Strange Interlude by Eugene O'Neill (1928)

Summary: The play follows the life of Nina Leeds over the course of about twenty-five years and is fundamentally about her relationships with men.

When the play opens, she is grieving the loss of her fiancee Gordon. Her father fears that she might be going crazy because she has recently informed him of her plan to become an army nurse. When Gordon entered the war, the two had not consummated their relationship and she is wracked with guilt because of it. Nina secretly wants to be an army nurse so that she can provide sexual comfort to the men returning from war.

After becoming an army nurse and engaging in sexual congress with lots of soldiers, Nina feels guilty. She returns home. Charles Marsden (a writer and friend of her now-dead father) advises that she should atone for her sexual sins by marrying sweet Sam Evans. Though she does not love Sam or feel sexually attracted to him, she does.

When she gets pregnant with Sam's baby, she is thrilled. However, her mother-in-law is horrified by the pregnancy and convinces Nina that she must abort the baby because the men in Sam's family have a history of insanity. When Nina tells Mrs. Evans that the only thing keeping her happy is the pregnancy, Mrs. Evan's suggests that Nina abort the baby and then have sex with a male friend: when a child inevitably arrives, Sam will assume that it is his.

Nina enters into an affair with Dr. Ned Darrell, informs him of her plans to have his child and he agrees. Though their afternoons of rapture do produce a child, they also fall in love along the way.

When the child (named Gordon!) arrives, Sam is thrilled and Ned leaves the country. When Ned returns years later, Sam's business has taken off, Nina is a shell of her former self and Gordon is a strapping young athlete. When Sam unexpectedly dies, Gordon tells his mother and Ned (his unknown father) that they should probably marry. Because too much has passed between them, they refuse. Instead, Nina remarries old Charlie Marsden--who has remained at the periphery, closely observing all of Nina's life choices.

Thoughts: Well. Quite a plot summary.

For the second time in the project, Eugene O'Neill uses the word "slut" to describe a woman (both instances in plays from the 1920s). In each of his four Pulitzer Prize winning plays, O'Neill creates women who are central to the story but who are often sexually promiscuous, always deeply flawed and frequently spiteful and mean. While his portrayal of women is certainly cringe-inducing, it is partially obscured in this play by the fact that none of the characters are very likable. They each have sinister ulterior motives, most surrounding sex or money.

Interestingly, the ulterior motives in this play are blatantly obvious because O'Neill has made the artistic choice to have each character speak almost all of their subtext.  Usually marked by a stage direction of "thinking", these lines are meant to be spoken. Finding a way to artistically and believably stage the play would be difficult because although the characters speak their emotions, but O'Neill offers no staging advice and each line of "thinking" reads like a soliloquy. Additionally, there are certain lines without "thinking", so this could quickly become confusing for an audience member. Adding to the challenge of staging is the fact that this play contains nine acts and is over 300 pages long.

Buried Child by Sam Shepard (1979)

Summary:  Vince is driving across the country with his girlfriend Shelly and stops in Illinois to see his grandparents.  Immediately after arriving at their house, it becomes clear that something is not quite right:  his grandfather does not recognize him, his uncle is putting his fingers in Shelly's mouth and his grandmother is nowhere to be found (we later find out that she is probably having a sexual relationship with the local priest).  Vince informs Dodge (his 70 year-old grandfather) that they are on their way to see New Mexico to see his father.  Dodge replies that  Tilden is no longer in New Mexico, but has moved back to Illinois after "some trouble" and is, once again, living at the family farm home. 

As the play progresses, outsider Shelly unearths some of the family history and repeatedly states that she knows that there is a secret and she plans to find out what it is is.  The secret is finally revealed in the last few pages of the play when Dodge enters into a long monologue revealing that a baby that is buried in the backyard.  The baby is not his, but instead the child of his son Tilden and his wife Halie.  After revealing this familial incest and reading his makeshift will aloud, Dodge dies.  The final scene of the play involves Halie talking about the growth of new surprise crops while Tilden enters holding the corpse of a baby that he has presumably just exhumed from the backyard.

Thoughts:  Well, that just happened.   

