My Living Theater

April 1975 – the final quarter of college and the end of 17 years of schooling. My afternoon job at Rogers No. 3 coal mine conveniently came to an end.  Six months of 17-hour days driving from Enumclaw to Seattle, attending classes at U.W., studying, then on to Ravensdale for eight hours of grimy work, showering in the washhouse, with a half-hour drive back home, to bed by midnight, only to repeat the process six or seven hours later.  It wore me down.  I wanted to retire.  Spring break was my last week, thankfully on the day shift.

That quarter provided a fresh beginning. Though only one college credit shy of graduating, I took a full schedule of 14 credits, including two finance classes to round out my Economics degree. Expanding my interests, I chose a two-credit Home Ec class in nutrition, one credit for tennis, plus a three-credit class called The Living Theater.

Growing up I had zero interest in theater and never even went to a school play during high school.  I did attend one musical my senior year – the Who’s Tommy, presented at the Moore Theater, with a little-known, Bette Midler as the Acid Queen.  In May of my freshman year, I saw a touring company’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar.

My true interest in theater grew one Sunday afternoon during the summer of 1973 while reading Rex Reed’s movie reviews in the Seattle P-I.  Reed highlighted a just-announced collection of filmed plays to be presented in movie theaters, on a limited basis, and only by subscription.  The American Film Theatre, produced by Eli Landau filmed eight stagings of top theatrical works all featuring notable actors.  Each film would be shown just four times, and exclusively at 500 select movie theaters across the nation.

I convinced Mom to subscribe and Dad joined, as well as Aunt Betty and Uncle Charlie Falk.  The local showings were at the Crossroads Theater, east of Bellevue.  I was a junior at the U.W. and each month drove my 1967 Renault across the I-90 floating bridge to meet the folks with an occasional dinner beforehand.  In the “don’t trust anyone over 30” atmosphere of the early 1970s, a sentiment, I roundly rejected, it was a thrill to hang with my parents, aunt, and uncle, all comfortably in their late 40s and early 50s.  I took pride in having launched this event to see the best of Broadway.  The ushers even handed out real playbills!

Among the plays we saw: The Homecoming, A Delicate Balance, Butley, Rhinoceros, and Three Sisters.  But, the greatest theatrical event in my estimation was The Iceman Cometh starring Lee Marvin as Hickey, a traveling salesman in an all-star cast of Robert Ryan, Frederick March, Bradford Dillman, and a young Jeff Bridges.  The Iceman Cometh was four hours long, three acts, and two intermissions.  It showcased Eugene O’Neill’s story of dead-enders with delusional pipe dreams who stayed drunk in Harry Hopes’ last chance saloon and boarding house to avoid facing the world.

That introduction to serious drama couldn’t have come at a better time.  We subscribed for the second season that featured Galileo, In Celebration, and The Man in the Glass Booth.  Unfortunately, the major Hollywood studios pressured local theaters to cancel American Film Theater screenings and the enterprise thereafter collapsed.

But I was now hooked on stage productions.  The Living Theater class, in the engineering department of all places, was my new ticket to more serious drama.  In addition to learning about the structure of plays and the various venues where they’re presented, students were required to attend seven live plays at the three theaters on campus, including the revered Showboat, a floating auditorium moored in Portage Bay.  In addition, I saw three off-campus productions including Death of a Salesman at Tacoma’s U.P.S. and a pair of Tom Stoppard offerings at Seattle’s Second Stage.

Theater of the Absurd – Which performance?

The Living Theater class really sharpened my prose as we were required to write reviews of the required plays.  One performance wasn’t on the syllabus but really piqued my imagination.  It was a double-feature of two short plays by Tom Stoppard, After Magritte and The Real Inspector Hound at the Second Stage theatre. The Second Stage was affiliated with the Seattle Repertory Theatre and typically presented more experimental shows.

Both Stoppard offerings were from a dramatic style called the Theatre of the Absurd – plays that reject traditional storytelling by focusing on what happens when narrative communication breaks down.  In late April, I took Mom to see the double feature and wrote the following review, trying to capture the surreal and absurd nature of what we saw, both on stage and off.

“Reality”

We come on the sloop John B
my dear mother and me.

We entered the Second Stage arena well before show time, found two second-row seats, and proceeded to experience the sights and sounds of the theater.

I pointed out all the Seattle luminaries listed as Second Stage supporters. Behind us, a woman in her middle fifties, whom we were going to encounter frequently as the night progressed, made the same observation. Our eavesdropping skills were in top form so my mother and I proceeded to monitor this woman’s conversations the rest of the night.

“Oh, look here, Christopher Bailey is on the list of supporters. I wonder what night he comes?”

Accompanied by two other women (from their conversations, I assumed the talkative one to be a grandmother with her daughter, and a friend), Mrs. Chatterbox, which my mother appropriately christened her, spoke, “There’s Lori.”

Lori was one of three girls of high school age who were ushers. Lori, it turned out, was also the garrulous grandmother’s granddaughter.

“Now why doesn’t she seat those people over there, plenty of good seats right there. I was shopping today and . . . oh, look, who is that?  Isn’t that Jean Enersen?”

The daughter replied, “Yes, that girl on Seattle Today. No, that isn’t Jean Enersen, it’s that Shirley, yes Shirley.”

“Isn’t that Jean Enersen, the blonde one on King Newservice,” the loquacious grandmother butted in.

