Lobster Boy (Dan Dietz)

I find it difficult to connect with monologue based shows. This may be obvious from the way I talked about Empanada Loca or Thom Pain earlier, and I don’t know why this is. The way monologues have to be structured, the actor has to speak to someone, it’s usually the audience, and that often breaks reality with me. In my bones I may feel like this is taking too long, why is this person talking for so long, that can’t possibly need all this time.

Lobster Boy by Dan Dietz is a pleasant near-exception to this. It’s a relatively short monologue (probably around 15 minutes,) that has such an odd and eerie structure to it that I think the author must be asking us to think “why is this person talking” in a way that most other monologues don’t bother with, and then it answers the question in a perfectly creepy way, and while the ending is expected, it still does its job marvelously.

While I assume most people aren’t going to run out and buy the scripts I write about I do frequently try to hold some plot details back to preserve whatever surprise people may want, but there isn’t a good way to get someone interested in this piece without giving the whole thing away, so be forewarned.

An unidentified man stands in front of us and starts telling us a story with weird slides filled with odd text. His story is about two brothers: the younger one can’t feel pain and so it’s up to the older one to do all the jobs around the house where the younger one might hurt himself.

The older brother grows to resent the younger one, and during science class he learns about lobsters, who may or may not feel pain, and the hypothesis that if lobsters don’t feel pain they don’t feel fear. Working backwards the older brother thinks that if he can scare his brother he may get him to feel pain which would alleviate a lot of problems in his life and (he justifies) his family’s as well.

This naturally ends tragically, but the tension is drawn out magnificently as the lecturer explains the entire plan in intimate detail, and the event with equal precision. The mood is discomforting and well established.

What brings this around to a truly haunting piece of theater, one that I don’t think I’ll forget for a long while, is what happens after. It’s probably not a surprise to say that our lecturer is the older brother, but it’s revealed in the final lines of this short play that the audience doesn’t actually exist: that he’s speaking to an empty room, and while in description this may not seem like a great ending, Dietz’s writing, pacing, and the continued strangeness of the slides combine together to give me a feeling I did not expect at the outset.

It’s hard to put into words why Lobster Boy connects with me when so many other pieces have failed, but it did, and I recommend reading it if you can.

Comes Romance (Tom Taggart)

Last week I wrote about how Laughing Wildly reminded me of the kind of comedy that might pop up on a social media site. That insight may have been premature because Tom Taggart’s Comes Romance is a one-act play that reads like a half-hour sitcom pilot. Given that the play was first published in 1940 with the first American sitcom debuting in 1947, Taggart manages to preempt the chief American contribution to culture (if you don’t count jazz, musicals, or 24-hour news coverage.)

One of the most enduring aspects of Taggart’s otherwise mediocre writing is the depth he brings to his female characters, who often outnumber the male characters in his shows. This is sadly not true of Comes Romance. While Taggart has always been a product of the beliefs of his time at least his characters seemed like real people, but Comes Romance flattens everyone out to make the situation understandable and resolvable in the short space of the half-hour running time.

I feel the word misogynistic gets thrown around with a bit too much regularity, but if someone wanted to find a play that thoroughly showed the culture disrespecting women, Comes Romance is a tidy little volume with which to do that.

We find ourselves trapped in the living room of Albert and Patricia Shepherd. Albert rips the spirit of Jackie Gleason from the future as he fumes that it’s six o’clock and dinner is nowhere in sight! Patricia has spent the entire afternoon writing a marriage proposal for local beat cop Eddie and neglected all of her chores for the day. What follows is a mildly amusing action of Patricia inserting herself into the neighborhood’s romances, usually to the detriment of all involved, while the local lovers get confused and bereft and Albert fumes loudly.

If you want a play about victim blaming and the goodness of traditional gender roles Comes Romance is the work for you. Eventually the play has the rather unusual resolution of two women realizing they’ve been two-timed and so they settle for the galoots who have been pursuing them.

Although not nearly demonstrating the same levels of abuse a person staging Comes Romance would have similar obstacles as a production of Taming of the Shrew- the base assumptions the play makes about the audience simply are no longer true. A today audience is more likely to deride Albert for not making his own dinner instead of angrily insisting that Patricia should get back to it: although there is something to be said about Patricia not putting up her end of the partnership. A today audience probably cares much more that one of the women gets bruised from her would-be-boyfriend grabbing her to kiss her. There is a lot of anti-cop humor that probably plays the same though.

No, this is not a play for today’s audiences unless you wanted to make the entire production ironic, which for the sake of comedy, I do not.

Cambodian Rock Band (Lauren Yee)

Arguably my favorite form of Art and Entertainment is live theatre; that’s why I’m writing these, that’s why I studied it, that’s why I want it to be my career. However, my current job keeps me more distant from theatre than I’d like: both because I work a lot of nights and weekends, and also because I don’t make enough money to pay for tickets frequently. So I read plays, because even though I can’t get what I really want, I can accept an imitation of it.