I have now read this play twice, both times very quickly because I was compelled to reach the climax and learn the secrets of this family.  While the major secret of the play obviously involves incest and murder, each of Shepard's seven characters have both a secret and a personality quirk that creates a general feeling of unease throughout the entire play.  Usually, these quirks are not explained...they just happen.  For example, Bradley sticks his fingers in Shelly's mouth moments after meeting her and cuts his fathers hair while he sleeps--leaving a bloody scalp and, by all description, a terrible haircut.  Regardless, no one seems to question either of these choices--including Shelly, who has no familial obligation to put up with these bizarre antics.  

Shepard makes extensive use of monologues to reveal the exposition of the play--usually from Halie and Dodge, the oldest members of this family.  While I initially criticized this dramatic technique, I also think it is a deliberate choice to indicate that the family has stopped interacting with each other through meaningful dialogue, so monologues directed at strangers are the only effective way of revealing these family secrets. 

This play won the Pulitzer Prize twenty years before August:  Osage County was given the award, and the parallels between these scripts border on uncomfortable.  Clearly, they are both "about" dysfunctional families who have their share of secrets involving incest; but they also start the same way (the patriarch sits in darkness while the matriarch rambles upstairs).  Further, the dramatic action is dependent on the reactions of an outsider--Shelly here, Johnna in August:  Osage County.

Anna Christie by Eugene O'Neill (1922)

Summary:  Christopher Christopherson is an aging sailor who receives a letter (care of the local tavern) from his estranged daughter.  Anna is writing to say that she will soon be arriving for an extended stay.  He is delighted and makes room for her aboard his barge.  When she arrives, it becomes clear that she is there because she needs a break from her career as a whore.  Oblivious to this and happy to see her, he persuades her to stay aboard the ship.

A few nights later, a stranded crew finds their way on-board Christopherson's barge.  Quickly, one of the refugee passengers (Mat Owen) falls in love with Anna.  In a dramatic scene of self-disclosure, Anna reveals to her father and Mat (who now wants to marry her) that she was previously making her living as a prostitute.  All hell beaks loose, Mat and Chris go ashore, leaving Anna in despair on the boat.  Eventually, both of the men come back and Mat agrees to marry Anna "in spite of it all" (188). 

Thoughts:  Eugene O'Neill's other Pulitzer Prizes are for Strange Interlude, Long Day's Journey Into Night and Beyond the Horizon.  While I can certainly see elements of all of those works in this play (family, men returning from the sea, alcohol), I was surprised to read the following outburst:  "God's curse on you!  You slut, you, I'll be killing you now!"  (Act 3, 180)  One scene before calling her a slut, Mat also attacked Chris (physically) after Chris explicitly stated that he did not want his daughter marrying a man of the sea. 

Perhaps most troubling is the scene of reconciliation that ends the play.  In that scene, Mat returns to Anna and berates her for her transgressions as a whore.  She protests saying things like, "Don't you seem I'm licked?  Why d'you want to keep on kicking me?"  He responds with, "And don't you deserve the worst I'd say, God forgive you?"  (186).  When she finally convinces him that she did not love any of her clients and instead loves him, Matt asks her to promise this by swearing with her hand on a crucifix.  After she has sworn, he asks if she is Catholic and is horrified to discover that she is a Lutheran.  Regardless, he agrees to marry her.  It is then revealed that Chris and Mat will soon be shipmates on a voyage to South Africa.  Although Mat threw a chair at Chris just days before, everyone guffaws and the play ends happily ever after (cringe).

Rent by Jonathan Larson (1996)

Summary:  The lives of seven young Bohemian friends in New York intersect over the course of a year as they attempt to find (or keep) love in a world where many of their friends are dying of AIDS.  None of the friends seem to have stable jobs and all are just trying to find some way to pay the rent.  The quasi-narrator of the story is Mark, a documentary filmmaker who is rarely seen without his camera.  Accordingly, Mark concludes the play by showing footage that he has gathered over the course of a year. 

Thoughts:  Another play that is difficult to summarize because so much of it is dependent on Larson’s depiction of individual characters and their relationships to each other.  Again, my reading of this play was enhanced by the fact that I am familiar (by familiar I mean I know every word) with the score…but, unlike Next to Normal and A Chorus Line, some of the songs in this text are memorable without their accompanying music ("Seasons of Love," for example, reads like a list-poem). 

