Minimalism done right: Waiting for Godot Post II

                                (Image found in Google Image Search of the Play)

One of the most striking things about reading and watching Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is its very bleak setting. The set has basically a scrawny tree with a few leaves, a rock, and a few props that range from hats, a stool, to boots. This is direct contrast to many of the plays I have read so far this semester.

Especially, plays like Shaw’s or O’Neill’s whose sets are so detailed it become almost impossible to replicate them on stage. They get down to the level of detail that your know what kind of books on the book shelf.  Beckett’s lack of scenery is almost startling in comparison.

I do think Beckett was trying to do something new with this type of scenery and play. I think he was trying to comment on modernism in a new way. His scenery defiantly helps you focus in on the player’s actions and words. It helps you focus on the existentialism and the choices each of the characters are facing. We have Pozzo who is trying to decide what to do with Lucky. Lucky who is choosing to stay and work for Pozzo till the bitter end. Then we have Estragon and Vladimir who choose to continuously wait for Godot (who ever or whatever he is).

In Shaw’s play we see how helpless we are in our social classes, and that even with the proper training, we never stop being who we really are. In O’Neill’s play we see how helpless we are in fate, and that sometimes our choices are out of our own hands.

Yet, in Beckett’s play, everything is driven by choice. I think the fact that scenery is so space is symbolic of that fact. There is nothing around that that could affect or influence their fate in anyway…except for possibly the tree. Yet, ultimately, they make the choices and the play is driven entirely by their choices and actions.

The minimalist stage could also be a symbolic of the religious aspect. Which shows how bleak their life is while waiting for God. That is probably a stretch, since I don’t necessarily think you have to examine this play by its religious references alone.

Beckett’s minimalistic stage, is defiantly different from his predecessors, and aides Waiting for Godot very well. I think this might be my favorite piece we have read this semester.

A Play Inside of a Play, About Creating a Play: Luigi Pirandello’s "Six Characters in Search of an Author"

                

                       (Luigi Pirandello, the playwrite, found in Google Image Search)

Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author is perhaps the most confusing play I have read this semester in terms of action, stage directions, actor relationship, and characterization.

I am not quite sure what to make of this play. It starts off with a drama company preparing for their first rehearsal of a new play (ironically by Pirandello), and randomly this family shows up, demanding they perform a play they are going to act out and create before them. The relations between all of the family members are unclear, expect they all think they are better than this professional acting company.

The family flatter’s the director into letting them act out this confusing play, which makes even less sense. The company actors are insulted and irritated, but end up going along with this, up until it looks like one of the family’s children dies upon the stage. Then everyone departs and the step daughter runs around laughing.

This play is extremely confusing and might make more sense if I could see it preformed. This would allow me to see the actor placement and frequent action and scene changes they are working with since the characters are essentially creating a play. Though I generally don’t mind the creation of a play inside of a play, (the play inside of Hamlet is the first one that comes to mind), this just seemed ridiculous! The way Pirandello lays this out, it seems more like a cheap trick to me than good drama.

However, Pirandello raises some interesting points in his play about the differences between reality, fiction, and performance. At the start of the semester we had a discussion about performance in everyday life. We talked about doing something as simple as following the social conventions sometimes of responding in a conversation about something you have not interest it as being a performance. You are putting on an act that you care what this other person is saying. This is what I kept thinking about when I was reading the play. Perhaps Pirandello was seeing the beginning of the blurring lines between reality and performance in everyday life and wanted to comment on it.

It was fairly easy for this family to walk in off the street and present themselves as ‘actors’ even though they claimed much of their story to be ‘reality’.

However, though Pirandello’s use of ‘breaking the frame’ by mixing in characters walk onto stage and join in effective. I found it very disorientating in this play. It almost creates more confusion than necessary, even if it helps strengthen the point he is trying to make.

Though, Pirandello’s play within a play is not as flawlessly and seamlessly transitioned into as it is in Hamlet, I also do not think it is not suppose to be. This is supposed to jar the audience into the same level of confusion as the characters with the original play.

I almost wonder, with the new level of mediation the world is going through at this moment, what Pirandello would have to say about it blurring the lines further between reality and fiction, especially with things like ‘reality TV’. Hmmm…..

What is so funny about waiting two days and Godot not showing?

                          
       (Image of Playwrite, found on Google Image Search of Samuel Beckett)

There are a lot of thing that are funny about waiting two days for Godot (whoever he is) and having him not come. I am not sure it this script is just funnier to me than Pinter’s The Homecoming or that after my experience going to see the The Homecoming, I have become much more sensitive to absurd/sardonic humor. Or maybe I’m just a sick person who found Sameul Beckett’s Waiting for Godot probably the funniest thing I’ve read in awhile.

