In Defense of Skipper (Both Sides of the Pond: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)

Note: page numbers are from the Dramatists Play Service Inc. version of the play.

            The role of Skipper in any given production of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is an interesting one.  Though not actually present as an actor on the list of characters at the beginning of the play itself, the dramatic arc of the play would not exist without him.   It is his relationship with Brick that creates the central tension between Brick and the other members of the Pollitt family.  The production currently running on Broadway made a very interesting choice regarding Skipper’s presence: they gave him one.  They have since changed their minds, removing his presence, but this unique choice added an interesting, new dimension.  Having seen it twice, once with Skipper and once without, I think that while the show does not lack anything without him his presence adds to the experience in an interesting way.

            The audience is first shown Skipper in Act One when Margaret (Maggie) starts talking about him at length: “I made my mistake when I told you the truth about that thing with Skipper” (25).  Maggie has been hinting at some incident in the past with this dear friend of her husband Brick and the conversation finally explodes in this scene.  In this instance, the director had the actor playing Skipper, dressed in a letter jacket evocative of his football playing days at Old Miss, walk along the gallery outside of the bedroom looking in.  Maggie has conjured him, but he is not welcome yet.  The truth is not fully out.  Brick has also not welcomed the specter of his dead best friend yet.  Brick still resists having the conversation, saying “I had friendship with Skipper.  You are namin’ it dirty!” (27).  The fact that his wife brought it up makes the discussion tainted somehow.  He blames Maggie for Skipper’s death because she was the one who told Skipper to stop loving her husband.  So the ghost warily walks the gallery, looking in on the marital strife.  With this visual manifestation of Skipper, this scene evokes what the relationship must have been like for Maggie; she was always the proverbial third wheel.  Without his presence, the scene is much more focused on the fight between bereaved husband and ignored wife.  The distinction is an important one.  It asks whether this scene about Brick’s relationship with Maggie or with Skipper.  Classically, this scene is written as though it is about Brick’s relationship to Maggie.  It is in this scene that the conditions of the continuation of their marriage are revealed.  This makes the purpose of the scene to reveal more about this relationship.  But Brick’s relationship to Skipper has always figured into his relationship to Maggie, so Skipper’s presence manifests the unspoken truth of the conversation: Brick’s relationship to Maggie was never quite as valuable to him as his relationship to Skipper.

            Skipper’s second and final appearance happens during Brick’s big talk with Big Daddy. Big Daddy forces Brick to defend his drinking, in many ways forcing Brick to confront his role in Skipper’s death.  This allows Skipper into the room.  He enters from the gallery and explores the edges of the bedroom as Brick tells the story of their relationship.  Brick insists that the relationship was “a pure an’ true thing” (57) while dispelling the rumor that Skipper and he were more than friends.  With his presence in the scene, Brick’s story has an air of speciousness.  With Skipper’s presence, the scene is imbued with an added degree of tragedy; the audience can see the look on his face when Brick denies that their relationship was anything more than friendship and it is a look of sadness.  When Brick begins to talk about the phone call Skipper placed in which the audience is meant to understand that Skipper confessed his love, Skipper picks up the phone.  The ghostly ring of the phone is more fully separated from the present.  Without Skipper present, it’s not totally clear that the phone is not ringing; the tonal quality of the ring is slightly different and the phone itself is hidden in purple shadows while the main action is tightly confined to the glow of center stage, but Skipper’s presence removes the phone call in a much more definitive way. 

Skipper is Brick’s demon; he is the reason Brick drinks.  His physical presence in the show adds an interesting representation of the burden Brick bears.  We see the play more from Brick’s perspective with Skipper’s presence.  Without Skipper, the other relationships Brick has are more highlighted.  The production does not suffer without Skipper.  The ensemble is very strong and very cohesive.  But the dimensions that his presence brings out make the show very different.  Both are good; one is more unique.

