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.

Theater on Both Sides - Cast of Titans

'Tis the season of Mamet. Ben Brantley took care of Anarchist at the John Golden theater, but as for Glengarry Glen Ross, despite having begun previews on Nov. 11, the reviews are not yet out.  This is because it doesn't open until the 8th of December.  Officially this is because of Sandy, unofficially this is because Al Pacino supposedly doesn't know his lines.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure Pacino was the right choice for his role.  In this production, he plays Levine.  He is ageing and failing; he can no longer sell and is grasping at straws.  Al Pacino is ageing, but he reads - to me at least - as a bit too confident for the role.  He really was perfect in the movie as Roma (played excellently in this production by Bobby Cannavale) and Jack Lemmon really was the quintessential Levine.  The other roles of the play are cast perfectly (John C. McGinley is perfect as Moss), but I have some serious reservations about Pacino.  I feel terrible about saying this, but it's the case.  It's just enough to draw me out of the world of the play slightly.
The world of the play is really ingeniously crafted.  The entire first act is set in a Chinese Restaurant, which is brought to life brilliantly with little touches like a child's high-seat or the subtly shifting window (the pattern of a window is cast onto the set in the cool tones of night from a different angle for each scene).  It really is a believable Midwestern Chinese restaurant.  When the action shifts to the office of the real estate company, you really feel like there's something in every filing cabinet.  For me, it called to mind the set of Gatz at The Public which was actually stocked with the theater's tax returns from many years back to make it look like a real office.

The production is certainly worth it.  It features some titans of acting.  But I'm not entirely certain that it is worth the hype of the marquis name.  Al Pacino is doubtless a great actor, but I'm not entirely sure he was right for the part.  The show does not suffer with regard to quality because he is in it, it suffers some with regard to believability.  Al Pacino's Levine doesn't read to me like someone who would take the drastic step of stealing the leads that are so crucial to the action of the play.

Oh Honey...

This is actually an essay I wrote for English class.  The page numbers refer to my copy of the play.  It is relevant for reasons...

Fifty years after it first opened on Broadway, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? still packs a punch.  One character often relegated to the background even by the others on stage is Honey.  She is in many ways a non-entity.  She does not often participate in the games of George and Martha, and in fact spends a great deal of time in the bathroom being sick.  Honey’s disconnect from the action allows the audience to observe themselves in many ways.  We can watch our experience played out on the stage.  She also serves as a child figure.  She needs caring for and George and Martha use her in the same way that they use their possibly imaginary child.  She is a mirror both for the audience’s experience and for George and Martha’s parenting skills.

            Honey begins the play as a non-entity. Her name in and of itself is a term of endearment not necessarily a name.  There are women out there named “Honey”, but when compared to a name like “Martha” which is definitely a name, it seems inadequate.  Even before we hear her name, Honey is described as “a mousey little type, without any hips, or anything.” (10) When we see her, she does live up to this description.  Her skirt is unflatteringly long, the green of her shirt is unflattering, and her clothes look somewhat too big for her.  This is, of course, intentional, but it really brings out her lack of personality in comparison to the larger than life characters George and Martha.  She is a boxy, mousey type that barely registers in comparison.  As the night wears on, we notice a pattern in Honey’s speech: she repeats.  She often does not add to the conversation instead saying things like “(Idiotically) When’s the little bugger coming home? (Giggles)” (77) She does not register the exchange between George and Martha which hints at troubles to come regarding the existence of their son, but instead repeats “idiotically” a question George posed.  Honey knows the others do not notice her.  After George introduces the fake gun, Honey says, “(Wanting attention) I’ve never been so frightened… never.” (63) Honey has to repeat herself to register to the other partygoers and even then they do not acknowledge her.  In response to this, she retreats within herself.

Honey’s withdrawal and quietness allow George and Martha to paint a picture of the kind of parents they would be on a living, breathing human.  Honey’s removal from the games makes her very childlike; her nondescript personality translates to a kind of innocence.  She is not an innocent and she is not a child; but George and Martha exercise their power over her as though she were a pawn between them, which, because she is younger than both of them, renders her their child and their plaything.  George brings up her hysterical pregnancy in a game called “Get the Guests” (156) to get his revenge on Martha for humiliating him.  George does so in a horrible way without regard for Honey’s feelings.  Her hysterical pregnancy is horribly embarrassing and emotionally charged.  She responds to the story with “hysteria” (163) “outlandish horror” (164), but George does not care.  He shows no remorse.  He shrugs off the incident saying “The patterns of history.” (165) As readers of the play, we are given to believe that Martha would behave the same way when her parenting is described in Act III.  Both George and Martha use their children and their child figures to their own ends.  George uses Honey to get his revenge and to play his own game.  Martha, according to George, acted the same way with their son.  Since Martha’s recriminations indicate that George was guilty of the same games when their son was involved, we as readers have reason to believe that the game of Get the Guests is indicative of the games George and Martha played on their child.  Honey’s apparent, childlike withdrawal allows them to show the audience.

