Note to playwrights: keep the fourth wall up.
I'm at a loss for words when it comes to Jordan Harrison's latest, The Amateurs.
The play begins with a troupe of traveling players during the middle ages as they try to outrun the plague and survive. Oliver Butler's directs it broadly, like a sketch comedy, and the script, which is full of anachronisms, is trying to be ironic for irony's sake. The players deal with more than just the plague; there's also homosexuality, unplanned pregnancy, and the desire to learn more about their roles in their biblical morality plays. There's not much plot, other than the death of one of the players, and there's certainly no conflict. Thirty minutes in I couldn't help but think, "where on earth is this going?"
And then the fourth wall comes down. And a member of the cast, Michael Cyril Creighton, introduces himself as playwright Jordan Harrison (and then cheekily acknowledges that he is not in fact the Jordan Harrison) who begins to talk about coming of age as gay during the AIDS crisis (or well, the tale end of it really). Are you confused too? I sat in my seat dumbfounded; what does this have to do with anything? Harrison isn't being too original by likening the black plague with AIDS; it was called "the gay plague" after all. He ruminates about a closeted teacher who eventually died of the disease, and from what I gather, he's trying to connect all of this with the idea of a "self" and the individual.
But why? Why get all postmodern on us? (I haven't even mentioned the reemergence of cast members Quincy Tyler Bernstein as herself to tell us a long, long story about her time as Mrs. Cratchit in A Christmas Carol, during which she ruminates on the woman and her lack of development from Charles Dickens.) What is the point? To me, this just tells me the playwright had an idea (the traveling troupe) that he could not stretch out to a full 90 minute (or even 75) and he had what he thought was a clever idea (it wasn't.) It does not work, and I just found it obnoxious.
And the worst crime? When the play turns its focus back to the players, when Creighton once again becomes Gregory, the troupe's set and costume designer, he says, "fourth wall up." Fourth wall up. It's bad enough you've decided to use this obnoxious technique but you don't have to be all tongue-in-cheek about it.
Now, I understand the point he's trying to make, at least I think so. Hollis, the player who begins to question her roles in the troupe's plays, and in turn, question God (her major role is Noah's wife, whose motivation for getting onto the ark she questions), also loses her brother early in the play to the plague. So I get that the plague, just as illness and death tend to do, makes her lose her faith in God. This is not a new development, and Harrison does not have anything new or interesting to add to it because he does not develop his idea. There's nothing under the surface, it's all superficial.
What's worse is that Harrison has enough meat on the bone of his central premise to make this work. He could've gone deeper with the idea of moving away from God and towards consciousness and self with all of his characters, with the gay man mourning the loss of his lover to the plague, with the woman who gets pregnant with an unwanted baby that eventually dies, and with the leader of the troupe himself, who expects a duke to be their savior from the plague (spoiler: he is not.) There's even a doctor who joins the troupe midway through the play, who is harboring a secret: he's Jewish. These people have lots of reasons to question God and move away from Him but we only see Hollis' retreat.
But alas, Harrison spent too much time being cute and clever instead of writing a well-rounded, developed play.
I'm at a loss for words when it comes to Jordan Harrison's latest, The Amateurs.
The play begins with a troupe of traveling players during the middle ages as they try to outrun the plague and survive. Oliver Butler's directs it broadly, like a sketch comedy, and the script, which is full of anachronisms, is trying to be ironic for irony's sake. The players deal with more than just the plague; there's also homosexuality, unplanned pregnancy, and the desire to learn more about their roles in their biblical morality plays. There's not much plot, other than the death of one of the players, and there's certainly no conflict. Thirty minutes in I couldn't help but think, "where on earth is this going?"
And then the fourth wall comes down. And a member of the cast, Michael Cyril Creighton, introduces himself as playwright Jordan Harrison (and then cheekily acknowledges that he is not in fact the Jordan Harrison) who begins to talk about coming of age as gay during the AIDS crisis (or well, the tale end of it really). Are you confused too? I sat in my seat dumbfounded; what does this have to do with anything? Harrison isn't being too original by likening the black plague with AIDS; it was called "the gay plague" after all. He ruminates about a closeted teacher who eventually died of the disease, and from what I gather, he's trying to connect all of this with the idea of a "self" and the individual.
But why? Why get all postmodern on us? (I haven't even mentioned the reemergence of cast members Quincy Tyler Bernstein as herself to tell us a long, long story about her time as Mrs. Cratchit in A Christmas Carol, during which she ruminates on the woman and her lack of development from Charles Dickens.) What is the point? To me, this just tells me the playwright had an idea (the traveling troupe) that he could not stretch out to a full 90 minute (or even 75) and he had what he thought was a clever idea (it wasn't.) It does not work, and I just found it obnoxious.
And the worst crime? When the play turns its focus back to the players, when Creighton once again becomes Gregory, the troupe's set and costume designer, he says, "fourth wall up." Fourth wall up. It's bad enough you've decided to use this obnoxious technique but you don't have to be all tongue-in-cheek about it.
Now, I understand the point he's trying to make, at least I think so. Hollis, the player who begins to question her roles in the troupe's plays, and in turn, question God (her major role is Noah's wife, whose motivation for getting onto the ark she questions), also loses her brother early in the play to the plague. So I get that the plague, just as illness and death tend to do, makes her lose her faith in God. This is not a new development, and Harrison does not have anything new or interesting to add to it because he does not develop his idea. There's nothing under the surface, it's all superficial.
What's worse is that Harrison has enough meat on the bone of his central premise to make this work. He could've gone deeper with the idea of moving away from God and towards consciousness and self with all of his characters, with the gay man mourning the loss of his lover to the plague, with the woman who gets pregnant with an unwanted baby that eventually dies, and with the leader of the troupe himself, who expects a duke to be their savior from the plague (spoiler: he is not.) There's even a doctor who joins the troupe midway through the play, who is harboring a secret: he's Jewish. These people have lots of reasons to question God and move away from Him but we only see Hollis' retreat.
But alas, Harrison spent too much time being cute and clever instead of writing a well-rounded, developed play.
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