Four One Act Plays by Thornton Wilder

Source of book: I own this

 

It is hard to believe it has been nearly four years since Stars Playhouse (RIP) did a set of three one-act plays by Thornton Wilder, headlined by The Long Christmas Dinner. (My wife did a read-through of that one recently with her zoom book club.) 

 

Since then, I have wanted to see more short classic plays, but have had to content myself with reading them instead. I have the complete Wilder, so I figured I would pick a few that interested me, and read through them, each in one sitting.

 

I also recently did this with the modernist classics by African American playwright Adrienne Kennedy. 

 

In this case, my Library of America book organized the plays into sections. The first is “The Angel That Troubled the Waters and Other Plays,” and these are the shortest ones - 16 in all. Most of these plays are between three and five pages long - admittedly in small print. The next is “The Long Christmas Dinner & Other Plays in One Act,” and consists of longer one-act plays. The title play and Queens of France (both of which I saw live) are in this section. Then, there are five plays that are listed individually, including Our Town, and The Drunken Sisters, the latter of which is also a one-act play. I am guessing that the organization is related to how the plays were published previously, because the length doesn’t seem to be the determining factor.

 

In any case, I selected two of the longer one-acts, and two of the shorter ones. I will discuss them in the order I read them.

 

Pullman Car Hiawatha

 

This play is an interesting setup, with a lot of metaphor and allegory, despite its initial surface realism. It is set in a single Pullman car on an overnight train from New York to Chicago. In fact, we are given this information and introduced to the characters by “The Stage Manager” who becomes a character in the play. 

 

As in the original setting of Our Town, the set consists of chairs. In this case, set up so that actors can lie down on them like a bed berth. 

 

We are introduced to the characters: the married couple Phillip and Harriet; the insane Mrs. Churchill; Bill and Fred, fellow engineers; an unnamed maiden lady; an unnamed doctor; and an unnamed stout woman in her 50s. There is also the porter.

 

We are allowed to see into the thoughts of the characters, their petty obsessions and worries, all about things that will be made moot by death. And here we get the first indication that the journey is as much metaphoric as real.

 

Harriet, who has been feeling ill, dies suddenly, while the insane woman wishes she had. This leads first to the realistic account of what happens in the aftermath.

 

But then, the actors clear away, the State Manager gives a monologue on meaning, and a series of metaphorical characters take their place in turn: stock characters for “the workman” and others, the hours, the planets, and the archangels. With these last, we return to hearing the thoughts of the passengers. Only the dead Harriet and the insane Mrs. Churchill can see the angels. 

 

To try to describe it further than that would be fruitless. There are obvious philosophical ideas, and more hidden ones to be found by the observant. In the short span of this play, Wilder tries to enfold the entire world, or at least the entire America of his time. 

 

In an interesting touch, rather than end the play when the train comes to its destination, Wilder includes a final scene of the cleaning staff entering the car to clean it before the next journey. 

 

Of all the plays I read this time, this might be the most daring, original, and fun to stage. I’d certainly go see it. 

 

Love and How to Cure It

 

This one is pretty dark and disturbing, although the ending is a bit of a relief. There are only four characters, and the action takes place in one place and in a short period of time. 

 

Rowena, a young dancer, consults her aunt Linda, an actress, and their friend Joey, a comedian, about Arthur, who has a crush on Rowena and is stalking her. 

 

Rowena is terrified that Arthur, with his love unrequited, will kill her when she turns him down. When Arthur finally appears, the three of them try to talk him down off of his dark intentions. Over the course of the intervention, a lot is said about the nature of love and life. 

 

As an attorney who does domestic violence cases from time to time, this was a bit of a harrowing play, despite Wilder’s decision to avoid a tragic ending. This is all too common, the man who considers a woman his property, and considers killing her, himself, or both. I mean, you see this in the news nearly every day. 

 

Wilder’s take is more of an examination of unrequited love than that of gendered violence. I wasn’t as thrilled with that decision, and would consider this the weakest of the plays I read for that reason. 

 

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

 

Obviously I had to read this one. The reference is directly to a poem by Robert Browning, itself inspired by a line from King Lear. The poem has inspired everything from graphic novels to a Stephen King series to a Doctor Who episode, with plenty of literature and science fiction in between. 

 

The play imagines what happened after the ambiguous ending of the poem. The gravely wounded and dying Childe Roland finally reaches the tower, which he sees as a portal to death. But inconveniently, two young girls bar the way and do not wish to let him enter. 

 

Rather than tend to him, they imagine his as first one romantic character, then the other. But ultimately, they are disappointed in him. The last line is a doozy. 

 

THE DARK GIRL: Take courage, high heart. How slow you have been to believe well of us. You gave us such little thought while living that we have made this little delay at your death. 

 

This would be an interesting play to stage. At least to me. I wonder if anyone else I know has read the Browning poem, or if I would be literally the only person to get the point. Oh well. 

 

Mozart and the Gray Steward

 

This is probably the most conventional play of the four, and one that most people will understand. Near the end of his life, Mozart and his wife Constanze are desperate for a commission. They need money to live on, and Mozart’s greatest works enrich the world while bringing little to buy food. 

 

A gray-clad steward shows up, offering a lucrative commission: Mozart is to write a requiem, but not put his name on it. 

 

Mozart knows what this is about, of course. He has composed in the past for these sorts of aristocrats who wish to pass off a composition as their own. In this case, though, the steward agrees to Mozart’s condition that no other name be used as author. It is a wink and a nod. 

 

The twist, which isn’t that much of a twist, is that the steward comes on behalf of Death. The requiem Mozart is to write is his own, and he will never finish it. 

 

As I said, this one was pretty conventional, and the topic one which has gotten more detailed treatment in more recent years. 

 

That said, it is well written, and could be staged well. Mozart has a line that is pretty good:

 

MOZART: And his Excellency is not aware that the pages I may compose at the height of my invention may be their own sufficient signature? 

 

Exactly. Mozart’s finest works are instantly recognizable as his own, and no one else’s. 

 

I love the Requiem, as I have written about before. If you want to enjoy the beauty of Mozart’s masterpiece, this is a good version.

 

Wilder wrote a lot of these short plays, so I may come back to them again in the future. Like Mozart, his works are in a way their own signature, recognizable as his even without the signature.