Tony Kushner – Intelligent Homosexual
21 May
This article could also have been titled A Reaction to the Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. But that would have been an over-lengthy title.
Observation: Now if you google “intelligent homosexual” you get a series of hits on Tony Kushner. That must be nice for him.
Two things before we get into it:
1. Tony Kushner has a Pulitzer Prize. I do not.
2. The show I attended was a preview performance – one of the actors was still carrying a script for a few scenes (one of which apparently was completely new material), and theater ethics prevent me from really reviewing the show, since I didn’t really see the SHOW – I saw a very public rehearsal. Therefore, I’ll offer more of a reaction to the things that won’t change between now and tomorrow – the core ideals, the strength of the performers, and what basically to expect if you go.
It’s exciting to be present at the beginning of something important, and the opportunity to see the first run of a new play written by one of the best and brightest American playwrights is, in and of itself, all the reason I think one needs to attend Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, playing now (Opening May 22nd) through mid-June at the Guthrie Theater.
Secondarily exciting is to then engage in a battle of wits with the imaginary Tony Kushner in your head – You can ask him such questions as, “Why do you think it’s necessary to write a play that’s three and a half hours long?,” and “You just came up with a really long and provocative title and then wrote a play to match that title, didn’t you?,” or possibly “What happened to the angels?” Even imaginary Tony in my head won’t answer that last question.
But I must admit – I did miss the angels. Not in the literal sense, as they present themselves in Kushner’s absolutely ground-breaking Angels in America, but the meta-theatrical device and mechanisms they (or something like them) provide. There is a moment in Intelligent Homosexual in which a mysterious item is found in a wall, and my hopes rose – What Brechtian disruption would this contain? But there are no angels in this America, only a longshoreman and his crazy-ass family in a Brooklyn brownstone on the verge of great bubble-burst of 2007. For those of you who prefer their theater Chekhovian, this may come as a relief – but I love the risk and ultimate reward of throwing your audience up against the fourth wall and pulling them through for awhile. This play lives firmly behind its fourth wall and cheerfully churns away at a fistful of big issues such as life, death, family, sexuality, commodity, capitalism, the housing market, communism, divisions of labor and class, fidelity, and ultimately…
And here’s where I’d ask Tony in my head, “What is this play about, really?”
Because for all the brilliant scenes and massively challenging dialogue, for all the intellectual psychology, for all the history and mythos contained within this sprawling story of a family in Brooklyn, I still couldn’t uncover the prevailing and enduring reason for their story to be told. The characters are magnificently realized by the actors playing them (even as some of the character arcs are still falling into place), but the over-arching logic and sense of what is at stake is hiding somewhere unseen and never uncovered. Perhaps it’s unfair to compare the level of stakes back to that old Play With Angels, but in that world, SHIT WAS FALLING APART! Angels were plunging through ceilings, people were dying left and right, heaven itself was eroding and abandoned. And it was only with that level of incredibly immediate and heightened stakes and reality that a seven-hour epic play could gather and build such a gripping momentum and inevitability.
To me – now – here – little old non-Pulitzer Prize winner me – easy for me to talk: For me, it seemed like no matter the amount of research and thought that went into the creation of Intelligent Homosexual, it ultimately was written around and on top of a series of philosophy and ideas that Mr. Kushner cares deeply about but is unable to bring onto stage with immediacy. It’s a study – Intellectual, psychological, beautiful, and messy. Admire the craft, for it is masterful. But the play itself? I’m not sure.
I’ll probably go back and see it again sometime in June, see if things have coalesced a bit more. In the meantime, I highly recommend that you see it – maybe you’ll find the key that I was missing.
For what it’s worth, I saw the full play last weekend, and I really dug it. I think your point is well taken, that there was not necessarily a point, but I think it’s less and less common for art to have one these days. It’s enough if the craft can carry a 3.5 hour play through to finish without me ever feeling like it was getting too long. (I know other folks who did feel that way, but I was captivated the whole time.) I did have some qualms about the ending, but I won’t go into them here. Overall, I thought the strength of dialogue and character was enough.
Thanks for writing this. I was there Tuesday, so we probably saw a similar play. I loved the first two acts, and got very little out of the extended (was it 3 scenes? 4?) denouement. Perhaps that’s because I, too, was looking for an overarching idea or theme; something to tie it together a little more tightly. And (this may just be me) I don’t really need to be convinced that there’s a reason to kill oneself. More interesting is the struggle to talk oneself out of it, a struggle that’s something of a microcosm of what it is to be human, something I think Kushner usually does with aplomb. What I always love about Kushner is what he makes me think about, and the depth with which he explores his subjects, and that is certainly not lacking here. And for whatever problems I had with the end of the play, I was thrilled to see my 2 favorite performers in the piece (perhaps my 2 favorite characters as well) come together at the end.
I think this is a very, very promising–though still evolving–play. I don’t disagree with much of the current criticism, but I also see the potential magnificence. For me the play was “about” the end of history (or at least the Hegelian vision of history, as understood by Marx and Engels, in which dialectical oppositions continue to compete and evolve; an ideological concept which fuels Angels In America). Marxists view dialectics as a framework for development in which contradiction plays a major role in economic, cultural and sociological transformation. This is probably best illustrated in Marx’s Das Kapital, which outlines two of his central theories: that of the theory of surplus value and the materialist conception of history. In “Intelligent Homosexual” Gus wants to die because history as he understands it has stopped working. He selfishly cannot face the world. Capitalism has triumphed and socialist ideology has been beaten into the ground. Like the old order on the wane in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Gus realizes his life’s and his family’s work has amounted to nothing. The great indignity (and one of the play’s most fruitful contradictions) is that the real estate boom has made his home worth a fortune. The play is set in 2007 and the anger which undergirds the dramatic action is immensely ironic given the world’s current economic state. Yeah, Kushner has a lot of work to do (it could probably do with a bit more humanism and bit less philosophy), but I have hope.