Craig's Wife by George Kelly (1926)

Summary:  Mrs. Craig is fiercely committed to keeping her house “in order.”  As a result, she treats her maids terribly, resents any guests that come to visit and makes strict rules for her husband and (live-in) aunt-in-law. 

Though this is play is fundamentally about Mrs. Craig’s relationship to her husband, there is also a strange murder mystery in the middle of the play which serves to highlight Mrs. Craig’s neuroses and extreme jealousy. 

Thoughts:  Like many of the awarded plays of the 20s, this play features a woman who is steadfast in her beliefs about the role of a woman in marriage.  Interestingly, Mrs. Craig and her husband have only been married for eighteen months.  She repeatedly states to different people that she married so that she would never be poor, and that all a woman has is her home.  True feelings about marriage and property are revealed when her husband counters this thesis with:

Mr. Craig:  Hasn’t she her husband?
Mrs. Craig:  She could lose her husband, couldn’t she?—As many another woman has.
Mr. Craig:  Couldn’t she lose her home too?
Mrs. Craig:  She couldn’t if she knew how to secure it  (Act 2, 362).

Enlightened by his aunt, Mr. Craig attempts to resume control over his household, which manifests in smashing some of his wife’s beloved ornaments on the mantel and smoking in the living room.  After he gets his wife to admit that she has been trying to keep his friends out of the house, Mr. Craig states that he plans to leave the marriage, but will ensure that Mrs. Craig keeps the house.  At the end of the play, the servants have all been fired or have quit, Aunt Austen has left to “travel” and Mrs. Craig’s visiting niece has returned home.  She is left alone in her pristine, but empty house.

At several points throughout the play, it seems that the dramatic action is going to take a different course.  There are hints of multiple other subjects throughout the play (murder mystery, the terminal illness of Mrs. Craig’s sister, a possible lesbian relationship between Aunt Austen and the neighbor with a knack for growing roses, Mr. Craig’s potential adultery) but none of these subjects are fully explored or come to neat conclusions.  Though there are a myriad of things going on around her, Mrs. Craig is most concerned with physically keeping up appearances.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams (1955)

Summary:  Adult brothers Brick and Gooper, accompanied by their wives and (in Gooper's case) children, are visiting their parents at the family plantation situated on 28,000 acres in Mississippi.  Big Daddy, their father, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and the brothers must find a way to relay the bad news to both of their parents, while each jockeying for a larger portion of the family inheritance (over ten million dollars in liquid assets alone).

While the circumstances create a tense situation; the primary tension of the play surrounds Brick's sexuality. Brick has been married to Maggie for years, though the two have never produced a child.  Maggie (the highly sexualized cat on a hot tin roof) and Big Daddy both accost Brick about his sexuality and the drinking problem that began when his best "friend" Skipper died.  

Early in the play, Maggie tells Brick, "Later tonight I'm going to tell you I love you an' maybe by that time you'll be drunk enough to believe me" (38).  In the final scene of the play, Maggie announces to the family that she is pregnant with Brick's child, thus making "Big Daddy's dream come true" and securing their larger portion of the family fortune (168).  In the final moments of the play, the family leaves the room and Maggie tells Brick that she has locked up the liquor and won't give it back until he has sex with her.  She states, "Tonight we're going to make the lie true, and when that's done, I'll bring the liquor back here and we'll get drunk together, here, tonight, in this place that death has come into" (173).  She adds that she loves him, and the play concludes with Brick's final statement, "Wouldn't it be funny if that was true?" (173).  

Thoughts:  For months, I've been thinking that I had read this play before and simply didn't remember it, but that is not the case.  This was definitely my first read of this play and I greatly enjoyed it.

