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CHINA DOLL by MAMET: A THINK TWICE DRAMA REVIEW

CHINA DOLL Passengers: We Are Experiencing Turbulence

It began with the announcement that Al Pacino would appear in CHINA DOLL, an original play by David Mamet on Broadway. Fans who will go see Pacino on the big stage no matter what, whether it’s Shake-speare’s Merchant of Venice or Mamet’s American Buffalo—snatched up tickets for the fifteen week run that began at the Schoenfeld Theater in October this year.

That was the pro-Pacino buzz.

And as if from some law of drama physics, a counter-buzz met the pro-buzz with comparable force. This buzz was generated by speculation that the legendary-but-aged Pacino (75) couldn’t remember his lines. Rumors fixated on technical prompting devices that gave his memory assistance. Deriders of CHINA DOLL didn’t have to see the play to form an opinion. They’d heard all they need to know. The anti-Pacino buzz.

Finally, after two months of previews, CHINA DOLL opened in early December. Finally we’ve gotten past the glare of the lead actor’s stardom and honed in on Mamet’s play. Finally we won’t have to listen anymore to the vultures and boo-birds who get off on rooting for someone to fail. The critics have considered the play and set things right. Right? Hmmm. Wrong.

FOOL FOR LOVE, THINK TWICE DRAMA REVIEW, PART 2

December 4, 2015 / think twice / 0 Comments / Sticky

Lassoing the Bedposts in FOOL FOR LOVE

You watch the stuntman Eddie in his cowboy duds lassoing the bedposts in the motel room on the edge of the Mojave Desert. And you can go big picture or little picture. Big picture is Eddie’s indoor rodeo for his half-sister May is symbolic of the closing of the Great American West, a cowboy trapped in the Cracker Jacks box of modern life . . . Little picture, you agree with May: he’s just showing off, the way a boy tries to impress a girl. He’s a fool for love.

After all it’s “Eddie.” Not Ed or Edward.

Sam Rockwell brings a menacing yet boyish charm to the role in the current Broadway production of FOOL FOR LOVE. He told the New York Times that to prepare for the role he went to rodeos, hung out with wranglers, and studied roping. He practiced by lassoing trashcans in Tompkins Square Park. To steady his throws, he does a half hour of throws before the curtain goes up. About what drives his character, Rockwell said:

“Ultimately, the scene is not about roping; the scene is about two cosmically entwined lovers. The character is incredibly vulnerable. He brings a shotgun, a bottle of tequila—all this macho swagger, to cover up that fact that he’s afraid of being abandoned. And that’s what the play is about.”

As the play moves forward, the cowboy routine seems more and more the role-playing of a little kid. Eddie tells May he’s practicing. But more than practicing, it’s avoidance: the arrested development by a man traumatized by the sad end of his mother.

It’s the reverse of a child feigning at a glorious Tom Mix adulthood. It’s the traumatized adult pretending to be that child again. Eddie is so terrified of becoming his father, the source of the family tragedy, that he can’t put away the cowboy fantasy.

FOOL FOR LOVE’s Sam Rockwell as Eddie

His Face and Her Neck

Early in FOOL FOR LOVE, Eddie tells May he’s driven 2,480 miles to come see her and an odd–even for them–exchange follows. The stage directions instruct that Eddie is looking down as he speaks and sticking close to the wall.

EDDIE: I missed you. I did. I missed you more than anything I ever missed in my whole life. I kept thinkin’ about you the whole time I was driving. Kept seeing you. Sometimes just a part of you.

MAY: Which part?

EDDIE: Your neck.

MAY: My neck.

EDDIE: I missed all of you but your neck kept coming up for some reason. I kept crying about your neck.

MAY: Crying?

EDDIE: Yeah. Weeping. Like a little baby. Uncontrollable. It would just start up and stop and then start up all over again. For miles. I couldn’t stop it. Cars would pass me on the road. People would stare at me. My face was all twisted up. I couldn’t stop my face.

Here Eddie admits to missing May in a primal way, like a balling infant picked up and held, his face to his mother’s neck. A grown-up cowboy wouldn’t lose control of his face from missing a woman, or, at least, wouldn’t admit to it. This is the charm of Eddie, his crying game, the kid half-brother showing his vulnerability. This is Eddie’s all-out need for her as he tries to win May over one more time.