            Because of her character’s detachment, Carrie Coon plays the drunken observer perfectly.  Her performance as Honey balances engagement and withdrawal perfectly.  She withdraws within herself when the other characters ignore her for too long.  However, she does not fully disengage.  Coon peers at the action through slit-like eyes, watching but not involving herself.  In this way, she becomes the audience, albeit a little more intoxicated.  Albee creates a way for the audience to watch itself through the character of Honey.  She calls out “violence… violence!” (151), in many ways asking for a reprieve from the mind games as well as stating the obvious as George and Martha fight physically for the first time.  We as an audience can understand violence.  To a modern audience, it is commonplace.  In 1961 the theatergoers would not be that far removed from war.  Physical aggression is a universal truth.  In the middle of the plan, violence is, in a sick way, a refreshing break from the mind games.  Honey can call out for it, the audience cannot.  Not only is it unacceptable to call out this way in a theater it is also embarrassing; as modern humans, we like to think that we are removed from violence in our daily lives.  To need it is embarrassing.  Yet in this scene we need a break from the mental aggression.  We need violence.  The audience can watch Honey stand on a couch, above the fray, and egg it on and laugh, but secretly that’s what the audience needs.  We know of or know personally abusive relationships where one party is a physical aggressor.  Relationships like George and Martha’s, where the mind games are a part of daily life, are not as familiar.  Seeing this familiar scene grounds us and acts as a breath of fresh air.  But we cannot ask for it.  Honey must do so, and can do so because she is drunk and part of the play.

            Honey’s mousey disengagement allows Albee to show important aspects of the other characters and of humanity as a whole as it is represented by the audience in a theater.  We as audience members can watch two horrible parents play mind games and destroy a younger woman and we can watch ourselves made manifest on stage and released from our inhibitions by brandy.  Honey’s drunkenness turns her into a child and a mirror.  Much of the intensity of Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? derives from the way Albee forces us to engage in the play.  We are Honey.  We are the observer of a wild night of fun and games, sick though they are.  We watch our mirror destroyed by the parenting of George and Martha and we watch Honey call out for the very thing we need.  We can laugh at Honey all we want, but, ultimately, we are one in the same.

Who Are You, Jesus Christ?

Broadway is turning into a religious institution.  Currently playing are The Book of Mormon, Godspell, and (more central to the subject of this post) Jesus Christ Superstar.  I love Superstar.  It's probably one of my favorite musicals.  Not that I've ever seen it before, I just love the music, which is - as it turns out - the entire show.  Jesus Christ Superstar is part rock opera and all awesome.  If you get the chance, I strongly encourage you to listen to "Gethsemane" from the 1971 original Broadway Cast Recording; there's this one note that Jesus hits that will make your brain melt with amazement.  What's especially cool about this production is that the cast is almost entirely comprised of Canadian no-names.  The show came down from the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and it represents the festival very well.  The cast does a great job with their parts and, more importantly, you can hear every word.  Full disclosure, the actor who plays Judas has a solo album and I bought it.  His voice is amazing.  With regard to staging (and how can I go an entire blog post without talking about it?), I thought it was really well done.  A few things threw me off at first - most notably the Mad Max/Sontaran styled centurions and the fact that the set does at times seem to swallow the actors - but I really liked what I saw.  I do not know if there is a Tony Award for projection design, but the projection designer for this show deserves major recognition. "Trial & 39 Lashes" and "John 19:41" were both awe-inspiring.

But perhaps more interesting than the details of the show is the subject matter.  It is, after all, a musical about the last six days of the life of Jesus Christ... the man.  Not the son of God.  It's a very interesting proposition: what if Jesus was just a guy who had some nice things to say?  What if he wasn't the son of god?  It's not a new idea.  Thomas Jefferson took all the miracles out of the New Testament and published  The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth as a book of ethics. I think that we can mostly all agree that Jesus didn't say anything too crazy with regard to his ethics.  But you have to admit, he was also kind of morbid.  Toward the end he talked about his own death an awful lot.  In the words of Judas in the opening number: "You've begun to matter more than the things you say". To me, the story actually becomes more important if Jesus was just a guy.  A potentially delusional guy depending on whether or not he himself believed he was he son of god, but a guy none the less who was essentially lynched by the people of Judea for spreading kindness and equality.  Once you strip away the myth from the man, I my opinion, he becomes someone worth founding a religion upon...

