Howard Zinn
My Response
By Howard Zinn
I appreciate that Paul Lion has not treated MARX IN SOHO
as a statue to be doused with a shower of pigeon-stool. His is one of the most perceptive and
thoughtful reviews I have seen, among many, from the Washington Post to the
Village Voice to the L.A. Times. He understands what I have tried to do, to rescue what is sound and important in
Marx's ideas from Stalinist dogma and
capitalist distortion, and to do it in a way that would be entertaining as well as instructive.
When he says that the play is important enough "to be
more than it is", I only
wince slightly, because I believe he is right. It is a common problem
with writers who want to present
serious ideas without putting the
audience to sleep, or if awake, to roll their eyes with "Oh, my
God, another Left lecture". It is
a problem of balance.
Tom Stoppard, in his play THE REAL THING, caricatures an imprisoned soldier who writes an insufferably dull political play, and in
him Stoppard has an easy target for
poking fun. Too easy - because
Stoppard, who it is fair to say is politically conservative, has
made his dull writer stand for all
political playwrights, as if to write a play with "a message" is
doomed from the start to drive an audience batty with boredom. In
revenge, one might write a play in which a playwright (shall we call him
Tom?) is witty, entertaining, but has
nothing important to say, and then conclude the inverse of Stoppard's point -
that to be funny is inevitably to be empty of
social content.
But surely it is
possible to be both entertaining and serious - to have an audience leave the
theater with a sense of having enjoyed the evening, and yet having learned
something that is troubling, that won't
leave the mind and conscience at ease.
It is possible,
but difficult. It requires a delicate
balance. And Paul Lion is suggesting, as kindly as he can, that I have not
quite achieved that desirable equilibrium between entertainment and
instruction. He is saying, I believe, that in bringing a witty, fun-loving Marx
on stage, and letting this quality dominate the production, I have, without
intention, somehow diminished this powerful figure, one of the great thinkers
of history, whose ideas have had a tumultuous effect on modern times.
Yes, there would
have to be more of a sense of "urgency", an understanding that the ideas Marx puts forth on stage, despite
the intermingling of those ideas with humor, are matters of life and death.
Paul Lion suggests that part of the problem may be the youth of the actor. He
acknowledges, as reviewers and audiences all over the country have made clear,
that Brian Jones delivers a wonderful performance as Marx, but he wants it to be more than
"performance". I can't be
sure he is right until I see an older actor, one with greater physical solidity
(Brian Jones is tall and graceful) play the role with the required power, but also with Jones' sense of fun.
Paul Lion says the
play is "too successfully likeable". He wants it to leave the
audience "upended and dislodged".
Yes,. a rare outcome of going to
the theater, and I wish I could achieve
that.
POSTSCRIPT by Paul Lion
This is the rare occasion when an author is as humane as
his work, and takes responsibility for
a problem that isn’t his. One of Howard Zinn’s most recent books is Howard
Zinn on War and Other Means and Ends.
Scheduled for September publication is Three
Strikes—Stories of American Labor.