Ugh. I can't seem to find a play without sexism. At least this play was written in 1727. It's a famous play called The Beggar's Opera by John Gay. Bertolt Brecht used it as the basis for The Threepenny Opera. As a result of that many of the characters have familiar names. Macheath, Polly Peachum, Jenny Diver, and others. The play is tremendously satirical. Very Swiftian. 

The plot is not really much of a thing. The Peachum's and their daughter, Polly, own a changing house, a sort of fence in Enlightenment England where pickpockets, highwayman and all sorts of thieves go to turn the objects collected into money. One of their most successful thieves is Captain Macheath, a highwayman. He is also a libertine who has married Polly. He gets arrested while hanging out with a bunch of prostitutes. At Jail we meet Lockit and his pregnant daughter Lucy. She is pregnant by Macheath. Lucy lets Macheath escape. He is soon caught again and put to death. He is granted a last minute reprieve and acknowledges Polly as his wife. Play ends

Gay writes engaging and remorseless satire. It's full of lines like "The comfortable estate of widow-hood, is the only hope that keeps up a wife's spirits." The play is presented as a play within a play written by a beggar and a group of begging players. Macheath's reprieve actually comes from the actors. It is confusing because none of the characters are likable or terribly sympathetic. All thieves and ne'er-do-wells. Also being an "opera" there are many songs. They borrow their melodies to well known songs of the day. Gay has changed the words to suit the action of the play. It's odd because almost all the women are called slut, wench, hussy, jade harlot, ect., etc.. It was hard to hear so often. One hopes it is just part of the outrageousness of the play. If not it's very odd. I can't say as I liked the play which is full of early 18th century English in jokes. This is the play that had me looking at the foot-notes more than any other.

We're back in Sweden today with another Nobel Prize winner. The play is a long one act by Par Lagerkvist. (Par should have an umlaut over the "a" but I can't figure out how to change the keyboard.) I is called The Hangman. It is a weird one and it too reminds me of Ingmar Bergman. 

The play is a little crazy. It begins in a Medieval tavern. Several tradesmen are sitting about drinking ale and telling stories most of which concern the hangman, who is sitting in the tavern by himself seemingly ignoring them. Some of their stories are acted out for us by a "tableau" which appears up left. The use of the word tableau is odd because that usually refers to a frozen stage picture but in this context it refers to a different playing area where flashbacks happen. After a bunch stories  of discussion about the power of evil and the hangman, a character called Gallows-Lasse comes in. He is maimed having had both his hand's and forearms cut off as punishment for theft. He ends the tavern scene by telling in grotesque detail how he managed to get the mandrake root which protects him and gives him the power to live with evil.

After this scene we are transported to a 1930's nightclub with a negro jazz band. The hangman is still there.joined by a woman who is glowing beatifically. The play was written in 1933 so there is much discussion of a master race in the club. There are a lot of conversations by different people at the nightclub about death and killing. There's a lot of pro-war talk. Soon the Negro band is caught eating their dinner and the crowd offended by this attacks and kills some of them before forcing them to play again, which they do jarringly and violently causing orgiastic dancing among the guests. .

Finally one member of those assembled toasts the Hangman who speaks for the first time. He launches into a five page monologue wishing that he could die and be free of all the death that he has been and continues be responsible for. We are treated to a flashback of the hangman talking to Jesus. The play ends with the hangman being given succor and hope by the beatific woman. 

Whoa. Clearly the play is informed by growing Nazi sentiment and it links it too the barbarism and superstition of Medieval times. It would be very hard to stage especially the melee that erupts. It's a dense metaphysical play about death. There's a bit too much story telling at the beginning. It's heavy man.

Maybe I should read a more modern play. It seems that there was a lot more sexism in the late 60's. A lot more. Anyway I just read an almost great play called The Latent Heterosexual by Paddy Chayefsky. He's the only solo three time academy award winner for Best Screenplay. He wrote one of my favorite movies, Marty. This play was originally called The Accountant's Tale and that is a better title for it. I think the play is amazingly resonant of certain current affairs despite being written in 1967 but one event int the fifth scene soured the play for me. Actually it was only one line. 

The play concerns John Morley. He is an eccentric, gay writer who finds himself in tax trouble. He is newly successful and has thus attracted the attention of the IRS. He owes a lot of money. His agent takes him to meet the other major player in the script, Irving Spaatz. Spaatz is an accountant of tremendous and god-like skill. He concocts a plan to save Morley a lot of money, The plan works better than anyone could have conceived. 

