Stage Directions

Israel Horovitz is one of the seminal American playwrights of the 70's, but I've never known much of his work. To me, he's most notable for producing Indian Wants The Bronx and 1/3 of the Beastie Boys. It's probably a gap in my reading I need to address at some point, that generation that grew up around Caffe Cino and La Mama. I'm often surprised by the playwrights of that generation, like Horovitz and Lanford Wilson and John Guare. Coming of theatrical age in the nineties, they were the Old Guard and it's a shock when I'm reminded how experimental they were, how groundbreaking. For Christ's sake ... Line's been running continuously since 1974 and has an introduction here by no less than Eugene Ionesco.

Stage Directions is one of those experiments, a formal exercise where the characters speak only in stage directions. It's interesting as an experiment, waiting to see if Horovitz can execute and stick the landing. And it's largely a successful highwire act: he cheats a bit in a long section of exposition, but otherwise tells a simple silent scene of grief in an incredible amount of detail that would otherwise never work on stage. I think that incredible detail is fascinating, as it emphasizes small gesture over big words and points out what we so often give short shrift to on stage.

But is the underlying content a scene worth seeing, and a story that needs to be told beyond that formal exercise? Three siblings come into a room after a funeral consumed with grief and lust and leave in about the same state. There's not a lot of journey, and quite a bit of creepy. I suppose the question I ask is whether I would be as interested in the script if it were not for the exercise of speaking only in stage directions ... and the answer's not "yes".