There are a lot of instances in this play that are just plain hilarious:

-        The opening of the play has Estragon trying to pull of his boots which turns into this big struggle in which Vladimir has to help him. During all of this they are having a fairly serious conversation.

-        Estragon and Vladimir’s constant speech one after anouther. They follow up after the other very quickly like:
Estragon: What it is?

Vladimir: I don’t know. A willow.

Estragon: Where are the leaves?

Vladimir: It must be dead.

Estragon: No more weeping.

Vladimir: Or perhaps it’s not the season.

Estragon: Looks to me more like a bush.

Vladimir: A shrub.

Estragon: A bush.
(Beckett pg 852)
This bantering back and forth produces some quite comical instances in the play.

-        The turnip/radish/carrot nonsense.

-        Their attempted hanging on the dead tree/willow/shrub/bush. They don’t seem to be sad, they seem to just want to do it for something to do. In the process of planning their ‘suicide’ they discuss the erection and mandrakes they will create. Which just makes Estragon want to do it all the faster.

  (Image of the Play with the famed tree, found in Google Image Search of Waiting for Godot)

More comedy is added outside of Vladimir and Estragon’s nonsense with Pozzo and Lucky

            - Lucky drops the luggage he is carrying and his fumbling are quite funny.

-        Then when Lucky is finally allowed to speak, he makes the most intelligent babble that I’ve heard, since of course Lenny from The Homecoming.

-         Pozzo's fumbling in Act 2.

-         Pozzo's treatment of Lucky, though mean, is somewhat humorous.

This is of course mostly in Act I of the play. Interestingly, much of the same action in Act 1 of Waiting for Godot repeats itself in Act 2. Act 2, almost seems like a dream like state, especially the second Pozzo and Lucky scene. This repetition doesn’t make it any less funny, in fact I’m sure with Pozzo being blind the second time, it would add more interesting stage directions to add to the humor.

  (Intresting Image of the four major characters, found in Google Image Search of the Play)

Waiting for Godot’s humor is different that The Homecoming (or again maybe I’ve just gotten better at seeing it), because the actions and the stage directions are more evident and funny in this play. In The Homecoming much of the humor was sarcasm, which doesn’t always come across the page as easily. Waiting For Godot’s humor is in its stage directions, their nonsensical conversations (much like the cheese roll scene in The Homecoming), and one’s own imagination.

Though this play makes relatively no sense in the long term plot, it’s a hilarious read, and if following the tradition of The Homecoming I’m sure it is all the more funny on stage. Or maybe I’m just like the rest of the audience in Stratford, laughing at odd parts.

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Beckett, Samuel. “Waiting for Godot”. The Norton Anthology of Drama Volume Two: The    Nineteenth Century to the Present. Ed. J. Ellen Gainor, Stanton B. Garner Jr., Martin      Punchner. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009. 849-905. Print.

Long Day's Journey in Mary's Night

              (Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's playwrite, obtained in Google image search)

After reading Pinter’s The Homecoming, I was certain there was not a more dysfunctional family in literature. Ironically, I was proven wrong merely a few weeks later when I read Long Day’s Journey Into Night. This family not only does not get along, but the source doesn’t come from just one individual, it comes from all of them. None of them mind fighting dirty and are not afraid to say anything to the other no matter how hurtful.

As each character adds a whole new level of dysfunction to the family, the conflicts become worse and worse. Mary Tyrone is interesting the glue of the family, but it is extremely poor glue. Mary is fighting a morphine addiction in the beginning of the play and by the end with her finally drug induced babblings we have seen she has totally lost that battle.

(Image obtained through google image search of morphine)

Why she is addicted is fairly obvious as the play continues. She is married to an selfish alcoholic, who can’t even give her a permanent home besides the summer one they stay in every year it seems. Her oldest son, Jamie, is a unemployed budding alcoholic. Jamie also may or may not have killed their other son by ‘accidently’ exposing him the mumps.  Edmund, her youngest, was a hard birth, and her husband’s cheap doctor selection, introduced her to the morphine. Edmund also seems to be dying of consumption slowly and painfully and she cannot deal with that, choosing the call it ‘a summer cold’ rather than what it really is.

Mary references her dislike and disappointment in Jamie frequently, especially in Act 2, Scene 2 when she admits her suspicions of Jamie killing her second son Eugene by going to play with him while he had mumps staying ‘he knew it could have killed the baby’ and that Jamie was jealous of the babies attention. She also blames herself because she had been away on business with her husband rather than with her children.

Mary also states she has been neglected by her husband with frequent references to the doctor he had gotten her after Edmunds birth being a quack, Also in Act 2, Scene 2, and throughout the play there are references to her husband’s inability to give her a permanent home and frequently leaving her alone while he went out to get drunk.

