A Raisin in the Sun

Review

The first three-quarters of Lorraine Hansberry’s widely acclaimed, historically significant play, A Raisin in the Sun, reminded me somewhat of Tennessee Williams’s Southern gothic melodramas. The Younger family, the drama’s central characters, are a dysfunctional, dichotomous lot. Their personalities clash in slightly over-0rchestrated ways, with the contrast between idealistic dreamer Walter Lee and his condescendingly intellectual sister Beneatha as the most apparent and obvious conflict. Aside from the child Travis, almost every character speaks in a manner that is slightly exaggerated, as if they are cognizant of the fact that they are being watched by an audience. Even though the play is completely realistic and believable, there is still an odd element of surreality suspended over the earlier, establishing scenes.

I found the first three-quarters admittedly boring. Plays whose central narrative orbit around argumentative extended families full of outsized personalities and undersized pocketbooks are a dime a dozen. Much like stories of drug/alcohol addiction and redemption, it’s a theme that is difficult to pull off with originality and unique insight. Even in 1959, when A Raisin in the Sun was first published, tales of siblings and parents who butted heads constantly still dominated the stage. What makes A Raisin in the Sun essential reading is the last quarter, where Hansberry begins to dissect and explore race relations in her native Chicago.

When Mama Younger, the family’s tough but loving matriarch, purchases a house in a predominantly caucasian neighborhood, the story shifts its emphasis from the filial dynamic to how the Youngers relate to society as a whole. A meeting with one of their new neighbors, elected to serve as a spokesman for the rest, proves that prejudice and racism do not have to involve a display of violence to be caustic and hurtful. Sometimes it can assume the form of passive aggression masquerading as kindness or altruism. This is a very important lesson for readers to learn, and when the play is placed in its historical context it is easy to understand why Hansberry was praised for her bravery. It was a sociological phenomenon that needed desperately to be expressed and addressed, and once I reached that point in the play I finally understood why English and drama teachers consider this a classic and include it on their syllabi.

Bibliographical Information

Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. New York: Signet, 1988.

Further Reading

One of my favorite plays of familial discord is The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, by Paul Zindel. It was published 14 years after A Raisin in the Sun, but also explores how children from the same mother can still grow up to become vastly different, incongruous, personalities living under the same roof. I thought the analogy of the science fair project that parallels the central conflict an interesting take on a standard theme.

~Riot

[Diversity Rocks! Challenge Progress: 3/24]

Topdog/Underdog

Review

On its surface, Suzan Lori Parks’s tense play Topdog/Underdog is about the dysfunctional relationship between two down-on-their-luck, card hustling brothers, named Lincoln and Booth, and the brutal tensions that mount between them in a ramshackle apartment. But beneath that lies a gritty urban fable, a Cain and Abel story set against the backdrop of a crumbling slum.

Written in a vernacular style, the play features only the two brothers and their interactions in the dingy, claustrophobic main room of Booth’s apartment. Recently divorced and retired from the card hustling business, Lincoln lands a job working as a whitefaced Abraham Lincoln in the shooting gallery at the local arcade. His younger brother wiles away his days honing his hustling skills, stealing luxury goods from high-end stores, and masturbating fervently. Parks heavily emphasizes the contrasts between them, only occasionally slicing open the antagonism to reveal their few commonalities. And it works. By turning the readers’ attention towards their differences in a heavily binary manner, she allows the burgeoning discord in the tiny apartment to fester and grow rather than remain static.

Lincoln and Booth’s gradually expanding enmity is illustrated in both obvious and subtle ways. Parks’s choice of names, obviously, immediately establishes their relationship as a strained one. Likewise, the early reveal that Lincoln is now trying to live his life within the boundaries of the law while his brother has no qualms about resorting to thievery and card hustling to land a quick dollar or two. But she underscores the more visible opposites with quick, barely perceptible flashes as well. For example, Booth hustles cards with the red suite as the winner, while Lincoln prefers black. The scenes are written with the intention of being performed with unnaturally rapid speech, rendering them difficult to decipher, but adding depth and texture to the overarching theme. What makes this play brilliant is that Parks understands that theme and character require layers both blatant and obscured to best convey the narrative. Because of this, her relatively obvious conclusion comes off as a necessity rather than a hackneyed cop-out.

