A History of Dramaturgy: The Origins

 

[On 30 December 2009, I posted “Dramaturgy: The Conscience of the Theater,” a look at what was then still the newest profession in the theater, and little prognostication about where the profession might be heading.  That was almost exactly 13 years ago, and though I’ve posted a few more pieces on Rick On Theater that touch on dramaturgy, I haven’t posted another entire article on the topic. 

[I figure it’s about time I did, and it strikes me that the most apt subject is the history of the profession.  As it happens, that results in a two-fer, because the history of dramaturgy splits neatly into two parts.  Below is the early history of the profession, which took place in Europe, mostly Germany, in the 18th and 19th centuries.

[Following “The Origins” will be “The Modern Era,” focusing on dramaturgy in the United States.  As you’ll learn, that only began in the latter third of the 20th century.  It’s recent enough that I was around to see the end of its beginning.  (That’ll make sense when you read Part 2.)  In fact, I was a close observer, as you’ll see.]

The profession of dramaturgy in the United States is still a relatively new idea; it has yet to be definitively described in either theory or practice.  Even now, whatever definitions exist are ad hoc, each dramaturg often writing the job description as he or she goes along. 

According to a survey taken by the American Theatre Association (ATA; 1936 [as the American Educational Theatre Association] – 1986), a dramaturg is a theater (and sometimes opera, film, and television) professional involved in play selection, casting decisions, research, directing showcases, attending out-of-town auditions, writing or translating plays, producing new-play series, supervising workshops and play readings, and editing support materials.

The dramaturg’s responsibilities are many, depending on the talents of the person holding the post, the needs of the theater, and the inventiveness of the artistic director.  Dramaturgs may often also take on a number of quasi- or non-dramaturgical responsibilities such as public relations, teaching, fundraising or, even, acting.  

They can be educators, adapters, translators, historians, researchers, editors, in-house critics, playwright’s advocates, conduits for new scripts, play doctors, and outside observers at rehearsals ready to set the artists back on track if they get diverted.

They can serve as resources for production directors and designers, and in a different context, for the company’s artistic director.  They can assist publicity directors and press reps as well.  Dramaturgs help keep everyone on the same page.

Though ‘dramaturgy’ is often used to mean ‘the craft of playwriting,’ I’ll be using it here exclusively to refer to the dramaturg’s profession.  The variant spellings ‘dramaturge’ and ‘dramaturg’ are used interchangeably by many writers.  

The former spelling, which is French (and consequently pronounced with a soft g) and is really a synonym for ‘dramatist,’ is less common; I’ll use the latter, German spelling, which, first, is closer in meaning to the function discussed here and, second, is the name used by the professional association, Literary Managers & Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA, founded in 1985).

The terms ‘literary manager’ or ‘literary adviser,’ though sometimes defined slightly differently from ‘dramaturg,’ will generally be used as a synonym for it here.  The staffs of few theaters include both a literary manager and a dramaturg—Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage lists both positions on its staff—and the work they perform frequently overlaps.  

Dramaturgy in the United States first appeared in 1908, when director Winthrop Ames (1870-1937) of New York City’s New Theatre (62nd Street and Central Park West on Manhattan’s Upper West Side) recruited New York Sun drama reviewer John Corbin (1870-1959) as literary manager.  His salary was a whopping $10,000 a year, equivalent to about $324,000 today!

In 1910, Corbin resigned in frustration over the strain of reading as many as 2,000 scripts a year—more than five plays every day over 365 days.  The theater accepted unsolicited scripts—an announcement to that effect appeared in newspapers—and most of what he read, he affirmed, he declared “impossible,” and then he had to find a diplomatic way to phrase the rejection letter.

Even in his short tenure at the New Theatre, Corbin was credited with contributing to the troupe’s highly artistic productions, demonstrating the value of a literary manager in residence.  The position of literary manager, however, was abol­ished, and Ames’s New Theatre Company ceased operations in 1911 as a result of financial failure, and the building was demolished in 1930.  No other such position was established with any prominence in an American theater for over half a century. 

It wasn’t until the late 1960s and early 1970s that the first full-time dramaturgs since Corbin were employed by professional U.S. theaters.  Since that time, a large number of resident theaters have hired dramaturgs or literary managers; some even have small staffs and internships in the field.  

Historically, the field of dramaturgy was initiated in the 18th century European theater.  It was common practice for theater companies to have a resident dramatist who composed plays for the troupe, translated foreign plays, or edited classical works that had casts too large for the company. 

The company playwright in the French-speaking troupes was called the dramaturge, and other European theaters used the French term as well.  So, the dramaturge developed into the forebear of the modern dramaturg.

The German form of the word was first used in Hamburg, Germany.  A consortium of 12 businessmen formed the Hamburg National Theater (Hamburger Nationaltheater) and the de facto director of the theatre was Abel Seyler (1730-1800), a Swiss-born theater director and former banker.  They hired playwright and critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-81) as resident dramatist in January 1767.

Lessing demurred, explaining to the theater’s manager, Johann Friedrich Löwen (1727-71), who was also a stage director, that he couldn’t write plays on a schedule.  Löwen devised a plan for Lessing to write criticism of the company’s productions to be published in a journal put out by the theater, a sort of precursor to the newsletters or subscriber magazines many U.S. theaters publish, with the idea that Lessing’s commentaries would draw theatergoers.

By 1767, Lessing had attained a reputation for both his criticism and his playwriting.  Löwen believed that having the dramatist’s name on the theater’s staff, it could take advantage of his prestige and respect to attract audiences.  Lessing, on the other hand, was in such impecunious straits that he was prepared to take any job that paid him a salary.

Of course, Löwen expected Lessing to pen laudatory descriptions of the National Theater’s work, but the playwright and critic expressed his honest opinions of what he saw.  The new dramaturg, it seems, saw himself not as a tout or a shill, but an enlightener or aesthetic educator.

Lessing’s criticism was aimed not only at the prospective audience, the potential theatergoers of Hamburg, but at the artistic leadership of the Hamburg National Theater.  In the epigraph to Joel Schechter’s essay “Lessing, Jugglers, and Dramaturgs,” the author quotes George Bernard Shaw:

It was Lessing, the most eminent of dramatic critics . . ., who was reproached by [German poet and literary critic Heinrich] Heine for not only cutting off his victims’ heads but holding them up afterwards to show that there were no brains in them.

Needless to say, the dramaturg’s efforts weren’t appreciated at the theater.  He found that his advice was largely ignored, and he got into disputes with both actors, who didn’t welcome his critiques, and spectators, who found his efforts to criticize their taste and understanding insulting. 

Both he and Löwen resigned in the summer of 1768, and the National Theater closed in 1769 due to financial failure.

While at the Hamburg theater, Lessing wrote a series of 104 essays on theater based on his work at the theater.  The pieces were written between April 1767 and April 1769, continuing after he left the theater, and were published in 1769 as Hamburgische Dramaturgie or Hamburg Dramaturgy, which popularized both the word and the practice of dramaturgy.  (An English translation was published in 1890, but it omits nearly 30% of the text.  A new, complete rendering was issued in 2014.)

Over the ensuing 200 years, dramaturgy in Germany became an established and important theatrical function.  Later German dramaturgs included writers and directors such as Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853), who helped bring German literature out of Sturm und Drang into Romanticism; Otto Brahm (1856-1912), founder of Berlin’s Freie Bühne (Free Stage), and Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), who served as dramaturg for Erwin Piscator (1893-1966) before developing his own plays and productions.

Lessing’s failure had little deterrent effect on the dawning of the profession of dramaturgy.  After the publication of Hamburg Dramaturgy, several other volumes on the subject followed.  In 1778/79, Otto Heinrich von Gemmingen (1755-1836; known as Heinrich while his father, with the same name, was called Otto), from an illustrious family—he was a baron, as was his father who was also a judge—published Mannheimer Dramaturgie (“Mannheim dramaturgy”). 

Having started with amateur dramatics in Heilbronn, where he spent his childhood, at 19, von Gemmingen moved to Mannheim, the seat of the Elector of the Palatinate, and soon came to the Elector’s attention. 

Appointed a chamberlain, a courtier responsible for maintaining a nobleman’s household, he took advantage of the expanded cultural scene in Mannheim and began to prepare himself for a literary career.  He was introduced to the Enlightenment at this time as well.

Meanwhile, by 1777, von Gemmingen was appointed supervisor of educational institutions and the theaters, a post once offered to (and turned down by) Lessing.  He also became friends with young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91), who was in Mannheim. 

