Phaedra - Racine, translated into English verse by Richard Wilbur

I am not a scholar of French Theatre, this might actually be my first reading of a classical French work, so please feel free to fill in my gaps and clarify my misunderstandings. My first question after reading this is what was Racine up to - writing this very Greek feeling play after Shakespeare and the Renaissance playwrights had opened up wildly divergent ways of telling a story? Is it an emulation of the Greeks, where this story originated? Or is it the type of play being written in this era? I’ll read more and find out.

Also, after reading this I saw that Adam Bock has a version of the story set in modern times, which I’d love to read next, and also Ted Hughes has a translation.

The story. Phaedra, wife of Theseus, is cursed with an unquenchable desire for her step-son Hippolytus. She resists her lust with every fiber of her being. Before the play opens she’s had him banished and removed from her sight. Theseus, a wandering hero and a philanderer, is off on another adventure and sends Phaedra to the country village where Hippolytus now resides. Phaedra withdraws from society and wastes away from the toxic mix of guilt and desire.

News is received that Theseus has been killed, during a romantic escapade perhaps, and a glimmer of possibility kindles in Phaedra’s mind. Perhaps she and Hippolytus can rule together, perhaps all will be well. But, as Phaedra declares her love to Hippolytus, he announces his love for the banished princess Aricia, whom he plans to make his queen. Phaedra is crushed, in suicidal despair. It turns out Theseus is not dead, he returns to find his house in disarray. To spare her mistress from torment, Phaedra’s servant devises a plan where they will accuse Hippolytus of accosting Phaedra with unwanted advances before he has a chance to humiliate Phaedra. Theseus is enraged, refuses to hear Hippolytus’s protestations of innocence and banishes him. He dies, Phaedra poisons herself and to make some amends for his rashness Theseus forgives Aricia the sins of her fathers and restores her to her rightful throne.

Over five acts through dialogue made up of declarative speeches and monologues delivered by characters to question their own motives and understandings of events, the story unfolds and moves inexorably towards its classically tragic conclusion. Reading it I found my own sense of the romantic to be so ingrained - and my sympathies so with Phaedra - that when Theseus was reported killed I celebrated with her, and believed in the possibility of these two young people to be brought together. This isn’t the outcome, instead, despite Phaedra’s attempts to resist temptation and manage her own impulses she cannot and they lead to her downfall.

New Design

Hello all,

So I'm re-doing this site to serve as a place to find information about my plays and projects - as well as other people's.

I am feeling pretty remedial at this, so please forward any suggestions or thoughts my way!

Thanks. And yes, I am also planning to get back to reading & writing about plays very soon. I had to take a break to get into my own work for a while.

Now I'm thinking I can handle both again.

Kristen

The Pain and The Itch - by Bruce Norris

Premiered at Steppenwolf then Playwrights Horizons, The Pain and The Itch is a satire of liberal suburbanites so focused on their correctness they don't perceive the rot in their own house.

It unfolds in two time periods. A present time, an afternoon in January and the past, the previous Thanksgiving evening. In the present parents Kelly and Clay are recounting the events of the previous Thanksgiving to Mr. Hadid. Their daughter, 4, wanders in and out and their baby cries occasionally. Kelly and Clay try to tell the story in the best possible light. The action fluidly shifts into that past moment. In addition to Kelly and Clay, Clay's mother Carol, and brother Cash are also present for the holiday meal. Cash has also brought his young, eastern european girlfriend.

In the first scene Mr. Hadid is visiting and Clay and Kelly play host. A tone is set, Kelly and Clay avoid getting to any point by talking about themselves - establishing their world-view (their 'type') - and more importantly a mystery is planted that isn't revealed until the final scene of the play. The incongruity of Mr. Hadid, an older man in a skull cap, a recent immigrant, in the suburban living room of these young parents who are prattling on, asks a question - and the rest of the play un-ravels the answer.

By moving between the two time periods there is the occasional relief from the claustrophobic thanksgiving meal this family is attempting to have. These scenes are pitched high, the conflict and animosity burbling up and the 'pain and itch' of the title growing, literally, more insistent. Before it is too much though the play leaps back to the present. The parents re-telling their side of the story and Mr. Hadid calming listening, quietly - non-judgmentally - taking in this young couple.

And the mystery unravels by the end. And really, the effect is more horrible than you were expecting. Satire indeed. And a condemnation of particularly strident attitudes.

The Typographer's Dream - by Adam Bock

Produced in NYC by Clubbed Thumb in 2003, The Typographer's Dream has three characters who speak directly to the audience (most of the time.) They talk about their jobs.

There is a Typographer, a Geographer, and a Stenographer.

There are 76 scenes, some very short, some not so short. They talk about their jobs, defining these three, specific lines of work. They talk about how their jobs have changed over the years. How they relate to their jobs, how much is work and how much is business. How much pressure they feel. How they fell in love with what they do - and fall out of it.

They encroach on one another, commenting on each others lives, on choices they should or should not make.

The language is precise. The rhythms of the play are specific. A casualness set out from the beginning lets this sneak up on you until by the end - the specific has begun to encompass the world and the reach of each of their experiences and perspectives, which may have seemed narrow at the outset, resonates with the weight of the changing world and particularly America's place in it.