Review
Redux
DOUBLE
TAKE-STAGE LEFT
MARX
IN SOHO
Review
by Paul Lion
Response
by Howard Zinn
A
young Karl Marx
Years
ago I reviewed theater on KPFK (Pacifica/KPFK had not yet become pervasively
corrupt, quasi-corporate and largely contemptible).For
the program, I put much stock in something I'd heard: "The relationship
of the reviewer to the work of art is the relationship of the pigeon to
the statue".To cleanse and sweep
away this one-sided, parasitic-fecal relationship, I devised a format called
Double Take: days before broadcast I submitted the review to a production
representative; that person composed a reply; we aired the prepared review-and-reply
live and then engaged in a longer spontaneous discussion.Here,
responding to my ChangeLinks review of MARX IN SOHO, below, is its playwright,
Howard Zinn, the renowned radical-humanist historian, author of the best-selling
classic, A People's History of the United States.
=============================================================
With
a little help from his friends-Socrates, Gandhi, Mother Jones, Mark Twain,
Buddha-and a lot from Howard Zinn-Karl Marx returns for a short while to
the Earth of our day.He is posthumously
determined to rescue his work from the distortions of Stalinism's brutalities,
pseudo-socialism's repressions, and capitalism's apparent triumph.An
imperfect afterworld's bureaucratic error, however, dispatches Marx to
Soho in New York, rather than Soho, London, where he and his family were
exiled.Marx, alone onstage, zestfully
played by Brian Jones, reminisces to us about his family, including two
splendid women, his wife Jenny and daughter Eleanor; his friend Engels
and political rival Bakunin; and his life as a revolutionary activist and
writer.(Suggestion for the run
of this production at its Santa Monica Boulevard theater-convert the play's
setting from Manhattan's SoHo to Los Angeles' SoHo-South Hollywood.)
Equally
if not more important, Zinn, prodded by his wife Rosalyn, makes the play
"more directly related to our time, rather than a historical piece about
Marx and Europe in the 19th century" (Foreword to the paperback edition).Marx,
for example, reads aloud to us from a newspaper: "A hundred thousand people
lined up before dawn in New York City for two thousand jobs.What
will happen to the ninety-eight thousand who are turned away?Is
that why you are building more prisons?Yes,
capitalism has triumphed.But over
whom?"
All
this is fleshed out with Jones' verve and with Zinn's characteristic gift
at accurately humanizing without sentimentalizing people whom most historians
ignore at best and disfigure at worst.Zinn
has also stripped the dialog of preaching, and has leavened it instead
with mischievous humor ("I know Christ," Marx confides to us. "He's not
coming back").Jones plays Marx
with considerable variety, clarity and commitment (his program credits
include active membership in the International Socialist organization).One
can go to the performance knowing it is a surprisingly entertaining and
enlightening event, as well as one that is uncommonly deserving-sufficiently
successful, in fact, to have been extended almost a month in Los Angeles
before it resumes anational tour.
Good,
deserving, and important enough, however, to be more than it is.
Zinn's
specific, easily complied with directions for Marx's physical appearance
and dress ought not to be cast aside.Making
Marxcontemporary, younger than the
script's description, younger even than the actor alters perceptibly the
audience's relationship to him, a matter I will return to in another connection
shortly.
An
actor as capable as Jones, moreover, should have an equally skilled director.Instead,
this portrayal (a one-person play at that), is apparently self-directed,
a daunting task to be attempted only by the most experienced and accomplished
performers-an Olivier, a Gielgud, a Welles.Too
often I had the impression of observing an ingratiating actor-and-"character",
each giving calculated "performances", rather than me feeling transported
and shaken by a transcendent human being who is driven to communicate irrepressibly
urgentideas.
This
urgency is vital.Marx's message
is not just a witty, stimulating Saturday night at the Complex.It
is a matter of life and death-for Marx and us.He
has, in fact, defeated Death to get to us, and his time now, even more
than in his life, is perishable.The
actor is playing, but in a theater piece that is neithergame
norpretense.
Finally,
the relationship between the play, the performer and the audience.I
believe that to entertain, move, and inform, however desirable, are not
enough.We who come to see and hear
should leave changed.Most if not
all of the audience already agrees with Marx anyway.Jones/Marx
should notthen justbe
a muse us and confirm already held beliefs.We
should depart the theater, not merely flattered or reinforced, but also
upended and dislodged; Jones/Marx could, finally, step down from the stage
and into the audience, challenging us, whether we like it or not.
I
believe this is what Zinn wants.At
the play's close Marx asks, "Do you resent my coming back and irritating
you?"The play should irritate us.This
Marx in Soho, however, does not.It
is much too successfully likeable.
Still,
successfully likeable Marxism (Marx, it must be said, emphatically denied
being a "Marxist"), even if only on one stage, is immeasurably preferable
to any amount of successfully camouflaged capitalism.
Marx
in Soho rewards a visit.
Howard?