Jeffrey Sweet–Making the Scene

I’ve seen something north of 5000 plays in my life. I saw Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?, The Penny Wars and La Strada on Broadway, and When You Coming Back Red Ryder? in its original off-off-Broadway run over a shoe store. I saw David Hare and Howard Brenton’s Pravda at the National in London, Peter Brook’s Mahabharata in Brooklyn, and Michael Pennington and Michael Bogdanov’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s history cycle (eight plays in seven nights) at the International Theater Festival of Chicago. I saw the first draft of Fences at the O’Neill Center, Robert DeNiro in a two-character one-act about drug addicts in a workshop, and most of the original Steppenwolf company in a midnight performance of Balm in Gilead on Halloween at Hull House. I saw Ethel Merman in Gypsy, Sid Caesar in Little Me and Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly!

I actually remember a lot of these. I’ve also read God knows how many books about the theater and written some. I think I can make a claim to be well-versed.
Anyway …

I was talking to a playwright friend about the problem I had with Merry Me by Hansol Jung. To be candid, I had trouble following it. She said, “Well, surely The Country Wife must have been a guide.” And I went, “Hunh?” She looked at me as if she were trying to explain how to make a latte to a dog. “The reference to Jack Horner?” Yes, that should have gone ding-ding-ding in my brain. But it didn’t. I don’t know if it would have made that much difference for me, but sometimes I miss things.

And I suspect that, no matter how wide or deep our reference level and how much we have seen where, most of us at one point or another run into something we just don’t get.

I think sometimes about what people who make shows assume their audience will know.

The first time I saw Hamilton was at the Public Theater. By coincidence, I found myself sitting behind Sheldon Harnick, an old friend. We were both members of the Dramatists Guild Council. I guess Lin-Manuel Miranda (who was also on the Council) was keeping an eye on who was out front, because Sheldon and I received a message at the intermission that he wanted to see us after the performance. So, about fifteen minutes after that dazzling performance, the three of us stood in a back hallway of the Public Theater. Lin looked us – two aging, balding Jewish guys who lived on the upper west side – and said, “I’m guessing you got none of the hip-hop references.” And Sheldon and I, in unison, confessed that we indeed got none of them. And then Lin said, “And I’m guessing you got all of the musical theater references.” And Sheldon and I, in unison, said that as far as we knew we had indeed got all of them.

So, we missed some stuff. Reportedly the structures of a few numbers made explicit references to hip-hop classics. I’m going to guess that some of the people who recognized all of those references did not get the fleeting reference to “Sit down, John!” that Sheldon and I instantly recognized from 1776.

But part of what is remarkable about Hamilton is that it works for pretty much everybody, whether or not they get all the references. Shakespeare is filled with references to contemporaneous events his audiences would have gotten that mean nothing to us. But the soundness of their basic architecture gets most of us past that. Works that succeed even though much of their audiences are clueless about occasional specifics are candidates for classic status.

None of this, however, consoles me on those occasions when, in spite of long experience and a deep reference level, I find myself standing at the station, conscious that a lot of other people around me have had tickets to ride and are enjoying a happy trip through the countryside.

The audience around me at Merry Me had a terrific time and greeted the talented cast with cheers. And I envy them.