Dried Roses Are Good For Sentiment Only
There's nothing I would like more than for certain playwrights to finally get their due. One of them is William Inge. It seems no one can do a good Inge production, so maybe it's best if we put a moratorium on him until a talented director comes to the boards.
"Nothing happens in his plays." "They're regional." etc etc etc.
Yet, if you've spent any time in the MidWest or the Plains, especially in Inge's time period, while not much seems to happen in Inge's plays, for his isolated characters, what does happen is ALL they have. A new, ugly paint job on the bank IS a major topic to these people - especially in a cut off world, with 2 radio stations and no TV or internet. It's their world, not ours. It still exists, and it's sad people don't see that. When played with NY City contemporary insight superimposed on the plays, they ARE dull. Few playwrights wrote so much subtext as Inge.
While we've been very careful to keep this blog universal, it's time to name names to make a point. Inge's midwestern plays are about isolation - these characters might as well be on desert island - and the few people they encounter are the ONLY people in their world. Claustrophobia is a main issue. When there are only 10 people in your world, they all have varying, clear places of importance. Defying his script, the awful Broadway Sheba revival, had a huge set with tons of buildings right behind the main house (Read the most beautiful stage directions that start off Sheba - they are poetry and describe the characters through the furniture. Neglecting them is a shame.) Similarly, the sad revival of A Loss of Roses also has a cyclorama of wall to wall houses and businesses and a huge office building on the side, all contrary to the script. Even Inge's slightly more citified Bus Stop has the characters stranded in a small diner, while a potentially deadly snow storm brings them together. The setting and weather is a huge part of Inge and Midwestern life, and it is often overlooked.
Inge is ALL about the subtext. People in his reality can speak a line every 10 minutes, and they are fine. This still exists today. It's about connecting. What IS important is the behavior between the lines. As Meiner stated, "An ounce of behavior is worth a pound of words."It was never more true than in Inge plays.
Sadly, all the 'artist's' failures to make Inge soar only lead to the accepted legacy that he was a minor playwright. If you do Inge successfully, and as it reads to a Mid-Westerner, you have to put the play down at times as it is so volatile. Like Wilder's Our Town, his plays are usually performed as syrupy Hallmark Hall of Fame Movies. They strip them off all their edge, and only play the words.
With the new revival of Inge's first flop, the brilliant A LOSS OF ROSES, produced by The Peccadillo Theatre - all the mistakes in producing Inge are glaringly on display.
From their outdated, childish finger-painting of a poster, it's clear the Peccadillo isn't taking the show seriously. They're clearly only doing this as a vanity project, along with lead Lichty's La Femme Prod. Besides not having any understanding of Kansas or the Great Depression (The whirling Disney-ish purple and blue cyclorama brings Oz to 1930's Kansas - along with giant trees and rolling Irish hills! - I wish I were joking! And the sex scene brings more stars out than warp speed in the Star Wars. Glad they were visible through all that dust.). Also, all the characters are 10 - 25 years older than written, and look even older than the characters they play. After Peccadillo's miscasting last year of a drag queen as the mother in Sidney Howard's The Silver Cord (billed as a comedy, though the play's literal title is "THE SILVER CORD: A DRAMA IN THREE ACTS") my date leaned over and whispered, "Did they cast a MAN again for the female lead?" After looking at the asexual name (Jean) in the program, she wasn't quite sure.'Jean' came across as either a man or a heavy female smoker, shouting and overacting as a crass city girl in a role WRITTEN for Marilyn Monroe, at her most naive. (Yes, Jean is a woman, as far as I know. Her production company helped fund the show. See our past few posts on 'benevolent' projects.)
The production, about a studly loser of a 21 year old man boy who has an unhealthy, unconsummated Oedipal relationship with his mother, (due in part to the father's death saving the son from drowning and the son feeling the need to take his father's place). The duo have their lives interrupted by the sexy ingenue who babysat the son 15 years prior. The former babysitter, now a failed stage actress, broken by the 'talkies', comes back to live with the family until she can get back on her feet. She's there as a woman, and it throws a wrench in the written Oedipal relationship - which doesn't exist, at all, in this production. Lila is a little girl in a woman's body, the son, Kenny is a boy who has been forced into a role of man of the house way too soon. As written, it makes for interesting, complex interaction, but all of this is thrown in the junk pil in exchange for one dimensional soap opera acting.
The line readings in the show are so misdirected, it makes for a campy evening. (If I were director, I'd tell the cast to say everything totally opposite of what they say. They PLAY the lines and nothing, nothing else.) In the mother's final speech about her hidden sins, ie. lusting after her son, are pointless, as the mother portrays none of that inner drama ever in the production - had I not read the play, like the average patron, all of this inner poetry would have escape me.
And then comes Lila, the Marilyn Monroe part. She's described as a beautiful girl in her 'early 30's' in the script. While beautiful, mid-50s yr old Lichty is laughable in the part. The unhidden varicose veins in her legs, the amount of makeup and harsh voice do make her seem crude and like a drag queen.
While the theatre building itself was nearly 100 degrees, and the script mentions 'it's too hot to work,' and the characters often lament the unbearable heat, they also stupidly wear fur coats and leather jackets.
This show will crucify Inge once again. It proves what all the skeptics say, as it gets his writing so, so incorrect. As performed, it makes his writing seem trite. Sadly, it's far from the case. Inge was a brilliant American playwright, it's just there are few productions of his work done, and seemingly always by hacks, that keep him a known as a dated flop.
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