Box Three, Spool Five

Made it out to catch the final performance of Cutting Ball's revival of Krapp's Last Tape last night. As you probably know, this is a play about a man spending his 69th birthday sitting and listening to a tape made by him on his 39th birthday--and, on the tape, the younger Krapp talks about just having listened to a tape made when he was 27 or 29. It's a play about the follies and delusions of youth, the resignations of old age, the tug of nostalgia, the unpredictability of memory, the desire to re-capture the past, etc. etc.

So, can I just say that it is a really weird experience to see this play/production again, approximately one year after I saw it the first time... and especially because I am just a few days away from my own birthday?

It's kind of a mindtrip. But I feel that Beckett would approve.

Recommended: "Krapp's Last Tape" at Cutting Ball

Over the last two weekends, I have gone to see the final entries in this year's Hidden Classics Readings Series at Cutting Ball Theater. Both were new translations and featured the actors David Sinaiko and Paul Gerrior in leading roles.

In Paul Walsh's translation of Strindberg's Storm, Sinaiko and Gerrior played brothers who are faced with the return of the woman whom one or both of them once loved. In Beatrice Basso's translation of Goldoni's The Antiquarian's Family (which has never been translated into English before), Sinaiko played an aristocrat so obsessed with collecting antiquities that he is blind to everything else around him, and Gerrior played the middle-class merchant who tries to talk some sense into him.

I mention this because these two talented men are also starring in Cutting Ball's current mainstage production, a revival of last year's Krapp's Last Tape. Gerrior plays the elderly Krapp, and Sinaiko provides the younger Krapp's recorded voice.

As you might recall, I saw this production last year and loved it. I have a lot of other things going on at the moment, so I am not sure if I will make it back to Cutting Ball to see it a second time, but believe me, I'd love to. It is an incredibly moving play. As director Rob Melrose said yesterday, "Forty-five minutes long and you get to evaluate this man's entire life! The power of theater..."

Krapp's Last Tape plays at the Cutting Ball Theater (in residence at the Exit on Taylor) through July 3.

"It Was Very Well-Acted"

This anecdote didn't come to mind when I saw Krapp's Last Tape in June, but I remembered it recently.

When I was studying abroad in France, I took a theater course. The professor had a habit of going off on tangents that went over my classmates' heads (and over my head too, sometimes, though I came into the course knowing much more about theater than many of my classmates did). At one point, he told us about how excited he got when he learned that his parents were in the audience at the Paris premiere of Krapp's Last Tape, which took place before he was born. He eagerly asked them if they remembered anything about the production, and what they had thought of it.

"Unfortunately," he said, "it wasn't their kind of theater. I think it confused them, and they didn't like it very much, but I guess they thought they should have liked it. So they told me, 'But it was very well-acted!' Just like that--'It was very well-acted!'"

I had never before thought of "It was very well-acted" as a phrase that people use to damn things with faint praise, but when my professor put it like that, I had to agree with him. He had the French avant-gardist's scorn for well-meaning bourgeois audiences who, not knowing what else to say about a play and wanting to be positive, fall back on "It was very well-acted" as the universal compliment. It reminds me of the kinds of attitudes that Daumier caricatured.

And ever since then, I always smile a bit skeptically whenever anyone tells me, "Oh, I don't think that play was very good--But it was very well acted!"

Oneiric/Minimalist

Life has a way of falling into patterns sometimes. So, just as a couple of months ago I saw a French-language play inspired by Hamlet at the school where a friend of mine teaches, followed by a minimalist one-man show at the Cutting Ball Theater... well, this week, that happened again.

The French play was called Rêver peut-être, which means, of course, Perchance To Dream. It was written by Jean-Claude Grumberg. Here is my translation of the blurb:

The story of a sleeper in pajamas who wanders onto a stage peopled with Shakespearean characters. During the day, Gérald B. rehearses the role of Hamlet. And at night, like all of us, he sinks into the arms of Morpheus. A highly criminal activity, according to the female gendarme who turns up in his bedroom one morning. Called before a judge, the actor is accused of having committed several murders in his dreams. Charged with "inhumanity," he finds himself commanded by his lawyer to produce, in his defense, some dreams filled with love for his fellow man. Clinging to his bed, Gérald B. undergoes a voyage to the deepest parts of his unconscious...

