Your Humble Blogger mentioned auditions for three shows: Lost in Yonkers, Uncle Vanya, and A Trip to Bountiful. Of the three plays, one is a Classic of the Modern Theater and is occasionally considered the First Modern Play by the First Modern Playwright. One is a Pulitzer Prize and Tony winner by one of the most prolific and successful American playwrights of the twentieth century. And the third is a much-loved but commercially disastrous adaptation of a teleplay that was later adapted into a much-loved film, all by a critically loved but popularly obscure Pulitzer winner.
I didn’t like any of the scripts. Oh-fer-three.
My favorite of the three is the one that is probably the one with the slightest reputation. Lost in Yonkers is in the Monstrous Mother sub-sub-genre, where we see the twisted adult children of a twisted woman attempt to break free in their different ways. Being a Neil Simon play, it has a happy ending: there is a confrontation, the Monstrous Mother has her power over her children diminished. The four children all grow and change and improve over the course of the play; the grandchildren are shown to be growing into adults undamaged by the family shit. Hurrah! And yet, artificial without being entertainingly or affectingly stylized.
The other two are opposites, in a way. Well, complements. They are both naturalistic character studies; they both seem to me to be lacking in incident and interest; they both use the techniques of subtext and elision; they both present problems without solutions.
Uncle Vanya is (in a sense, anyway) about how awful the country is. The characters rot in a small town. They are fundamentally cut off from the interaction and opportunity that city life might provide for them. Another character arrives from The City; this arrival drives the action (such as it is) for the characters, who show themselves having rotted past all hope. In the end, the City character leaves for City Life again unimproved by his stay on the farm; the remaining characters take up their old lives. If they are strengthened or weakened by their crisis, it isn’t evident from the script.
A Trip to Bountiful is (in a sense, anyway) about how awful the city is. The characters rot in a large city. They are fundamentally cut off from the strength and centeredness that country life might provide for them. Another character leaves for The Farm; this departure drives the action (such as it is) for the characters, who show themselves having rotted past all hope. In the end, the Farm character returns to City Life again unrejuvenated by her stay on the farm; the remaining characters take up their old lives. If any of them are strengthened or weakened by their crisis, it isn’t evident from the script.
Now, leaving aside the fact that I lean toward the City Boy type myself, my point is that I find both of those scripts depressing and debilitating. The playwrights have found situations where the characters are hemmed in, their opportunities narrowed, and their characters preventing them from seeing (or certainly taking) such chances as still remain. And they carry on. I understand that many people find that simply persisting through those circumstances is inspiring. I get that. I don’t find it fun to watch. Or at least, I don’t find it fun to watch in a naturalistic setting; I can enjoy Beckett, but that’s different.
Well, now I’m going to spend a couple of months living with A Trip to Bountiful, closely reading and attending to all the various bits of it in all the various aspects of production. I hope I will come to a greater understanding of what it is people like about the play, even if I don’t come to like it a whole lot myself. But I have to say, if I had my druthers, and I had to spend that time deep in one of the two scripts, I would rather it be Vanya, just because I think it would work out better for me later on. And if I really had my druthers, I’d do a comedy.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.