*Playwright's Corner- From The Pen Of Jean Genet-"The Maids"

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the French playwright Jean Genet.

Book Review

The Maids, Jean Genet, 1947

There was a time when I would read anything the playwright Jean Genet wrote, especially his plays. The reason? Well, for one thing, the political thing that has been the core of my existence since I was a kid, his relationship to the Black Panthers when they were being systematically lionized by the international white left as the “real” revolutionaries and systematically liquidated by the American state police apparatus that was hell-bend on putting every young black man with a black beret behind bars, or better, as with Fred Hampton, Mark Clark and long list of others, dead. Genet, as his autobiographical “Our Lady Of The Flowers” details came from deep within a white, French version of that same lumpen “street” milieu from which the Panthers were recruiting. Thus, kindred spirits.

That kindred “street” smart relationship, of course, was like catnip for a kid like me who came from that same American societal intersection, the place where the white lumpen thug elements meet the working poor. I knew the American prototype of Jean Genet, up close and personal, except, perhaps, for his own well-publicized homosexuality and that of others among the dock-side toughs that he hung around with. So I was ready for a literary man who was no stranger to life’s seamy side. His play “The Maids” was the first one I grabbed (and I believe the first of his plays that I saw performed).

Fortunately, by the time that I got around to then reading (and seeing) such seemingly avant-garde material I had shed my prissy Catholic ignorance about the great varieties of human sexual expression, for good and evil. Otherwise, I would not have appreciated this play as either a perverse form of class struggle (the story line centers on the plot of two interchangeable maids, sisters, although the performance that I saw had the two maids played by men) to “murder” their mistress. Or as a ritualistic sadomasochistic sexual exercise. Either way this play still holds up today as a very well thought through literary effort, at a time when seemingly every offbeat sexual expression has been ground to bits through banal exploitation. See this one, the next time it is revived, if you get a change. In the meantime read the text.

In Honor Of The Centenary Of Tennesse Williams' Birth-*Playwright’s Corner- "Fugitive Kind"

Friday, October 29, 2010
*Playwright’s Corner- Tennessee Williams’ "Fugitive Kind"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for American playwright Tennessee Williams' early play, Fugitive Kind.

Book Review

Fugitive Kind, Tennessee Williams, New Directions, 2001

“Hey, the message of the social gospel (Marx or Christ, or some such figure) is fine, but I want get mine now not in the great by-and-by.” That message, or my paraphrase of that message, may seem old hat, but in one form or another it has animated the characters that people most of Tennessee Williams’ plays, including this early effort when he was just starting out in the old St. Louis days of the 1930s long before A Streetcar Named Desire insured his literary immortality. Here Williams uses the time-tested devise of the flop house (also used in Maxim Gorky’s Lower Depths, Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, and in other places like in Norman Mailer’s Barbary Shore) that permits him to, with some emotional and psychic economy, look at the human condition without having to stir up too much trouble out in the mean streets of Depression-era America (1930s version, sorry).

Of course when one thinks of flop houses, or rather when I think of flop houses I think of “losers” of one sort or another. The marginal people whose very existence is a monument to the paraphrase above, including one of the key characters here hiding away in that anonymous space, Terry. Outlaws, grifters, drifters, midnight shifters, drunks, homosexuals when that was a closeted thing, leftist political exiles (self-imposed or not), and generally those who must live by their wits as best they can are the stuff of Williams fare. After reading the introduction to this play apparently this gnawing search motivated him from early on in his writing career. And this is great stuff on the theater stage, although out in those means streets such characters are as likely to knock you down for your ready cash as be “colorful”. Marx (and others) called them the lumpen element that parasitically fed off and broke down the solidarity of the working stiffs. The Paris Commune, in its short existence, declared “death to thieves” from much the same motivation. Tennessee Williams says let’s get the stethoscope out and see what makes them tick. And on the stage he is right. Read this one, read (or see) every Williams play you can.

On The Centenary Of Tennessee Williams' Birth- Playwright's Corner- "A Streetcar Named Desire"

Thursday, September 23, 2010
*Playwright's Corner- Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for American playwright Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire.

Book/Play Review

A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams, Harper, 2006

Tennessee Williams rightfully takes his place as one of the premier playwrights in the history of the American theater. The relentless turning out of high quality pieces (and other short literary expositions) on subjects that in an earlier day before the late 1940s and early 1950s would have not found nearly so receptive an audience.

I saw the movie version of Streetcar long before I read the original play so that, of necessity, the role of Stanley Kowalski on the page evokes the powerfully strong, sexual and primitive role performed by Marlon Brando and the equally powerful performance by Vivian Leigh as the coquettish, down-on-her-heels, blatantly feminine-wiles wielding Blanche Dubois. There are however, important differences between the story line presented in the movie and in the original play version. Some of the more explicit graphically sexual scenes and latent homosexual allusions did not pass muster with the movie censors of the times. For one familiar with the story from the stage or theater it is well worth going back and reading the original play to get a feel for the tensions that remain unexplored in the other media.

A reading of the play also makes clear something is missing from the film productions and that is the sense that the characters (including Blanche's sister Stella, Stanley's wife)are sleepwalking through life with their own private illusions that prevent them each, in the final analysis, from having more than a surface understanding of the others in the claustrophobic little "home" they inhabit. Blanche will pay, and pay dearly, for not understanding Stanley better as she tries to live the illusion of a fallen, aging Southern Belle. In any case, whether on stage on the screen or on the page this is a great American classic.

On The Centenary Of Tennessee Williams' Birth-Playwright’s Corner-“Suddenly, Last Summer”

Thursday, January 15, 2009
*Playwright’s Corner- Tennessee Williams’ “Suddenly, Last Summer”

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for American playwright Tennessee Williams' "Suddenly, Last Summer."

