The mouse goes out and nibbles around in the theater. Latest post to westportnow.com.
If you are headed to the Westport Country Playhouse at any time in the near future, not just for the stellar new production of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” but for any production, I advise you to sit far away from me, if you know me by sight.
Why? I am an eavesdropper, especially in our town’s homey, pretty fabulous looking theater. I am always a writer and reporter, trying to listen in on “everyman’s” thoughts to take the pulse of the Zeitgeist, you might say.
I like to write down people’s comments, just like that! Just as I heard them. Don’t worry, you may be shamed but you won’t be named.
I am not in the theater to critique the show, but rather to incorporate relevant social opinion as it pertains to the arts in this era—a snapshot of how as a town we relate to art, to culture, to each other. Your dialogues make me think. Make me react.
I have overheard praise of canned, lighthearted revivals done by deft directors with innovative sets, and with highly professional actors. I have heard the comments on great scoring and triumphant performances for musicals, and, whether I like the play in its totality, I could agree.
I, however, am a big fan of hard-hitting plays that make me think or make me cry. I like to ponder. I like to see the good in everything. Even a bad play has a reason for being and I try to figure out what went right or wrong, but more than anything I try to see why it got into the Playhouse mix.
The man who sat behind me on preview opening night for “The Diary of Anne Frank” was a most non-felicitous fellow who certainly deserves to have his opinion heard. I was appalled at his pre-curtain judgment that the Playhouse was making a mistake to “to dwell on these subjects from so long ago—to include such a downer in the season.”
Wow. That was a shallow arrow in my heart, and from someone who had probably just had a lovely dinner in Fairfield County and who wanted to continue the evening in complete harmony with his own sense of himself.
He was unaware, and skeptical, when I informed him that the Westport Arts Center and the Westport Country Playhouse were conjoined in a thematic exploration of “Memory.”
I didn’t get a chance to tell him that a Holocaust survivor’s daughter, the visionary artistic curator at WAC who put together a remarkable exhibition with a good deal of Holocaust art, Helen Klisser During, is one of the most upbeat people that I know and her demeanor belies the gravity of her ancestor’s lives. “Not dwell on these subjects?”
I informed him, whether he wanted to hear it or not, that I was very lucky because, as far as I know, I had no relatives exterminated in Germany, or trapped in Holland before being sent to the camps. My relatives came here around 1898, all of them.
But my luck doesn’t prevent me from reflecting on horrifying events. Doesn’t introspection guard us from vanity? From arrogance? Didn’t denial or the lack of desire to know about these things create the worst sort of horror for the Jews in those countries that were not so lucky as we were?
“The Diary of Anne Frank” is indeed a play that leaves you with a somber thought. But it is a play about the amazing ways humanity “hopes” despite human unimaginable suffering. It is about everything we need to dwell on forever.
Anne Frank was on a real life journey into womanhood while in hiding from the Nazis. She told herself the truth with humor and pathos. She was one of the rare beings who survive to inspire others despite her physical death during the liberation of the camps. “Not dwell on these subjects?”
At the end of the first act, during the black out, there was an overwhelming, reverent silence. “Deathly still” would be an accurate term. No one was running to the bathroom as they did in “Happy Days.” No one was gleefully checking out the orchestra pit as they did for “I Do I Do!”
The woman sitting in front of me sighed when the lights came up, “I couldn’t applaud,” she said. “I didn’t want to interrupt what was happening almost in real life and in my heart.” Anne Frank lives today because we should dwell on atrocities. They happen over and over, and it’s artists who are left to tell the tale.
We must dwell on things that make that man sad, or make him uncomfortable, or better yet, remove him from his privileged reality. We shall applaud the existence of hope instead of avoiding what makes us despair. We shall certainly applaud the selection of this play, because it’s life affirming.
If we don’t pay attention to Anne Frank’s memoir, or to “Memory” as it has been captured visually in the exhibit at WAC, if we are only willing to watch rousing musicals or hear Noel Coward’s flippant scripts, we will be consigned to our own narcissism.
That’s a place where all art will be the same. Where art will no longer have a purpose. A smiley face will do just fine above the mantle, and the dialogue we hear everyday will only be, “Have a nice day!”
