30 PLAYS IN 30 DAYS: Play # 5 "All Over" by Edward Albee

 

I have decided for the month of September to read 30 plays in 30 days. It is my belief that, if possible, a play should be read in one sitting to get a better inherent sense of the dramatic arc. Each day, I will write a short post here about the play of the day.

Play #5

All Over by Edward Albee

Despite the huge success of the playwright's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, both on Broadway and in Mike Nichols first feature film as a director, and the Pulitzer Prize he won for A Delicate Balance in 1966, Edward Albee's All Over was torn to pieces by many critics and closed after only 40 performances on Broadway in 1971. This despite Albee's (in my opinion, much-deserved) renown, and a powerhouse team, including Jessica Tandy and Colleen Dewhurst in leading roles, and John Gielgud at the helm of the production.  The play fared better a year later with the Royal Shakespeare Company's production in London, a production which featured Angela Landsbury. Clive Barnes, who felt Woolf was overpraised and considered All Over to be Albee's most important work to date, wrote, "It is a moving meditation and threnody on death--- and there indeed is the rub. One could hardly expect such a subject to be popular on Broadway, nor did it prove so.... the notices were almost gleefully savage, pointing out the work's melancholy and mood, the special musical tonality of its texture, and its slowness, without catching its poetry and subdued passion, its operatic grace, and careful construction, its beautiful writing, and, most of all, its grave and noble sense of man's mortality." Barnes concluded: "Perhaps people do not wish to be assured that they too will one day die."

While I do not find All Over to be my favorite of Albee's early work--- I am incredibly fond of Zoo Story, the Ionesco-inspired American Dream, and yes, I am captivated by the energy in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?--- I do agree that All Over has a great deal of beauty in its writing, and find it puzzling that it failed so terribly here in the states. Yes, it is slow--- Albee uses variations of the word "languid" more than once in describing a character's demeanor--- but it is not without precision and passion, as Mr. Barnes notes. 

It is literally a deathbed play. An unnamed "great" man (or at least mildly famous, as the press awaits on the property for word of his death) lays dying, while being cared for by a Doctor in his 80s and a Nurse. In wait are the man's Wife, his Mistress, his Son and his Daughter, and his Best Friend, who is also the family lawyer (none of the characters are given names, only these titles in relationship to the dying man). The Wife seems closer with, and more fond of, the Mistress than her own grown children. Indeed, she is disgusted by her Son (though I find him to be the most likeable of the characters, but perhaps that says more about me) for showing too much emotion at times, and the Daughter and Mother wage an all-out war of words and emotions against one another for much of the play. 

I believe Albee to a lyrical and wondrous writer, and there are many speeches that do not disappoint. Perhaps though, it is the number of ponderous monologues delivered that kept U.S. audiences from completely tuning in, as well as the inability to find a completely consistent tone between family drama and Theatre of the Absurd. Albee once said that his three favorite playwrights were Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Eugene Ionesco (in that order), and this play feels Pinter inspired in some ways--- it has no fear of pauses and silence--- and that can be disconcerting for many audiences. 

I dig this play and its language, but at times find it has a "trying too hard" quality for me. Perhaps this is something I ought not be critical of, but I am. I also find that, unlike Zoo Story, Virginia Woolf, or a later work like Three Tall Women, the speeches, while still well-written, seem to run out of energy. Perhaps this was by design, but it doesn't change the fact that, at least on the page, some feel a bit overlong and tedious by the end of them. 

But only a bit. This is still great writing, folks, and I would be more than happy to catch a production of it some day. But then, I have never hidden the fact that I am an Albee fanboy in many ways, as it was early viewings of readings of some of his plays that first made me see what theater could be capable of that not even movies can achieve. So I will always presume that even when I find problems in his plays, some of them may very well be my own. 

