Tynan's Anger

Labels: 99seats, adam thurman, community organizing, how theater failed america, local theater, mike daisey, obamaism, regional theater, revolutionary politics, scott walters, solonova, todd olsen

Unless some new play ends up sweeping me off my feet in the next few months that I didn’t see coming, I think we can safely begin to wrap up the debate on the progress in drama in the English language for the first decade of the 21st century. Say what you will about the crisis facing the commercial theater in terms of profitability, but in terms of quality, there were a hell of a lot of good plays this decade. Some of these plays are as good as those from the golden age of Braodway; it would be a shame if they don’t become as much a part of our culture as Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, or Harold Pinter. I doubt that, in 40 years, I will see some future soul child of The Simpsons do to August: Osage County what The Simpsons did to A Streeetcar Named Desire, but then again, I always seem to underestimate the role of theater in American cultural life. There may be far fewer Americans, or even New Yorkers, who are aware of the works of Sarah Ruhl, Sarah Kane, Adam Rapp, Mike Daisey or Taylor Mac, but if a play makes a big enough dent on the Broadway or even high off-Broadway level, it can be seen by enough people to make a difference.

Each month, I will be unrolling a top 10 list regarding English-language drama this decade. This first month starts with the best lines from English-language plays this decade. I have admittedly taken a more mainstream angle on this list, because my aim is to gauge which lines will resonate the loudest for the longest period of time in the future.

10.

“Not many people know this, but the Führer was descended from a long line of English qveens.” – Franz Liebkind (played by Brad Oscar), The Producers, book by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan.

When Mel Brooks came up with this line, he caused co-writer Thomas Meehan to fall out of his chair laughing. He did the same to thousands of audience members of the biggest flash-in-the-pan Broadway success this decade. The line was vintage Mel Brooks, but its particular application to the musical conversion of Brooks’ first feature film was a key element of the play’s wild success. With this line, Brooks completely lightened the load of Nazi imagery that dominated the rest of the play, and validated Brooks’ controversial assertion that it was more effective to demean Hitler through mockery as rather than polemics an hour before “Springtime for Hitler,” sausage display and all, hit the stage. It was also a nod to the homoerotic connotations inherent in staging a Broadway musical, no matter how straight you may be. That a right-wing Nazi could be so blind to the inherent gayness of staging a musical only made the wink to the audience that much stronger.

9.

“You the cowboys and I'm the Indians. See who wins this war.'' – Elder Joseph Barlow (Anthony Chisolm), Radio Golf by August Wilson.

Radio Golf was the weakest play of Wilson’s decade-by-decade 20th century saga, and that was mainly because the 1990s were no place to show off what made Wilson so great. Wilson’s mix of humor, poetry, folklore, playfulness, desperation and political rage made him the preeminent voice of African-American theater in the 20th century, and this line, delivered by the only character in Radio Golf who could have fit in the rest of Wilson’s canon, pretty much summed up all of that in sentence where all but two words have one syllable. Everything went awry in Radio Golf’s second act, both for the characters and the play itself. But with this doozy of an act-breaker, Wilson showed you that, even out of his element, he could still knock you out of the park.

8.

“Jirous doesn’t care. He doesn’t care enough even to cut his hair. The policeman isn’t frightened by dissidents! Why should he be? Policemen love dissidents, like the Inquisition loved heretics. Heretics give meaning to the defenders of faith. Nobody cares more than a heretic. Your friend Havel cares so much he writes a long letter to Husák. It makes no odds whether it’s a love letter or a protest letter. It means they’re playing on the same board…But the Plastics don’t care at all. They’re unbribable.” – Jan (Rufus Sewell), Rock N Roll by Tom Stoppard

Later in his life, John Osborne would repeatedly express his disgust with the success of Tom Stoppard, who he considered “intellectual flatulence.” How surprised would the original Angry Young Man be, then, to see that Stoppard would come up with the best explanation of the Angry Young Man mentality by an English language dramatist this decade. Jan is no Jimmy Porter, he’s more a foolish young pup blinded by the transcendent power of music that he sees as conquering all politics, ideas, and words. It would all come crashing down for Jan, as it does for just about every Angry Young Man, but with Rock ‘N’ Roll, Stoppard showed he understood the mindset his detractors accused him of ignoring. Jan’s speech here has all the attitude of “I hope I die before I get old” with all the intelligence of “I’ll get on my knees and pray/ we don’t get fooled again.”