Victoria Hoffman’s Introduction to the text reveals some of the now well-known stories about Jonathan Larson, namely that he died after the final dress rehearsal of Rent from a brain aneurysm that two emergency room physicians failed to diagnose.  Interestingly, Hoffman (Larson’s best friend) also writes that he was directed towards a career in composition after Stephen Sondheim wrote to him, “I know a lot fewer starving composers than I do actors” (vii).  Indeed, Sondheim is lyrically thanked in the text and his influence is evident in Larson’s structure and heavily rhyming lyrics. 

Rent is certainly a different kind of musical…and one that paved the way for the critical and popular success of things like Next to Normal (Anthony Rapp, a lead in Rent wrote the introduction to Next to Normal).  While musicals like 42^nd Street, My Fair Lady and South Pacific may have been an entry-point into the world of musical theatre for my parents' generation, Rent was my entry-point.  Though the thought of how many times I listened to the orange discs makes me cringe now, the subject matter and artistic choices were unlike anything else that my ninth grade self had experienced.

The Teahouse of the August Moon by John Patrick (1954)

Summary:  American Captain Fisby is sent to Tobiki Village--an island of Okinawa with specific orders to establish democracy and build a school.  However, when he gets there, he soon finds himself far more interested in the Tobiki way of life.  Following the wishes of his Geisha Girl Lotus Blossom, Fisby uses governmental resources to build a teahouse rather than a school.  When a psychiatrist is dispatched to look after him, he too loves the Tobiki way of life.  However, the psychiatrist also understands that the “natives” need a source of income and starts selling the local sweet potato brandy to neighboring military bases.  

When the Colonel eventually visits Tobiki, he is outraged and orders the brandy stills and the teahouse demolished.  However they are quickly saved by another military officer who bursts into the final scene exclaiming that the village is being called a great “example of American ‘get-up-and-go’ in the recovery program.  The Pentagon is boasting.  Congress is crowing” (Gassner 214).  The natives may never get a school, but they have their teahouse and their liquor industry….thanks to the Americans.

Thoughts:  The narrator of the play is an Islander named Sakini, who often speaks in verse and is chided by American soldiers for being a lovable idiot.  He serves as a native informant to Captain Fisby, informing him of island customs and serving as an interpreter.  The play moves quickly and is often very funny but the issues of racism and salvation-by-American-soldier are troubling in terms of production today.   The Japanese people in the script rarely speak any sort of English, but instead speak John Patrick’s own version of Japanese…which seems to have no translation into the actual language.  Asian stereotypes and American aggrandizement run rampant throughout the play.

Proof by David Auburn (2001)

Summary:  After the death of her mathematician father, Catherine is left to negotiate a relationship with her sister Claire (who appears to completely have her life together) and Hal, a former doctoral student once advised by her father.  Allusions are made to her father's mental illness which 25 year-old Catherine believes she has inherited.  Ultimately, the Hal discovers a notebook containing a revelatory mathematics proof which would prove Robert's genius.  However, Catherine claims that she wrote the proof.  Claire and Hal are forced to question Catherine's potential genius and the lasting legacy of troubled Robert.

Thoughts:  One of the reasons that I find myself attracted to Edward Albee's plays is the way he writes fighting--sometimes ruthless and often nonsensical and emotional rather than logical.  Now on my third read of Proof, I find myself attracted to Auburn's dialogue for the same reason.

We know that Robert was a genius who went "crazy" and that Catherine feels the madness might have been passed down to her--but the type of mental illness or any sort of specific diagnosis is never mentioned.  Somewhat hauntingly, the play is dedicated "In memory of Benjamin Auburn (1972-2000)."

