London Mauling (A Theatre Tale, archived)

A delicious droplet by Steffen Silvis from 2GQ #1, "London Mauling" follows Steffen's journey from Portland to London, where a play he wrote is being produced.:   

To purchase a copy of the print journal in which this originally appeared, look for "Issue No. 1: The Issue of Summer Finery and Weak Tea" . We have about five copies left.

London Mauling
by Steffen Silvis

To hell with national pride and New York. Any American playwright worth his or her breath desires nothing more than to have something produced in London. Britain remains the motherland for drama in English, and London is the epi(c)center for productions. Needless to say, when I was informed that a one-act play of mine had won a competition in London, and was to be produced and performed upon the stage of the Gielgud Theatre on Shaftsbury Avenue, my hick head spun. So, I packed my bags, left my employers in the lurch, and flew to jolly old.

My play chronicles how two theater critics who, having stomached their fill of shitty stage work, turn toward violence and murder, which they dub "physical criticism." It's a cathartic piece as, you see, I am a theater critic by profession (until I can earn my feed through playwriting, newspaper hackery puts lunch in the bucket).

Having had my share of dismal evenings in local (Portland, Oregon) theaters, where I often sat in the dark devising tortures for the painted hams and fools shunting about on the stage, I was following the oldest rule for writers: "Write about what you know." That the two injurious and poisoned critics in my piece delighted me was rewarding enough; that others felt it deserved an award was quite amazing. Surely, the judges of the New London Playwrights' Competition included a few fellow critics, who experienced an acute identification with my characters' plight. I arrived in London practically quivering with excitement. Could this showcasing of my little epic actually bring me the attention that I have up-until-now craved but lacked? My mind reeled with fantasies of being officially discovered by London talent scouts. The Gielgud Theatre would play Schwab's to my Lana Turner. Naturally, this was an open invitation to hubris.

The director, a "young genius" down from Cambridge had already cast the play with three fairly well-known West End actors. I had some email exchanges with the Young Genius before fleeing the States, which, in retrospect, should have tipped me off that things might not go as swimmingly as I fantasized. Throughout the piece, the critics lard their dialogue with quips and quotes from plays. Admittedly, some of the references are somewhat obscure, culled from Jules Feiffer's great Little Murders, Clifford Odet's Waiting for Lefty and Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi. However, I would have expected a "Young Genius" down from Cambridge to have gotten references to Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Sad to say, I had to lead the poor Young Genius throughout the entire play, explaining every reference.

Still, my little play was to be plopped upon the Gielgud's stage, so I felt I could handle the lapses in the Young Genius's theatrical education.

I arrived early for the dress rehearsal the day before the thing was to open. I met the actors, who I generally liked, and then we waited for the Young Genius to show up. He was a half-hour late, but had a relatively good excuse. I was struck by how fucking gorgeous he was; one of those lithe, blond Englishmen whom pretentious queers (such as myself) long to be punted down the Cam with. In short, he was an escapee from Brideshead Revisited. As Gore Vidal said upon meeting the young Martin Amis for the first time, "Oh, to be in England now that England is here." Hear, hear.

However, I quickly learned that this handsome cliché of Englishness was: a) dumb as a blond post and b) riding into theatrical glory on the coattails of various gentlemen callers.

He stooped and conquered.

I took my place in the sixth row of the orchestra to watch the first run-through. The Young Genius was two rows ahead of me. The lights went down, my heart leapt up, and the thing began. Having written the play, it would be assumed that I would be one of the first people in an audience to recognize the dialogue. Not here. The actors were delivering the lines in strange animals sounds. One seemed to be imitating a sheep, while the other was doing a passable job as a goose. I sat frozen in shock that the play was suppose to open in one day's time, and that the actors were turning it into a Fisher-Price tour of a barnyard.

Other than the great pity that I felt for myself, I did feel great sorrow for these poor actors who obviously lacked any valid theater training. It was an unbearable experience fraught with some tasty irony. Here I was, a theater critic who had written a play about theater critics who murder bad actors, sitting in a theater reviewing this play by myself performed by bad actors. Vomit welled in my throat.

The run-through limped to its conclusion, and I readied myself for the anger that would surely come pouring from the Young Genius. Instead, he began to applaud wildly and said, "Well, that was the best yet." He turned his beaming face of flawless pallor toward me. "Well?," he stated more than asked, expecting my praise for his interpretation. "I don't know what to say," I stammered.

"Yes, I know," he gushed with pride. "No," I said, "you don't understand. I don't know what to say because I don't know what the hell they were saying." This caught him off guard. "What do you mean," he asked incredulously.

"I mean," I began, "I have no idea why these actors are making animal noises through my play."

"ANIMAL NOISES!" The Young Genius looked on the verge of murder himself. I continued, "Why are they making those sounds?"

"Are you referring to their American accents?" he snapped.

"Their..." I couldn't quite grasp what I was being told.

"THEIR AMERICAN ACCENTS!" he bellowed.

Gathering all my strength of character, and finding some little-known corner of internal calm, I informed him that I knew no Americans who spoke as nasally and high-pitched as he imagined. I also told him that the point of the production was really to allow audiences to "hear" new work as well as see it, and that no one could possibly utilize both senses as the delivery was so painfully indecipherable that the only natural reaction would be to avert their gaze and study their shoes on the floor.

"You don't know what you're saying," he spat out.

"Yes he does."

The voice came from the stage. One of the actors had moved to the lip. "These 'accents' you have us doing are shit, frankly, dahling." The temperature dropped quite noticeably. The Young Genius looked decked. Then the other actor joined in. "Yes, dahling," she said, "I can barely understand myself." It was a revolution.

"I see," seethed the YG. "Well, then you can do the bloody thing yourself." A welcome invitation, but it came rather late in the day. Nonetheless, the show went up the following evening with the actors basically redirecting themselves and speaking a passable mid-Atlantic accent. Now I must reconsider all those vile things I say about actors in the script.

_______
Steffen Silvis wrote the award-winning plays Eurydice Rising and Liberty Oregon, and is the theater critic for Willamette Week.  UPDATE: Steffen now rocks Prague, rather than silly ol' Portland...