Wasps: A Greek Comedy by Aristophanes

I know it’s been ages since I showed up anywhere in blogland, but things have been much busier than usual with a house move and bank troubles and a toddler who is finding it a little hard to adjust to the new surroundings. A dodgy internet connection didn’t help any. Anyhow, things are beginning to settle, so I look forward to visiting my favorite blogs again and getting back on track with my challenges. Starting off with the Greek Classics Challenge hosted by Howling Frog Books.

When you think ancient Greek theater, you almost always think of long, sweeping tragedies where everyone involved, hero or villain dies a horribly gruesome death. At least, this is what I always thought, based on the bits of Sophocles and Plato that I’d read.  I’d certainly never suspected that the Greeks had such a rich store of comic theatre. Wasps is a proper, no holds barred comedy. In fact it is a mash-up of every kind of comedy. It has political satire, slapstick, dirty jokes, double entendre, clever puns and absurd but hilarious situations.

The play revolves around Philocleon who suffers from a strange disease; he is addicted to the law courts. More specifically, he is addicted to jury duty. So great is his affliction that his well-meaning and harassed son Bdelycleon has to keep the old man under guard. But Philocleon is wily and determined and keeps thinking up ways to escape his son and the guards. He is aided and encouraged by the Chorus, which in this case is made up of incurable jurors like Philocleon. They are the ‘wasps’, buzzing and stinging their victims with obvious relish. With great effort and eloquence, Bdelycleon manages to convince his father and the chorus that a juror’s job is a thankless and unprofitable one. To entertain his dejected father, he sets up a mock courtroom in the house and stages a trial with one of the household dogs standing in the dock, accused of stealing cheese. When this is all played out, Bdelycleon attempts to teach his father sophisticated manners and graces so he can take the old man out to all the fashionable parties. However, he soon learns that some people are just incapable of change.

The thing that amazed me the most about this play was that it seemed so modern. Granted, the translation is partly responsible since the language is very simple and not a bit archaic. But it’s more than that. The politics, the social commentary and even the characterizations feel like something we would watch or read today. If you discount the Greek names and customs, you could easily take this for a contemporary play.

The character of Philocleon is what this whole play hinges on. He is crafty yet charming. One minute he is a dejected and lost soul and the very next minute he is causing mayhem all around him. I imagine that the way an actor played Philocleon, would absolutely make or break this play for the audience.

Wasps, though it is a comedy, has all the elements of a classic Greek play i.e the Chorus which sometimes plays narrator and sometimes instigates the characters into action.  There are bits where the playwright directly addresses the audience and also alludes to his earlier plays. If you watched any Woody Allen movies, you know how this plays out. It is funny enough to read but I’m guessing it would be a lot funnier if you saw it performed.

My only difficulty with this play was that so much of the dialogues and humour was topical and socio-political, full of allusions to current affairs of Aristophanes time.  All of these were explained in the Notes section and admittedly it did give me a real peek into that time and place, but it meant a lot of shuffling back and forth and multiple bookmarks. Still, this didn't really dampen the pleasure of reading this excellent play.

Play Day: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot was the first “grown up” play I ever saw. I wasn’t entirely grown up myself at just 14. It was a very simply mounted production that stuck to Beckett’s script pretty faithfully. The two principal actors were beyond talented and brought a real effervescence to the play. I enjoyed the performance immensely. Whatever symbolism and existential undertones the play had, I neither understood nor cared about. I just thought it a lot of fun. It was only years later, in literature class, that I realised how intimidating this play can be. Critics and scholars and professors seem to delight in making the play as inaccessible as possible. But at the heart of it, it’s really a very simple play. A play where nothing happens. Twice. A brainteaser, yes, but then what work of art isn't?

The play is pretty much summarized in the title itself. It is about two guys waiting. For someone name Godot. We never find out who Godot is or why these guys should wait for him. The implication is that they don’t know either. We know very little about the two men except that they are called Vladimir and Estragon. There are faint allusions to them having seen better times but it has hardly any bearing on anything. To pass the time while they are waiting, the two engage in ridiculous banter, horse around with their boots and hats, and at more than one point they even consider hanging themselves. “Nothing to be done” is a recurring motif here.