In 1778, the new Mannheim National Theater was opened and von Gemmingen was offered the post of dramaturg.  He began translating plays into German and earned a reputation as a drama critic.  In 1778 and ’79, he wrote criticism and essays on theatrical theory for a theater journal; the pieces were collected in 1780.

He moved on from translation to writing original plays, including one, now lost, which he co-wrote with Mozart.  In 1779, von Gemmingen had his greatest stage success with Der deutsche Hausvater (“The German house father” or “The German father of the house”), in which the esteemed German actor Friedrich Ludwig Schröder (1744-1816), who later became a great friend of the author, starred.  The play was highly praised by Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) and many critics and literary experts believe it influenced Schiller’s own Kabale und Liebe (Love and Intrigue; 1784).

Hausvater made von Gemmingen famous almost overnight; it played in German theaters all over Europe and remained in some companies’ repertoires for years.  He went on to write several other successful plays, but he left Mannheim and moved on to other pursuits.  He fell into heavy debt and died impoverished and almost forgotten.  Today, his name is hardly known.

In 1788-89, Baron Adolph Knigge (1752-96) published the journal Dramaturgische Blätter (“Dramaturgical pages”).  He had started an amateur theater in Hanau, Germany, in 1777.  He wrote several plays (the titles of which I wasn’t able to track down!), published in a two-volume edition titled simply Theaterstücke (“Theater pieces” or, simply, “Plays”; 1779-80).

Knigge, who was born Adolph von Knigge, but as a staunch supporter of the French Revolution, dropped the aristocratic von after the nobility was abolished there (though it appears on some of his books depending on the editor and date of publication), was a prolific writer on topics social and political, until his early death—apparently from “nervous fever and gallstones”—at the age of 43.

Heinrich Christoph Albrecht (1762-1800) was a German philologist, someone who studies language in oral and written historical form and applies the methodologies of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics.  With no apparent ties to the theater, in 1791, he published the journal Neue hamburgische Dramaturgie (“New Hamburg dramaturgy”).  It only ran 16 issues.

Even after the demise of the Hamburg National Theater and the rejection of Lessing’s attempt to raise the artistic standards of both the theater’s repertoire and the Hamburg audience’s viewing habits—both of which are within a dramaturg’s job description, though a lot of tact and patience is generally required—the hiring of dramaturgs around the German-speaking world continued apace, except in Hamburg, which balked at a reprise of the experience.

(When I was doing a supervised research project for a dramaturgy course in grad school in 1984, I proposed offering some discreet in-house assessments of the work of the theater where I was serving as literary advisor.  My expectation was that this would be much very informal and entirely private—no public consumption of my opinions—but in the margin of my project journal, my teacher wrote: “Look, however, what happened to poor Lessing when he tried it!  This takes the most acute diplomacy.”)

There was still prestige to be gained at theaters which had a man with Lessing’s reputation and stature on the staff, and it provided the theater with a source of knowledge of playwriting and dramatic theory that gave them not only access to new plays—playwrights attract other playwrights—but a person with the expertise to evaluate scripts and nurse them from the page to the stage.

Also, having a playwright on the staff, even if he couldn’t turn out producible new scripts on demand, he could supply the company, becoming less and less dependent on classics and popular standards, with new plays of quality.  Even Löwen in Hamburg knew the value of that: in the dramatist’s brief stint as dramaturg, the National Theater produced four of Lessing’s plays, including the 1767 première of Minna von Barnhelm.

Far from permanently queering the pitch for dramaturgs in the German theater, Lessing seems to have stoked the eagerness for them.  Not only were they being hired, but they were finding their advice heeded.  (I suspect that the crop of dramaturgs that came behind Lessing knew not to come on like gangbusters and applied some finesse to their suggestions.) 

By the turn of the 19th century, the dramaturg had become a permanent and vital member of the German theater’s staff.  Many theaters have the split dramaturgical set-up to which I alluded briefly earlier, with a production dramaturg who works with the director and other artists in rehearsal and a literary dramaturg, what we’d call a literary manager or literary adviser, who deals with the selection of the repertoire, finding and evaluating scripts, and pretty much all text-based matters.  The dramaturgy departments of these subsidized companies comprise staffs of up to 12 full-time dramaturgs.

Along with the new dramaturgs, a whole herd of new writers was getting their work done on German stages, including Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) and Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811), who made débuts in Dresden at the Court Theater courtesy of Tieck’s dramaturgy.  Karl Immermann (1796-1840) brought classics by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-81) to Düsseldorf’s Stadttheater in 1835.  At Berlin’s Freie Bühne (1889-94) and Deutsches Theater (1894-1903), Brahm premièred Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), August Strindberg (1849-1912), Émile Zola (1840-1902), and Gerhart Hauptmann (1862-1946) late in the 19th century.

Ironically, even with their new-found acceptance and influence in their theaters, these later dramaturgs often had the same disputes with actors and theatergoers that Lessing had and which, in part, scuttled his residency in Hamburg. 

Brecht was so bold as to demand in 1925, when he was one of the literary advisers at Max Reinhardt’s (1873-1943) Deutsches Theater in Berlin (where Brahm before him had served as manager), that the theater management cede all decision-making authority to him so he could shape the company’s repertoire to suit his own theories—and exclude all but his own plays.  The management rejected his demand.

Like Lessing, Brecht was more successful as a playwright that he was as a dramaturg.  He did get to run his own theater, the renowned Berliner Ensemble, established in 1949, just a few weeks after the founding of the German Democratic Republic itself after World War II in what was then Soviet-controlled East Berlin, capital of the GDR.

At the Berliner Ensemble, Brecht himself, now the theater’s artistic director, used dramaturgs extensively.  Indeed, my first dramaturgy professor at New York University was Carl Weber (1925-2016), an actor and dramaturg at the BE, and assistant director to Brecht.  The great playwright and director made the dramaturg his closest conceptual collaborator, giving them a significant say in all artistic considerations.

Dramaturgs in Germany, following on the Lessing debacle, have become integral to the success of the rep theaters in a country where nearly every town of any size has at least a Stadttheater (municipal theater) and often also a Stadtoper (city opera) and a Städtisches Orchester (municipal orchestra).  These aren’t community theaters, even in the small cities.  

(I lived for two years in a city of 100,000 residents, and it had a theater, an opera company, and an orchestra of very high quality—Germans take their culture very seriously.  The orchestra and the opera troupe were both bases for American artists to come and gain experience they couldn’t get in the States.)

[Thus endeth part one of “The History of Dramaturgy.”  On Tuesday, 3 January 2023, I’ll post part two, “The Modern Era,” which picks up in the 1970s (with a few quick warm-up trips to the early 1900s and a little after). 

[I’ll be focusing on the United States, but there’s a brief side-trip to Britain.  So we not only jump from the end of the 19th century to the last quarter of the 20th, we hop over half of Europe and across the Atlantic Sea, as Claude sings in Hair.. 

[I don’t know why I did that last reference.  It has nothing to do with anything.  I just felt like it was time for a song cue!]

Tom Stoppard

by Kirk Woodward

[On 22 October, I posted “Tom Stoppard & Leopoldstadt” on Rick On Theater.  It’s an assemblage of different pieces about the playwright, including a short biographical sketch.  As an introduction to the post, I gave a little background of my initiation to Stoppard’s work.  Here’s an edited version of that introduction:

[Tom Stoppard is one of my favorite playwrights; since I first encountered his work some fifty-odd years ago, I have reveled in his wordplay and his convoluted logic and intellectualism.  I first experienced Stoppard’s work while I was in the army and stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky.  I attended several plays at the five-year-old Actors Theatre of Louisville, just 45 minutes north of the army base.

[Louisville, as it happens, is the hometown of Kirk Woodward, my college classmate and the author of the report on Hermione Lee’s new biography of the dramatist.

[I saw three plays at ATL, the third of which knocked me out because I’d never before seen anything like it: Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.  The deconstruction of Hamlet, the verbal play, the twisty logic, the philosophical underpinning, the fundamental question of how we know what we (think we) know, all made my mind spin and my mouth gape.  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern immediately became one of my top favorite plays. 

[I’ve seen many of Stoppard’s plays since then.  I did one of my first acting-class scenes from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  Later I played Moon in The Real Inspector Hound and I used a speech from Jumpers as an audition piece for a number of years.  I haven’t caught all of them, but many of the plays listed below have been part of my theater experience.]

Tom Stoppard: A Life. Lee, Hermione. 2022. Vintage Books, New York. 872 pp.

I saw the play Leopoldstadt on Broadway in New York City on December 1, 2022, and it has stuck in my mind ever since. I went to see it because a family friend, Brandon Uranowitz (b. 1986), a three-time nominee for the Tony Award, plays two prominent roles in the play. I was not disappointed; his performance is stunning.