One part of the plan is to get Morley married. Chosen as his bride is a prostitute Christine Van Damn. As soon as they are married Morley changes. No longer a mincing, flaming homosexual, he now sports a stetson, a cigar, and Texan drawl. He has embraced his new found heterosexuality. The new Mrs. Morley is even pregnant. Yet this play is more about the things that the Spaatz is doing to Morley than his wife. To better save money through tricky tax dodges, Morley is slowly transformed in a corporation of greater and greater breadth and scope. The business jargon that make up a good chunk of this text is dense, hysterical, and intense. I loved it. 

As the corporation expands, Morley becomes stripped of his personality. His wife cares for him selflessly, but is caught fellating another character. Despite her selfless devotion to Morley and his professed love for her and hers for him, she is dismissed from the play, divorced with the phrase, "Get that lousy whore out of here." It's one moment in the play that rings harsh and false. My feelings for the play fell then. 


Despite that, I liked the play and were I to produce it I would edit that moment somehow. Anyway I thought the play had some interesting things to say about corporate personhood, especially in the wake of the Citizen's United ruling. A man, an artist, is rendered catatonic and unfeeling about anything but his ability to make money. Once a vital interesting individual, he is consumed in corporate greed until his humanity is almost gone. Loosing his wife would be a good example of his descent, but it is handled is such a "women are such sluts and all they have to offer is their sexual fidelity" kind of way that it almost sunk the play for me. One has to adjust for the times when thing were written which is too bad.  

Just a note to say that I've changed the name of my blog to better reflect how it is happening. The new name is georgesplayblog@weebly.com.  I feel this better describes how the blog is doing and take a certain nawing pressure off me to read a play everyday, Whew, 

Today's play is The Ghost Sonata by August Strindberg, This a dense, surreal and amazing play. It is hard to describe the plot as it veers around quite a bit. It is comprised of three short scenes each having their own development and somewhat independent arc, but they are interrelated by characters and events, The first scene is mostly expositional but this partly undone when a character in the second act informs that most of that exposition was a series of lies. Reading this play made me think of Ingmar Bergman's films.

This play made me think a lot about translations. The play was translated by Elizabeth Sprigge in 1951 or thereabouts. I wondered about reading a more recent translation to see how different a modern sensibility. This translation feels a little academic. I think it would be hard to act. That could be that play too. I'm not sure if this is a Swedish thing or something but the text is often direct in highly theatrical way. The characters about their experiences as though talking about someone else. It's something I noticed about Bergman as well. 

Can I describe the plot? It might be hard. There are a lot of characters, some of whom are dead. All are interconnected in strangely improbable ways but the two main characters are an old man, Hummel, and a young student. The play opens on a street where the old man and the student meet. There is a house on this street that is almost like a character in it's own right. In it are two households, one in mourning, one that of an aristocratic Colonel and his family. The student has often idealized a life for him in the house with its highbrow comforts. The old man has secret designs on the inhabitants of the house and plans to use the old man to achieve them. It is also revealed that, as a Sunday child the student can see apparitions. He sees one of a milkmaid. These apparitions are also visible to the audience. I like this device. It makes the ghosts somehow more believable.

The first scene lays this groundwork. The second scene completely upends it. The student does make an entrance into the house to court the Colonel's daughter. The old man arrives to reap strange vengeance of the house. The Colonel's wife a near invalid somehow magically reveals Hummel to be a hypocrite and villain. He dies, The scene ends with the student singing a song of redemption to the Daughter's accompaniment. 

The third scene is strange in that it is hard to tell how soon after the second scene it takes place. It seems liek later that same day but is revealed to be some weeks later. The student and the daughter are together talking. He again reveals his idealization of the house, but the daughter corrects him. She lists the innumerable ways the house is evil and damaging to her and her parents who sit mutely in the next room. She reveals the presence of a new character, the cook, who, mirroring the revealed behavior of dead old man, saps the live and energy from the house. The family is unable to rid themselves of her. The student rebels against the daughter's fatalism but is rebuffed. The daughter then dies and the student to comfort her sings his song again. 

There is a tremendous amount of symbolism here. A lot to chew on. I liked the play. I have another translation and I'll read that soon and compare impressions. The play speaks of the futility of life and it's pretenses and false victories. It is dark in general and seems pick up certain themes half treat them and then move to others. 

I don't know why but I am having trouble writing about this play. It is called A Play of Giants  by Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. It is a very good play. Intense and brutal. A very political play. I am just finding it hard to write about.

