Sunday in the Park with George by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine (1985)

Summary:  In Act One, a fictionalized version of artist Georges Seurat is working on his famous "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" painting while navigating a failing relationship with his lover Dot and the critical voices of fellow artists and acquaintances.  In the second half of Act 2, the play fast forwards to 1984 and another artist named George is attempting to generate financial support for a new experimental project that celebrates Seurat's work with the use of lasers and extensive electronic technology.  Both Georges are played by the same actor and it is gradually revealed that 1984 George is a descendant of Georges Seurat.

Thoughts:  One of Stephen Sondheim's signatures is repetition, which makes this play enjoyable to listen to, but difficult to read.  The stage directions in this play are also highly technical and staging is dependent on large pieces of scenery and cutouts featuring different parts of the painting.  The use of repetition and arpeggio are especially effective at demonstrating one of the central themes of the play:  that art is often monotonous and isolating.

Again, it is interesting that this is Stephen Sondheim's only Pulitzer; as much of it involves a character who is decidedly not American, and the bulk of the play takes place in France.  Only in the second act is America mentioned (1984 George is from New Jersey).

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat.  Wikipedia, courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.

South Pacific by Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein and Joshua Logan (1950)

Summary:  American military men are stationed on an island in the South Pacific during World War II.  While a war is going on around them, the primary stories in this play are the relationships.  Featured in the Rodgers/Hammerstein adaptation of James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific are:

Interactions between stationed (and bored) sailors
A budding, serious romance between young nurse Nellie Forbush (from Little Rock) and Emile DeBecque, a mysterious older Frenchman
A flirtation and possibly sexual relationship between young, attractive Lieutenant Cable and Liat, a seventeen year old Tonkinese native.  

An illegal picture taken from my seat at Lincoln Center in August.  Instead of a curtain, Michener's text appeared on the stage before the overture.

In Act 2, Nellie informs Emile that she cannot be with him because his two children (from a deceased wife) are half Polynesian.  She explains that her Little Rock upbringing has influenced her as Lieutenant Cable sings, "You've got to be taught to be afraid/Of people whose eyes are oddly made/And people whose skin is a different shade--/You've got to be carefully taught" (136).  Heartbroken by the news that Nellie will not be his wife, Emile agrees to help the American soldiers on a very dangerous mission...that is the ultimate end of Lieutenant Cable.  When Emile returns home, Nellie is mothering his children and the play ends in a "happily ever after" embrace.

Thoughts:  It seems strange to me that this is the only Pulitzer Prize for Rodgers and Hammerstein--and even more puzzling that their one Pulitzer is for this play.  This is not a disparaging statement about this South Pacific, but in keeping with the guidelines stating that plays should be about the American experience, I am surprised that Oklahoma! was not awarded. 

When I saw the revival of this play at Lincoln Center in August of 2010, I cringed at the "people whose eyes are oddly made" line and started thinking about the issue of race in the American musical.  Clearly, this is a subject I have been thinking about during the last three months of this project.  In this play, Nellie takes a risk by exposing her feelings about race, but this issue is never dealt with after her initial confession.  In his absence, she realizes that Emile is important to her; but her discomfort with the children is never further explored.

When I saw this play, I quickly noticed that the most memorable songs of the musical take place in the first act...and though the second act is shorter, it seems to drag, certainly in part because of Emile's song "This Nearly Was Mine" which seems to go on forever.  This issue of balance was not as evident while reading the play; because unlike some of the other musicals on the list, there is a great deal of spoken text in this play...rather than text serving as a bridge to get to the next song.

I knew this illegal picture would come in handy someday.  Personal photo, August 2010.

There Shall Be No Night by Robert Sherwood (1941)

Summary:  The entire play takes place in the Helsinki living room of Dr. Valkonen (who has recently won the Nobel Prize) and his wife Miranda.  The play chronicles the interactions of the family and various friends from 1938-1940.  In the early scenes, Valkonen spends an extensive amount of time talking about his reasons for being a pacifist and abhorring the war (Finland's Winter War with the Soviets) before his son Erik enlists.  Eventually, Valkonen himself joins the medical corps.  In undramatized moments, both Valkonen men die.  American-born Miranda is left both a widow and a grieving mother who feels responsible for the care of Erik's unborn child and sends his fiancee to America to have the baby.