But so is the entire play, and it has been on my mind ever since. In scope and in impact, it is powerful. It was written by Tom Stoppard (b. 1937). I have always thought of him as one of the younger generation of playwrights; it came as something of a shock to realize that he is now 85. Clearly I needed to learn more about him, so I bought Tom Stoppard: A Life by Hermione Lee.

The most striking aspect of the book description above may be the 872 pages. If you’ve had an ambition to meet Tom Stoppard, you might want to read this book instead. It would take you about as long as it would to fly to England, and by the end of the book you’d feel you’d known him personally.

Hermione Lee (b. 1948), noted for biographies of the novelists Willa Cather (published in 1989) and Virginia Woolf (published in 1996), was asked by Stoppard to write this biography, which follows an earlier one with the same title by Ira Bruce Nadel (b. 1943), published in 2002 and credited by Lee as “thoroughly researched [and] detailed.”

Those words certainly apply to Lee’s book. Stoppard invited her to write it; he told friends to cooperate with her, and he made a staggering amount of documentation available to her. The result is highly readable – a triumph for the author, and a tribute to the enormous activity with which Stoppard has filled his life. I found it difficult to read anything else until I had finished it.

Lee peppers her book with references to Stoppard’s skeptical attitude toward biography. She writes:

There have been moments when he clearly regretted setting this book in motion, and would have preferred me not to be asking personal questions about him of his friends, or reading his archive, or asking him about his past. For all that he is a public and highly visible personage, he is also a reserved, shy and embarrassable private man, protective of himself and of his family. Sometimes he has been baffled by the whole process and by the questions I’ve asked him. This can’t be any use to you, can it? he has often asked, in mid-conversation.

Lee’s biography is “critical” in the sense that it takes a thorough look at Stoppard’s writing. It is hardly critical of him as a person, although it acknowledges contradictory and sometimes difficult elements of his personality:

One young playwright, who adores him but has witnessed him in critical mode, added to his adjectives [describing Stoppard]: “And a tiny bit evil.” One grand old woman of the world, an old friend of his, said to me: “Beware of the charm.” A theatre director noted that he used his politeness to get what he wanted from people. A woman who has often worked with him notes that he is not influenced by anyone when he wants something his way. “Solitary” and “private” are frequent adjectives. Many people who know him have said they don’t feel they know him well. They don’t know who his close friends are and they aren’t even sure if he has any.

I quote this passage at length because it’s pretty much the worst anybody has to say about him. Lee often puts the best construction on his behavior; on the other hand, in the strenuous world of the theater few people are saints, and Stoppard’s dealings with people appear to be honest and aboveboard.

Certainly Lee gives him the benefit of the doubt when she can. Of his breakup with the splendid performer Felicity Kendal (b. 1946), for example, Lee writes that

Though she keeps the private story of their life to herself, she speaks of him to this day with fondness, humour and respect. If there was pain and sadness, it was well managed, and outweighed by affection and loyalty. It is one of the striking features of his life that he has stayed friends with his ex-partners.

The facts, as far as they can be known, seem likely to be true (although it took time for Stoppard and his first wife to reestablish an equilibrium after their divorce), but it certainly is not tabloid-style journalism.

Two other aspects of Lee’s writing to note: she occasionally uses British slang that might not be familiar to Americans (but, after all, she’s British); and if she uses the word “he” without a clear antecedent, as she frequently does, it refers to Stoppard.

I have seen little of Stoppard’s work and read little more; Lee’s book convinced me that I have missed a great deal in two ways: she convinces me that his work has great value, and that there is a huge amount of it. Stoppard seems to have been a non-stop (if I may put it that way) writer.

His plays are certainly his best-known output, and he has said that he’s “a theater writer who does other things.” Indeed he does – essays, letters, journals, speeches, media appearances, radio and TV dramas, nearly everything except social media (which he avoids).

I was astounded by the number of movies he’s been associated with, whether he was credited or not: examples include Brazil (1985), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989, in my opinion the best of that series), The Russia House (1990), Shakespeare in Love (1998, his project from inception and a Best Picture Oscar and Golden Globe Award winner for him and his co-author Marc Norman), and Star Wars Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005). By any account, that’s a wide variety of films, and it’s just a sampling.

But, as Lee says, “Stoppard was, after all, a playwright, not a historian, a biographer, an essayist or a philosopher – though he feeds off all those genres.” “Feed off” he does – he is an astonishing researcher. Lee says

His process was always the same. He read and read till he had taken on more than he could handle. Then he plunged in and made it up as he went along. There had to be a point where he stopped beating himself up for not knowing X, Y, and Z, and began writing without knowing X, Y, and Z. It was a lesson he had found hard to learn.

What does he research? The answer is “just about anything,” which can include topics from history, science, philosophy, mathematics, religion. His play Travesties (1974) is a good example.

The initial idea came from a not then published novel which mentioned that Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state (1870-1924); the psychologist Carl Jung (1875-1961); the novelist James Joyce (1882-1941); and Tristan Tzara (1896-1963), an influential literary figure of his time and an important figure in the Dadaist and Symbolist movements, were all in Zurich, Switzerland, at the same time in 1916.

If the name of Tzara is unfamiliar, in a way that’s the point: Stoppard has exhaustively researched the period, its events, characters, and themes, and created a celebrated play out of a mix of elements some of which are almost certainly not common knowledge. This has given him a reputation as a playwright more interested in the intellect than in human behavior – an opinion that can be challenged, as we will see below.

Still, although Lee doesn’t make the following point, it seems to me easy to see Stoppard as a playwright descended, not directly, from another playwright often accused of over-intellectualism, namely George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950).

There are resemblances: both Shaw and Stoppard came to England from other countries (Shaw from Ireland, Stoppard from Czechoslovakia); both began their careers in journalism; both wrote prolifically and startled their audiences by the emphasis they put on intellectual activity.

And both were involved in social movements of their times. Shaw had numerous theories on how economies and governments should be organized – he was among other things a fervent Socialist. Stoppard has focused on freedom of expression, particularly in nations like Czechoslovakia when the U.S.S.R. controlled Eastern Europe.

Both in fact could be labeled as playwrights of a “theater of ideas,” but that label would get us almost nowhere. There are ideas of all sorts; the question is what they mean to people who use ideas as a way of explaining themselves, the world, and what’s important to them.

Stoppard is certainly known for esoteric choices of material in his plays. Lee makes a good case, however, that human relationships are at the core of the plays, and that “all this material had to be turned into a drama that would make people laugh and weep, as well as think.”

She describes how Stoppard’s son Ed, viewing his work, came to ”see that the actors needed to find the key to it – as often in his father’s plays – through the emotions, not the ‘cerebral’ side.” When asked how the actors should approach his play Rock ’n’ Roll (2006), a play about the role music played in the opposition to the Communist government in Czechoslovakia, Tom Stoppard said, “Tell them it’s a love story.”

Stoppard describes his approach to writing plays in similar non-scientific terms – he researches like crazy, then plunges into writing the play. “If you can steel yourself just to blunder off into the dark, and keep alert to the way it might go, then God will come to your aid.” (He is not conventionally religious, which makes his choice of words particularly interesting here.)

Shaw, like Stoppard, was accused of writing plays that are “all talk.” Their styles, though, are different; Shaw tends to focus on one subject per play (on which he is thoroughly informed, at least in his own opinion), while Stoppard enjoys creating a mix.

Writing his play Saint Joan (1923), Shaw read most of the major accounts of Joan’s of Arc’s life (c. 1412-1431), and carefully studied (and used) the transcripts of her trial. That amount of research was sufficient for his purposes. Had Stoppard written the play, one can imagine his bringing in astronomy, quantum physics, and numerology as well. If he had, no one would have been surprised.

But although abstract thought may take a role in Stoppard’s work, there is a definite personal side to it, as Lee makes clear – a fact never more evident than in Leopoldstadt (first performed in London in 2020, where it won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Play that year). The story behind the story is fairly well known by now: Stoppard’s family was Jewish, but he was only dimly conscious of that fact until the 1990’s (see “Tom Stoppard & Leopoldstadt” – especially “Brief Biography”).

His family were Czech Jews, and when the Nazis arrived, some escaped, most did not; all his grandparents died in concentration camps. Stoppard situates the play’s story in Vienna rather than in Prague, but he dramatizes the same drift in Austria from casually insulting anti-Semitism to the brutal onslaught of the Germans, with the same results as his family experienced.

The last of the five scenes in the play shows a character very much like Stoppard – urbane, British in manner and outlook – coming face to face with the facts of his heritage. The scene is sobering and affecting. The preceding scene, in which the Nazis invade the family residence, is terrifying and I still have not gotten over it.

