Miss Witherspoon, by Christopher Durang

DIARY

On Saturday, Jessica and I attended the Playwrights Horizon's production of Christopher Durang's new play Miss Witherspoon. This is the second installment of our season tickets given by Hallie at our wedding.

I liked the play a lot. In general, I would describe it as fun, if not deep, with the exception of one aspect. And truthfully, the play is about what one should expect whenever she hears the reverberations of that relatively known name, Christopher Durang. The piece was filled with funny moments and absurdities... something familiar that struck me like well-scripted Dada colliding with a sitcom. This is, for many of us, quintessentially Durang. And of course, the human drama was completely surrounded and submerged in a thematic (as opposed to philosophically rigorous) exploration of theological issues. This also was quintessentially Durang.

The premise of the play is refreshing and direct, albeit almost atemporal. It might be classed postmodern (the setting is "the earth and not the earth," "the past and the foreseeable future" except for a strong moral position that doesn't imply cynicambiguity. Essentially, "Miss Witherspoon" is a soul who constantly reincarnates without progress due to a constant string of suicides. The action is divided between her (generally miserable) terrestrial experiences and various afterlives. Her "bad attitude" and refusal to participate draws increasingly powerful figures to intervene, beginning with the effervescent Maryamma, and building to Jesus (in the form of a black woman), and finally Gandalf. The plot, then, is more thematically driven than event driven, though the script does not fully commit to this approach.

FUN

I chastized Sarah Schulman's play for not living up to its own ambitions, and while Miss Witherspoon was a better piece of writing overall, there wasn't much that was mind-blowing in the script. That said, I don't know that the script was striving for something greater than fun. Inasmuch as it achieves what it set out to do, it must be considered a success.

Where the "fun" distinction becomes truly relevant is the balance of emphasis on the script over the production. That is, a straightforward play, a living room play, a Manic Flight Reaction is constrained by austere production limitations and a psychologically binding premise. The writing then is either unambiguously successful or conspicuously bad. Against such a measuring stick, I might describe Miss Witherspoon as "entertaining," which falls short of "fun." Why does it? Because television and books and the internet are all entertaining, all of which I can access from my apartment, and none of which braving the Saturday night crowds and winds in Times Square.

Fortunately, the script does not demand an austere production nor psychological rigor any more than the play presents philosophical depth. The text is musical, but doesn't overwhelm production choices, and this allows the acting, the set, the music and sound enough levity to provide their own depth. In this production, the choices were consistent with Durang's story, evocative and suggestive of sleek magic. The acting was energetic, committed, and hyperbolic in its interpretation of cosmic emotion. The play danced through its ninety minute, intermissionless running time at a tempo that seemed breezy for a play where time has little meaning. The set, I will discuss further below...

In short, the depth and beauty of this production, its sense of magical fun, was largely composed of production choices that moved around and hinged upon the script. The words themselves didn't resonate with mystery and meaning, but the production could not have done so if the script had not encouraged such investment.

In this sense, Durang's writing served as something closer to a musical score than literature. Miss Witherspoon is a script that makes the argument against theater as literature; the was much more impressive onstage than it could have ever been on the page. (Perhaps this, too, is quinessentially Durang).

PROBLEMS

The play was not without its problems.

For the most part, these were moment to moment problems that did not spoil the arc of the play. They typically broke down to characters executed with a panache that did not compensate for their glaring contradictions.
Chief among these were "mom 2" and "dad 2" who seemed to be designed as the Everyevil Parent, but were not rendered with the primary color consistancy of other incarnated characters (such as the dog owner, mom 1, and dad 1). Mom 2, in particular, who benefited from generous stage time, was an admixture of evangelical fanaticism, doped-up slackery, and redneck hostility. Perhaps two of these traits my coexist, but the three together
presented a mess of contradiction that was absent from other characters in the play.

Another problem was in the final dramatic appearance of Gandalf, who manages to trump both Maryamma and Jesus for onstage effect. While I have no doubt that Gandalf was a deliberate anachronism, and while I personally endorse such an angle, he didn't carry the import he should've. He mentioned Middle-Earth once, timidly, and acted primarily as a cheerleader to balance out the other two; less brusque than Jesus, and less complacent than Maryamma. Ultimately, if you're going to put Gandalf in the Afterlife you'd better PUT GANDALF IN THE AFTERLIFE, with references to Rings and Valar and all.

These incosistencies notwithstanding, I believe it was the devil-may-care of the text that suggested the risk and audacity in the other production choices, which together elevated the play to something more than entertainment. If this is the case, then these concessions were worthwhile.

PROFUNDITY

I'm deliberately vamping off the recent Vatican document now in my abuse of this word.

Still, I can't dance around the point:

The script was entertaining, the acting was free and bold, and the direction was adventuresome and fun.

The set, however, was profound.

If artists and sculptors tempered their ultra-conceptual zeal with the pragmatic and eye-catching priorities of the set designers on Miss Witherspoon, I'd be a more frequent visitor to galleries and museums.

When we entered the space, both Jess and my attention was immediately arrested by the performance space. An old fashioned reading chair, with dented rungs and a fine, if worn, cover and stray threads sat next to a small table. Astroturf modeled grass curved in two lines, almost fractal in their slightly irregular curves and clides off to the left where a small flower bed was filled with a row of tulips conspicuously marked by a single absence. The missing tulip rested in a vase on the table. Behind this, however, bowing up and away, were brilliant, radioactive blue screens. They flaired out at the bottom and shot to a straight verticle quickly, allowing the space to alternately suggest a bowl when the actors were clustered at center, or a traditional room when they were arrayed along the edges. Projected or painted (I never could completely decide) on the wall were bunches of clouds, and upon these were projected a series of squares, "windows" that had distinct borders but an insubstantial dimension that made it unclear whether one was looking out at the sky, or in on a sky that was mysteriously "interior."

During scenes in afterlife, incense holder lamps were flown in and the sound of wind-chimes floated through the space, while the terrestrial scenes were accomplished through the insertion of essential, if minimal, set pieces. These setpieces, however, were small enough so as to not eliminate the blue sky / window effect.

This set was one of the most effective, beautiful, and affective stage sets I've ever seen, and it did a lot to drum up the drama of the production a notch.

END OF POST.