Poets and the Great War

The Almeida production of The Dark Earth and The Light Sky is a rarity.  Nick Dear's play traces the last seven years of the poet Edward Thomas. We see his troubled marriage, compulsive walking and friendship with Robert Frost, who turns him to poetry. We are shown Eleanor Farjeon's adoration of him and the two rich years of productivity before his death in World War I from a shell blast at Arras in 1917.  By all rights it shouldn't be particularly dramatic, especially in the way it's written.  It combines monologues that directly address the audience with vignettes of the poet's life which seems almost entirely comprised of depression and long walks in the country.  But the quality of the writing, acting, and directorial image take real characters - now long dead - and introduce them to the audience anew, making the production fresh and utterly absorbing.

The story is undoubtedly tragic.  Bob Crowley's design evokes both the barren wasteland of the trenches of WWI and the rich soil of England's countryside.  It easily transitions to so many different locations.  In one scene, Helen Thomas actually digs potatoes out of it.  In another, a bomb explodes casting dirt in every direction.  Peter Mumford's lights are simply beautiful.  The rich ambers and purples create beautiful days and sharp spots delineate the reflective monologues, separating them from the narrative in a way that makes you feel like you're sitting alone in a room with the figures portrayed. The country sky is brought to life in all it's varieties with little pins of light creating stars and clouds actually seeming to move across the backdrop.  John Leonard sound design evokes equally and perfectly birdsong and the sounds of war.

The casting here is perfect.  The characters are utterly and painfully believable.  They capture the little dramas of an unhappy marriage and the loss of a friend so dear they seem to have been fated to know you.  Richard Eyre's directorial image fosters this approach to the story and supports the drama of the relationships of a set of average people who happened to be famous as well.  The portrayals are really beautiful.

Ayckbourn's Amateur Hour

Alan Ayckbourn's A Chorus of Disapproval is, I think. inherently funny.  Ayckbourn is a funny man and he wrote a play about an amateur operatic society, which is inherently funny.  But comedy demands to be well played or else the jokes die.  Trevor Nunn's erratically cast and oddly awkward production at the Harold Pinter Theater lacks the timing, sense of company, and ability to project that would constitute a well played production.

Nunn's production takes a somewhat condescending tone toward the endeavors of amateur theater, which is perhaps the choice guiltiest of robbing the play of its comedy.  The play demands to be linked to The Beggar's Opera (the show within the show) and it seems completely disconected not only as a result of lighting design choices that create completely different environments for the overlapping moments but also as a result of the fact that the lyrics are often inaudible.  Guy, the protagonist, is played as an inaudible nonentity, which immediately drains the energy of the script and he's actually one of the best actors.  Dafydd (yes, the character is welsh) is distinctly overplayed and comes across as a little bipolar.  The cast seems totally random (at least Twelfth Night had a sense of cohesion even if it did seem like a bunch of old guys getting together to put on a show) so the relationships seem somewhat forced.  The set also looks somewhat fake; this might work for the scenes in which the cast inhabit The Beggar's Opera but it creates a stagey feel for the scenes that are supposed to take place in the real world.  The walls of pubs don't swing.  There is one somewhat wonderful moment when Dafydd is trying to get through a tech rehearsal with a  lighting designer who is afraid of heights and a plot that's been patched in the most non-linear manner possible, but on the whole the play lacks a sense of cohesiveness and believability.  

Men Playing Women Playing Men

Some are born great; some achieve greatness; and some have greatness thrust upon them.  You'd think it would come from a history play.  It's from Twelfth Night.  Similarly, some men are born to play women; some men achieve the ability to play women; and some men have women's roles thrust upon them.  It comes across as really sad when it's the third one.

