Kate Mulley

Speaking of state of the nation plays, I saw ENRON last night after hearing that it is closing at the end of the weekend. After reading Brantley’s review and seeing the Tony nominations and weekly grosses, I can understand the decision to do so. There were very high expectations for this show to do well on Broadway and it appears that the money and the Times did not follow those expectations.

I, however, had a great time and found it to be an exciting, yet bizarre, piece of multi-media theatre. As someone who was not really paying attention to “business” when Enron collapsed, I was especially impressed with how well the show told the story, made it dramatic (almost Greek–9/11 as deus ex machina anyone?) and explained what everyone did at the company. The first act was a little too episodic for my tastes, but I liked what was done with the dance sequences once I got used to them. Norbert Leo Butz as Jeffrey Skilling was great from start to finish and the use of lighting and sound was very impressive. By the end of the play, I was a fan of this outsider’s view of American business from a city that has its own share of financial woes.

Of course, previous knowledge of the show closing made me examine the play more carefully in an attempt to reconcile why this play probably shouldn’t have been transferred to Broadway (I think BAM may have been a safer bet, the play needed a more intimate venue to pack the necessary punch). Theatre in London tends to succeed (especially recently) when it exposes society in a negative light. Jerusalem and Posh are great recent examples (see previous posts) of plays that show an unflattering mirror to society but have been critically and financially rewarded. That’s not to say that plays need to be dark to succeed, just that these plays seem to do better commercially in London than in New York. Add to that the fact that the play casts America and the 90′s bubble in a negative light and a lot of paying audience members don’t want to see it. And certainly don’t want to shell out hundreds of dollars to be told something they don’t want to hear. Americans don’t wallow as much as Brits do. And Brits certainly like ribbing Americans every so often.

It seems like a good time to break out my go-to difference between America and Britain. We haven’t come to terms with losing our power yet, while Britain lost an entire empire in the past hundred years. And while it might be an oversimplication to equate that to the differences in commercial theatre, I think for this particular show (and this particular theatre season) it seems quite apt. We’d much rather see uplifting stories about overcoming adversity or fantasy worlds than an indictment of bad behavior that continues not in Houston, but just on the other end of the island of Manhattan. Brits have been dealing with their nation’s loss of power for years, so a play about it doesn’t feel like a slap in the face anymore.

An exception to this might be Bruce Norris’ work, but it hasn’t quite made the leap to Broadway yet so I can’t crunch the numbers as easily.

In Sunday’s heatwave, I broke away from a day of birthday celebrations and culture to catch the new show at the Atlantic, Gabriel by Moira Buffini. It’s about a displaced family on the island of Guernsey (which was occupied by the Germans during World War II) and what they do when a naked stranger washes up on their shore. The play explores the role of women during an occupation when all the native men are fighting or dead and many of its moments are very poignant and subtle. It’s a fine play and the design is absolutely gorgeous, but I kept thinking that it was, perhaps, too earnest. And some of the actors seemed a little bit off with their lines, which always throws me. The play was produced at the Soho Theatre in 1997 and I’m not sure what the process behind putting it up here 13 years later was. Ever since my freshman year of college I’ve been very interested in the decision making behind “subsequent performances” and this is one that I would be interested to know, because either the cultural relevance is too subtle for me, or they just liked the play and wanted to do it.

In the meantime I’ve been reading Laura Wade’s play Posh because it arrived at the book shop last week and the cover image(on the left) is excellent. I’m pretty disappointed that I won’t be able to see it (and I highly doubt it’ll transfer across the Atlantic, it’s too timely and British), but reading it has been an absolute delight. It’s equal parts hilarious and scathing. I found myself laughing on the subway while reading it and horrified by other sections. There’s a good review of it that’s just been posted on the NY Times website, but it’s essentially about the members of an Oxford club (modeled, supposedly, after the club that David Cameron and George Osbourne were both in as students– though I’m sure there are others like it) on a night that they get together and get drunk and postulate on their position in the world and the decline of the Empire. It’s a state of the nation play, much like Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, but from a very different side of it.

I’m always intrigued by state of the nation plays, and while I’ve never really attempted to write one for America, I would like to try some day.