Taming Taming of the Shrew

This last weekend, I went to see a production of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, which I may not have ever seen before in person.

(Also new to me: the hillside theater at Zilker Park, which was very nice, especially with the addition of a little picnic basket.)

This version was set in 1890s Texas (more or less), with all the place names changed. So in the original, where a traveler says his trip will take him

...as far as Rome;
And so to Tripoli, if God lend me life

in this version, the traveler says that he's going to Dallas or Abilene or Fredericksburg. I can't remember which, which shows that that sort of info is easily swapped out. You could place this on a spaceship or in modern day New York and easily replace the place names without changing much about the play.

What you can't replace is the central plot, about Petruchio crushing Katherine's spirit by starving her, disrupting her sleep schedule, dressing her in his clothes, and teasing her with beautiful new clothes that he won't let her have. Or some combination of tactics that may remind you of standard cult activity. (Or standard activity at a military bootcamp, or Gitmo, or... Lots of organizations like to break people's spirit.)

(Well, teasing someone with clothes that they can't have is perhaps a little more specific; but in general, offering/teasing people with some reward is pretty standard.)

There's a lot of argument about the meaning of this plot. Is Shakespeare advocating it? Is he making fun of it? Is it about more than gender?

But however you take it, seeing a man torture a woman into submission is a little offputting.

(I remember going to see Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the University of Chicago Theater; and I remember the sound of the entire audience catching its breath when we remembered that this play was about a viciously unhappy couple in academia. I felt a similar moment at the theater when Petruchio starts starving his wife.)

Maybe it's just that I recently watched Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt that has me thinking about things this way, but I'm wondering what's a way to play Taming of the Shrew and be smart about this plot? Perhaps you could rewrite it literally as the story of a cult...

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 275: Anna Cora Mowatt, The Morning of the Débût (#275)

Anna Cora Mowatt, "The Morning of the Débût" (1856) from The American Stage: Writing on Theater from Washington Irving to Tony Kushner:

Meh. Nothing much to say here. Anna Cora Mowatt was a writer and actor, who wrote both a biography and a fictional account of stage-life. This is from the fictional version, but clearly close to some actual experience: a young actress first going on stage in a major role. Rather long, didn't keep my interest.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 273: Arthur Miller, Mare Island and Back (#273)

Arthur Miller, "Mare Island and Back" (1945) published for the first time in Arthur Miller: Collected Plays 1987–2004, with Stage and Radio Plays of the 1930s & 40s:

I'm excited to see Arthur Miller's radio plays get some attention in the LoA, if only because they are radio plays: a large segment of our cultural heritage that we don't really pay attention to, except for one-off incidents (Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?", Orson Welles's "War of the Worlds") or properties that stretched beyond radio (The Lone Ranger).

That said, I find it odd to read a radio play. Sure, a big reason why we don't remember a lot of radio work is that it was literally ephemeral, floating in on the airwaves at a particular time and place. And, again, sure, the Library of America focuses on books and printed material.

But really, at least some of these radio experiences were recorded and aren't that hard to find. Perhaps it's time that the LoA starts thinking about the multimedia experience of some of its collections.

Because, really, without the radio show, it feels like we're only hearing half the story here.

(And yes, if you couldn't tell, I don't have much to say about this so-so radio play: a doctor deals with three wounded men during the war, two who want to give up, and a third who believes he can fly a plane despite his amputation. Of course, this being Arthur Miller, everyone has a happy ending. OK, so at least I can say that: whether pressured or natively optimistic, Miller's work here doesn't really read like his other plays.)

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 225: Thornton Wilder, The Drunken Sisters (#225)

Thornton Wilder, "The Drunken Sisters" (1957) from Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays & Writings on Theater:

If all you know of Thornton Wilder is Our Town--which is all I know of him, besides the other LoA pieces of his I've read--"The Drunken Sisters" may seem a little odd: it's a Greek tragedy about Apollo trying to save the life of King Admetus, mostly (it seems) because of his affection for Queen Alcestis. He tricks the Fates by getting them drunk and then tricks them into a riddle contest, which is itself a trick since the riddle's answer is impossible without knowing who the riddler is.

There's some echo of the Wilder "just a stage" writing: the Fates throw invisible strings to lasso Apollo, in a scene that might be funny; while Apollo comments to the audience directly.

It's a fine short play, but I wonder more about the background here, as hinted at by the headnote: Wilder was always interested in Greek mythology and wanted to write a satyr play (the short play that followed the longer tragedy, often playing for laughs the earlier tragedy). Which means that this is Wilder's idea of comedy? Clearly not, but it's interesting to imagine him starting out comedic and ending up tragic, if that's what happened. (It happens to all of us at some time.)

A review of Lovecraft: Nightmare Suite

This is a little late, as I'm still in Los Angeles, running around. But here's a review of a play I saw.