Reprising the quadricentennial production ten years later, Mark Rylance and the boys are back in an all male production of Twelfth Night.  Ten years later, a lot of the men are too old to be playing women.  Mark Rylance is a great actor and Olivia can be a very funny character, but Mark Rylance playing Olivia just seems pathetic.  Quite frankly, he's too old.  His mannerisms would be comical on a younger Orsino but come across as desperate when Rylance plays them.  It's impossible to believe that Liam Brennan, who plays a fantastic Orsino, would be attracted to her, especially in her almost kabuki style makeup and incredibly severe wig.  The production suffers from the hair and makeup design; Viola and Sebastian are made to look more alike through makeup and wigs, but they end up looking like ghosts wearing hair pieces made of yarn.  It also suffers a little as a result of casting.  The actors playing Viola and Sebastian should be switched.  The actor playing Sebastian, Samuel Barnett, looks much more feminine and is honestly a better actor.  Johnny Flynn, Viola, looks uncomfortable on stage (he takes some strange beats and conspicuously watches his feet during the dancing) and disconcertingly mannish.  Then again, some men are born to play women.  Or achieve that ability later in life.  Either way, Paul Chahidi, who turns Maria into a plumply roguish figure forever eyeing Sir Toby with lascivious enthusiasm, does yield a very funny performance.  Stephen Fry is almost too good as Malvolio; it's hard to believe that Olivia would spurn his advances.

The costume and set design are positively wonderful.  Even though Mark Rylance's costume reads a little like the old version of Elizabeth I as portrayed in many movies, the outfits are fantastic.  Jenny Tiramani's set – a decorated oak screen, with some of the audience seated in on-stage galleries – suits Twelfth Night wonderfully (it's being performed in rep with Richard III), and recreates the collegiate atmosphere the play must have had when seen at the Inns of Court in 1602.  

It comes together into an alright production.  Perhaps I'm ultimately questioning the directorial image of Tim Carroll.  He chooses to play up the more sombre aspects of Twelfth Night, the longing for an unrequited love and class warfare, as opposed to the funnier aspects, namely mistaken identities and class warfare.  

Experimental, Cinematic, Animated Theater

On the edge of a major metropolis lies the Bayou: a sprawling tenement block of which people say "If you're born in the Bayou, you die in the Bayou."  I drag my parents to some weird productions.

After catching a plane five hours ahead of schedule to beat a weather front so severe the BBC felt it newsworthy, the Eames family touched down in London.  First up: 1927's The Animals and Children Took to the Streets.  It somehow ended up billed as a children's show.  It's not.  It's a really wacked out combination of projected animations, musical theater, and meta story telling.  It's kind of like Adventure Time;  it may be billed for children, but it is not for children.  

The show is somehow performed by three women and a host of animated characters including various rival gangs of children.  Children really are a menace in this show.  The plot has a gang of child-pirates go on  the rampage, take over a middle-class park and even kidnap the mayor's cat before being whisked off in black ice-cream vans and effectively sedated by gumdrops infused with a drugstore's worth of sedatives.  At the beginning Agnes Eaves and her daughter arrive in the hopes of reforming the children through arts and crafts (specifically pasta collage), only to leave when the going gets tough.    It mixes together in something that feels like part silent movie, part social commentary, part Cabaret.  

It is seamlessly synchronized and well worth it.  It's just not really for the kids.  I don't know who got that idea...

A Genius in the Strings Section and in the Ring

This blog has been really negative of late.  I assure you, I don't dislike everything.  For one, Clifford Odets's Golden Boy is an amazing theatrical experience.  

The plot itself is vaguely contrived: the play centers on Joe Bonaparte who faces the choice between becoming a musician and the lure of big money and the distinct possibility of injuring his hands as a boxer. For context, Joe's Italian immigrant father shells out $1200 for a violin for is son's 21st birthday. The play takes place in the late 1930s.  But it never feels that way, which I think is a testament to the dramaturgical abilities of Odets.  The play, which clocks in at about three hours, never feels that way.  It moves and it avoids becoming preachy.  The characters do not engage in protracted conversations about the state of man or about beliefs, which could easily happen in a show whose characters include a philosophizing candy store owner, the kind of father who would shell out $1200 for a violin for his son's 21st birthday, a union organizer older brother, and a Newark native woman whose father drank and beat her mother into suicide.  Magically, the show does not preach.  I actually bought the script I thought it was so good.

