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I just watched the 5/16 episode of Theater Talk with Angela Lansbury. During the interview she was asked about her role as the mother, Queen of Diamonds, in the 1962 classic version of The Manchurian Candidate; in a follow up question she was asked if she had seen the remake and her opinion–she replied “yes” and “no.” Lansbury said the acting, etc., was great, but how can you have any interest when you already know what the “secret is?”

I had to laugh to myself because, being as ‘stuck’ as I am with Oedipus on the brain right now, that is sort of the crux of Oedipus: that everyone knows what the secret is (except the characters in the play) and the dramatic irony makes it all the more powerful.

In an article I just finished reading by John Belton, he remarks that the attitude, if you want to call it that, expressed by Ms. Lansbury, is precisely the modern problem, here Belton quotes Frederic Jameson, (“Reification” 132):

“Thus the detective novel, unlike Greek tragedy, is ‘read for the ending’–the bulk of the pages becoming sheer devalued means to an end–in this case, the solution–which is itself utterly insignificant.” In other words, withing the contemporary culture of mass consumption, narrative undergoes a process of materialization and reification which abstracts it from the Real, gives it an “unnaturality” (Jameson, “Reification” 132), and reduces it to the status of an instrument, rendering it dramatically different from earlier forms of popular culture, such as Greek tragedy, which were “organic expressions…of distinct social communities” (Jameson, “Reification” 134).

935

This made me think of cigarettes, which some cigarette companies characterized as nicotine delivery systems.

Thus, Belton writes:

Detective fiction…emerges as a much more mechanistic restructuring of the reading process whereby phenomena are reorganized into formulaic categories which reduce the complexity of experience to a series of delays, snares, equivocations, partial answers, suspended answers, and jamming actions.

935

Oedipus, by contrast, was meant to be “read” for its irony, for the “interplay of various levels of knowledge (that of the audience, that of Oedipus)” 934 etc. Not for the end in-and-of-itself.

There is much more that Belton has to say about the differences of epistemology between Sophocles’ way of knowing and the modern detective writer’s way of knowing. But delving into this would go to far astray (which I may have done already) from the main point that struck me as I watched Theater Talk this morning.

Reference

John Belton. Language, Oedipus, and Chinatown, MLN, 106(5), Comparative Literature (Dec, 1991), pp933-950

So, this post is long past the performance run…but I still want to say something about it, as it was/is the first convergence show for 2009.

I don’t mean any disrespect to the other actors in the play, but this play clearly requires a strong female lead and it was very strongly delivered by Lucy Bredeson-Smith. In fact, it’s hard to conceive of this play working without her. When I see performances like the one Bredeson-Smith delivered, I am reminded of the stamina it takes to be an actor and I am forever in awe of it. I often think I’d like to give it a go, but doubt I lack that most fundamental of characteristics; the characteristic that makes it possible to deliver night after night after night. Eleven years ago I went to Stratford, Ontario to see some plays. The play that impressed upon me, the first time, this fact of the stamina required for theater acting was Tennesee William’s Night of the Iguana. For those of you unfamiliar with the play, a “reverend” and bus tour guide with a predilection for young women, has a nervous breakdown in Mexico. For the actor, Geordie Johnson, who played the reverend Shannon (and who needs a new design for his website), the intensity of almost constantly being on stage and the high energy required to portray a nervous breakdown is exhausting even to watch. And to think the man had to do performance after performance three to four times per week from April through November (and this just one play–he was also in two or three others). Needless to say, my admiration goes out to actors and, in this case, to Lucy Bredeson-Smith who delivered her role three nights a week for five weeks with no less energy and certainly not much less of a physical demand, given the frequent costuming changes (ah em, including some rather large knockers).

I won’t talk too much about the play, as it was not one of my favorites by Paula Vogel. I thought the concept of twins and their dual natures was interesting, as well as the dual nature represented in their sons. I though the use of nuclear holocaust as a metaphor was unique as well as the nightmarish dream sequences that were the apocalyptic visions of the twins. More to the political side is the diametrically opposed natures of the twins: one a rebel, hippie, anarchist, lesbian; the other a virginal, mother, conservative talk show host, mental case; combine to point out the schism in our national psyche.

The play was worth seeing though for Bredeson-Smith’s performance.