There is a great deal more to Lee’s book than I have described here, of course, including fascinating details like his expectations of actors (frequently, what he insists on is good diction) and his way of working with directors (open to their suggestions, but stubborn about what he wants).

Is Stoppard a great playwright? Asked the question, he replied with animation that it was too soon to tell. One thing is certain: Stoppard has greatly expanded the assumed limits of what a play can successfully do, by bringing in elements of the complexity of life that previously had not found much of a place in theater.

He has done this with both imagination and intelligence, not sacrificing the importance of plot and the complexity of human relationships. His plays answer the question, “Should theater entertain or educate?” by demonstrating that life is complex – more complex than the question itself.

*  *  *  *

[I was listening to the local CBS news on 21 November last, and its occasional “Broadway and Beyond” segment was on Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt.  Brandon Uranowitz, who plays a Stoppard-like character in the autobiographically inspired play, was featured in an interview with the correspondent Dick Brennan.  Uranowitz, who was the principal spokesperson on the segment (other than Brennan) spoke about the play and anti-Semitism—past and present.  (As Kirk notes above, Uranowitz is a “family friend.”  The video is available at “Leopoldstadt” star Brandon Uranowitz reflects on new Broadway play's important and timely story - CBS New York (cbsnews.com)).]

“‘LEOPOLDSTADT’ STAR BRANDON URANOWITZ REFLECTS ON
NEW BROADWAY PLAY’S IMPORTANT AND TIMELY STORY”
by Dick Brennan 

NEW YORK -- The new Broadway play “Leopoldstadt” shows the horror and heartbreak an extended Jewish family faces when the Nazis occupy Austria during World War II.

Actor Brandon Uranowitz sat down with CBS2’s Dick Brennan to talk about the rise of antisemitism on stage and what’s happening today.

It is a searing family drama of love, tragedy and human suffering sprawled over decades. The play follows an Austrian-Jewish family through the joy and prosperity of the turn of the 20th century and then into the darkness of Kristallnacht [“The Night of Broken Glass,” 9-10 November 1938] and the scourge of Nazism.

It is in part based on the life of Tom Stoppard, one of the most successful playwrights in Broadway history, and features a giant cast [38 actors] portraying a family tree that withers under the burden of hatred and oppression.

“I think if you’ve never experienced what it’s like to be oppressed or be marginalized, it can be very difficult to step into the shoes of someone who has,” Uranowitz said.

Uranowitz takes on two roles, Ludwig and Nathan, over a five-decade period from 1899 to 1955.

“There’s a very terrifying parallel between that apartment and this theater, and everything that’s happening outside of it,” he said.

Today’s headlines prove that antisemitism never really goes away.

“‘Leopoldstadt’ is sort of bringing to life the kind of Holocaust education in a pop culture sense,” said Scott Richman, regional director for the Anti-Defamation League.

Richman says the play sends an important signal to society at precisely the right time.

“I’m really glad that a show like this, which has a message about the Holocaust and where hate can lead . . . is a very important message,” he said.

Generally what awaits Uranowitz outside the theater is adoration from people who may have experienced what they just saw or who’ve had family who did, and he says they become an important part of the play itself.

“Any time I’m rehearsing a play, it always comes up that like, well, we’ve gone as far as we can, until we introduce the last character, which is the audience. And it does feed their performance, it uplifts their performance, and it validates their performance,” Uranowitz said.

“If there was some one thing, one theme . . . that is a message of this play and that perhaps might resonate beyond the doors here. . .” Brennan said.

“For me, the biggest thing about the play is memory and remembering,” Uranowitz said. “I think my biggest hope for this play is that it doesn’t exist in a vacuum or it doesn’t exist in an echo chamber. I don’t want the themes of this play, to just be presented to people who already understand them and know them.”

Uranowitz is a three-time Tony nominee who has worked in film and TV, including “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” so what keeps him returning to the theater?

“Theater to me is just, it’s my life blood because there’s nothing else like it in the world. And you know, when you do film and TV, you sort of jump into the middle of a scene, you jump into the middle of an ‘act,’ and in theater, you start at the beginning and you go through the middle and you go to the end, and you experience something in real time with people and then it’s done. And there’s something ethereal about it. And yes, we do it eight times a week, yes, it’s repetitive, I guess, but every single performance is entirely unique because everyone here [in the audience] is different. What we’re bringing into the theater every day is different and that informs how we talk and listen and react. Theater to me is the greatest thing on Earth because there’s nothing else like it, and we all experience this one thing together and then it disappears,” he said.

“Leopoldstadt” is running at the Longacre Theatre through March 2023.

[Dick Brennan joined CBS2 (WCBS, channel 2 in New York City) in 2012 as an anchor and reporter. In addition, he anchors on the digital channel CBS News New York, which is also seen on the News at Nine on WCBS’s Long Island sister station WLNY-TV (channel 55 in Riverhead, Suffolk County, New York).

[Brandon Uranowitz, a stage and screen actor, is from Livingston, New Jersey, and turned 36 last July.  Growing up in West Orange, New Jersey, he began performing at age six.  By the mid-’90s, he was appearing professionally in regional and Off-Broadway New York City productions.

[Uranowitz graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2008 with a degree in theater arts and made his Broadway debut in the 2011 jukebox musical Baby It’s You! (pop and rock hits of the 1960s), which ran for 33 previews and 148 regular performances.

[He’s best known for his roles as Adam Hochberg in the musical An American in Paris (2014-15; see reports on ROT by me and Kirk Woodward, posted respectively on 2 August 2015 and 13 November 2015) and Mendel Weisenbachfeld in the 2016 Broadway revival of Falsettos (see Kirk’s report on 5 January 2017).

[A three-time Tony Award nominee, Uranowitz received nominations for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for those performances in addition to a 2019 nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in Burn This.  His other Broadway credits include Prince of Broadway (2017) and The Band’s Visit (2018). 

[I first saw Uranowitz on stage in Washington, D.C., doing Arnold in Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy (see “Torch Song Trilogy,” 5 October 2013.)  He was nominated for the Helen Hayes Award—the D.C.-area regional counterpart of the Tony—for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Resident Play.]

Spirit of 1907 Christmas, Recovered in 1999, Completed in 2016

 

[On Christmas Day 2009, I posted what I labeled “Arguably the most famous editorial ever written.”  It contained the line, now world famous: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!”

[The column ran in the New York Sun of 21 September 1897 and was editor and editorial writer Francis Pharcellus Church’s reply to 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon’s letter asking “Is there a Santa Claus?”

[Below, I’m posting three news stories about a later Christmas letter, this one from 1907 from 10-year-old Mary McGann (later McGahan; 1897-1979).  As you’ll read, the letter to Santa was recovered by Peter Mattaliano (b. 1949) from a Hell’s Kitchen fireplace in 1999.

“‘CHRISTMAS SPIRIT PERSONIFIED’:
MAN’S SEARCH FOR GIRL WHO WROTE 1907 LETTER TO SANTA”
by Dana Jacobson

[This report was broadcast on CBS This Morning (the predecessor of CBS Mornings), a feature of CBS News, on 23 December 2016 (Man finds what happened to Mary McGann, girl who wrote 1907 letter to Santa, nearly 17 years after finding it in his chimney - CBS News).]

On the night before Christmas back in 1907, a 10-year-old girl in a New York City apartment wrote a letter to Santa. Following an Irish tradition, she sent it up the chimney.

A man found that letter nearly 17 years ago when he was renovating his fireplace. Ever since, he’s been working to learn more about the little girl. His long journey came to a satisfying conclusion just last week, reports CBS News correspondent Dana Jacobson.

“As I’m bringing bricks out, I find this little blue envelope written to Santa Claus in Reindeer Land,” Peter Mattaliano recalled. “And I open it up. And here’s this letter from – from Mary.”

“And you say, ‘Mary,’ like you know her. But at the time . . .” Jacobson said.

“I know,” Mattaliano said. “It’s funny.”

Mattaliano did not know anything about 10-year-old Mary McGann when he discovered her partially charred letter in his fireplace. He was struck by the last line of Mary’s note.

“My little brother would like a wagon that I know you cannot afford,” she wrote.

“She doesn’t ask for anything for herself and then says, ‘Please, do not forget the poor.’ I mean, you know, the spirit of Christmas, that generosity and maturity – she’s 10,” Mattaliano said.

So he set out to find Mary. The census records he dug up only told part of the story. That’s when the New York Times got involved.   

“They found where she was buried in four days. Mary McGann married George McGahan, OK?” Mattaliano said, laughing. “We get to the stone. And there it is, George McGahan. But Mary’s not on the stone.”
 
