All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages…
—from As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7, by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
The seven ages, you may remember, are Infant, Schoolboy, Lover, Soldier, Justice, Old Age, and finally, Second Childhood & Mere Oblivion. Limping up the steps each evening to watch another rerun of Blue Bloods, I seem to be closer to the 7th age than the 6th.
We’re kicking off this month thinking about theater because Shakespeare was born on April 23rd: That’s why April is National Poetry Month. When Shakespeare is mentioned, I mainly think of the plays, but I loved his sonnets as well. I remember, too, once in my high school library when I was about 14, I accidentally discovered Shakespeare’s poem, “The Rape of Lucrece,” and of course sat down to read it. After a while (it’s a long poem) the librarian, Mrs. Thompson, came over to see what I was up to, stared at me hard, and then left me alone. She was a good librarian. I stuck with the poem, which was more flowery and brutal than sexy. I didn’t see another poem written in rhyme royal (rhymed ABABBCC) until I was in graduate school and read Chaucer’s “The Clerk’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales. I liked “The Clerk’s Tale” a lot more than “The Rape of Lucrece.”
Jeanne and I have always loved live theater, perhaps because of the first New York play we saw together, in 1956 while I was still in the Army (Shakespeare’s fourth age). It was an off-Broadway production of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts, a tragedy about incest, betrayal, madness, disease — what could be better? The stage was a circle in the round, and at the end of the play, the heroine, Mrs Alving, played by the Irish actress Siobhan McKenna, staggered off the stage, leaving her dying son Oswald as she exited, weeping, though the audience. We had aisle seats, and she was really crying. Later on, having drinks at the White House Tavern — even then following writers, namely Dylan Thomas and Jack Kerouac (who liked the White Horse before he found St. Petersburg and the Flamingo) — we talked about how difficult it must have been for McKenna to repeat her matinee performance again that night. An admiration for the emotional strength of actors was born.
The last New York play we’ve seen combined that actor’s strength with a demand on our own. During Christmas week, we saw an old “friend,” Elaine May, starring in The Waverly Gallery at the Golden Theatre on Broadway. Back in our 30s and 40s, the hilarious improvisational comedy duo of May and Mike Nichols was our favorite entertainment, on records, TV and radio (we were turning more political, and they were lefties, too, playing in events supporting George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, and other Democrats).
So here was Elaine May, born — like me — in 1932 (Jeanne’s a youngster), back on the stage for the first time in 50 years, playing the lead role. We couldn’t miss it!
May was brilliant in the role of Gladys, an aging operator of a third-rate art gallery who’s losing her battle with dementia. The evening begins as the garrulous Gladys can still retort with quick comebacks, but as the play, and time, move on, the once-lively woman falls apart in front of her loving relatives. As May’s Gladys keeps on talking, repetitiously, desperately trying to hold on to her human dignity, we couldn’t help thinking of Mrs. Alving weeping for her son, Sally Bowles singing her heart out in the Kit Kat Klub as Berlin collapses around her, and King Lear howling to the winds…
“He faints. My lord, my lord!”
“Break, heart; I prithee break.”
There’s nothing like live theater, except life.
Like a dull actor now,
I have forgot my part, and I am out.
—from Coriolanus, Act 5, Scene 3, by William Shakespeare
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This article appears in Apr 4-11, 2019.