Seven years after winning his first Pulitzer for A Streetcar Named Desire, this play involves many of the same subject areas (dysfunctional family, tension with in-laws, gay issues, alcohol, fighting).  Earlier in the project, I wrote about being in awe of Edward Albee's fight scenes...and this is an area where Tennessee Williams also excels, particularly within the confines of a very tense family situation.  While Maggie is constantly complaining about the children being vaguely annoying, they have little effect on the play with one exception.  When she is attempting to scold one of her nieces, the child (named Dixie) says to her, "You're jealous!  You're just jealous because you can't have babies!"  (62).  Williams' stage direction before Dixie's line reads, "With a precocious instinct for the cruelest thing."  Even the children at the periphery of this family know how to throw trump cards in a fight.

While Williams' plays are favorites of actors, he also uses stage directions to make the texts highly readable.  Instead of using stage directions simply for the most basic of blocking and emotional cues, he includes a great deal of information about his characters in these italicized pieces of text.  Moments after Big Daddy has suggested that Brick's relationship with Skipper was, "not, well, exactly normal", the stage directions note: 

"Brick's detachment is at last broken through.  His heart is accelerated; his forehead sweat-beaded, his breath becomes more rapid and his voice hoarse.  The thing they're discussing, timidly and painfully on the side of Big Daddy, fiercely, violently on Brick's side, is the inadmissible thing that Skipper died to disavow between them.  The fact that if it existed it had to be disavowed to "keep face" in the world they lived in, may be at the heart of the "mendacity" that Brick drinks to kill his disgust with.  It may be the root of his collapse.  Or maybe it is only a single manifestation of it, not even the most important.  The bird that I hope to catch in the net of this play is not the solution of one man's psychological problem.  I'm trying to catch the true quality of existence in a group of people, that cloudy, flickering, evanescent--fiercely charged!--interplay of live human beings in the thundercloud of a common crisis.  Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself.  This does not absolve the playwright of his duty to observe and probe as clearly and deeply as he legitimately can:  but it should steer him away from "pat" conclusions, facile definitions which make a play just a play, not a snare for the truth of human experience.  

[The following scene should be played with great concentration, with most of the power leashed but palpable in what is left unspoken.]" Act 2, 116-117). 

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (1948)

Summary:  Blanche Dubois arrives in New Orleans to visit her sister Stella.  It is immediately clear that Blanche is unaccustomed to city life and uncomfortable around blue-collar workers like Stanley (Stella's husband).  Pregnant Stella attempts to keep the peace while her husband and sister antagonize each other.  Eventually, fueled by frustration, Stanley does some sleuthing and discovers that Blanche left Mississippi because she had acquired quite a reputation and had no other place to go.  Late in the play, Stanley and Blanche have implied (non-consensual?) sex.  Subsequently, Blanche is taken to a mental institution.

Thoughts:  I feel a great deal of pressure to come up with some "thoughts" about one of the most famous (and read) plays on the list.  Though this was not my first read of this play, I continue to be impressed by Williams' craftsmanship.

While the main characters in this play (arguably Blanche and Stanley) do unlikeable things, they are not unlikeable people.  Flawed?  Yes.   Unlikeable?  Certainly not.  Because they are two very different people, Williams uses two dynamic techniques to reveal their individual humanity to audiences.  Blanche is most vulnerable when delivering a monologue to Mitch (a potential admirer) about her deceased husband (a gay man who committed suicide in front of her after she told him that he disgusted her).  In contrast, Stanley's vulnerability is glaringly on display after a fight with Stella.  Following the violent outburst, he returns to his wife in a pitiful, remorseful and childlike state.  While Stella is able to see the humanity in both her sister and husband, neither Stanley nor Blanche develop sympathy for each other.  Instead, the spirit of antagonism builds to an unsavory climax.

William's Introduction is conspicuously not about the likely controversial story to follow; but is about his own process as an artist and how the success of The Glass Menagerie almost caused him to stagnate.  His final words encourage readers to live....while they still have time to do it.

Original Cast List, Signet edition

Seascape by Edward Albee (1975)

Summary:  Nancy and Charlie are a married couple with adult children, taking a holiday on the beach.  They discuss the state of their union, and are eventually startled by another couple in the distance.  As the other couple (Leslie and Sarah) approaches...it becomes clear that they are creatures from the sea! 

