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I am continuing here with the second article from American Theatre from April that looked at Wallace Shawn. I know I am taken by him as a subject because I was acting as a dramaturg at Cleveland Public Theatre when they were producing The Designated Mourner, and I was surprised to see a photograph from that production in the American Theatre issue. I have, in fact, posted the piece that I wrote for the program at CPT on this blog.

The request that I write a program piece for the play was something I hadn’t expected and like many other young writers, I suppose, my experience of Wallace Shawn came from other areas of popular culture than through theatre. In fact, until I was asked to do the piece I didn’t even know he was a playwright. I read several critical articles, a book, read The Designated Mourner, Fever, and Aunt Dan and Lemon. I found that Case had a copy of My Dinner with Andre which I found fascinating and actually had an epiphany of sorts when Andre started talking about his “coincidence” experiences with The Little Prince and the hand tracings–for more on this, quite a fascinating talk–go to http://www.cloudnet.com/~jwinder/dinner.htm for a full transcript of My Dinner with Andre and do a browser search for “Saint-Exupéry” to find the section. (I am fascinated with stories of coincidence, which is one reason why I love the Invention of Solitude by Paul Auster, but I digress…)

The main point being that I found myself digging Wallace Shawn pretty hard during that time because he was definitely new and definitely different than where I had come from in the world of playwrighting and these articles in American Theatre really took me back to that experience.

The article on Shawn as a playwright covers a lot of the same ground that I did in my piece, so I’m not going to dwell on it. The only thing that I will point out is a cool radio play version of the Designated Mourner.

I think the two things that struck me most about this article are 1) Shawn’s true sense of disappointment in American theater and the sense, that we all know, that no one is going to it and that there are some things worth seeing and the true challenge of making that connection–of interested, active, passionate people to the theatre that would satisfy them. And for me, this is one of the big marketing challenges I see ahead for convergence-continuum: how do you get at the people who would be most interested in your theater when they have a notion of theatre that is different from what you’re doing; and further, how to connect with people who haven’t been in a theatre in years… 2) deals with something that Shawn says, on page 27:

I’ve always thought the best use of my talent would be as a literary writer. It would be a fantastic thing to have an impact on some specific problem in society–to write a play that whould have an influence on the debate about capital punishment in this country. But I’ve sort of decided I’m not going to organzie my life that way. And I’m going to follow this strange, somewhat old-fashioned belief in the idea of inspiration and that your subject picks you. You don’t pick the subject.”

I find that statement at once fascinating and also confirming for me. I’ve been dealing with this question, with no resolution, for some time. That is, what does it mean to be a playwright? Should I write “the well-made play” about a given topic. Should it be a well-formed, two-act play that deals with an issue–the injustice shown midwives in our society, the injustice shown empirics in the past (as did my play The Empiric), or any number of other issues that any one of us can come up with–always the most popular and glaring being the “abortion” play. That is, do you write plays that address topical themes of your day–relevant in some way to the culture or society–or do you seek some other level in yourself. Some form of expression that “finds you” as Shawn says, not that you choose.

For me, this was the main break between how I was approaching playwriting and how I have been altered since. I wrote The Empiric in 2005-2006 and it is about injustice and outrage; driven by sincere personal anger. Then I wrote A Howl in the Woods, now Lord of the Burgeoning Lumber–and it was authentic, pure–not motivated or consciously driven in any way by the logical mass between my ears. I let it direct me and it direct itself. The result? Something that will be staged, for one. Something that still is unsettling to me–because I don’t have an answer for what it is or what it means. It is from me, a part of me, and yet, the “me” that makes that definition has no way of defining clearly what it is–it is beyond a label.

So, knowing that Wallace Shawn addresses this question frankly in this article in American Theatre has lent me some comfort in a way of proceeding.

Life is tough. It’s really tough when you’re a kid. So many things you can’t do. You want to get out, be yourself, do…well, whatever it is that you want to do. But you just can’t. And sometimes there’s that great longing for something or someone to help you pass the time. If you’re lucky, you’ve got a sibling to beat on; or maybe two. But if you’re an only child, what are you going to do? Well, one option that’s always open is to invent an imaginary friend. It’s rare that they don’t do what you like, and rarer still when they don’t have time for you, right? Well, not if you’re Lucy. Her imaginary friend, Mr. Marmalade, doesn’t have a whole lot of time. He’s busy. Very busy. So busy, in fact, that he’s an imaginary person who has to have an imaginary assistant to help him out.