The plot has several heads of state of some African nations posing for a statue at the U.N. They expect to have the statue on display somewhere in the U.N. The main character driving the events is fictional version of Idi Amin named Kamini. The other heads of state are likewise fictionalized by name but not by character. There is an introduction to they play that states very clearly that, to paraphrase the famous qualification, "any similarity between the characters and persons living or dead is entirely intentional". They grouse about how difficult ruling is and how one needs to be strong and crush one's enemies. Kamini in particular is almost comically ignorant of simple ideas, like how currency works. One hopes that Mr. Soyinka is exaggerating the level of ignorance and capriciousness that are exhibited by Kamini. 

There is one character that is either underwritten or not fully presented well. I wanted to understand more of her motives and her place in the situation. Her name is Gudrum and she is a Scandinavian journalist who seems to blindly support everything that Kamini does, I have no understanding of why she does what she does knowing that Kamini is essentially a horrible, violent bully. She seems to respect his power. 


There are two major events that happen one is the torture of the head of the Kamini's central bank. He tries to explain that printing more currency will only make that money useless and his unfortunate choice of words (toilet paper) for a comparison gets his head flushed in a toilet for "the remainder of the play". Even after Kamini uses the toilet to deposit some solid waste. The other is the assault of the unnamed sculptor. There is a major misunderstanding of why he is there. To explain that would take too long but he confides a negative opinion of Kamini to Gudrum which she shares with Kamini which is the behavior of hers that confuses me. Kamini beats the sculptor nearly senseless.


The play ends with the Russians and Americans squabbling over Kamini's demands (this was written in 1984 and the end of the Cold War was still 5 years away), when news arrives of a coup back in Kamini's country. He decides it is a lie and makes plans to attack the U.N. which he does as the show fades to black. 


The play packs an intellectual and political punch. It says much about the abuses of power. Although somewhat, dated there were still some very cogent and timely ideas about rebellions and sovereignty of states and how they are fostered and maintained. 


 

I just finished Love's Cure or The Martial Maid by Beaumont and Fletcher from a 1859 collection of their work. This is a Jacobean comedy and shares many of the same kind of plot elements of Shakespeare's comedies. I enjoyed this play. It is a bit sexist but that is hardly unexpected given when it was written. In that way it is reminiscent of The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night.

It takes place in Seville, Spain and concerns the fate of two houses, the Vitelli's and Alvarez's. Many years ago, Alvarez killed Vitelli's uncle, Don Pedro, and was banished to the low countries to fight in the wars as punishment. News come to Vitelli that Alvarez has been pardoned in payment for his and his son's success in battle. Vitelli is both outraged and heartened in that he will be able to avenge his uncle. 

Alvarez returns and meets his wife Eugenia. Here is where things get odd. The son that fought bravely in exile is in fact not a son but a daughter, Clara, who has been raised as a man in military camps. Alvarez's son, Lucio has been raised with his mother in Seville as a girl. Exactly why this was done is unclear but the play would be less interesting if it hadn't been. The main action of the play involves getting Lucio to behave like a man and Clara to behave like a woman. Nothing really works until each falls in love, Clara with Vitelli and Lucio with Vitelli's sister Genevora. Falling in love with their father's sworn enemy and his sister doesn't make things any easier. 

The play's big final scene involves a due to settle once and for all the enmity between Vitellli and Alvarez. There is a slight nod to the clear headedness and bravery of women over men as they are the ones who finally put to rest the quarrel. Everything ends well. 
 
There is a subplot involving a corrupt constable, a whore that Vitelli is keeping, and bunch of mechanicals who are his cohorts. It is a strange and likable play. Again given its time it is a bit sexist. It verges on Restoration style but is more Jacobean or Elizabethan in manner. It has some very good verse writing and some interesting scenes. Whenever I read plays form this period I often find them good and very interesting and I wish I could see them performed, but apparently the only playwright of this period anyone ever wants to do is Shakespeare and always the same ten odd plays or so. It gets boring. This play is fun and deserves to be shared again. 

More soon. 

So the next play I read was from a collection of very early Sam Sheppard plays called Chicago and Other Plays. I chose the first one, Chicago and right away I knew had changed perspectives and the inmates had taken over.

Unlike the other experimental plays I have (and to be fair there haven't been many), which have subverted the presentation of the play but pretty much kept basic narrative structures in tact, this play explodes both. The text is scattered, There is almost no exposition at all, Symbolic and iconic actions dominate. Sifting a clear narrative out of all this imagery takes some doing, but I think I did.

