama. The play is effective. It triggers an innate sense of justice in us. Knowing, as we do, the accusations to be false seeing them taken so seriously is incredibly frustrating. All the characters are well written. And the play has a good sense of rhythm and timing. The characters speak in a strange fake early English that gives a credible sense of place and time. There is a sense of the arguments being a bit pat and obvious, but apart from Abagail, there isn't a a character that is an out and out Straw man.

Reading this play caused me to do some research into the actual Salem Witch trials, which I suppose is a good thing. There isn't as clear a reason for those events as the play presents. That is both a blessing and a curse. I can't help but wish the play could be more historically accurate, but the actual history is less compelling than the play; more ambiguous and therefore more difficult to form an adequate opinion of what happened. Miller's play has clear villains and heroes. History does not.