Serenading Louie

The American Century Theater presents Audience Guide Written and compiled by Jack Marshall July 23–August 21, 2010 Theatre II, Gunston Arts Center March 26-April 1 7 Theatre II, Gunston Arts Center Theater you can afford to see— plays you can’t afford to miss! About The American Century Theater The American Century Theater was founded in 1994. We are a professional company dedicated to presenting great, important, but overlooked American plays of the twentieth century . what Henry Luce called ―the American Century.‖ The company‘s mission is one of rediscovery, enlightenment, and perspective, not nostalgia or preservation. Americans must not lose the extraordinary vision and wisdom of past playwrights, nor can we afford to surrender our moorings to our shared cultural heritage. Our mission is also driven by a conviction that communities need theater, and theater needs audiences. To those ends, this company is committed to producing plays that challenge and move all Americans, of all ages, origins and points of view. In particular, we strive to create theatrical experiences that entire families can watch, enjoy, and discuss long afterward. These audience guides are part of our effort to enhance the appreciation of these works, so rich in history, content, and grist for debate. The American Century Theater is a 501(c)(3) professional nonprofit theater company dedicated to producing significant 20th Century American plays and musicals at risk of being forgotten. The American Century Theater is supported in part by Arlington County through the Cultural Affairs Division of the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Resources and the Arlington Commission for the Arts. This arts event is made possible in part by the Virginia Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as by many generous donors. Contents Who Is Louie? . 1 The Playwright: Lanford Wilson . 3 Preceding Louie: The Unsettling Sixties . 7 Critical Reactions to Serenading Louie . 9 Lanford Wilson: I Hear America Talking . 12 Lanford Wilson‘s 50 Stage Works . 20 The 2010–2011 American Century Theater Season back cover Who Is Louie? —Jack Marshall If you didn‘t graduate from Yale, the odds are that the title Serenading Louie means nothing to you. The title appears in the second stanza of the song, which is the traditional closing number of the Whiffenpoofs, an a cappella harmony singing group at Yale University, much parodied (as in the comedy Trading Places) and much imitated (as by the sound-alike Harvard College student group, the Crocadilloes). The song, whose author and composer are often cited as ―Anonymous,‖ was actually based on a tune written by Tod Galloway (or, some sources say, Harvard grad Guy H. Scull), with lyrics by Yalie Meade Minnigerode. It was published in sheet music form in 1909 (the year the Whiffenpoofs were founded) and became a hit for crooner Rudy Vallee (Yale, Class of 1927) in 1927 and again in 1947 for uber-crooner Bing Crosby. It was also recorded by Elvis Presley, Count Basie, Perry Como, the Statler Brothers, and many others. ―Mory‘s‖ refers to Mory‘s Temple Bar in New Haven, Connecticut, and ―Louie‖ to a former owner of Mory‘s, Louis Linder. The chorus is a parody of the poem ―Gentlemen Rankers‖ by Rudyard Kipling. The song has turned up in many pieces of American culture and pop culture, especially in war movies. It was sung in the Air Force film Winged Victory in 1944, for example. It was featured in the opening sequence of the World War II TV series Baa Baa Black Sheep, and the famous chorus was heard in the movie 12 O’Clock High, starring Gregory Peck. More recently, the first verse was heard under the action in various parts of the CIA thriller The Good Shepherd, which was produced by Guy McElwaine, younger brother of TACT Resident Playwright Bob McElwaine, who died earlier this year. On the other end of the spectrum, the song was warbled by a herd of sheep on The Muppet Show. Here are the lyrics: 1 From the tables down at Mory’s, To the place where Louie dwells, And the dear, old Temple Bar we love so well, Sing the Whiffenpoofs assembled, With their glasses raised on high! And the magic of their singing, casts a spell. Yes the magic of their singing, Of the songs we love so well: "Shall I Wasting" and "Mavourneen" and the rest! We will serenade our Louie, Till health and voices fail, And we’ll pass and be forgotten with the rest. We are poor little lambs Who have lost our way, Baa! Baa! Baa! We are little black sheep Who have gone astray! Baa! Baa! Baa! Gentleman songsters, off on a spree, Doomed from here to eternity. Lord! Have mercy on such as we, Baa! Baa! Baa! 2 The Playwright: Lanford Wilson —Jack Marshall Lanford Wilson is a prolific American playwright, much admired by critics and bankable on Broadway, who has written the requisite number of famous and successful plays (at least four: Talley’s Folly, The Fifth of July, Burn This!, and his first hit, Hot L Baltimore) to bolster his equally accomplished but less familiar ones (The Rimers of Eldritch, Balm in Gilead, and many