GATZ

Having just recovered from the theatrical experience of a lifetime, I figure I should try to explain just how truly cool The Elevator Repair Service's GATZ is.  Which might be a little futile, since tickets were sold out the day it came back to The Public Theater and it hardly needs more accolades, but I'll still make a go of it.

This is a theatrical endurance test.  My back still hurts from sitting in the Newman Theater's rather uncomfortable seats.  The audience sits down at 3 PM and the play is over at around 11 PM.  That includes two intermissions and a dinner break (I went to the B Bar & Grill, which was delicious), but that's still really freaking long.  But it is so worth it.  Set in an grimy, dingy office, the play begins with a man sitting down to his desk, discovering his computer isn't working, finding a copy of Fitzgerald's book, and beginning to read.  As he continues to read, the other people in his office begin to fall into place as the character from the novel.  As the play progresses, it seems that the text begins to take over and it becomes hard to tell who's in charge: the people populating the world of this office or Fitzgerald's meticulously chosen words.  Slowly but surely the evidence that this is an office is taken away, and by the time the narrator gets to the last chapter the files and computers that cluttered the desks have been whisked away, leaving Nick alone with the text.  Quite frankly, it's somewhat disturbing.  The light has faded to a blue gray, the sound design is gone (the technician/actor leaves after discharging his roles as various NYC people, Michalis, and the Lutheran Minister) and much of the furniture has been removed.  It's remarkably unsettling, but you can't take your eyes off the stage in much the same way that the people of the Ash Heaps are transfixed by the accident that kills Myrtle Wilson.  It is truly remarkable.  Only Fitzgerald's text remains.  And that is the only text involved in this production.  It is ostensibly a live action audiobook.  True, other things are said on stage, but they are not audible and gradually the tasks of the office stop intruding as everyone gets wrapped up in playing their parts.  The only complaint I might make about the productions regards Jordan, who takes her epithet "jaunty" very seriously which renders her performance somewhat robotic, but truly this production was remarkable.

Also, the actor who plays Nick has all 49,000 words of the text memorized.  It makes you want to cry out to the skies "What is this madness!?", right?

All the World's A Stage

I maintain that only Brits can do Shakespeare right.  This assertion was proved more right on Friday night when I made the trek down to Brooklyn to see Simon Callow in Being Shakespeare at BAM.  One-third one-man show, one-third Shakespeare survey, one-third lecture, this production is a fascinating look at who Shakespeare was in the context of his life and times using Jaques' famous "All the world's a stage" speech from As You Like It as frame work.  The text of the production was written by Jonathan Bate (preeminent biographer of Shakespeare) and the design and direction is the brain child of Tom Cairns.  The moment Callow steps on stage we are treated to a somewhat disheveled looking professor and guide through The Bard's life and words.  And it's not just the classics that everyone knows.  In addition to a fantastically realistic Falstaff, Romeo's "psychotic chum" Mercutio, the Rude Mechanicals from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and a weary Macbeth, we are introduced to some more obscure works.  Like a monologue from Sir Thomas Moore.  Don't worry, it's not part of the official cannon.  It's from one of his collaborations with other writers.  Which, as it turns out, is how he got his start.  Will Shakespeare rose from glove maker's son, to horse carriage valet for London theaters, to technician, to ensemble cast member, to script fixer, to author, to William Shakespeare.  It makes me unmeasurably happy that he was, at one point, a technician.  As he grew older, he continued to write his own plays, but also contributed a monologue or two to the works of others.  Hence, Sir Thomas Moore.  We are also introduced to what little William would have learned in school.  Which is to say Latin Grammar and Rhetoric.  Callow takes apart the "Friends, Romans, Countrymen..." speech to show the audience each rhetorical device employed by Shakespeare to convey his point.  It's super cool.  All in all, it was a fascinating look into the seven ages of William Shakespeare that I would recommend to anyone.

