Theatre Essay: In defense of Act I Scene 1 of HAMLET

I saw two very different productions of HAMLET in the last two weeks. Almost the only thing they both had in common was that they excised Act I Scene 1.

I object.

I have no problem with trimming the play. Everybody does it and with good reason. Avon Bill never used one word when he could use ten, and it's hard enough for modern audiences to interpret the language. And in spite of what some people would have you believe, it is not finally the language that is the most important aspect of Shakespeare's work, impressive though his language is - it's the plot and the emotions.

Here is the scene as written:

ACT I

         SCENE I. Elsinore. A platform before the castle.

            FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO

        BERNARDO

            Who's there?

        FRANCISCO

            Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.

        BERNARDO

            Long live the king!

        FRANCISCO

            Bernardo?

        BERNARDO

            He.

        FRANCISCO

            You come most carefully upon your hour.

        BERNARDO

            'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.

        FRANCISCO

            For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold,
            And I am sick at heart.

        BERNARDO

            Have you had quiet guard?

        FRANCISCO

            Not a mouse stirring.

        BERNARDO

            Well, good night.
            If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
            The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

        FRANCISCO

            I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who's there?

            Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS

        HORATIO

            Friends to this ground.

        MARCELLUS

            And liegemen to the Dane.

        FRANCISCO

            Give you good night.

        MARCELLUS

            O, farewell, honest soldier:
            Who hath relieved you?

        FRANCISCO

            Bernardo has my place.
            Give you good night.

            Exit

        MARCELLUS

            Holla! Bernardo!

        BERNARDO

            Say, What, is Horatio there?

        HORATIO

            A piece of him.

        BERNARDO

            Welcome, Horatio: welcome, good Marcellus.

        MARCELLUS

            What, has this thing appear'd again to-night?

        BERNARDO

            I have seen nothing.

        MARCELLUS

            Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy,
            And will not let belief take hold of him
            Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us:
            Therefore I have entreated him along
            With us to watch the minutes of this night;
            That if again this apparition come,
            He may approve our eyes and speak to it.

        HORATIO

            Tush, tush, 'twill not appear.

        BERNARDO

            Sit down awhile;
            And let us once again assail your ears,
            That are so fortified against our story
            What we have two nights seen.

        HORATIO

            Well, sit we down,
            And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.

        BERNARDO

            Last night of all,
            When yond same star that's westward from the pole
            Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
            Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
            The bell then beating one,--

            Enter Ghost

        MARCELLUS

            Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!

        BERNARDO

            In the same figure, like the king that's dead.

        MARCELLUS

            Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.

        BERNARDO

            Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio.

        HORATIO

            Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder.

        BERNARDO

            It would be spoke to.

        MARCELLUS

            Question it, Horatio.

        HORATIO

            What art thou that usurp'st this time of night,
            Together with that fair and warlike form
            In which the majesty of buried Denmark
            Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak!

        MARCELLUS

            It is offended.

        BERNARDO

            See, it stalks away!

        HORATIO

            Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!

            Exit Ghost

        MARCELLUS

            'Tis gone, and will not answer.

        BERNARDO

            How now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale:
            Is not this something more than fantasy?
            What think you on't?

        HORATIO

            Before my God, I might not this believe
            Without the sensible and true avouch
            Of mine own eyes.

        MARCELLUS

            Is it not like the king?

        HORATIO

            As thou art to thyself:
            Such was the very armour he had on
            When he the ambitious Norway combated;
            So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,
            He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
            'Tis strange.

        MARCELLUS

            Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
            With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

        HORATIO

            In what particular thought to work I know not;
            But in the gross and scope of my opinion,
            This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

        MARCELLUS

            Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
            Why this same strict and most observant watch
            So nightly toils the subject of the land,
            And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
            And foreign mart for implements of war;
            Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
            Does not divide the Sunday from the week;
            What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
            Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day:
            Who is't that can inform me?

        HORATIO

            That can I;
            At least, the whisper goes so. Our last king,
            Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
            Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
            Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
            Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet--
            For so this side of our known world esteem'd him--
            Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal'd compact,
            Well ratified by law and heraldry,
            Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
            Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror:
            Against the which, a moiety competent
            Was gaged by our king; which had return'd
            To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
            Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant,
            And carriage of the article design'd,
            His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
            Of unimproved mettle hot and full,
            Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
            Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,
            For food and diet, to some enterprise
            That hath a stomach in't; which is no other--
            As it doth well appear unto our state--
            But to recover of us, by strong hand
            And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
            So by his father lost: and this, I take it,
            Is the main motive of our preparations,
            The source of this our watch and the chief head
            Of this post-haste and romage in the land.

        BERNARDO

            I think it be no other but e'en so:
            Well may it sort that this portentous figure
            Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
           That was and is the question of these wars.

        HORATIO

            A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
            In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
            A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
            The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
            Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:
            As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
            Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
            Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands
            Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse:
            And even the like precurse of fierce events,
            As harbingers preceding still the fates
            And prologue to the omen coming on,
            Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
            Unto our climatures and countrymen.--
            But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!

