The City Madam

In the plays of William Shakespeare, the colony of Virginia (named for Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen) shows up only indirectly. Caliban in The Tempest isn't technically a Native American in the New World, though he can certainly be understood that way, and might have been by some of the play's original audience members.

Philip Massinger's play The City Madam gets us a little closer to portrayals of the natives of Virginia, though again somewhat indirectly, since in the context of the play, people are only pretending to be natives. At the end of Act III, Sir John Frugal and his two prospective sons-in-law Lacy and Plenty enter "as Indians." Sir John's plan is to pretend to have retired to a monastery while he grants his estate and the care of his family to his wayward brother Luke.

In the first half of the play, Luke's character seems a bit ambiguous. In his youth, he squandered away his money, but now he is living with his brother. Lady Frugal (the titular City Madam) and her daughters abuse Luke. Has Luke ultimately reformed, or if given the chance, would he once more fall back into his old ways? Sir John plans to test him, and at the same time test his wife and daughters, who have been acting proudly, trying to follow the fashions of the court rather than just live humbly as a citizen of the City of London should.

What the fake "Indians" would have looked like on a 17th-century London stage, I don't know, but the play does give us some idea of how British people in that period might have felt about Virginia. Lacy's father, who is in on the plot, entreats Luke on behalf of Sir John:

            Receive these Indians, lately sent him from

            Virginia, into your house; and labour

            At any rate with the best of your endeavours,

            Assisted by the aids of our divines,

            To make 'em Christians.

Luke, however, worships only money, and makes no attempt to convert the "Indians" to Christianity. Instead, they tell him they have a special arrangement with the devil. If he sends them a virtuous matron and two virgins to be sacrificed in Virginia, they'll send him back an entire mine of gold.

When Luke starts at the name of the devil, the chief "Indian" (Sir John) tells him, "if you / Desire to wallow in wealth and worldly honours, / You must make haste to be familiar with him." The satire here strikes me as more directed at British greed than at the actual religion of native Virginians. Still, the fact that Luke readily believes the natives can supply huge amounts of gold in return for female sacrifices might speak to the fantastic tales Britons received back from the New World.

Luke tells the women that the two daughters will be married off to Indian royalty, but they scorn the idea of emigrating to Virginia. According to one daughter, the people shipped to Virginia are "Condemn'd wretches, / Forfeited to the law" while the other calls them "Strumpets and bawds, / For the abomination of their life, / Spew'd out of their own country." Though the daughters had been portrayed as snobs, I imagine this was a common perception of the British colonists. In fact, Luke says that "Such indeed / Are sent as slaves to labour there."

At the end of the play, Sir John reveals himself. His wife and daughters are repentant, and Sir John turns out his wayward brother. "Hide thyself in some desert, / Where good men ne'er may find thee," he says, "or in justice / Pack to Virginia, and repent." Certainly, in the 17th century, Virginia must have seemed a wild place to Londoners, and a fitting wilderness in which to repent one's sins.

Report of the Special Committee

In 1832, the British parliament issued a report by a select committee formed to investigate the state of dramatic literature.

Edward Bulwer, who would later go on to write the popular plays The Lady of Lyons and Richelieu, chaired the committee. It also included other members of parliament with literary ambitions, including Richard Lalor Sheil.

According to the report, "a considerable decline, both in the Literature of the Stage, and the taste of the Public for Theatrical Performances, is generally conceded." That this was a matter of urgent business for the government seems almost unthinkable today in the U.S.

Of course, the British stage in the early 19th century was also subject to significant regulation. The Licensing Act of 1737 had solidified a virtual monopoly on spoken-word drama held by the Theatres Royal at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. However, according to the select committee, "such privileges have neither preserved the dignity of the Drama, nor, by the present Administration of the Laws, been of much advantage to the Proprietors of the Theatres themselves."

It was not until the passage of the Theatres Act in 1843 that the monopoly was abolished, allowing the so-called "minor theatres" to perform spoken-word drama. Before that, they were limited to a handful of musical genres such as burletta. What exactly is burletta? Well, the committee tried to find out, and discovered no one really knew. According to James Winston, former stage-manager of the Haymarket and Drury Lane, even the Lord Chamberlain himself--who was charged with regulating drama--had difficulty defining burletta.