Play/DVD Reviews

The Sweet Bird Of Youth Gone Awry

Suddenly Last Summer, The Theater of Tennessee Williams, Volume Three, New Directions Books, New York, 1955

“Suddenly, Last Summer" is an odd little beauty of a play. Odd in that the appetites of the main (unseen in the play) character, Sebastian, seem to be both beyond the pale and obsessive. Odd, also that his protective monster of a mother is determined to keep the truth about her “genius” son from the world even after his ‘untimely’ death in the play's ...last summer. As if to add fuel to the fire of an already bizarre tale of exploitation, sexual and otherwise, Sebastian’s beautiful lure of a cousin used as bait for Sebastian’s appetites (some form of pedophilia) is to be permanently taken out of the picture (via institutionalization in a mental hospital) in order to keep this world beautiful. Nobody believes the sordid tale she has to tell about dear cousin Sebastian. The play ends with the ‘hope’ that there may actually be someone to believe the girl’s story before she becomes one more sacrifice to ‘beauty’ in the world. Frankly, old Sebastian got what was coming to him over in the islands.

In the movie version, the stories that have to be told verbally in the play get told as cinematic flashbacks as well. Katherine Hepburn is in high dudgeon as Sebastian’s mother and ‘keeper of the flame’. Montgomery Clift is a more sober, somber and searcher for the truth psychiatrist than the one in the play and Elizabeth Taylor as the beautiful lure cousin is a mass of confusions whose memories of last summer have to be erased ….some way. Old Sebastian and his twisted sense of life and his place in history is still a guy who had it coming to him. Well, he did, didn’t he?

In Honor Of The Centenary Of Tennessee Williams' Birth-Playwright’s Corner- “Orpheus Descending”

Thursday, January 15, 2009
*Playwright’s Corner- Tennessee Williams’ “Orpheus Descending”

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for American playwright Tennessee Williams' "Orpheus Descending."

Play/DVD Reviews

Take A Walk On The Wild Side

Orpheus Descending, The Theater of Tennessee Williams, Volume Three, New Directions Books, New York, 1955

On reading “Orpheus Descending”, Tennessee Williams’ take on the old Greek legend in modern grab I was struck by the similarity in the character of the Orpheus figure, Val ,and Nelson Algren’s Dove Linkhorn in “ A Walk On The Wild Side." Both are loners, outsiders, have checkered pasts and are ready for anything from deep romantic love to murder and mayhem. And because they are capacity of that range of emotions and reactions they are also as capable of getting burned by a complacent society that does not take kindly to those that it cannot control. Val drifts into town, gets a job at a store by the enigmatic Lady and then the wheels begin to turn and to deal out his fate. Could he have stopped and turned away? Although that is a question that drives many dramatic efforts it is not always resolvable in a play- or in life. Lady’s terminally ill husband lurks in the background with nothing to lose, once the romantic sparks start to fly between Lady and Val. I do not understand why this play was not more successful in its earlier manifestations as was pointed out in the introduction, especially as this society has created a culture that has made space, if only grudgingly, for the outsider to tempt the fates, even if only symbolically.That should have been a draw to Williams-driven theater-goers

On The Centenary Of Tennessee Williams' Birth-Playwright’s Corner-“The Rose Tattoo”

Thursday, January 15, 2009
Playwright’s Corner- Tennessee Williams’ “The Rose Tattoo”

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for American playwrightTennessee Williams' "The Rose Tattoo."

Play/DVD Reviews

Waiting For A Sign

The Rose Tattoo, Three Plays of Tennessee Williams, New Directions Books, New York, 1959

“The Rose Tattoo” is a little different look at the family. Although the geography of the play is still the American South this play is not peopled with Williams’ usually WASPy characters but rather a little conclave of immigrant Italians who have somehow made a beachhead in the Gulf Coast area. The central character is a previously abandoned but now widowed Italian seamstress trying to survive, mainly through her hopes for her daughter, on her wits, her memories of youth, her integrity and her fierce instinct to survive in alien territory. A philandering husband, the obsessive subject of her adoration, a daughter trying to learn to fly on her own in the love game, and an incidental encounter with a fellow, younger Italian truck driver come together to give her the sign she needs to start over. Maybe. This play, more than most of Williams’ efforts, depends on the strength of the dialogue and not the plot line. That is what gives its dramatic edge as Williams explores yet another tangled up dream gone awry story.

In the movie version, the role of the young Italian truck driver as played by Burt Lancaster and the seamstress as played by the fabulous Anna Magnini is more central to the unfolding story from the beginning. The dramatic tensions between this pair and the ‘waiting for a sign’ by the seamstress are still fairly similar. It is however Lancaster’s enhanced role that really makes this a visual treat and gives one hope that this new family ‘aborning’ can survive.

On The Centenary Of Tennessee Williams' Birth-Playwright’s Corner- "The Sweet Bird Of Youth"

Thursday, January 15, 2009
Playwright’s Corner- Tennessee Williams’ "The Sweet Bird Of Youth"

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for American playwright Tennessee Williams' "Sweet Bird Of Youth."

Play/DVD Reviews

The Fickle Bird Of Youth

The Sweet Bird Of Youth, Three Plays of Tennessee Williams, New Directions Books, New York, 1959

“Sweet Bird Of Youth” is a case in point of the fickleness of youth. Not for the first time, a seemingly 1950’s style All- American boy Chance who has left his hometown, his home town girl, and his roots behind to drift in that endless spiral toward fame- Hollywood and the movies, naturally- comes back to claim what is his by right. On this little hometown reunion Chance is in the service of one aging and fretful actress who has her own issues with that elusive ‘bird of youth’. On returning to his home town it appears that Chance has stirred up a hornet’s nest with the local political establishment in the person of one red-neck preacher turned politician in order to better do “god’s work”, old Tom Findley. The object of this dispute is one Heavenly Findley, old Tom’s daughter and Chance’s left behind paramour who is now the subject of some scandal (due to the amorphously stated need for female-related medical treatment, an abortion, due to Chance’s irresponsibility). Along the way we get to see how political power is distributed in a small Southern town as well as the inevitable tempting of the fates by Chance in order to win the ‘brass ring’ before it is too late (apparently somewhere over thirty, by my reckoning). At play’s end though, where he is between a rock and a hard place, Chance may not get the chance to be Chance at thirty. Oh, that fickle bird of youth. Still, Chance, go for it.