There are two major "wowza!" moments in this play.  One comes in the middle of Scene One after an eight-page conversation between Catherine and her father as he states mid-scene, "Because I'm also dead.  (Beat.)  Aren't I?"  She responds, "You died a week ago."  From this moment on , Auburn's structure does not follow linear chronology.  This deliberate stylistic choice allows him flexibility and new perspective in exploring yet another family drama (much like style is at the forefront of How I Learned to Drive).  Additionally, although Robert is dead, the non-chronological structure allows us to see him as "madness" begins to set in and then overtake.  The second wowza moment closes Act One as Catherine states, "I didn't find it.  I wrote it.  (Curtain.)"  While "wowza!" moments are highly theatrical and inspire whispers at intermission, Auburn also succeeds at making them shocking in print...certainly not an easy feat.

Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry (1988)

Summary:  After an unfortunate accident involving the neighbor's garage, Boolie Werthan decides to hire a black chauffeur for his mother Daisy.  For the next twenty-five years, she resists Hoke's help while they both gradually develop a deep mutual affection toward one another.

Thoughts:  I flew through this play (much like my reading experience of Doubt, actually).  The language of this play is precise:  neither Daisy not Hoke wastes their time with superfluous anything--especially words.  As such, each of Uhry's lines reveals something about his characters.

In his Introduction, Uhry explains that these are real people--amalgamations of individuals he encountered over the course of his childhood in Atlanta.  Anyone who has grown up in the South has probably known their own Miss Daisy.  Maybe I loved this play because it reminded me of my own grandmother; but I also found myself moved by the simplicity of the story and detail of the characters lives as they stay together for twenty-five years. 

I have written before about film adaptions that have made it hard for me to get the voices of the film actors (Jimmy Stewart in Harvey) out of my head.  This was not one of them.  While I remember the cinematic performances offered by Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy (Academy Award, 1989), Uhry's play is as remarkable on paper as it is in performance.

I recently read a New York Times review of the 2010 Broadway revival starring Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones that noted the challenge of staging this play because it is certainly not a visual piece.  The article explained that the new production features slides in the background depicting the Civil Rights struggle and other events over the course of the twenty-five year setting (1948-1973).  After reading the play, I wonder why why why.  Uhry's work is strong enough to be produced with very little visual element...especially with actors like Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones.

Photo credit:  Carol Rosegg

"I am in the process of writing the screenplay.  I have won the Pulitzer Prize.  Even as I write these words they seem unbelievable to me.  When I wonder how all this happened (which I do a lot!) I can come up with only one answer.  I wrote what I knew to be the truth and people recognized it as such."

-Alfred Uhry, Introduction

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

Doubt by John Patrick Shanley (2005)

Summary:  Sister Aloysius is convinced that Father Flynn has had an inappropriate relationship with Donald Muller--a twelve year old in the parish.  She is hellbent on getting him fired and Sister James, an eager young nun, is not sure who to believe.

Thoughts:  After writing about reading Harvey, Our Town and Fences after seeing them on stage/film, I began to wonder if reading a play after you have seen it performed completely changes the experience.  While I have seen the 2008 film version of Doubt (directed by the playwright) I did not find myself constantly thinking about the inflections of Streep, Hoffman and Adams while reading this text.  Shanley's precise writing enables the text to stand alone.  With or without performance, this piece of writing is remarkable.  The language of Doubt is uncomplicated and (perhaps because of this) the dialogue moves rapidly.  The play is one of the fastest reads I have encountered in the project.

Additionally, Shanley's Prologue explains that this play was inspired by his own experiences as a child of the 60s in a strict Catholic school.  Speaking prosaically about the tension between doubt and certainty, this piece of the text is evidence that Shanley writes well in a variety of genres (he does have an Oscar for Moonstruck, after all).  Go to a bookstore and read the Prologue.  It will probably make you want to read the play.

"We've got to learn to live with a full measure of uncertainty.  There is no last word.  That's the silence under the chatter of our time."

-end of the Prologue

Our Town by Thornton Wilder (1938)

Summary:  A Stage Manager leads audiences through the fictional town of Grover's Corners in three acts:  Daily Life, Love and Marriage, Death and Eternity.  The Stage Manager remains central to the narrative as we watch other characters age, marry and eventually die.  A primary appeal of the play is that this town could be any town--just like yours or mine, with people reminiscent of our own neighbors.

