On Execution

There's all the work that needs to be done
It's late, for revision
There's all the time and all the planning
And songs, to be finished
- LCD Soundsystem, “Someone Great”

Stephen Sondheim
(1930 - 2021)

Losing a great person of art provides a moment of reflection. You hold for five, and look around and appraise not only what they have done, but also the impression they have made, what else may be absent had they never begun. Perhaps even more significant, when you are made aware of what currently is.

Because, oh! There is a revival of a musical by Stephen Sondheim on Broadway right now, and not just any revival, but one for which he actively participated, recentering the central protagonist to be a woman; Company.

A few openly gay playwrights have bristled as their works were psychoanalyzed for queer themes. If George and Martha were meant to be a gay couple, said Edward Albee, I would have written them as a gay couple. This is also the case with Company, which many have interpreted as centering a gay man who cannot acknowledge his sexuality.

If we must make Company autobiographical (and Sondheim would prefer we not) it touches not on the creator’s sexuality, but perhaps instead his inability to commit to a relationship, which his biography suggests may be true, up to a certain age.

There are no doubt people from all walks of life for whom the solitary life of Bobby/Bobbie is very familiar.

Reimagining the character as a woman who cannot commit, he had no problem with that, at least not during his final years. And that he would be engaged in the process, in his late 80s. He did not need to do that. But of course he did.

Of the many videos people are sharing today, one features Sondheim accepting his 1972 Tony Award for Follies, when he quoted the playwright David Trainer. He said that theater is “the only medium that acknowledges the presence of the audience, and that is why it will never die.”

I believe the theater will never die because of its fluidity. It resists definity. No, maybe Shakespeare did not intend Hamlet to be a woman, Iago to be black, Antonio to be gay (I mean, Antonio is totally gay) but they can be. You can do that production. I have seen them.

You can stage Into the Woods in an attic, Sweeney Todd where the actors play all the instruments, Assassins with a company of teenagers. Just remember: Having just the vision's no solution, everything depends on execution.

Yesterday, my friend Brian compared Into the Woods to Hamlet. “I'll see any production, any time and still find something new.” That, I believe, is the definition of a classic. Not that it can survive interpretation, but that it thrives on interpretation. 

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (2006)

The past two weekends some friends have been meeting on Zoom to read Edarwad Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. 

There has been a running gag among the actor-teachers that someday Lisa and I should play Martha and George, and so we did. We made it a drinking game. 

Drink whenever:

1. Martha or George make an ageist comment to Nick or Honey
2. Martha mentions her father
3. anyone mentions George and Martha's son
4. someone sings the "Virginia Woolf" song
5. anyone mentions alcohol

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. You will die.

This will probably be the only time I have the opportunity to channel the person of George, and it was a pleasure. I was particualrly inspired by the perfomance Bill Irwin gave, almost fifteen years ago and which I was fortunate enough to catch in the West End.

At that time I made note of it in the blog I kept for performances of I Hate This, which, in addition to visiting my brother's family, was another reason I was in London at that time. I was struck at that time about the theme of childlessness. 

Here are my thoughts from the time, note the appearance of a young David Harbour who has since achieved fame as Sheriff Hopper in Stranger Things.

I Hate This Blog: March 30, 2006

After a quick meal of fish and chips, Henrik and I took off to see the recent revival of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" with Bill Irwin and Kathleen Turner at the Apollo. Okay, not British, not the playwright, not the actors, but who cares? Couldn't see it in New York, thrilled to be able to see it in London. Besides, Henrik has never seen or read it, ever, so I knew it would be a kick for him.

Martha & George

It is as good as they say. I was on my guard for an understudy notice to be up when we arrived, but it wasn't. I knew the entire cast had gotten nominated for Tonys. Henrik tells me Ms. Turner missed a few performances a month ago, and when she opened her mouth last night I almost wished for her sake she'd taken the night off, her classic, dusky voice just sounded very, very tired. Big, but tired.

The event began a bit symbolically, as we took our seats, the folks from Chicago sitting next to us were being harangued by a red-headed drunk. Apparently he had been sitting on one side of them, and then the actual owner of that seat arrived, and then he had been in our seat, on the other side. He started talking to them politely, and then got loud and insulting, "You Americans think you're big shots, but your just fucking middle class," and like that. There were about a dozen people gesticulating wildly at the ushers and he was eventually escorted out.

Our aisle mates and we chatted for a bit, Henrik reporting that was the first time he had ever seen something like that happen in a dozen years of British theater-going. We concluded being verbally assaulted by an alcoholic wasn't exactly an inappropriate way to begin that night's performance.

SPOILERS AHEAD

I was probably supposed to read Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" in college, but I didn't. I know I haven't seen the Mike Nichols film, and some say that's for the best. In any case, the only other time I've seen it was (surprise) at Great Lakes Theater Festival, about ten years ago. I really enjoyed that production. In fact, having never even read it before, I was shocked at how great the first act was, and equally amused to hear another audience member heading for the lobby during the first intermission saying loudly, "This is terrible, there's nothing to like about any of these people!" Great drama, very funny, and it was still pissing people off after 35 years! That's theater.

What I did not get ten years ago was the whole "no son" thing. Thought it was symbolic. Maybe there was a son, but he's gay or something so they don't want to talk about him. Or it was just a game. The kind of game that people don't want to have children play, those kinds of people. Intellectuals.

