Talking Heads: The Hand of God
I saw a good piece on PBS Sunday night. I thought it was great theater, but I don’t know if it was originally written for stage production, or whether it went straight to film. In either case, as presented on film, it worked very well as “theater.” Essentially, it was a long – 40 minutes – monologue, broken into four or five scenes separated by fades to black. The scenes took place in progressing time, but all in the same room – a somewhat down-at-heels antique shop – with the narrator standing or sitting in different places in the room in each scene.
The narrator seemed to be addressing both the audience and herself at the same time. The whole monologue was an exercise in self-denial or self-delusion, but it wasn’t quite clear which. The proprietor of the shop told a long tale that wandered along the edge of perfidy, and ended with a come-uppance. I think the playwright’s intent was for us to guess whether the shop owner was trying to convince us that she wasn’t shot through with avarice, or whether she was trying to convince herself that she had acted with good conscience. Along the way, there were nice sub-themes exploring widowhood, loneliness, her sense of being “burnt out,” and the pettiness of English country life.
In a nutshell, her story was about the shop being in the doldrums, and her discovery that a very old lady who lived nearby had a 17th century house filled with valuable antiques. The old lady’s maid came in from time to time to sell a few items, and while calling on the old lady, the shopkeeper discovered her stirring her tea with a silver spoon with the same touch mark as one sold to her by the maid. The shopkeeper doesn’t exactly blackmail the maid, but uses her knowledge to enlist the maid as an ally in her access to the house. As the old lady declines into a terminal illness, the shopkeeper calls on her regularly – she insists to us she does this as an act of kindness – but while in the house notes and appraises the value of everything in it. She is clearly planning to plunder the old lady’s estate, being emboldened by the maid’s assertion that the old lady has no heirs.
After the old lady dies, an unknown niece from Canada shows up, and the plan falls apart. The niece gives the shopkeeper the knickknacks in an old desk because “she was so nice to auntie while she was sick.” There is nothing of value in the desk, but a framed drawing of a finger seems to have an interesting frame, which she thinks she might get 10L for. Later a young fool with lots of money shows up in the shop and wants to buy a large harvest table that has been lingering unsold forever. He has so much money, and so little knowledge of antiques, she prices it to him for twice what it’s worth. He measures it to make sure it will fit his house and promises to call her that afternoon. He’s such an easy mark, as he’s leaving she says he might find this frame of interest at 90L. He takes the frame too; she has totally screwed him -- she thinks. Of course he never calls back about the table, he was playing her, and the “finger” in the frame turns out to be Michelangelo’s cartoon sketch for God’s finger in the Sistine Chapel. As the piece closes, she’s musing about the news broadcast of the new Michelangelo piece that has sold for 1,000,000L.
I think I might have enjoyed this play under any circumstances, but what made it really interesting was that it was the first time I ever watched a play while looking specifically at the writing technique. Sure enough, everything happened right on schedule, almost as if the author was doing the exercises in our text, chapter by chapter. The character development was outstanding. At the beginning we are sympathetic to this tired widow and her dreary little shop. But with every word she says about her concern for the old lady, she protests too much, and we see how underhanded her purpose really is. She sits by the bedside of the old lady, and tells us of her disgust as others come to visit her – “gathering vultures” she calls them, notwithstanding that we understand that she intends to be the chief plunderer. Once, after the old lady is comatose, she lifts the mattress to better determine the age and construction of the bed. When she puts it down, the old lady is awake and mumbles “happy.” At least that is how she narrates it to us, and speculates the old lady is “happy” to finally be dying, at the end of her suffering. But she hasn’t fooled us, the old lady clearly said “happy?” – meaning was the dealer satisfied with the value of the bed. The writer has done a wonderful job with this long narrative monologue, where everything the proprietor says means just the opposite. But, does she realize it? She tips her hand with every word she says, but perhaps she believes what she’s saying about her motivations? Our not knowing is part of the pleasure of the play.
There is a wonderful sense of rising action as the illness develops and the dealer insinuates herself into the household, reaching the climax, we think, when the old lady dies. But the arrival of the unknown nieces makes another, higher, climax, and the discovery of the Michelangelo yet another. This, a 40 minute rambling discourse, is never boring.
There are wonderful “beats.” The dealer relates many “she said, and I said” conversations, always showing herself one-upping whomever she was speaking with – always on a higher moral plane (a plane that is phony as a three dollar bill.) When the niece offers her the cheesy contents of the desk as a gift memento of the old lady, the dealer declines to accept it, speaking nicely, but snobbish in intent, “that it wouldn’t be right, she was just a friend to the old lady.” The niece then says in that case, she can pay her 5L for it, so she [the dealer] will feel better about it, and it will make the estate attorney’s happier too. The dealer’s moral ace is trumped, and she pays, much to her disgust. Of course, the biggest beat of all is the dealer being snide about the young man paying 90L for the frame and its weird picture of a finger.
The playwright did a great job of building his foundation early in the play, planting lots of seeds he would need, and we would recognize, later. In the opening scene, we hear her talk about the harvest table that was such a mistake. She has 1,100L tied up in it and can’t sell it. She’s had it for over a year, and says she’d happily take 1,150 for it to get it out of the shop. In the last scene, when she prices it to the “foolish” young man for 1,700L, we can feel a W. C. Fields moment coming long before it gets there. The maid selling the teaspoons early in the play later lets us understand exactly how the dealer works her plot to get in the house.