Thoughts:  It seems crazy to me that I made it out of high school without reading this play, but I did.  Though this is a predecessor to Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth (1943 Pulitzer Prize), the playwright's ability to handle an extremely broad scope of material through individual (perhaps archetypal?) characters is astounding.  People continue to produce Our Town because it is essentially timeless.  Though the actions of the family sometimes date the play (chopping wood for mother, going on dates to get ice cream sodas), their feelings about the subjects listed in the three acts are inherently relatable, if not universal.

In February of 2009, director David Cromer mounted a new production of Our Town at the Barrow Street Theatre in New York.  The production raked in critical acclaim, with Cromer starring as the Stage Manager.  During the two and a half year run, several actors have played the Stage Manager including:  David Cromer, Stephen Kunken, Michael Shannon, Michael McKean and Helen Hunt.  The show closed on September 12, 2010 with Cromer reprising his role as the Stage Manager for the final performance days before it was announced that he was the recipient of a 2010 MacArthur Genius Grant.

I also had the privilege of seeing this production (on the same day as Fences, actually).  Michael Shannon's performance was absolutely unbelievable; but the other actors were sometimes distractingly bad, other times simply not remarkable.  The most stunning moment I have ever seen in theatre or film happened in the middle of the third act and I left the theatre knowing that it was something that I would never forget.

"...That is the sole extraordinary touch in a production that is in most ways ordinary, and I think purposely and profitably so. Wilder sought to make sacraments of simple things. In “Our Town” he cautioned us to recognize that life is both precious and ordinary, and that these two fundamental truths are intimately connected."

-Charles Isherwood:  The New York Times, February 27, 2009.  

http://theater.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/theater/reviews/27town.html

J.B.: A Play in Verse by Archibald MacLeish (1959)

Summary:  Mr. Zuss and Mr. Nickles are omnipresent narrators who guide us through the story of J.B. (a modern-day Job) and his family.   Occasionally, they are joined by "Distant Voice", who we can surmise is God.  After individually revealing each of J.B.'s trials, they return to the scene to swap some theological banter and guide us into the next depiction of things getting progressively worse for the wounded protagonist.

Thoughts:  Ashamedly, I groaned a little when I discovered that this was a 153 page "play in verse."  Wrong!  So wrong!  Structurally, this play is one of the most sound and interesting I have encountered in the project.  With Zuss and Nickles as guides, MacLeish facilitates the telling of a Biblical story in a very human and potentially timeless way.  As things go from wonderful to terrible for J.B. and his wife, their roles and thoughts about God are essentially reversed. 

We know from the outset that, after J.B. has endured all the trails that God has in store for him, things will get better; but MacLeish masterfully makes each new heartbreak a deeper descent into darkness. 

I think my fourth grade brain added the word "rhyming" to the subtitle "a play in verse."  While it did not rhyme, the language of this play was stunning, and for me, reminiscent of the often theological patriotism of Norman Corwin.  For those keeping score at home, MacLeish holds two additional Pulitzer Prizes (for Poetry), an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and a Presidential Medal of Freedom.  Because he wasn't busy enough, he also served as the first Librarian of Congress...and came up with the idea that the United States should have a poet laureate.

I can already say that when I finish this project, one of the most substantial riches I will have gained is the discovery of Archibald MacLeish.

Men in White by Sidney Kingsley (1934)

Summary:  Doctors at various stages of their careers are at work in a hospital.  One night, the engaged Dr. Ferguson has an adulterous tryst with a nurse named Barbara.  A few months later, Barbara herself is on the operating table after an abortion goes wrong.  Ultimately, Barbara dies and Laura (Dr. Ferguson’s fiancee) leaves Dr. Ferguson, reminding her overworked former fiancee to, “work hard.” 

Thoughts:  Abortion!  Adulterous trysts!  1934!  When I read the line, “septic abortion”, I immediately put an exclamation point in the margin.  To that point, the drama of the play surrounded the action of the hospital and the interpersonal relationships of the characters; but the botched abortion served as a catalyst for the remainder of the dramatic action.  While Nurse Barbara is being prepared for surgery, Dr. Hochberg (a senior physician) invites Laura to watch Ferguson's next surgery in order to help her understand the importance of his work.  The next surgery "coincidentally" happens to be the removal of Barbara's uterus.  During the surgery, the entire sordid situation becomes clear to Laura…who is understandably devastated.  