7.

“If you let a standing army stand too long...it will find something to do.” – Mike Daisey, If You See Something, Say Something.

Mike Daisey’s legacy at this point is still tied to his immensely influential diatribe How Theater Failed America, but with this line, Daisey framed the dangers of the military-industrial complex in a succinct manner better than anyone, be it Eisenhower, Bill Hicks, or Naomi Klein. The first time Daisey used the line, he was describing the Cold War change in the Presidential cabinet from Secretary of War to Secretary of Defense, and the line served to show how the military-industrial complex has created a perpetual need for global conflict over the last 50 years. The second time he used it, he put the words in the mouth of George Washington, which added a universal element to Daisey’s view on history, politics, war, and even theater. Daisey validated that the problems that plague our world today are not that different from what they’ve ever been. That Daisey accomplished this without a proper script only makes this achievement that much more impressive.

6.

“Did I send you to the most expensive university in the world to teach you how to feel conflicted, or to learn how to manipulate great masses of people?” – Caldwell B. Cladwell (John Cullum) – Urinetown, book by Greg Kotis.

No other musical would open with the number “Too Much Exposition,” nor would any other musical end with the cry “Hail Malthus!” But no line in Urinetown captured the sick genius of Urinetown creators Kotis and Mark Hollman like Urine Good Company’s robber baron Cladwell, who used this line as a sick way of consoling his daughter. In one line, Kotis combined high-minded political philosophy with Borscht-belt sarcasm and a practicality that gave it special significance to everyone who wasted their private college liberal arts education on philosophy or theater. The ridiculous circumstances that led to this line within the structure of Urinetown are about as ridiculous as those that led Kotis to win a Tony for writing the line.

Stay tuned for Quotes 5-3, to be revealed tomorrow.

Labels: august wilson, Greg Kotis, if you see something say something, lists, mel brooks, mike daisey, radio golf, rock 'n' roll, the producers, tom stoppard, top theater quotes of the decade, Urinetown

How America Failed Theater: A capitalist marketing perspective on theater's socioeconomic role in American life.

In case you're not convinced that it's essentially impossible to make money as a theater blogger, try this experiment. First, watch this video by online media guru Gary Vaynerchuk:




Now, take Gary V's suggestion and apply it to theater blogging. First, google "theater" and see what Google Adwords come up with. You'll likely get a lot of results on movie theaters or home theaters; perhaps the term is too general. So search for New York theater. When you do this, you'll get a lot of websites of individual theaters themselves, and maybe a few other publications. Search for "regional theater," and you'll get the same, as you probably will for any city you happen to live in. The only other results I got were for vacation and ticket services. This is probably the best option for advertising, but keep in mind the majority of the desired audience of these sites are out-of-towners whose interest in theater doesn't go all that far out of The Little Mermaid or Wicked. They're not going to be all that interested in your Brechtian analysis of some way off-off-Broadway show.

In Gary V's video, the way to make money off your blog is to call up these people and get them to advertise on your blog. Of course, most theater people are introverts, and get clamped up at the prospect of cold calling. But besides that, if you're focus is being critical and editorial, there's simply no way you can court advertisements from individual theaters and claim to have independent critical judgment. If you were going to get advertising from these sources, you'd need someone else who works on your website for strictly advertising purposes. For smaller theater publications, and especially theater blogs, that's a virtual impossibility. Even if you could get someone to do it, the amount of time you'd need to invest wouldn't be worth the minimal results you'd probably get.

