Dawn's Reading Blog

GBS’ plays read like novels and Candida is no exception. It’s funny to imagine someone trying to play “A vigorous, genial, popular man of forty, robust and goodlooking, full of energy, with pleasant, hearty, considerate manners, and a sound, unaffected voice, which he uses with the clean, athletic articulation of a practised orator, and with a wide range and perfect command of expression.” Fortunately Shaw’s stage directions can usually be safely ignored if you’re trying to stage the thing and they do add to the readability when you’re only reading it.

This isn’t one of Shaw’s best plays. It’s a little dull with neither global reach nor comic aspects. The ending is anti-climactic. Nothing has happened and no one has changed. We’re supposed to find the character of Candida captivating but I mostly found her shallow and silly. She’s from a different era and doesn’t translate well.

I read Merchant of Venice because I was going to see it and I find it’s essential to read Shakespeare before seeing it so you’ve got at least a fighting chance at understanding what they’re saying. Merchant of Venice seems to be one of his better plays in terms of language and lack of silliness in the plot. I’m not saying that no woman ever dresses up like a man and goes unrecognized by her closest friends and family, because that happens, but it’s not as big a plot point as it sometimes is.

Unfortunately, the work suffers seriously from anti-semitism. It’s very hard to read since the slurs, prejudices, and stereotypes are on every page. It culminates with the villian (a Jew) being forced to convert to Christianity. This makes him ‘saved’ so of course it’s a good thing. When that line was delivered during the performance I saw, the audience gasped. I think the show could be saved by changing every instance of “The Jew” to “Shylock.” He’s set up as a bad guy for other reasons (usuary) and if the performance concentrated on that aspect, it would be OK. In the version I saw, Shylock was played very strongly and without any stereotypical mannerisms, so it was only other characters’ lines that kept you refocusing on the anti-semitism.

Vanities is a play and I didn’t read it so much as act in it. I played Mary, the sexy, bitchy one (or not so much of a stretch as my friends kept pointing out). It was a good production and I was surprised by how much depth there was to the script. It’s easy to see only the surface of what the three friends are saying to each other and miss all the nuances, so better to see it (done well) than to read it.

The play is three actresses, three acts, a simple unit set with some interchangeable pieces. It’s a great script for community theater and the audience really enjoyed it – especially the women who would have been that age during those periods it covers (60s and 70s). You could see how much the women in the audience were relating to it. It’s a comedy but with very serious undertones, particularly in the third act which can be anything from hysterical to devestating. In fact, we never managed to settle down the third act and it swung wildly from night to night. Always interesting and entertaining, I think, but a very different show depending on how we played it.

There’s much left open to interpretation in the play.

I’m trying to find a play to direct and remembered being struck by No Exit when I first read it back in high school so I picked up No Exit & Three Other Plays to give it a re-read and see if there was anything I could pair it with. Unfortunately, The Flies and Dirty Hands are full-length plays and The Respectful Prostitute is too full of racist comments to be performed these days, so none of the other plays made a good match, but I did like No Exit as much as I remembered. Someone suggested to me that it’s often paired with Zoo Story by Edward Albee but boy that would make one challenging evening. Perhaps something a little lighter for the other piece.

I’m looking for something to direct so I went to the library and took out a few volumes of compiled plays, namely Plays by American Women 1930 – 1960 , Leading Women Plays for Actresses, and Leading Women Plays for Actresses II. I’m not married to the idea of doing a play by/for women. These were just three compilations sitting next to each other I hadn’t read before.

I didn’t read all of each play. If it was clearly uninteresting to me or impossible to stage, I skipped it. The play I came closest to thinking I’d direct was The Women by Claire Booth Luce but I was disappointed by the ending. The question of how far you should compromise yourself to keep a relationship going – whether pride is stupid or a safety net – is one that has interested me lately.

I think I’d been leaning towards the stupid side. Why lose someone you love because society says you should be too insulted to put up with a situation that may or may not really matter to you (an affair in The Women)? Finding someone to really, passionately love is so difficult, starting over again is so lonely and hard, that maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to say goodbye.

But reading the play, seeing the ending where she decides to fight to get her roving ex-husband back again, I saw that she was wrong and society is right. Pride is a weapon we’re given for self-preservation. Our emotions can talk us into staying on when leaving is the right answer, so pride is the emotion that argues on the other side for us, gives us a chance of breaking the bonds of an unhappy love and putting up with sorrow today to get to a brighter tomorrow.

I think.