| re: I long considered Delicate Balance the best American play of the 20th century | |
| Posted by: BruceinIthaca 11:59 am EDT 05/28/24 | |
| In reply to: re: I long considered Delicate Balance the best American play of the 20th century - schauspieler 11:12 pm EDT 05/27/24 | |
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| This is always a fun game! There was a period when my Best American Play was dead heat between Streetcar, Salesman, and Journey--all superb in different ways. I love all three, for quite different reasons--Streetcar for its poetry and its indelible relationships between the four main characters; Salesman, perhaps because it was my father's favorite--he was Depression kid who dropped out of school to support his widowed mother, and served as a medic in WWII--he was far from WIlly, but, as someone who rose from driving a meat truck to retiring as Vice President of our suburban bank, he knew these people--and the business of the grease spot on the head was a detail he often mentioned(as well as "Nobody dasr blame this man"); Journey, because I read it as a freshman in high school and had the temerity to perform Tyrone's monologue about the childhood Christmas at age 14 (quite badly, I'm sure). But in recent yers (well, decades), I think I would place Thornton Wilder's Our Town as THE "Great American Play." It has, as Stefon would say, "EVERYTHING!"--Wilder's subtle yet clear-sighted tragic vision, complex characters who only reveal their complexities in what may otherwise seem mundane moments (the soda fountain scene), family relationships, a gutsiness in its use of form, a willingness to engage, even force the audience to participate (the characters who speak from the balcony), and the stage manager reminding us tat all of creation is a story. David Cromer's production brought all of this out for me--as I am sure many other productions have for other people. Best 20th century world play? Harder for me to pick one, because each culture evokes a different mood. When I want that blend of melodrama and character depth, with moral questions, it might be Ghosts or Hedda (all right, technically 19th century, but still...); for longevity, over the decades, probably Vanya (I played the Professor opposite Dan Castellaneta's Vanya in a student-directed production in high school--too young for Chekov, but, oh, how grateful I am for that opportunity). I know when we asked our teacher, Lilla Heston, her choice (she taught our sophomore interpretation of drama class at Northwestern), she answered, without hesitation, "Endgame." It seemed a curious choice to me then--she acted Mrs. Alving and Bernarda Alba back then, so I would have expected realism, but I've come around to understanding it as worthy choice. A few years before I was a student, she directed a production of it with Frank Galati as Hamm and Bud Beyer as Clov. How I wish I had seen that--though the one I saw at BAM a number of years, which had Stritch and Nell and Alvin Epstein as Nagg, as well as John Turturro as Hamm and Max Casella as Clov, was an extraordinary experience. And I've seen both the Lane-Irwin and McKellen-Jacobi Godots (another play a student directed at our high school--we were nothing if not ambitious--I directed Oh Dad with a 17 year old Madame Rosepettle who was as good as any I could imagine) and thought each showed what a varied and open play that is. |
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