Licensing

Getting plays produced is hard. Getting them licensed for amateur performance can be even harder. That's why I'm glad to announce that Keep On Walkin', the musical I wrote together with Lavell Blackwell and Joshua H. Cohen, is now available to be performed by schools and community theatres.

The musical's licensing agreements are being handled by Plays for New Audiences, a division of Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis. The company has done a lot of fine work over the years, and it would be a shame to see original work developed there not continue to have a life elsewhere. Keep On Walkin' wasn't developed there, but they are helping other works for young audiences connect to schools and children's theatres looking for material.

Keep On Walkin' weaves together history, humanity, and hope to tell the unforgettable story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott through the eyes of two teenage pen pals. One, May, lives on Staten Island, and the other, June, is in Montgomery. As their letters cross regional and racial divides, both girls come of age against the backdrop of one of the most pivotal movements in American history. The play was performed at schools on Staten Island and later won the Anna Zornio Memorial Children's Theatre Playwriting Award.

This is the first time a musical I worked on has been licensed, though a number of my plays are published and licensed for production. In fact, I recently received a check from Brooklyn Publishers for royalties for my play The New Mrs. Jones. Given that royalty rates for amateur and educational productions haven't gone up much in the past fifty years, no playwright in America can make a living this way, but it's nice when someone acknowledges that your work has value.

Escapists

 If you love comic books and you love opera, then the Metropolitan Opera's production of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a must-see event.

Based on the Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel by Michael Chabon, the opera tells the story of two Jewish men in 1930s and '40s New York trying to raise money to get relatives out of Europe. Sam Clay can't draw well, but he loves telling stories, and his recently arrived cousin Josef (now Joe) Kavalier is an art-school graduate looking for a job. Together, they invent a comic book character, the Escapist, who comes to rival Superman and Batman.

The first act of the opera is brilliant. Joe (Andrzej Filonczyk) tries to get his sister Sarah (Lauren Snouffer) to New York on a ship called the Ark of Miriam, which has been arranged by the activist Rosa Saks (Sun-Ly Pierce). Fortunately, he has more than enough money to do this once the Escapist becomes a hit not just in comic books but also in a radio program starring the actor Tracy Bacon (Edward Nelson). Romantic sparks start to fly not just between Joe and Rosa, but unexpectedly between Tracy and Sam (Miles Mykkanen).

Librettist Gene Scheer did a wonderful job adapting Moby-Dick as an opera, tweaking the iconic novel in a way that paid homage to the original without having to follow it in every detail. He manages to navigate the adaptation of Chabon's novel well in the first act, but then departs so dramatically from the book in the second act that the audience is left with mood pieces inspired by Chabon rather than the innovative storytelling of the novel.

While I was familiar with the music of Moby-Dick's composer, Jake Heggie, I did not know much about Mason Bates, the composer of Kavalier & Clay. Apparently, Bates is famous for introducing electronic music into orchestras, which might not work for most stories set in the '30s and '40s, but since this opera deals with the fantasy world of comic books, electronic sounds actually fit in rather well.

The sets and projections by 59 Studio aren't quite as impressive as those used in Moby-Dick, but they are still amazing, particularly when comic book panels pop up on the wall behind the live actors. The entire production is staged lavishly by Bartlett Sher.

This production is playing until October 11th. Last night's performance appeared to be sold out, so get your tickets while you can! You won't want this opportunity to escape.

The Wild Duck

Last night, I saw Theatre for a New Audience's production of Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck. If you haven't seen it yet, the show is definitely worth checking out before it closes on Sunday.

Pettersen, the old hand at the Werle mansion, is the character who introduces us to the action, and is usually played by a man. In this production, directed by Simon Godwin, the role is played by Katie Broad as one of the maids in the household, which makes perfect sense.

In the original play, the hired waiter Jensen appears to be there just to get Pettersen talking, so it would normally be thrown away on a performer like Alexander Sovronsky, who has composed music for a host of shows, including the excellent Mother of the Maid. Fortunately, Sovronsky sticks around for the rest of the show, periodically providing live violin music as the action advances.

After the first act melts away, the posh Werle home is replaced by the humbler abode of the Ekdal family, nominally headed by Hjalmer (Nick Westrate). The household is really run, though, by his wife Gina (Melanie Field) and teenage daughter Hedvig (Maaike Laanstra-Corn). Hjalmer instead spends his time in a fantasy-land upstairs in the loft where he and his father (David Patrick Kelly) keep a number of animals, including the titular wild duck.