Theatre Essay: Bitches is Crazy: or why I despise TALLEY'S FOLLY

BITCHES IS CRAZY

~ OR ~

Why I despise and loathe the Pulitzer Prize-winning play TALLEY'S FOLLY

 

In which I explain why I have a problem with a play that presents a stalker, who forces a woman to remain in a boathouse until she submits, as a romantic hero.

When I first saw Lanford Wilson’s TALLEY’S FOLLY, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, I didn’t even pick up on the horrific stalking and bullying aspect. This was in the early 1990s, when I first became interested in writing plays, and I considered it homework to go and see a community theatre production of the play in Haddonfield New Jersey. I picked the play exactly because it had won the Pulitzer Prize: I figured it had to be good. Like Shakespeare good.

But instead I was bored. It’s a ninety minute play that felt like two hours, but I gritted my teeth and stayed until the end. As I was walking out of the theatre I remember wondering whether I should abandon playwriting and go back to painting. If that was theatre, then I hated theatre.

My impression of the play, based on that long-ago production, was a long boring conversation, with lots of exposition, and the man doing most of the talking. I don’t know why I didn’t pick up on the truly repulsive underlying message of the play - perhaps it was the way it was directed - I don't remember any physical force used, as specified in the stage directions of the published script. 

Cultural gatekeepers have always been men (or men's female enablers.) To this day the vast majority of movie and theatre critics in the traditional media are men. But thanks to the new technologies all kinds of excellent feminist commentary is available to the public. One of the best purveyors of feminist culture theory is a web site called Tiger Beatdown. And one of its best essays is called TIGER BEATDOWN FOR DUDES Presents: That’s Not Funny. No, Seriously Dude, It’s Not.

In this essay, the author identifies a cultural trope called the Because...? Um Girl. I’ll let author Sady Doyle explain:

So then, of course, you have (television series) Eastbound & Down, where a man calls a woman a “bitch” and promises to “fuck her up (with some truth),” because she doesn’t want to immediately jump into a relationship with him, and her reaction to this is to dump her fiance and move to a new city with him about five seconds later, so he basically verbally abuses her into being his girlfriend, which, if we were encouraged to look into her motivations to the same extent that we’re allowed to examine the motivations of the other (male) characters on the show, would be some spooky tragic cycle-of-abuse bullshit – the show emphasizes that the only other characters who are drawn to him are deeply fucked up, I would take “deeply fucked up” as an answer here – but in the context of the show, it’s all cool. Because she’s not a person; she’s a plot point. Because she’s a woman.

Fear and contempt of women are the only motivating factors to write a character this way. In Apatow-Brand comedies, the girls who are not “Because, Um…?” girls are either bitches (wives; sexually unavailable women; professional women; ex-girlfriends) or sluts, typically of the crazy drunk variety. (Woody Allen, another prominent “Because, Um…?” writer, uses Manhattan to compress all of the above-listed “bitch” characteristics into a successful lesbian ex-wife, whom he hilariously confesses to having tried to run over with his car. HA! A man trying to murder a woman because she ended their relationship and/or is not heterosexual! It’s funny, ’cause that’s how a lot of women actually die!) Eastbound & Down takes this tack by having literally only two other female characters, a wife whom we’re encouraged to think of as an uptight bitch and a “fuckbuddy” whose only defining characteristic is that she is such a crazy drunk slut all the time. The “Because, Um…?” girl can only exist in the negative space created by this double bind. If women have standards, they’re bitches; if they don’t have standards, they’re sluts: try to write yourself out of this, and you find that the only feasible way to create a non-threatening female character is to give her no motivations or personality whatsoever, to turn her into a cipher who provides love or sex simply because the plot demands it.

This is an exact description of Sally in TALLEY’S FOLLY. 

Let us review the evidence. Wikipedia mentions some salient plot points:

While on vacation in Lebanon, Missouri the previous summer, Matt met Sally and has sent her a letter every day since. Though the single reply from Sally gave him no hope for romantic encouragement, he has bravely returned to ask her to marry him.

*** 

Sally arrives at the boathouse and is in disbelief that Matt has shown up uninvited, even though he had written her that he planned to come for the holiday.

*** 

Matt's interest in Sally had never waned; once, he drove from his home in St. Louis to the hospital where she worked and waited hours for her, even after being informed that she was not available.

Notice how the Wikipedia entry - which sounds like it was taken right from marketing copy - refers to the stalker coming to confront the stalkee after a year of rejection as "brave." 

But Matt didn’t just wait for her at the hospital, he did a little snooping around while he was there:

                   MATT
Also, I talk to the patients at the hospital, remember? Some are not so young. And they all say "Are you Sally's beau? Every time we say something sweet to Sally, try to get fresh, she says 'Come on now, I got a beau."

Now please note - we are supposed to take this to mean that Sally is “really” in love with Matt because she’s telling men who are hitting on her that she has a boyfriend. She is supposed to be playing extreme “hard to get." 

In addition to spying on her at work, Matt spies on Sally through her aunt:

                    MATT

Oh my goodness. She does have a vanity as well as a temper. You are thirty-one because you were fired from teaching Sunday school on your twenty-eight birthday and that was three years ago.