This largely is the premise of the play by Noah Haidle. Oh, and then there’s the very seriously warped adult humor layered on top of the whole thing. For instance, kids like to play doctor. Lucy (Lauren B. Smith) likes to play doctor and we see her do so early on with the little brother (Larry–played by Tom Kondilas) of the baby-sitter’s foul-mouthed boyfriend. But when playing doctor Mr. Marmalade (Wes Shofner) likes to do things like…oh, have his prostate examined. (For those of you unfamiliar with this exam, it requires going through the backdoor, as it were.) But there’s much more. Mr. Marmalade carries a suit case filled with porn, dildos, and has some bad habits, including alcoholism, a cocaine addiction, and a proclivity for physically abusing his assistant. As you might imagine, Mr. Marmalade is quite a lot to deal with. Mr. Marmalade would be a lot to deal with for a 40-year-old, let alone a 4-year-old.

Lucy, though, is pretty good at handling Mr. Marmalade–at least during the five minute increments he actually attends her. When he’s not around, Lucy has some other things to deal with: her mother, Sookie (Lucy Bredeson-Smith) who works all day and goes out with a variety of men at night; and then there’s her over-sexed babysitter, Emily (Teresa McDonough) who only stops watching the television when her hard-ass boyfriend (Geoffrey Hoffman) stops by for a little sugar. Fortunately for Lucy, when the boyfriend stops by he brings along his little brother, as mentioned above, Larry. Larry has issues, too: for instance, he’s five years old and wants to kill himself. Pretty extreme for one so small, right? He doesn’t like to be touched either and is pretty stiff and reserved. But Lucy does a good job of breaking him out of this and soon they’re playing doctor like nobody’s business.

Time expands in Lucy’s imaginary realm and while the events (we discover at the end) all take place over the course of one night, the imaginary reality spreads them over days. Lucy and Larry sleep after their round of doctor and, when they wake, Lucy kicks Larry out. Mr. Marmalade’s assistant comes in, shocked by the infidelity he sees, he panics, and soon after we see the real Mr. Marmalade melt down in a fit of jealous rage. Lucy, though, is saved by Larry–who runs Mr. Marmalade off.

We then get to see the “relationship” between Lucy and Larry develop along predictable lines. The honeymoon ends quickly, then Larry is bringing home his buddies to eat dinner (without consulting “the wife” first), and then there’s that unwanted pregnancy. Soon, Larry is out on his ass and Mr. Marmalade is back in the picture. Sober, polite, and ‘saved,’ Mr. Marmalade is the picture of courtesy and romance–and more importantly–he is fully attentive to Lucy. But, alas, as with Larry, things just will not stay heavenly for good, and soon the romantic get-away to Mexico ends with a crying baby and Mr. Marmalade in a wife-beater swilling canned beer and swearing like a sailor.

In the end, Mr. Marmalade can’t take it, Lucy kills the baby, and Mr. Marmalade leaves.

Back in real time, Lucy’s mom, Sookie, comes home with Mr. Next-in-Line and the evening ends with Sookie pissed about the ketchup all over her neglige (which Lucy is wearing). But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel; the next day, as Sookie leaves for work, Larry comes over to ask Lucy if she’ll go outside and play dodge ball. After years inside sweltering with Mr. Marmalade and Lucy in their oppressive relationship the promise of playing ball outside is a glory indeed.

Mr. Marmalade is a pretty searing and terrible examination of the twisted relationships that adults often have. Of course, extreme light shines best to make the shading bearable for those of us who have twisted relationships that don’t quite go as far as Lucy’s with Mr. Marmalade, but the point ends up being the same. The petty demands, the squabbling, and the dis-satisfaction are all too familiar. The use of children as the play’s vehicle is, of course, darkly comic and adds to the fun and outrageous tone of the play, but it does wear thin after a while. The piece definitely requires the willful suspension of disbelief, but there are some nice highlights: for instance, when Larry brings home his boisterous friends (a flower and a cactus), they interrupt a dinner consisting of chocolate milk, cookies, and cheesy poofs. The whole dinner ends in a chaos of a food fight.

Arthur Grothe does a good job of directing the piece and keeping things moving. Lauren Smith is to be congratulated for the strong work she puts out there as the four-year-old Lucy. And Kondilas’ Larry is hilarious. The intensely romantic re-union scene between Marmalade and Lucy has the highlight of both Stuart and Geoffrey Hoffman greased-up, shiny, and slim as flamingo-dancing waiters prancing about. Sade Wolfkitten does a great job with the set and stage management and all the others do what they do best to make a convergence production what we’ve come to expect.