Thoughts:  In his lengthy preface, Sherwood explains that this play is the sequel to Idiot's Delight, in which Dr. Valkonen was a minor character stuck at the hotel with a zany crew of fellow cast mates (Pulitzer Prize, 1936). 

Once again, I feel like Sherwood had a lot to say, but perhaps a play was not the best possible platform for his thoughts.  When the characters of the play are interacting with plot-driven dialogue, the play moves quickly and believable characters and relationships are created.  However, the bulk of this play (like Abe Lincoln in Illinois and Idiot's Delight) is made up of lengthy monologues about the nature of humanity and war.  In his thirty page preface, Sherwood quotes extensively from his other works and seems to make many of the same arguments that he has made before--war is not the end of humanity, but instead a chance to reflect on our mistakes and learn from them, though he seems dubious about that actually happening.

"Patriotism as now practiced is one of the most virulent manifestations of evil" (79).  

The Great White Hope by Howard Sackler (1969)

Summary:  Sackler’s dramatization of the life of boxer Jack Johnson (named Jack Jefferson in this play).   After winning the World Heavyweight Championship in the first few pages of the play, Jack spends the rest of his life dealing with fallout surrounding this event.  The central dramatic conflict of the play is the search for a “great white hope”—a white boxer who will fight Jack and win.  After he gets into some trouble with the law (for having sex with his white girlfriend), Jack flees the country and is repeatedly approached with offers trading his inevitable jail time in exchange for throwing a fight (losing on purpose).

Thoughts:  The play is a powerful statement about race in America, race in sports, race in families and race in sexual relationships.  Interestingly, the photo on the front of the play and the text on the back of it led me to believe that this would be a play about Jack’s rise to glory—when it is actually just the opposite.  Jack is triumphant in the first few pages of the play, but the bulk of the play’s 239 pages depict his descent into depression and desperation.  A particular low-point in Jack's departure from the glory days depicts him and his girlfriend Ellie in a performance reminiscent of a minstrel show. 

Additionally, the blurbs on the back of this play made me think about the tendency toward hyperbole when writing about culturally and literarily significant works. While I did enjoy this play and certainly do think it is important, I wonder if readers today would still draw comparisons between it and Long Day’s Journey Into Night. 

Both bad pictures courtesy of my phone and UNM's 95 cent Bantam edition of the play, April 1969.

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.

Idiot's Delight by Robert Sherwood (1936)

Summary:  An assortment of travelers are stranded at the Hotel Monte Gabriele on the precipice of World War II.  The hotel essentially sits atop a military base at the border of Italy, Switzerland and Austria.  Antics ensue because the collection of travelers include a pair of honeymooners, a man named Harry who directs a traveling act featuring six blond dancers and a very oddly matched couple of unknown origin.  Lengthy drunken conversations reveal that the female half of this couple is one of Harry's former lovers with whom he spent one crazy night in a hotel in Nebraska and who is likely traveling on a forged passport.  At the end of the play, all of the characters are unsure about what the future holds both for their own relationships and the world-at-large.

Thoughts:  After the emotionally uncertain conclusion, there is a postscript written by Sherman about the then-current political situation.  Sherwood writes, "During the past two weeks (this is March 16, 1936) the Italians have made a great offensive in Ethiopia..."  He spends an entire paragraph discussing specific tensions around the world before adding:
"What will happen before this play reaches print or a New York audience, I do not know.  But let me express here the conviction that those who shrug and say, "'War is inevitable,' are false prophets.  I believe that the world is populated largely by decent people, and decent people don't want war.  Nor do they make war.  They fight and die, to be sure-but that is because that have been deluded by their exploiters, who are members of the indecent minority" (189).  

Though the play was written three years before the generally assumed start date of World War 2 (September 1939), the tension erupts from confusion about what is currently happening (to individual characters and the outside world) and uncertainty about what the future holds.  Adding to the surface-level confusion is the fact that the hotel staff speaks almost exclusively in Italian (and a good portion of Sherwood's dialogue is written in Italian with no translation).

Talley's Folly by Lanford Wilson (1980)

Summary:  The play opens with Matt directly addressing the audience, making comments about the romantic set and telling the audience that the play will be over in ninety-seven minutes.  He also states that he is going to need all the help he can get in the conversation that follows.  When Sally enters, it becomes clear that they had a hot, sexy affair the previous summer and he is back to profess his love and claim her as his wife.  Throughout the conversation, Sally resists, saying that they don't really know anything about each other and are probably too old to be getting married anyway (the play is set in 1944 and Matt is in his 40s). 

