by April de Angelis
“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” — Macbeth Act 5, Scene 5”
Hush is set on a dismal beach a year after Jo has mysteriously disappeared. It is about the effects that the disappearance is having on those she left behind. Or else it’s about socialism and the failure of the left. Or it’s about failure to communicate.
Rosa, Jo’s indifferent/depressed 15-year-old daughter, has been having sex on the beach with a disturbed homeless boy called Dogboy, who acts like a dog and spends most of his time naked. Louise, Jo’s sister and Rosa’s guardian, is arguing with her mediocre novelist boyfriend Tony. Denise, the housecleaner, daydreams of going to Tibet. Then Colin comes in and tells everyone that Jo held strong beliefs, was at Greenham Common, wouldn’t drink coffee because of the oppression of the coffee workers, and we have a brief argument about the failures of society and where Rosa belongs.
There is loads of angst dripped and spattered and poured all over the place. The debates are clumsy and unsupported, overly emotional and come out of nowhere.
Rosa realizes she is pregnant by Dogboy, who is likely insane and may have killed her mother. She begins to punch herself in the uterus and bleed out as the play ends.
Random Thoughts Written Down as I Read:
The language is stilted, juvenile, pretentious.
Cole’s monologues are stilted and disjointed.
The emotions are exaggerated, but I don’t care about these people or anything that’s going on.
Why does Colin even think for one instant he has any claim on his dead former lover’s teenage daughter? He’s just here to suddenly rant about communism, socialism, coffee boycotts, neofascism, the proletariat, and the working class.
And then we are back to doing nothing.
The characters wait for something that never happens. They take no actions.
WTF:
“The difficulty is that at the moment there is not an accepted way of looking at the world if you are a left-wing writer.”—April de Angelis, about “Hush.”
That was produced in 1992? There’s your problem – we’re still not dealing well with the original wave of surrealism.
In a way, it’s appropriate you mentioned the Greenham Peace Camp this weekend. FB and liberal historians have been making hay today about the creation of Mother’s Day as a feminist and pacifist holiday in the 1800’s. It was then co-opted over the decades into Hallmark Holiday #1 (supposedly – I haven’t read anything but unsubstantiated Internet). And before Occupy got drowned in everything else, Occupy cited Greenham as an example of positive occupational protest.
As a mother, female, feminist, liberal treehugger, I despise Mother’s Day. It’s my opinion that ALL of our holidays have been co-opted into Hallmark Holidays and the push to buy me something expensive/useless sickens me. I also think you should tell your loved ones you love them ALL the time, not just on special days.
As a person who reads, designs, attends many, many, many plays, I dislike preening intellectualism, message plays that smack you with the message, message plays that forget what their message is, and shock for the sake of shock.
I like spectacle. I like to be challenged. I like to be moved to tears or laughter or disdain. I dislike useless angst. I am a cranky old lady and I want ALL you damn kids to get off my lawn!