Thematically, the play is about finding your passion or what complete's you.  For Joe's manager, that's Lorna.  For Joe's union organizing older brother, it's workplace justice.  For Lorna and Joe, it's up in the air.  Lorna loves Tom Moody, Joe's manager, because they have a peaceful, quiet relationship; but she also loves Joe and tries really hard to convince herself of the contrary.  Joe's internal conflict - music, which makes him feel human and empowered, versus boxing, which is a faster if more violent route to empowerment - is the central plot of the play.  Do you spend your life trying to shine in Capitalist America where you're judged by the dollars in your bank account, or do you fulfill a more satisfying, more humane though humbler destiny?  “Truthful success,” in the words of Joe's father, remains as elusive a goal today as it did when “Golden Boy” first opened on Broadway at the same theater 75 years ago.  

In the new production, Odet's language feels fresh and not at all dated and the powerhouse cast make sure the verbal punches sting as much as the physical ones.  The play is fantastically acted.  Seth Numrich's energy never falters, but it evolves in a fascinating way as the story progresses.  He goes from being a bouncing, boyish fireball to a hardened boxing machine with very little left over for living life.  The actors are no doubt aided by the atmospheric set design which quickly evokes many different locations and the understatedly perfect costumes.  The stark lighting almost makes you feel like, even when you're blocks away from a boxing arena, the actors are still in the ring fighting it out with each other.

Theater on Both Sides - A Night at the Opera

I should begin this by saying that I am perhaps the least qualified person to write this post.  I do not do opera.  I'd like to say I appreciate it, but I probably don't.  I enjoy the music, for whatever that's worth.  I once went to an un-staged performance of Anthony and Cleopatra at Carnegie Hall which is perhaps the best opera experience I've ever had.  Actually going to an opera house and sitting down for three hours isn't really my jam.  That said, I keep this blog half for myself and half because I actually have to blog for school on occasion.

It is pretty supremely cool that we had box seats as a class for Don Giovanni at the Met.  This awe factor wears off after you realize that the box seats are actually pretty damn uncomfortable, but they're still some of the best seats in the house.  Not only can you see the majority of the stage but also the orchestra, and the pit is a lot of fun to watch.  I've also heard that box seats are supposed to be some of the best seats acoustically, but that didn't come from the most reliable of sources.  I especially focused on the orchestra during the overture, as opposed to staring for what felt like many minutes at a block of dimly lit Spanish balconies and a sleeping Leporello.  And Leporello was my favorite part of the night. Almost no one else seemed to act.   I mean everyone had fantastic voices.  This is, after all, The Metropolitan Opera house. But no one seemed all that into their characters.  I give major props to Don Ottavio and Leporello.  Those two dealt with the inconsistencies of the other characters impressively.
I sound negative.  It was good.  I have seen some really bad opera.  But that was in the Ukraine and I was probably stupid to expect better.  The vocal talent was impressive, the music was wonderful, and the sets were impressive.  They really did build a few blocks of a Spanish town (I really want to say Seville, but that's only because I'm reading the original Don Juan text, El Burlador de Sevilla, for my AP Spanish Lit Class).  In the grand scheme of things, my issues with Don Giovanni are really nit-picky issues.  But I didn't really enjoy the whole experience.
Ultimately, my issues stem from the story, not from the performance.  It's The Met.  Everyone is at the top of their game there.  But I have some real reservations about the plot.  I mean Don Giovanni is an asshole - he sleeps around and he admittedly did kill a guy in a duel - but he doesn't deserve to be dragged to hell for it.  Sleeping with 1800 women is pretty damn impressive and it's maybe not the most traditionally moral thing to do, but it's not "get-dragged-to-hell-with-fiery-vengeance" material.  At the very beginning of the play the titular don does kill someone - Donna Anna's father, Commendatore - but he does so in a duel that he didn't even instigate.  It would be one thing if Giovanni instigated the duel, but he didn't.  I'm not saying that the Commendatore is at fault, but he did challenge a much younger man to a duel.  What was he expecting?