 

In response, a very guarded Matt reveals details about his past--involving a Lithuanian childhood and detainment by French and German officials in the early 1900s (this segment of the play is very important...and also very confusing).  Ultimately, Sally agrees to leave her family in Mississippi and marry Jewish Matt--a decision that will certainly not please her family.

 

Thoughts:  The first four pages of this story have a very charming, very Our Town-like appeal.  Matt seems likable, and is highly concerned with winning the emotional support and favor of the audience.  However, once Sally shows up, the charm evaporates.  The two spend the first half of the play bickering.  When Matt is finally forced to reveal something about his personal background, his narrative is purposely stilted by how he chooses to tell the story (in vague fairytale tones).  Though this play attempts to make statements about religious persecution and family pressure in relationships, I never felt myself pulling for Sally and Matt.

 

After Sally appears, a rigid fourth wall is erected and is only broken by the last line of the play:  "And so, all's well that ends... (Takes out his watch, shows time to Sally, then to audience)...right on the button.  Good night.  (They embrace)."

 

Of Thee I Sing by George Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, Ira Gershwin (1932)

Summary:  Political handlers have decided that the best platform for presidential hopeful Mr. Wintergreen to run on is love.  After all, Americans can't resist a good love story.  They create a pageant, where the lucky winner will follow Wintergreen to the White House and assume the position of First Lady.  Meanwhile, Wintergreen falls in love with Mary (a campaign worker who makes dynamite corn muffins).  Wintergreen wins the election, the country falls in love with Mary and pageant winner Diana returns to stir up some conflict.

Thoughts:  Antics for days!  This is the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize, and one of the only comedies to win the award in the 20s or 30s (the 1937 winner was also a comedy and also written by Kaufman).  Much like State of the Union (1946), this play caters to America's fascination with the inner workings of politics.  An overall message of "those people in Washington don't know what they're doing any better than you do."

The humor in this play remains relatively intact.  Though sexist statements about women date the play, they also give it a sort of antique charm.  Like State of the Union and You Can't Take It With You, the humor in this play is smart an exists on numerous levels (dialogue, puns, zany plot antics).  The play contains a running gag about a man named Mr. Throttlebottom.  No one can ever remember his name, why he is there or what he does.  Throttlebottom himself doesn't seem to understand the duties of Vice President (which he is!) because no one can explain them to him.

I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright (2004)

Summary:  Doug Wright's Introduction explains that the play is "a one-woman show, performed by a man" (xix).  Charlotte von Mahlsdorf is an East Berlin transvestite who has managed to survive both the Nazis and the Communists and lives to tell about it as she guides audiences through her home--which is a sort of collector's museum.  One actor plays thirty-six characters (including the playwright) in a style reminiscent of the ethnographic performances of Anna Deavere-Smith.

Thoughts:  This play is unlike anything else on the list of plays that have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize.  Currently, it is the only one-person show on the list and it is one of the only plays that is decidedly not about American Life (which the guidelines suggest/mandate).  The other plays that I have encountered thus far that are not about "American Life" are Ruined and The Diary of Anne Frank.  An argument could be made that all three of these plays deal with issues/people that America should have cared about, but instead turned a blind eye to (genocide in the Congo, Holocaust, Communist persecution). 

One of the most compelling parts of Wright's text is the Introduction where he details the practical and emotional experience of writing this play.  He collected hundreds of hours of interviews and then was at a loss about how to put them all together.  Eventually, his colleague Robert Blacker suggested, "Whatever you do, don't write a play about history.  Write a play about your love affair with Charlotte von Mahlsdorf.  If you're lucky, the requisite history will take care of itself."   Wright replies, "It was the most liberating gift a fellow artist could give; permission to write my own story.  For the first time, the play's structure dawned on me.  It wouldn't be a straight-forward biographical drama; it would chart my own relationship with my heroine" (xv).

Wright does an excellent job of showcasing Charlotte while using the other characters to propel the narrative; but, at times, it seems that the other characters are present for the sole purpose of providing dramatic structure.  This play is moving and important, but much of it's critical acclaim should be credited to Jefferson Mays--the actor who won a Tony Award for bringing Wright's complicated text (and the complicated character of Charlotte) to life onstage.