From a marketing perspective, it shows the limits of niche marketing, even though theater isn't by any means the smallest niche to try to make a profit. Within the theatrical community, however, there are two main factors keeping these kind of marketing strategies from succeeding. For one, theater is based more around a sense of community. Any show produced or artist supported by a theater is seen as more of a means of adding something to the theatrical discussion. Unless you're making something like The Little Mermaid, it is not seen primarily as a revenue stream (even if profit is still in the back of your mind).

Secondly, in the case of individual theaters as possible advertisers, it is impossible to extract the product of the theater (be it talent, show, or community) from the theater that's producing it. If you're selling beer, you're almost always selling someone else's beer. From a business perspective, you have no emotional attachment to the brand of beer you're selling, even if you have a weird beer specialty market. In theater, the product your selling is inherently produced by your own personal labor and belongs to the individual laborers who produce it. Do you know anyone who buys Budweiser from Anheuser-Busch directly? Or for an off-off Broadway parallel, you can't even buy Summit Ale from the Summit Brewing Company online store.

In How Theater Failed America, Mike Daisey spoke of contemporary American theater submitting to the American capitalistic system of constant competition, fear of failure, and an artistically counterproductive need to make theater marketable to a stable audience. Tom Stoppard spoke of this just last night. Tony Adams recently talked about how theater don't focus on content anymore. Scott Walters has fought for artistic emphasis constantly. The consensus seems to be that this is a recent, troublesome development. Daisey suggested that a better title for his show would have been "How Theater Became America."

Yet, from the capitalistic perspective that these sources lament, the Gary Vaynerchuks of the world, theater is still a hopelessly unmarketable faux-commodity, one that flies in the face of long-term financial stability, and maintains a system of ethics entirely outside of that of American capitalism. From this perspective, theater still seems like something you do in spite of your desire to make a living. Whether it be theater's Marxist heritage or the nature of the artistic endeavor in general, success in theater is an entirely different mindset from success in business. The standards for good theater (artistic excellence) are wildly different from that of normal business marketing (ROI, profit).

If you're in theater, even using the term "commodity" in referring to theater will make you cringe. Yet, the fact that this cringe is nearly universal is a unique thing to theater, in terms of business and even in terms of the arts. Technologically reproducible art, be it film, music, fine art or literature, have all become dominated by a top-down big business structure to various degrees (the high art/low art distinction be damned). Theater can be top-down too, especially in New York (less so in Chicago or London). But despite the stereotypes of the Broadway producer, theater still exists on an immensely smaller business scale than just about any other form of art in the country. For all the complaining of theater's increasing commercialization and commodification, theater simply does not exist in the same financial stratosphere as any other form of art, even at its highest level. Some people who do theater are rich, but virtually no one gets rich—and I mean really rich, megamillionaire style—purely from theater itself.

As a result, theater has more of a focus on artistic excellence over profit than almost anything else in our culture. No matter what you think of the current strength of American theater, that's an enviable position for any artist to be in from an aesthetic standpoint. The downside is thatit's much harder to make a good living in theater. Of course, that's a tradeoff virtually every theater artist is willing to make.

But at the same time, most people in theater have problems with the notion of the majority theater artists having to live in poverty. As much was we like to romanticize the notion of a community of financially stable theater practicioners, without a wide-ranging income spectrum that includes the (relative) ultra-rich and ultra-poor, you simply cannot reconcile theater with the free market capitalist system that we currently live in. The Cold War proved that this liberal capitalist system is ultimately the most sustainable from a global economic perspective. By no means does that mean theater has no value in America—it may even give it more value simply precisely because it is so different. But again, what that means is that theater, at its core, has and will always run in spite of the larger socioeconomic spectrum of a capitalist society. If you go into theater, you better only want to make a sustainable living, or else you're screwed. No one should have to live in poverty. But poverty for some is virtually inevitable, and that rate will inevitably be higher a large-scale community that does not conform to the liberal democratic capitalist system. Communities like that national theater community we all strive for.

