Just smile and wave, boys.

A few weeks ago I was on a panel discussion after a play.  The play was put on by a local theater company; they decided that it would be worthwhile to get a few academics to talk about the play after one of the performances.  I got asked presumably because a) there is an economist in the play and I am an economist and b) it isn’t easy to find economists willing to talk about plays.  I went because it was a quirky enough request that I figured it might be fun.  As it turned out, the performers were good (all three of them), the direction and sets and so forth were also good. Truth be told, for a theater production in a small town in Massachusetts, all those things were shockingly good.  But, all of it went to waste because the play was not good.  In the history of the world there have been written a vast number of excellent plays; how this one was chosen to be performed is one of the great Mysteries of Life.

The play; Madagascar, by J. T. Rogers

There are three people—one middle aged male, one middle age female, and one younger (30ish) female.  The characters never actually interact—it is three monologues taking place at different times all in the same hotel room.  The monologues are intertwined.  During any given monologue, the other two actors pretend to be the people with whom the speaker is interacting in the memories being related.  The plot, using the word loosely, was about a character who has vanished.  We watch the three characters talking about the missing guy.  If that description does not sound like it has much promise for being an interesting play…well, you won’t be surprised by what follows.

The play is supposed to be a Big Mystery.  Why did Paul vanish?  The mysteries are meant to just keep piling up.  You are supposed to think this is really, really deep and, you know, mysterious.  You are supposed to keep looking for the missing threads like it is some giant Agatha Christie mystery.  Then there is this constant overlay of Greek mythology; Persephone looms large.  And it doesn’t take much time at all to realize the author is standing on a chair screaming at you through the whole play saying, “Look how clever I am being!  See I am being really clever!  Aren’t I clever!”  Yeah, it’s Oedipus and Persephone and Eurydice all rolled into one.  Mom has incestuous relationship with son; son also has incestuous relationship with his twin sister; mom has adulterous relationship with friend of her husband; daughter has adulterous relationship with her mother’s lover, started at her mother’s funeral; son is jealous of mother’s lover, and may wonder about his own paternity…and so on in one long sordid story which never really gets told but is pretty obvious when you start noticing the links.  It’s not a deep mystery after all.  And not a clever one. 

There are all sorts of other questions left hanging.  Is the lover actually the son’s father?  Maybe.  Did the sister find her brother and live with him for a few years with him after he vanished?  Maybe.  When are the narrators’ unreliable?  Who knows?  The author thinks he is being more clever than he is being.  There is no way to find the answers to those questions in the play.  We are supposed to think that there is this unsolvable mystery, but the mystery is only unsolvable because a) the story is not real and b) the author has not provided the answers.  In other words, the author has made a fake mystery.

Consider a similar situation:

Last week, Harold was walking down the street in a crowd in a major American city when a disheveled old woman walked up to him and screamed, “Harold!  The purple Elephant turns 37 today.  Beware the Lapridoforus Phenome!  Seek the Wise One Known to the Ancients.”  She then fell to the ground, dead.

End of story.

You now have two choices.  You can forget all about it.  Or, you can try to solve the mystery.  What did the Old Woman mean?  Why did she tell Harold this?  What is Harold supposed to do?  What will happen if he does not do this?  The mysteries abound.  You could spend forever trying to uncover the answers.  I then can stand on the side with a smirk noting that you have fallen into my trap of thinking that you can actually understand human behavior.  “Ha!,” I laugh, “What fools these mortals be, seeking to solve life’s mysteries.”  And then I get to think to myself, “See how clever I am in that story?  Did you notice how unbelievably clever I am?”

That is Madagascar in a nutshell.  The basic plot isn’t really all that mysterious.  The answers to the questions which remain cannot be discovered because the story isn’t real and the story doesn’t provide the answers.  So, what are we, the Audience, supposed to conclude?  That Rogers is a clever genius?  Or that he hasn’t done his job?

I wasn't going to bother reviewing Madagascar, but then I noticed something curious when I wrote about Holy Motors.  The movie also has mysteries which will never be solved, but I still enjoyed watching the movie.  So how is Holy Motors different than Madagascar?  I think the difference is this: In Holy Motors, the parts are interesting; it is the connection between the parts that raises the unsolvable mysteries.  So, at any given time, the movie is perfectly comprehensible and well-done.  But stepping back it doesn’t cohere in a deliberately interesting manner.  Madagascar also aims for the point that the mystery cannot be solved, but there are no parts.  The whole play lives in the incoherent, unsolvable mysteries.  Exploring unsolvable mysteries in the manner of Madagascar is simply a cheat; I can pile up a host of giant mysteries off the top my head; I did so above.  The harder task is sucking the viewer into the mystery by providing parts which are interesting in their own right, which draw the viewer or reader in and captivate the imagination.  I can’t do that; I have not the talent for it.  Neither does J.T. Rogers.  Sadly, one of us fancies himself a playwright.

If you are ever get the chance to see a production of Madagascar, do yourself a favor: do something else.