I was given a copy of Lauren Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band by my friend Chelsea, and I hadn’t read it yet, but it was playing in Houston and I managed to get a ticket. So I got to do a thing I never get to do: watch a play and then read the script.

It’s hard to not hear the production I was read the play, and while I think I would have liked the script if I read it as is, I love it so much more as its living, breathing self.

Cambodian Rock Band has some elements of Tea which I read earlier this week, though while Tea had moments of expats struggling to relate to their children in their new country, Cambodian Rock Band features the child trying to understand a parent’s past that the parent would rather protect the child from.

We start in 2008, but that’s not really true, we actually start in 1975 with an unknown Cambodian Rock Band, although our narrator for the evening would have you believe that we start with him and him alone as he holds court in a liminal space. Those three time periods crashing together are good symbols for this show which asks you to consider which story matters: the one of the historical figure who’s done notable things or that of the quiet and obscure citizen for whom the world knows little?

We open with a song from a fictional rock band, written by an actual rock band, Dengue Fever, before being told that they were wiped from culture’s memory during the reign of the Khmer Rouge, then we find ourselves in 2008 where American-born Neary is working (in unspecified capacity) on the case against Duch, the warden and chief torturer of the Khmer Rogue’s main prison, who was apprehended nine years ago after twenty years in hiding.

Her father, Chum, surprises her and embarrasses her while trying to get her to ignore the case. In short order it’s shown that Neary considers herself to be a disappointment in her father’s eyes for not going to law school, while Chum is afraid of modern Cambodia and intent on getting Neary home. These early scenes are filled with big laughs tinged by tension as we know something terrible is on the horizon.

Somewhere early in the first act we’re told that our charismatic narrator is Duch himself, and he insists that this story is all about him, because what isn’t? Neary realizes that her father is an as-of-yet-unknown survivor of the terrible prison and wants him to testify against Duch. When Chum won’t, she disappears, and that’s when Chum starts telling his story.

It’s 1975 and Chum asks his family to wait on fleeing to Paris until he and his band, the Cyclos, can finish their album. It’s a decision that will end in Chum’s family being killed and Chum being tortured. The band finishes, but it’s too late and the Amercian’s have pulled out and the Khmer Rouge has taken over.

We flash forward to 1978 where Chum is a prisoner being tortured by his former bandmate, turned convenient communist, Leng. Before long Duch takes an active interest in Chum’s case, and Chum eventually escapes.

I wouldn’t want to reveal more than I have already, but in addition to asking “whose story is it,” this play also examines the burden of unforgivable choices: someone has to do something beyond the pale, and it’s just a question of who does it first. Yes, the situation was untenable but even if you have to, how do you justify it? It’s still bad karma no matter what.

The play is a wonderful piece of historic fiction: tells a story that is relatively unknown (in America,) takes it seriously, presents it with empathy and compassion, and it shows why it’s relevant today without relying on being too modern (like my own work or Lauren Gunderson’s.)

I loved the script, but if you have any chance at all, see the show.

Laughing Wild (Christopher Durang)

Folks often talk about us having shorter attention spans, frequently it’s a precursor to either claiming that that is the root cause of all evil in our society, or to excuse some rude thing that person is about to do. I’ve never bought that argument if only because we continue to break financial and attendance records with longer and longer films and the most popular TV is also getting longer with streaming allowing them to be any length they feel is right.

I tend to think what’s happening is that there were always people who didn’t like to sit through a full TV show or movie, but until the last few decades there wasn’t a way to satisfy their natural state. They’re the people who’s entertainment circadian rhythm didn’t fit the strictures we created, but now they can get what they’ve always wanted and so they don’t have to settle.

All of this is prologue to say that Christopher Durang’s play Laughing Wild feels like a TikTok meme that was stretched to be two hours because that’s the length people needed plays to be. And also that I feel vindicated.

That’s not to say it overstays its welcome (but I’m also not not saying that,) just that the form his ideas are playing in feel like it should be a lot shorter, or at least that it could. If I saw this play live it would easily count among the most weird theatrical experiences I ever had (and I’ve seen several Mickle Maher plays.)

Let’s start with the title, because it’s the only handle you’ll have to open this play up: Laughing Wild is a reference to a Beckett play which itself is a reference to a Thomas Gray poem “Laughing Wild amid severest woe.” We’re going to look at characters who feel the pressure of life pressing down on them (for one social, the other political) and try (and fail) to laugh their way through it. Durang also pulls the very Durang move of making the recursive nature of the quote meaningful by playing with perspective and repetition within the play.

So what is this show? The first 36 pages (over half) of the script is spent on two monologues from two disturbed and pessimistic characters, only called Man and Woman. Woman is frayed by life, given to violent outbursts and maniacal laughing. It’s clear that the world is not built for her to succeed, and her enmity towards other people and general unhingedness keep her from finding gainful employment or staying out of the psychiatric ward for too long.

Man is a general depressed sort, frustrated by the politics of the 80’s, especially in regards to AIDS and his status as a bisexual man favoring other men. He looks for meaning and his place in the world and he can’t find it, and can’t appreciate what he has until he does.