                   SALLY

What?

                   MATT

I've become great friends with your Aunt Charlotte. There's a counterspy in your home. You're infiltrated. I didn't tell you. You're ambushed. I've come up on you from behind.

                   SALLY

When did you talk to Aunt Charlotte?

                   MATT

Last year. For a second today. And every few weeks during the winter. On the telephone. (He laughs.) I never heard of anyone being fired from Sunday school before.

                   SALLY

I quit. We didn't get along.

This is an astounding, grotesque exchange for many reasons. First, because Sally’s aunt has betrayed her to a stranger. Either the aunt has all her faculties and still gave out embarrassing personal information about her niece because she's an awful person with no respect for her own niece's privacy, or she has mental problems and Matt is taking advantage of this to get the dirt on his obsession. 



And Matt is not the least bit bashful about the fact that he has been obsessively spying on this woman - he brags about it with undisguised triumph:



You're infiltrated. I didn't tell you. You're ambushed. I've come up on you from behind.


I won’t even go into the apparent sexual assault metaphor there. And don’t tell me that Wilson was unaware of that possible interpretation.

The third reason that the “talking to Aunt Charlotte” passage is so objectionable is because of the way that Sally reacts right after Matt has humiliated her. Remember now, Matt has just said a few lines earlier that Sally has a temper. Here’s how she responds to all this information:

                   SALLY

I quit. We didn't get along.

Now most human beings would have some kind of objection to this gross violation of privacy let alone someone who is supposed to have a temper. But Sally is a “because...um girl?” defined as

"a non-threatening female character (with) no motivations or personality whatsoever...  a cipher who provides love or sex simply because the plot demands it."

To have Sally respond in a way that a person with a temper would respond would work against the narrative that says that Matt will win her in the end. And the plot demands that he win her in the end. And that's not hyperbole - the Matt character confides in the audience at the top of the play:

They tell me that we have ninety-seven minutes here tonight without intermission... if everything goes well for me tonight this should be a waltz one-two-three, one-two-three a no-holds barred romantic story..."

He virtually declares the outcome and how long it will take. There's certainly no time for Sally to have an actual personality, or for there to be any realistic consequences to Matt's actions. The plot demands that she provide love. She delivers, like a compliant plot device.

Matt's charm offensive doesn't end with the stalking, however. He's not afraid to use physical force - several times throughout the play Sally tries to leave the boathouse and Matt stops her by holding her back or blocking the door:


                      SALLY

-Get gone now. Leave before I hit you with something. You can walk to the Barnettes', they'll give you some gas for a couple of coupons.

                      MATT

Now who is making the disturbance?

                     SALLY

               (Angry, quite loud.)

Get off this property or get out of my way so I can go back to the house, or I'll disturb you for real.

                     MATT

We are going to settle this before anyone goes anywhere.

                     SALLY

I won't be made a fool just because I fell in love again, Matt, and I won't be pushed around again.

                     MATT

You're not getting away from me.

                     SALLY

Get out of here!

                     MATT

Do you realize what you said? Did you hear yourself?

                    SALLY

             (Yelling toward the door.)

Buddy! Cliffy! Here he is. Matt Friedman is down here!

(Her last words are muffled by Matt's hand as he grabs her and holds her fast. She tries to speak over his lines.)

                     MATT

              (Grabbing her.)

Vilde chaya! you are a crazy woman! We could both be shot with that gun. People do not scream and yell and kick.

              (She stops struggling.)

People are blessed with the beautiful gift of reason and communication.

              (He starts to release her.)

                    SALLY
Cliffy!

                    MATT

               (Grabbing her again.)

How can such a thing happen? When they passed out logic everybody in the Ozarks went on a marshmallow roast. You are rational now?

(He releases her. She moves away. Matt stands where he can block her exit.)

Life is going to be interesting with you. Are you hurt?

Is there anything more repulsive than a thug using physical force against someone he is supposed to love, and then lecturing her on the proper way for people to behave? 

But remember how Sally is playing hard-to-get? Stalker/bully Matt can see the clues that tells him what she really wants, in spite of her many protestations.

This passage contains one of those clues:



                   SALLY

I won't be made a fool just because I fell in love again, Matt, and I won't be pushed around again.

Did “because I fell in love again” leap out at you too? Who ever says that, right in the middle of screaming at somebody to go away? Women, of course, in "romantic comedies" and that’s why you have to respond to their craziness by replying:



                  MATT

You're not getting away from me.

Women don’t know what they want. Or maybe they secretly do know what they want, but they’ll jerk you around for a whole year. And that's why, as a man, you can’t take no for an answer. You have to keep her in that boathouse until she gives you the right answer.

But maybe Sally is just crazy and so Matt is forced to act crazy too. But here’s the thing - nowhere in the play are we led to believe that Sally is crazy. She’s normal, albeit sad yet beautiful. No, Sally isn't crazy, Sally is a woman and bitches is crazy. 