This premise is so very Continental, isn't it? The idea of the gendarmerie policing Gérald's dreams is Kafkaesque, and I think Europeans have always been much more fascinated with dreams/psychoanalysis/the unconscious than Americans have. It was in my theater class in Paris that I first learned the word "oneiric" (or oneirique), in that case referring to the dream-logic employed by Pirandello--and a lot of major European art movements (Symbolism, Expressionism, Surrealism) have an oneiric quality, but this form is rarer in English and American drama.

The actors in this production were all teachers at the lycée, and it seems like half the fun, for the audience, was the chance to see their teachers cut loose. One woman wore a miniskirt, another belly-danced, and the guy who directed the play also performed the role of the judge, in fishnet stockings, short-shorts, and makeup that made his face look like Jean Cocteau had sketched it. (Cocteau: another master of the oneiric.)

I can't say I totally got the play, though. My French basically suffices for me to understand the characters' words, sentences, and conversations, though I missed a few punchlines that had everyone else in the theater roaring. But on the larger level of understanding why the characters were having these conversations, why this scene followed that scene, why the play ended when it did, I was less certain. The play utilizes dream logic, after all, and when it's dream-logic in a language that isn't your native tongue, it can get difficult. (Don't they say that the moment you're become truly fluent in a language is when you start dreaming in it? And I've had dreams that include French phrases, but never a complete dream in French.) I'm not used to being so bewildered by the structure of a play. Indeed, three or four years ago I discovered I'd begun to watch plays "like a playwright," that is, with a hyper-awareness of their underlying construction and the tricks-of-the-trade used by the playwright. But I'm still uncertain what tricks Grumberg used; perhaps I should try to locate a copy of the script...


A few days after that, at five p.m. last Sunday, I went to the Exit Theater to catch a production of Krapp's Last Tape, by Samuel Beckett. I thought it was pretty nifty, how they scheduled this short play at an unorthodox time: you could be downtown shopping or whatever, pop over to the theatre, spend forty-five minutes seeing one of Beckett's major works, and when you left it would hardly even be time for dinner. (I also liked how this saved me from having to be in the Tenderloin after dark. There's a reason that the other two times I have seen a show in this neighborhood, I have been accompanied by tall men!) On the other hand, I'm not sure this is really the best way to absorb Beckett--should he really be consumed so quickly, sandwiched between more mundane or frivolous activities? Ah, well. Such is modern life.

There was a woman of about sixty at Krapp's Last Tape, pushing an older and very frail woman in a wheelchair. After the play finished, I overheard her say to her companion, "I saw this play when I was in my twenties. I knew it would be interesting to revisit it again now. Because I think it bewildered me, when I first saw it. How could it not?"

As a young twenty-something myself, I know that I probably won't get as much out of this play as an older person will, since it's all about aging and memory and regret... But because I've kept a diary since I was fourteen, I can understand how it feels to revisit the person you once were and think "How could I have ever thought this?" Or "How could I be so naive?" Or "I'd forgotten all about that--why did it seem so important at the time?"

And I could have sat in a bookstore and read Krapp's Last Tape in about fifteen minutes, but I know it wouldn't have had the same impact. Yes, it's a stripped-down little piece, but it's entirely theatrical, because every word and gesture counts. My heart ached for Krapp every time he uncorked his liquor bottle and took a swig. And mind you, this happens when Krapp is offstage, so it's not even anything in the actor's performance that created this effect--just that lonely, hollow pop as the bottle is uncorked hit me like a shot. And at the end, when, as he listened to his younger self talk about going boating with a beautiful woman and burying his face in her breasts, he cradled his old reel-to-reel tape recorder, and the two spools of it were like a poor mechanical echo of the shape of the woman's breasts--I would not have seen this beautiful image if I had only read the play.