Then there are Pozzo and Lucky. Two of the most inscrutable characters you ever did see. But then “inscrutable” is a word that keeps cropping up when you’re reading anything by or about Beckett. There is also the character of the ‘boy’ who brings the two tramps messages from Godot. Actually, he brings the same message, twice. Godot himself is the central character. But we know nothing about him. Nobody does. It isn’t even known if he exists.  It is often suggested that Godot is meant to be a metaphor for God, an unknown entity who we spend our whole lives waiting for.

The trouble with Waiting for Godot, and also its main strength is that it is so completely open to interpretation. This can be challenging for the average reader, like me. Especially when the interpretations get increasingly obscure and confusing. But Beckett didn’t intend it to be a puzzle. There is no right answer. You can make what you want of it and if it makes sense to you, you’ll be right. When I first saw the play, the interaction between Vladimir and Estragon seemed very like a Laurel and Hardy sketch. That is how the actors chose to play it. I also loved Lucky, his crazy dance and nonsensical ramblings. Waiting for Godot (A tragicomedy in two acts) is a prime example of the “Theatre of the Absurd” movement.  It is meant to be absurd and ridiculous. Rather, it is meant to mirror the absurdity and ridiculousness of the human existence. Why bother to ‘figure it out’?

Play Day: Sweet Bird of Youth by Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams, apart from writing some of the most affecting plays also has a talent for picking out hauntingly lyrical titles. A Streetcar Named Desire and Sweet Bird of Youth being the best of the lot. However, the sweetness of the titles contrasts rather starkly with the bitterness in the plays.  When Sweet Bird of Youth was first written and produced in 1959, it caused quite a stir. Mainly because it talked openly and non-judgementally about promiscuity, sex and even drugs. But none of this is really what the play is about. At its core, this play is about loneliness and ageing and the hopelessness of trying to hold on to youth.

Chance Wayne was going to be a Big Star; instead he’s become a gigolo, drifting from woman to woman and town to town. This time he’s managed to latch on to an insecure and aging movie star Alexandra Del Lago AKA the Princess who’s running away from the debacle that was her grand comeback. Chance is back in his hometown St Cloud to reclaim the love of his life, Heavenly. Years back, Heavenly's father Boss Finely had forced Chance to leave his hometown and his girl. Chance hopes to fool his former acquaintances into believing that he has made it big but everyone see’s through the false glitter. He had once been the golden boy of this town but today everyone looks at him with either pity or contempt or both.  The Princess drifts in and out of a drug induced stupor throughout the play, now leaning on Chance for comfort, now turning from him in anger.

The relationship between Chance and the Princess is very layered and bittersweet. They are bound not by love but by their desperation and despair. They have both, contempt and compassion for each other.  Each is using the other and willingly being used too. The other characters in the play seem one dimensional and somewhat stereotypical in comparison. Especially the bigoted politician and his spoilt, wayward son. Perhaps this lack of complexity is intentional, to depict a recognizable character type. Youth is a leitmotif in this play, with each character mourning its loss in some way or the other.

Williams includes very specific instructions on stage directions, lighting, scenery and even the background music which is to accompany certain scenes.  This really gives the reader a multi-layered experience unlike some plays which read pretty much like a short story.   The initial production of the play and also its movie version stars Paul Newman as Chance and Geraldine Page as the Princess.

In the foreword to the play Williams writes, “We are all civilized people, which means that we are all savages at heart but observing a few amenities of civilized behaviour. I am afraid that I observe fewer of these amenities than you do.” He is talking of himself but the same could be said of Chance and the Princess. Williams captures the savagery behind the veneer of civilization without resorting to psychobabble or rhetoric. That’s what makes Sweet Bird of Youth a disturbing yet unforgettable play.

Play Day: The Jewish Wife by Bertolt Brecht

“Character is a question of time.  It lasts for a certain length of time, just like a glove. There are good ones that last a long time but they don’t last forever”

The Jewish Wife is not so much a play as it is a sketch or a vignette. It is part of a series of sketches that form the play Fear and Misery of the Third Reich alternatively known as The Private Life of the Master Race. These sketches are all slices of life in the early years of Hitler’s reign when the horror was slowly beginning to creep into people’s lives. The sketches are actually unconnected to each other except for the time and place they inhabit. The Jewish wife is often performed as a standalone one-act play, and it works brilliantly as such.