But even more important than Sally blurting out that she fell in love is Matt blurting out in Yiddish during the struggle.

But first let's look at more of Matt’s charms:

                      MATT

I am foolish to insinuate myself down here and try to feel like one of the hillbillies. Who ever heard of this Friedman? I don't blame you. I won't be Matt Friedman any more. I'll join the throng. Call myself... August Hedgepeth. Sip moonshine over the back of my elbow. Wheat straw in the gap in my teeth. I'm not cleaning my glasses, I'm fishing for crappies. Bass.

                     SALLY

Sun perch.

                     MATT

Oh heck, yes. Only I'm not. I can't even take off my shoes without feeling absurd.

                     SALLY

People don't walk around with their shoes off here, sipping moonshine. It isn't really the Hatfields and the McCoys. The ones who go barefoot only do it because they can't afford shoes.

So we’ve seen that Matt is a stalker, a bully, and he mocks Sally’s community. How could such a character possibly be acceptable as a romantic lead?

Here’s how:  

                      MATT

...and Buddy came - does your entire family have such absurd names?

                      SALLY

His real name is Kenny. We call him Buddy.

                      MATT

Kenny? Is his real name? This is better, for a grown man? Kenny? Kenny Talley, Lottie Talley, Timmy Talley, Sally Talley? Your brother also does not know how to converse. Your brother talks in rhetorical questions. "You're Sally's Jewish friend, ain't ya? What do you think you want here? Did you ever hear that trespassing was against the law?"

Kenny has a good reason for telling Matt he's trespassing - he told him to leave because Sally wasn't there. Matt believed she was hiding from him and that's why he refuses to leave. 

So why is Buddy the bad guy and Matt the hero of this passage? 

Anti-Semitism. 

Matt's from an oppressed minority so he's allowed to be completely obnoxious and still get the girl. 

Still not convinced? Imagine how obnoxious Sally would sound if she said this to Matt: "What kind of names are those? Schlomo, Golda, Moishe, Uri?" She even says at one point that he shouldn't make fun of her accent because she wouldn't make fun of his. But the normal rules of polite behavior do not apply to Matt: we are expected to excuse him because he is a victim of anti-Semitism. 

And this should not be surprising - if people can excuse Roman Polanski for drugging and raping a 13-year-old due to the Holocaust, surely we can forgive Matt a little stalking and bullying and bigotry.

As much as I loathe TALLEY’S FOLLY, Wilson, in his introduction to the published version, reveals it could have been much worse. Wilson writes:

Everyone loved it, that is, except Marshall W. Mason, who was to direct. After many glowing comments and applause, Marshall and I retired to his office. He had (ominously) said nothing during the discussion period. I thought the play was perfect, so I had quite a chip on my shoulder. He said something like, "So the story is, essentially, Matt comes down to Lebanon and browbeats this girl into hysterical admission that she's barren." I said yes and he said "What's fun about that?" He pointed out that with Matt knowing she couldn't bear children he didn't even have to tell her he refused to bring children into the world. Except for being turned down, he had nothing more at stake. He didn't even have to browbeat her, he could just say Lottie told me. It wasn't even dramatic. His actions were brutal with little cost to himself.

All true enough, but please note that in spite of the glaring flaws that Wilson admits were in the script, "everyone" - that would be the Circle Rep play reading group - loved it prior to the re-write, and Wilson himself thought it was "perfect." Wilson continues:

However, if he did not know her situation, then he would first have to tell Sally that he refused to have children and ask if she would have him in that condition. He had to risk something. Marshall must have been very convincing because the chip fell off my shoulder and very soon I was taking notes. I rewrote the middle third of the play. It was much more dramatic... Marshall said, "Let's read it. I'll read Matt, you read Sally.

OK, so Wilson rewrote some of this "perfect" play, but there was still a huge problem, he continues:

I had sat there as Sally, watching Matt jump through hoops, and all I said was "Oh Matt" and "Come on now, Matt." I didn't like my part. And I especially didn't like it when Matt finally told me he wanted to marry me but he didn't want kids. The writer had not provided me with the obvious response: "Who told you I couldn't have children?" I sat there livid because he had made me feel terrible about his lousy childhood and I thought it had all been a ploy. And all I did in the script was cave in. Back to the typewriter. Sally's part grew by a third. It is still not as flamboyant as Matt's but I think she now holds her own. She is much stronger and much more her own woman. We finally had a play.

I would argue Wilson is giving himself too much credit here - as I've demonstrated, Sally is a sap when it's narratively convenient. But then Wilson admits there are still problems with the final version of the play - the version that won the 1980 Pulitzer for drama:

If Matt knows she can't have children and it takes the whole play for him to convince Sally it's OK that she can't have children - it's a story. If he doesn't know and he presents his resolution, and then finds out she can't have children anyway - it's a plot. What happens is a very strange phenomenon. When Sally finally screams out in desperation, "I can't have children, I can't bear children!" there is an almost audible click as the last piece of the plot locks into place. It is an enormously satisfying moment. We feel the perfection of it. But it is also terribly disappointing. We feel like we have been manipulated. This has all been a carefully worked out artifice... that's what a plot this starkly presented does. It underlines the artifice... we decided to live with it.