Well, I’ve written far too much about this, but it please me that this was the first time I ever saw a play where I could not only see the face of the clock, I could also understand how the hidden gears behind the face made the hands move.
The narrator seemed to be addressing both the audience and herself at the same time. The whole monologue was an exercise in self-denial or self-delusion, but it wasn’t quite clear which. The proprietor of the shop told a long tale that wandered along the edge of perfidy, and ended with a come-uppance. I think the playwright’s intent was for us to guess whether the shop owner was trying to convince us that she wasn’t shot through with avarice, or whether she was trying to convince herself that she had acted with good conscience. Along the way, there were nice sub-themes exploring widowhood, loneliness, her sense of being “burnt out,” and the pettiness of English country life.
In a nutshell, her story was about the shop being in the doldrums, and her discovery that a very old lady who lived nearby had a 17th century house filled with valuable antiques. The old lady’s maid came in from time to time to sell a few items, and while calling on the old lady, the shopkeeper discovered her stirring her tea with a silver spoon with the same touch mark as one sold to her by the maid. The shopkeeper doesn’t exactly blackmail the maid, but uses her knowledge to enlist the maid as an ally in her access to the house. As the old lady declines into a terminal illness, the shopkeeper calls on her regularly – she insists to us she does this as an act of kindness – but while in the house notes and appraises the value of everything in it. She is clearly planning to plunder the old lady’s estate, being emboldened by the maid’s assertion that the old lady has no heirs.
After the old lady dies, an unknown niece from Canada shows up, and the plan falls apart. The niece gives the shopkeeper the knickknacks in an old desk because “she was so nice to auntie while she was sick.” There is nothing of value in the desk, but a framed drawing of a finger seems to have an interesting frame, which she thinks she might get 10L for. Later a young fool with lots of money shows up in the shop and wants to buy a large harvest table that has been lingering unsold forever. He has so much money, and so little knowledge of antiques, she prices it to him for twice what it’s worth. He measures it to make sure it will fit his house and promises to call her that afternoon. He’s such an easy mark, as he’s leaving she says he might find this frame of interest at 90L. He takes the frame too; she has totally screwed him -- she thinks. Of course he never calls back about the table, he was playing her, and the “finger” in the frame turns out to be Michelangelo’s cartoon sketch for God’s finger in the Sistine Chapel. As the piece closes, she’s musing about the news broadcast of the new Michelangelo piece that has sold for 1,000,000L.
I think I might have enjoyed this play under any circumstances, but what made it really interesting was that it was the first time I ever watched a play while looking specifically at the writing technique. Sure enough, everything happened right on schedule, almost as if the author was doing the exercises in our text, chapter by chapter. The character development was outstanding. At the beginning we are sympathetic to this tired widow and her dreary little shop. But with every word she says about her concern for the old lady, she protests too much, and we see how underhanded her purpose really is. She sits by the bedside of the old lady, and tells us of her disgust as others come to visit her – “gathering vultures” she calls them, notwithstanding that we understand that she intends to be the chief plunderer. Once, after the old lady is comatose, she lifts the mattress to better determine the age and construction of the bed. When she puts it down, the old lady is awake and mumbles “happy.” At least that is how she narrates it to us, and speculates the old lady is “happy” to finally be dying, at the end of her suffering. But she hasn’t fooled us, the old lady clearly said “happy?” – meaning was the dealer satisfied with the value of the bed. The writer has done a wonderful job with this long narrative monologue, where everything the proprietor says means just the opposite. But, does she realize it? She tips her hand with every word she says, but perhaps she believes what she’s saying about her motivations? Our not knowing is part of the pleasure of the play.
There is a wonderful sense of rising action as the illness develops and the dealer insinuates herself into the household, reaching the climax, we think, when the old lady dies. But the arrival of the unknown nieces makes another, higher, climax, and the discovery of the Michelangelo yet another. This, a 40 minute rambling discourse, is never boring.
There are wonderful “beats.” The dealer relates many “she said, and I said” conversations, always showing herself one-upping whomever she was speaking with – always on a higher moral plane (a plane that is phony as a three dollar bill.) When the niece offers her the cheesy contents of the desk as a gift memento of the old lady, the dealer declines to accept it, speaking nicely, but snobbish in intent, “that it wouldn’t be right, she was just a friend to the old lady.” The niece then says in that case, she can pay her 5L for it, so she [the dealer] will feel better about it, and it will make the estate attorney’s happier too. The dealer’s moral ace is trumped, and she pays, much to her disgust. Of course, the biggest beat of all is the dealer being snide about the young man paying 90L for the frame and its weird picture of a finger.
The playwright did a great job of building his foundation early in the play, planting lots of seeds he would need, and we would recognize, later. In the opening scene, we hear her talk about the harvest table that was such a mistake. She has 1,100L tied up in it and can’t sell it. She’s had it for over a year, and says she’d happily take 1,150 for it to get it out of the shop. In the last scene, when she prices it to the “foolish” young man for 1,700L, we can feel a W. C. Fields moment coming long before it gets there. The maid selling the teaspoons early in the play later lets us understand exactly how the dealer works her plot to get in the house.
Well, I’ve written far too much about this, but it please me that this was the first time I ever saw a play where I could not only see the face of the clock, I could also understand how the hidden gears behind the face made the hands move.
posted by taotianone at 6:50 AM
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