CHEKHOV TELLING TIME: Part 2

November 30, 2015 / think twice / 0 Comments / Sticky

Chekhov and Temporal Complexity in THE CHERRY ORCHARD

On July 2, 1904, Olga Knipper summoned a doctor to the hotel in the German spa of Badenweiler for her famous husband who was dying. After arriving, the doctor ordered champagne from room service for Chekhov. The champagne was to relieve his breathing. Olga reports that he sat up in bed and said in German, “Ich sterbe” [I’m dying]. . . “Then he picked up the glass, turned to me, smiled his wonderful smile and said: ‘It’s been a long time since I’ve had champagne.’ He drank it all to the last drop, quietly lay on his left side and was soon silent forever.”

Olga Knipper and Anton Chekhov, 1901

Even with his last words, he was gauging the experience of drinking champagne in a larger context. A long time since. Chekhov was twenty-four when he first became aware of blood coming up from his throat. For twenty years slowly gave way to tuberculosis. During this time he steadfastly downplayed his condition to family and friends. He refused to be seen as a patient. As the author of THE CHERRY ORCHARD, his last completed play, Chekhov immersed the world in the temporal complexity that genius and a life long courting death had made possible.

Donald Rayfield in The Cherry Orchard: Catastrophe and Comedy has written that the subject of the play had a germination that goes back to Chekhov’s childhood. The author spent holidays in the Ukraine among a cherry orchard on a farm. Important too was the deforestation of Russia in the 1880s. And Chekhov himself owned a cherry orchard that was chopped down in 1899 by a timber dealer. Clearly the long-term biographical association of cherry orchards for Anton is important to the construction of his final play.

The Most Shocking Line in the Play

Lopakhin opens the play. It is he that provides the sense of urgency, who must convince the audience of the direness of the situation. He must do this even if Liubov Ranevskaya is unable to give the selling of the estate her full attention. The stage directions ask for him to check his watch frequently. He gives the terrible, impending date of the sale twice specifically (August 23). He refers to it more generally often: “Time will not stand still.” In this regard, Lopakhin is prepared to embrace the portentous future.

Yet, his personal shame at having come from peasantry (“Like a pig in a pastry shop”) and his unease with the advancing new political order indicate that he is stuck in the mud of his private history as much as the other characters are in their own. His hands hang at his sides as if they belong to someone else. By the end of the play when he fails to propose to Varya (fails to ask for her hand), even though this marriage proposal has long been anticipated by Varya and her mother Ranevskaya, we the audience understand that for Lopakhin the conundrum of love and marriage to the adopted daughter of an aristocratic family is as difficult to face as the sale of the cherry orchard has been for the others.

Still, it is Lopakhin that delivers the most shocking line in the play: “The cherry orchard is now mine!” It is a bald statement of a present fact that Chekhov jolts us with. This announcement is like no other statement for its power and immediacy. It leaps off the page. Chekhov has prepared for it by constructing a rich temporal world where talk of the past and future has dominated.

SHEPARD AND HIS LEGACY . . . FOOL FOR LOVE

November 21, 2015 / think twice / 0 Comments / Sticky

Eddie and May in Sam Shepard FOOL FOR LOVE

Roomful of Eddie and May in FOOL FOR LOVE by Sam Shepard

Shepard Staying Power

It was Halloween at the Samuel J Friedman Theater. A motley audience had gathered for the Manhattan Theatre Club production of FOOL FOR LOVE by Sam Shepard. We were there to witness a deadly dance to a song with a haunting rhythm that has played in our heads for more than thirty years.

The women might have worn red dresses, like May (Nina Arianda). The men might have dressed in the manqué of the Marlboro man, like Eddie (Sam Rockwell). But, apart from a few witches and zombies, we were there dressed as ourselves, commiserate fools. And that was enough.

FOOL FOR LOVE is about all of us. It’s that rare play that gets beyond the bickering of the central characters and digs deep into our emotional pants. Caring about some other more than yourself is at once spooky and rapturous, destructive, life-affirming, what we’ve all gone through and go it again with Eddie and May.

WONKY RULES OF DRAMA

November 12, 2015 / think twice / 5 Comments / Sticky

Wonky Rules, What We Talk About When . . .

Have you ever attended a talkback after viewing a new work (a staged reading or workshop production) and been shocked by the level of feedback? Maybe you wrote the play. Maybe you simply admired it. You thought it had a lot going for it. Then out they come. THE WONKY RULES OF DRAMA.

It’s as if the spirit of Agatha Trunchbull, the rule-mongering headmistress of MATILDA THE MUSICAL, is unleashed and what the play has going for it gets overwhelmed with a system of negativity that demands conformity.

Miss Trunchbull’s Wonky Rules

A play might be as remarkable as the young heroine Matilda . . . but never mind. There are the WONKY rules. Obey, obey, obey.

