April 29, 2009

Brilliant day, reigned over now by a brilliant bow of moon. I rushed around doing errand, but I see by the paint on my thumb that at one point I must have gone to the studio and at least lifted up a brush.

Went downtown to NC Stage to see Caryl Churchill’s A Number. The first thing to be said is that a healthy arts scene is exactly the arts scene which puts on fare like this, for though I didn’t like the play, I’ve spent the whole time between curtain call and now thinking about it, and such contemplation is to be cherished whatever the provocation. If a student handed me A Number as her final project in playwriting, I would give her an A+, praise her to the skies, and assume that she would grow out of it. It’s a five-finger exercise, an empty tour-de-force. I’ve wondered why there aren’t more science fiction plays; now I know. A Number is, I suppose, science fiction, and the flaw evident in the first five minutes is that it’s not about anything real, not about a problem that anybody actually faces. Klingons or orcs could hardly be more far-fetched. The play is all geeky speculation, a three-AM-in-a college-dorm rap, a what-if that I could see very easily coming out of (as perhaps it did) a workshop exercise: suppose for a moment that you had a clone. That’s not really a very promising premise. The natural place for it to go is slapstick: The Patty Duke Show antics, a good solid farce of mistaken identity. For it to rendered into tragedy presupposes a conviction of personal uniqueness–and a purity of determination to enshrine that uniqueness-- that I doubt very many sane people actually possess. One could say it’s about a larger question of identity, but the specific issues raised could only be taken to heart by a neurotic or, as happens in the action, a psychopath. The frivolity of the situation rendered the considerable talent of the actors a little absurd; the drama of the presentation so far exceeded the drama of the material in quality and plausibility that it was hard not to laugh. One misstep from the stage and everyone would have broken up in guffaws. Or, perhaps the tone should have been lighter, and the guffaws encouraged. The one believable character was the last one introduced, an unnamed clone who thought the whole affair was funny, and– healthily–had never blazed a road into his own darkest secrets. NC Stage reportedly sustained a barrage of puzzlement from its patrons concerning this play, and I hope that doesn’t discourage them from doing more like it. Yes, I thought the play was unworkable from several perspectives, but I learned so much from it I feel indebted both as a man and a playwright. I feel at the end of the night that I have had a really satisfying argument. The production was excellent, and insofar as A Number can be well served, it was. Perhaps the artificiality of Churchill’s language could have benefitted from a different kind of stylization, something more Pinteresque. The actors tried to make up for and hide the fragmentary nature of the writing, when it might have served to relish it, even exaggerate it, so that the audience would not waste time looking for something real.

I suppose it could be said that A Number is a send-up of people (or theater) who would take such matters seriously. I doubt it, though. That’s like insisting a deeply boring play is meant as a send-up of boringness.

The cats bat a cough drop across the floor. It makes a sound ten times greater than it should.