One of the great Puritan curses on the arts and entertainment is the glum necessity of making them useful or uplifting, an extension of some middle-class self-improvement program. It follows that if something shallow, trivial, or fatuous becomes very popular, the success must be justified in terms of culture, given the robes of these metaphysical spooks which haunt the lecture rooms of university arts departments, and are eventually displayed in the literary or coffee-table sections of chic bookshops. Almost anything can be made into a cultural totem, and often is: Marilyn Monroe, for instance, and subway graffiti have become the objects of solemn attention from people who should have better things to do with their time.
Mark Of The Philistine
The honest declaration "I know what I like" has become the mark of the philistine; liking is not enough, it is to be derided. One must see into the cultural depth, and sense the place of a "work" in the great scheme of things. This has been known to happen even when a picture or a film or a play is deliberately designed for people who, innocently, know what they like. One has to think only of the elevation of gangster films into the category of films maudits, or of the risibly over-solemn treatment of essentially lightweight playwrights like Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard.
Now, I am all for culture and an educated view of what we enjoy. But I do argue that the education and its cultural imperatives should not be allowed to get in the way of enjoyment. They should, so to speak, be put in their place from time to time, as Danny Kaye did with his joke about Great Russian plays--"First I play part in Great Russian tragedy--everybody die! Then I play part in Great Russian comedy--everybody die! But they die happy. That makes it funny."
Some of these thoughts ran through my mind when I heard about the critical reaction to Richard Greenberg's Eastern Standard, which is playing at the golden Theatre in Manhattan. Although the New York Times and other distinguished publications praised this piece highly, calling it "one of the year's best plays," others felt that it was meretricious, because it handled "serous issues" in a shallow manner. When I saw the play, these comments puzzled me. It is a skillfully written, amusing alloy of light comedy and smart, comforting sentiment--absolutely classic Broadway stuff--in a genre that has entertained New York audiences for fifty years and more. Much of it actually takes place outside a luxurious country house, in the manner of those British "anyone for tennis?" plays that went out of fashion in the mid-fifties. It is what I call an American Terrace Play, in which a number of people who have no problems about money work out their other problems in the setting of a sunny terrace. It is slick, it is very well done, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, despite a few flaws that may have been unavoidable.
The six characters are introduced to the audience and each other in the setting of a Manhattan restaurant. Stephen and Drew are old school friends. Stephen is a young architect of vast independent means, very unhappy in his job of building "ziggurats" in New York. Drew is a painter. Both of them are looking for love. In Stephen's case this means a mysterious and beautiful woman who often comes to the restaurant, and, indeed, comes in while he is complaining to Drew about contemporary architecture. (It is not that he hates the great buildings as such;
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