Bibliographical Information

Parks, Suzan-Lori. Topdog-Underdog. New York: Theatre Communications Group, Incorporated, 2001.

Further Reading

It may seem a little unorthodox as a recommendation, but as I was reading Topdog/Underdog, I couldn’t help but flashback to John Steinbeck’s epic tale of the Salinas Valley East of Eden. But it makes sense in its own way. Both concern themselves with antagonistic relationships between brothers, using the tale of Cain and Abel as a starting point. Their settings and interpretation of the source material may be vastly different, but at their core, both Topdog/Underdog and East of Eden are ultimately tragic stories of how families can unravel because of intense, negative rivalries.

~Riot

Speed-the-Plow

Review

Although Hollywood satire has become something of an overdone theme, few writers are as adept at dissecting the grim reality lurking behind its slick exterior as David Mamet. His play Speed-the-Plow is not his greatest foray into this territory, but it is certainly successful in conveying the self-serving actions and manipulations of the literal and figurative “Old Whore[s]” (25) who populate the film industry.

Speed-the-Plow cannot be fully appreciated if there is any break taken during reading. That was a mistake I made, and I’d prefer that other readers not do the same. Mamet’s dramas and screenplays are characterized by dialogue as rapid as machine gun fire, and considerable energy is lost if consumed in bits and pieces throughout the day. The frenetic first scene involves producers Charlie Fox and Bobby Gould concieving of an eye-rollingly clichéd “prison film” (13), pausing intermittently to ruminate on artistic integrity versus fame and profit. At times Mamet implies that Hollywood considers both concepts to be mutually exclusive, as if profit can only be obtained through soulless, plastic retreads pitched towards the lowest common denominator. In spite of being published in 1988, much of the dialogue rings eerily true twenty years later – most especially Gould’s lamenting that “guys want [him] to do remakes of films [that] haven’t been made yet” (6). The tone of the piece overall is blacker than Rachel Ray’s soul, and wickedly funny as a result.

The three characters themselves are comicly one-dimensional caricatures of Hollywood archetypes, which reinforces the biting nature of the satire far moreso than if Mamet had taken the time to flesh them out. Gould seeks to create art, Fox to amass a fortune, and substitute secretary Karen has no qualms about literally prostituting her body for a career boost. This arrogant trio’s single-minded pursuit of their respective goals adds edge to the play rather than detracting from the main theme, an exceedingly difficult device which Mamet employs with aplomb.

Bibliographical Information

Mamet, David. Speed-the-Plow. New York: Grove Press, 1988.

Further Reading

David Mamet’s screenplay for State and Main updates the content of Speed-the-Plow for the new millennium. I found it a richer and more scathingly humorous parody than its earlier counterpart, but both should provide plenty of entertainment for fans of the genre. Likewise, Nathanael West’s 1939 novel The Day of the Locust places the Hollywood satire in considerably darker territory than Mamet, weaving in trappings of the then-burgeoning noir movement into his cynical plot.

~Riot, who is sick and apologizes for posting such short reviews lately

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein

Review

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein is a one-character play commissioned by actress Pat Carroll for playwright Marty Martin as an homage to the late writer and patron of the arts. It is written as a recounting of her life in “the studio at twenty-seven rue de Fleurus in Paris in 1938″ (1), where she lived with her brother Leo and, later, her lover Alice B. Toklas. The flat served as one of the many central locations for the avant-garde, modernist, fauvist, and cubist movements, and played host to expatriat Americans of the Lost Generation such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Martin does not skimp on name-dropping the broad range of artists, writers, dancers, and other creative types that Stein touched with her open personality and generous patronage during her lifetime. Though a one-woman play, readers do get a genuine feel for Stein’s genuine love of people, conversation, and the pursuit of portraying their attempts to make sense of existence.

