locked up
by Douglas Messerli
Jack Richardson Gallows Humor in Douglas Messerli and Mac Wellman, eds. From the Other Side of the Century II: A New
American Drama 1960-1995 (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1998)
Richardson's play in two parts is really a study in early 1960s martial
relationships more than it is about a murderer soon to be hung. There is a
murderer, indeed, Walter, locked away for beating his wife to death with a golf
club—"forty-one strokes from the temple to the chin." But Walter was
clearly locked-away even before his tempestuous reaction. A man of complete
order, he cannot abide the prostitute sent to him by the Warden to take the
prisoner's mind off the gallows and lead him to his death with a smile on his face.
Walter, who has also just been served up a large chicken dinner, cannot even
think of eating it, and is horrified by Lucy's carnal appetites, which includes
not only bedding down with him, but consuming the chicken and tossing its bones
into the center of Walter's cell.
Walter is clearly a man of order, determined to clean and organize his
cell up to the very moment of his state-determined death. It is not that he is
unattracted to women, simply that he has no intention of detracting from the
system that has put him into the cell and now has determined the end of his
life. Walter is a number, 43556, and like Zero of Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine is thoroughly a man
of the system, a man whom after the murder of his wife has clearly abandoned
the dizzying world outside the prison walls and now is disturbed by
"perfume and overpowered flesh" of the female with which he has been
provided. We can only suspect that
self-imprisonment, being locked away in an unhappy life, is what led to his
frenzied act.
Lucy, on the other hand, has a job to accomplish, and with philosophical
relish attempts to convince Walter to change his ways, to, after twenty years
of living a meager existence to seek out his reward in her "mouth,
fingertips, and breasts." The first part ends, obviously, with Walter's
being seduced by the joys of life which he was clearly seeking in wife's
murder.
On the other hand, the Warden and Hangman are even more locked away in
their lives than has been Walter. At least he has gone temporarily mad, has
left the confines of normalcy. Phillip, the unhappy Hangman, is so frustrated
with his life that he has, as is wife describes it, begun to do hundreds of
little things—tossing ashes into his slippers, skipping club meetings,
purchasing a pair of red socks—that reveal his determination to change his life
or, as he puts it, his desire to "open the window and slither down the
drainpipe to disappear forever."
The morning of Walter's hanging, Phillip is determined to wear a black
mask over his head, like a Medieval figure—an idea met with hardy resistance
from the Warden and Martha, Phillip's. As he goes off to slip on the mask, the
Warden and Martha discuss Phillip's behavior. Sympathizing with what she has
had to endure, the Warden reveals his long-time love for Martha, and,
eventually, she admits her love for him. The Warden also lives in an unhappy
relationship, his own wife having had various sexual encounters with plumbers
and other working men. The two determine to have an encounter, but hilariously
cannot even find a date when they might meet, so involved are they with the
society in which they live. As Phillip returns with his mask, he discovers the
two kissing, and, outraged, insists he that can now leave as he long wanted
desired.
Martha off-handedly invites him to first help her with the dishes, and
before he can even comprehend what he has agreed to, he perceives he is
trapped, locked away in his own staid identity, unable to even open the kitchen
door. When it comes time for him to attend the hanging, Lucy must pop the door
open, promising him "something very special for dinner."
At least Walter has had the courage of
his convictions, while these "free" figures are more locked away in
their determined patterns than Walker is in his cell. As the Prologue,
performed by Death, suggests, they too will ultimately die. Walter has lived a
freer life in the short time his has to remain on this earth, than the Warden,
Hangman, and his wife.
If Richardson's little masterwork seems
cynical, it also represents the intense dissatisfaction with everyday existence
that animated other American playwrights of the time such as Edward Albee,
Arthur Kopit, and Jack Gelber—precursors of the later 1960s generation that
would ultimately, in only temporarily, alter definitions of freedom and love.
Unfortunately, Gallows Humor, was to be the last of Richardson's successful plays.
Two further works, Lorenzo and Xmas in Las Vegas closed on Broadway
after only four performances each. Although he long served as drama critic for Commentary, the author wrote no new
plays. He did help his friend Elaine Kaufman establish her East Side
restaurant, Elaine's, suggesting larger tables and promising to provide
writers, which he did.
Los Angeles, July 11, 2012
Reprinted from US Theater Review (July 2012).
No comments:
Post a Comment