And bingo - Pulitzer. 

Now the repulsiveness of Matt's character is not an issue for Wilson because, as I said, Matt gets an asshole license due to anti-Semitism. But the problem with the plot as-is goes beyond the "perfection" of its artifice. Wilson has set up a situation where a woman is interested in a man, but tells him to go away many many times, presumably because she can't have children. But if that's the issue, why didn't she just tell him she can't have children?

But if that is really why she rejects him, why wouldn't she immediately respond, when he tells her he doesn't want children, that she can't have children? Instead he has to drag it out of her - still.

No matter how many times Wilson has someone tell us that Sally is strong, what he shows us instead is that Sally is a dithering, childish cipher who has to be browbeaten and physically restrained by Matt in order to achieve a happy ending. 

And are we to believe that because she can't have children, Sally has sworn off men forever? And that only a browbeating stalker who doesn't want children and is eleven years older could possibly make her interested in sex, love and marriage again? Are we supposed to believe that Sally is going to end up an old maid unless Matt comes along, like Mary in the George Bailey-free alternate universe in "It's a Wonderful Life?" That movie has the excuse of being made in the 1940s. TALLEY'S FOLLY was written in 1979. 

Finally, the device of having Matt speak to the audience at the beginning of the play, telling us up front that he's going to try to get the girl, adds nothing to the story. In fact, it puts Matt and Sally on an even more unequal footing by making Matt the omniscient narrator and Sally just a character behind the fourth wall, and it puts the audience in the position of being confederates of Matt in his campaign to win Sally.

And his little winking aside to the audience at the end of the play: 

(takes out his watch, shows time to Sally and then the audience) 

...right on the button. Good-night

- is creepy, precious and smug, all at the same time. 

I've been involved in play readings since November 2000 in New York City, and I've seen actors make really crappy plays sound good. Skilled and appealing actors can work wonders on bad scripts. And Wilson had access to a very high caliber of actor for his work by the time he wrote TALLEY'S FOLLY. But what those not-so-great actors in Haddonfield New Jersey made plain to me, and what the text itself and Wilson's own comments make even plainer is that this is actually a poorly thought-out play with a repulsive character as a romantic lead.

During the course of writing this essay, I had an argument on Facebook with an actor who defended TALLEY'S FOLLY by saying that obviously I am wrong about the play, since it's so popular and nobody else has noticed the whole stalking/bully aspect.

But in the past few years, critics are finally beginning to take note. 

This is from Theatre Mirror Reviews in 2006:

Adam Zahler’s canny direction makes Matt’s determination -- and aggression (He’s not taking ‘NO’ for an answer) -- seems ever so romantic. Remember, the play is set in 1944, way before “stalking” entered our vocabulary. Stephen Russell makes Matt an earnest, if gangly, hero to rescue Marianna Bassham’s fragile maiden-in-distress. The two seem so mismatched that we, just like Sally, need convincing---and we get it in Zahler’s heartfelt production.

This is from a 2009 theatre review in Pegasus News:

Matt Friedman is persistent (as many smitten men can be) but he doesn't seem delusional. The idea of stalking in the sense we have today didn't exist in 1979, when Folly won the Pulitzer, or 1944 when the play is set. Sally doesn't make Matt feel welcome, but she doesn't exactly chase him off.

And this is from a 2012 review in a blog associated with the Journal News:

She finds moments — flashes of moments, really — where Sally drops her resolve to reveal emotion in a shy smile, a glint in her eye, a color change on her expressive face.It’s not much for Matt to work with, but Stone uses those moments as fuel, to push, prod and needle his way into Sally’s heart.

In our modern age, Sally’s family would have a restraining order, power being power and no meaning no. Matt’s considerable charms — despite the best of intentions — would be kept at bay.

Of course the stalking is excused based on the "that's just how it was in the good old days" argument - but at least there is acknowledgement of the behavior. 

But why keep producing a play that excuses stalking and bullying? Not only excuses it, but posits those behaviors as absolutely necessary for a romantic comedy - the only actual dramatic struggle on stage in the whole play is Matt restraining Sally from leaving the boathouse, after refusing to leave it himself. 

My theory is that in addition to being relatively inexpensive to produce, most of the people who've seen this play in the past twenty years are old - theatre audiences are famously old. When the audience for TALLEY'S FOLLY was coming of age, male dominance was the absolute law of the land. Nobody even questioned it. So of course these attitudes and behaviors are perfectly acceptable to them, even "romantic." 

As the post-baby boomers become old and become the theatre audience, they might not be so comfortable with the extreme patriarchy of this play - and TALLEY'S FOLLY will one day go the way of WHY MARRY, the 1918 Pulitzer Prize winner that nobody ever produces anymore. Because it's crap.

So sure, few people notice the egregiousness of TALLEY'S FOLLY now, but that's just because I'm ahead of the curve.

c. 2012 by Nancy McClernan

And if that isn't enough for you here are even more reasons why I hate TALLEY'S FOLLY.

