More Script Reports VII: Adaptations (Continued)

 

[In the fall of 1986, as a member of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of America (now “. . . of the Americas”), I was part of a team of script readers for the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships for American Playwrights Program, 1987 Competition.  The project is now defunct, but it was a program for regional theaters to apply for grants to subsidize a residency for a mid-career playwright of their choosing. 

[The Rockefeller Foundation had contacted LMDA, whose president at the time was Cynthia Jenner, who’d been a teacher of mine in the Department of Performance Studies at New York University.  Cynthia put together a team of LMDA members to serve as the first level of screening for the grant competition. 

[We read the scripts submitted by the theaters in support of their nominees for the residency and passed on our evaluations to the distinguished panel, the members of which weren’t known to us, who’d make the final selections of the grant awards.

[Each of us readers read scripts passed to us randomly, each of us reading a dozen or more.  We might be reading a typescript or even a published text, and we might be the first reader or a second or third reader.  We had to write up an evaluation using a form for the RF competition—I think Cynthia devised the form—so that we all responded to the same areas of interest. 

[This first group of script evals below are all for playwrights whose names are known in theater circles.  That was more likely in the RF competition than in other reading stints I did because the grant was for mid-career writers, so they already had track records.  Other collections will include many writers whose work is not familiar to ROTters.

[Two words of warning: first, because these reports were communications from one theater pro to another, we felt free to use jargon and shorthand and not to identify names and titles or define terms we reasonably expected our readers to know.  I’ll endeavor to add explanations and commentary as necessary for ROT readers.

[Second, these reports were never intended for public consumption; these were in-house documents.  In order to be as brief and succinct as possible, some of what we said, as you’ll notice below, might sound harsh and even insulting.  I’m afraid that’s how this end of the business works.]

ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIPS FOR AMERICAN PLAYWRIGHTS PROGRAM

1987 COMPETITION

PRE-SCREENING SCRIPT EVALUATION                                                                                            

READER: [Rick]
DATE: 9/28/86

AUTHOR/(TRANS.): Robert Gordon

TITLE/DATE: Seven Gables, 1986

GENRE/STYLE: romantic (even Gothic) melodrama

STRUCTURE: 2 acts, 9 scenes

SETTING: essentially realistic parlor, ca. 1840, New England

LANGUAGE: realistic dialogue of a Victorian style

MUSIC/LYRICS: not a musical play, but one character sings several sea chanties, and there is off-stage harpsichord music that is a leitmotif (music composed by Gordon, but not included)

NO. CHARACTERS/SPECIFIC NEEDS: 4 men, 3 women

CHARACTER STRUCTURE/TREATMENT: standard romantic/gothic characters, exc. that 1 man and 1 woman are invisible specters

CONCEPTION: This is essentially a gothic mystery tale, adapted from [Nathaniel] Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables [1851], dealing with “the sins of the father” and bearing family honor/curses until they can be atoned by a good deed

CHIEF THEATRICAL INTEREST: the 2 specters, perhaps, and the dramatization of Hawthorne’s popular story

BRIEF SYNOPSIS:

_________________________________________________________

The plot is essentially Hawthorne’s, though the ending has been changed “based on an aesthetic logic which Hawthorne didn’t follow for self-acknowledged commercial reasons.”  (Sounds somewhat presumptuous to me, and a little like [Thomas] Bowdler’s fiddling with Shakespeare.)

Phoebe Pyncheon has come to live with her cousin Hepzibah in Salem [Mass.] just at the time Hepzibah’s brother Clifford returns from 25 years in prison for the murder of their uncle and guardian.  There is a strange young man boarding in the house, Charles Holgrave, who is a peripatetic fellow, now a daguerreotypist and mesmerizer (literally).  The family is haunted by its prominent ancestors and the mystery of the real circumstances of the uncle’s death.  In this version, everything works out for the best, with Phoebe marrying Charles and Clifford learning the truth of the uncle’s death.  The impoverished Pyncheons even inherit the wealth of the nasty cousin who actually caused the uncle’s death.

DISCUSSION/EVALUATION: Because this is an adaptation, I have some problem judging Gordon’s writing.  I find the language a little pretentious, and not quite Hawthorne-like, almost a parody of his Victorian prose.  The play itself is short on action and long on talk, which works much better in a novel with the prose evocations of the environment and characters as well as their thoughts and motivations.  Here, it all just gets wordy.

The characters are stock and predictable for the most part.  There are no surprises and little development, as all the characters start out essentially the way they end up.  The little change that occurs is contrived and cataclysmic, rather than developed.  The adapter ties up all the loose ends nicely, but with little drama.  There are lots of dei ex machina.

The 2 extra “figures” are a mystery to me.  I know what they’re supposed to represent (the pasts and consciences of the main characters), but dramatically, I find them more an annoyance than a help.  I see no useful reasons for adding them to Hawthorne’s story.

