The Young Man from Atlanta by Horton Foote (1995)

Summary:  Following the apparent suicide of their adult son Bill, upper middle class Houstonians Will and Lily Dale build their expensive dream home.  Will is fired from a company where he has worked for 38 years shortly after they move in.  When he asks his wife for some of their savings, she sheepishly tells him that she has given much of it to their son's "friend" from Atlanta.  After Lily Dale reveals that she has been speaking to Will's friend and sending him thousands of dollars, Will is incensed.  When the friend unexpectedly shows up, Will refuses to see him on the grounds that, "There are things I'd have to ask him and I don't want the answers" (109).

Thoughts:  The word "gay" never appears in this play, but all talk of Bill's friend is fraught with tension.  In her final monologue on the last page of the play, Lily Dale says, "He said Bill insisted on giving him the money, for buying nice things.  He said he was like a father to him....He said, too, that he wished he could have gone down in the water that day with Bill.  That's how much he loved him and missed him" (110).  Her husband assures her that everything will be "all right" soon and the play ends.

This play is short and confined to familial interactions.  Family secrets surrounding money, suicide and homosexuality are omnipresent, but rarely verbalized.  Foote's characters suggest that these are the three topics that should, under no circumstances, be discussed outside of the stifling confines of family...and sometimes not even inside the confines.

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (1949)

Summary:  After working as a traveling salesman for more than twenty years, Willy Loman fights with his adult children and wonders if he was ever really good at his job or his life.
As Willy struggles to keep his job, his adult sons (Biff and Happy) attempt to figure out what they want for their own lives--as they are certainly not yet on a path to greatness.
Ultimately, after struggling to make payments on his house and life insurance, Willy commits suicide in a final attempt to provide for his family.

Thoughts:  I feel the same sort of pressure writing about this play as I felt months ago when I tried to come up with some critical reflection about A Streetcar Named Desire (which won the prize just one year before).  I have probably read this play more times than any other on the list, beginning in Mrs. Worley's twelfth grade English class.  Neal Dandade and I were cast as Willy and Linda and our classmates were forced to spend weeks listening to us likely massacre some of American drama's most famous words. 

Like several of the plays that have been awarded the Pulitzer, this play contains an element of magical realism and the physical structure of the house is central to any production.  Countless comparisons can be made between this play, Our Town and Fences.... each very different interpretations of "the American Dream."  Each play involves a physical home, children and the destruction of expectations.

August: Osage County by Tracy Letts (2009)

Summary:  The three Weston sisters have returned to the home of their parents in Pawkuska, Oklahoma following the disappearance of their father.  They are joined by various relatives and a recently hired cook/maid/nurse named Johnna as they wait with their drug-addled mother for the phone to ring.  Eventually, Sheriff Heidebrecht visits the family to inform them that Bev's body has been found in the lake, an apparent suicide that will be filed as "drowning."  As the sisters attempt to figure out what to do with their mother (who has mouth cancer and is seriously addicted to painkillers), family secrets old and new are exposed. 

Thoughts:  For the second time in this project, a blurb on the back of the book compares the work to that of Eugene O'Neill.  Jeremy McCarter writes, "August:  Osage County is what O'Neill would be writing in 2007.  Letts has recaptured the nobility of American drama's mid-century heyday while still creating something entirely original."

When I read this play for the first time in May of 2010 after spending a few years lying about having read it, I was both moved and awed by the thirteen characters Letts had created.  Each of these characters is crucial to the transmission of the family narrative, and cases can be made for many of them being the "main" character.  Accordingly, both published critics and friends of mine have called this "the best play of the decade."  If the dysfunctional family is the most celebrated subject in the canon of American drama, this play certainly holds its own in the historical record.  

However, I have now read both this play and Sam Shepard's Buried Child twice and now take issue with McCarter's compliment "something entirely original."  Not only are there overlapping subjects in these plays (which happens all the time in dysfunctional family dramas), there are details and structural issues that contain uncomfortable instances of overlap (what happens in the backyard, the role of the outsider, ghostly ending...)

I still love August:  Osage County and think it is a majorly significant work that excels at doing what many American dramatists have attempted:   a realistic depiction what happens when the adult members of a family are forced back together under emotional circumstances.  However, before making proclamations about grandeur and originality, I think it is important to take a look at the play that won the Pulitzer Prize 29 years before.  

Next to Normal by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey (2010)

Summary:  A middle-class suburban family deals with the challenges presented by living with a matriarch (Diana) who is a diagnosed manic depressive.  In addition to the "mountains and valleys" of the disease, Diana literally sees her dead son Gabe as an eighteen-year-old (though he died as an infant) and is treated with electroshock therapy before finally deciding that she needs to leave her husband and daughter in the hope that they will all have a more peaceful normal existence.