One of the most interesting things about this play is Kingsley’s extensive usage of footnotes.  Sometimes, his footnotes simply translate medical language “Stat=hospital jargon for immediatley” (443), but other times, his liberal inclination shines through:   

“No one wants to encourage the indiscriminate use of this grim practice.  However, the lash of the law, instead of correcting the evil, only whips it into dark corners, creating a vicious class of criminal practitioner--bootleg doctors and ignorant midwives who work in dark, back-room apartments.  A saner, healthier attitude is that adopted by the Soviet government, which is fostering birth control education, and instituting legal abortion clinics in a spirit best expressed by the motto inscribed over the door of one such clinic:  "You are welcome this time, but we hope you will never have to come here again" (466). 

 

This was Kingsley's first published work, written six years after his graduation from Cornell where he "distinguished himself with his talents in forensic and dramatic art" (436). 

The Green Pastures by Marc Connelly (1930)

Summary:  In the first scene, children in a “negro church” are asking typical children-at-Sunday-School questions, concerning why God decided to create the world.  Their teacher gives them typical “I don’t know, read the Bible” answers.   In the next scene, God is in Heaven, lamenting his boredom and decides to create man and the world.  The next thirteen scenes follow God and man’s interactions from The Garden of Eden to Noah to Moses to the eventual crucifixion of Christ.

Thoughts:  In the spirit of Rice's Street Scene, I found myself having to read much of this play aloud because it is written in “typical negro dialect.”  The play is full of sentences like, “An’ you better take an’ git married an’ settle down an’ raise some chillun.  Dey ain’t nothin’ to make a man fo’git his troubles like raisin’ a family.  Now, you better git” and “You got two bad lookin’ eyes.  I bet yo’ hot coffee ‘mong de women folks” (402, 403).

While the play was written by a white male and much of the dialogue is stereotypically problematic, I was intrigued and appeased (?) to discover that this was the first play on Broadway with an entirely black cast.  I wasn’t always thrilled to be reading it, but now I am very interested in the play’s production history, audience reception and critical reviews.

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.

Why Marry? by Jesse Lynch Williams (1918)

Summary:  Couples in a family are each having separate issues surrounding the subject of marriage.

Main plot:  Ernest and Helen:   two scientists who agree that they love each other; and also agree that they do not want to marry.

Sub-plots:  Rex and Jean:  probably don’t really love each other but have decided that it is time to marry.

John and Lucy:  Established married couple of the family.  All of the action of the play takes place at their home.  Amidst all the marriage craziness, Lucy eventually announces that she wants a divorce because she’s never really loved John in the first place.  John dismisses this as female hysteria.

Uncle Everett and unseen wife Julia:   Everett provides comic relief throughout the play.  He and his own wife are “secretly” attempting a trial separation, but she keeps sending cute telegrams from Reno, eventually revealing that they both miss each other and she’s on her way home.

Thoughts:  This play was originally published under the title And So They Were Married, but perhaps in an attempt to not give away the ending…it was changed and The Pulitzer committee recognizes it under the title Why Marry?  I have to say that I wasn’t particularly thrilled when I received this play through Inter-library loan and noticed that the first recipient of the Pulitzer is 242 pages long; but I was actually delightfully surprised.

The text is shockingly progressive, especially for 1918.  Helen is a brilliant, working scientist whose family believes that it is time for her to get married.  She and Ernest profess their love to each other and both agree that, “those who love each other truly don’t need anything to bring them together.  The difficulty is to keep apart” (148).  Clearly, Helen’s family thinks that this idea is ludicrous.

The play contains major commentary surrounding not only the subject of family and marriage; but also the role of both the church and state in marriage and civil unions and gender bias in academia.  Though these are all weighty subjects, the comedic elements of the play are both whimsical and intelligent.  Additionally, many of William’s lines are pointedly succinct.  He clearly uses word economy to his advantage, creating snippets of dialogue that can be quoted and remembered. 

I think a fascinating paper would be a queer reading of this play, especially because many of Helen and Ernest’s thoughts about marriage are reminiscent of rhetoric currently being used on both sides of the gay marriage/civil union argument.