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Labels: art versus business, Broadway theatre, economics, gary vaynerchuk, how theater failed america, mike daisey, Summit Brewing Company, tom stoppard

At first, the jump between Mike Daisey’s last two projects seems ungainly and almost impossible. Barely four months after shaking the foundation of contemporary American theater with his incendiary How Theater Failed America, Daisey is now tackling homeland security, a much larger, more complex, and more important issue. Yet, there is a link between Daisey’s previous screed and the more meditative, politically-charged If You See Something Say Something.

That link is economics. In Mike Daisey’s world, every pursuit one can take in life, be it artistic expression or thermonuclear war, breaks down very simply into humanity’s weakness for money. It’s that streak of cynicism that ties Daisey’s critiques of contemporary life to the last 200-odd years of Western theater. Some would say Daisey’s fury towards capitalism and flirtation with Marxism are irrational and dated. But as current events should make all too apparent, every human desire reduces to the stability of his economic situation. That’s something both radical Marxists and staunch capitalists can agree upon.

Lest you think by the title that Daisey is at Joe’s Pub just to carelessly rant about having to take his shoes off at the airport, If You See Something Say Something spans the Cold War, World War II, the founding fathers, and present-day Los Alamos. Modern homeland security concerns make up a relatively small fraction of the play. Daisey’s main target is the military-industrial complex; his thesis states that “if you keep a standing army, and it doesn’t do anything, it will find something to do,” a statement he repeats twice, first in reference to Eisenhower, then to Washington, DC. When the military, government, and corporate sectors converge, Daisey doesn’t just see a rise in paranoia: he sees a systematic manipulation of human weakness to get everyone to conform to a system that ultimately benefits no one.

Daisey is smart enough not to detach himself from the situation. He spends much time talking about his childhood fascination with Los Alamos, the Bomb, and the cleansing power of Total Destruction. Always willing to refer to his painful, traumatic childhood as a loser in the bowels of Maine, Daisey depicts himself as a comic-book-loving outcast (he compares Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to Skeletor), harboring pre-Columbine fantasies of annihilating all the sources of his misery.

He finds a kindred spirit in Sam Cohen, the deeply troubled, morally tormented father of the neutron bomb, who invented that ultra-efficient weapon partly to appease a similar fantasy. Rage at the political economy of the military-industrial complex was the bait for Daisey to create If You See Something Say Something. It was that deeply ingrained sense of longing that forced Daisey to fall into the monologue hook, line, and sinker.

Ultimately, If You See Something Say Something will probably not have the same impact on the theatrical community that How Theater Failed America did, but it does cement Daisey’s status as the finest, most unique monologist of his generation. Daisey’s often been compared to Spalding Gray, but he’s got an an attitude straight out of the the Angry Young Man movement, comic books, and punk rock. As today’s foremost self-described fat, angry asshole, Daisey has a perpetual itch to provoke that he will probably never be able to escape (he probably doesn’t want to, either).

Yet he’s accomplished that rarest of feats: mixing rage and a revolutionary spirit with a well-grounded intelligence and an ability to promote discussion, maybe even solid changes. If You See Something Say Something may not be as fresh as Daisey’s 21 Dog Years or as directly vital as How Theater Failed America, but as long as there’s a place for a voice to point out the injustice and political outrage that so many feel but few articulate, there will be a place for Mike Daisey. With the economy what it is, that place may only get bigger.

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If You See Something Say Something, written and performed by Mike Daisey; directed by Jean-Michele Gregory; lighting design by K.J. Hardy. Photos by Kenneth Aaron.

If You See Something Say Something is performed at Joe's Pub at the Public Theater (425 Lafayette Street). The show runs through November 30. For performance times and ticket information, visit www.publictheater.org. This review was originally published on Blogcritics.

