“Vernon God Little”

Vernon God Little (Theatre)
Adapted from DBC Pierre’s novel by Tanya Ronder
Seen at: The Young Vic - Tuesday, May 1, 2007
**1/2

Vernon Little is a man much put upon. A none-too-sympathetic bastion of averageness in a sea of intolerably selfish people. The play begins in the aftermath of a school shooting, with a tone perhaps slightly more satirical than is wholly comfortable for an audience still wincing at our fascination with the tragic events at Virginia Tech. Vernon’s best friend, Jesus, has rushed from the classroom amid taunts from his fellow students, and returned to the high school fully armed and murderous. Vernon, curiously absent during the massacre-suicide that wiped out all of his friends, is immediately tarred with his friend’s feather: outsider, oddity, pariah. The proof can be found in every trace of teenaged alienation: his mother’s lingerie catalogues hidden with internet porn under his floorboards, a joint and some Acid he was holding for a friend, his curious inability to account for his attitudes and behaviors. When the media come to his small Texan town, led by charlatan/impresario Lally (who promptly seduces Vernon’s mother, a woman so terminally self-absorbed that she can only show interest in her son by asking after his bowel movements), Vernon is caught up in a frenzy of interpretation so ludicrous it begins creating its own violence to match the hype.

The Young Vic’s production is still in previews, and its edges remain a little rough, no doubt because an actor in the complex ensemble production had to be replaced at the last minute after a serious accident. Years ago I produced a show that encountered the same stumbling block a few days before opening, and I am not sure I have gotten over the stress yet, so I have instinctive sympathy for these actors and the crew. Although the show is filled with a manic enthusiasm that I can’t help but admire (and that is clearly a necessity with this expansive script), it has yet to find the proper rhythm that will make the chaos of the plot unwind meaningfully and the dialogue cohere with audience reaction. And seeing a play off its rhythm is a painful thing, even if the plot of Vernon God Little weren’t already so excruciating, so unrelentingly disastrous, that it is hard to endure (I seem to remember that the Booker Prize-winning novel, which I have not yet read, encountered this reaction from a number of readers). Sometimes the manic energy shades off into a recklessness or imprecise broadness of acting which makes blocking absurd rather than, well, absurdist (showing the flight of our hero by having him run in place seems like something out of a scene prepared half-hearted for a high school acting class) and turns characters into cartoons. Hopefully the previews will give the production time to acquire to polish that made the allegories in the Young Vic’s Brecht Fest such paragons of non-naturalistic characterization.

A couple of odds and ends:

First, the American accents struck me as better than those I often hear on the British stage, with its fondness for Arthur Miller that yields a “boy, golly” accent with the squeakiness of a – painting. Then I had to ask myself, is the Texan accent just easier to acquire than more neutral or mild American dialects, or is it my unfamiliarity with it that is blinding (or, rather, deafening) me to the flaws. Certainly I am now much more sensitive to the Southernism I know well, the range of North Carolinian accents that have been imitated so poorly by non-Tar Heel actors in the recent spate of films set in the state (Loggerheads, for instance, or Junebug), and cringe at stereotypical drawls which would have struck me as perfectly authentic a few years before.

Secondly, this production provided me with the very odd experience of seeing country line dancing for the second time in as many days on the London stage. But this time enthusiasm held true for the company, and their heel-slapping was so much more lively (and motivated) than that in Attempts on Her Life (last night's show) that I involuntarily let out a tiny whoop of appreciation and delight. Cheers to them for that.

Melodious Rants and Passionate Cannon Fodder

My favorite uncontextualized academic quotation of the day, from Lucyle Hook’s introduction to the 1696 satire on female playwrights of the London stage, The Female Wits:

Mrs. Barry’s ability and her strength of voice in expressing the passion led to the full development of the rant, which was the test of the dramatic actress as the aria is the test of the opera singer. Ordinarily in a tragedy, there were two: one, the melodious expression of unattainable love in the first part of the play, and the second in the death scene, usually of raving madness. In The Royal Mischief, there are at least six major rants, each more powerful and surprising than the one preceding it.

Later, from a summary of this play (by Mrs. Manley):

Bassima, however, has been poisoned and is dying when Osman comes to her, urging the consummation of their passion then and there, before it is too late. Her gentle refusal to stray from virtue on her deathbed awakens him from his unplatonic spell, and he begs forgiveness but is interrupted in the middle of his contrite speech, led away, crammed alive into a cannon and shot off.

Two points:

1. No, it doesn’t make any more sense if you hear the plot that comes before this (though apparently there is a lot of erotic writhing on beds for people one has never seen).
2. I can’t wait to get a hold of this play and read it.
   

Apologies from London

Apologies for my long absence! I hope no one has given up on me utterly because of it. I offer up this explanation by way of apology:

My March was filled to brimming with conference-going, which demanded an unusual level of, let us say, non-blogging work from me. All of this culminated at the beginning of April with a sprightly (if inconsistently so) popular culture conference, where I learned many an interesting tidbit about Battlestar Galactica (would that I had gotten there in time to hear about Freud, the gaze, and the Cylon body). No sooner was that conference finished than I spirited myself across the Atlantic (with the aid of a major airline) to London, where I have now been suffering from feeble internet access (I can only find a wireless signal if I crouch on the bathroom floor) and a terrible dearth of free time for a week and a half now.

I must admit to feeling rather smug and virtuous about the busyness of my schedule since I have arrived, especially since this (my non-teaching, dissertation-writing) year of graduate school has been largely characterized by the most profound sloth. I have been lounging around my apartment (or my boyfriend’s apartment on the West Coast, or my parents’ house in DC) like a figure from a medieval allegory of the seven deadly sins, unable to move from the couch except (barely) to feed myself, pick up the TiVo remote, figure out why the wireless router is tormenting me with dysfunction, or fetch a new book. Whole days go by without my catching a glimpse of the outside world. College counselors should serious consider photographing me for prophylactic campaigns about the dangers of graduate school.

But, before you send a flock of life coaches to rescue and rehabilitate me, rest assured that travel has hoisted me forcibly off the couch and back into life. I have spent some part of virtually every day since I arrived in London working on my dissertation (chapter 3 of 4, baby!) at the British Library, the most incomparably work-inducing location I have ever frequented. Most mornings and early afternoons will find me there (I admit that I am taking time from my studies there currently to type this up), after which I go traipsing (well, more like manically rushing) off to the theatre in the afternoon or evening (and, on four exhausting occasions, both).

Determined to be more virtuous about blogging (by typing my entries up in Word before transferring them to Blogger, in the hopes that I will then be able to make use of the brief flashes of internet-access lucidity I get in my flat), I counted up all the things I had done since arriving here 12 days ago that I want to blog, and found that I had 21 entries to write (12 live performances, 2 films/DVDs, 3 exhibits/historic house visits, 4 books). So I had better hop to it, and do the best I can. After all, I am seeing two more plays tomorrow.