Dueling Reviews
Ah, anti-realism. Ain't it grand. A touch of Dada, a dash of Surrealism, and a little Expressionism just to drive home the point. Sometimes it works, like in the case of Mike Pape's new play (which just finished its run at Reed College), the flower peddler and some time it irritates the fuck out of you, like in defunkt theatre (theatTRE!?!? Go back to fucking Canadia you jerkoffs.) new production of Mac Wellman's so-smart-its-idiotic play Hyacinth Macaw. I've never been a fan of anti-realism. I suppose I should reveal my biases. I was raised an objective child by objective parents. Things were things where I came from. They didn't represent things, evoke things, symbolize, or reference. And I know it's hard being a subjective artist. You've got all these awesome Ideas floating around in your Imagination and they keep knocking into cold hard reality and they never seem to fit. And so you try to translate them into some kind of art or theater and all you've got to work with is words and actors and sets and props that already exist and they never seem just right. And then you see all those "objective" artists writing plays about stuff that happens to real people or stuff that could very plausibly happen to real people or stuff that probably wouldn't happen to real people but it would be cool if it did. And you think these artists are lazy and stupid and don't understand Time and Death and Truth and all there little family dramas and political plays are just distracting people from the real important Ideas (like the one about how Ideas aren't really important anyway, etc.) you're trying soooo so hard to communicate. Really, I sympathize.
But when you do come up with a piece that you think really gets to the heart of the matter that you've been thinking sooo hard about for sooo long and with everybody would think about more and this piece ends up being boring and non-sensical and dumb and headache inducing, I have to say, from the bottom of my all too real heart, sorry buddy, I can tell you worked hard on this, but fuckyougivememymoneyback.
That was my response to defunkts Macaw. I got in for free and they had a tiny audience (two members [about 20%] of which walked out before the "climax" in the second act) so pity overcame my rage. It was long. It was dense. It was full of annoying alliteration of words you'd have to look up in the dictionary. It was bad. I've heard this guy Wellman's been compared to Gertrude Stein. I've never read any Stein but now she's guilty by association. So are the Obies which this guy won apparently. Like giving Kissinger the Nobel or Milli Vanilli the Grammy or James Cameron the Oscar. They're meaningless now. And the fault all goes to the playwrite and the guy who picked this playwrite. The actors were fine, even quite good occasionally. The set boasted of being 99% post-consumer recylced and costing $17. It was quite awesome and impressive while still looking cheap with dignity. Lights were great, the whole production was great. Which is why, I have to wonder why the good folks at defunkt decided to put on this utter stinker of fraud play. Emperor's got know clothes folks. I know y'all were a little intimidated during the read-through to say you didn't get it and you thought it was a little long and slow. Maybe the director or "the guy who picked this playwrite" even assuaged your concerns by giving you some grad school explanation for why this play totally rules. But let's all admit it now guys, this play fucking sucks. Sucks the life out of you. Sucks the happy endorphins out of your brain. It makes the hours you sit through it awful, tedious, and in the end, wasted.
I must say I was expecting exactly the same thing out of Michael Pape's 'flower peddler'. When he pitched it to me at a party it sounded like dada hippy nonsense bullshit. And it is, a little. But not really. Michael's take on anti-realism is much more fun and accessible. Starting from the open sequence (see how I'm psyched to give you plot summaries and tell you what happened. That's cuz I liked it. For the record --i.e. just cuz I have to-- Macaw's about a strange man who comes to tell a young girl she's an orphan because her father's really a duplicate and he's come to replace him and then mom gets lured away by a handsome chinaman folk singer and the strange man and the daughter bury the moon in the ground.) where a mute flower peddler tries to give away flowers to trenchcoated business-folk who are too busy to notice. Instantly I was comforted. This was expressionism. Reality, amped up for commentary's sake. As the prelude ends two new scenes are established which form the structure of the play. On one side of the stage is a mother and a daughter and a silent little girl (Rosemary). Dad's an asshole, mom's nervous, you've seen it before. It's great. Played to the hilt an over the top. Awesome. On the other side of the stage is a stranger scene in which a stupid henchman type forces two apparent slaves into acting out scenes of rape and violence over and over with fake swords. Strange, confusing, unreal, to be sure, but obviously referencing our entertainment industry and the perverse obsessions of Hollywood. Cool, cool, I'm with it. The two scenes develop in a nice even back and forth structure that remains constant and regular enough to be satisfying while mixing in enough scenic embellishments and innovations to keep it interesting. Eventually we learn that the slaves are under the command of an evil rival of the dad. They apparently had great Top Hats in college but the dads was just a little bit better and the rival slave-master guy has been jealous ever since. Sick of her family and the shrinks they bring in to medicate their child, silent little Rosemary runs away. This paralleled nicely with the escape attempt by the two slaves (ah, symmetry. It's back baby! Symmetry is totally the new asymmetry.) Make a short story shorter, the slaves find the runaway, take her back to their lair where the slavemaster tries to get them to rape and kill her for real and then she's saved by the mute flower peddler. Happy Endings! Gotta love it. The whole thing worked on its own terms, commented on my society, had a satisfying dramatic structure and coherent characters with clear motivations. Call me lame and old fashioned, but I think that's what makes a good play. (and I can hear your smirk as you read this Mac Wellman and I reply with a punch in your nose. It's symbolic.)