As a writer, minimalism does not come naturally to me. But plays like Krapp's Last Tape make me wish that it did.

Photo: Paul Gerrior as Krapp. Image from the Cutting Ball Theater.

Air Beckett

In today's New York Times, Dwight Garner reviews the first volume of Samuel Beckett's collected letters, which, he says, humanize this seemingly inscrutable writer: the young Beckett is "surprisingly affectionate and wholehearted," often depressed but also fired up by literary passions. The letters also reveal odd facts that do not always jibe with our stereotypes of Beckett: at one point, Beckett reveals a wish to be a commercial pilot. In an aside, Garner adds "Imagine what Monty Python could have done with the notion of 'Air Beckett.'"

Well, Monty Python may not have gotten to it, but Ian Frazier did, in a New Yorker humor piece from 1980 titled "LGA-ORD." (It is reprinted in the collection Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker.) An excerpt:

(Pause)
Cruising along nicely now.
(Pause)
Yes cruising along very nicely indeed if I do say so myself.
(Long pause)
Twenty-two thousand feet.
(Pause)
Extinguish the light extinguish the light I have extinguished the No Smoking light so you are free to move about the cabin have a good cry hang yourselves get an erection who knows however we do ask that while you're in your seats you keep your belts lightly fastened in case we encounter any choppy air or the end we've prayed for past time remembering our flying time from New York to Chicago is two hours and fifteen minutes the time of the dark journey of our existence is not revealed, you cry no you pray for a flight attendant you pray for a flight attendant a flight attendant comes now cry with reading material if you care to purchase a cocktail
(Pause)
A cocktail?

Image: First page of Beckett's English translation of Waiting for Godot. Dwight Garner quotes someone as saying that Beckett "had the worst handwriting of any 20th-century author" and having seen a collection of his manuscripts at the Centre Pompidou exhibition 2 years ago, I agree wholeheartedly with that. Nonetheless, the impenetrability of it feels appropriate...perhaps there's some truth to graphology. Image taken from the UTexas website, which owns Beckett's papers.

"Endgame," at the end of my college years

Elaine Stritch and Alvin Epstein as Nell and Nagg. Photo by Richard Termine from playbill.com.

I will be leaving the East Coast in less than two weeks, so it's appropriate that the last play I will see in New York City for quite some time was Endgame. (I feel Beckett would've appreciated the humor in that.) Many thanks to my Shakespeare professor for the opportunity to see this--he offered me a ticket as a way of apologizing for not being able to see my play. He drove 9 of us students to the matinée at BAM on Sunday.

As always happens when Vassar takes students to BAM, we sat up in the balcony, but at least this time I was in the front row of the balcony, not the very back--a decided improvement, even though I believe Endgame would work best in a smaller theater. At least I was close enough to realize that John Turturro, especially with the stubbly beard and dark glasses that he wore to play Hamm, looks remarkably like one of my uncles. Which makes a kind of sense, if you think about it--Turturro is an Italian-American who has successfully played several Jewish characters (Barton Fink, Quiz Show) and my uncle is half-Italian and half-Jewish.

(Coincidentally, this same uncle gave me an amazing edition of Waiting for Godot/En attendant Godot, with the English and the French texts on facing pages, last Christmas. "You're the only person I know who'd appreciate it," he said.)

