sheseestheatre

[sheseestheatre]

some notes on hilton als, the glass menagerie and the not-so-fragile classics

Ugh. Hilton Als. Did you see his review of The Glass Menagerie? Double ugh. Look, he was already on my shitlist for two reasons:

First up: I sometimes doubt whether he even...likes theatre at all? In more than one review, he has taken a show (usually a musical) to task merely for adhering to genre conventions. I loved Hamilton (have I mentioned that I saw it at the Public?? Because I totally saw it at the Public * hairflip *), but I do think Als’ Hamilton review has some good stuff to say about the show’s relationship to “traditional” masculinity within the queer tradition of the musical. HOWEVER: 

“But once Hamilton works his way into Washington’s inner circle, becomes the Treasury Secretary, and meets his future wife, the rich and socially prominent Eliza Schuyler (played by the genteel and thus dull Phillipa Soo), the show’s radicalism is slowly drained, and the resulting corpse is a conventional musical love story. “ 

Two things to unpack here. First, I think it’s unreasonably bitchy and even cruel to trash an entire performance in a parenthetical. If Soo’s performance was such a substantial obstacle, then you owe it to your readers and to the show to engage with it in a substantial way. Second: I know that “conventional” is a common critical pejorative, but like...musicals are a genre, and genres have conventions. Get over it. When this is a major sticking point in your review, it sounds to me like you’re saying, “It’s not like other musicals! It’s a Cool Musical! Well, until the part when it started acting like other musicals, and then it sucked because musicals suck.” There’s also a nice little dash of implied misogyny here - the show is fun when it’s just ~teh boyz~, but once the ladies get some air time, it’s snooze city. Which leads me to…

Second major beef: This review. Oh LORD LORD LORD, this review. And yes, this review is that review - the jaw-dropping take on Leigh Silverman’s New Group revival of Sweet Charity whose blithe sexism inspired a furious point-by-point takedown from the women of the Interval and a letter-writing campaign to the New Yorker. Most of what I have to say (and then some) is covered in the Interval piece, but I will say that I practically fell off my chair at least six times while reading it and immediately sent livid caps-lock messages to three of my girlfriends the second I finished it. For most of my childhood, both of my parents worked for weekly newsmagazines, and I have enough of an understanding of the editorial process to be I am truly shocked that this piece made it to publication without major adjustments. Especially at the GODDAMN NEW YORKER - which, famously, sends fact-checkers to the movies to fact-check their fucking movie reviews. Come on, people. Do better. 

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that while I do think Hilton Als is a smart, interesting person capable of wonderful writing - not to mention a much-needed voice of color in a still-very-white critical landscape - his theatre writing does not always land him my good graces. All of that said, let’s turn to his recent review of Sam Gold’s Glass Menagerie revival on Broadway. Behold his opening salvo: 

“The despair and disgust I felt after seeing the director Sam Gold’s rendition of Tennessee Williams’s 1944 play, “The Glass Menagerie” (at the Belasco), was so debilitating that I couldn’t tell if my confused, hurt fury was caused by the pretentious and callous staging I had just witnessed or if my anger was a result of feeling robbed of the beauty of Williams’s script.”

Wow, Hilton! Tell us how you really feel! (Just kidding. My mom always says that to me after I’ve expressed a particularly forceful opinion, and I always fucking fall for it!!! Don’t mess with people when they’re in high dudgeon, guys, it’s really rude.)

He spends the rest of the review bemoaning Sam Gold’s “desire to leave his mark on the play” (side note: please don’t psychologize directors!! Especially if you’re going to be really fucking ungenerous and condescending about it!!! It’s lazy lazy lazy criticism that wouldn’t pass muster in a freshman writing seminar!), comparing the stark production design to the descriptions in Williams’ famously rich stage directions, and complaining about the casting of a wheelchair-bound actress with muscular dystrophy as Laura (who is usually played as having a slight limp). There’s also some rhapsodizing about the genius of Tennessee Williams as well as a brief detour to pillory Ivo van Hove, on whom he blames the current vogue for directorly European minimalism (Gold first directed this production for van Hove’s Toneelgroep Amsterdam).

Okay. This review is almost 1500 words long. But Als’ complaint boils down to one question: “Why couldn’t you just do it exactly the way it is on the page?”

Here’s what this review reminds me of. Once, in college, I was in the dressing room getting ready for a performance of Coriolanus. We were swapping stories of our favorite productions, and I chimed in with a description of William Electric Black’s The Hamlet Project, which I saw at LaMaMa when I was in about fifth grade. (Yeah, I don’t know. My parents kinda knew the author? And they thought my then 7-year-old sister and I would enjoy it? Who knows, maybe they’re cooler than I give them credit for.) It was a hip-hop/pop/rock Hamlet, and y’all, it blew my prepubescent MIND. Gertrude wore a leather bustier and the best glittery fuschia lip gloss I have e’er seen, Ophelia had a group of backup singers called the Opheliettes, and I think there were puppets. It was VERY DOPE, is what I’m saying. And I’m like 19 and putting on my blush or whatever and jibber-jabbering about how this show opened my eyes and changed my life and the summer after I saw it I started going to Shakespeare camp, and this other girl in the cast who’s like, passing by on her way to pee, goes, “Ugh! No textual evidence!”

1) Rude. Rude!!! 2) Is that...seriously the only framework that you have to evaluate a piece of theatre? You will reject something out of hand because it’s not 100% Faithful To The Text? Ugh. I have encountered this attitude pretty frequently among Shakespeare People, to be honest: the idea that the best thing any production can be is a faithful rendering of exactly what’s on the page, because Shakespeare was a greater genius than any of us will ever be and we must approach him with proper reverence. (Frankly, this attitude is why I don’t spend much time hanging around Shakespeare People anymore.)

A lack of reverence for the text seems to be what Hilton dislikes about Gold’s production of Menagerie. And - as is common in this kind of critique - he seems to think that Gold has done some kind of violence to the play. He has “robbed” the audience of the text and its beauty. The most pedestrian rendering of this critical posture is “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?”; the necessary corollary is that doing anything to an unbroken text will break it.

Here’s my point: great plays are not fragile. A few backup dancers will not permanently disfigure Hamlet; a bare stage and a wheelchair will not smash The Glass Menagerie to pieces. These plays get performed all the fucking time. There will be another Menagerie on Broadway within five years! There will be another Hamlet...like, tomorrow! One aggressive reimagining - even a shitty one - is not going to do lasting damage; no one is going to get on the subway after seeing Gold’s Menagerie and think, “Huh! You know, I always thought that was a good play but I guess it’s garbage! Wow, so glad that got cleared up for me.” A truly great play can invite, support, and even flourish under a wide variety of interpretations, and that openness - in my opinion - is, in fact, a sign of its greatness, not of weakness.

This is not about my thoughts on the actual production. (Stay tuned for those, or don’t if you’re tired of my yapping or need to shave your legs or whatever. I don’t know. Live your life!) This is about my dismay at seeing such pedantic narrow-mindedness in the pages (webpages, but still) of a publication I admire deeply. This is maybe the only time I will ever say this, but Als would do well to look to Jesse Green on this one: this is not THE Glass Menagerie, it’s A Glass Menagerie. As with any number of great plays, there have been many and there will be more. Take the production on its own terms and stop pouting about how it’s not exactly like all the many, many others.

#hilton als #glass menagerie #sam gold #theatre #the new yorker #rantz