“It’s Shirley, that girl on Seattle Today.”

“Now where is Lori going to seat her?  Look, Lori is putting that Jean Enersen in those good seats. I wonder why SHE gets those seats. Just because she’s on TV.”

“That isn’t Jean Enersen. It’s that Shirley.”

“Well, whoever it is, there’s seats over there, Lori,” the grandmother commands as if she’s talking to her granddaughter who must be fifty feet away.

The play begins. After Magritte is a delightfully surrealistic, satirical takeoff on something resembling a mystery or Sherlock Holmes type of script.

At intermission, the fun continues. Lori, the usher comes over to visit with her mother and grandmother. Mrs. Chatterbox asks, “Wasn’t that Jean Enersen you seated, Lori? Why did she get such good seats?”

The mother responds, “That’s Shirley, the girl on Seattle Today, not Jean Enersen.”

Lori tells her tale of what the ‘snobby’ Jean Enersen or Shirley said. In a mock voice, she repeats, “We don’t want THESE seats, I would prefer being seated there.”

“Who does she think she is?” the grandmother retorts.  Lori and her two usher friends giggle and tell of their other experiences as ushers.

Mrs. Chatterbox again, “Look now, that Jean Enersen is leaving, what, doesn’t she like the play? I can’t stand her anyway.  Did you see her show yesterday when they had that psychologist who talked about symbols? I absolutely detest that show.”

“That’s not Jean Enersen. It’s that Shirley on Seattle Today.”

“Well whatever, look, she’s not coming back. After getting those good seats, she goes and leaves in the middle of the play.  I can’t stand her show. That psychologist explained what it means if you like . . . uh, I mean, uh . . . relate to a circle, a square, a triangle, or a Z.  I draw circles and that means . . .” as she proceeded to give a lengthy pop-Freudian interpretation to drawing circles.

The Real Inspector Hound was another trip into the fantasy world of the absurd. Eventually, the critics attending the supposed play were involved in the fun, murder, and intrigue as critics became players and the players became critics.

Leaving the theater at the end of the plays, I turned to my mother and asked, “Well, what did you think of those shows?  Rather unreal, huh?”

She replied, “Which performance?”

By William Kombol
April 28, 1975
HSS 451, Jack Leahy, Assoc. Professor

Professor Leahy gave me an ‘A’ for the class, writing, “

Great!  You ought to be a playwright.  This is a funny paper.  I don’t quite know why, but the Repertory seems to attract these kinds of audiences – try opening night at a regular Rep presentation – it’s downright awesome, but very much a part of theater.  The Elizabethans were the same. And that’s what makes it fun.  Very much enjoyed reading this paper.”

My interest in theater grew.

My interest in theater grew with each new play I saw.  I kept programs and playbills from most performances and usually stapled the ticket stub to the cover.  While writing this essay I made a quick count of the collection which totals over 300, though some were lost.  In the early years, I primarily saw were dramas.  Back then only the biggest musicals yielded touring companies. But any musical with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s name attached found me attending.

Through all of them, Tom Stoppard remained my favorite playwright.  And with each new play of his I saw, so did my admiration.  Stoppard’s plays are first produced in the United Kingdom, and only his most successful make it to the U.S.  Still, I’ve been able to see most of his best including the breakout hit, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Real Thing, Arcadia, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and Leopoldstadt, his most recent.  With the advent of audio plays, I’ve listened to the lion’s share of the rest, including the mesmerizing Darkside, inspired by Pink Floyd’s 1973 album.  Stoppard is generally considered the greatest living English language playwright.  His most popular film adaptation is Shakespeare in Love.

In addition to seeing live performances, these days I’m more often listening to the likes of L.A. Theater Works or other recordings found on Libby and Audible.  It may not be for everyone, but when you’re hooked on live drama, an audio play will do quite nicely.

Below are some of my favorite audio plays:

Broadway Bound – In my estimation, Neil Simon’s concluding comedic drama of an autobiographical trilogy, may be one of the finest works of the 20^th century.  It mixes humor with pathos and when you’re not laughing you might just find yourself shedding a tear.  The L.A. Theater Works audio production is superb.

Copenhagen – This weighty play explores the ethics and morality of developing the atomic bomb. Michael Frayn, one of England’s leading playwrights explores the real-life 1941 meeting between Niels Bohr, the great Danish physicist, and Werner Heisenberg, Germany’s leading nuclear scientist. There are two audio versions – pick the one starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Heisenberg.

The Real Thing is generally considered Tom Stoppard’s best.  Its focus is broken marriages, adultery, and the nature of love, more specifically the real thing, interspersed with two plays within the play we’re seeing.

Arcadia, another Stoppard favorite explores the relationship between past and present, order and disorder, certainty and uncertainty, plus the nature of evidence and truth in history, mathematics, and physics.  It’s a complex play that requires several listening’s to fully understand. 

Darkside is probably Stoppard’s most approachable audio play, as it was written as such to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon.  It’s 45 minutes long with philosophical dialogue interspersed with music from the album. It’s a play you can listen to time and time again and still hear something fresh.

Post script: Ian Hunter’s 1981 song, “Theater of the Absurd” doesn’t really rise to what playwrights of that style are trying to achieve. Still it’s an amusing song and Hunter, former lead singer in Mott the Hoople is one of my favorites, so here’s a video link with lyrics:

https://youtu.be/OFdfm77R9is?si=Orj8d3nlt0md5tlo