(obtained in Google Image Search of the play)

Though she is generally kind to Edmund, it is easy to see that she blames him for her addiction.  Yet, because he is her baby, she cannot bear the thought of him sent to a sanitarium to get better, because she has been to one herself for her addiction. Also, admitting that he may die and her addiction and suffering through his birth was for nothing. This may finally push her over the edge of sanity.

Dealing with reality seems too painful for Mary. She is mistreated and neglected by her husband and cannot handle the fact that her children dislike her and their father greatly. Mary reverts often to references to memories and her childhood because those are times of happiness and innocence for her. Her childhood, especially her hopes as a young bride, remind her of happiness, before she was trapped in a patriarchy and at the fate of her husband’s mistreatments. Before she knew what he was really like. Mary even admits had she known how much he drank, she would not have married him has she known then what she does at the present in the play.

Yet, Mary is the reason the three male characters attempt to get along and attempt to work through their problems again and again. She holds them together and yet it is very obvious that her addiction and her inability to deal with reality or their family problems are slowly and painfully tearing them apart.

Interestingly, there is this reoccurring theme of fog in the play. Mary especially likes the fog because it can hide the world from you and you from the world. No one can find you in the fog. Therefore, not one can hurt you. Mary is afraid to be hurt anymore because it will only push forward her addiction, which she is deeply ashamed of. Sadly for her, the only hope she seems to have for her future is an accident overdose…

Mary’s is the character in Long Day’s Journey Into Night that seems call for the most sympathy, or at least the most wonder about her the state of her sanity; perhaps because she seems the most pathetic because she is a women or because much of her current state does not seem to be her fault. Or because of her current state the characters have chosen to not comment on any other fault of hers other than her addiction.

                                  (Image obtainedi n Google Image Search of the Play)

A lot in “Much Ado About Nothing”

                                                       (found in Google Image Search)

I recently watched a mediated performance of Much Ado About Nothing, starring Kenneth Branagh as Benedick, Emma Thompson as Beatrice. The wonderful Robert Sean Leonard played Claudio and a very young Kate Beckinsale appeared as Hero. This movie was fairly recent made in 1993, directed and adapted for screen by Branagh.

I have never read Much Ado About Nothing, but I was familiar with the plot, having read some critical essays which included it in their argument. I am going off the assumption that because it is Kenneth Branagh production, that it is so close to verbatim that I need not worry. His version of Hamlet is perhaps the best mediated performance I have ever seen.

(Google Image Search)

The plot is very Shakespearian: Benedick and Beatrice hate each other, and banter back and forth with great delight. When Benedick accompanies a Prince to her family’s estate to stay for a month, fireworks are sure to happen. The Prince’s stay is dominated however by one of his friends, Claudio falling head over heels for Hero, Beatrice’s younger cousin.

The Prince’s brother orchestrates a plan to break them up to get back as his brother. He sets up a situation where Hero looks like she’s given up her maiden head, and Claudio enraged, calls of the wedding and calls her a whore in front of the entire family and guests. It is soon discovered that this is not true, but by that time, Hero’s family has hidden her and lied saying she died in grief of Claudio’s words.

(Google Image Search)

They make Claudio plan to marry her other cousin, who is actually Hero, and in the end they are happily united. During all of this madness, the various parties trick Benedick and Beatrice into believing the other loves them. After some difficulty and a great Emma Thomspon scene where she demands Benedick kill Claudio for slandering Hero, they end up happily together. This makes them joyously happy and in true Shakespearian comedy, everyone ends up together, and almost everyone is happy. Again, Shakespeare shows his fondness of double weddings.

 After recently seeing live Shakespeare play, I have some idea of how they stage these dramas. There are many differences I have noticed that make the mediated performance almost as enjoyable to the real experience.

(Google Image Search)

The first being: the close ups and variety of views. In plays depending on where you are seated, you do not always have the greatest views, and with the close ups you get to see expressions on the actor’s faces perfectly. Close ups allow you to see every expression on a given actors face; however, because you are focusing on one actor, you are missing what the others are doing at that time. However, this was a very lively film. There is a lot of dancing, parties, and a lot of action; almost too much, and the limiting of vision, in some ways allows you to see more because you have shots of just the party. So in some ways limiting the views is helpful.

There is also this marvelous double exposure scene with the two B’s after they have overheard the others talking about how they love each other. This would not have been possible on stage and was very well symbolic of the prodigious-ness of that moment in the play.

(Google Image Search)

The second reason this mediated performance was almost more enjoyable, was the lushness of the scenery. The scenery was so much more rich and exciting than stage scenery. This is no fault of stage performance; they have much more limited resources and space. It is nice though in the mediated performance, because it allows to them to do more things (like dance in fountains, bathing scenes, dramatic horse riding entrances, hide in the garden, ect.) with the characters.