I think the scene between Nagg and Nell was my favorite part. I never expected that I'd get to see Elaine Stritch live onstage, least of all in a Beckett play, and her playbill bio is a real hoot! After listing most of her credits in straightforward fashion, she writes:

She then won an Emmy for the edited version of Elaine Stritch at Liberty produced by Sheila Nevins and John Hoffman for HBO. Following her triumph (she just won't quit) she filmed Paradise for Showtime TV in Salt Lake City; the movie aired in November 2004. She can also be seen in Monster-in-Law starring Jane Fonda and Jennifer Lopez, as well as Romance and Cigarettes, directed by John Turturro, whom she adores. Oh, and by the way: she opened the Café Carlyle in September 2005 with her very first cabaret--ever. And, in September of 2006 she did her second ever cabaret. Where else? The Café Carlyle. No need for a car and driver for this gig--she lives (over the deli) permanently at the Carlyle Hotel. Time goes on, or by, or whatever, and in April 2007 Ms. Stritch was introduced on the last episode of this season's television show 30 Rock as Alec Baldwin and Nathan Lane's--would you believe--mother! For which she won an Emmy I'll have you know.

Her co-star, Alvin Epstein as Nagg, also has an impressive resumé. He "made his NY stage debut in 1955 with Marcel Marceau, then as the Fool in Orson Welles' King Lear, Lucky in the American premiere of Waiting for Godot...Clov in the American premiere of Endgame", and "more than 150 other productions on and off Broadway," including many other Beckett works. I love how he says that as founder of American Repertory Theater, "he acted leading, supporting, and tiny roles." Really, an incredible career--my God, why doesn't this man have a Wikipedia page?

Anyway, these old pros were very sweet and touching as Nagg and Nell. In a way, though they are the oldest characters onstage, they are the easiest for the audience to relate to--since they best remember the time before whatever apocalyptic catastrophe befell their world. They may start off as grotesques, but really, they're the most human figures in the play.

Hamm, on the other hand, sees himself as a larger-than-life character. When I think of Turturro I tend to think of the whiny, adenoidal Barton Fink, so I was impressed with the rolling, self-consciously theatrical voice he used for Hamm. I will not soon forget the booming cadences as he shouted, "The dialogue!" (in response to Clov's question "What is there to keep me here?"). Max Casella emphasized the comic aspects of Clov, playing him with a bandy-legged limp and a jutting-out belly, like a character in a silent film.

I once read a theory that Hamm is like "hammer," and Clov, Nagg, and Nell all are etymologically related to "nail" (clavo in Spanish, nagel in German, nail in English). Which is interesting, because in the play Hamm really does hold the power, wield the force. How does he get such power, being blind and wheelchair-bound? I also started thinking about the connections between Endgame and Shakespeare's most apocalyptic tragedy, King Lear. (I see I am not the first person to think of this.) Specifically, how in Lear, Edgar tells the blind old Gloucester a lie in order to save his life (the marvelous "mock suicide" scene). In Endgame, Clov lies to Hamm too, but is he doing it to help him, or to cruelly torment him? Can it be both?

Oh well, I don't want to get too bogged down in theories of Beckett. In the end, you can't stage or act a theory--a point that Turturro, Epstein, Stritch, Casella, and director Andrei Belgrader are all quick to make. I'll leave you with this great interview they did with backstage.com, including several classic Elaine Stritch-icisms, such as "I think [Beckett] is a selfish son of a bitch."

Un dîner théâtral

I just realized that today is the one-year anniversary of my Theatrical French Dinner Party--the one for which I dressed up as La Dame aux Camélias. The wonderful thing about this party is that not only did the guests have to dress as characters from French plays, all the foods made punning references to French drama. I had a great time helping plan, cook, and serve this menu, so I thought I'd share it with you all today.

This is a picture of our beautiful table right before the guests arrived. My host family had gone to the Comédie Française gift shop and bought all kinds of decorations, place cards, etc. Oh, and the little purple ribbon tying each napkin is actually a Ségolène Royal campaign bracelet. My hosts were pretty big Socialists (which is rare among people who live in the ritzy 16th Arrondissement)!

Menu

Hors d'oeuvre: Les Champignons farcis de Maître Pathelin (Maître Pathelin's Stuffed Mushrooms). Farci, meaning "stuffed," is related to the word "farce," the theatre genre. (So called because farcical plays are stuffed full of slapstick and jokes.) And La Farce de Maître Pathelin is one of the oldest French plays in existence. The mushrooms were stuffed with garlic and roasted. We also served radishes, olives and fruit punch with the hors d'oeuvres.