In the movie version the recently departed excellent actor Paul Newman, a classic example of a 1950’s All-American boy type (among his other acting talents), as the movie star ‘wannabe’ and Geraldine Page as the aging actress recreated their stage performances although with a greater screen presence for Ms. Page. Moreover, Chance’s strivings to reconnect with Heavenly are more central to the plot. More importantly, the endings differ in that, despite some mauling by Tom Findley’s boys Chance takes my advice from the play version and runs, with Heavenly ( a fetching Shirley Knight), just as far and as fast as his now aging legs can carry him.

In Honor Of The Centenary Of Tennessee Williams' Birth- Playwright's Corner-"Cat On A Hot Tin Roof"

Thursday, January 15, 2009
Playwright's Corner- Tennessee Williams’ Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for American playwright Tennessee Williams' "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof."

Play/DVD Reviews

Enough Mendacity To Sink A Ship

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, The Theater of Tennessee Williams, Volume Three, New Directions Books, New York, 1955

The first couple of paragraphs here have been used as introduction to other plays written by Tennessee Williams and reviewed in this space. This review applies to both the stage play and the film versions with differences noted as part of the review

Perhaps, as is the case with this reviewer, if you have come to the works of the excellent American playwright Tennessee Williams through adaptations of his plays to commercially distributed films you too will have missed some of the more controversial and intriguing aspects of his plays that had placed him at that time along with Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller as America’s finest serious playwrights. Although some of the films have their own charms I want to address the written plays in this entry first (along with, when appropriate, commentary about Williams’ extensive and detailed directing instructions).

That said, there are certain limitations for a political commentator like this reviewer on the works of Williams. Although his plays, at least his best and most well-known ones, take place in the steamy South or its environs, there is virtually no acknowledgement of the race question that dominated Southern life during the period of the plays; and, for that matter was beginning to dominate national life. Thus, although it is possible to pay homage to his work on its artistic merits, I am very, very tentative about giving fulsome praise to that work on its political merits. With that proviso Williams nevertheless has created a very modern stage on which to address social questions at the personal level, like homosexuality, incest and the dysfunctional family that only began to get addressed widely well after his ground-breaking work hit the stage.

“Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” is a prime example of the contradiction that a radical commentator is placed in. The themes of duplicity, latent homosexuality, adultery and dysfunctional families topped off by more than enough mendacity to sink a ship are the stuff of social drama that NEED to be addressed as outcomes in the modern capitalist cultural sphere. However, in the end nothing really gets resolved truthfully here. Old 1950’s-style All-American boy Brick, the ‘great white hope’ of the family, may or may not sober up after the ‘lost’ of his dear friend and fellow football player, Skipper. Saucy and sexy wife Maggie (the cat) may or may not really get pregnant by Brick and save the family heritage for him, or die trying. The only certainty, despite all that above-mentioned mendacity, is that Big Daddy is going to die and that 28,000 acres of the finest land in the Delta is going to need new management, either by Brick, brother Goober (along with his scheming wife and their ‘lovely' brood of children) or some upstart. Off of these possible outcomes, however, I would not get too worked up about the final outcome.

In the movie version, done in the 1950’s as well, which starred the recently departed excellent actor Paul Newman as Brick and a fetching Elizabeth Taylor as Maggie the question of Brick’s possible homosexual relationship with Skipper is far more muted than in the play. The implicit question seems to concern Brick’s fading youth, his search for perfect meaning to life in Mississippi and that one’s existential crisis can be eliminated by reliance on the bottle. The relationship between the dying Big Daddy and his ever suffering wife, Big Mama, is less dastardly than in the play as well. The scheming Goober and wife and family and those ‘lovely’ children, however, run true to form. My sense of the movie, unlike the deeper issues of the play, is that a few therapy sessions would put old Brick back on the right track. The play was far less hopeful in that regard.
********

***From The Archives (2011)- On The Centenary Of Tennessee Williams' Birthday-Homage To The Outsider- Some Of The Work Of Playwright Tennessee Williams

Play/DVD Reviews

Enough Mendacity To Sink A Ship

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, The Theater of Tennessee Williams, Volume Three, New Directions Books, New York, 1955

The first couple of paragraphs here have been used as introduction to other plays written by Tennessee Williams and reviewed in this space. This review applies to both the stage play and the film versions with differences noted as part of the review

Perhaps, as is the case with this reviewer, if you have come to the works of the excellent American playwright Tennessee Williams through adaptations of his plays to commercially distributed film you too will have missed some of the more controversial and intriguing aspects of his plays that had placed him at that time along with Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller as America’s finest serious playwrights. Although some of the films have their own charms I want to address the written plays in this entry first (along with, when appropriate, commentary about Williams’ extensive and detailed directing instructions).

That said, there are certain limitations for a political commentator like this reviewer on the works of Williams. Although his plays, at least his best and most well-known ones, take place in the steamy South or its environs, there is virtually no acknowledgement of the race question that dominated Southern life during the period of the plays; and, for that matter was beginning to dominate national life. Thus, although it is possible to pay homage to his work on its artistic merits, I am very, very tentative about giving fulsome praise to that work on its political merits. With that proviso Williams nevertheless has created a very modern stage on which to address social questions at the personal level, like homosexuality, incest and the dysfunctional family that only began to get addressed widely well after his ground-breaking work hit the stage.

“Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” is a prime example of the contradiction that a radical commentator is placed in. The themes of duplicity, latent homosexuality, adultery and dysfunctional families topped off by more than enough mendacity to sink a ship are the stuff of social drama that NEED to be addressed as outcomes in the modern capitalist cultural sphere. However, in the end nothing really gets resolved truthfully here. Old 1950’s-style All-American boy Brick, the ‘great white hope’ of the family, may or may not sober up after the ‘lost’ of his dear friend and fellow football player, Skipper. Saucy and sexy wife Maggie (the cat) may or may not really get pregnant by Brick and save the family heritage for him, or die trying. The only certainty, despite all that above-mentioned mendacity, is that Big Daddy is going to die and that 28,000 acres of the finest land in the Delta is going to need new management, either Brick, brother Goober (along with his scheming wife and their ‘lovely brood’ of children) or some upstart. Off of these possible outcomes, however, I would not get too worked up about the final outcome.

In the movie version, done in the 1950’s as well, which starred the recently departed excellent actor Paul Newman as Brick and a fetching Elizabeth Taylor as Maggie the question of Brick’s possible homosexual relationship with Skipper is far more muted than in the play. The implicit question seems to concern Brick’s fading youth, his search for perfect meaning to life in Mississippi and that one’s existential crisis can be eliminated by reliance on the bottle. The relationship between the dying Big Daddy and his ever suffering wife, Big Mama, is less dastardly than in the play as well. The scheming Goober and wife and family and those ‘lovely’ children, however, run true to form. My sense of the movie, unlike the deeper issues of the play, is that a few therapy sessions would put old Brick back on the right track. The play was far less hopeful in that regard.

The Fickle Bird Of Youth

The Sweet Bird Of Youth, Three Plays of Tennessee Williams, New Directions Books, New York, 1959

“Sweet Bird Of Youth” is a case in point. Not for the first time, a seemingly 1950’s style All- American boy Chance who has left his hometown, his home town girl and his roots behind to drift in that endless spiral toward fame- Hollywood and the movies, naturally- comes back to claim what is his by right. On this little hometown reunion Chance is in the service of one aging and fretful actress who has her own issues with that elusive ‘bird of youth’. On return to town it appears that Chance has stirred up a hornet’s nest with the local political establishment in the person of one red-neck preacher turned politician in order to better do “god’s work”, old Tom Findley. The object of this dispute is one Heavenly Findley, old Ton’s daughter and Chance’s left behind paramour who is now the subject of some scandal (due to the amorphously stated need for female-related medical treatment due to Chance’s irresponsibility). Along the way we get to see how political power is distributed in a small Southern town as well as the inevitable tempting of the fates by Chance in order to win the ‘brass ring’ before it is too late (apparently somewhere over thirty, by my reckoning). At play’s end though, where he is between a rock and a hard place, Chance may not get the chance to be Chance at thirty. Oh, that fickle bird of youth. Still, Chance, go for it.

In the movie version the recently departed excellent actor Paul Newman, a classic example of a 1950’s All-American boy type (among his other acting talents), as the movie star ‘wannabe’ and Geraldine Page as the aging actress recreated their stage performances although with a greater screen presence for Ms. Page. Moreover, Chance’s strivings to reconnect with Heavenly are more central to the plot. More importantly, the endings differ in that, despite some mauling by Tom Findley’s boys Chance takes my advice from the play version and runs, with Heavenly, just as far and as fast as his now aging legs can carry him.

Waiting For A Sign

The Rose Tattoo, Three Plays of Tennessee Williams, New Directions Books, New York, 1959


“The Rose Tattoo” is a little different look at the family. Although the geography of the play is still the American South this play is not peopled with Williams’ usually WASPy characters but rather a little conclave of immigrant Italians who have somehow made a beachhead in the Gulf Coast area. The central character is a previously abandoned but now widowed Italian seamstress trying to survive, mainly through her hopes for her daughter, on her wits, her memories of youth, her integrity and her fierce instinct to survive in alien territory. A philandering husband the obsessive subject of her adoration, a daughter trying to learn to fly on her own in the love game, and an incidental encounter with a fellow, younger Italian truck driver come together to give her the sign she needs to start over. Maybe. This play, more than most of Williams’ efforts, depends on the strength of the dialogue and not the plot line. That is what gives its dramatic edge as Williams explores yet another tangled up dream gone awry story.

In the movie version, the role of the young Italian truck driver as played by Burt Lancaster and the seamstress as played by the fabulous Anna Magnini is more central to the unfolding story from the beginning. The dramatic tensions between this pair and the ‘waiting for a sign’ by the seamstress are still fairly similar. It is however Lancaster’s enhanced role that really makes this a visual treat and gives one hope that this new family ‘aborning’ can survive.

Take A Walk On The Wild Side

Orpheus Descending, The Theater of Tennessee Williams, Volume Three, New Directions Books, New York, 1955

On reading “Orpheus Descending”, Williams’ take on the old Greek legend in modern grab I was struck by the similarity in the character of the Orpheus figure, Val ,and Nelson Algren’s Dove Linkhorn in “ A Walk On The Wild Side. Both are loners, outsiders, have checkered pasts and are ready for anything from deep romantic love to murder and mayhem. And because they are capacity of that range of emotions and reactions they are also as capable of getting burned by a complacent society that does not take kindly to those that it cannot control. Val drifts into town, gets a job at a store by the enigmatic Lady and then the wheels begin to turn and to deal out his fate. Could he have stopped and turned away? Although that is a question that drives many dramatic efforts it is not always resolvable in a play- or in life. Lady’s terminally ill husband lurks in the background with nothing to lose, once the romantic sparks start to fly. I do not understand why this play was not more successful in its earlier manifestations as was pointed out in the introduction, especially as this is a culture that has made space, if only grudgingly, to for the outsider to tempt the fates if only symbolically.

The Sweet Bird Of Youth Gone Awry

Suddenly Last Summer, The Theater of Tennessee Williams, Volume Three, New Directions Books, New York, 1955

“Suddenly Last Summer is an odd little beauty of a play. Odd in that the appetites of the main (unseen in the play) character Sebastian seem to be both beyond the pale and obsessive. Odd, also that his protective monster of a mother is determined to keep the truth about her “genius” son from the world even after his ‘untimely’ death ……last summer. As if to add fuel to the fire of an already bizarre tale of exploitation, sexual and otherwise, Sebastian’s beautiful lure of a cousin used as bait for Sebastian’s appetites is to be permanently taken out of the picture in order to keep this world beautiful. Nobody believes the sordid tale she has to tell about dear cousin Sebastian. The play ends with the ‘hope’ that there may actually be someone to believe the girl’s story before she becomes one more sacrifice to ‘beauty’ in the world. Frankly, old Sebastian got what was coming to him over in the islands.