I rather wish the American Conservatory Theatre had submitted an original script on which to judge Gordon’s work.  Basing an evaluation on this adaptation is like kissing through a napkin: I get little of the flavor of the real thing and none of the satisfaction.

RECOMMENDATION: 

Reject                                                     _____XXX____

Reject, but express interest in writer       ____________  

Second reading                                       ____________

Other                                                      ____________

*  *  *  *

[I read briefly for the Off-Broadway theater MCC, formerly known as the Manhattan Class Company, founded in 1986.

[William Shakespeare is a perennial candidate for adaptation (there’s another one coming up next), and theater for children is also a field that often makes use of adaptation, including Shakespeare.  (I posted a piece by Kirk Woodward, Rick On Theater’s most generous contributor, on “Directing Twelfth Night for Children,” 16 and 19 December 2010, and Kirk, who’s also a playwright as well as a director, has written several Shakespearean adaptations for children.)

[Sean Deming’s Little Shakespeare takes characters and situations from several Shakespeare plays (Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Taming of the Shrew, Richard III, and Henry V), a sort of pastiche, to create a new children’s script set in a 20th-century situation.

[Little Shakespeare has been produced several times, but I haven’t been able to pin down the theaters or dates.  The text is published by S&L Books as Little Shakespeare: A Play in One Act (1992).  Deming, an editor during the late 1980s, is co-author of several adaptations or editions of other works, including The Hobbit: An Illustrated Edition of the Fantasy Classic (Ballantine Books, 2001).]

MCC READER’S EVALUATION FORM

AUTHOR'S NAME:  Sean DEMING

TITLE OF WORK:  Little Shakespeare

TYPE OF PLAY:  ONE-ACT (children’s play)

READER'S NAME:  [Rick]

DATE RETURNED:  9/10/93

OVERALL REACTION TO SCRIPT (CHOOSE ONE)

1    2   3  4    5    6    7    8    9   10

           least favorable                                 most favorable

BRIEFLY SUMMARIZE THE PLOT:  Some of Shakespeare’s famous characters as kids in a little league competition.  (Romeo and Juliet are leaders of rival teams: the Montagues and the Capulets.)

STRENGTHS:  Mildly amusing; some little fun in trying to spot the altered famous speeches from Shakespeare’s plays patched together here (a sort of pièce à clef); might be a painless way to introduce kids to verse theater.

WEAKNESSES:  Not particularly interesting; pretty silly idea; doesn’t have much beef; I really question that 10-year-olds (age range indicated by author) would follow Elizabethan verse, and adults would find little of interest in story or characters; large cast for a one-act (14 m, 3 w, 8 extras)

RECOMMENDATION:  Rejection

*  *  *  *

[Another of the theaters for whom I read was The Gypsy Road Company which conducted an annual playwriting contest, the 21st Century Playwrights Festival.  Gypsy Road required us to write a letter to the playwright with our evaluation—presumably in softer terms than we might have used with the theater’s personnel.  Mine is included below with the eval report.

[Jeffrey M. Chausse (b. 1976) isn’t a professional writer.  In a profile, he called himself “a Computer Science major college student with extensive studies in drama and playwriting.”  He works with game developers on creating storylines, dialogue, and so on, for computer games.]

THE GYPSY ROAD COMPANY
21st CENTURY PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL 

9 April 1996                                                                 
[Rick]

RUDE MECHANICALS
by Jeffrey M. Chausse 

Summary:  As the title suggests, this is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  A bunch of present-day construction workers attempt to put on the Shakespeare play for the President and the First Lady.  The treatment is sort of a one-act, non-musical rip-off of Kiss Me, Kate vis-à-vis The Taming of the Shrew.

Critique:  There’s not much to say in favor of Chausse’s effort.  It has the quality of a junior high school spoof in both its humor and dramaturgy.  Even if there were a good reason to do an update of Midsummer, this is closer to embarrassing than funny.  It isn’t anywhere near silly or absurd enough to be a true send-up, its farcical elements are juvenile, and the characters are just dumb rather than clown-like or outrageous.  There aren’t even any surprises to speak of, since the plot of Rude Mechanicals follows that of Midsummer almost exactly. 

Some of the characterizations are downright insulting, to boot.  (The Francis Flute character [he’s a bellows-mender and plays the female role of Thisbe in Pyramus and Thisbe, a play-within-the-play] is “effeminate” while Shakespeare’s was just very young; a theatrical director is “an arrogant thespian,” effete and haughty.)  Finding something positive to say to Chausse will be very, very hard.

Recommendation:  Pass

Suitability for public reading series:  No

Comments:  I see no reason to expose an audience to this script, and I doubt a reading would reveal anything worthwhile to the playwright. 