Thoughts:  New York Times reviewer Ben Brantley's quip, "It is something much more than a feel-good musical:  it is a feel-everything musical" appeared on promotional material across New York and is now the first blurb on the back of the printed edition of the play.  True, this is a far cry from other huge-grossing Broadway musicals, but not just because of it's subject matter.  When the play came out, comparisons to Rent were immediately drawn due to the pop-like musical score.  However, unlike Rent, Next to Normal is not a musical of memorable songs that will be used in advertising and hummed on the way out of the theatre.  I saw this musical in New York three months ago.  While reading the text of the songs in the recently published Pulitzer edition of the play, I was only faintly reminded of the tune of these songs (highly unusual for me).

Next to Normal is unquestionably a different kind of musical.  Much of the play is very dark, and even the moments of sung tenderness are underscored with the feeling that this is a family that can never be truly happy.  When I saw this play, I liked it.  I was moved.  I did not love it and I was not overwhelmed like countless people told me that I would be.  Having read two of the other three 2010 nominees (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo and In the Next Room), I wonder if Next to Normal won the Pulitzer because it is, in fact, a "different kind of musical."

Personal Photo:
Next to Normal set, Broadway:  August 2010.  
Strange, great lottery seats obtained by Jessica Watkins.

'Night Mother by Marsha Norman (1983)

Summary:  Jessie is planning to commit suicide and tells her mother just hours before she plans to do it.  The play chronicles their subsequent night in one continuous scene.  True character traits are revealed and words left unspoken for decades are finally uttered.

Thoughts:  No play in the Project thus far has made me as uncomfortable as this one.  Perhaps because I was familiar with the story before reading it, I knew that when Jessie promised suicide that this was a promise she would fulfill.

Adding to my discomfort was the fact that, for 18 years, I lived in a house with two women--my mother and grandmother.  They have interactions that mirror Marsha Norman's prologue note, "There is a shorthand to the talk and a sense of routine comfort to the way they relate to each other physically.  Naturally, there are also routine aggravations" (4). 

The play is a fifty-eight page scene with no intermission.  The New York Times blurb on the back of the Dramatists acting edition simply states, "...a shattering evening..."  I agree.  And know that it is not something I ever want to spend an evening witnessing.

The Shrike by Joseph Kramm (1952)

Summary:  Jim finds himself in a mental institution after a failed suicide attempt.  He frustrates doctors by telling them that he's not really sure why he tried to commit suicide--only giving them a number of vague reasons.  Instead of being discharged a few days after his intake, he is moved to an observation floor where he learns that he is going to have to "play ball" to get discharged--or else he is going to be sent to the state hospital.  Meanwhile, his wife Ann (they have been separated for three months) sees this as an opportunity to get him back.  We infer that she has asked doctors to keep him for a few extra days so that she can clean out his bachelor pad and make him dependent on her once again.

Thoughts:  Another in a series of plays (that I have read for this project) that is entirely dependent on interpersonal relationships rather than action or memorable dialogue.  Frustratingly, Jim never offers a concrete answer for why he attempted suicide--just general feelings of vague unhappiness and regret.  At the end of the play, his doctor is discharging him even though he knows that Jim has simply learned how to play the game.  We know that Jim is not better, nor is he in love with Ann (as he now claims to her and various doctors).  The last line of the play is a phone call with Ann where he announces his discharge from the hospital, asks her to pick him up and asks her to bring a necktie with him--after ties have been conspicuously absent from the entire play.

Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley (1981)

Summary:  The Magrath sisters have returned to their family home after youngest sister Babe has been arrested for shooting her husband.  They revisit old arguments (and old boyfriends) and seem to argue that, though we age and move apart, the way we interact with our relatives never really changes.

Thoughts:  Another play about a family that fights, but also loves each other very much.  While the catalyst for the reunion (Babe's newly minted murderous tendencies) is certainly flashy, the interactions of the Magrath sisters are fairly banal.  Additionally, we can't hate Babe too much because her husband had been abusing her for years.  However, additional dramatic tension is added by the fact that Babe has been having an affair with a fifteen year-old black boy (and there are pictures!  Scandalous!)  Though the murder and subsequent meetings with the lawyer are certainly important to the advancement of the plot, this play is fundamentally about the relationship between sisters.  It seems obvious from the outset that Babe is not going to spend any time in jail, but worrying about it gives the sisters something to do besides fight with each other.