In the movie version, the stories that have to be told verbally in the play get told as flashbacks as well. Katherine Hepburn is in high dudgeon as Sebastian’s mother and ‘keeper of the flame’. Montgomery Clift is a more sober, somber and searcher for the truth psychiatrist than the one in the play and Elizabeth Taylor is the beautiful lure cousin is a mass of confusions whose memories of last summer have to be erased ….some way. Old Sebastian and his twisted sense of life and his place in history is still a guy who had it coming to him. Well, he did, didn’t he?

Playwright's Corner- Eugene O'Neill's "The Emperor Jones"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for American playwright Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_Jones

Markin comment:

This entry provides a little background information for the play (and movie) that helped, along with Othello, define Paul Robeson as the epitome of the strong black man, a man for every racist, and every Uncle Tom, to fear. Period.

***Playwrights Corner- Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour

Click below to link to a Wikipedia entry for American playwright Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children%27s_Hour_(play)

Markin comment:

Yes, I know that Lillian Hellman (along with long-time lover, novelist Dashiell Hammett) was nothing but a Stalinist hack in her political life but some of her plays, including The Children's Hour which deals with the subject of lesbianism and witch trials-type hysteria forthrightly for the 1930s, are nevertheless worth reading. And immediately after that reading then go back to blast her for her defense of the Moscow Trials, and all the rest. Author Mary McCarthy (The Group), whatever her own political sins, had Hellman's Stalinist hack number on that score.

*Playwright’s Corner- Tennessee Williams’ "Fugitive Kind"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for American playwright Tennessee Williams' early play, Fugitive Kind.

Book Review

Fugitive Kind, Tennessee Williams, New Directions, 2001

“Hey, the message of the social gospel (Marx or Christ, or some such figure) is fine, but I want get mine now not in the great by-and-by.” That message, or my paraphrase of that message, may seem old hat, but in one form or another it has animated the characters that people most of Tennessee Williams’ plays, including this early effort when he was just starting out in the old St. Louis days of the 1930s long before A Streetcar Named Desire insured his literary immortality. Here Williams uses the time-tested devise of the flop house (also used in Maxim Gorky’s Lower Depths, Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, and in other places like in Norman Mailer’s Barbary Shore) that permits him to, with some emotional and psychic economy, look at the human condition without having to stir up too much trouble out in the mean streets of Depression-era  America (1930s version, sorry).

Of course when one thinks of flop houses, or rather when I think of flop houses I think of “losers” of one sort or another. The marginal people whose very existence is a monument to the paraphrase above, including one of the key characters here hiding away in that anonymous space, Terry. Outlaws, grifters, drifters, midnight shifters, drunks, homosexuals when that was a closeted thing, leftist political exiles (self-imposed or not), and generally those who must live by their wits as best they can are the stuff of Williams fare. After reading the introduction to this play apparently this gnawing search motivated him from early on in his writing career. And this is great stuff on the theater stage, although out in those means streets such characters are as likely to knock you down for your ready cash as be “colorful”. Marx (and others) called them the lumpen element that parasitically fed off and broke down the solidarity of the working stiffs. The Paris Commune, in its short existence, declared “death to thieves” from much the same motivation. Tennessee Williams says let’s get the stethoscope out and see what makes them tick. And on the stage he is right. Read this one, read (or see) every Williams play you can.

*Playwright's Corner- Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for American playwright Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire.

Book/Play Review

A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams, Harper, 2006

Tennessee Williams rightfully takes his place as one of the premier playwrights in the history of the American theater. The relentless turning out of high quality pieces (and other short literary expositions) on subjects that in an earlier day before the late 1940s and early 1950s would have not found nearly so receptive an audience.

I saw the movie version of Streetcar long before I read the original play so that, of necessity, the role of Stanley Kowalski on the page evokes the powerfully strong, sexual and primitive role performed by Marlon Brando and the equally powerful performance by Vivian Leigh as the coquettish, down-on-her-heels, blatantly feminine-wiles wielding Blanche Dubois. There are however, important differences between the story line presented in the movie and in the original play version. Some of the more explicit graphically sexual scenes and latent homosexual allusions did not pass muster with the movie censors of the times. For one familiar with the story from the stage or theater it is well worth going back and reading the original play to get a feel for the tensions that remain unexplored in the other media.

A reading of the play also makes clear something is missing from the film productions and that is the sense that the characters (including Blanche's sister Stella, Stanley's wife)are sleepwalking through life with their own private illusions that prevent them each, in the final analysis, from having more than a surface understanding of the others in the claustrophobic little "home" they inhabit. Blanche will pay, and pay dearly, for not understanding Stanley better as she tries to live the illusion of a fallen, aging Southern Belle. In any case, whether on stage on the screen or on the page this is a great American classic.

Playwright's' Corner- Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire"- A Guest Review

Click on the headline to link to a review of a New York revival of Tennessee Williams' play, "A Streetcar Named Desire."


Markin comment:

In looking over my blog archives I find that I have not reviewed Tennessee Williams' master-work (at least that is what I consider it). I will provide my own review later.

*Playwright's Corner- Clifford Odets' "Waiting For Lefty"

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the American playwright Clifford Odets.

Book/Play Review

Waiting For Lefty, and other plays, Clifford Odets, Random House, New York, 1935

There has always been a place for didactic political plays, like the one under review here, “Waiting For Lefty”, within the left-wing movement. Such plays have value both as a means to express certain plebeian cultural values that are not expressed through mainstream bourgeois cultural institutions and for purely propaganda purposes to get the “message” out to the sometimes illiterate, sometimes just barely literate, or sometimes merely recalcitrant masses. These are both honorable and acceptable means in order to create an “alternative” cultural expression looking forward to the new culture of the new communist society.

