Well, this is going well.
I love how we’re all falling into niches here. When DG, God’sLonelyMan and I first discussed the idea of a blogospheric enterprise, we hoped we wouldn’t end up in “categories,” but there is a certain sense of self-categorization. However, I think we’ll branch out fairly soon, out of the eclectic, digital, and theatrical, into the “utterly miscellanous.” That’s what I aspire for.
So, as for me: well, I’m a drama person. Bigtime. Always have been. So expect a healthy dose of theatrical or literary flavoring in my posts. Like vanilla extract, but more iambic and tinged with self-pity. For my first list, I bring you an exorbitant list of:
Top 10 Modern Plays You May or May Not Have Heard Of
Note: As the title implies, you may or may not have heard of these. Some of the names are definitely obscure, but you never know who’s been doing their research.
1. Marat/Sade, or The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (Peter Weiss): Okay, you've probably heard of this. But I'm always surprised at how many people haven't, so I'll revamp the subject for whatever friends haven't heard this schpiel yet. Marat/Sade is a brilliant play; arguably the best play of the 20th Century, though, because of its abstraction and difficulty, it is seldom performed. Written by Peter Weiss collaborating with Peter Hall, one of the century's great directors, Marat/Sade is a play-within-a-play, showing the audience an all-verse musical drama "written" by the famous Marquis de Sade; the ingenious 18th Century pervert after whom the word "sadism" is named, and who was responsible for the creation of mainstream pornography. Sade's play is performed by his peers; inmates at an asylum where he is imprisoned, and chronicles the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat, a key figure of the French Revolution who was confined to a bathtub because of a skin disease. A cast of narcoleptics, sex addicts, paranoiacs, schizophrenics, autistics, and other crazies portray the entire spectrum of the French Revolution in this psychological extravaganza. If you EVER hear of a production of this near you, go out and see it immediately. It's not to be missed.
2. Rhinoceros (Eugene Ionesco): I love Ionesco - he embraces the absurd in deeply profound ways; much as I enjoy Beckett (Waiting for Godot, etc.), Ionesco's absurdism slaps his in the face with its cleverness and self-deprecation. Rhinoceros follows Berenger, a put-upon French Everyman, and his larger-than-life friend, epicurean Jean, as well as Berenger's crush Daisy, as the town they live in is infected with a plague which makes people turn into Rhinoceroses. Ionesco's Theatre of the Absurd is a delight compared to some "avante-garde" theatre, in which the audience feels like the writer is just sucking at the proverbial teat of Jungian archetypes and old Freud handbooks. In Rhinoceros, Ionesco offers a deft criticism of socialism, communism, McCarthyism, and more, while never losing the hilarity of a play about being chased by Rhinoceroses. For more of this, look into Ionesco's Exit the King, The Bald Soprano, and his clever neo-Macbeth, Macbett.
3. Quills (Doug Wright): I guess it says something about me that my Top 5 Plays in this list contains two plays about the Marquis de Sade. Well, whatever. Quills is a brilliant, historical fiction work about the time the Marquis de Sade spent in Charenton Asylum. The play itself is very good; an examination of the meaning of censorship, literature, and sex, stuffed into a blender with a lot of really exceptional wit (the play also contains one of my favorite dirty jokes: "Conversation, like some parts of the anatomy, always works better when lubricated"). What's really great about the play is the movie - also called Quills, a 2000 Philip Kaufman film with a brilliant cast giving stellar performances, including Geoffrey Rush as Sade, Michael Caine as his "therapist" Doctor Royer-Collard, Joaquin Phoenix as the head of the asylum, and Kate Winslet as Maddy Leclerc, the maid who helps de Sade publish his pornographic work through the asylum walls.
4. The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Martin McDonagh): You can't have a list of modern plays without Martin McDonagh on it. The man is certifiably one of the best living playwrights - more's the pity that only one of his works, the brilliant The Pillowman, is often performed. The Beauty Queen of Leenane, like all of McDonagh's work, is funny only in how distressing it is. A stagnant spinster named Maureen Folan takes care of her septuagenarian mother Mag, a manipulative hag who wants her daughter to experience no happiness, in their home in Leenane, Connemara, an Irish village. I won't give away the plot, but suffice to say it combines morbid romance, intricate deception and betrayal, and a once-in-a-lifetime portrait of a dysfunctional relationship. Not for the intellectually faint of heart. Once you've dispensed with Beauty Queen move on immediately to McDonagh's other work: The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Lonesome West, The Pillowman, and his films Six Shooter and In Bruges (the latter netted an Oscar nomination, and probably should've won; the film is exceptional).