There was a space, but no name. Mary, who never had children and worked as a stenographer, died in 1979 at age 82. 

“A little girl who had that kind of emotional depth and generosity, has to be acknowledged,” Mattaliano said. “Even if there’ll be nobody to go visit, she has to be acknowledged.”

Mattaliano couldn’t add Mary’s name because he is not related; but someone else could. 

“Last January, an article appeared in our local newspaper here in Ireland,” Brian Dempsey recalled.

Dempsey is a physics teacher who lives outside of Dublin. He recognized his mother’s maiden name and discovered he’s a distant cousin of Mary’s. 

“It clicked,” Dempsey said “I know that. Amazing.” 

As Mary’s relative, Brian passed the right to add her name to Mattaliano in the form of a notarized letter. 

“I mean, look at it – it was obviously meant to be here,” Mattaliano said, standing beside her grave. 

Thirty-seven years after her death, Mary McGann’s name was engraved on her tombstone. 

“You got Mary’s name on that tombstone. What else has she given you?” Jacobson asked.

“Anytime things seem to be going south I still take a look at the letter. And I say, ‘All right. OK,’” Mattaliano said.

“It’s more than the Christmas spirit,” Jacobson said. 

“It’s the Christmas spirit personified,” Mattaliano said. 

*  *  *  *
“A CHRISTMAS REQUEST, 
ANSWERED A CENTURY LATER”
by Corey Kilgannon 

[This was Corey Kilgannon’s second report on Mary McGann’s letter to Santa.  It appeared in Section A (the news section) of the New York Times on 21 December 2016.]

The stonecutter walked along Row F of a section of Mount St. Mary Cemetery in Flushing, Queens, and stopped at Grave 108, marked with a modest gray granite headstone.

He held a stencil bearing the words “Loving Wife Mary” and the years 1897 and 1979, which frame the life of Mary McGahan, loving wife of George McGahan.

The couple was childless, and according to cemetery records, both were buried here. But for whatever reason, Mary’s name was never added to the headstone under that of her husband when she died three years after him.

This bothered Peter Mattaliano, 67, an acting coach and screenwriter, who is not related to Ms. McGahan and never even knew her.

The connection came by quirk of a poignant letter to Santa he found in the fireplace of his Hell’s Kitchen apartment 17 years ago. It had been written by Mary nearly a century earlier, when she lived as a child in the same apartment, and became the impetus for an article in The New York Times a year ago [see below] about serendipity and Christmas.

Mr. Mattaliano visited the grave at that time and was upset to see the gravestone lacking her name. He murmured a graveside promise to Mary that he would be back to remedy this.

Last week, he was back, with the stonecutter, who laid the stencil across the headstone and used a sandblaster to carve her name into granite permanence, 37 years after her death.

When Mr. Mattaliano moved into the fourth-floor apartment at 447 West 50th Street in 1999, the fireplace had long been bricked shut. Renovating it, he found Mary’s letter, along with one from her little brother, Alfred.

Alfred had written to Santa asking for a drum and a hook-and-ladder fire truck. Mary’s was more touching, hinting at the family’s poverty and her selflessness even at age 10.

She wrote asking Santa for a wagon for her brother “which I know you cannot afford,” and for herself “something nice what you think best.” She signed off with the request: “P.S. Please do not forget the poor.”

Mr. Mattaliano was haunted by that reminder from a poor girl who requested a wagon for her brother first and nothing specific for herself.

“For somebody to show that kind of humanity at that early age,” he said. “I just could not stand to see her be forgotten.”

He would later learn from historical records that the siblings’ father had died abruptly and that they were being raised by their mother. She was a dressmaker who, records indicated, had given birth to three other children who did not survive infancy.

He found that Mary was born Mary McGann and wound up marrying the similarly named George McGahan, and that both of her parents wound up buried in Calvary Cemetery in Queens, in unmarked graves.

All of this hit home for Mr. Mattaliano, a bachelor with no children. He was 12 when his own father died. He and his three brothers saw some lean Christmases along with their mother in their Jersey City apartment.

He had the letters to Santa framed and began displaying them year-round above the fireplace. Every December, he honors Mary and Alfred by putting up Christmas decorations and laying out their presents: a fire truck for him and a doll for her.

“I’m sharing their space,” he said, of their continued presence in his apartment.

The story is well known among his friends, neighbors and even his acting students, who have included the likes of Jill Clayburgh and Javier Munoz, who now plays Alexander Hamilton [2016-18] in the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton.”

Over the years he wrote and polished a whimsical Christmas-themed movie script based on the letters. He has assembled a production team and is speaking to investors to finance the film, which he calls “Present From the Past.”

Visiting Ms. McGahan’s grave last December, Mr. Mattaliano planted a small tree near the grave and then patted the grave and promised that, “I’ll be back.”

Cemetery staff members told him that to add her name, he needed permission from the buyer of the plot (who is deceased) or a relative (he could find none).

Then he heard from a distant cousin of Mary’s, a man living in Ireland who read about Mr. Mattaliano’s story in an Irish newspaper article.

The cousin, Brian Dempsey, 56, a schoolteacher from County Kildare, agreed to send Mr. Mattaliano a notarized letter granting permission to add Ms. McGahan’s name. He also sent a bag of soil he scooped from a field near the small farm in Lullymore where Mary’s mother grew up before emigrating.

Even with the letter, Mr. Mattaliano still had problems getting the cemetery’s permission. For help, he contacted Michael Lewis, who owns an established monument company in Queens, but by early December, it still seemed that yet another Christmas would pass with Ms. McGahan’s going unacknowledged in her grave.

Then, a bit of holiday magic happened: the Metropolitan Cemetery Association held its annual holiday luncheon in a catering hall on Jericho Turnpike, a few miles from Ms. McGahan’s grave site.

A board member of the group, Jan Neuman, had enjoyed The Times story and had invited Mr. Mattaliano to the meeting to share the story with his members.

Mr. Mattaliano attended and, with the timing of a seasoned acting coach, told the story of the little girl’s big-hearted letter to Santa and where that girl wound up. Then he paused, and decided to plead his case in the room filled with cemetery officials.

A hand shot up. It belonged to Stephen Comando, executive director of Catholic Cemeteries, associated with the Diocese of Brooklyn, which includes Mount St. Mary Cemetery. The group was unaware of the difficulty, Mr. Comando said.

The necessary approvals were obtained and within two weeks, Mr. Mattaliano was smiling as the stonecutter finished engraving “Loving Wife Mary” into the granite.

Mr. Mattaliano knelt at the gravestone and sprinkled the small bag of Irish soil in front of it.

“Even if there’s no family to visit,” he said, “at least she’ll be acknowledged.”

*  *  *  *
“A CHIMNEY’S POIGNANT SURPRISE: 
LETTERS SANTA MISSED, LONG AGO”
by Corey Kilgannon

[Before Corey Kilgannon wrote the 2016 article for the New York Times, the reporter published this earlier story on 22 December 2015 in Section A (news).]

Last week, Peter Mattaliano, 66, an acting coach and screenwriter, put up Christmas decorations in his Hell’s Kitchen apartment and laid out presents for the children: Mary and Alfred.

These are not Mr. Mattaliano’s children, and they are no longer living. But a century ago they lived in what is now Mr. Mattaliano’s home.

He has honored Mary and Alfred every December for the past 15 years, ever since he learned of their existence when he renovated his fireplace. It had been sealed with brick for more than 60 years.

“My brother does construction, and I had him open up the fireplace,” he said. “We were joking that we might find Al Capone’s money. Then my brother yelled to me and said, ‘You’re not going to believe this.’”

In the rubble and dust, Mr. Mattaliano’s brother found a delicate piece of paper with faint children’s scrawl bearing a request to Santa from a century earlier.

“I want a drum and a hook and ladder,” read the letter, adding that the fire truck should be one with an “extentionisting” ladder. It was dated 1905 and signed “Alfred McGann,” who included the building’s address.

There was another item in the rubble: a small envelope addressed to Santa in “Raindeerland.” Inside was a second letter, this one dated 1907 and written by Alfred’s older sister, Mary, who had drawn a reindeer stamp as postage.

“The letters were written in this room, and for 100 years, they were just sitting there, waiting,” said Mr. Mattaliano.

He learned through online genealogical research that the siblings were the children of Patrick and Esther McGann, Irish immigrants who married in 1896. Mary was born in 1897 and Alfred in 1900.

The family lived at 447 West 50th Street, where Mr. Mattaliano now lives in a fourth-floor apartment filled with books on acting and mementos from his days as a fast-pitch knuckleballer.