While two theatres in London had been sufficient during the Restoration era, the city had grown tremendously since then. The sizes of the two patent theatres were enlarged, but there were still only two. J. Payne Collier (who had his own controversies to come) testified before the committee, "the great evil has always been that instead of multiplying theatres in proportion to the increase of population, the proprietors have enlarged theatres."

Collier opined that London playwriting was at low ebb, and the committee seems to have agreed. It would not be until the end of the century that the British theatre would see the playwriting talent of Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde.

Where the Cross is Made

Whaling voyages can make certain men a little obsessed. That's what we learn in Moby-Dick, anyway, a novel I myself have adapted for the stage.

The obsessions of whaling captains also show up in the early plays of Eugene O'Neill. For instance, in O'Neill's play Ile (a New England Yankee pronunciation of "oil") a captain becomes so preoccupied with going after more whale oil that he drives his wife mad.

However, Captain Isaiah Bartlett in O'Neill's Where the Cross is Made has a different obsession. He was on a whaling voyage when he was shipwrecked in the Indian Ocean. There, he and a handful of survivors found a treasure, buried it, and created a map marking the location with a cross.

Bartlett not only obsesses over the treasure, but after the other survivors are killed trying to get it, he passes his obsession on to his son Nat, though his daughter Sue is immune to the madness. O'Neill implies that the treasure exists, but is fake. A bracelet Bartlett returned with turns out to be made of brass with paste jewels rather than real ones. The play makes Bartlett's dream of fortune manifest onstage, though, by having actors playing the drowned crew members cross the stage like ghosts.

Where the Cross is Made premiered in 1918 by the Provincetown Players. Ida Rauh, who directed the production as well as playing Sue, apparently had difficulty staging the ghostly effect that really makes the play stand out as something special. "You'll have to do something about the ghosts, Gene," she reportedly said. "The boys never can look like ghosts, you know it. The audience will simply laugh at them." O'Neill stuck to his vision, and the ghosts stayed.

O'Neill later turned the one-act play into a full-length work called Gold. It opened on Broadway in 1921, but closed after only 13 performances.

The Roaring Girl

Everyone knows that during the Jacobean period all actors were male and women never ever appeared on stage... except when they did.

I'm not talking about masques, which were held in private for the court and featured aristocrats (and even royalty) rather than professional actresses. I'm also not talking about foreign companies that allowed actresses to perform at special exhibitions and were booed by English audiences for it, though that happened, too.

No, I'm talking about Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton's comedy The Roaring Girl, which told the story of the real-life female criminal Mary Frith, better known as Moll Cutpurse. The play was acted at the Fortune Theatre and later published in 1611. Middleton wrote a brief preface in which he alluded to Frith's crossdressing, stating: "Venus being a woman passes through the play in doublet and breeches, a brave disguise and a safe one, if the statute untie not her codpiece point."

But was Middleton alluding to more than just the depiction of crossdressing on stage? In addition to the play being published in 1611, in that same year a confession of Frith's was recorded, in which she claimed to have appeared upon the public stage. Frith said not only had she gone to the Fortune Theatre dressed as a man, but she had "also sat there upon the stage in public view of all the people there present in man's apparel and played upon her lute and sang a song." (She flatly denied, however, being "dishonest of her body" or drawing "other women to lewdness.")

In what play did Frith appear? Chances are, her own. In the second act of The Roaring Girl, the character of Moll Cutpurse enters "in a frieze jerkin." Was this Frith? Possibly, but more likely she played the porter, who enters with Moll in a later scene "with a viol on his back." The porter asks, "Must I carry this great fiddle to your chamber, Mistress Mary?" This would allow Frith some time on stage with a musical instrument (as she claimed to have) but not require her to learn too many lines.

On the other hand, it is not the porter but the character of Moll herself who sings in Act IV. One verse of her song goes:

        Here comes a wench will brave ye.

