Revolutionary Drama

Tonight, I'm having a private reading of my play Combustion with American Renaissance Theater Company.

The play tells the story of Marie-Anne and Antoine Lavoisier, who revolutionized chemistry around the same time a political revolution was happening in France.

Megan Greener will be reading the part of Marie-Anne, who figured out the mechanics of how to perform experiments that changed the way we think about matter. Frank Hankey will be playing her husband, Antoine, who was more focused on theory than the actual experiments.

A third character in the play, being read by Eric Percival, is the ghost of Jean-Paul Marat, a key figure in the French Revolution who sparred with the Lavoisiers and ended up getting assassinated in his own bathtub. (This later became the subject of a famous painting by Jacques-Louis David.)

The French Revolution has always inspired great drama. In fact, re-enactments of the storming of the Bastille were staged soon after that event took place. Throughout the revolution, playwrights like Olympe de Gouges wrote about current events for the stage. The Bastille and the Terror later had important roles in the play The Black Doctor which became a star vehicle for Ira Aldridge.

Perhaps the most memorable depiction of the French Revolution is in A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens's novel which was first adapted for the stage in 1860 by Tom Taylor. The events of the revolution keep resurfacing though, such as in the 21st-century playwright David Adjmi's Marie Antoinette, which I recently saw at Marymount Manhattan College.

My own play adds to this tradition, but also brings focus to the unique partnership of two scientists who tried to change the world, but got caught up in the world changing without them. I hope to be able to share this piece with the public soon in a full production.

Red Monkeys and Beryl Coronets

A couple years ago, I saw Sean Coffey of Red Monkey Theater Group perform a one-man version of A Christmas Carol at Van Cortlandt House Museum in the Bronx.

Last night, I was back at Van Cortlandt House where Coffey played John Watson in Red Monkey's production of The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet, adapted from the Sherlock Holmes short story by dramatist Tal Aviezer, who also played Holmes.

The adaptation takes some liberties with the original story by Arthur Conan Doyle, but in some fun and amusing ways. As in the story, the coronet ends up in the home of the banker Alexander Holder to secure a loan for "one of the highest, noblest, most exalted names in England" as Doyle writes. Presumably, this is the Prince of Wales, but in Aviezer's adaptation it is Queen Victoria herself, played by Ariel Francoeur.

Derek Tarson is wonderfully obtuse as Holder, who when three beryls of the coronet go missing, immediately zeros in on his son Arthur (played by Collin Orton) as the prime suspect. Holmes is more clever and decides he needs to question Holder's niece Mary (Grace Maddox in this production). There are later a few twists and turns in the script that keep the play interesting even for those who already know the outcome of the story.

Red Monkey will be bringing the play to Harrison Public Library on Sunday, April 19th. If you miss it, you can catch another Red Monkey show this summer when they perform William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing at the Bartow-Pell Mansion May 30th through June 7th.

Titus Andronicus

I've long been interested in William Shakespeare's play Titus Andronicus, so I was excited when Red Bull Theater announced they would be producing the play with Patrick Page in the title role.

Last night, I saw the show, which is playing at the Pershing Square Signature Center. Page is excellent as always, but I found myself (as I often am) most fascinated by the role of Lavinia, played in this production by Olivia Reis.

Poor Lavinia not only has her hands chopped off, but her tongue is ripped out, too, rendering her mute for most of the play. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of opportunities for fine acting, though, and Reis excels in using a simple smile or a small groan to speak volumes.

The play is filled with references to Ovid's Metamorphoses, a work Shakespeare went back to again and again. When Shakespeare's actors included the piece in the First Folio of his work, they confidently attributed the play to him, but its bloody stage effects and straight-forward verse have led many critics to want the play to have been written by someone else.

Red Bull included a program note by Ayanna Thompson speculating the piece was co-written by George Peele, one of numerous rivals postulated by critics at one time or another as a possible author of the piece. This is in spite of precisely zero external indications of the play being authored by anyone other than Shakespeare. Since there is no objective evidence, Thomson notes "several resonances" with the anonymous play The Battle of Alcazar, which has been attributed to Peele.

Idle speculations about authorship aside, this tale of narcissistic leadership and senseless bloodlust has much to say to us in the 21st century. Red Bull's production is mostly faithful to the original, though it cuts quite a bit and changes Andronicus's brother Marcus into a sister, Marcia, played memorably by Enid Graham. (Similarly, the noble Roman Aemilius is transformed into Aemilia, played by Blair Baker.)

Other fine performances are delivered by McKinley Belcher III (who was wonderful in A Soldier's Play) as Aaron and Amy Jo Jackson as the nurse, a role that couldn't help but make me remember that character's resurrection in Taylor Mac's play Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus.