Patrick McGann died in 1904, so by the time the children wrote the letters left in the chimney, they were being raised by Ms. McGann, a dressmaker.

Mary’s letter is as poignant as Alfred’s is endearing.

“Dear Santa Claus: I am very glad that you are coming around tonight,” it reads, the paper partly charred. “My little brother would like you to bring him a wagon which I know you cannot afford. I will ask you to bring him whatever you think best. Please bring me something nice what you think best.”

She signed it Mary McGann and added, “P.S. Please do not forget the poor.”

Mr. Mattaliano, who has read the letter countless times, still shakes his head at the implied poverty, the stoicism and the selflessness of the last line, all from a girl who requests a wagon for her brother first and nothing specific for herself.

“This is a family that couldn’t afford a wagon, and she’s writing, ‘Don’t forget the poor,’ ” he said. “That just shot an arrow through me. What did she think poor was?”

Then there was the fact that the letters had survived at all, perhaps avoiding incineration by being tucked on a ledge or in a crevice in the chimney.

The letters have become “my most treasured possessions,” said Mr. Mattaliano, who had them framed and displays them year-round above the mantel of the fireplace where they had been discovered. On Friday, they were joined by ornaments and mementos, along with a dump truck, a miniature wagon and a doll. “I wanted them to have a Christmas present, even if it was 100 years too late,” he said.

The story is well known among his friends, neighbors, acting students and the regulars at a longstanding Friday night poker game.

“I’m the new guy in the group, and I’ve been there since the late ’80s,” said Mr. Mattaliano, whose roster of actors he has coached includes Jill Clayburgh and Matthew Morrison.

For Mr. Mattaliano, the letters summoned a link to his years growing up in an apartment in Jersey City. He would leave letters to Santa under the tree on Christmas Eve.

When Mr. Mattaliano was 12, his father, who was 47, died of cancer just before Christmas, leaving his mother, Margaret Costello, to raise him and his three younger brothers on her own.

“So we had a few rough years,” he said. “For the next couple years, our Christmases were a little lean.”

Mr. Mattaliano, who has lived in Hell’s Kitchen for 36 years, saw the children’s letters as a testament to the immigrant struggle in New York.

“I’m sharing their space,” he said. Their spirits remain in the apartment, he believes, forever young, in something of a Hell’s Kitchen snow globe.

He has written a movie script based on the letters, titled “Present From the Past.” It is fictionalized, but includes the letters quoted word for word and the children depicted as spirits in the apartment.

Mr. Mattaliano said he had attracted the interest of investors and hoped to start working on the film by the spring, using Broadway actors and shooting in Hell’s Kitchen and indoors on a set that replicates his apartment.

But even after he had written the script, he knew almost nothing about Alfred or Mary. He wanted to know more, and he wanted to give the letters to their family.

He began looking on genealogy websites and found census data that had basic information about the family. With the help of a reporter and a researcher from The New York Times, he found out more, including the father’s death.

By 1920, Mary, Alfred and their mother had moved up to West 76th Street. As young adults, Mary worked as a stenographer and Alfred as a printer. By 1930, Mary had married the similarly named George McGahan and moved to the Bronx, and later to Queens. Her brother also married.

But, so far, Mr. Mattaliano has not found any living blood relative. Neither sibling appeared to have children and both apparently died in Queens; Mary in 1979, at 82, three years after her husband. She is buried in Flushing. Alfred’s burial location is unclear, perhaps because his birth name was John Alfonse McGann. He seems to have died childless in 1965 in Queens. His wife, Mae, died in 1991.

Mr. Mattaliano met with Bruce Abrams, a volunteer at the Division of Old Records in the Surrogate’s Court in Lower Manhattan, and saw proof of the 1904 death of the children’s father.

“So their mother became the breadwinner — that’s why they couldn’t afford a wagon,” he said. “She was a widow at 35 with two kids.”

On a recent weekday, Mr. Mattaliano took the No. 7 train to Flushing, carrying a small, potted tree for Ms. McGahan’s grave site. He walked into the office at Mount St. Mary’s Cemetery and was told her grave location: Division 11, Row F, Grave 108.

The modest headstone bore the name McGahan, but only her husband’s name, George, not Mary’s.

Mr. Mattaliano said he would look into having Ms. McGahan’s name added to the gravestone. He put his hand on the grave and murmured little Mary’s Christmas reminder to Santa: “Please do not forget the poor.”

“You know, I might have to come out here every Christmas,” he said as he turned to leave, and then added over his shoulder, “I’ll be back.”

More Script Reports VIII: Known 20th-Century Writers

 

[I haven’t posted any of my old script reports on Rick On Theater since last April.  It’s a good time to put up a few more. 

[This selection are all scripts by writers from the last century who are well known in the business.  If you don’t recognize their names, you probably know one or two of their plays.  Most have had Broadway successes in the middle of the century, some have also had work seen in the movies or on television.

[These reports were all prepared for StageArts, which is a theater where I interned as a literary advisor in the 1980s when I was a grad student taking classes in dramaturgy.  (I’ve described StageArts in past posts, and I direct readers especially to my introductions to “Yevgenii Shvarts: Biography & Literary Criticism,” 6 March 2020, and “More Script Reports IV: Classics,” 14 December 2021.)

[The plays below are all in the vein of works by established writers that would add variety and a little surprise to a StageArts season as a change from their usual fare of new scripts.

[The first is by Paddy Chayefsky (1923-81), whose best-known stage work is probably The Tenth Man (1959).  For the movies, he composed the scripts for The Americanization of Emily (1964) and Network (1976), and for television, Chayefsky wrote the teleplay Marty in 1953 (remade as a film in 1955).  The play evaluated below, The Bachelor Party, is also a teleplay from 1953 (remade into a film in 1957).]

StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION 

Date:  6/26/84
Evaluator:  [Rick]

The Bachelor Party by Paddy Chayefsky

            Plot Synopsis:  Charlie and Helen have been married for 3 years, and  they are having trouble getting ahead.  Before the play opens, Helen told Charlie she is pregnant—something they hadn’t planned on. 

Charlie  is very taken aback.  This puts all his plans—a car, a belated honeymoon—in jeopardy.  On his way to work on the PATH train [Port Authority Trans Hudson, a commuter rail system between lower Manhattan, New York City, and points in northern New Jersey], he sees a young man pick up a girl, and he begins to feel the strictures of married life and impending fatherhood. 

At home, Helen worries that she may be losing Charlie.  One of his coworkers is getting married, and Charlie attends the office bachelor party.  He gets very drunk and when the groom-to-be corners him with his second thoughts, Charlie ducks him and takes off with the office bachelor, whom everyone envies for his freedom and success with women. 

On the bar-hopping binge, Charlie sees the loneliness and emptiness of the bachelor’s real life, and he goes home to Helen with renewed love and commitment.

            Theme:  There is nothing ulterior in Chayefsky’s meaning here; he is simply saying that love and commitment, even when they bring hardships, are far better than a freedom that has no purpose.  It is unabashedly soap-opera and simplistic.

            Genre/Style:  Romantic naturalism; crisis drama

            Structure:  3-act cinematic.  It is, in fact, a TV play.

            Setting:  1950s NY and NJ; many locations—kitchen, office, bars, PATH trains, etc.—requiring quick changes and cinematic dissolves.  Suggested settings in a unit set rather than fully realized realism is necessary.

            Language:  Basically naturalistic dialogue, but slightly stilted in ’50s colloquialisms.  This is an “Actor’s Studio” type of script with long pauses and silences and uneven pacing.

            Characters:  5 women: 4 are 20’s, 1 is 40’s; 7 men: 5 are 20’s, 1 is 30’s, 1 is any age.

            Evaluation:  This is a heart-warmingly charming play with good roles for actors.  (It is frequently used in scene-study classes.)  It has little depth, but there is dramatic impact in the relationship of Helen and Charlie and a number of scenes are so good they sound, even after 30 years, like overheard reality. 

The main problem (aside from securing rights to stage it) is the transfer of the teleplay to the stage.  Careful and clever staging should accomplish this, and the result should prove well worth the effort.  The period language (indeed, the whole play) may be up-dated for easier handling, but I’m not convinced it would serve us to do so.

A stage version of this play will undoubtedly please a StageArts audience, and may also attract some critical attention.  I don’t believe it has ever been done outside of acting classes.

            Recommendation:  Possible production

            Source:  [Rick]

*  *  *  *

[Philip Barry (1896-1949) is probably best known for his play The Philadelphia Story (1939), which starred Katherine Hepburn and was turned into a wonderful film in 1940 with Hepburn and Cary Grant.  (It was later remade as a movie musical called High Society (1956) starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Celeste Holm.  High Society was adapted for the Broadway stage in 1998—and I included it in my report on “The 2006 Shaw Festival (Part 1),” 8 December 2015.