Thirdly, the humor can still be put into mediated performances. There were many moments in this play that were hilarious and were just as good as on stage. The Monty Python-ish horse riding in some scenes was almost too much to handle!

Sadly though, the thing that always for me makes the live shows more enjoyable than the mediated performances is watching it with a whole group of people and laughing along with them. I watched this mediated performance by myself, and though I laughed, it doesn’t seem as good when there are other people laughing with you.

All and all, from what I can devise, this was a great version of Much Ado About Nothing, it certainly left me with a lot to say!

                                                    (Google Image Search)

Oct. 1 Performance of Twelfth Night in Stratford Ontario

I haven’t laughed as much as I did during the performance of Twelfth Night in a long time. It was a very enjoyable performance. Many of the cast from The Homecoming which was preformed earlier that day were in the Twelfth Night, which I have no doubt made for an exhausting day for the actors.

Brian Dennehy as Sir Toby, Stephen Ouimette as Sir Andrew, and Tom Rooney as Malvolio stole the show. Ben Carlson, who played Hamlet back in the 2008 Season when I went, was Feste, which totally changed my opinion of him as an actor. It added a lot more range of character for him in my mind. Sir Toby and Sir Andrew’s antics on stage were utterly ridiculous and kept me laughing throughout the night. This was a complete change for me from reading the play last semester in English 311. I saw the plots with Sir Andrew, Sir Toby, and Malvolio as this annoying side plot that dragged the play on longer than it needed to be. Seeing it on stage changed my whole opinion of the play. It just might be one of my favorite plays of all time.

This play had a lot more director’s interpretation to it and I think he attempted to bring out as much humor as he could. They switched the first two scenes around and their costumes had no time period. They ranged from 1980s dressed to 1920 sports and athletic wear. Yes, athletic wear. There were golf scenes (complete with golf cart) and scenes in a Sauna, complete with almost towel/wardrobe malfunction.

There was also this hilarious pizza scene, where Sir. Andrew orders a pizza and begins to eat it on stage! Also, Malvolio’s costume to win Olivia’s love was just priceless!

One of the things that I’m still trying to decide if I liked or not, was the amount of music in this performance. The actors had a lot of singing and there were musicians on stage at least every other scene, it was almost pushing rock opera for me. I think the director was trying to liven it up and really play out the comedy quality of this Shakespearean drama.

I like this play a lot more seeing it than reading it. The humor came out much stronger and I didn’t mind many of the director’s interpretations.  Changing up some of the wardrobe and time period in Shakespeare doesn’t bother me as much as it use to. I didn’t care much for the rock opera quality of the play, and they kept pushing the line:
“If music be the fruit of love: play on” too much. They said/sang it at least five times in the performance!

Twelfth Night is perhaps the best play I’ve seen since my 2008 trip. Each time I go it gets better and better! I do know I can’t wait to go back!

Oct. 1 Performance of The Homecoming in Stratford, Ontario

I was hoping by seeing The Homecoming preformed on stage that I would understand it better than I did by reading it. Sadly, that wasn’t the cause. I am now more confused about the plays purpose, who Ruth really is, if this is a play about power, or if Ruth is even the main character of the play than ever. After seeing the play, I think Max is the main character of the play.

This performance of The Homecoming was superbly done. The cast was spot on, especially Brian Dennehy as Max. All of the actors were as I pictured them, except for Ruth; although, to be fair I wasn’t quite sure how to picture her.

Seeing the play live was a great experience. There are so many pauses and lack of stage directions throughout the play, that there was a lot of room for directors to interpret things. I especially liked when they had Ruth sit down and put her feet up on a table after she begins to make her demands after making out with Joey. It really shows the power play that is beginning to take a turn. I liked being able to see what was going on in those pauses as well as how aloof Teddy was during much of the action happening with his wife. I also finally see the play as humorous, because you can see where the sarcasm as well as the physical interactions with the characters.

There were things I didn’t like. Lenny talked a little fast in a few lines and it would have been funnier had he slowed his speech down, especially with the “Don’t hit me with the stick, Daddy” moment. I also wasn’t a fan of how assertive they made Teddy by having him shout a few of his lines. I saw him as meeker than that, but it also gives a larger allusion to him fighting for the little power that he has.

The director’s interpretation of the play was a lot of the action on the stage. The lines and scene order was verbatim the script. However, given the lack of many stage directions (other than pauses) this gives a lot of freedom. Like Sam during the entire last scene downing drink after drink at the bar, where Lenny stood off to the side, and where Sam made his last stand.

All and all, it was an incredibly performance and I was really glad I went despite how unsure I felt about this play. I do feel I have a better appreciation for it now at the very least.