In his introduction, Robert A. Wilson states that in the first performance, both Martin’s play and Carroll’s acting was “so lifelike…that some persons who actually knew Stein have wept unabashedly and uncontrollably on seeing this play”* (vii). Truth be told, I got the impression that Gertrude Stein³ was at its best witnessed rather than read. Though one could make that argument about drama in general, few deny that there are certainly plays out there who stand on their own as works of literary achievement. I found the play’s greatest strength its only obstacle to being read as literature rather than solely as a script.

Martin does an excellent job of emulating Gertrude Stein’s unique, almost staccato writing style. So well, in fact, that readers may as well pick up one of Stein’s own novels instead! That is not to say that the play was not enjoyable in its own right, but there were moments when I would have preferred to reach over to my bookshelf and pluck The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas from its resting place and start reading that. If Gertrude Stein³ were to be performed where I was living or visiting, I would likely go see it performed. It sometimes seems as if the play is meant to be experienced visually far more than read when compared with others in the genre.

*Full Quote: “So lifelike it is that some persons who actually knew Stein have wept unabashedly and uncontrollably on seeing this play.” Edited to better incorporate into the sentence.

Bibliographical Information

Martin, Marty. Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein. New York: Random House, 1980.

Further Reading

As I mentioned previously, Marty Martin’s near-flawless mimicry of Gertrude Stein’s writing style drove me more to want to read her oeuvre rather than complete his play. Her memoirs, cheekily titled The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, were unquestionably the inspiration behind Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein. Like the play penned in her honor, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas reflects her extensive and influential social circle and the prominant role she played in the lives of many timeless painters, writers, dancers, and other visual and performance artists. Those interested in her ficticious works may want to pick up Three Lives, a strikingly realist novel which Martin frequently mentions as well. Gertrude Stein’s repetitive, clipped writing style takes some getting used to, but those willing to give it a chance will be rewarded in the end.

~Riot

Krapp’s Last Tape and Other Dramatic Pieces

Review

As the five pieces included in this slim compilation of Samuel Beckett’s shorter works all share a common overall tone and theme, I am electing to review them as one cohesive unit rather than offering separate reviews for each. I also felt that each work presented was too short to necessitate any real substantial review on its own. The stage play Krapp’s Last Tape opens and establishes the running mood of the volume, and is followed by two radio plays, All That Fall and Embers, and two outlines for mime performances, Acts Without Words I & Acts Without Words II.

Though the works embrace a different method of performance art, they all reflect each character’s attempts to eke out some semblance of meaning in an increasingly absurd, confusing existance. From Krapp, reliving birthdays past through a series of monologues taped decades before, to the struggling couples of the radio plays and on through the silent figures in the Acts Without Words series – all actively yearn to piece together answers from what fragments remain of their respective environments. Though Krapp’s Last Tape is the intended focal point, I actually thought Acts Without Words I best reflects the rivulets of desperation and mounting frustration flowing through the other pieces presented. Its simplistic presentation of satisfaction pursued and denied almost perfectly summarizes everything that lays inside the core of Krapp, the Rooneys, and Henry and Ada from earlier in the volume.

This being Beckett, of course, even the 5 pages of Acts Without Words II begs for multiple readings in order to fully grasp every nuance and allusion. I’ve only read this mini-anthology once, so I’m not going to make any claims of catching all the minutiae included, but I do plan on reading and hopefully dissecting it further in the future. Beckett is a consummate, eloquent dramatist, and the five scripts and outlines that have been pieced together here are all valuable examples from his body of work.

Bibliographical Information

Beckett, Samuel. Krapp’s Last Tape and Other Dramatic Pieces. New York: Grove Press, 1960.