THE GYPSY ROAD COMPANY
21st CENTURY PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL 

RUDE MECHANICALS
by Jeffrey M. Chausse 

Shakespeare is, of course, universal, and adaptations of his plays have often proved to be the most successful or interesting pieces in modern theater, from The Boys from Syracuse and Kiss Me, Kate through West Side Story to Your Own Thing and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.  When you work with the best, you often end up with the best.  You picked good source material, and the Rude Mechanicals are doubtlessly some of theater’s most wonderful clowns.

The appeal of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, though, comes as much from the romance and magic in the love stories as from the low humor of Bottom and his pals.  A true update, allowing only for the realities of the 1990s without the fantasies of the 1590s, is less appealing unless you can find a way to return these elements.  You should first ask yourself, however, why you want to update this particular play at all.  Is there something you can say to a modern audience that can’t be said by a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream?  It must work pretty well as is for modern audiences since it is Shakespeare’s most-produced play of all 36.

If, on the other hand, you just want to create a farce—a vehicle for outrageous acting—then you need to go much further.  Rude Mechanicals has to be far wackier, less anchored to reality.  Think Three Stooges, Jerry Lewis—or, better yet, Steve Martin and Robin Williams.  Remember, Shakespeare’s characters weren’t realistic even in his day; why should yours have to be?  Don’t feel bound by logic or, for that matter, Shakespeare’s text.

[The Rude Mechanicals are an ever-popular subject for comic performances, including for children.  As you’ve read, I had some issues with Jeffrey Chausse’s adaptation, but in 1978, I directed a production of Pyramus and Thisbe with middle-school students.  This wasn’t an adaptation really; it was simply an extraction of the Rude Mechanicals scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream performed as a one-act play.  I won’t describe my production, but I will say that it was quite successful (if I do say so myself!).

[Sidebar: I remember one girl in particular who learned something wonderful from the experience.  The cast was all 7th- and 8th-grade girls and I cast an enthusiastic 8th-grader as Snug,  the joiner, who did the lion’s part in Pyramus and Thisbe.   (Her name, which I’ll never forget, was Ariadne Valsamis.  Isn’t that a wonderful name for the theater?  It’s practically musical!)  She objected because the lion has no lines.

[I explained to her that she shouldn’t necessarily count lines as the measure of a role and that I guaranteed her that the lion would be an audience favorite.  When my prediction proved right—the spectators just howled at her antics—Ariadne came to me, beaming from ear to ear, and admitted she’d had a lot of fun doing that role.  As a teacher I, as I said, counted that production a great success, not least because of what Ariadne said.]

*  *  *  *

[I’ve saved one reader’s report for last, out of chronological order, because it’s not strictly speaking an adaptation.  Jules Tasca’s Romeo and Juliet Are Lovers is really a sequel.  That’s not unheard-of, of course, even outside the world of fan fiction.  My friend Kirk Woodward, has Hamlet Act VI (Classics (spiceplays.com)), which posits that “Hamlet and Laertes do not exchange rapiers, [so] Hamlet does not die,” and proceeds from there.

[The Tamer Tamed (first published in 1647, but written perhaps between 1609 and 1622) by John Fletcher (1579-1625), is a sequel to Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew.  The joke of the plot is that the women are all denying the men sex.  (Think  Shrew meets Lysistrata.  See my mini-report posted in “Some Classics from the Archives” on 19 February 2019.)  

[On 22 July 2017, I posted a blog report on Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2, a sequel to the Ibsen classic that takes place 15 years after the 1879 original ended.  It ran on Broadway for 172 regular performances, was nominated for the 2017 Best Play Tony, and won the Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play award for Laurie Metcalf as the returning Nora Helmer.

[I first encountered Romeo and Juliet Are Lovers in 1979 when I participated in an invitational reading for the benefit of a composer who was considering musicalizing the play.  He wanted to hear it read by actors, but ultimately decided not to do the musical.  As far as I know, our reading was the only “performance” of Tasca’s play. 

[The text was published by Aran Press in 1984, but I can’t confirm that the publisher is still operating.  Tasca (b. 1938) has had a number of his plays published, but his best-known title is The Mind With a Dirty Man (Samuel French, 1975), popular in regional and community theaters.  The play, about a small-town movie review board that has problems when the son of one of its members takes over the local moviehouse and wants to show porn, toured the country for years with well-known movie and TV comedian Don Knotts and his daughter Karen.]