Lovecraft: Nightmare Suite; adapted and directed by Dan Spurgeon; performed by the Visceral Company at the Lex Theatre

Lovecraft may not be the obvious choice for theatrical adaptation, with his SAT-prepped narrators and the indescribable weirdness they face (or run gibbering from before being subsiding into restful oblivion). How can you represent cyclopean buildings and squamous horrors on the stage?

The answer, of course, is: with puppets or shadow projections. If it's weird, keep it weird. And rather than run from those wordy, occasionally logorrheic narrators, you could--as Dan Spurgeon does--highlight them by having them tell us the stories directly. As the playbill essay notes, though Lovecraft's narrators generally seem to be men, some of these adaptations are narrated by women; and I generally agree that this change does bring some interesting depth or at least a new slant to these stories.

Lovecraft: Nightmare Suite features several such full stories, with some interstitial pieces that either help the transitions or merely give the actors time to change costumes, depending on your tastes. It doesn't help that these interstitials are too quick to let their weirdness build into something dreadful; and that the recitation seems somewhat garbled.

In order, the scenes are

1) "Prologue: Dreams": A dapper, self-assured fellow frames the scenes to come with some scattered Lovecraft quotes--a little "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (mankind's oldest emotion is fear), a little "From Beyond" (we'll see what dogs and cats are always going on about), a little "Nietzcheism and Realism" (it would be better not to exist at all). Good mood setting, and probably better if you're not playing "catch the Lovecraft quote."

2) "The Statement of Randolph Carter": Nervous Randolph Carter tells the jury--us--what really happened the night that Harley Warren disappeared. At some point, Harley shows up on the stage and the recital turns into a reenactment. It's fairly faithful to the story, as near as I remember it: they go to a graveyard in a swamp, uncover stairs down, Harley uses a telephone on a long wire, and then tells Randolph to run. As the first full story, "Randolph Carter" nicely shows us the general format--a little narration, a little dramatization--and the nonchalant appearance of Harley is suitably creepy: already looking half-dead, he walks on stage while Randolph is telling the story and just stands there until the reenactment starts, when he pulls two shovels off one wall of the stage. That was an especially nice touch, I thought, since that wall featured a bunch of evocative tools--axe (I think), shovels, saws. And after this, I could never be sure what was just decoration and what would play a part in the scenes.

3) Interstitial: a short poem about a cat, with a puppet cat walking across the stage. Walking, gliding, whatever.

4) "The Cats of Ulthar": Although (3) wasn't very engaging, it did serve pretty well as a transition into this piece, which was all done with puppets and costumes. The people of Ulthar are all waist-high puppets with slightly grotesque papier-mache faces. The "acting" of the puppets may be a little broad, like a pantomime show, but was pretty effective all the same; extra points for giving the gory-silly story some humor through these puppets. The narration was all done from the side, where the actress sat in a sort of pseudo-Egyptian glory. (Did she actually have her face painted with the Eye of Horus or was that just my imagination?) That design, I could take or leave, though the narration did add to the pantomime quality. And when the grand caravan of strange people came, it was authentically odd to see full-sized, masked figures among the tiny, grotesque Ultharites. The back wall of the stage, which was the projection screen, first showed the town--with the cat-killing couple's house off to the side; and then, during the rite, showed a projection of a house surrounded by cats turning around it.

5) Interstitial: a puppet head pops out of a box on the side of the stage and tells us about a tower, which is projected on the back wall.

6) "The Outsider": was cancelled due to actor injury.

7) Interstitial: with a blacklight on, various glowing bits came together to form a house. Was it a witch house? I couldn't say for sure.

8) "The Picture in the House": A bicycling genealogist takes shelter from a storm in a seemingly-abandoned house, only to discover that the ancient and isolated inhabitant obsesses over a book featuring cannibals. I honestly can't remember this story; and the idea of a cannibal hick in a cabin in the woods may not surprise anyone today. But the execution was well done. The authentic frontier gibberish of the Yankee hick was very off-putting, though largely because he kept going on about how that picture of cannibalism gave him queer thoughts. The lighting for this story was very dark, except when the lightning effect played or the book's cannibal-shop image played on the back wall. As with many other full pieces, the narrator here addressed us directly, while the other character didn't, which added an extra tension here: "Stop telling us about your bicycle," I wanted to yell, "there's a guy with an axe behind you!"

9) Interstitial: something about Fungi from Yuggoth, with green, plant-like, pincer-tipped arms reaching in from off-stage to menace a guy.

10) "Cool Air": One of the pieces where the narrator's gender gets flipped, but otherwise keeping close to the story (as I remember it). A woman takes a room at a boarding house, befriends the doctor above her, who keeps his room surprisingly cool, and who mentions something about a terrible brush with death that he had. Surprise! He already died years ago and when his cooling apparatus fails, he deliquesces. Like many earlier pieces, the narrator addresses the audience directly; but what really set this piece apart was that the doctor never appears directly on the stage. Instead, he appears only as a shadow projected on the back wall and never talks out loud, with his dialogue explained in brief through the narrator. Not only does this help to speed up the story by summarizing, it keeps the literally shadowy doctor at one remove from us and from the other people in the scene (narrator, landlady, workmen). I've never found this story particularly scary, or even really creepy, and instead, this version seemed more sad than anything else.

