A strange thing occurred to me after seeing Marjorie Prime (American Stage) and HIR (Jobsite) on their opening weekends, or maybe it's not so strange: I started to think that both plays were, almost subversively, telling the story of men.
Right, OK, so back up. HIR is everyone onstage's story and Marjorie Prime — without giving away too many spoilers — is really sort of Jon's story, but you don't realize it until the end. Nevertheless, seeing the two shows almost back-to-back made me think about how we're representing men in theater.
Let's start with Arnie in HIR, played splendidly by Ned Averill-Snell in this five-star Jobsite show. This guy is basically the reason we have #MeToo and #TimesUp. And while it's fun to kick and punch at a misogynistic asshole who beat his wife, Paige, and kids and railed against women, socialism and equality, it's sorta sad to see him clutching his penis like it's a security blanket.
And it is, really. Arnie's all these things — a wife-beater, an asshole, a racist — but it's also all he knows, and, right or wrong, the only way he functions as a man is all tied up in those things. I wonder if that's true for a lot of men, especially the Greatest Generation and many of the Boomers. It takes a lot to retrain your brain after it being tacitly OK to not be the most evolved one on the block. Perhaps Arnie's withering not from his stroke or the estrogen, but because his world is dying and he has no clue how to be a man in this brave new one.
Now, as for Jon in Marjorie Prime. I gave this show four stars, but Steve Garland's performance deserves five. Marjorie Prime sort of implies it's Marjorie's story, but really, the play's an artistic interpretation of the ethical debates (and fears) surrounding AI. And let's take that play on words — the title could mean Marjorie first, and in the first few scenes, we see Jon doing that, putting Marjorie first because it's important to his wife, Tessa, that her mother come first, and Jon's putting his wife first by helping the AI learn about Marjorie.
Jon is Arnie's antithesis; he's a liberated man who not only sees his wife as an equal partner, but also as Queen, the first one. He's doing everything right, or trying to.
And yet, we see two different outcomes for Paige and Tessa by the end of each show. Who triumphs, Paige or Tessa? Are these plays telling us it doesn't matter what a man does, a woman will fly or fall on her own merits, or are they making deeper commentary about the fate of men in America?
I don't have the answers, but I like that two weeks after seeing each show, this is still something dancing around in my brain. What do these two plays say about men and their future in America? And is it intentional? Both shows are live in Tampa Bay through Apr. 1, so I don't want to get too much into the little delights you'll discover on your own when you go see them, but if you have any thoughts on this, please leave them in the comments.
Cathy Salustri is the arts + entertainment editor for Creative Loafing Tampa. Contact her here.
This article appears in Mar 22-29, 2018.