The production has been extended through May 3rd, so you still have a chance to see this lovely staging by Jesse Berger before the whole thing goes to the Goths.

Resurrection Day

In Henrik Ibsen's final play, When We Dead Awaken, the sculptor Rubek creates a self portrait in his statue group "Resurrection Day" which is a figure he calls "remorse for an unrealized life."

Quite a bit of that "remorse for an unrealized life" can be seen onstage in The Last Days of Downtown, Matthew Gasda's new play now in previews at the Center for Theatre Research (formerly the Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research).

Since the play is still in previews (officially opening April 17th), I won't say too much, other than that you should get your tickets now. The piece takes place in the downtown apartment of independent filmmaker Terry, who is simultaneously celebrating his 40th birthday and preparing to travel for a premiere of his latest movie.

When Terry leaves, his apartment gets taken over by Michael, the young star of his film, who uses the director's pad to throw parties and bed a series of women. Throughout the play, a crowd of actors appear onstage in a succession of scenes involving sex, drinking, vaping, and more onstage cocaine use than in anything I've seen since Stereophonic.

At one point, a character shares the story of an experience he had at a dive bar where for one brief moment, everyone watching the performance of an amateur band began to live in the present and just enjoy the music--before they all went back to the chatter of everyday life.

The Last Days of Downtown invites us to live in that present, so that, unlike Ibsen's characters, when we awake on Resurrection Day, we won't "see that we've never lived."

Draining Drama

On Saturday I saw Blood/Love, Carey Renee Sharpe and Dru DeCaro's pop opera about the Queen of Hell who rejects Satan and becomes an unholy nosferatu. Then Wednesday night I saw the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. One of these plays is about people mercilessly drained to the last drop of their life's blood. The other one has singing vampires.

Pop has become a prominent genre for musical theatre, just as rock was before it, with memorable Broadway juggernauts from Jesus Christ Superstar to Rent to American Idiot. Rock music is inherently messy, though, and the musicals that use it tend to be deeply flawed even as they are often inspired and touching. (I'm looking at you, Chess.) Pop music, by contrast, has had its rough edges smoothed away, leading many pop musicals to have a shiny surface, but to sadly be lacking in depth.

When I first heard about the pop musical Six, I was incredibly excited, but I found the play's follow-through to be a bit disappointing. Similarly, the first act of KPOP was some of the most fun I've ever had in the theater, but the musical's creators seemed incapable of writing the sort of simple, honest song, free from over-production, that its protagonist longed to perform. I have nothing bad to say about the pop music in Blood/Love, unless it's that the music is almost too perfect, sustaining a constant level of competence that doesn't allow any one number to stand out much.

That might be a result of the pop medium, which also could have influenced the story the play tells. Like the belting pop ballads the show features, Blood/Love appears to be passionately sincere in every note, even when the subject matter might lend itself to a bit more variety. Yes, the show does utilize humor. ("The Devil is my ex," the protagonist awkwardly confesses to her new love interest.) However, this tale about how the Queen of Hell becomes a vampire, when you dig a little deeper, is actually about... how the Queen of Hell becomes a vampire. I overheard one young woman complaining after the show, "I was expecting a metaphor for toxic relationships. Where were the toxic relationships I wanted?"

Director Joe Mantello's revival of Death of a Salesman has different challenges. Miller's script drips with metaphoric imagery, from the stoop Willy Loman builds for his house, to the diamond watch fob he gets from his brother, to the valises he carries about with him making sales. Mantello updates the play's aesthetic to the 1970s, makes the set resemble a giant garage, and has young Biff pose atop the Loman car in football gear like some sort of Greek god. There's no lack of symbolism, though the direction can manage to make it needlessly obscure at times, particularly at the end.

The show is still in previews and could change, so I won't engage in spoilers, but I will say, please, Mr. Mantello, please, if you're reading this, fix your ending! Laurie Metcalf is a brilliant actor, and I loved her in A Doll's House, Part 2. She's a phenomenal Linda Loman, but even she can't make those grave-side antics you've given to her make sense to the audience. You're in previews, so it's not too late. Fix it!

Nathan Lane is wonderful as Willy Loman, which might be a surprise for audience members who know him primarily as a comedic performer. Instead of the frenzied antics he displayed in Gary, he embraces the tragic situation of Miller's working-stiff hero. Willy's mental and physical difficulties, sometimes papered over in performance, come front and center in this production.

Christopher Abbott, who played the troubled husband of the titular prophetess in the recent film The Testament of Ann Lee, plays Biff in this production. Though early on he is upstaged by his brother Happy (played by Ben Ahlers), he emerges as a force to be reckoned with later in the play.