Salad: Les Carottes de Gogo et Didi (Gogo and Didi's Carrots). While Waiting for Godot, the two tramps eat a carrot--though this recipe is much nicer than hobo food. The original recipe flavored the carrots with cumin and orange, but I insisted on adding a pinch of tarragon to the mix, because Gogo's full name is "Estragon," which means "tarragon" in French! Served with frisée lettuce and good French bread.

Main course: Le Dindon de Feydeau (Feydeau's Turkey). The famous playwright Georges Feydeau wrote a farce called Le Dindon, which in this case means something like "the fool" or "the butt of the joke." But it also means "turkey"! This was a vapor-cooked turkey breast, served with sauce vierge (an uncooked sauce/garnish of chopped tomatoes, lemon juice, and herbs) as well as steamed zucchini.

Wine: A red Côtes de Bergerac--that is, from Cyrano's home region. I joked that his nose needed to be so big in order to fully smell all the delicious aromas of this wine.

Other beverages: Water, which we called l'eau d'Ondine (she is a water sprite in a Giraudoux play), as well as coffee and tea after dinner.

Dessert: La Tarte Amandine de Ragueneau (Ragueneau's Almond Tart). In Cyrano de Bergerac, Ragueneau is a pastry chef who dreams of being a poet, and he composes a doggerel verse about how to make almond tarts. We didn't follow Ragueneau's recipe, though--we made an even fancier version, consisting of a homemade crust, a thick layer of almond cream, a thin layer of dark chocolate, topped with poached pear slices. Yum! The hit of the evening.

Mighty Pens, Mighty Swords

I was talking to a fellow playwright last night and we got to lamenting the fact that while modern playwrights may create fantastic worlds on the page, our everyday lives tend to be quiet and constrained. We go to college and then get MFAs; we hole up somewhere and write a play; we submit it to contests; we format everything in that regimented one-page-equals-one-minute style... "Why don't we live back when playwrights actually did things?" we cried. These were the kind of adventurous writers we were thinking of, who don't seem to exist anymore:

• Christopher Marlowe, who is thought to have worked as a royal spy, which might explain his mysterious murder in a tavern
• Aphra Behn, one of my heroes (obviously!) who worked as a spy for Charles II in Antwerp in 1666, before turning to playwriting
• Samuel Beckett, who worked heroically as a courier for the French Resistance
• Vaclav Havel (another of my heroes, obviously!) whose plays, other writings, and political activism helped defeat Communism in Czechoslovakia

I especially like knowing this about Beckett. Sometimes he seems like such a distant and untouchable figure--the craggy sage whose plays espouse such a bleak, lonely vision--that he needs to be humanized, a little. So it's good to know that he fought for the French Resistance. And intriguing that his rejection of James Joyce's daughter Lucia helped drive her to schizophrenia. And comforting to visit his grave in Montparnasse Cemetery and see him buried next to his partner of 50 years, Suzanne--to know that despite the loneliness of his writing, in life and death he was not alone.

Photo from Wikipedia.

And I've always been intrigued by the notion of spying, à la Behn and Marlowe. They say Behn's spying contact, William Scott, was her lover--I hear that and I start imagining a scenario straight out of Hitchcock's Notorious, one of my all-time favorite movies. It also might be the most realistic espionage film ever made: it has no wacky James Bond gadgets, no superhumanly strong and intelligent spies, no shadowy government organizations. Just three heartbreakingly real and flawed people, and the shadowy mysteries of the human heart.

But of course, even if its emotions run deeper and its characters are more human than in a typical spy film, it's still a glossy '40s Hollywood product, and more exciting than anything I am ever likely to experience. Which brings me back to the beginning: what ever happened to the time when being a writer meant being adventurous...meant being notorious?