UPDATE: years after the #metoo movement, misogynist idiots are still producing this play.

Theatre Essay: The Last Manly Man Playwright - on RED LIGHT WINTER by Adam Rapp

John Lahr is a happy happy camper. He's discovered yet another manly man playwright who may be a suitable successor to uber-manly David Mamet.

Adam Rapp's manly brutal manliness inspires Lahr to flights of manly critic manliness:

Davis is a tour de force of liveliness; he feeds off the deadness in others, which goes some way toward explaining his allegiance to his depressed and inept friend, who, when Davis enters, has just attempted to hang himself from a coat peg with his shoelace.

Here we see the cruel manly man arrive to jump start the loser - not to say feminized - sensitive writer man.

Davis, who is a wunderkind of the publishing world back in New York, fancies himself an agent of delight. He is as pathologically confident as Matt is pathologically shy; he generates life, but at an emotional price to those who capitulate to his infectious energy.

The manly character is not just cruel, he's patholigically confident. Well who wants to see a play about a character who is merely excessively over-confident?

It's easy to understand Davis's appeal to Matt: he embodies the wildness, the appetite, the sense of maverick liberation that Matt yearns for and raves about in Henry Miller's writing. 'Miller was a genius. Carver was all craft and no substance,' Matt lectures, provoked into a rare moment of eloquence by his disdain for Raymond Carver's "little tales of suburban paralysis."'

More notes of manliness. 'maverick liberation' and a disdain for 'suburban paralysis.' And of course references to other literary manly men.

Rapp, in his introduction to the published play, refers to Davis as a "sexual carnivore... a collector of seduction anecdotes."

But of course. He would hardly be a manly man if he was not a sexual carnivore. Sexual herbivores just don't cut it in manly man land.

A soi-disant French singer who turns out to be a window whore and an American, whom Davis has picked up in his troll through the red-light distract. Christina, we learn, is part of a pre-arranged plan to get the earnest, sex-starved Matt laid. (Matt's only significant girlfriend since college, he later reveals, fell for and is now sort of, like engaged to Davis.) She is a languid, soft-spoken object of desire; in her pliancy, she exudes a sense of lostness. Her big, kohl-lined eyes sparkle at Davis's brazen high jinks.

The Christina character is the perfect female in a manly man play. A prostitute who is also languid, soft-spoken, pliant and lost, who approves of the manly man's "high jinks."

You're an idiot, he tells her. You think you know me... because I stuck my finger up your ass while I fucked you like the whore you are? We made love, Christina says, insisting on his goodness. The ensuing violent, sexual scene - it might be the best and the worst hting they've ever felt, the stage directions read - escalates into a powerful dance of death.

Yes, the beautiful pliant prostitute insists on seeing goodness. And now the sexbot must fulfull her ultimate role in the manly man fantasy - she must engage in a violent sexual dance of death.

The genius of the Patriarchy is that it insists that male fantasies are not male fantasies - they are Meaningful Lessons For Us All. And to complete the mirage, Lahr even confesses, in the mini-review of Barefoot in the Park that follows directly after the Rapp review, to finding patriarchal attitudes insufferable.

As I read reviews of the play by other critics, all male, I noticed a recurring theme. They tend to think that Rapp's previous plays weren't especially good, and this play, while swell and rip-roaring with sex and violence and cruelty (he's compared to Neil LaBute) is flawed too. But they love him anyway. Which supports my theory that male critics are just dying for a manly man playwright to represent their fantasies. The fact that 95% of all movies are male fantasies isn't enough to satisfy them. They really want Adam Rapp to succeed.

A perfect illustration of critics' love of Rapp for his manly manliness while regretfully acknowledging his limitations as a dramatist can be found in the opening paragraph of Michael Feingold's review in the Village Voice:

Despite my admiration for Adam Rapp's writing, I've stayed away from his plays the last few years - no easy task, given his prolific output - because they were starting to give me the locked-in feeling of a gifted artist endlessly circling round and round the same material, looking for someplace else to go but unceratin what direction to take next. In Rapp's case, this sense of imprisonment was particularly grueling because of the relentless sordidness in his work: characters always at the bottom of life, actions always the harshest and ugliest.

Rapp is such a gifted artist that Feingold's been avoiding his plays!

Lahr finishes his Rapp review with what we all, manly men fantasists or no, should take away from the show:

...he brings memorable news about the heart, telling us both how it fools itself and how it kills itself.

The heart kills itself.

By hanging itself from a coat peg with its shoelace.

c. 2012 by Nancy McClernan

Mother/daughter day at the sea shore

Theatre Essay: History is Written by the Winners - an analysis of OLEANNA

This was originally written in response to a British production of OLEANNA by David Mamet in the mid-2000s.

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Most critics seem to think that David Mamet has written an analysis of male-female miscommunications:

In Virtual-Lancaster, Paul Wilkenson wrote.:

What men say and what women hear (and visa versa) is one of those tricky areas of human nature that science steers clear of and only playwrights and comedians dare to tread.
or an indictment of political correctness, as Michael Billington of the Guardian believes:

Mamet is not just attacking the lunatic excesses of political correctness. His play is really a lament for the destruction of mutual trust and personal interaction that makes academic freedom possible.