            Her courage was so great,

        She lay with one o' the navy,

            Her husband lying i' the Fleet.

        Yet oft with him she cavilled,

            I wonder what she ails.

        Her husband's ship lay gravelled,

            When hers could hoise up sails,

        Yet she began like all my foes

        To call whore first: for so do those,

            A pox of all false tails.

That certainly sounds like something a real-life criminal like Frith might have enjoyed roaring out on stage.

The Moll Cutpurse of the play, rather like the actual Mary Frith, who confessed to some crimes while denying others, defends herself in the final act. She compares herself to a traveler recently returning from Venice who heard about all of the tricks of panders and courtesans and now warns others against them. She asks others not to condemn her just because of her ill name. Could these line have been spoken by Frith herself?

While we can't be sure, the play's epilogue drops some juicy hints. It ends with the poets and actors saying,

        Both crave your pardons: if what both have done

        Cannot full pay your expectation,

        The Roaring Girl herself, some few days hence,

        Shall on this stage give larger recompense.

        Which mirth that you may share in, herself does woo you,

        And craves the sign, your hands to beckon her to you.

Perhaps Frith actually made good on that promise.

Dead Outlaw

When the Broadway musical Dead Outlaw posted its closing notice, I knew I'd have to rush to see the show before it was... dead.

Once I finally caught up with the piece, I discovered it was both funnier and sadder than I had imagined. Right from the beginning, the audience is laughing, but by the end they might want to cry, too.

This musical about the incompetent robber turned sideshow attraction Elmer McCurdy was the brainchild of David Yazbek, the songwriter also known for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels among other musicals. For Dead Outlaw, he teamed up with Erik Della Penna (who has some serious rock cred) and book writer Itamar Moses, who previously collaborated with Yazbek on The Band's Visit.

McCurdy is brought to life on stage by Andrew Durand, who previously appeared in Shucked. Durand makes us feel a surprising amount of sympathy for McCurdy, who bungled his burglaries just as he'd bungled pretty much everything else in his life. In the song "Killed a Man in Maine" he even brags about murder, though as the story's narrator (an energetic Jeb Brown) tells us, there's no evidence McCurdy ever killed anyone.

Brown's narrator (billed as "Bandleader" since he also leads the show's on-stage rock band) constantly reminds the audience that what they're watching is true. That's because if anybody made McCurdy's story up, no one would believe it. The tale involves not just the outlaw's sad life, but what happened to his body afterward. As the audience learns in the opening number, it ended up being discovered in a spooky dark ride in California when it was stumbled upon by crew members making an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man.

Oh, come on! Really? Isn't that a little too on the nose? Do you really expect us to believe that... wait, I forgot that all of this is real. McCurdy's fame as an outlaw was followed by a string of posthumous performances in carnivals, a wax museum, sideshows, movie theater lobbies, and finally an amusement park. As the audience watches this transfer from place to place, we are reminded of the rapacious spirit of American capitalism that seeks to exploit anyone and everyone, even after we're dead.

The other stand-out performance in Dead Outlaw comes from Julia Knitel, who plays an array of characters, from McCurdy's sweetheart to a young girl who grew up with the outlaw's corpse being stored in her house. Her touching performance of the song "A Stranger" is far more emotionally affecting than you would expect in a play this wild.

Ultimately, it's the show's heart rather than just its humor that is captivating to audiences. If you haven't seen it yet, hurry before it closes on June 29.

The Imaginary Invalid

Molière's final play, The Imaginary Invalid, is difficult to perform as written. Prior to last night, the only time I'd seen the piece on stage was in a creative re-imagining by Mabou Mines.

One of the biggest challenges of the play is that its plot-based scenes alternate with balletic musical sequences in the pastoral style. How on earth do you stage those interludes, especially when love-lorn shepherds no longer have the cultural power they used to enjoy?

The solution playwright Jeffrey Hatcher came up with for the adaptation Red Bull Theater Company now has playing at New World Stages is kind of brilliant. The play's characters end up singing some of the most stereotypically French songs ever composed with re-written lyrics all about sheep.