more) and earn him a place with the all-time greats of the American Theater. Despite this, Wilson has never achieved the kind of celebrity and public familiarity that followed the last generation of great playwrights, like Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller, or even Neil Simon. Shown a photograph of Wilson, even the most sophisticated theatergoers would be puzzled about whose face it was. We don‘t have that many great playwrights these days, but still Wilson manages to stay nearly invisible. Perhaps part of the problem is that he had the bad luck to share the Wilson surname with a contemporary, also a great playwright, who has been both more outspoken and a little bit more successful. That would be African- American playwright August Wilson, eight years Lanford‘s junior but five years dead, who won two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama to Lanford Wilson‘s one (for Talley’s Folly), and whose ten-play ―Pittsburgh Cycle,‖ dramatizing the Black experience in America, is one of the most impressive playwriting achievements of any native writer. But Lanford Wilson doesn‘t have to take a back seat to anyone, even August. ―What Lanford Wilson does is write beautiful plays,‖ writes critic and essayist Thomas Keith. He is undeniably right. Wilson‘s lack of celebrity proportional to his accomplishments is more likely the product of his own relentless and sincere modesty. Comparisons to legendary playwrights embarrass him. He is commonly called a contemporary Tennessee Williams, for example, and he rejects the notion. ―I don‘t compare myself to Tennessee Williams, no, thank you,‖ he told an interviewer in 1984. ―We‘re talking Tennessee Williams. He‘s great, and I‘m not.‖ 3 Most theatergoers familiar with Lanford Wilson‘s work disagree. Wilson was born on April 13, 1937, in Lebanon, Missouri. Family journeys took him to the Ozarks and San Diego, until he finally reached the University of Chicago in 1959, where he enrolled in his first playwriting class. Upon graduation, he moved to New York City. ―I left Chicago because there was no theatre, which is hard to believe,‖ Wilson told an interviewer years later. ―Of course, you had touring companies, but nothing like the abundance and level of professionalism that exists in Chicago today. So playwrights really only could go to New York. I found that the quality of my work improved immensely in New York because I was in this incubator of creativity.‖ The incubator soon got him involved with a group of theatrical artists at the Café Cino, a tiny coffeehouse Off-Off-Broadway (read: semiprofessional theater) that presented edgy, avant garde works. Wilson became active as a playwright, director, actor, and designer, and got his first play, So Long at the Fair, produced there in 1963. ―All playwrights have to do is hang around a theatre long enough until someone reads their script,‖ he tells young playwrights. ―A good strategy is to work at a theatre, you know, like do things around the office. Don‘t tell them you‘re a writer. Then, sooner or later, someone will ask you what you do, and you hand them a script.‖ Another of Wilson‘s scripts produced at the café was a one-act entitled Home Free (1964), about the relationship of two incestuous siblings. During the run of Home Free, Wilson met a young director named Marshall W. Mason. The two initially clashed when Mason criticized Wilson‘s rewrite of Home Free, but when Wilson gave Mason a copy of his latest play, Balm in Gilead (1965), a massive, 56-character piece employing simultaneous scenes and overlapping dialogue, a creative partnership was forged. Several months later, Balm in Gilead opened under the direction of Mason at the Café La Mama, beginning a long and profitable collaboration between the two young artists. In 1969, Wilson and Mason cofounded Circle Repertory Company. Its production of Wilson‘s Hot L Baltimore (1973), the story of a ragtag group of drifters, prostitutes, and aging residents in an old, run-down hotel, was directed by Mason and was a sensation, running for 1,100 performances (an Off-Broadway record for a non-musical) and eventually was transferred to 4 Broadway. It won the New York Drama Critics‘ Circle Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, and the Obie Award, and established Wilson as a major playwright. Wilson and Mason continued their successful collaboration, which included The Mound Builders (1975)—a play that Wilson has identified as one of his own favorites—in which an archaeological dig sets the stage for a fascinating meditation on a university scientist‘s past and present; Serenading Louie (1970), about two young suburban couples confronting disillusionment at the heart of their marriages; Angels Fall (1982), where strangers come together in a small, remote, mission church in New Mexico to face their own mortality in the wake of a possible nuclear accident, and Talley’s Folly (1979), perhaps Wilson‘s most celebrated play, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics‘ Circle Award.

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