The trouble with rules, especially theatre art rules, . . . they come and go according to the taste of the times. They may be well-meaning and can be helpful in some instances. More often than not, they inhibit creativity. They are blind to originality. They dismiss. They do more harm than good when they inspire connect-the-dots, rule-book dramas.

Wonky Rules Make For Dramatic Rigor Mortis

“The moment we succeed in consciously patterning our theater,” Walter Kerr has written, “in making it do precisely what we think it ought to be doing, we are apt to paralyze it.” Kerr, a revered New York theater critic and intellectual force in the theatre for many years, won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1978. As an instructor of playwriting, he mandated to his students that the purpose of the playwright is to entertain.

About rule-oriented theatre, he cites the neo-classical Italian theatre of the 16th century, the state-censored French theatre of the 17th century, and the moral British theater of the 18th century as eras of dramatic rigor mortis. “In each case, the deliberately shaped experience became an experience of boredom, and what had been outlawed as vulgar proved to be embarrassingly vital.”

Enemy of Wonky Rules Walter Kerr with Helen Hayes

Nemesis of Wonky Rules, Walter Kerr with Helen Hayes

If you think of plays as something constructed or wrought, that you are building a piece of furniture, then it is going to be different than it would be if you think writing a play is like composing or painting, an act of creation that involves the imagination.

BONOBOS AND DRAMA PART 2

October 27, 2015 / think twice / 0 Comments / Sticky

Bonobos in THE QUALMS by Bruce Norris

Bonobos are first mentioned more than halfway through THE QUALMS. Party host Gary says that humans are genetically engineered for warfare. His partner Teri says, “That’s not true. What about bonobos?” Gary continues, “—look at chimpanzees. Chimps conduct strategic attacks on rival tribes.” After the others protest, he adds, “—to protect their territory.” Then Teri says, “But Gary, Bonobos resolve conflict through sex instead of aggression and we’re genetically closer to bonobos.”

This déjà vu bonobo lesson got my attention. It was so similar to the bonobo and chimp parable in David Grieg’s THE EVENTS. [Bonobo Part 1: THE EVENTS] In this instance, however, there was cause to believe Bruce Norris would go further. And he does. His subject in THE QUALMS (Playwrights Horizons May 2015—July 2015) is closer to what has so intrigued us about bonobos, their use of sex to resolve conflict.

The play’s setting is a beach community condo owned by Gary and Teri where four couples have gathered, in theory, for erotic partner swapping. Newcomers Chris and Kristy struggle to fit into the “lifestyle.” Chris, in particular, can’t get past his hierarchal orientation.

The Kiss (Bonobo) by Gwenn Seemel

His insistence on class distinction is cleverly symbolized by his bringing an expensive bottle of cabernet to the party. Inevitably the red wine and associations with spilt red wine contribute to the crisis.

BONOBO AND CHIMP ZOO CHATTER

Bruce Norris is the author of a dozen or so unsettling, naturalistic comedies, including the Pulitzer Prize winning Claiborne Park. Many like THE QUALMS originated with Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

In his introduction (Playwrights Horizons Preview Editions), the playwright undersells THE QUALMS with a dry sociological account of the play exploring class competiveness. Sure, there’s that, but without question the eight characters interact as archetypal party animals. The audience is encouraged to view the beach condo scenario as a human zoo exhibition.

There is a frequent wonderful effect of five or six of the characters talking at the same time. In print these chatterings are formatted in short columns across the page. Each chattering marks a significant juncture in the group dynamic with a cascade of character views that advance the insecurity and tension.

TIME TELLING WITH CHEKHOV

October 17, 2015 / think twice / 2 Comments / Sticky

Time and The Mystery of the Broken String

One of the most important stage directions in theatre history appears in Anton Chekhov’s THE CHERRY ORCHARD. It is the middle of Act II and the characters have assembled in an open space near an abandoned chapel. Madame Ranevskaya has delivered a revelatory monologue about her past, in which she recounts the punishments she has received for her sins—a fate that includes a husband who drank himself to death with champagne, then love on the rebound with a cruel younger man, and—most painfully—her little boy drowning in the river.

The former tutor of the lost child, Trofimov, counters with a speech about human progress. Lopakhin discusses his business, Yepikhodov strolls by playing his guitar, and Gayev gushes about the setting sun. “Oh wondrous nature, cast upon us your eternal rays, . . .” Varya and Anya plead with him to stop. Spoofing Gayev and his pool-playing references, Trofimov quips, “We’d rather have the yellow ball in the side pocket.” They all sit in silence, except for the mumbling old servant Firs.

