Plays

Maybe it's just me, but the plays I have seen seem to be overwhelmingly about misery and suffering and bitterness. I just saw Homecoming by Harold Pinter at the A.C.T. and my reaction can be summed up in a word, "Huh?"

Maybe plays reflect who we are, our real selves. After all, life can't be as glamorous as a musical, even if we walk around with our personal soundtrack thanks to our iPods. Maybe when we feel trapped we do lash out and say mean and hurtful things to each other. I'm not denying that, I know I do it, but it feels that plays are often used to express regret and sadness about life and relationships. Sometimes they do so in a humorous way, but at the end of the day, still sad.

The first plays I ever read were the Glass Menagerie and Death of a Salesman in English class. Without looking at them again, the things that come to mind when I think of them are the longing for a gentleman caller and fragility, and well, death, and the volatile relationship between parent and child. Real. But not very happy or uplifting.

Perhaps if I watched more plays and studied the text I may be able to tease out some bigger themes. For example, the program talked about how memory is used in the play and there is a point made about living in the present and not the past, but if I didn't read that, I don't know if I would have caught it. So it's not really an organic observation. I walk away from the play thinking about how cruel we are to those closest us to us, in blood and in proximity, and the power dynamics between a woman and a group of men, and how odd plays are and would I see another one.

The next play at the A.C.T. is No Exit by John Paul Sartre. The description reads: "A mysterious valet ushers three people into a shabby hotel room, and they soon discover that hell isn't fire and brimstone at all—it's other people." Sounds like a rollicking good time.