The Constant Hostess
Jason Rohrer | Nov 02, 2011 | Comments 10 |
Why, when the party runs out of ice or Vermouth, do men head home? Why don’t they turn the car around and head to the liquor store? We will argue that we’re not too drunk to make that extra trip, and left to our devices we will keep that party roaring until the cops come, because we don’t know what else to do. It’s our women who know we’d better get home soon or there’ll be no after-party party.
In service of my ponderings I must mention that I saw a couple of plays this past week in which some determined and talented women made a great deal of good out of more or less awful material. The question therefore arose, as I attempted to wrangle verbiage into an address to the players: what potential dance did they see in these scripts, which lie like dead dogs? A mere man, I cannot see what’s not there except to imagine myself in glory or defeat. Girls, though, have something else, perhaps an innate sense of gestation that lets them imagine the possibilities. My father once hit the washing machine with a wrench and pronounced it expired; my mother dragged it out from the wall, took it apart, examined its nature. And when she put it back together it washed clothes for another ten years.
I’ve written elsewhere about Gregory Moss’s unfunny sin of commission on the JonBenet Ramsey murder, House of Gold, so I will say here only that embodying his culture’s failings is a poor way to satirize them. But Gates McFadden, as Artistic Director of EST/LA, pursued and secured this play’s production rights for her company’s space. (EST/LA shares the Atwater Village Theater with Circle X, which currently rents out its half of the building, and on the night I attended, House of Gold‘s performance was repeatedly interrupted by amplified noise from next door. A rocky marriage at best.) If she hadn’t directed this play so well, I could dismiss McFadden’s unhappy stage-childhood as an unfortunate and best forgotten excuse for her interest in Moss’s work. But she has rendered the best possible production of these words. Colorful, engaged staging, filling in the story’s cavities with imagination the writer could not supply, tells this story as no reading could. She is helped by fine actors, especially Jacqueline Wright and Denise Crosby, who wrest from this unpromising writing the redemptive power of practiced art. With McFadden, they drag a hundred times the value from this source that I would ever have seen in it. All these women reflect undeserving praise on the writer, and this annoys me a little bit, since the opportunity to work with shit strikes me as a less fine opportunity than to work in something else. Something good.
Less horrifying in every way, Frank McGuinness’s Dolly West’s Kitchen still undercooks its story, the promise of his lush, literate first act spoiled by a facile climax. His protagonist waits for her lover the length of the play and then gives this shell-shocked soldier some tough love et voila! Subordinate characters find love’s triumph in a thematically identical if more spectacular manner through fisticuffs. Betraying one’s art so indifferently deserves rebuke, so I rebuke it with my little criticisms here. But over at Theatre Banshee, McKerrin Kelly slaps her writer sillier than I could do by directing his play so beautifully, so much more subtly than its writing deserves: she even directs a scene change into babbling, coherent life. Her cast ably personifies the theatrical virtues of economy, grace and style, all of them very good but four of them supernatural, and all women. Kacey Camp and Kirsten Kollender play sisters who fret and frolic heavily, overwhelmed almost by circumstance, not caring a damn for the limitations of the piece. Natalie Hope MacMillan fairly rings off the walls, her disingenuous ingenue more interestingly written than the sisters, but her performance all the more impressive for taking that good character and making it great. And that force of nature Casey Kramer, as a matriarch whose work elicits screams of laughter, sobs of grief, gasps of wisdom recognized: well, if she isn’t something to see, I’ve never seen anything.
These artists grapple fire from cold clay and set alight dark places. That those places would feel so bleak and miserable without the angel’s touch strikes me as reason to wonder why women bother.
A man will leave his woman when he thinks he’s had enough, and he knows when he knows. But I’ve known, and you’ve known, women who stay with men far longer than logic would allow, because those women see something nobody else can see. Some boys hit girls, and some girls learn to think it’s okay, staying until the violence crescendos or peters out. For women are patient and enduring past the capacity of men. A woman will drudge for years of thankless toil at a job, mothering, which few men can do and fewer even consider. It is for women that we dive for the pearl, mine the diamonds and the gold, snare the vivid parrot’s plume: would we have seen the opportunity in an oyster’s shell? Those other animals, those women creatures, who reason differently from, and so frighten, us… what is it they see that we can’t? Their innovations are not ours, and seem to come from another place. They’re not smarter than we are, but their intelligence can defeat ours more often than ours, theirs. Why? Because they see around the corner, into the dark that for them is partly lighted by creative spark. They know that what waits in the unconscious womb is life itself, while I know only that the empty ice tray means go home.