Not too long ago Man and Woman had a run in where Man took too long picking out tuna at the grocery and woman attacked him in a fit. During the third act of the show we see increasingly hostile and exaggerated versions of this incident until it’s revealed that both have been sharing this recurring dream. From there Durang careens wildly mixing imagery and lines from both monologues as they share each other’s dreams and continue to grow angrier and more distant, though by the end of the play they accidentally find themselves in sync and working together.

It’s a strange show, and it’s almost as though whoever produced it asked Durang to write a play about what it means to be alive in 1987 since the characters are so focused on the Now that the play feels terribly dated.

I frequently find Durang’s plays to be a slippery eel that sometimes just escape my grasp and sometimes I manage to barely hold onto. Laughing Wildly feels like an eel that got away but that I might catch if I stay on its trail, and I think it’s going to be a work that I’ll appreciate more upon revisiting.

As I sign off I want to say that most playwright’s notes are insipid or condescending and often reveal a person who is nervous about collaboration. Durang has long avoided that problem so I always make time to read his notes. For this volume he spent several pages bemoaning the fact that Frank Rich has a lot of power as a theater critic, and that Rich (and the Times) make Durang’s life harder than it ought to be. A great essay to be sure, but a strange placement for it.

The Female of the Species (Joanna Murray-Smith)

At first blush Female of the Species bares a lot of resemblance to Eureka Day, a play I wrote about earlier this month: they both satirize a traditional liberal environment/mindset (in this case Feminist personalities,) and they both deal with themes that after their publishing would come to be far more associated with the political right rather than the left, and despite that fact they both are arguably apolitical.

What I mean by that is that neither play is making a political argument, but the audience can easily put one on it if they wish too.

Both plays are extraordinarily funny, both are largely traditional plays (although Eureka Day uses a technological innovation to great effect,) and both feature complex characters. Given these similarities it is perhaps surprising that while I only admired Eureka Day, I love Female of the Species.

At the top of Murray-Smith’s play we’re introduced to Margot Manson, a famous and celebrated feminist author and thinker caught by writer’s block after decades of being on top. She’s soon visited by Molly, a stranger (she thinks,) who spends some time puffing her up before handcuffing Margot to a desk and revealing her true intentions to kill Margot in retribution.

Retribution for what? This is where the interesting political allegory comes in: Molly believes that Margot has been irresponsible in spouting off all of her ideas to an impressionable public: Margot’s writing encouraged Molly’s mother to abandon her (In one book Margot says that women should be mothers, in a later book she says women should let go of their children if they’re unhappy and go find themselves,) then Molly neutered herself because Margot said “procreation is genetic masturbation”, and finally Molly dropped out of school after slaving away on an essay only to be told by Margot (who doesn’t remember this incident at all,) that she has no talent. (and unsurprisingly Margot has little positive to say about leading an average life.)

All of this adds up to a thesis stated plainly in the text that Margot, and people like her, court celebrity by saying incendiary things, but take no responsibility for people who act on what they say. Just like we saw Alex Jones do recently in his court cases, Margot feebly insists that no one would take what she said seriously, that she had to exaggerate to get her point across, that it’s not her fault if other people react to her.

And that is interesting in and of itself, but the play hardly rests on that, because this isn’t a dry intellectual exercise of the danger of dying by one’s sword, but is instead a fantastically funny, fast, exciting romp of a show. Even while chained to a desk Margot continues to puzzle out titles for her next book. Even while trying to command respect Molly gets distracted by delivering a tirade to Bryan who she perceives as being anti-feminist.

Who’s Bryan? Well, like any great show The Female of the Species continues to pile on problems for Margot (and Molly,) by an increasing number of people entering the room and not helping Margot escape. First there’s her daughter, Tess, who looks like she might defeat Molly before it’s revealed that Margot called her a waste of talent and a mediocrity, then Tess’s dimwitted husband comes in and tries to get Tess to come home, and that’s only the beginning.

By the end of the show we’ve seen feminists, post-feminists, anti-feminists, bystanders, and people just trying to make a buck on outrage. Everything ends as it always must: with people pacified by the promise of money and fame, playing all angles of the strife we’ve just bared witness too.

As a Producer
This is exactly the show we’re looking for: social satire, wickedly funny, not terribly expensive to produce. It’s also the first show of the year that I feel I could quickly cast from the people in Houston, so that’s a plus.

As a Designer
We’ve ignored the designer side of things for a bit, but this show gives a lot of opportunity, especially for props who has to make an entire bookshelf of Margot’s published works.

As a Writer
Let’s return to the question of why I love this play and not Eureka Day. Both are smart, funny plays, but The Female of the Species allows everyone to be irrational and unlikeable while trusting the audience to connect with the charisma of the actors. All of the characters are thoroughly exasperating, throughout the play everyone’s virtues turn to vices, but everyone is so ridiculous that it never wears on one’s nerves.

I don’t frequently shy away from my character’s rotten sides, but I think this is a good example, like the show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, that we often show humanity best by showing it at its worst.