Further Reading

Samuel Beckett’s own Waiting for Godot could have been seamlessly integrated into this volume. Like Krapp’s Last Tape itself and the four other performances alongside it, Waiting for Godot explores its main characters’ dire pining for something – anything – that makes sense as the world around them dissolves into a cacaphony of absurdity and illogic. The classic Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Thomas Stoppard also explores the same themes in a manner almost identical to Beckett. Both of the aforementioned dramas, however, incorporate considerably more dark humor into the storyline than those included in Krapp’s Last Tape.

~Riot

Rock ‘n’ Roll

Review

Rock ‘n’ Roll, the latest play by The World’s Greatest Fanfiction Writer, Thomas Stoppard, is best when dissected as a study in contrasts and binaries. On its surface, the drama traces three decades in the life of a Czech doctoral student named Jan who, in the first act, ceases his studies at Cambridge University in order to return to his native country in spite of an acute case of Anglophilia. Inspired by the raw passion he finds in the music of Syd Barret, The Rolling Stones, Velvet Underground, Plastic People of the Universe, and other rock acts, he finds himself eventually embroiled in the nonviolent, socialistic Velvet Revolution protesting Czechoslovakian communism. This puts him at odds with his former professor and mentor Max, a staunch Marxist and supporter of the Soviet regime.

Although not fully antagonistic, the relationship between Jan and Max stands as the play’s most prominant interpersonal conflict. Personally, though, I found the dynamic between Max and his daughter Esme far more intriguing. Both adhere to a Communist ideology, though they apply it to their own lives in vastly different ways. Where the rigid Max makes a living as a college professor in order to spread his messages, Esme is portrayed as a stereotypical, perpetually stoned ”flower child” who eventually flees to a hippie commune and finds herself pregnant at age 19. There are many ways Stoppard could have explored their interactions and interpretations of Communism further, I thought. Other conflicts I noted in the play could easily warrant a few more posts if I decide to analyze them further. Rather than expending too many bytes on this entry alone, what follows is a partial list of some of the binary themes I noted while reading: age/youth, lyrical poetry/raw poetry, fear/courage, power/subjugation, violence/peace, illness/resiliance, and, obviously, freedom/compliance.

As stated previously, I thought the play was best thought of as a study in contrasts rather than as a narrative. I had a difficult time really getting into the story as a story. While it does a fine job of encapsulating the way music can drive humanity’s passions and lead people towards something greater than themselves – an almost universal experience – I found that in some ways Rock ‘n’ Roll could not be fully appreciated without some background knowledge of Czech history. I know almost nothing of the subject, and although I read Stoppard’s introduction regarding the play’s autobiographical elements and his friendly connection with the Czech Republic’s first elected president Václav Havel (on whom the character of Ferdinand was based), I still found myself somewhat lost when it came to the play’s cultural and historical elements. That’s not to say Stoppard ought to compromise his literary goals for the sake of those of out there who are completely oblivious to Czech history, but had I known ahead of time I probably would have done more research on the subject so I could better understand the play. Consider this an advanced warning.

Bibliographical Information

Stoppard, Tom. Rock ‘n’ Roll. New York: Grove Press, 2007.

Further Reading

I’ve read many books on the subject of music as a powerful muse, but the majority of them focused more on how it touches the individual rather than the society. There are honestly no similar works of literature I can recommend for this particular play. But just so nobody here goes home empty-handed, Stoppard is kind enough to include the names of some of his major influences in the introduction, and they are all relevant to the subject matter he covers in Rock ‘n’ Roll. Don’t come banging down my door with torches and pitchforks if they aren’t any good. I would only do something like this in the event I honestly can’t think of any similar books. Anyways, his recommendations are as follows: The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (which has been on my “To Read” list for far too long), and three plays by Václav Havel himself - Audience, Private View, and Protest.

~Riot