So, here’s the plot of Ira Levin’s play Veronica’s Room: it’s 1972 or so, the present day of when it was written, and a young couple has been brought into a room that has been preserved from the 1930s, the furniture draped with sheets and the clothes kept meticulously clean, etc, etc. The middle-aged couple who have brought them there say that Veronica, who used to live in that room, died of consumption, and that the young woman, Susan, looks ever so much like her. They persuade her to dress in Veronica’s clothes and pretend to be Veronica for a brief period, for moderately plausible reasons.
That’s Act One.
In Act Two, the older couple claim that the young woman is Veronica, that it is 1937 (or whatever), and accuse her of incest, murder and madness. She, of course, claims that it’s the 1970s and she is Susan, all the stuff we saw in Act One. The young man who was her date in Act One is now a doctor who confirms the older couple’s accusations, and threatens to inject her from a hypodermic. The young woman, broken, confesses to being Veronica, and confesses to all the crimes and sins they accuse her of.
Then they kill her.
Then it turns out that the middle-aged woman really is Veronica, that she is guilty of all those things, and so on and so forth; the play ends with her locked in the room alone while the young fellow goes off to rape the corpse and the older fellow, well, we don’t really care, do we?
This is a really disgusting play, and I felt throughout that it was not so much the characters abusing poor Susan but Mr. Levin forcing an actress through it. There was nothing edifying about it; the abuse served no purpose other than titillation.
And it’s very well-written. Mr. Levin builds suspense extremely well; we spend much of the first act knowing that something is going to go wrong, but not sure what. Then Act Two begins with horror and then keeps turning the screw; several times I thought that it couldn’t get any more horrible, and it did. The pacing, the characterization and some of the details of the staging (insofar as those were written into the playscript) were all working effectively toward the goal of giving me the creeps. They were creepy creeps, and I can’t see anything admirable in it, but he sure is good at the thing he’s good at.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
There was nothing edifying about it; the abuse served no purpose other than titillation.
I will have to read this play, if only to satisfy some sort of sick curiosity. You make an interesting point though, and it has reminded me of a few plays that I have read in recent months that juxtapose physical and emotional savagery with compassion.
Have you read Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman? There’s also The Shape of Things or Fat Pig by Neil LaBute? The first deals with, at least indirectly, the psychological effects of physical torture. Those effects, however, are not limited to the person(s) being tortured-the protagonist’s artistic career flourishes as a result of his sibling’s physical torment at the hands of their parents.
LaBute’s plays examine emotional torment, but emotional torment that is less explicit. In either of these works, there is no gratuitous violence. There is, however, an inordinate amount of deception. There is also the tension between preserving one’s own identity and sacrificing it for a place among a larger society and this produces its own form of distress
All three elicit empathy in a reader or an audience, which seems to be lacking in the play you described. However, they are just as shocking, perhaps because of their humanity (though a series of twisted interpretations of humanity), which also seems to be absent from the Levin play as you have summarized it.
I’ve been following this for a while-I’m glad I finally had a reason to comment!
Glad to have your comment! I’ll say that my summary of the play is about my own experience of it; other people may find that Mr. Levin does elicit that empathy that you find in the other plays. I haven’t read any of Mr. LaBute’s plays yet. I picked up a volume the other day and put it down again, as I am afraid I will find the same sort of experience I’m talking about. Not that it’s necessarily gratuitous abuse, emotional abuse I mean, but then one could argue that the abuse in Veronica’s Room isn’t gratuitous, either. I mean, it is pretty much what the play is about. Without the abuse, there’s no play. Which for me would be just fine…
I haven’t read The Pillowman either, although I have read several of Mr. Mcdonagh’s other plays (and saw his movie, too), and I find that the violence in them is somehow totally different thatn that of Veronica’s Room. Although there is something of a sense that the violence is something Mr. McDonagh is doing to the audience (that is, shocking us with it, not beating us with a bit of pipe), there isn’t, for me, a sense that Mr. McDonagh is aiming the violence at the character. Or, let’s see, how can I explain this… I don’t get the sense that the play exists as an excuse for the violence. Nor do I get the sense that we, as an audience, are being complicit as voyeurs or sorts. I mean, we are, of course, because, hey, audience, right? But in a very different way than in this play.
Hm. Not very coherent. Perhaps I’ll think about it and return to the idea. But I think those are great sparking points for comparison.
Thanks,
-V.