Meaning? What Meaning?: Why Bobby Keniston Loves the Theatre of the Absurd

While I Do Not Advocate Smoking, I DO Advocate Samuel Beckett, particularly Wating For Godot

Hello everyone, and welcome to Theater is a Sport.  I am your host.  My name is Bobby Keniston, and I will be your host on this blog. That's right, I'm your host.  (repetition is key in so many things)  If you're worried about reading a blog about theater by some random guy , I will happily tell you that I have been a lifelong student of theater, in acting, directing and playwriting.  In fact, I'm a playwright with over 20 published titles (please don't feel bad if you haven't heard of me). 

Judging by the title of this post, and the picture of Mr. Samuel Beckett, I am sure you clever folks must know that today's post is about the Theatre of the Absurd.  What it is, some of the biggest names involved, and, really, why I like it so much.  You might even say I love it.  Well, not all of it, of course, but, if I were forced to choose my favorite type of theatre, I mean, was literally FORCED, I would probably answer Theatre of the Absurd.  A big reason will become clear from the pictures of people you will see throughout this post, including Mr. Beckett above, and this fellow below:

Harold Pinter, Nobel Laureate in Literature, and, on some days, my favorite playwright (and in my top five on all days)

Let's start off simply enough with a definition:

THEATRE OF THE ABSURD:  
Theatrical movement beginning in the 1950s in which playwrights created works representing the universe as unknowable and humankind’s existence as meaningless.

Of course, origins of Theatre of the Absurd date back before the 1950s, even all the way back to the tragicomedies of Elizabethan Theatre.  In fact, the mode, or "genre" (for lack of a better word) of most Absurdist plays is tragicomedy.  To quote the play Endgame by Mr. Beckett, "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.... it's the most comical thing in the world".  Arthur Kopit's 1964 Absurdist masterpiece (at least a masterpiece in my opinion)  Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad, is subtitled as A Pseudoclassical Tragifarce in a Bastard French Tradition, and that is certainly a dark comedy that achieves a sense of tragedy as well. 

And, yes, Theatre of the Absurd began as a French movement. 

Okay, let's look at some characteristics of Theatre of the Absurd:

---  Theatre of the Absurd, as mentioned before, puts into question the meaning of humankind's existence, and often finds that there is absolutely none.  Building on this point, Theatre of the Absurd often presents a protagonist who is almost a puppet to some unseen force, with no control whatsoever to the world around him (forgive the pronoun). 

---  Because life is not backed by any sense of meaning, in the Theatre of the Absurd, logical communication ceases to exist, leading to a complete breakdown of communication and, well, eventually and inevitably, silence.  A simpler way to say this is that many playwrights dipping into the Absurd will play with language a great deal.  One need only to the character Lucky in Waiting for Godot for an example of communication going completely haywire.  Mr. Pinter, who, as I mentioned, is a favorite of mine, says so much in his pauses.  I don't know if there is a playwright who uses ellipses (...) as well as he does. 

--- Some Theatre of the Absurd almost actively wants to parody the notion of what constitutes as a well-made play.  Look at Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Soprano, which he called "an anti-play".  In fact, why not take a look at this picture of Mr. Ionesco:

Mr. Ionesco, no doubt on the lookout for a charging rhinoceros

--- A good deal of Theatre of the Absurd mixes a kind of interesting stew of broad comedy, even Vaudevillian or slapstick (see Waiting for Godot--- Beckett loved Vaudeville), and mixes it with horrific things and tragedy.  After all, in a world without meaning, there is bound to be severe tonal shifts, wouldn't you say?

--- Many Absurdists plays may have a cyclical nature, in some ways representing the idea of humankind making the same damn mistakes over and over again. 

---- Big old wordplay.  Some of my favorite comes from Tom Stoppard in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, like their wonderful game of questions or referrng to England as "a conspiracy of cartographers". 

Why do I love the Theatre of the Absurd?   Look, I'm not a literary critic, I just know what I like, and largely, what I like are things that effect me viscerally.  Things I feel deep in my bones and that stay with me long afterwards.  There are many types of plays and musicals that do this for me, but, the largest percentage is represented by the Theatre of the Absurd.  I dig it when I go from laughing to being shocked.  I enjoy having to think about why something is making me feel the way it does.  I like the bold audacity that is represented in so many Absurdist works.  And, truly, I like playwrights who ask the big questions and aren't afraid of not giving answers (because, well, to the really big questions, there aren't any). 

