New York hot versus LA Cool

Hudson Review, The, Summer 2003 by Hornby, Richard

PLAYWRITING IS NOT A YOUNG PERSON'S PROFESSION. Aeschylus was around seventy when he wrote the Oresteia, as was Sophocles when he wrote Oedipus Tyrannus. Shakespeare, more precocious, began writing plays in his mid-twenties, but the truly great ones came at least a decade later. Ibsen made his name with A Doll's House, his sixteenth play, written at the age of forty-nine. The usual explanation for the slow development is that it takes time for writers to learn the practicalities of the theatre, from physical constraints like keeping track of characters and getting them on and off stage, to deeper artistic problems of knowing how to create roles that an actor can bring to life, rather than just characters who may read well on the page. Thus Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Shakespeare began their theatrical careers as actors, while Ibsen began as a director.

Two promising American playwrights today, one in New York and the other in Los Angeles, are actually in their thirties, with careers stretching back more than a decade. New Yorker Stephen Adly Guirgis began his career with the multiethnic LAByrinth Theater Company as "an actor and a fuckup," but has turned to writing with stunning results; Los Angelean Justin Tanner has acted, directed, and produced plays (including his own) in addition to writing. Like most people writing for the stage these days, both Guirgis and Tanner are less interested in plot than in characterization; their plays ramble, and often end perfunctorily, but they pass the first test of playwriting by having roles that actors love to play, and audiences to watch. Closely drawn from contemporary urban life, the offbeat, distinctive, hilarious characters grab hold of you, and never let go.

In addition to focusing on character development, Guirgis operates through lyrical dialog, which is unusual in playwriting these days, and which will probably prevent him from going the way of most American playwrights, i.e., he won't end up in Hollywood as third co-writer on Terminator 4. More poet than playwright, Guirgis is obsessed with words, creating characters who are themselves compulsive talkers. Their speeches are wordy and repetitive, variations on some theme, or simple reiterations for incantatory effect, always mesmerizing even when you merely read the lines to yourself in the script. Guirgis' basic poetic technique is to mix religious imagery with New York street slang, as in the titles of his two best-known plays, Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train and Our Lady of 121st Street.

The former piece begins with an inmate of the Manhattan Correctional Center, symbolically named Angel Cruz, trying over and over to recite the Lord's Prayer ("Our Father, who art in heaven, Howard be thy name") while the other inmates shout obscenities in an attempt to shut him up. It seems that Angel has been incarcerated for shooting the leader of a religious cult "in the ass" as revenge for the cult leader having lured away Angel's best friend. Angel speaks of the cultist with contempt and his typical slangy eloquence:

If there was "another" Son of God runnin' around here, juss pickin' up where his older brother left off, tryin' to save our ass: He sure as shit ain't Reverend Kim! How many sons of God you know drive a Lexus? Or got million dollar stock portfolios? Or go skiing in Aspen? 'Cuz I'll tell you right now: If Jesus Christ existed, and I ain't sayin' he did, but if, by some miracle he actually did, the mothafuckah didn't ski!!

When Reverend Kim dies on the operating table, Angel finds himself transferred to Rikers Island, caught up in a bureaucratic prison system. His overworked, burnt-out public defender mistakes him for another case. Beaten regularly by other inmates, he attempts suicide, then is transferred to solitary confinement for protective custody, where he is abused by a moralistic guard named Valdez.

Angel's only human contact is another inmate in protective custody, a serial killer named Lucius Jenkins, who is fighting extradition to Florida. Angel and Lucius meet for an hour a day for exercise in a cage on the prison roof. Lucius has three obsessions: furious physical workouts, intense chain-smoking, and a garbled, hysterical religion. (Angel seems to attract religious fanatics.) "Usurp the Serpent, Lord, he crawlin' up my leg!" he cries. "Irrigate the bile, Lord, ketchin' in my neck. Take away the vengeance, Lord, swirlin' in my brain! Lobotomize the evil, Lord, slinkin' in my brain!" Lucius has an amazing charisma, to the point where a previous guard practically became his manservant. Lucius' lifestyle changed, however, when the man was replaced by the brutal Valdez, who ridicules the killer's newfound beliefs like a street-smart existentialist: "I am a good man because I choose to be! End of story! Not because I fear God. Not because I wanna go to some holy playground when I kick the bucket!"

Lucius is finally sent to Florida and executed, with the friendly guard from Rikers, loyal to the end, in attendance. Apparently Lucius sweet-talked another guard into assisting him, because an autopsy revealed large concentrations of heroin and cocaine in his system! Afterward, Angel comes to trial. In a final scene, his lawyer describes how she put him on the stand, where his sincerity nearly won over the jury-who, after all, had no love for cult leaders-until Angel, compulsive talker to the end, began babbling and confessing. "Angel will be eligible for parole in 2026," she concludes.