5. Eurydice (Sarah Ruhl): Sarah Ruhl is a hot playwright nowadays - she was recently awarded a genius grant, and wrote the Pulitzer-Prize winning The Clean House. I had a hard time picking one play of hers to go here, but I knew she'd be on the list. In a few years, she won't have any unknown works, but now she's still hovering just north of artistic obscurity outside of Clean House, and her success Dead Man's Cellphone. Eurydice is a much simpler, quieter, more delicate play which poetically and abstractly recreates the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice goes to the Underworld, but finds it to be a quiet, unobtrusive place where you lose your memories. Her only friend there is her Father, who remembers her even though she doesn't remember him. The bond between Eurydice and her Father is one of the most beautiful relationships created in the modern theatre, and when Orpheus comes down to claim his wife, the whole myth is violently shoved into perspective with these added elements. Outside of the tender poignancy, Ruhl gives us a chorus of "Stones" who offer Godot-like commentary, and a Lord of the Underworld who rides a tricycle and tries to seduce people. Also look into Sarah Ruhl's lesser known works; In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play, and her fascinating philosophical trilogy, Passion Cycle.*
Note: Charlottesville residents, remember: LiveArts downtown is doing Eurydice later this summer. Go see it, see what I’m talking about. And the University of Virginia is doing Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cellphone in early 2010.
6. As Bees in Honey Drown (Douglas Carter Bean): A satirical romp through...lots of things. Evan Wyler, an aspiring supposed-to-be-homosexual New York writer, is thrust into the world of fame and fortune by an apparent impresaria, the enigmatic Alexa Vere de Vere. The plot really can't be detailed without giving away interesting things, but you have to trust me. Evan, another flustered everyman, sinks deeper and deeper into a world of faux-art, pop culture, and crime, with hilarious results. The play is a feast of language, reference, and wit that revels in its modernity. It risks being dated in a decade or so, but if you see it soon, you'll fall in love. (Note: I heard about this play, though I never saw it, after the H-B Woodlawn School in Arlington, VA did an award-winning performance of it last year, with some friends of mine in it - the play is a delight for young performers especially, and should be much more of a high school/college theatrical staple than it is).
7. The Idiots Karamazov (Christopher Durang): Durang's shorter plays are generally his most popular - The Actor's Nightmare, about a man thrust into the world of theatre head first, and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All, a scathing criticism of Roman Catholicism, have enjoyed a prosperous stage life. Karamazov, which premiered with Durang in it, as well as Meryl Streep, has not. The Idiots Karamazov is a comical, quasi-musical retelling of Dostoevsky's brilliant The Brothers Karamazov, replete with very poor-taste sex jokes, a Dr. Strangelove-esque Russian translator in a wheelchair, copious references to The Sound of Music, and death-by-pestle. Durang's style of black, black comedy is actually very uncomfortable, but once you push aside your puritanical doubts, you can't help but laugh. For more fun, check out Durang's other full-length work, especially Baby With the Bathwater, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, and Beyond Therapy.
8. House of Blue Leaves (John Guare): House of Blue Leaves is really mind-bogglingly cerebral, but that doesn't mean it can't be enjoyed. Another in a long line of stupendous dark comedies I like, House of Blue Leaves weaves a story around one day in 1965 when Pope Paul VI visited New York City. Artie Shaughnessy, an aspiring songwriter with a schizophrenic spouse named Bananas, a vaguely psychotic son named Ronnie, and a platinum-haired girlfriend named Bunny, lives in an apartment in Sunnyside, Queens, New York. When the Pope comes to town, Artie hopes the event will bring about a change in his drifting life; and change, in the form of papal assassination, potential elopement, Unitarianism, and a lunatic band of nuns, certainly does come. But, at its heart, House of Blue Leaves is a painful, poignant criticism of how people work in society. Amidst some really enjoyable belly laughs, any audience to a good production of this play will leave feeling a little emptier than before - exactly as Guare intended. For an even more cerebral journey, check out the sequel, Chaucer in Rome.
9. The Good Doctor (Neil Simon): Neil Simon is a comic playwright best known for his more "mainstream" storyline works, such as The Odd Couple, Brighton Beach Memoirs, and Rumors. I personally think his greatest comic success is this self-referential travesty of a play, which brilliantly fuses the world of Anton Chekhov and Noel Coward to create a string of episodes from 19th Century Russia, generally darkly comic. The play is threaded together by "The Writer" an omniscient character, clearly a parody of Chekhov, who waltzes amongst the storylines. The best episodes include "The Drowned Man," in which a man convinces people to pay him to commit suicide, "The Audition" in which a flighty ingenue performs Russian drama en masse, "The Sneeze" a social criticism about a man sneezing on his employer's head, and "The Arrangement," in which a man gets his son a Moscow hooker for his birthday.
10. Fortinbras (Lee Blessing): Blessing, author of the Pulitzer-nominated A Walk in the Woods and the perennially-popular Eleemosynary here gives us Hamlet 2, but does a better job than Steve Coogan did. Fortinbras is not really a good play, but for Shakespeare nerds its just ridiculous fun. The play starts with the last lines of Shakespeare's Hamlet, and watches as Fortinbras, a no-nonsense Norwegian prince with a good eye for media spin, tries to "edit" the tragedy of the dead Hamlet to make his coup look more PC. Meanwhile, Horatio tries desperately to honor his dead friend's memory, Osric might just be gay, two Swedish prostitutes learn English while enjoying the "royal sceptre" and its benevolence, and the ghosts of Hamlet, Claudius, Polonius, Laertes, Ophelia, and Gertrude quietly pop out of nowhere to cause existential problems. Hamlet spends Act I inside a television set.
Currently, I’m trying to think of what my next contribution will be. Top 10 Funny-Sounding Cocktails? Top 10 Effeminate British Men? Give a brotha some help.
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