Maybe it seems to be about miscommunications or political correctness on the stage, and the final message of the play depends a good deal on how it is directed. But on the page, OLEANNA is a folk tale about a hero fighting evil.

The title of the play is inspired by a folk song, which Mamet quotes in the introductory pages of the published play:

"Oh, to be in Oleanna ,
That's where I would rather be.
Than be bound in Norway
And drag the chains of slavery."
- folk song

In OLEANNA, John the professor fights evil in the form of the Group (Mamet's capitalization). Many reviewers entirely overlook the importance of the Group to the dramatic structure of the play and focus on Carol, the student who accuses John of harassment. The Group is mentioned only four times in the play, and probably in a stage presentation the physical reality of actors portraying John and Carol works to minimize audience awareness of the Group even further. But in the text it's easier to see the Group is responsible for the power dynamic that develops between Carol and John.

JOHN: Yes. Tell me frankly.
CAROL: ...my position...
JOHN: I want to hear it. In your own words. What you want. And what you feel.
CAROL: ...I...
JOHN: ...yes...
CAROL: My Group.

When asked what she wants, Carol refers to the Group. It's what the Group wants that matters now, and Carol is merely its spokeswoman.

In the Posner production some critics felt that John was portrayed as sexually exploitive.

Charles Spenser in The Telegraph comments:

One also feels a great deal less warm towards the professor in Aaron Eckhart's performance. He presents a man fatally in love with the sound of his own voice and far too preoccupied with his impending purchase of a new home to concentrate fully on his pupil's distress. When he puts his arm round Carol to comfort her, and later hugs her and offers to massage her grades, there is a distinct crackle of exploitative sexuality in the air.

To audiences the big question in the play is always whether or not John is actually making a sexual move on Carol. I think the text shows he is not. But although that issue is in dispute, what is absolutely indisputable is that the Group tries to blackmail John in its efforts to ban his book:

CAROL: We can and we will. Do you want our support? That is the only quest...
JOHN: .. to ban my book...?
CAROL: ...that is correct...

By the end of the play, the charge of sexual harassment has become attempted rape:

CAROL: My Group has told your lawyer that we may pursue criminal charges.
JOHN: ... no...
CAROL: Yes. And attempted rape. That's right. (Pause)

which makes the issue of whether or not John is guilty of sexual harassment completely irrelevant to the moral of the story - while there may be some doubt over whether John's actions are honorable, nobody in their right mind would say he tried to rape Carol.

So the play is not really about a man-woman misunderstanding, or a student reacting overzealously against what she truly believes is sexual harassment. This play is about a shadowy Group with an agenda to censor free thought by any means necessary. The Group creates a situation where John's life is ruined unless he capitulates to its demands. And he responds by transforming from a self-absorbed jerk or a subtle groper (depending on the production) into a fearless champion of the First Amendment:

JOHN: And, and, I owe you a debt, I see that now. (Pause) You're dangerous, you're wrong and it's my job... to say no to you. That's my job. You are absolutely right. You want to ban my book? Go to hell , and they can do whatever they want to me.

This is why audience members cheer at the end of some productions when John makes Carol cower before him: at great personal sacrifice the Hero slays the Dragon.

Mamet never uses the word "feminist" but since Carol accuses John of sexism, presumably the Group is composed of feminists. Anti-feminist Katie Roiphe believes that's what Mamet means:

Writers from David Mamet to Michael Crichton wrote works of art devoted to the excesses and absurdities of the feminist preoccupation with sexual harassment.

While I'm sure that even feminist groups are capable of doing bad things, I have never heard of a feminist group using blackmail to ban a book. I'm not saying it's impossible - but I am saying that there's no evidence this has ever happened in the history of feminism. If there was, Katie Roiphe would have shouted it from the mountaintops by now.

This is a problem for Mamet, because political correctness as it is actually practiced would not serve his message. Silly speech codes and public demonstrations are not sinister enough and would probably make a better comedy than a tragedy. So Mamet invents the feminist version of the International Jew, a skulking, ruthless, extremely powerful cabal, able to arrange John's personal destruction through nothing more than hearsay from a mentally challenged undergraduate.

It's fascinating to compare Mamet's folk tale with reality. Recently Naomi Wolf has claimed she was groped by culture hotshot Harold Bloom when she was his student. She was excoriated by right-wingers for discussing it in public and  Kathleen Parker, writing for Townhall.com, even suggests that Wolf owed Bloom an apology for her reaction:

The fact that Bloom's boneless hand prompted Wolf to regurgitate her dinner inarguably put an immediate and explicit end to this would-be tale of sexual harassment, with no harm to any except perhaps to poor Bloom's withered self-esteem. Given Wolf's then-considerable gifts of youth, beauty and guile, I should think she owes the dear fellow an apology.