Moreover, there has been no lack of those cultural workers, including playwrights and actors, who, while not plebes themselves, have readily come over to our side, at least for a while. This movement toward the plebes is episodic but takes a big leap forward especially in times of general social turmoil like the period of the Great Depression in the 1930’s and in the social movements of the 1960s. That is the case with the playwright under review, Clifford Odets, and the cultural organization that initially sponsored his works, The Theater Guild of New York, in the 1930s.

Put a collectivist spirit in the air as a result of serious class struggles for union recognition in some a massive strike wave in 1934, a turn by the Communist International toward the popular front and alliance with previously ignored or despised bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements, some hunger actors and related cultural workers, AND the bright lights of New York and you have the Theater Guild. Its illustrious personal included many young performers who would go on to, if not honorable theater careers, then long ones like Lee J. Cobb and Elia Kazan who made appearances in Clifford Odets works.

As to “Waiting For Lefty” it certainly is a period piece of those times. The subject, a pending strike of taxi cab workers, and how various characters came to class consciousness, or at least of consciousness of the need to struggle against the bosses is pretty straight forward. Except, that the Lefty of the title, a known militant worker from whom his fellows had previously taken their political lead is no where to be found. Or rather is, in the end, found dead, in some back alley from a boss’s thug’s bullet. Lefty may have been the catalyst for action, for developing political awareness, but the plebes are on their own now. The class struggle continues. Definitely, as intended, an uplift kind of play that could use a revival today. If not of the play itself then of the need for class struggle theme behind it.

Note: I would be remiss if I did not mention that Clifford Odets, and a number of other members of the Theater Guild troupe, most infamously Elia Kazan and Lee J. Cobb, when the sunny days of the 1930s struggles passed and the hard Cold War days of the “red scare” came in the 1950s had no problem naming names of those whom they were asked to identify as communists or, more probably, fellow travelers by various Washington committees. Were they, like some of the characters in Odets’ “Till The Die I Die” (also in this book), tortured by some Gestapo-like fiends into submission for that information? Or were they threatened with some other more psychological abuse and being merely mortal could not stand the heat. No, they “sang” just to keep their jobs. Others like Dalton Trumbo, the Hollywood Ten and Howard Fast, brought their toothbrushes with them to the committees and took the jail time instead. While there was (and is) a huge gap between the politics of these Stalinists and ours we honor them despite their politics. For Odets, Kazan and Cobbs we have nothing but scorn.

*Keeping The Historical Memories Alive- Playwright August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson”

Click On Title To Link To August Wilson Homepage.

Book Review

The Piano Lesson, 1936, August Wilson, Theatre Communications Group, New York, 2007

Okay, blame it on the recently departed Studs Terkel and his damn interview books. I had just been reading his "The Spectator", a compilation of some of his interviews of various authors, actors and other celebrities from his long-running Chicago radio program when I came across an interview that he had with the playwright under review here, August Wilson. Of course, that interview dealt with things near and dear to their hearts on the cultural front and mine as well. Our mutual love of the blues, our concerns about the history and fate of black people and the other oppressed of capitalist society and our need to express ourselves politically in the best way we can. For Studs it was the incessant interviews, for me it is incessant political activity and for the late August Wilson it was his incessant devotion to his century cycle of ten plays that covered a range of black experiences over the 20th century.

Strangely, although I was familiar with the name of the playwright August Wilson and was aware that he had produced a number of plays that were performed at a college-sponsored repertory theater here in Boston I had not seen or read his plays prior to reading the Terkel interview. Naturally when I read there that one of the plays being discussed was entitled "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" about the legendary female blues singer from the 1920's I ran out to get a copy of the play. That play has been reviewed elsewhere in this space but as is my habit when I read an author who "speaks" to me I grab everything I can by him or her to see where they are going with the work. This is doubly true in the case of Brother Wilson as his work is purposefully structured as an integrated cycle, and as an intensive dramatic look at the black historical experience of the 20th century that has driven a lot of my own above-mentioned political activism.

By the time that this review appears I will have already reviewed five of the ten plays in August Wilson’s Century cycle. On the first five I believe that I ran out of fulsome praise for his work and particularly for his tightly woven story and dialogue. Rather than keep following that path for the next five plays I would prefer to concentrate on some of the dialogue that makes Brother Wilson’s work so compelling. For those who want to peek at my general observations you can look at my review of “Gem Of The Ocean” (the first play chronologically in the cycle).

In all previously reviewed plays I noticed some piece of dialogue that seemed to me to sum up the essence of the play. Sometimes that is done by the lead character as was the case with Troy Maxton in “Fences” when he (correctly) stated that there should been “no too early” in regard to the possibilities of black achievement and prospects in America. Other times it is by a secondary character in the form of some handed down black folk wisdom as means to survive in racially-hardened America. In “The Piano Lesson” no one phrase sticks out as much as the story surrounding the history of the piano, the carvings engraved in it and the historical memories of slave, slave-owner and the scars of slavery’s harm on black life in the 1930’s (and the 2000’s).

The struggle between brother and sister, Boy Willie and Berneice, over this family heirloom is more than just an exercise in the productive use of the unused piano but points to the importance of trying to preserve memory in a world that does not cherish such notions. This is not the best play in the Wilson cycle by a long shot but, as always, there is plenty of food for thought for anyone who has confronted this issue. Slavery times, and Jim Crow times, and de facto segregation times and, unfortunately, now in so-called “post-racial” times demand the preservation of such memory. The ill-fated King Hedleys, I and II, and Troy Maxtons of the world (characters in other Wilson plays in this cycle) deserve no less. Once again, kudos Brother Wilson.