Labels: 2008-2009, how theater failed america, if you see something say something, mike daisey, military industrial complex, public theater, theater review

Back in March, I posted on the effect known as "the Whammy"—that utter loss of words and coherency you get when you meet someone who you deeply admire. At the time, I noted that "If I am going to make it as a journalist, I have to get over the whammy" and doubted if I ever would. Now, 7 months later, I can report that if I'm not completely over the Whammy, I've at least made enough progress where I can overcome it to an acceptable level.

In the past two days, I have talked to two people I deeply admire who have a significant influence on my recent life in terms of what I do and how I do it. When I returned to New York after graduation, I was hesitant to pursue theater criticism actively, and needed some motivation and direction. Then I saw Mike Daisey's How Theater Failed America, which was all the inspiration I needed to make my decision. Earlier this night, after attending a press preview of Daisey's new show, If You See Something, Say Something, I made a point to introduce myself to him, after corresponding with him briefly on the internet previously.

Yesterday, I spent 20 minutes on the phone with Jim DeRogatis. Between his biography of Lester Bangs Let it Blurt, his definitive 90s alternative rock collection Milk It!, and his continuing vital work at the Chicago Sun-Times, DeRogatis has been one of my prime spiritual inspirations in music criticism ever since I began seriously pursuing the path. We talked about Lester Bangs, Pitchfork, and the spirit of rock criticism, and I not only found him to be as personable in conversation as in writing, but with views that corresponded so perfectly with my own.

I still had a bit of the whammy in both cases. I was still somewhat awkward, with more ideas in mind than I knew how to articulate, and in both cases a little nervous to present myself. But in both cases I initiated the conversation, and in both cases I was glad I did afterwards. Most importantly, however, in each case I was myself, and not afraid to be that. I didn't worry about being some pipsqueak fan/wannabe, nor was I in awe of this person's imagined aura. This is significant progress over even a few months ago, when I must have been the first "journalist" ever to weird out Gibby freaking Haynes out of my awkwardness. There are a handful of musicians, actors, and other celebs who due to previous interviews or interactions I would be too ashamed to show my face to. But they're becoming fewer and farther in between. And that's progress on the Whammy front.

Labels: gibby haynes, jim derogatis, mike daisey, neurosis, self-absorption, the whammy

Have a party to go to, but I thought I'd give a quick update. First, saw the Bacchae today. Very well done. The R & B theme to the chorus worked, the sets and acting was mostly fantastic, and seeing the play in the Rose Theater space made it really feel like you were in 4th century Athens. And of course, this is the role Alan Cumming was born to play.

Also, Mike Daisey gave me a shout out today, which has me theater geeking out. Equally geeky is learning that Hal Brooks has a blog, where he most recently gave fellow of U of C alum Jason Zinoman props. Cool deal.

Now I'm off to drink in Park Slope, two weeks after taking the magical G train to the same house two weekends ago. For a Manhattanite, this is like entering Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, all the way down to the purple vomit on the subway car floor. I may be taking the G train again tomorrow to see the Breeders at McCarren park. This is a bad omen for the apartment hunt...

Labels: alan cumming, euripides, G train, hal brooks, mike daisey, the bacchae

The breakdown:

• Theaterforte calls on Mike Daisey to define his view on how theater exactly fails America more clearly.
• Daisey responds, calling for a culture where the artist is nurtured and not desperate for income.
• Scott Walters gives his take on Daisey's point, advocating to keep it simple and return regional theater to its core values.
• Don Hall calls Daisey and Walters out, arguing that if restructuring American theater was so simple, it would have happened already. Hall makes a parallel to a professional gambler complaining about lacking health insurance-it's his choice, after all.
• Here's when the shit really starts to hit the fan. First, Daisey lashes back at Hall, claiming Hall misrepresented his argument and shoots down the blackjack parallel:

  This is just dumb. I don't know where to start--do I start with how art isn't much like gambling? Or how what society gains from art is wildly different than what it gets from gamblers? Or do we talk about how one form of activity (gambling) is on the ascendency, while theater has been shrinking...oh, I give up. It's just a really facile analogy, and I'm not going to parse it.
  