This goofiness is right at home on Beowulf Borritt's ridiculously fanciful set. The result is not exactly Molière, but very much in the comic spirit of the original play. Molière famously collapsed on stage while playing the hypochondriac lead Argan, later dying without receiving last rites, thanks to the controversy surrounding his earlier play Tartuffe. In the current production, the leading role goes to Mark Linn-Baker. (Who, unlike Molière, will hopefully outlive the run of the show!)

In many ways, though, the best role in the play is Argan's maid, Toinette. Red Bull's production features the tremendously talented Sarah Stiles as the put-upon servant who understands things far more clearly than her master. Stiles, best known for her performance as Jessica in Hand to God, finds comic gold in a messed-up medical system, as does Arnie Burton, who plays not one but three different doctors, each with their own unique quirks.

Argan's daughter Angélique was originally played by Molière's wife, Armande Béjart. Emilie Kouatchou, most famous as the final Christine in The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, takes on that role in the current production. (When Kouatchou sings re-written Phantom lyrics to extoll the virtues of sheep, those in on the joke go into hysterics.) Equally hilarious in this production is Angélique's stepmother Béline, played by Emily Swallow (whom you will not recognize as the Armorer on The Mandalorian).

The show, directed by Red Bull's artistic director, Jesse Berger, is only playing through June 29th, so see it while you can!

Strindberg's Wives

The Swedish dramatist August Strindberg had a complicated relationship with women. That comes across in the new adaptation of his play Creditors by Jen Silverman.

As I just saw Creditors this afternoon, now is a good time to go over Strindberg's rather tumultuous marital history and how it impacted his plays. It was in 1875 that he first met Siri von Essen, a married baroness who likely provided the model for Tekla in Creditors.

Von Essen had always wanted to be an actor, and in 1877 she began performing at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. That same year, she married Strindberg, having secured a divorce from her first husband only the year prior. She appeared in Strindberg's historical drama The Secret of the Guild, and after his turn toward Naturalism she originated the title role in Miss Julie.

Together, Strindberg and von Essen founded the Scandinavian Experimental Theatre which premiered his play The Stronger with her as Madame X. That play premiered together with Creditors and a third Strindberg one-act play, Pariah. Unfortunately, the theatre failed, as did their marriage. The author was plunged into a depression he later referred to as his Inferno Crisis. Strindberg ultimately abandoned both his atheism and his embrace of Naturalism.

Emerging from his Inferno Crisis, Strindberg met the 20-year-old Frida Uhl, whom he married the same year he wrote his comedy Playing with Fire. Uhl had lots of ideas about how to market his plays internationally, but Strindberg wasn't big on women having ideas of their own. To absolutely no one's surprise, the couple ended up divorcing. Uhl went on to become the lover of another playwright, Frank Wedekind, and a pioneer in cabaret performance.

After the hurricane of his relationship with Uhl, Strindberg turned back toward religion. This was reflected in his three-part play To Damascus, as well as the history plays he returned to writing with the Vasa trilogy: The Saga of the Folkungs, Gustavus Vasa, and Erik XIV. As he returned to productivity as a playwright, he also met a young actress, Harriet Bosse. He chose her to play the role of "The Lady" in To Damascus as well as Eleonora in Easter.

The two were married in 1901, and the following year, Bosse appeared as the Daughter of Indra in Strindberg's A Dream Play. His jealousy, which seems to have crossed over into insanity at times, doomed this marriage as well. They separated, and then divorced. Strindberg began writing a grand cycle of history plays based on world-changing figures like Socrates and Jesus, but he had greater artistic success with smaller works.

In 1907, Strindberg co-founded a new theatre in Stockholm to perform chamber plays, including The Ghost Sonata. Like pieces of chamber music, these dramas were smaller in scale but still ambitious artistically. The works were meant to be performed without intermissions and to an audience of no more than 160.

Even in the late chamber plays, you can still see the influence of the powerful women in Strindberg's life. It clearly wasn't easy being married to Strindberg, and the theatre owes a debt to the women who inspired him.