[Barry’s other well-known play is Holiday (1928), also later filmed with Hepburn and Grant.  The play evaluated below is Second Threshold (1951), which Barry left unfinished at his death in 1949 from a heart attack at the age of 53.  Finished by Barry’s friend, playwright Robert E. Sherwood, it ran only 126 performances on Broadway.] 

StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION

Date:  7/16/84
Evaluator:  [Rick]

Second Threshold by Philip Barry

            Plot Synopsis:  Miranda Brook, who just got her BA is psychology, is convinced that her father, Josiah, is so depressed by recent events that he is trying to commit suicide.  She has some reason to think this: he opposed her imminent marriage to a man older than he; his son has just flunked out of law school; his wife has just divorced him; and his brother has just been killed in a fight over a woman—and he has had 2 unexplained accidents and now plans a solitary hunting trip in the West.

Josiah has been a famous international lawyer often called on by the government to act as a diplomat-at-large; now he seems to have little interest in anything.  Miranda calls everyone close to Josiah together and explains her fears.  They plan to reengage him in life by bringing their problems to him.

Miranda’s plan is for Josiah to talk brother Jock into returning to law school and mother Susan to return to him.  Things backfire, however, and Jock gets Josiah to agree to let him go into show business as a song-and-dance man, and Susan gets him to bless her marriage to Russell Evans, Josiah’s friend and business advisor.

When he discovers the plot, Josiah throws a few monkey wrenches into the works, and in the end Miranda finds she is in love with childhood friend, Dr. Toby Wells, Susan realized she doesn’t want to be married to anybody, and Josiah goes off to California with the woman over whom his brother fought to free the man who shot him.

(Just as Miranda’s assumption seems to be entirely fallacious, Toby points out that the two accidents were unlikely and Josiah admits privately that there was something to his family’s fears.)

            Theme:  Barry was exploring an idea he had had for a long time—a father saved from loneliness and death by a daughter’s love.  On a broader scope, he says that over a lifetime, one may achieve success, renown, and respect, but no one can bear the cost of the achievement alone.  This is done with humor and comedy, but the gist is serious.

            Genre/Style:  Realistic comedy-drama in the high style of the ’30s and ’40s.

            Structure:  Standard 2 acts, 5 scenes; strong action line.

            Setting:  The study of Josiah Brook’s townhouse on W. 10th St., NYC; realistic.

            Language:  Basically realistic dialogue, but period and class idiom is used, making some of the phrases slightly awkward to a modern ear.  (It should not really be changed—unless the entire play is up-dated—but the actors will have to become comfortable with the idiom.)

            Characters:  3 women: 1 48, 1 24, 1 20; 5 men: 1 65, 2 50’s, 2 mid-20’s.  Jock should be a good dancer and be able to sing.

            Evaluation:  There are two versions of Second Threshold, the original version as Barry left it when he died, and a revision done by Barry’s friend Robert E. Sherwood from Barry’s notes.  I read the former; the latter was performed on Broadway in 1951 (2 years after Barry’s death).

There are some confusing moments in this play—it is not as smooth as Barry’s famous plays—but it is an unusual blend of the serious and the comic, and there is truth in it.  The characters are all charming and appealing and provide excellent roles for actors.  (There is one brief passage that is sexist by today’s standards and can be easily cut with little adverse effect.)

Some of the reversals are truly surprising, and the final revelation that Josiah was, indeed, trying to kill himself, is startling, and raises the play above a matter of comic misunderstanding with a pleasant end to a serious play handled in a unique manner.  (The revisions in Act II may smooth this out—it would be worth checking.)

Philip Barry is famous for Holiday and The Philadelphia Story (recently revived on Broadway [1980]), but his other plays are seldom performed.  This is a good area to mine, and Second Threshold could make an excellent choice for revival.

            Recommendation:  Possible production

            Source:  [Rick]/E[rnie]. Schier [1918-99, former theater reviewer for the Philadelphia Bulletin and Director of the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center]

--------------------

Supplemental Report on Second Threshold by P. Barry, revised by Robert E. Sherwood – 8/23/84

            Plot:  Basically the same as the original version, but certain extraneous action lines have been eliminated.  The characters of Josiah’s wife (he is now Josiah Bolton, not Brook) is only referred to, and Russell Evans no longer exists at all.  Josiah’s brother and the whole story of his death is expunged, and Jock is already a working actor, rehearsing summer stock on Long Island.  What is left is leaner and more direct, and a good deal smoother.

            Structure:  1 less scene: 2 in each act

            Evaluation:  As I said, this version is smoother and more direct than the original, but it seems less interesting and quirky.  There is far less humor in it and the plot Miranda cooks up to snap her father out of his dumps is less convoluted.  The reviews of the original production in ’51 were lukewarm, and I imagine part of the reason might have been the missing eccentricity.  I missed the convolutions and the remaining characters all seemed so much tamer they were almost lackluster. 

On the other hand, the loss of some of the extra complications (e.g.: the brother incident) make the story more believable, and less contrived, which was a problem.  Some of the heavy-handed exposition and explication has been removed to the benefit of the piece.

            Recommendation:  Make a composite script of the two versions for a Workshop Reading.

            Rights:  Robert A. Friedman holds the professional rights; DPS holds the amateur rights and has a m/s of the revised version, which is out of print.

*  *  *  *

[Sidney Michaels (1927-2011) was best known for the early and mid-1960s works Tchin-Tchin (1963), Dylan (1964), and Ben Franklin in Paris (1964).  He also wrote for television, scripting episodes of several series, and film, most notably The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968).

[I found no record that The Guy with the Flashlight was ever produced, and the date of its composition isn’t recorded anywhere that I’ve found.  I suspect, however, that it was probably a recent script of Michaels’s (i.e., ca. 1984).]

StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION

Date: 8/4/84
Evaluator: [Rick] 

The Guy with the Flashlight by Sidney Michaels

            Plot:  Susan Frost, owner of a struggling publishing house, and Elias Katz, a lawyer and friend, have called upon Boardman (Boardy) Daugherty, the “Equalizer of Inequities,” for help.  It seems Max Gould died in Susan’s bedroom.  He had come to negotiate a loan to Susan’s company and died on his way to the bathroom, but Susan is afraid of the scandal and wants Max to have died somewhere else.

In a series of outrageously conceived attempts to dispose of Max, Boardy gets Susan and Elias into a number of absurd situations, but Max always ends up back in the apartment.  Finally, Boardy deduces Max had been poisoned by his wife, who is having an affair with the druggist.

They try to call the police, but while Elias is on “hold,” Max, who has only been unconscious, walks in on them.  They tell him the plot, turn him over to Elias for legal help, sell his story to Susan for publication, negotiate the loan—everyone gets something out of the adventure, and Susan rides off with Boardy on his motorcycle (which was parked in her living room!).

            Theme:  I’m not sure there is one—it’s a farce.

            Genre/Style:  Farce—a little on the absurd side.

            Structure:  2 acts in 5 scenes with 5 “interludes” and a prologue.  The “interludes” are the attempts to get rid of Max somewhere far-fetched; the scenes are all in Susan’s apartment as they plan their next move.

            Setting:  A penthouse apartment with terrace overlooking Central Park West [8th Ave. on the West Side of Manhattan where it runs along the western edge of Central Park from 59th to 110th St.; apartment rents rival those of 5th Ave. on the Upper East Side] with a scrim or screen “in one” for “interlude” projected scenery.  [“In one” designates the area of a stage downstage between the frontmost pieces of scenery, i.e., at the front edge of the stage.]  This latter may be a problem in a small house and another way of accomplishing this scene shift may have to be found.

            Language:  Basically realistic dialogue, though Boardy has his own idiom.  Michaels’s writing is very interesting and unusual.  This man is a pro with an impressive background.

            Characters:  Susan is 35; Boardy is 50, Elias is 39; Max is 40-60, a shaving-lotion tycoon.  Susan and Elias are basically ordinary people in a crazy situation, but Boardy is a unique creation: part hippie, part Groucho Marx, with a touch of larceny in his heart.  The actor who plays this role will have to have the charisma to make the most absurd suggestions seem reasonable and overcome each failure with complete aplomb.  Max has no dialogue until the last scene, and must be carried and buffeted about as a “corpse” with a will of its own for most of the play.  This may be the hardest role to cast.