  The only part of this that is true is that being a working artist *feels* like being a professional gambler. Otherwise, it's worthless.

• Then, out of nowhere, Adam Thurman swoops in. He takes Hall's comparison one step further, drawing a parallel to the World Series of Poker and how nearly 90% of the players are "Dead Money." This is just like the theater world, Thurman argues. A handful of people who have enough skill and have learned to take advantage of the system, and lots of people who have foolishly jumped into the fold and will never make it.
• Daisey goes apeshit on Thurman, arguing that theater is not a zero sum game where the success of one person depends on the failure of another. Theater is not competitive, and one person's success does not entail another man's failure.
  
• Walters give his two cents on the Hall-Thurman analogy, breaking down their artistic Darwinism and noting that there's an element of luck to it. This post is followed by a particularly nasty comment trolling session between Walters, Hall, and others.
• Thurman strikes back with what he claims to be a hard-line economics stance on how Daisey and Walters are unrealistic, with a post entitled "The Power of Scarcity."
• Walters argues that Hall and Thurman disagree with him and Daisey on whether fixing American theater is a normative or descriptive problem. Despite being the only academic in the group, Walters takes the normative side. Hall leaves a nasty comment calling Walters cracked.
• In his Friday roundup, Hall calls Thurman's article the "Best Fucking Theater Post of the Week"

And then they all called it a week and went out and had tea. Sheesh, I guess if you don't want drama in your blogging life, don't blog about drama.

My Take:
For one, I think Hall is right to point out that fluffy, oversimplistic talk accomplishes nothing. I also think Thurman is right to point out that there is an inherent talent gap in all fields, be it theater, poker, or law. That's a side of the starving artist argument that is often ignored. What I will say, however, is that Daisey is right to point out that there's no need for theater to be competitive. Thurman claims to be taking the realist economic stance, but he makes an egregious error in his view of scarciy.

Yes, resources are scarce in the arts economy, just as they are in the world economy. But the economics of art, just like the economics of the world, is not like a poker tournament. There's not a fixed amount of money involved, and there's no fixed pie for each person to acquire a percentage of. One theater professional's success does not need to mean another one starves. Walters is right that Thurman has taken a descriptive stance, but he's overlooked how flawed his descriptive stance is.

If you're going to talk economics, why not use an example from actual economics, instead of a poker tournament? When India developed a tech industry, did America's tech industry crumble? No. Instead, India provided an extended pool of resources that has helped the U.S. and world economy much more than it has hurt. If it wasn't for India's economic development, there would be no Citigroup today.

Contrary to Thurman's assessment of scarcity, more theater would not mean that there is a shortage of pieces of the pie to be had. It would instead mean that the pie gets bigger. The argument is not that a bad theater artist should make as much as good one, but he should be able to make an income that's sustainable. Healthcare should not be dependent on your success. A bad lawyer can still make six figures, while an exceptional one can make eight figures. Theater artists should be able to make a living the same way.

The economic explanation for why most theater artists do starve is that a theater professional is not as heavily demanded as a laywer, and there is an an abundance of theater people over what is demanded. This creates a surplus of theater workers, which means more unemployment. Demand, however, is elastic, and it can increase. If steps can be taken to shift a demand curve to the right, then there will be more theatrical professionals making more money. The demand could increase by creating more lively, cheaper theater. Lively and cheap theater requires artists who can take risks without worrying about starving because their medical bills are so high.

When a basic standard of living is met, theater jumps back into the world like a spring. Theater artists can take more risks and ticket prices go down. People start coming back to the theater, putting money into the system. A theater artist's expected income increases, meaning more people can live that life, and have more of an incentive to do so. The normative goals are met by descriptive economics. Simple as that, people.

