Strange Places
2014; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 7; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/thr.2014.0075
ISSN1939-9774
Autores Tópico(s)Themes in Literature Analysis
ResumoStrange Places Jack L. B. Gohn (bio) Some plays are born strange, some achieve strangeness, and some have strangeness thrust upon them (or upon their characters, at least). We consider one of each type herein. Born strange is certainly a fair characterization of Will Eno’s play The Realistic Joneses, recently at the Lyceum. The New York times’ Charles Isherwood was up in arms that the play, which he called “the most stimulating, adventurous and flat-out good play to be produced on Broadway this year,” received no Tony nominations, but it’s pretty clear why that didn’t happen: to borrow a phrase from Frank Zappa, it just “looked too weird.” Which is a strange thing to say about a play that on its surface is as bland as Wonder Bread. The surface is all ordinary-sounding conversation, studded with a few jokes, among four white, middle-aged, middle-class denizens of some exurban-to-rural residential lane, all with the surname Jones. This smooth surface challenges the audience to be on the lookout for minuscule conversational ripples possibly hinting of some kind of drama going on unseen, down beneath. But the little ripples might just as likely be meaningless, and Eno is nearly mum as to the real depth of any ripple. A sample from the early going, where new neighbors Pony (Marisa Tomei) and John (Michael C. Hall) are paying a first visit to residents Bob (Tracy Letts) and Jennifer (Toni Collette): [End Page 572] PONY Hi. We’re Pony and John. You must be the Joneses. It’s on your mailbox. We’re Joneses, too. We’re renting the house at the end of the road with the blue shutters and the— JOHN (Interrupting.) It’s like two-hundred feet from here. It’s right over there. BOB Sure, we know that house. Someone else used to live there. JOHN Wow. Who knew the place had such an interesting history. PONY Look at these salt and pepper shakers. Cute. BOB (Picking one up:) These were made at a factory. JENNIFER Bob is filled with fun facts like that. (To PONY and JOHN:) Can you sit down? JOHN I practically invented sitting down. Actually, that’s not true. There could be all kinds of aggression going on in this exchange. John might be poking fun at Bob for his vagueness about the previous residents of Pony and John’s house. Bob might be putting down Pony for purporting to find anything interesting in the mass-produced salt- and pepper-shakers. Jennifer might be chastising Bob for that cheap shot at Pony (if it was one). John might be engaging in self-criticism for recumbent inertia or in self-pity for whatever drives him to sit. Or he might be acknowledging that his remark about sitting down was simply idle conversation reflective neither of the truth nor of any deeper meaning. Or there might indeed be deeper meaning and truth that John is trying to walk back because he is not ready to share. Eno is not going to tell us much for sure. He is going to force the audience to turn its analytical gears endlessly but to little definite end. There is only one untold secret that will definitely be revealed concerning these two couples: both husbands are suffering from the same (fictive) rare degenerative disease, and both couples seem to have moved to this unnamed purlieu to be close to one of the few specialists who has any idea how to monitor and perhaps treat it. This of course places similar strains on their wives and marriages. Each husband seems to flirt with the wife of the other couple, but maybe not. Each husband seems to be in some kind of denial, but maybe not. Nothing changes much in their lives because of any of these things as the play progresses. [End Page 573] At the end, the four of them are sitting outside staring at the night sky in a state of relative contentment, very little having changed since the beginning of the first act. Each of the men tries to put into words how he feels about living with the disease. First Bob...
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