Except it's stated pretty clearly at the end, they cannot have children. Cannot. In the days of my ignorance, the idea that people cannot have children was a very simple concept. Intercourse, but no conception. You cannot have children.

NICK: (to George, quietly) You couldn't have ... any?

GEORGE: We couldn't.
MARTHA: (a hint of communion in this) We couldn't.

What I did not know at that time was that means trying to have children. A lot. Hoping for children. Having miscarriages, maybe a lot of them. Stillbirths. Not so simple.

Honey & Nick

The play takes place on the advent of the 21st birthday of this imaginary son. A private ritual, George and Martha make up a life for their son, and on this night she breaks the rules and tells someone else. And on this night, George kills him. It's over. He's dead.

So he was never imaginary. Was there a boy? A small boy, a stillborn boy, or a boy who died shortly after birth? He was real.

"There's nothing to like about any of these people." Maybe not. It's ugly in its hysterical-ness. It's a play about failure, so many different kinds of failure, for everyone in the room. The younger couple have much in common with the older one. Nick and Honey can't have children, either. Hmn. Another take on the word "hysterical."

The performances were uniformly brilliant, but I simply adored Bill Irwin. A monument to passive aggression. But I was also struck by Mireille Enos' Honey. Never gave her character much notice before, I think I had the least sympathy for her in the past. But she was heartbreaking. Oh yes, mousy and yet so, so sympathetic. So vulnerable.

It was a great show. Capped by a migraine. Ah well.

The Season (book)

Twenty years ago my friend Roger, a Chicago theater director, recommended to me William Goldman’s book The Season. He told me he reads it every year.

Shortly thereafter, the wife found a fine first edition at a local bookstore, and I promptly read it. I understood what Roger was getting at, what an instructive and engaging read it is, and fully intended to follow his lead and re-read it the following year.

Last month the author, William Goldman, best-known as the screenwriter for films such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, and The Princess Bride, passed away at the age of 87. His book, The Season, stared at me, untouched, from the bookshelf in my office.

So I finally re-read The Season, a thorough and utterly demoralizing report on the state of the American professional theater, specifically Broadway, exactly fifty years ago.

Goldman received a grant which he employed to cover the entire 1967-68 Broadway season, attending every show, and interviewing a wide variety of players; actors, designers, technicians, stage hands, directors, producers, ticket agents, ticket “brokers”, audience members, and critics, and everyone in between.

One of the bitter joys of reading this book is how Goldman aggressively takes the piss out of everyone, from Clive Barnes to Neil Simon to Mike Nichols. It’s also tiresome, because we love Clive Barnes and Neil Simon and Mike Nichols, and while the author makes us complicit in his insult humor by making us his audience, his sense of superiority over absolutely everyone in “the business” means it’s hard to take any of it seriously, and he is deadly serious.

He’s also really funny. So you stick with it. Even through all the data, and there is an eye-crossing amount of data. After a joyride through perplexing London transfers, horribly ill-thought musical concepts, and cringe-worthily dated American plays on the Generation Gap (plays as memorable as films like Skiddoo and I Love You, Alice B, Toklas) Goldman draws his final conclusion on the fate of Broadway and American theater in general in an overlong final chapter, “What Kind of Day Has It Been?” (Aaron Sorkin fans, take note) stuffed with the results of a survey he himself commissioned; percentages and lists and numbers, numbers, numbers, asking “What do audience members want?”

Freud once asked a similar question about women, with a comparable conclusion. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

His prognosis for Broadway was dire, and while this may have been a cautionary tale when I first read the book two decades ago, during the time since there has been something of a correction. And the truth is much of what he said needed to change has born itself out, namely through diversification.

During the 1960s the makers of film, and those who produce and distribute them, discovered that you didn’t have to make all films appropriate for everyone, and Goldman concludes, naturally, that the same should apply to the creators of theater. Remember, we’re talking big-budget, professional theater. Plays, and specially musicals, even on Broadway, can be directed to segmented audiences and you can still make a pile.

He also predicted the increasing irrelevance of Broadway itself, and how the best playwrights were Off-Broadway or even (egad) off-off-Broadway. Recently I heard the critics from Three On The Aisle note how some of the best voices aren’t even in New York, which is crazy, I know.

Yet we have seen Broadway rebound, and while it is true that there are far, far fewer straight plays being produced for Broadway as compared to fifty years ago, that also means there are also far, far fewer shitty plays being produced for Broadway as compared to fifty years ago -- every single one of those fifty year-old plays, it should be noted, was written by a white man.

Speaking of which, race and gender are entirely not addressed in this book, and it is good to remember the progress which has been made, even in just the past few years. Every play referenced in The Season, and there are so many of them (e.g., Staircase, Dr. Cook's Garden, The Freaking Out of Stephanie Blake) was written, directed and produced, and (with a handful of exceptions) performed by Caucasians, and women are merely in the performance category. But as much as Goldman likes to be cheeky about closeted homosexuals (it isn’t pretty) and Jews (for which he claims a pass) he has nothing to say about this disparity. It didn’t occur to him to mention it.

When I first read The Season, it was at a time I thought of myself as a director. Now, it is a playwright. And as such, here are my three major takeaways in 2018, or Things I Learned from William Goldman about Playwriting:

1. The third act of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf sucks.
2. No one has ever actually enjoyed watching Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
3. Only stupid assholes who can’t write write the book for musicals.

Wisdom for the ages! I look forward to reading The Season again in 2038.