Labels: adam thurman, don hall, economics, how theater failed america, mike daisey, scott walters

As a native of the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I see playwright-performer James Braly as a mirror image of the cool dads half my friends had growing up. Those were the dads who disproportionately ended up divorcing the moms, often for a younger woman. But Braly, who gave up his Central Park West apartment to improve his family life, has not divorced his wife Susan, despite having ample reason and opportunities to do so over the past twenty years. Having inherited an unstable family life from his childhood, Braly is a man who can’t thrive unless there’s a minimum baseline of chaos in his life. To use a phrase my mom used for my dad, Braly has two speeds: fast and off.

Braly got his expensive apartment as a speechwriter, and his skills as a writer are apparent throughout Life in A Marital Institution. The script never misses an opportunity for a punch line; one can easily see a politician using Braly's seemingly endless reservoir of verbal jabs. But more important than his natural sense of humor is Braly’s ability to distribute the blows equally among family, friends, and himself. Life in A Marital Institution achieves a balance between Braly’s self-righteousness and self-loathing that is rare in a one-man show. After years of writing speeches where the focus is on artifice, Braley has two decades' worth of truth-telling in store that the monologue format allows him to blurt out for an hour.

As easily as writing comes to Braly, he is not a natural performer. This is a double-edged sword for the play's overall impact. On the one hand, his plain old regular-guy storytelling performance style is a welcome relief, keeping things fresh throughout the evening. On the other hand, Braly’s performance will often betray his writing, as some lines don’t hit as hard as they should. In part to overcome his lack of an actor’s instincts, Braly has a tendency to mug with an annoying smirk when he delivers a particularly smart line. Once things turn serious, however, that smirk vanishes. As a performer, Braly is at his best when he is most vulnerable.

The tribulations of married life aren't exactly a new concept for drama, but Braly’s marital circumstances are legitimately exceptional. No primetime sitcom would touch James and Susan’s marriage, which includes planning on breastfeeding their two sons until the age of seven, having the entire family sleep in the same bed, and holding dinner parties where parents discuss eating their wives' placentas.

Susan’s Eastern spiritual leanings are a constant source of frustration for James (in what may be the best one-liner you’ll hear in New York this summer, James comments that "[he’s] never put 'exorcism' in the memo box of a check before"). In the play’s most emotionally taxing scene, that frustration becomes a matter of life and death. Yet Susan is as much a source of comfort to James as she is a source of rage. In James' family, a long-lasting marriage is an exception rather than the rule. Consider his dying sister who's marrying a violent Australian, a father who can’t hold down a marriage, or his more clueless sister, who owns a salon un-ironically named “Façade.”

While a one-man show usually makes its director invisible, here Hal Brooks establishes himself as this generation’s premier director of the format. Between Thom Pain, No Child, and now Life in A Marital Institution, he’s built a signature style of quick shifts, segmenting a play by lighting changes, and brief, abrupt audience engagement. The guidance he has provided Braly’s performance has proven to be invaluable.

After a few years of an identity crisis after Spalding Gray’s death, the monologue has made a triumphant return with a bevy of new, creative plays. Life in A Marital Institution opens as Mike Daisey’s How Theater Failed America, a similarly, frank, honest one-man show, just finished a heralded run a few blocks away. In today’s culture of theatrical excess, there’s a premium on unassuming, direct plays that cost a lot less but resonate a lot more. Life in A Marital Institution succeeds precisely because of its small goals. Who would have thought selling an apartment on Central Park West would be worth it after all?

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Through August 31 at the Soho Playhouse, 15 Vandam St. Written and performed By James Braly. Directed by Hal Brooks. Tickets can be purchased here. The show runs 1 hour, 5 minutes. This article was originally posted on blogcritics.com. Photo by Jaisen Crockett.

Labels: hal brooks, james braly, life in a martial institution, mike daisey, new york, theater review