Here is a partial list of some of my favorite Absurdist plays that I recommend to anyone and everyone (no particular order, just as I think of them) :

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Happy Days by Samuel Beckett
The Caretaker by Harold Pinter
A Slight Ache by Harold Pinter
The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter
The Maids by Jean Genet
A Night Out by Harold Pinter
The Chairs by Eugene Ionesco
The Zoo Story by Edward Albee
Rhionoceros by Eugene Ionesco
Endgame by Samuel Beckett
The Homecoming by Harold Pinter
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard
Exit the King by Eugene Ionesco
The Killer by Eugene Ionesco
Amedee or How to Get Rid of It by Eugene Ionesco
Jack or the Submission by Eugene Ionesco
Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad by Arthur Kopit
God by Woody Allen
The Sandbox by Edward Albee
The American Dream by Edward Albee
The Nature and Purpose of the Universe by Christopher Durang
Firebugs by Max Frisch

Okay, so that's only a partial list, but there are plenty more.  That's enough to get anyone interested started, however.

Thanks for checking out my blog today.  Feel free to follow the links below to find out more about me.  In the meantime, life can be absurd, so it's important to remember that theater is a sport.  Bye bye.
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How to Write a Play or How to Enjoy Repeatedly Banging Your Head Against the Wall, Lesson 5: Making a Contract With Your Audience

Hello, my name is Bobby Keniston, and welcome to Theater is a Sport.  Today is Tuesday, so any regular reader knows that I'm here to talk about writing a play today.  Yippie!

Today I wanted to talk about the most important contract a playwright must uphold.  It is not with a producer, though, please be sure to check the fine print, and it is not with a publisher even though I readily admit you should read it carefully before you sign. 

The contract I'm talking about today is the contract you make with your audience. 

When a person sits down to watch a play, this viewer enters into a contract with the playwright (and the production in general) within the first few minutes.  Children's audiences can be both the easiest and the hardest audiences to have a contract with--- easiest because if you have your character say, "Hi!  I'm Paul Bunyon!", the kids will most likely respond, "Hi Paul!"  This is a good thing, because children are much more in tune with their imaginations than adults and will accept a given circumstance at a word.  However, they can be the hardest to maintain the contract with because they seem to have an inherent, visceral understanding of storytelling--- in short, if you have characters behaving in ways that don't ring true, a new plot development that feels false, and they will tune out and let you know they have tuned out. 

It is the same with adults, only perhaps adults are not as exuberant in their praise or disdain (I should say, "some adults", as there are others who are pretty exuberant).  Generally, though, I would hypothesize that adults take a little bit longer to accept the given circumstances of a play, but will also give the author a tiny bit more leeway when things may seem to be going awry, whether in a plot or in a character.  Perhaps adults are more accustomed to what seem like non sequiturs in real life.

All right, let's talk about some different types of contracts.

Let's take a look at this short exchange from Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf:

GEORGE:  Just don't start on the bit, that's all.
MARTHA:  The bit?  The bit?  What kind of language is that?  What are you talking about?
GEORGE:  The bit.  Just don't start in on the bit.
MARTHA:  You imitating one of your students, for God's sake?  What are you trying to do?  WHAT BIT?
GEORGE:  Just don't start in on the bit about the kid, that's all?
MARTHA:  What do you take me for?
GEORGE:  Much too much.
MARTHA:  (really angered)  Yeah?  Well I'll start in on the kid if I want to.
GEORGE:  Just leave the kid out of this.
MARTHA:  (Threatening)  He's mine as much as he is yours.  I'll talk about him if I want to.
GEORGE:  I'd advise against it, Martha.