Inscribed copy of I Am My Own Wife.  Gift from Jessica Watkins (who worked with Doug Wright at the La Jolla Playhouse, 2009). 

The Diary of Anne Frank by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett (1956)

Summary:  Thirteen year-old Anne and her family are hiding in an attic to escape discovery and capture by the Nazis.  They are joined in their confined space by the Van Daan family and a dentist named Dr. Dussel.  Eight people and a cat attempt to survive on stolen food rations while sticking to a strict nocturnal schedule to avoid capture.  Eventually, as it begins to look like the war is ending and they will be liberated, they are all captured and sent to separate concentration camps.

Thoughts:  I wasn't looking forward to reading this play, perhaps because I knew the ending, perhaps because I remember not reading the book when it was assigned circa eighth grade.  Yesterday, I complained about the lack of action in my recent reads and was certain that this play would be the same.  Instead, though the play is confined to an extremely tight area, it is largely dependent on action rather than narrative or relationships between characters.  Each time there is a knock at the door, both the characters and the audience wonder what surprises Miep has in store...or if the families in hiding have finally met their end.  Because we know how the play will end, the repeated visits from Miep create narrative tension that closely mirrors the emotional tension that each additional month in the attic causes.

While the play is obviously called The Diary of Anne Frank, the adaptation from Frank's text tells the story of the time spent in the attic--not always from her perspective.  All of the characters are well-developed and are each given the opportunity to show their multi-faceted personalities--which inevitably change under the stress of circumstance.  Though Anne becomes more important as the play progresses, this play is not full of huge monologues or chunks from the diary as I imagined that it would be.

Additionally, I think that using this play as part of a unit would be extremely beneficial for teachers required to teach Anne Frank's actual diary.  The Goodrich/Hackett adaptation piques interest in individual characters and made me wonder about what else Anne has to say about them in a diary that spans more than two years.

You Can't Take it With You by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman (1937)

Summary:  The Vanderhof family is not like other families of 1937.  Or of any decade, really.  From the opening scene, we see that visual eccentricities abound:  mother is writing plays while offering treats from a skull-shaped candy dish, father is in the basement creating special fireworks for the fourth of July.  Their own personal oddities have never proven a problem before, but Alice (the family's youngest daughter) is soon-to-be engaged to Tony Kirby--a young man from a society upbringing.  Alice attempts to ready her family for a dinner party involving Tony's relatives...but all goes to hell when the Kirby family arrives for dinner a day early.

Thoughts:  The family in this play reminded me of Augusten Burrough's makeshift relatives in Running with Scissors.  While their lifestyle works for them, it isn't the most presentable or understandable to outsiders.  Though the family is the meat of this production, there are also some rich "color" characters including Gay Wellington ("an actress, a nymphomaniac and a terrible souse"), Kolenkov (a very large, very male Russian ballet teacher) and The Grand Duchess (a Russian princess...of course).

The humor in this play has remained almost entirely intact, even after 73 years.

If ever I were to be given the opportunity to do a large-scale production with a diverse group of friends, this would be it.  The antics in this play generate madcap humor; but there is also a remarkable amount of heart involved in the struggle to accept the family you were born into.

Ruined by Lynn Nottage (2009)

Summary:  Mama Nadi owns a bar/brothel in The Democratic Republic of Congo.  One of her rules involves serving any paying customer:  including soldiers on either side of the conflict.  The setting never changes, but stakes are raised when she is asked to take in more girls than she can handle and is visited both by rebel leaders and soldiers from the current government.   

Thoughts:  I feel like it is really difficult to offer any sort of critique of this play without appearing racist or culturally insensitive.  While the subject matter is unquestionably compelling, I was not extraordinarily moved by the actual text.  I was, however, moved by the photographs of the women in the appendix of the play (taken by Nottage’s husband) and information included in the Introduction (by director Kate Whorisky).  While the play is not an ethnography, Nottage’s work was primarily informed by interviews with women (in the Congo) who have experienced sexual violence as a result of the political upheaval in their country.  Unlike other interview-based work (The Laramie Project, The Exonerated) this play veers away from traditional monologue storytelling…and perhaps this is why I felt emotionally removed from a very emotional subject.

Other nominees in 2009 included In the Heights and Becky Shaw—both largely about families and their internal conflicts, so perhaps the committee decided it was time to award a play set outside of a nuclear family in the United States (from 2000-2010, over half of the recipients involve a central theme of dysfunction in the American family).