11?) Interstitial: There was something about inner Egypt. My question mark here comes from the fact that this might really have been part of the next scene.

12) "Nyartlathotep": Seemingly based on the original prose poem, this piece starts with a narrator going with a crowd to see a magic show presented by the titular character. Here, Nyartlathotep, the Egyptian-looking sorcerer-god, is a pretty stiff shadow puppet projected on the back wall, and his magic is just a few lights on a dark stage. But when the narrator objects and Nyartlathotep drives the crowd (the rest of the cast) into the street, the scene becomes more interesting: each character has a flashlight and soon they are all in unison jumping at strange sounds and turning their flashlights first left, now right. Then they fall under a magical compulsion that sees them marching out into alien landscapes, until our narrator is left alone again, in a suddenly and totally black stage.

13) "Epilogue: The Thing in the Moonlight": The dapper man from the prologue returns, only this time he introduces himself as Howard Phillips and is almost comically nervous. And he has a lot to be nervous about since he's stuck in an endless nightmare that he can't wake up from, haunted by various shapes. This piece seems to owe as much to Lovecraft's letter (where he recounts a dream) as to the later story written by J. Chapman Miske, which seems like an odd choice. But it does give the actors a second chance to appear as their most interesting characters of the night--the cannibal hick, the Egyptian-style narrator of "Cats," the nervous narrator of "Cool Air," etc. all appear as the shapes that haunt the narrator.

Overall, Lovecraft: Nightmare Suite isn't completely successful and makes some odd choices that lead it into unforced errors--mostly around those interstitial pieces; but the longer stories are generally strong, featuring direct acting and a touch of weirdness and dread through the simple special effects of light and shadow.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 184: Eugene O’Neill, The Long Voyage Home (#197)

Eugene O’Neill, "The Long Voyage Home" (1917) from Eugene O’Neill: Complete Plays 1913–1920:

Another O'Neill play about seamen sailing merchant vessels, a lot like the first one I read, "In the Zone." As in that play, this play has some hilarious descriptions that I would not want to see in a casting call: Fat Joe is a "gross bulk" with piggy eyes, a "slovenly barmaid" with a "stupid face" mechanically wipes down the bar, etc.

The action of the play is set up pretty quickly in dialogue between the bar owner and an ex-sailor whose job it is to lure people here. This is probably usually about drinking, but they are also prepared to shanghai sailors for a price.

Into this spider's web comes four sailors, each with their own heavy accent: three of them are drunk and not all that interesting--one seems to remember that this bar is crooked, one wants to find some women, etc.; but the fourth is a teetotaler who is going to save his money and move home to Sweden, to see his mother and brother and live on a farm.

Guess which one gets shanghaied?

The play is pretty simple and has some sense of dread: we know there's a bad end coming for this one guy who has a way out of this terrible life. And yet, for all that we like the Swede Olson, there's not really enough on the page to make us care about his end. Because he's a nice guy, something bad happens to him, which is a shame, but doesn't really call much more out of me. Again, this would probably be a very interesting play to stage and see, but reading it is a cool experience.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 168: Eugene O’Neill, In the Zone (#148)

Eugene O’Neill, "In the Zone" (1919) reprinted in Eugene O’Neill: Complete Plays 1913–1920:

A bunch of swabbies on a cargo ship suspect this one weird seaman might be a German spy or saboteur; so naturally they go through his stuff and read out his letters... which show that he's nothing more than a drunk who has lost the woman he loves through his drinking. (Which is somewhat reminiscent of his one published short story, "Tomorrow.")

Plays are curious things, existing both as literary objects (exemplified in the long tradition of the "closet drama," i.e., a play never meant to be performed but only read) and as blueprints for another medium. Reading this play, I see bits that would be difficult to get across naturalistically as given; for instance, we hear the date and time in the description rather than the dialogue. There are ways to loosely depict that--showing period items, putting in a calendar or a clock--but none of that is specified. So saying the time seems more like a message to the reader rather than the audience. (The time, in fact, is not all the important to the action, so it's not super important to get that info across.)

But "In the Zone" also has so many different accents that I think it would be played more easily than read: the reader has to keep in mind which one is Driscoll and which one is Scotty in a way that's done for you by actors. Though, as you may be able to tell from those names, O'Neill tries to make it easier by making everyone talk in very broad accents.

Somewhat like the classic Twilight Zone "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," the story here is of suspicion; but unlike that story, this story sticks with the relatively linear suspicion and never branches out into paranoia: the swabbies all suspect Smitty, they never veer from that suspicion, and that suspicion just sort of builds through them talking about it, rather than any ratcheting up of the plot. Perhaps that's why this is only a one-act play, because there's not much plot to keep it moving?