nunoncastors

I was invited along to the theatre on Saturday night to watch a play by Tennessee Williams. This is, as you may guess, not something I would normally do on a Saturday evening. Indeed, under almost any circumstance this is not something I would normally do. I think that it is for this reason that the whole experience was somewhat more edifying than several pints down the pub and a stint of badly coordinated dancing.

I can feel you raising questioning eyebrows and thinking thoughts along the lines of “what” and “really” upon discovering this and your sarcasm has been duly noted. Rest assured that it does make me feel all warm inside.

The thing is though, for someone so obsessed with books and words as to desire a personal library of their own creation, someone who is drawn to museums like a moth to a flame, I actually spend very little time doing anything overtly cultural. I enjoy gigs, plays, art installations and galleries. If you were to suggest that we should drive several miles to some long forgotten country house with the sole purpose of attending a craft fair where, amongst other things, there was a wide selection of homemade jams and chutney’s, I’d go. I’d go and I’d enjoy myself immensely. Yet for some reason I’d never think of going myself, which is odd really, when you think about it.

Anyway, the play was Summer and Smoke. It’s a tale of unrequited love and features a male protagonist who is a bit of a shit. I say this because he starts off as a rabble-rousing man about town, always on the lookout for number one and ends up a respected doctor with a beautiful fiancé. Why does this make him a shit? Well, he finally pulls himself together when his father is shot as a result of his idiocy and because the female protagonist, despite his generally oafish treatment of her, sticks by him.

Her reward for this unconditional affection is approximately fuck all. He even admits to his fiancé (ironically one of her young singing students) that she’s the main reason he sorted himself out. Their roles become transferred, he gets to be all respectable while she, whose only real fault was to blindly love someone, ends up going off with a travelling salesman in reference to a character, briefly mentioned (the fiancé’s mother) , who waits at the train station for every one that passes through.

What sort of happy ending is that? He gets to indulge himself throughout and comes out on top and she gets to be a spinster who indulges travelling salesmen. I’m quite angry with this fictional state of affairs; it strikes me as being grossly unfair and rather sad. Cynic that I am, I do still like to see happy endings and a modicum of justice now and again and I couldn’t really find either here because they either weren’t there to be found or because my interpretation of the whole shebang is flawed. I suspect the latter but that doesn’t particularly placate me.

Obviously the fact that I am so annoyed is undoubtedly a good thing; it means the actors succeeded admirably in their aim to engage people’s emotions. Even better, it hints that the production is a good one. Indeed I suggest you try and see it if at all possible. Just don’t expect everyone to be happy at the end.

I certainly did not sniffle at any point.