Blood/Love and Death of a Salesman are both worth seeing... though for different reasons. The pop opera doesn't always offer the nuanced acting on display at the Winter Garden Theatre, but on the other hand, Miller's play does noticeably lack driving electric guitar solos.

Cashel Byron's Profession

I've blogged about how I received the Constable & Co. collection of the works of Bernard Shaw previously owned by noted scholar Chuck Berst, kindly shipped to me by his widow Roelina, who left in place all of the slips of paper where her late husband had noted something interesting.

Recently I was reading not a Shaw play, but one of the author's novels, Cashel Byron's Profession. The title, much like Mrs. Warren's Profession, hints that the seemingly respectable main character might have gained money and status in a less-than-respectable way. Instead of running a string of brothels like Mrs. Warren, however, Cashel Byron is a prizefighter.

The always insightful Chuck Berst had stuck slips of paper in Chapter VI of the novel, and had as a further help marked in pencil some key passages in which Cashel espouses an active philosophy of executive power. It might be tempting to attribute the character's views to Shaw himself, who later showed not just a tolerance for but even an admiration of authoritarian leaders such as Joseph Stalin. Here's a bit of the first marked passage:

Suppose you walked along the street and saw a man beating a woman, and setting a bad example to the roughs. Well, you would be bound to set a good example to them; and, if youre men, youd like to save the woman; but you couldn't do it by merely living; for that would be setting the bad example of passing on and leaving the poor creature to be beaten. What is it that you need to know, then, so as to be able to act up to your ideas? Why, you want to know how to hit him, when to hit him, and where to hit him; and then you want the nerve to go in and do it. Thats executive power; and thats whats wanted worse than sitting down and thinking... 

To Cashel, this is just common sense. However, readers today might recognize the same self-righteous mentality that allowed the Soviets to slaughter millions of people in an effort to "set a good example" for humanity. Stalin, after all, had asked his followers to "act up to" their ideals by killing others as well as frequently getting killed themselves. Perhaps most telling is that the prizefighter advocates knowing how, when, and where to hit and likens this to the executive power wielded by individuals and nations alike.

A few pages later, in another section flagged by an old piece of paper courtesy of Chuck Berst, the character makes the political analogy explicit. What is more, Shaw's prizefighter belittles those who struggle and strive to better the world without the necessary force to back themselves up and the necessary will to use that force when it might be effective. Here's another passage I found bracketed in pencil:

All this struggling and striving to make the world better is a great mistake; not because it isnt a good thing to improve the world if you know how to do it, but because striving and struggling is the worst way you could set about doing anything. It gives a man a bad style, and weakens him. It shews that he dont believe in himself much.

For those who might mistake a character for his author, this defense of executive power might seem pretty damning. Things look even worse for Shaw when later in the book he explicitly mentions eugenics, a concept most people today rightfully find abhorrent, though it was a common article of faith for many people (on both the left and the right) back in Shaw's day.

Toward the end of Chapter XIV, the heroine Lydia Carew explains to her cousin that since her "body is frail" and her "brain morbidly active" it makes sense that she marry "a man strong in body and untroubled in mind" since "it is a plain proposition in eugenics."

Before condemning Shaw for supporting a debunked ideology, however, it's important to read the rest of the book. In the final chapter of Cashel Byron's Profession, the narrator says of Lydia Carew: "Her children, so carefully planned by her to inherit her intelligence with their father's robustness, proved to her that heredity is not so simple a matter..." Instead, the boys inherit her own lack of athletic aptitude while the girls take after their father's impetuousness.

So while Lydia has faith in eugenics, the narrator most definitely does not. Of course, the narrator does not necessarily represent Shaw's opinions either, but the ending of Cashel Byron's Profession would seem to caution us against making too many assumptions about the author.

Advancing

Sometimes being a playwright means making small advances, little by little, hoping that something will finally stick.

That's how I've been feeling lately, as many small things have been dripping in, such as my play Combustion being named a semifinalist for Broken Arts Entertainment's Loved Ones series.

Combustion re-imagines the life and death of Marie-Anne and Antoine Lavoisier, who revolutionized chemistry around the same time a political revolution was happening in France. I've also been trying to get a reading of the play scheduled with American Renaissance Theater Company.

After an Earlier Incident, a play I previously developed with ARTC, has moved on to Round 2 of the selection process for the B Street Theater's New Comedies Festival in Sacramento. The festival had more than 400 submissions this year, so competition has been fierce.

So things continue to crawl along. I just hope that something sticks soon.