But when you do come up with a piece that you think really gets to the heart of the matter that you've been thinking sooo hard about for sooo long and with everybody would think about more and this piece ends up being boring and non-sensical and dumb and headache inducing, I have to say, from the bottom of my all too real heart, sorry buddy, I can tell you worked hard on this, but fuckyougivememymoneyback.
That was my response to defunkts Macaw. I got in for free and they had a tiny audience (two members [about 20%] of which walked out before the "climax" in the second act) so pity overcame my rage. It was long. It was dense. It was full of annoying alliteration of words you'd have to look up in the dictionary. It was bad. I've heard this guy Wellman's been compared to Gertrude Stein. I've never read any Stein but now she's guilty by association. So are the Obies which this guy won apparently. Like giving Kissinger the Nobel or Milli Vanilli the Grammy or James Cameron the Oscar. They're meaningless now. And the fault all goes to the playwrite and the guy who picked this playwrite. The actors were fine, even quite good occasionally. The set boasted of being 99% post-consumer recylced and costing $17. It was quite awesome and impressive while still looking cheap with dignity. Lights were great, the whole production was great. Which is why, I have to wonder why the good folks at defunkt decided to put on this utter stinker of fraud play. Emperor's got know clothes folks. I know y'all were a little intimidated during the read-through to say you didn't get it and you thought it was a little long and slow. Maybe the director or "the guy who picked this playwrite" even assuaged your concerns by giving you some grad school explanation for why this play totally rules. But let's all admit it now guys, this play fucking sucks. Sucks the life out of you. Sucks the happy endorphins out of your brain. It makes the hours you sit through it awful, tedious, and in the end, wasted.
I must say I was expecting exactly the same thing out of Michael Pape's 'flower peddler'. When he pitched it to me at a party it sounded like dada hippy nonsense bullshit. And it is, a little. But not really. Michael's take on anti-realism is much more fun and accessible. Starting from the open sequence (see how I'm psyched to give you plot summaries and tell you what happened. That's cuz I liked it. For the record --i.e. just cuz I have to-- Macaw's about a strange man who comes to tell a young girl she's an orphan because her father's really a duplicate and he's come to replace him and then mom gets lured away by a handsome chinaman folk singer and the strange man and the daughter bury the moon in the ground.) where a mute flower peddler tries to give away flowers to trenchcoated business-folk who are too busy to notice. Instantly I was comforted. This was expressionism. Reality, amped up for commentary's sake. As the prelude ends two new scenes are established which form the structure of the play. On one side of the stage is a mother and a daughter and a silent little girl (Rosemary). Dad's an asshole, mom's nervous, you've seen it before. It's great. Played to the hilt an over the top. Awesome. On the other side of the stage is a stranger scene in which a stupid henchman type forces two apparent slaves into acting out scenes of rape and violence over and over with fake swords. Strange, confusing, unreal, to be sure, but obviously referencing our entertainment industry and the perverse obsessions of Hollywood. Cool, cool, I'm with it. The two scenes develop in a nice even back and forth structure that remains constant and regular enough to be satisfying while mixing in enough scenic embellishments and innovations to keep it interesting. Eventually we learn that the slaves are under the command of an evil rival of the dad. They apparently had great Top Hats in college but the dads was just a little bit better and the rival slave-master guy has been jealous ever since. Sick of her family and the shrinks they bring in to medicate their child, silent little Rosemary runs away. This paralleled nicely with the escape attempt by the two slaves (ah, symmetry. It's back baby! Symmetry is totally the new asymmetry.) Make a short story shorter, the slaves find the runaway, take her back to their lair where the slavemaster tries to get them to rape and kill her for real and then she's saved by the mute flower peddler. Happy Endings! Gotta love it. The whole thing worked on its own terms, commented on my society, had a satisfying dramatic structure and coherent characters with clear motivations. Call me lame and old fashioned, but I think that's what makes a good play. (and I can hear your smirk as you read this Mac Wellman and I reply with a punch in your nose. It's symbolic.)
posted by E at 6:08 PM
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