Incredibly Parker can't imagine that the incident could have a long-term impact on Wolf's relationship with Bloom, and therefore on Wolf's academic career. In general the conservative response to Wolf's claim is not disbelief that Bloom did what Wolf says he did, the response is that it's no big deal, it's strictly a personal issue between Wolf and Bloom, and Wolf should get over it.

And Wolf herself advises extreme caution when making accusations: unlike the world of OLEANNA, in Wolf's experience the accuser is far more likely to be punished than the accused:

For years now, Yale has been contacting me: Would I come speak at a celebration of women at Yale? Would I be in a film about Jewish graduates? Would I be interviewed for the alumni magazine?
I have usually declined, for a reason that I explain to my (mostly female) college audiences: The institution is not accountable when it comes to the equality of women. I explain that I was the object of an unwanted sexual advance from a professor at Yale - and that his advances seemed to be part of an open secret. I tell them that I had believed that many Yale decision-makers had known about his relations with students, and nothing I was aware of had happened to stop it. Where is the professor now? they ask. He is still there, I explain: famous, productive, revered. I describe what the transgression did to me - devastated my sense of being valuable to Yale as a student, rather than as a pawn of powerful men. Then, heartbreakingly, a young woman will ask: "Did you tell?"
I answer her honestly: "No. I did nothing."
"Have you never named the guy, all these years on?"
"No," I answer. "Never."
"But," she will ask hesitantly, "don't you have an obligation to protect other women students who might be targets now?"
"Yes," I answer. "I do have that obligation. I have not lived up to it. I have not been brave enough." And then there is always, among those young, hopeful women, a long, sad silence.
After such speeches, a young woman will come up to me - in Texas, in Indiana, in Chicago - in tears: My music professor is harassing me , she'll say. I tried to tell the grievance board, but they told me it is my word against his, and that there is no point in pursuing it. I know I won't get a job if I do anything about it. My lit professor made a pass at me; he is grading my senior thesis. My female adviser basically told me to drop it if I want to graduate; to switch classes; to start all over with another subject. My lab instructor keeps putting his hands on my body, and his mentor is on the grievance committee. I can't sleep. What should I do?
I am ashamed of what I tell them: that they should indeed worry about making an accusation because what they fear is likely to come true. Not one of the women I have heard from had an outcome that was not worse for her than silence. One, I recall, was drummed out of the school by peer pressure. Many faced bureaucratic stonewalling. Some women said they lost their academic status as golden girls overnight; grants dried up, letters of recommendation were no longer forthcoming. No one was met with a coherent process that was not weighted against them. Usually, the key decision-makers in the college or university - especially if it was a private university - joined forces to, in effect, collude with the faculty member accused; to protect not him necessarily but the reputation of the university, and to keep information from surfacing in a way that could protect other women. The goal seemed to be not to provide a balanced forum, but damage control.

So why is it that although many students have been sexually harassed by professors right up to the present, and even Naomi Wolf advises them to worry about making true accusations, the most famous play on the subject of professor-student harassment is about a feminist group using false accusations and blackmail to ban a book?

Village Voice theatre critic Alexis Solomon notes:

...since 1975 the percentage of plays by women has stayed virtually the same on Broadway (16 percent) and increased only marginally Off-Broadway (from 13 to 21 percent). Never mind that the study found that nearly two-thirds of ticket buyers are women. Often they're trying to drag their reluctant husbands or boyfriends along to the theater, and winning them over means insisting that the play in question will appeal to their male sensibility. (No wonder the misogynist OLEANNA was one of the most-produced plays in the history of regional theaters.)

Solomon wrote that in 1999, but nothing has changed. This year (2004) the Atlantic Theater Company is doing a season with exactly zero female writers (0%). Their direct mailing piece includes Tina Howe's name on the cover, but they aren't doing a Howe play - it's Howe's interpretation of Ionesco. Since the Atlantic is co-founded by Mamet (they're doing a Mamet play in the new season) you might expect that kind of thing from them, but the Roundabout is also doing a zero female writer season (0%). While last year's season had one female author out of 3 (33%) the previous Roundabout season had no women (0%). Meanwhile, the Manhattan Theatre Club managed to do plays by 2 female writers out of 7 total productions (28%).

Mamet includes some lyrics from the folk song "Oleanna" in the published version of the play. The song was written by Ditmar Meidel in 1853. Pete Seeger provided the English lyrics in 1953. Oleanna is not only a place to escape the chains of Norway - it is a magical land, where chores are done for you - the cows milk themselves and the hens lay eggs ten times a day. And if the women get out of line, you don't even have to beat them yourself:

In Oleanna the women do all the work.
If she doesn't work hard enough
She takes a stick
And gives herself a beating!

You can read the entire song here:
http://spikesmusic.spike-jamie.com/folk/ps3/OLEANNA.pdf

Maybe one day when women's plays are produced 50% of the time, or students have true recourse against professors who misbehave, Mamet will have cause to be paranoid about female power. But OLEANNA is an example of the way history - and folk tales - are written by the winners.

c. 2012 Nancy McClernan