At its best, As Bees in Honey Drown is about the American fixation on groundless celebrity. As
high-powered Alexa Vere de Vere tells us in Act II, the shelf life of real accomplishment is brief — about six months for a new “hot” playwright, for example — but superficial, based-on-nothing fame is eternal. That’s the pot of gold — breakfast at the Plaza, dinner at the Polo Lounge — that attracts novelist Eric Wyler to Alexa, and that eventually forces him to confront his greediest demons. In a society that features Paris Hilton, American Idol, and all the tabloids at the supermarket counter, this is a richly relevant subject, and one that’s closer to the heart of America than we usually admit. What’s Britney Spears up to this week, who’s sleeping with Jessica Simpson, is it true that Cher just got another tummy tuck? Our national dream life comes to us courtesy of People Magazine, and if we insist on real depth, well, there’s Vanity Fair. We’re swimming in honey, or maybe we’re drowning. We won’t know the Messiah’s come till he’s interviewed by Barbara Walters.
The ingenious story that Douglas Carter Beane tells us in Bees is
This article appears in Jul 8-14, 2010.