The play seems to be about the dissolution of a relationship. Stu and Joy are apparently a couple. Joy has got a new job and it seems she will be moving on. In response to this, Stu has hunkered down in the bathtub, with water and becomes by turns, petulant, poetic and uncommunicative. To Joy that is. He has a lot to say to himself and the audience. He speaks in long rambling monologues barely acknowledging Joy. Many friend come by to have a party, offstage, celebrating Joy's new job. Joy leaves and in a probably arresting visual finale, the guests cast fishing lines into the audience while Stu delivers a monologue about loss.


I admit that after reading lots of traditional narrative plays encountering this one annoyed me a bit. Why make an audience work so hard?, I thought, There are good reasons. The predictability of so many scripts does need to be refreshed now and then. One should strive to find a voice different from than those that came before. Something profound and moving is definitely communicated by this text and the lack of clarity forces one to pay more attention. I liked this play the more I thought about it.

Finally finished 10 Short Plays. The last play in that book was Visit to a Small Planet by Gore Vidal. It is a teleplay which is a word that is seldom used these days. It was a script written to be performed on live television of the 50's. A number of very good films from the late 50's and early 60's were based on teleplays. Marty, 12 Angry Men, Requiem for a Heavyweight, Bang the Drum Slowly, and Days of Wine and Roses, were all first staged as live television. The only notable difference between a teleplay and a stage play are a few stage directions that are borrowed from screenwriting, for example Cut To, or Dissolve to. 


 Gore Vidal is a somewhat under appreciated writer. Rather an under-read writer. Especially his plays. They are really good and this is no exception. He has a humor and wittiness about his work that is reminiscent of Shaw, as well as an intellectual weight in the manner of Giraudoux. Every time I read one of his plays I am surprised and excited by the charm of them. More theatres should visit his work. He's kind of like an unsung American Stoppard. 

This play is a marvelous take on that old 50's trope of the visitor from outer space, a smarter less obvious version of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Kreton a traveler from a future dimension with extraordinary powers, arrives at the home of Roger Spelding, his wife and daughter, Ellen. Roger is a television and radio commentator who fancies himself the Voice of American People. He has just finished a broadcast denying the existence of space ships and such when Kreton arrives. Kreton's advanced state allows him to read minds which he really enjoys because in his world, people are more controlled with their emotions than are these 20th century. Kreton's motivations at first seem quite benign. He has just come to observe as a "tourist". It soon becomes clear that his definition of tourist is a bit different than the Spelding's 

Things escalate to the point of nuclear war but Kreton is finally stopped by another visitor from his own time. I really liked this play, It could easily be done on a stage as the teleplay elements are easily worked around. like Tiger at the Gates, it has some very well put and interesting anti-war sentiments and polemics. Mr. Vidal's dialogue is always witty and well formed. It also has a nice three mini act structure which gives the play a nice "well-made" feel. The last bit is a tiny bit cheesy but it works well enough and given the difficulty of ending a play like this isn't too terrible. 

Just picked up a bunch more plays at the Library in Brookline, MA including a 1859 collection of Beaumont and Fletcher. so maybe the next play will be Jacobean, 
 
Soon, Have fun,  

YO! Another short play from 10 Short Plays. This one is a radio play called My Client Curley by Norman Corwin. This is a dated play. It is a media commentary. The story is told by a talent agent through what are now called sound bites but were then likely called snipets. I'm not sure. Being a radio play a lot of it is presented aurally. I think the play could work well enough on stage with lots of simple quick changes and a small group of versatile actors. In that way it reminds me of many of the shows I did with the Rough & Tumble Theatre company. We had lots of little scenes presented very quickly with minimal set pieces. That would be the only way to make this highly episodic play work on stage. 

The plot: a talent agent finds a young boy Stinky who has trained a caterpillar, Curley, to dance. The agent, taken with the talented bug, signs Stinkey and Curley to a contract. A media blitz ensues which catapult Curley to fame and the agent and Stinky to fortune. Just when Curley lands the coveted and incredibly lucrative deal with Disney, he disappears. Life returns sadly to normal because Curley is believed to be dead, It is then discovered that he has changed into a lovely butterfly and goes off to find his butterfly fortune in a bittersweet finale. 

The social satire of the play is very dated and mostly comes from mocking the style of the various magazines, newspapers and media that carry the stories of Curley. Most of these newspapers are defunct, so the jokes fall flat. The ones about the New Yorker and the New York Daily news still work though. There are also sections about nerdy scientists and such. 

The play is sweet and silly though, and fun to read. 

One more and then onto a different book.