When the curtain goes up, we see Judith Keith packing her bags. She’s restless and nervous and cannot sit still. She then goes to the phone and calls a few people to tell them that she’s leaving for Amsterdam for a few weeks. The phone calls done she turns to a chair and starts rehearsing what she is going to say to her husband about the trip. She tells him that she has seen the change that’s come over him lately. They can’t look each other in the eye anymore. We find out that she is a Jew married to an Aryan and Hitler’s propaganda is beginning to infiltrate their lives. Fritz, a surgeon, has been facing some unpleasantness at work on her account and she worries it is all going to get much worse. By now Judith has worked herself up into near hysteria as she lashes out at the powers that have divided the country and its people.

-----Mild Spoiler Ahead----

Fritz comes home and Judith tells him she is going, desperately hoping that he will stop her. But he doesn’t. He claims the change of scene will do her good and she can come back in a couple of weeks when ‘all this has blown over’. She knows, he knows and we know that it will never be. As the curtain falls, Fritz hands her the fur coat that she won’t need until next winter.

The Jewish Wife is a brilliant look at the way in which the politics of hate seeps into the everyday lives of ordinary people. Judith was a beloved wife, a friend, a bridge player and housewife, but now she is only Jewish. Brecht doesn’t portray Fritz as a villain but as a victim. A victim of fear and distrust that gradually distorts him.

This was one of Brecht’s early anti-Nazi plays, written when the full horror of the holocaust was yet to unfold. It is quieter, though just as effective as his later plays like Arturo Ui.... There is no melodrama here; Brecht lets us feel the rot beneath the surface without screaming about it. We all know about concentration camps and the like, but The Jewish Wife is about all the other, subtle ways in which people are broken.

Image http://www.sfbaytimes.com/?sec=article&article_id=6367

Play Day: A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

       

     

      A Doll’s House, written in 1879 is Ibsen’s best known and perhaps most controversial play. Written at a time when women’s liberation was an unheard of concept, its radical final act scandalized the conservative society of the time.  Ibsen based the premise of the play on the life of writer Laura Kieler.

       The play opens on Christmas Eve at the Helmer household where all of the action takes place.  We meet Nora, a vivacious and seemingly frivolous woman. Her husband Torvald patronises her and treats her like a child which she seems to enjoy. She adores her children who are taken care of by her own former Nanny. Then there is Dr Rank, an ailing friend of the Helmers who secretly desires Nora.  Unexpectedly, Nora’s old friend Kristine Linde drops in. There is a general atmosphere of gaiety and well being. This calm is shattered by the arrival of Krogstad. I hesitate to call him the play’s antagonist, but initially he does seem so. Nora’s cheeriness turns brittle and starts to crack.  Her life is hardly the dream she’s made it out to be. Her not-too-distant past and its secrets are closing in on her and her entire world seems likely to crumble. The reckoning when it does arrive, leaves her unbroken but wiser. She finally sees her life, her husband and herself clearly.  The final act is unexpected and powerful. But I’ll leave you to discover that for yourself.

      Every character in the play is so richly textured that you can never really pigeon-hole any of them.  Even Torvald who at the start seems like a petty stock figure, reveals a hidden depth in the finale. I’d read a review which called this a feminist play, and certainly there is a strong message of female empowerment here, but I wouldn’t label it as that. Ibsen himself stated that he had meant A Doll’s House to be about self-realisation, irrespective of gender. I think it makes an impact whichever way you look at it.

      Apparently, when A Doll’s House was set to be produced in Germany, it was felt that the original ending would be unpalatable to the audiences and Ibsen was forced to write an alternative ending. He is said to have termed this a “barbaric outrage” but wrote it anyway because he didn’t want it to be rewritten by someone else. The alternative ending is not exactly a cop out, just vague enough to not rock the boat too much.

      Towards the end of the play Nora tells her husband that she has a moral duty to herself as a human being before she can fulfil her responsibilities as a wife and a mother. Today, over a century later, we still struggle to find ourselves amidst all the roles we must play. A Doll’s House is as relevant today as it was in 1879.

Image http://www.globetheatrelive.com