To call the duck a metaphor is insufficient, since much of the action of the play hinges on Mr. Werle's estranged son Gregers (Alexander Hurt) speaking about the duck metaphorically. Hedvig, who loves the duck more than anything else, catches on to the notion that the duck might be a metaphor, taking the idea even further than Gregers intends. This, as they say, has consequences.

If the world of the loft is a sort of fantasy heaven, the downstairs apartment could be a hell. It is occupied by the cynical Dr. Relling, played by Matthew Saldivar who memorably portrayed Alphonse Mucha in Bernhardt/Hamlet. Relling's roommate, the demonic Molvik, never appears in this adaptation of the play penned by David Eldridge.

Toward the end of the play last night, the actors skipped right over one of the greatest lines in the piece, though I'm not sure if that was Eldridge's doing or an actor's flub. In any case, it was the only false note in what was otherwise a splendid production.

The Tragedy of Ina

After Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s verse tragedy Remorse became a hit in 1813, many writers with literary ambitions turned to the stage, hoping to repeat the poet's success.

One of them, Barbarina Wilmot, had her play Ina premiered at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1815. In the first scene, the Mercian princess Edelfleda’s maid Bertha even cries out, “Oh heaven! thou speak’st as tho’ remorse / Had stung thy bosom.”

Edelfleda counters that remorse more rightfully belongs to the man who has wronged her, Prince Egbert of Wessex, who was engaged to Edelfleda by his father in order to secure peace with Mercia. However, he is actually in love with Ina, Edelfleda’s beloved friend.

For his part, Egbert thinks of Edelfleda as a sister, while he is passionately in love with Ina, the orphan daughter of a warrior who died saving the king. That king, Egbert’s father Cenulph, decides to resolve the quandary by sending his son off to war defending the kingdom’s border, but Egbert instead flees with Ina.

Act II begins with Egbert brought back to his father, who reprimands him for placing himself above the good of his people. The problem is that Egbert and Ina have not only been secretly married already, but they even have a child together. Edelfleda leaves in a passion, declaring she will have vengeance. When the Mercian forces invade, Cenulph has little choice but to allow his son to lead an army against them.

In the following act, Edelfleda goes to Ina and tells her that Egbert has been imprisoned and placed in chains. This was briefly true, but is no longer, as becomes apparent when Egbert himself arrives. Thwarted, Edelfleda leaves, quietly vowing Ina’s death. Alwyn, the king’s faithful retainer, arrives and offers to take Ina and her child to safety as Egbert goes off to war. All of them are aware of the dangers present at court, not just from Edelfleda but also from the monk Baldred, who was once himself in love with Ina. 

Indeed, Baldred captures Ina and in the next act brings her to trial for treason. The trial scene allows Ina, who was originally played by Sarah Smith Bartley, to shine in her own defense, but it is in vain, and she is sentenced to death. In the final act, she appeals to the king and escapes her execution, but Egbert, returning to her home, finds her gone and expects the worst. Just before he kills himself, Ina returns, and the play has a happy ending, depriving the actor who plays Egbert of a death scene.

Who was that actor originally? It was none other than Edmund Kean, an otherwise brilliant performer who ended up giving such a weak portrayal of Egbert that the play was only presented at Drury Lane for a single night. Reviewers praised Julia Glover as Edelfleda, but she was unable to carry the show.

Is there a lesson here? Perhaps it's to always give your leading actor a juicy death scene, at least if your leading actor happens to be Edmund Kean.

Kean, Dumas, Sartre

Edmund Kean has been called the greatest actor of the Romantic era, perhaps even the greatest actor of all time. (Kean wouldn't disagree with that.) However, his genius also attracted other geniuses, and he became the subject of a play by Alexandre Dumas that was later adapted for the 20th-century stage by Jean-Paul Sartre.

Dumas's play Kean is a comedy, while the actual Kean's life was more of a tragedy. (Like Molière, he collapsed onstage and subsequently died.) The play premiered in 1836--just three years after Kean's death--at the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris. No mention of the actor's famous death is made in the piece, as Dumas's play ends happily. It originally starred Frédérick Lemaître in the title role. Lemaître was a highly respected performer, and would go on to originate another title role in Victor Hugo's play Ruy Blas.

The play opens at a society soirée attended by the Danish ambassador and his wife, Elena, who is rumored to be in love with Edmund Kean. The fact is Kean had many lovers, but I'm not familiar with his ever being linked with the wife of a Danish ambassador. It hardly matters, since the scene is an excuse for Kean to at first decline an invitation to the party, and then show up and make a brilliant speech, entreating Elena to read aloud a letter. He then quietly asks her to flip the letter over and read the other side, which is an invitation to a private assignation with him.