            Evaluation:  This may not be StageArts’ cup of tea, but I feel it will play well and be a great success with an audience and critics.  Nothing quite like it will have been seen anywhere around, I’m sure, and it’s crazy enough to be a real laugh riot.

Michaels is a significant writer, author of Dylan; Tricks of the Trade; Tchin-Tchin; The Night They Raided Minsky’s; and Goodtime Charlie, as well as TV and film scripts.  If this play isn’t for us, perhaps he’s got something else that is.

A friend of mine worked with him for a while (and knows this play).  She tells me Michaels has not been doing well lately and would be delighted to have anything of his produced right now.  He is not unknown, but has been “lying fallow” recently.  He does have a number of other plays available.

            Recommendation:  Second reading; if it appeals, a reading with actors would be a good idea.  (This play should not be considered for the same season as The Unvarnished Truth [1978, Royce Ryton]; they are too much alike.)

            Source:  Mitch Douglas [1942-2020, literary agent] (ICM [International Creative Management])

*  *  *  *

[Patrick Hamilton (1904-62), a British playwright and novelist, is most familiar as the author of Rope (1929), the source of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 film of the same name.  It ran on Broadway in 1929 under the title, Rope’s End.  He also wrote Angel Street (1938), which after the film versions, Gaslight (1940, UK; 1944. US), was retitled to match the popular movies.

[Rope as a stage play had fascinated me for many years.  I’ve never seen it on stage, and it was never revived on Broadway after its New York début.  (Two Off-Broadway productions were staged in 1962 and 2005, but I didn’t seen them.)  As I mention below, I’ve tried to find a theater interested in producing it, but never succeeded.  StageArts didn’t step up, either.]

StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION

Date: 8/21/84
Evaluator: [Rick]

Rope by Patrick Hamilton 

            Plot:  Based on a 19th-century thrill-killing case, but recalling more the famous 1924 Chicago case of Leopold and Loeb, this is the story of a murder for the sheer art of the act.  Wyndham Brandon persuades his weak-minded friend, Charles Granillo (Granno), to help him murder a fellow Oxford undergraduate named Ronald Kentley.  They place the body in a wooden chest, and invite a few friends, including the dead boy’s father, to a party at which the chest holding the body serves as the buffet server.

Only poet Rupert Cadell suspects, and after all the guests have left, Brandon and Granillo break down and confess their guilt, supposing that Cadell would appreciate their act.  He doesn’t and after an intense scene of great intellectual and philosophical content, he calls the police.

            Theme:  Even the greatest intellects and artists are not above the common law.  Mostly, this is a superb psychological study and suspenseful thriller.

            Genre/Style:  Realistic mystery drama

            Structure:  Well-made play; very strong, with crescendo-like suspense build-up.  3 acts.

            Setting:  Realistic interior of the study/drawing room of the Mayfair (England) house of Brandon and Granillo.  Time is 1929, but could be up-dated and even transferred to NY with some small changes in the text.  Leaving it alone might be more fun, though.

            Language:  Realistic dialogue; upper-class British—very literate.

            Characters:  2 women: 1 50’s-60’s, 1 20’s; 6 men: 1 50’s-60’s, 4 20’s, 1 any age (French butler).  All are extremely well drawn, wonderful character roles for talented actors; Brandon, Granillo, and Cadell require superb performers able to handle subtleties and intellectual language and concepts in what amounts to a dialectic justifying their philosophy.

            Evaluation:  In case you don’t recognize this, it is the play on which Alfred Hitchcock based his 1948 movie of the same title, starring Jimmy Stewart (recently rereleased [1984] to excellent reviews).  He up-dated the story and moved it to NY and made Cadell (Stewart) older and a former professor of the young murderers whose philosophy inadvertently led them to their act.

This is a wonderful thriller—taut, intelligent, suspenseful, and literate.  If it hasn’t already been grabbed by someone for a major revival, S/A could stage a coup by doing it—it’s very movable.  I’ve been trying to get a hold of a copy for some time, but it is currently out-of-print at French’s, who own the rights—others may have had the same idea I did.

As I stated earlier, this can be (and had been) relocated and up-dated.  I think it would be better to do it as a period piece and leave it set in England.  That way the similarities with the Hitchcock movie will not seem so obvious.  Besides, the ’20s are such fun to do, and the characters are so wonderfully English, it would be a shame to deprive the actors of the pleasure.

            Recommendation:  Produce.  This strikes me as a perfect S/A play.

            Source:  [Rick]

            Rights:  SF [Samuel French, play publisher] (currently available in m/s only @ $10 ea., plus $25 deposit.  NYPL/LC [New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center] copy would be ca. $6-9 to copy.)

*  *  *  *

[The Lady’s Not for Burning (1948) by Christopher Fry (1907 -2005) became one of my favorite plays when I saw a television production of it on PBS in 1974.  I used a speech from it as an audition piece for a language play (in lieu of a classic) for several years.

[So when I read The Firstborn (1946), I had to see if it was something I could pass along to the artistic directors of StageArts.  I questioned both whether it was something they’d like and whether it was within the capabilities of the small theater company S/A was, but I gave them my report anyway. 

[Other plays by Fry include A Phoenix Too Frequent (1946), Venus Observed (1950), and The Dark is Light Enough (1954).  He also wrote for the movies and TV, in the latter instances, often adapting his own plays for the small screen.]

StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION

Date: 8/31/84
Evaluator: [Rick]

The Firstborn by Christopher Fry 

            Plot:  This is the story of Moses’ struggle with the Pharoah Seti before the Exodus.  Seti’s sister, Anath, cannot forget Moses who had been her adopted son until he discovered his Hebrew background and left Egypt. 

Egypt is under attack from Libya, and Seti needs Moses’s prowess as a general.  Upon his return, however, Moses refuses to help the Pharoah repel the Libyan invasion. 

Ramases, Seti’s son, looks upon Moses as an uncle and offers to help him.  Although fond of Ramases, Moses reminds him that they must go separate ways in life.

Except for his brother, Aaron, Moses’ family considers him a source of trouble.  His sister, Miriam, and her son, Shendi, just want to be left alone to get along as well as they can for themselves, 

In an effort to appeal to Moses and do him honor, Ramases suggests to Seti that Shendi be made an Egyptian officer.  Moses asks Shendi to refuse the commission, but they boy accepts, and he and his mother move into the officers’ barracks and luxury. 

Moses sues Seti to let the Hebrews leave Egypt, but the Pharoah keeps none of his promises to Moses, and darkness comes over the land.  The biblical plagues strike Egypt, and finally, when the plague of the Death of the Firstborn comes, Moses summons his people. 

Shendi refuses to stay within the protection of Miriam’s tent, marked with the blood sign of the Passover, and runs out into the city, obscured by “sand.”

Moses now realizes that since all Egyptian firstborn must die, Ramases will be included.  He attempts to save the boy by warning the court of the impending doom, but Ramases crumples before him.  Anath, sending Moses out to find liberty for his people, bids him farewell. 

          Theme:  A study of liberty opposed by sadistic despotism.  Much of the play is taken up with convincing not only Seti to free the Hebrews, but the Hebrews, themselves, to see what they must do—and what Moses must do. 

Moses had been happy and successful as an Egyptian prince and general, and Shendi sees himself following the same path.  Miriam and Shendi see Moses’ attempts to oppose the Pharoah as personal attempts to prevent them from having what he had and lost.

            Genre/Style:  Verse drama

            Structure:  3 acts, 7 scenes: classical structure

            Setting:  Non-realistic unit set that can represent a terrace and a room in the Pharoah’s palace, and the interior of Miriam’s tent; minimal props.

            Language:  Free verse dialogue; will require very experienced actors with a gift for using language in the classical vein.  The language is contemporary, but very literate and sophisticated.  The poetry here is not as lofty and soaring as Fry’s The Lady’s Not for Burning, but it is impressive nonetheless.

            Characters:  3 women: 1 50, 1 30, 1 15; 10 men: 1 50-55, 2 30-40, 2 18-20, 5 extras (any ages; easily done by 2 actors).  These are all fascinating portraits, particularly Moses, Ramases, Shendi, and Anath.  In the hands of talented, exceptional actors, these would all be wonderful showcase roles with challenges to any serious actor.

            Evaluation:  This play is not as scintillating as The Lady’s Not for Burning, but it is certainly an interesting work by a well-known writer that should be seen again.  In these days of world-wide tyranny and struggles of national liberation, the ideas of The Firstborn are certainly topical and powerful.  The treatment is unusual—I can’t think of another play using an old-testament story this way—and might be a unique offering around the Easter-Passover holiday season,

            Recommendation:  Possible production

            Source:  [Rick]

            Rights/Scripts:  DPS [Dramatists Play Service]