Filed Under: Featured • jason rohrer
About the Author: Jason Rohrer's education includes New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, the Nikitsky Gates Theater in Moscow, Russia, the National Academy for Theater and Film Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria, and Village Oaks School in Stockton, California. He reviews theater, dance and music for stageandcinema.com and stagehappenings.com, and on Twitter he's known as @RohrerWrites. He is less intelligent than he thinks, but then, he would have to be.
Be careful confusing your opinions with facts. Remember: you’re talking about art. One person’s shit is another person’s gold.
Indeed. Clearly there are some consistent standards for quality art, but you’re right, Brian. I have to admit that I saw House of Gold and I didn’t think the play was as hideous and disgusting as Jason though it was. What it did lack was story. In my book, it was simply an exercise in exploring theme and on several occasions that exploration worked extremely well. I was genuinely disturbed here and there.
But because it lacked any real story, character development, dramatic throughline, rising action, there was no major payoff. If not for Jaqueline’s incredible performance I just wouldn’t have cared.
But the direction was extremely creative and the production design was superb and most of the performances were very good as well.
I think you mentioned in a tweet, Brian, that this is a play people should see and discuss. I agree. It certainly isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea but I give EST-LA and Gates McFadden some serious props for their risk taking with this one.
Brian, I don’t know why you’d feel the need to advise me on the difference between fact and opinion. And if you think we live in a world where shit and gold can be objectively equated, try giving your wife a shit necklace.
Yo Jason – easy, pal. We’re simply having a discussion here. Nobody’s asking you to step outside.
Seriously. The only reason I decided to say something was because you made the statement about the script without backing it up. It came across as a statement of fact with you as the ultimate arbiter. I’m really just saying I’d like to know why you feel the way you feel about the script.
I apologize for lowering the discussion, Brian. I mean no disrespect to you or your family; I just thought it was a good illustration.
Please consider that a man with a public forum will by design write with authority. I do not apologize for my informed opinions.
I wrote a little more extensively about my reasoning when I reviewed the play, and a link to my review is embedded in the text above; here it is again:
http://www.stagehappenings.com/Jason_Rohrer/reviews/_2011/houseofgold.php
Essentially, the playwright’s decision to accuse a living and legally exonerated father of molesting and murdering his daughter outrages me. His lack of compassion for JonBenet’s survivors, explicit in his depictions of her degradation, strikes me as crass exploitation – all that aside from the structural and dramatic failings inherent in his piece.
It’s not my job as a critic or commentator to doctor his show, but to state its merits. I could explain at great length the deficits in Mr Moss’s education, ethics and manners, but such is not incumbent upon the critic. My responsibility is not, in each published piece, to revisit the components of “good” or “bad” literature, but rather to determine whether a work merits the price of admission.
Ahhhh. The sweet smell of civil discourse.
It’s funny, I’ve been contemplating the “art of criticism” lately and I’ve found that there are direct parallels between the “artist” and the “critic as artist” in the way they embody authority, craft, presence, passion and intellect colliding – in the same way that there is a great difference between a playwright and an “artist” I believe there is similarly a difference between a reviewer and a “critic as artist”.
As a playwright I aspire to the higher calling and I’m guessing that any critic who feels as passionately about their art form usually does the same.
Carry on.
Agreed, Colin. Those who write well on the Internet suffer the handicap of association with poor practitioners undisciplined in the ways of analysis and craft. To convey an opinion is nothing. To convey an educated opinion that furthers the forms not only of the art under investigation but of criticism itself: this is much. I attempt the latter, and in my forum here, I analyze my analysis.
The unfortunate idea that all is all, that there are no criteria delineating good from evil, has destroyed the initiative and discrimination of a generation. Brian, after warning me of the difference between fact and opinion, in the next breath suggests that there is no difference because beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but it’s that spirit of nice-guyism, the willingness to compromise intellectual and moral truth for the sake of politeness, that helps erode a society’s sense of taste. This lack of critical thinking benefits neither him nor his society.
Jason, it seems like you are trying to pick a fight with me for some reason. I don’t know why you are being antagonistic. If you aren’t intentionally being that way, you should know that is how you are coming across. I’d prefer it if you didn’t put words in my mouth or condescend. All I did was bring up a point that was bugging me after reading your article. I don’t know if this is because you have difficulty taking criticism, or if I just personally offended you to the point where you felt the need to fight back. It is this kind of personal attack that contributes negatively to the discourse on the art. We’re trying to talk about the art. Yet somehow my mention of fact vs opinion became a discussion on my hypocrisy and lack of critical thinking. I left a comment respectfully. I think you are experienced enough to know how to respond in kind.
Jeez, Brian. Remember that you contacted me, and started the conversation by disagreeing with me. I can’t keep apologizing to you for stating my case. We’re in disagreement. You state your position, I state mine. If that hurts your feelings, if you take my disagreement with you as a personal attack, I guess we shouldn’t talk anymore.