Thoughts:  Thought number one:  Frank Langella (Leslie, original 1975 cast) as a merman?  What!?  Eventually, during an argument Charlie states, "All you're going to do is explain evolution to a couple of lizards."  This is the only hint at what these creatures might actually be. 

The entire first act is an examination of Nancy and Charlie's marriage and overall state of satisfaction with each other and the life they have created.  Neither one of them are tragically unhappy, but they both seem comfortably restless.  In typical Albee fashion, the dialogue is an accurate and moving representation of the way people actually fight with each other--sometimes rationally, often not.  When they eventually begin communicating with their new lizard acquaintances in Act 2, the relationships between couples and female/male allegiance are examined.  That is, Nancy comes to Charlie's defense because she is married to him...but also shares intimate secrets with Sarah because they are both child-bearing females.  Testosterone rages as Leslie and Charlie have a physical altercation.

This was, in the words of my professor Brian Herrera, a "WTF moment" for me.  Certainly both couples are interesting representations of marriage/partnership, but why creatures from the sea, Edward Albee?

"What do they call it...the primordial soup?  the glop?  That heartbreaking second when it all got together, the sugars and acids and the ultraviolets, and the next thing you knew there were tangerines and string quartets."

A Delicate Balance by Edward Albee (1967)

Summary:  Agnes and Tobias are a married couple living in the comfort of the suburbs, clearly affluent enough to never discuss working outside of the home or any sort of financial strain.  Instead, they spend much of their time finding creative and emotionally destructive ways to fight with each other, often surrounding the topic of Claire—a seemingly permanent houseguest (and the alcoholic younger sister of Agnes).  There is news that their 30(ish) year-old daughter Julia is expected back home, fresh off her fourth failed marriage.  In a dramatic break from the routine, Edna and Harry arrive at the end of Act 1.  They are, apparently, Agnes and Tobias’s closest friends.  More interestingly, they are suddenly terrified of being alone in their house, for reasons unspecified throughout the play.

Thoughts:  So many of the plays I have read thus far have been about the way that couples fight with each other, but there is nothing reminiscent of polite veneer (Dinner with Friends, Rabbit Hole, The Subject was Roses) in this play.  Agnes and Tobias know how to hurt each other, and their fighting is reminiscent of another more famous Albee couple—George and Martha (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)  They fight about Claire, they fight about Julia, they fight about Edna and Harry…they fight, seemingly, because they love to fight and excel at it.

The dialogue in this play is interesting enough to make it remarkable, but the play comes to an absolute stunning halt at the end of Act 1 when Edna exclaims, “WE WERE FRIGHTENED….AND THERE WAS NOTHING” (47).  Tobias, Agnes and Claire attempt to figure out what is going on…and the last line of Act 1, only two pages later is Claire’s response, “Don’t you know yet?  (small chuckle)  You will.”  We never know definitively what this fear is—the hints are towards nuclear war, but no one ever says outright.  Eventually, the play ends with a long monologue by Tobias concerning the nature of friendship, love and responsibility.

Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire (2007)

Summary:  The play opens a few months after Becca and Howie have lost their four-year old son in a freak accident involving a teenage driver and an unlatched gate.  Almost immediately, Becca's sister Izzie reveals that she is newly pregnant (unmarried) and this adds another level to the grief and stress that Becca and Howie are already experiencing.  Additionally, the teenager (Jason) desperately wants to meet Becca and Howie to make some sort of amends.  Becca eventually meets with Jason and they talk primarily about his own science fiction writing.

Thoughts:  Hmmm. I saved this play to read when on a night when I had little motivation, thinking that I would absolutely love it.  Lindsay-Abaire is fantastic at writing dialogue, so the play was a very fast read...but I did not become as attached to this play or it's characters as I had hoped.  Other nominees in 2007 included Bulrusher, Orpehus X and A Soldier's Fugue; none of which have received the same sorts of popular acclaim as nominees in 2005, 2006, 2008 or 2009.  I certainly did not dislike this play, but also wasn't as invested or moved as I had anticipated.