And then . . .

Suddenly a distant sound seems to fall from the sky, a sad sound, like a harp string breaking. It dies away.

Much has been written about the symbolism of the broken string and how important it is to gaining access to Chekhov’s dramatic work. That the sound seems to fall from the sky, precipitation-like, a singular note of portent—gives credence to its cosmic relevance in the world of the play.

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

Madame Ranevskaya asks, “What was that?” and shivers and grows nervous. Lopakhin’s theory that the sound is an echo from a faraway mine shaft speaks to his bent to exploit nature for monetary gain. Gayev ventures that the sound came from “some kind of bird . . . like a heron” fixing it within a pastoral context. This is trumped by the eternal student Trofimov hearing it as the cry of another bird, the more intellectual owl. The elderly Firs chimes in and then adds scope. “It’s like just before the trouble started. They heard an owl screech, and the kettle wouldn’t stop whistling.” Gayev asks Firs, “Before what trouble?” and the old man answers: “The day we got our freedom back.”

Firs is referring to Czar Alexander II’s emancipation of the Russian serfs in 1861 and the shift away from the feudal system. A view commonly held by scholars is that “broken string” results from the tension created by the older more-natural order (as symbolized by the setting sun, screeching owl, and Ranevskaya’s tragic river) and a newer more man-made order (yellow ball in the side pocket, whistling kettle, and the arrival and departure of Ranevskaya and Gayev by train that frames the story).

The tension between the infinite and the finite, between the natural and man-made order, begins in THE CHERRY ORCHARD with the play’s first line. Lopakhin’s opening words are: “The train’s finally in, thank God. What time is it?” From here Chekhov created a play of astounding temporal complexity. Four acts later he underscores his breaking-string effect by repeating it in the play’s conclusion, the final stage directions.

Ranevskaya’s estate has been sold. Firs discovers that he is locked out. The eighty-seven year old servant, a human timepiece and representative from a bygone era lies down on the front porch. He very possible dies. The distant sound occurs, in this instance, just before the quiet that precedes the sound of an ax cutting a cherry tree.

EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH

October 8, 2015 / think twice / 2 Comments / Sticky

Reconsidering Sheila Callaghan’s Fashion Play & EVERYTHING

A favorite Think Twice Drama, one that got me thinking about theatre blogging in the first place, is Sheila Callaghan’s EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH. Do you know this play? The work of Sheila Callaghan? If you don’t, you should . . . but proceed with your mind open and check your drama rules at the door.

This provocative and innovative author has written more than a dozen plays that have appeared in the best new-play theaters across the country. In EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH, she utilizes a breadth of poetic expression old and new, quantum leaps in plot, and a heartfelt examination of where the aesthetics of fashion beauty comes from and how it impacts the esteem of women and men.

BONOBOS & DRAMA PART 1: THE EVENTS

October 5, 2015 / think twice / 0 Comments / Sticky

David Greig’s THE EVENTS

In 2015 while at the theatre, I twice caught wind of the bonobo. That is to say, two different plays, each from a contemporary playwright, mentioned this pacific chimpanzee-like species that resides in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Both references seemed intended to shame the audience. We were supposed to feel dismayed, even chastised, by the realization that a rival species, this hippie or left-bank ape, as bonobos are called, is our non-violent moral better. The first bonobo mention was in David Greig’s THE EVENTS (performance on 3/6/15 at New York Theatre Workshop).

DRAMA THINK TWICE . . . WOWING BACK

September 23, 2015 / think twice / 3 Comments / Sticky

Playwright Intent, Think Twice Drama, Theatre Art Redux

Drama Hello! Hurray Theatre!

Have you ever attended a stage play and talked about it for hours afterward? Or wished you could? You traveled while sitting in your theatre seat. You lived to tell the tale. A piece of drama took you someplace emotionally and intellectually that you wouldn’t be able to get to by other means. You were smitten by a work of Theatre Art.

Did you have an “OH YEAH” moment the next day? Somehow that elusive insight or twist you didn’t catch popped into your head and that’s it. You were moved to read up on the play. You wanted to experience it again. You wondered what you might have missed the first time.

Do you like to just flat-out read plays?

THINK TWICE DRAMA is for playgoers and readers who like to ponder. It’s for delving into plays and authors and drama topics that stir us. For “getting,” not just forgetting. For cracking open that theatre history tome. For changing the lens of critical thought, for finding the hidden text, the order in chaos and chaos in order.