StageArts SCRIPT EVALUATION

Date:  8/22/84
Evaluator:  [Rick]

Romeo and Juliet Are Lovers by Jules Tasca

Plot:  What if Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet had lived?  Tasca has supposed this and given us a domesticated, middle-aged Romeo and Juliet with a young son of their own.  Romeo’s old friend Benvolio, now a “fat, balding man with a tooth missing,” pops in to tell Romeo on the sly that Rosaline (Romeo’s first love before he meets Juliet) is in town.  The rest of the play is a slapstick farce that details Romeo’s meeting with Rosaline, Young Romeo’s own romantic efforts, and various other hilarious complications too complex to list easily.  In the end, Romeo sees the virtues of domestic bliss with Juliet, and leaves the adventurous romance to youth.

Theme:  If there has to be one, it’s that each generation must learn the lessons of love and human nature for itself, and once having learned them, move on.  However, it’s best not to discuss this too openly—the play’s too light-spirited to [be] belabor[ed by] a message.

Genre/Style:  Romantic farce.

Structure:  2 acts, divided into many scenes (à la Shakespeare) with 2 prologues (1 to each act) and an “Epithalamium” [Tasca’s label: a song or poem celebrating a marriage].  Episodic, but fast-paced.

Setting:  Renaissance Mantua; non-realistic area staging with levels and risers.

Language:  Phony Shakespearean; it doesn’t really read well, but it plays hilariously.

Characters:  5 women: 1 50’s-60’s, 3 “middle-aged,” 1 teens-20’s; 6 men: 5 “middle-aged,” 1 teens-20’s.  Most are cartoons, and very “commedia”; while none are really rounded characters, that is not a fault here.  These roles, well-played in the proper style, will be comic masterpieces for actors.  This really has to be heard to see; reading them on the page is unlikely to show this.

Evaluation:  You may recall I mentioned I did a reading of this play in 1979 (apparently the first “performance” according to the front of the script) and I never expected the results.  During the rehearsal, the cast was constantly breaking up—practically on the floor.  At the reading, the audience followed suit, and we still had a hard time not going with them.  [See below for my account of the reading.]  Believe me, this play will work like gangbusters.  If S/A [StageArts] wants a comedy, this could be the answer.  You want middle-aged characters—men and women—here are 8 of all types and descriptions.  Easy staging, complete freedom on costuming—what more could you demand?

As far as I know now, this has never really been produced in NY—perhaps not anywhere yet.  [Still true.]  It may not be a serious contender for an Obie (but, then, who knows?), and it’s certainly not Pulitzer material, but it will slay any audience, and probably get good notices.  Tasca is not unknown (his Mind With a Dirty Man has been paying his bills from summer-stock productions with the likes of Don Knotts for years) and may attract some critics’ attention.

At the risk of being a pest, let me remind you that you may find this less interesting on a page—and I did when I first read it—unless you can imagine the production.  A reading for us might be worthwhile.

Recommendation:  Produce.

Source:  [Rick]

Rights/Scripts:  Aran Press

[When my friend Josephine, who put the reading of Romeo and Juliet Are Lovers together, asked me to take a part in the one-night event, of course, I agreed.  We always supported each other’s work, but besides wanting to help her out, a reading for a playwright, a composer, and their agents might mean other pros would attend, too, and it was a chance to be seen by people who influenced casting and hiring.  Enlightened self-interest, as it were.

[I picked up a copy of the script and decided to take a long weekend at my parents’ vacation home on Cape Cod with just me and my dog in the early spring off-season.  (The reading was on Monday, 26 March 1979; I was probably on the Cape during the weekend before.)  I hung around the house, sat on the deck wrapped in a blanket like old scenes aboard ocean liners, and walked along the empty beach with the dog.  And read the play.  

[Tasca’s play is about Romeo and Juliet’s life as Romeo experiences his mid-life crisis and the two see their 15-year-old son fall into the pattern of young love that had so dramatically affected their lives as teenagers.  I read through the play several times, and the faux-Elizabethan speech and the silly situations and jokes just didn’t seem funny to me.  I was sure the whole thing would lay an egg at the reading; I couldn’t see why the composer (I never learned his name) would want to musicalize it.

[I’d made a commitment to my friend, though, and it was only for one evening.  We were supposed to get together at the Vandam Theatre in SoHo for an hour or so before the reading and run through the script, get any necessary pointers from Josephine, director Jim Kramer, and Tasca—not really a rehearsal, just a familiarization.

[Well, we met as scheduled, and started to read the play.  It was absolutely hilarious.  We were almost literally rolling on the floor!  We couldn’t get through more than a sentence or two without breaking up and interrupting the dialogue.  The parody of Shakespearean language was so outrageous when spoken that it transcended the silliness I thought I’d seen when I read the text to myself.

[Of course, we calmed down by the time we had to read the play in front of the invited audience.  (They did the laughing then.)  Unfortunately, the composer decided not to do the musicalization and the collaboration never happened.  But I learned a powerful lesson that evening.  Plays, especially comedies, can often play far better with live actors than they read on the page.  After this reading, I never forgot that.]