Act II takes place in Kean's chambers. (In Sartre's adaptation, it's explicitly his dressing room at the theatre.) Dumas's stage directions state: "Au lever du rideau, le théâtre présente toutes les traces d’une orgie." (As the curtain rises, the theatre presents all the signs of an orgy.) A woman arrives in disguise, but it's not Elena, rather another woman, Anna, who wants to learn acting from Kean.

The third act takes place at the tavern of Peter Patt, which is called the Black Horse in Sartre's adaptation. This might be based on the Coal Hole, a pub Kean frequented with the members of his infamous Wolves Club. Kean agrees to act the role of Romeo at a benefit for a performer down on his luck. Kean was considered weak in that part, so Sartre changed it to Othello.

The performance is a disaster and causes a scandal which Kean is only extricated from by Anna. The French versions of Kean's life--both Dumas's and Sartre's--are historically inaccurate and leave out his wife Mary and son Charles. Still, they are a great deal of fun.

Remorse and Shakespeare

I previously blogged about theatre articles that appeared recently in The Byron Journal. Today, I want to write about an article in The Coleridge Bulletin.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is best known today as a poet, but by his own account, he made more money off of his verse drama Remorse than all of his other poetry combined.

Dominik Laciak wrote an article called "Coleridge's Remorse and the Haunting Shadow of Shakespeare" which argues that Coleridge's playwriting and Shakespeare criticism informed one another, which definitely makes sense. Remorse opened at Drury Lane in January of 1813, and throughout the rehearsal process Coleridge was also delivering lectures on Shakespeare.

Laciak concentrates on three Shakespeare villains who likely influenced the character of Ordonio in Remorse: Macbeth, Richard III, and Iago. Like Macbeth, Ordonio feels guilt but tries to pretend that he doesn't. Like Richard III, he is constantly posturing. Like Iago, he takes pride in his intellect.

I wrote about Remorse in my book Romantic Actors, Romantic Dramas. It's nice to see other scholars writing about the play as well.

Byron's Dramas

Today is the birthday of novelist Mary Shelley, but I want to write about the plays of one of her associates, George Gordon Byron, who remained a close friend and colleague of hers until his death in 1824.

While Byron is today known mainly as a poet, the latest issue of The Byron Journal has a couple of articles addressing his dramas Cain and Manfred. Both plays are verse dramas that Byron protested (perhaps too much, methinks) were not intended for the stage, but then they got performed over and over again anyway.

In "Byron in Space" Anthony Howe of Birmingham City University takes a look at cosmology in Cain as well as Byron's mock-epic poem Don Juan. While earlier poets like John Milton could invoke the Ptolemaic universe at least somewhat seriously, that was not the case for Byron in the 19th century. Act II of Cain shows Lucifer taking the title character to "The Abyss of Space" and asking him to point out the Earth. Cain responds:

                                                        As we move

    Like sunbeams onward, it grows small and smaller,

    And as it waxes little, and then less,

    Gathers a halo round it, like the light

    Which shone the roundest of the stars, when I

    Beheld them from the skirts of Paradise...

Howe notes how Cain becomes lost in the vastness of space. He seems to suffer from the pain of the Copernican revolution, no longer able to count on the Earth being a fixed point. Interestingly, though, the cosmos he sees still has elements of the Ptolemaic model of the universe, including not just "ether" also a heaven that is a "blue wilderness" postulated by earlier astronomers who thought the sky only grew dark when the Earth's shadow passed over it.

Flora Lisica of Northeastern University London speculates in "Byron's Manfred and Tragedy in the 'Mental Theatre'" that the tragedies of Byron achieve their greatest intimacy when read. Curiously, she does not include Heaven and Earth with the tragic plays Byron had published. (The play is a sort of sequel to his earlier drama Cain.) However, she does remind readers of the advice--traced back to Roman drama--that Byron gives in his poem Hints from Horace:

    Yet many deeds preserved in history's page

    Are better told than acted on the stage;

    The ear sustains what shocks the timid eye,

    And horror thus subsides to sympathy...

Later in the article, Lisica quotes from one of Byron's letters he wrote after seeing Barbarina Wilmot's tragedy Ina, which failed at Drury Lane, probably due to the half-hearted acting of Edmund Kean. Byron lamented Kean's poor performance, and the fact that the epilogue recited by Sarah Bartley could hardly be heard. Alas, the play bombed, in spite of fine performances by Alexander Rae as the villainous monk Baldred and Julia Glover as Princess Edelfleda.

Perhaps it was the fear of failing with a play like Ina that made Byron turn inward when writing Manfred, creating a deeply introspective work. In any case, I enjoyed reading both articles and look forward to the next issue of The Byron Journal when it arrives.