All right--- aside from giving us further ideas about how these characters interact, the great Mr. Albee (and his is very great, in my humble opinion) is also making a contract with the audience in this moment.  Because so much energy is spent by George in this short passage to not bring up the "bit about the kid", and Martha returns the energy with forceful assurances she will "talk about him if I want to", Mr. Albee is telling the audience that "the bit about the kid" is very important.  Now, like any other good playwright, Mr. Albee will proceed to lay in even more hints about the kid throughout this very long play. 

So--- imagine, if after this exchange, "the bit about the kid" was never brought up again.  That this detail was never discussed again for the entirety of the show.  This is the kind of detail my playwriting professor, Gladden Schrock, would have called an 8-foot bear, meaning, you, as a writer, have to address it later on.  You have to.  Why?  Because by bringing it up to the audience in the first place, you have made a contract with them.

Make sense?   (Sorry---- that's something I say to my actual students quite a bit in the classroom--- "make sense?")

Let's look at another example of a contract a writer makes with the audience, though, this time, not about plot, but about overall aesthetic and tone. 

Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, another favorite play of mine, is a family comedy/drama (I'm not saying that it is "for the whole family", I'm saying it is about family, as well as other things).  Throughout the play we see the conflict between Vanya and the Professor, Vanya's flirtations with the young wife of the professor, Vanya's growing disgust not only with himself, but with the Professor, a man he once admired.  At the end, there is a big blow-up when the Professor wants to sell the estate, ultimately kicking Vanya, Vanya's mother, and Vanya's niece out into the cold, after they had worked for years keeping the estate and sending all of their money to the Professor.  Vanya has a bit of a breakdown, accusing the Professor of ruining his life.  It is a powerful moment, and a somewhat inevitable one.

Let's say, just for argument's sake, that all of a sudden, here in late Act III or a four-act play, Chekhov decided, as Vanya was breaking down, to have him turn into a giant cockroach.  Out of nowhere.  Boom, suddenly Vanya is a big cockroach.  And then, amazingly, in act four, Vanya was back to being human and no one even mentioned the fact that he had turned into a cockroach at all. 

I know this is a ridiculous example, of course, but it is also a clear one of a playwright breaking an aesthetic contract.  Yes, I know, I threw in some Kafka, and you might say, "Well, if it works for Kafka, why not for Chekhov?"  The answer is simple--- Kafka sets up a very different contract than what Chekhov does.

The same is true for an absurdist like Ionesco.  He can have people turning into rhinos because that's the contract he sets up from the beginning. 

There is a movie out there called From Dusk til Dawn that I know a lot of people like.  It was a movie I was looking forward to when I was in high school, because I was a big Tarantino fan.  However, when I saw the film, I was disappointed.  The first half is a very serious crime drama, where you get to know the characters in a certain way.  I was very entertained by it.  Suddenly, in the second half, the movie becomes about vampires, and relishes in a B-movie cheesy aesthetic, the characters too, suddenly becoming B-movie cut-outs.  I happen to like B-movies.  I also happen to like crime dramas.  So why was I disappointed with From Dusk til Dawn?

Because it cheated.  It did not write or direct itself into a B-movie from the crime drama.  It just went there.  The characters did not naturally transform into B-movie heroes and heroines, they just went there.  In short, a contract was broken with me, the viewer. 

I'm not saying you can't have tonal shifts in your play.  I'm a fan of tonal shifts, and a fan of genre-bending.  But you have to EARN it.  You have to WORK FOR IT.  You can't just plop the audience there and say, "hey, it's still fun, right?"

It may still be fun.  But that doesn't mean it's still good, or, even worse, still satisfying. 

Your audience, if they've stuck with you for any length of time, deserves to be satisfied. 

To go right to PLAYWRITING LESSON NUMBER 6, simply click HERE

Okay, that's all we have time for today at Theater is a Sport.  If you want to learn more about me, please feel free to follow the links at the end of the post.  In the meantime, this is Bobby Keniston reminding you to respect the contracts you make with an audience, and please remember--- theater is not only a craft and an artform... it is also a sport.

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