*It Wasn’t “Morning In America” For Everyone In Reagan's Time- Playwright August Wilson’s “King Hedley II”

Book Review

King Hedley II, 1985, August Wilson, Theatre Communications Group, New York, 2007

Okay, blame it on the recently departed Studs Terrell and his damn interview books. I had just been reading his "The Spectator", a compilation of some of his interviews of various authors, actors and other celebrities from his long-running Chicago radio program when I came across an interview that he had with the playwright under review here, August Wilson. Of course, that interview dealt with things near and dear to their hearts on the cultural front and mine as well. Our mutual love of the blues, our concerns about the history and fate of black people and the other oppressed of capitalist society and our need to express ourselves politically in the best way we can. For Studs it was the incessant interviews, for me it is incessant political activity and for the late August Wilson it was his incessant devotion to his century cycle of ten plays that covered a range of black experiences over the 20th century.

Strangely, although I was familiar with the name of the playwright August Wilson and was aware that he had produced a number of plays that were performed at a college-sponsored repertory theater here in Boston I had not seen or read his plays prior to reading the Terrell interview. Naturally when I read there that one of the plays being discussed was entitled "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" about the legendary female blues singer from the 1920's I ran out to get a copy of the play. That play has been reviewed elsewhere in this space but as is my habit when I read an author who "speaks" to me I grab everything I can by him or her to see where they are going with the work. This is doubly true in the case of Brother Wilson as his work is purposefully structured as an integrated cycle, and as an intensive dramatic look at the black historical experience of the 20th century that has driven a lot of my own above-mentioned political activism.

By the time that this review appears I will have already reviewed five of the ten plays in August Wilson’s Century cycle. On the first five I believe that I ran out of fulsome praise for his work and particularly for his tightly woven story and dialogue. Rather than keep following that path for the next five plays I would prefer to concentrate on some of the dialogue that makes Brother Wilson’s work so compelling. For those who want to peek at my general observations you can look at my review of “Gem Of The Ocean” (the first play chronologically in the cycle).

In all previously reviewed plays I noticed some piece of dialogue that seemed to me to sum up the essence of the play. Sometimes that is done by the lead character as was the case with Troy Maxton in “Fences” when he (correctly) stated that there should been “no too early” in regard to the possibilities of black achievement and prospects in America. Other times it is by a secondary character in the form of some handed down black folk wisdom as means to survive in racially-hardened America. Here it is the simple common phrase “it ain’t always about you” that several characters throw at King Hedley as he unsuccessfully tries to make his kind of sense out of the 1980’s.

Somehow the ‘abundant’ of the Reagan years in America did not trickle down to King Hedley’s Pittsburgh ghetto neighborhood. In the post civil rights, post affirmative action era he was the forgotten man, the man left out, so that he had to made do- any way he could. He made the wrong choices, as sometimes happens, and paid the price. In 2009 we can make this assertion- for every Barack Obama and others of W.E.B. Dubois' "talented tenth" who were incubating during the Reagan years there were ten (maybe more) young black men who were left to drift. Is Hedley’s story so different today in the ghetto? I think not. Thanks, Brother Wilson for speaking “truth to power” in addressing another timeless piece of the puzzle.

*Searching For The Roots- August Wilson's "Radio Golf"

Click On Title To Link To August Wilson Homepage.

Play Review

Radio Golf (1997), August Wilson, Theater Communications Group, New York, 2007

Okay, blame it on the recently departed Studs Terkel and his damn interview books. I had just been reading his "The Spectator", a compilation of some of his interviews of various authors, actors and other celebrities from his long-running Chicago radio program when I came across an interview that he had with the playwright under review here, August Wilson. Of course, that interview dealt with things near and dear to their hearts on the cultural front and mine as well. Our mutual love of the blues, our concerns about the history and fate of black people and the other oppressed of capitalist society and our need to express ourselves politically in the best way we can. For Studs it was the incessant interviews, for me it is incessant political activity and for the late August Wilson it was his incessant devotion to his century cycle of ten plays that covered a range of black experiences over the 20th century.

Strangely, although I was familiar with the name of the playwright August Wilson and was aware that he had produced a number of plays that were performed at a college-sponsored repertory theater here in Boston I had not seen or read his plays prior to reading the Terkel interview. Naturally when I read there that one of the plays being discussed was entitled "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" about the legendary female blues singer from the 1920's I ran out to get a copy of the play. That play has been reviewed elsewhere in this space but as is my habit when I read an author who "speaks" to me I grab everything I can by him or her to see where they are going with the work. This is doubly true in the case of Brother Wilson as his work is purposefully structured as an integrated cycle, and as an intensive dramatic look at the black historical experience of the 20th century that has driven a lot of my own above-mentioned political activism.

By the time that this review appears I will have already reviewed five of the ten plays in August Wilson’s Century cycle. On the first five I believe that I ran out of fulsome praise for his work and particularly for his tightly woven story and dialogue. Rather than keep following that path for the next five plays I would prefer to concentrate on some of the dialogue that makes Brother Wilson’s work so compelling. For those who want to peek at my general observations you can look at my review of “Gem Of The Ocean” (the first play chronologically in the cycle).

In all previously reviewed plays I noticed some piece of dialogue that seemed to me to sum up the essence of the play. Sometimes that is done by the lead character as was the case with Troy Maxton in “Fences” when he (correctly) stated that there should been “no too early” in regard to the possibilities of black achievement and prospects in America. Other times it is by a secondary character in the form of some handed down black folk wisdom passed on as means to survive in racially-hardened America. In “Radio Golf” this task falls to Roosevelt Hicks, a man who has been a beneficiary of some affirmative action by the white establishment (as always not directly present in the story line as it unfolds), when he candidly and ironically notes that when heading to the golf club with his white associates he has to pass out business cards so that others do not think that he is the caddy.

That says more in a couple of sentences about a central aspect of black experience in America than many manifestos, treatises or sociological/psychological studies. That Wilson can weave that home truth into a play of less than one hundred pages and drive the plot line of a story that deals with the contradiction between black aspirations to “make it in America”, at least for those who fall into W.E.B. Dubois’ “talented tenth”, and that nagging feeling of selling out for a ‘mess of pottage’ to the mainstream white culture. Given the continuing hard fate for most blacks in housing, education and jobs today Brother Wilson is on to something. As I have also noted previously- that, my friends, is still something to consider in the “post-racial” Obamiad. We shall see.

