still more from.

Saw Desire Under the Elms Friday night at the St. James. Expressionist set, naturalistic actors and sore-thumb Dylan song during a movie-type montage-- these things weren't very cohesive.

Tectonic forces onstage though-- Brian Dennehy, Carla Gugino, Pablo Schreiber. Lots of amazing work done on this play. Still, some O'Neill plays are anachronisms; it's a fabulous piece of theater history, but now? Themes like the desire for home, the desire for another-- but they're obscured by the overwrought language and the specifics of old New England. I'm not charmed by presentational melodrama. It all proves, once again, the genius of Shakespeare-- how, 500 years later, still his plays are relevant and witty as hell.

But, I'm inspired by the show and grateful that I was able to see it. In its spirit, here's another piece for The Closet of Empty Frames, this time in the style of early expressionist O'Neill.

(HAROLD is squatting in front of a river, bare-chested. He sweats the sweat of himself and of men who have come years before him. With him, a chorus of actors acts as trees, bowing and swaying in the air, bending like a dutiful mother to a hungry child.)

HAROLD (inhaling the fresh air). Ayuh. It's a fruit.
TREE CHORUS (bending in the wind): Fruit!
HAROLD. That's right I say! Fruit me wantin', fruit of the vine, off the fatta' the lan'. Fruit that kin sustain yuh, kin keep yuh, kin remind yuh that yuh ain't dead yet, no matter house close yuh be. Sweet, dripping fruit...

[GERRY enters, nay, drifts in, ghost-like. Her gauzy garments barely graze her hourglass frame, and for a moment, HAROLD forgets everything, and remembers what it feels like to move through time and space. The TREE CHORUS opens like springtime. A beat, then the next moment, he is crashing through to stillness again, back to himself, unreachable.]

HAROLD. Dripping fruit can't sustain yuh forever though.
GERRY. Yer daddy ain't goin' ta like yuh talking like you were talkin' 'bout the frames, Harry.
HAROLD. Ayuh.
GERRY. I think maybe yuh ought t'apologize.
HAROLD. Aw hell, Gerry.
GERRY. What did you say?
HAROLD. [losing control, he takes her in his arms and yells, letting out the demons, the screams that have waited years for seeping] I said aw hell, Gerry! Aw hell, aw hell! And I'll say it again! Me n' Pa got on once-- once-- and ever since I'd done married you it's all this and that. And I'm sick, sick of it! An' I tell you Gerry I don't love yuh. I don't love yuh an' I never did.
GERRY. It's not true!
HAROLD. It is!

[he looks at her, searching her eyes, wishing it were true]

I said I would but I don't. I just don't, Gerry.

GERRY. You love me more than you ever thought yuh could.

[he splashes in the water, a long-awaited motion of frustration and surrender.]

GERRY. That's it Harold! I'm goin' ta' do somethin' you won't ever forget.
HAROLD. Not the closet! Not the frames!
GERRY. No...I'm gonna eat the vegetables.

[end of scene]