Tribes

As my teachers will attest, I do not like feeling like I have missed something.  I am well known for coming in for extra help regarding topics that I know full well will be elucidated in the next class.  So perhaps you can imagine my opinion of a play that centers on the concept of missing things.  Nina Raines's Tribes at the Barrow Street Theater is that play.  An import from London's Royal Court Theater, this dramatic comedy is about passive and active listening and hearing.  And very probably about deciding who is the biggest ass in the show.  Because, to be perfectly honest, even the hearing characters don't hear each other.  Everyone lacks some ability to connect to the outside world and almost all of them fundamentally do not or cannot hear some majority of the other characters.  And the actors do an amazing job of acting it.  Really, that is very well done.  As is the scenic design.  Scott Pask has created a wonderfully neurotic living/dining room for the family whose interactions drive the play.  The problem is that the play they're driving is a rather heavy handed one.  It is pretty funny in the first act; it just gets preachy in the second.  The characters the actors inhabit are nothing new.  Dad is an academic critic who is never anything other than critical, mom is vaguely writing a "marriage breakdown detective novel", Daniel is writing a thesis (kind of), Ruth is trying to pursue a career singing arias in pubs, and Billy is generally a bystander to their cacophonous arguments because he's the deaf one.  On the surface they may seem unique, but there's not much to distinguish them from any of the dysfunctional families you’ve probably met before in fiction (like J. D.Salinger’s tales of the Glass family) or film (like Wes Anderson’s “Royal Tenenbaums”).  They're all pretending at some kind of significance and none of them are succeeding.  Only the actors seem to win in this show because they carry off these stereotypes as though they were in fact as new as the writer seems to think they are.  The ensemble really does an excellent job with a play that is heavy handed at best.  As staged by Mr. Cromer supertitles are projected during signed sequences, but irregularly, so sometimes we lose the thread. The in-the-round configuration for this production means that at different points different actors will have their backs to us. And you’re increasingly aware of the importance of where everyone is standing, how bright or dark the stage is (according to Keith Parham’s lighting) and how loud or muffled offstage noises are.  


All in all I think it was interesting.  I just can't say I enjoyed it.

The House of Bernarda Alba

I’m not usually one for reimaginings, but I thought the Almeida’s production of The House of Bernarda Alba set in modern-ish day Iran was really well chosen and well done.  The play was written on the eve of Franco’s rise to power in Spain and so tyranny and totalitarianism play prominent roles in the production.  It centers on the actions of Bernarda Alba after the death of her husband, specifically the fact that she locks her five daughters and herself within her house for 8 years of mourning.  This house is not a home; it is conjured within the environment of the play as a fortress or a coffin.  Bernarda summons its different elements as a means of reinforcing its boundaries: the unseen love interest of the girls meets his sweethearts through their windows; men and women are separated (men in the yard, women in the house); and the neighbors watch each other without mercy between the shutters.  The women inside the house are connected to the outside world only by gossip and the excellent sound design of Dan Jones.  And I feel so much sympathy for them.  I too live with Bernarda Alba.

Visually too, the play’s palette of black and white may serve to evoke the color scheme of a black and white photograph.  Bernarda insists on everything being scrubbed spotless, yet only wears black.  Her morality too is black and white.  She endorses and upholds a society she condemns as keeping her daughters from enjoying their rightful place in the world.  Bernarda believes herself to be a high-born woman.  Whether this is actually the case is left up to the audience; but, in either case, Bernarda believes her daughters have been cheated out of their rightful place. But this play is built on the premise of negation.  Bernarda’s opening and closing line is “Silence” and she imposes on her daughters a regime of denial.  This is the story, ultimately, of a dynasty, only here Clytemnestra has been conceived as a 60-year-old matriarch for whom social control is inextricably bound up with religious display.  The play was conceived as a statement on tyranny and it wholly succeeds, evoking not only the beginnings of Franco’s Spain but also the conditions against which the protesters of the Arab Spring rebelled.

How to Make a Two Act Play One Act

Last night I had the opportunity to attend Bingo: Scenes of Money and Death by Edward Bond at the Young Vic.  It is not one I particularly relished.  I would love to say there was something about the production I enjoyed, but I really can't.  I don't think I can express to you how absolutely terrible this production is.  It is really, really, really bad.  And I feel terrible saying that because I got to talk to Patrick Stewart (who plays the role of Shakespeare) before the show, and he is just one of the nicest people.  So nice, in fact, that I almost stayed for the second act.  Almost.  But I didn't.


To be perfectly honest, this play is fundamentally incomprehensible.  I may be coming down hard on playwrights, but this really goes too far.  As far as I can tell (and be corroborated by the great sage wikipedia), this is a historical fiction, Marxist interpretation of the last years of Shakespeare's life in which all he wants to do is sit.  I know they say make your characters want something, but I don't think this is what they meant.  The first act of this play also features his daughter (a greedy bitch), an old gardener with the mind of a 12 year old (this is how he is described by his wife), an angry preacher, a "witch" (she's killed for arson and shaking), and Combe (I think he's meant to represent the "establishment").  Let that sink in for a bit.  The script features heavy handed condemnations of violent entertainment (bear-baiting), capitalism, money, success, and the common man.  For being a marxist writer, Bond is incredibly aristocratic. As for the title: "Art has very practical consequences. Most 'cultural appreciation' ignores this and is no more relevant than a game of 'Bingo' and less honest."  If you understand that, please explain in the comments.  Thank you.


So yeah.  I literally can't say anything more than that.  I did not understand a word of what transpired on the stage in front of me.  Stewart is probably very good, but Bond gave him nothing to work with.