*You Can't Go Home Again, Can You?- August Wilson's "Jitney"

Click On Title To Link To August Wilson Homepage

Play Review

Jitney (1977), August Wilson, Theater Communications Group, New York, 2007

Okay, blame it on the recently departed Studs Terkel and his damn interview books. I had just been reading his "The Spectator", a compilation of some of his interviews of various authors, actors and other celebrities from his long-running Chicago radio program when I came across an interview that he had with the playwright under review here, August Wilson. Of course, that interview dealt with things near and dear to their hearts on the cultural front and mine as well. Our mutual love of the blues, our concerns about the history and fate of black people and the other oppressed of capitalist society and our need to express ourselves politically in the best way we can. For Studs it was the incessant interviews, for me it is incessant political activity and for the late August Wilson it was his incessant devotion to his century cycle of ten plays that covered a range of black experiences over the 20th century.

Strangely, although I was familiar with the name of the playwright August Wilson and was aware that he had produced a number of plays that were performed at a college-sponsored repertory theater here in Boston I had not seen or read his plays prior to reading the Terkel interview. Naturally when I read there that one of the plays being discussed was entitled "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" about the legendary female blues singer from the 1920's I ran out to get a copy of the play. That play has been reviewed elsewhere in this space but as is my habit when I read an author who "speaks" to me I grab everything I can by him or her to see where they are going with the work. This is doubly true in the case of Brother Wilson as his work is purposefully structured as an integrated cycle, and as an intensive dramatic look at the black historical experience of the 20th century that has driven a lot of my own above-mentioned political activism.

By the time that this review appears I will have already reviewed five of the ten plays in August Wilson’s Century cycle. On the first five I believe that I ran out of fulsome praise for his work and particularly for his tightly woven story and dialogue. Rather than keep following that path for the next five plays I would prefer to concentrate on some of the dialogue that makes Brother Wilson’s work so compelling. For those who want to peek at my general observations you can look at my review of “Gem Of The Ocean” (the first play chronologically in the cycle).

In all previously reviewed plays I noticed some piece of dialogue that seemed to me to sum up the essence of the play. Sometimes that is done by the lead character as was the case with Troy Maxton in “Fences” when he (correctly) stated that there should been “no too early” in regard to the possibilities of black achievement and prospects in America. Other times it is by a secondary character in the form of some handed down black folk wisdom as means to survive in racially-hardened America. In “Jitney” this task falls to Doub in Act Two when he cuts through all of the rhetoric and accusations a that some blacks were (and still are) making about white abandonment of the struggle for racial equality in America. His retort: ain’t no whites give a damn about you, you don’t exist for them.

These lines are doubly poignant in play where the central occupation is that of “homegrown” private cab drivers that sprang up in the black ghettos because the licensed cabbies wouldn’t go into black neighborhoods. Powerful stuff. As I have noted previously that says more in a couple of sentences about a central aspect of black experience in America at the end of the 20th century than many manifestos, treatises or sociological/psychological studies. That Wilson can weave that hard understanding into a play of less than one hundred pages and drive the plot line of a story that deals with the contradiction between black aspirations and the reality of the hard fact that many blacks were left behind heading into in the Reaganite 1980’s when all the “boats were to be lifted to by the rising tide”. Given the hard fate for most blacks in housing, education and jobs today Brother Wilson is on to something. As I have also noted previously- that, my friends, is still something to consider in the so-called “post-racial” Obamiad. We shall see.

*Joe Turner Get Away From My Door- August Wilson's "Joe Turner's Come And Gone"

Click On Title To Link To August Wilson Homepage.

Play Review

Joe Turner’s Come And Gone, August Wilson, New American Library, New York, 1988

The first couple of paragraphs of this review have been used as introduction to other August Wilson Century Cycle plays as well.

Okay, blame it on the recently departed Studs Terkel and his damn interview books. I had just been reading his "The Spectator", a compilation of some of his interviews of various authors, actors and other celebrities from his long-running Chicago radio program when I came across an interview that he had with the playwright under review here, August Wilson. Of course, that interview dealt with things near and dear to their hearts on the cultural front and mine as well. Our mutual love of the blues, our concerns about the history and fate of black people and the other oppressed of capitalist society and our need to express ourselves politically in the best way we can. For Studs it was the incessant interviews, for me it is incessant political activity and for the late August Wilson it was his incessant devotion to his century cycle of ten plays that covered a range of black experiences over the 20th century.


The old blues song "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" is a familiar one to me. I have heard it in many versions, some where Joe is a good guy and others, as here with August Wilson's concept of Joe, bad. Bad, indeed, for black people who tried in the second decade of the 20th century to try to make a decent life for themselves and their families. The specific case highlighted in the play is the fate of one Herald Loomis (and his daughter). Herald, having come up against Joe Turner's justice (read white Jim Crow justice) and paid the price with the lost of his wife, as well as part of his sanity, is searching to find his roots.

In the opening play of this series "Gem of the Ocean" we find the characters there trying to figure out what to do with their new found freedom. Here were are involved in a search to find meaning for the black family, the black man and anyone else who is confounded by the race question, circa 1910. One of the most dramatic lines in the whole play is when one of the boarders at Seth's Holly's house, Molly, who is about to go off with fellow boarder Jeremy for parts unknown in order to have fun or just to get a fresh start. She says- "I will go anywhere with you-except the South". That, my friends, says as much about this play as anything else. Of course, as always with Wilson one gets a deep dialogue, a very real feel for the confined space that the whites, North or South have left for blacks and with the exception of the link with the white travelling salesman Selig are not part of the flow of national capitalist society. Yes, "Joe Turner's Come and Gone", circa 1911 style, is gone but are we so sure that he is gone for good? As always, kudos, Brother Wilson.