Diane Debenham
This volume of short plays for two actors appeared at almost the half-century mark of Mavor Moore's remarkable journey through Canada's theatrical landscape, a journey during which he has travelled in many guises, as producer, director, actor, consultant, administrator, librettist and playwright, and this by no means exhausts the list of his skills. Considering that as a playwright, Moore's output was prodigious - his produced plays for radio, television and the stage and his operas and musicals number over one hundred - this collection is but a tiny sampling of his work. Nevertheless, it affords a welcome glimpse of a particular facet of his dramatic vision and of his consistent theatrical craftsmanship in several media. There are strong resemblances in style and structure among the six plays in the collection, attesting to the fact that they were not chosen at random. Indeed, with one exception, they date from a time in Moore's career when he wished to put several theories to the test. In his introduction, he sets out his reasons for his choice of plays; first, they represent 'more than another attempt to meet the pressing demand for theatrical economy' but reflect the desire he had in the late sixties and early seventies to work on a small scale, after writing the libretto for the monumental Louis Riel in 1967. Secondly, they are, he tells us, 'linked by a common concern with the interplay of three different perspectives on reality: what is being said, what appears to be happening, and what the audience is doing.' Finally, he informs us, 'I had in mind, for my sins, a series of short plays on the seven types of ambiguity.' This conscious intention, to produce small-scale, ambiguous works based on multiple levels of 'reality' has produced tightly constructed dramas which both intrigue and disturb with their elusive blend of Existentialist, Absurdist and Symbolist elements. Moore's desire to 'think small' also responded to the radio and television market in the 1970s, at a time when there was still a strong demand for half-hour scripts for such series as CBC Radio Tuesday Night and CBC-TV's experimental Program X. 'True to the times in Canada,' Moore remarks in his preface, 'I wrote versions of each [play] for radio, television and theatre, hoping to sell the plays to one and then the others in order of luck.' This effort to produce an all-purpose play has resulted in a sort of Canadian theatrical hybrid, capable of being staged effectively as well as responding to the technical demands of camera and microphone.
The plays are constructed in a traditional one-act format, containing a single concentrated action and played out in a single setting. Characters are sketched in quickly; exposition is dispensed with. The Store, which had its first production by CBC Television in 1971, is set in the office of The Manager of a mysterious department store, who opens the play with the line 'Complaints! complaints! complaints! Can't you bring me anything but complaints?' A clerk informs him that a clergyman, distressed by the fact that the store's discount for clerics has been discontinued, has proclaimed that 'the whole moral order of man is disintegrating.' The play is underway, with the subject (complaints) and the action (disintegration) announced in the opening nine lines. Next to appear is a woman, described in the stage directions as 'middle-aged, aggressive and clearly unbalanced.' The dialogue that ensues, between The Manager and The Woman, transports us into an absurd and menacing universe, where the Woman's complaints include a malfunctioning electric toothbrush which disfigured her daughter, an ice-pick used to murder her mother and a refrigerator which smothered her son. For all the terrible events of her life, she holds the store and its manager responsible. The skewed reasoning of the woman in assigning malevolent intentions to candles, belts and toothpicks is paralleled by 'unnatural' behaviour she claims to have observed in the natural world. She begins her series of complaints with a direct allusion to nature in a state of disarray:
It began with the owl and the skunk. I was walking home through the woods, after cutting off juniper roots with the clippers, when I stepped right into a skunk, lying across the path in a pool of blood and stuck all over with owl feathers. I stood there in a kind of spell - it was so unnatural, an owl going after a skunk like that!
The owl and skunk image is transformed into horrifying reality at
the play's climax, when the manager abandons his rational attempts to fend
off the woman's attacks, loses his reason and becomes the owl, 'driven
to unnatural deeds by a tormenting skunk.' Picking up a paper knife, he
murders the woman (crying 'Who. Who. Who.', in case we should miss the
point). All this is cleverly done, without a wasted word. In its satirical
view of the consumer society the play manages to be blackly humorous as
well, without losing any of its malevolent, ambiguous quality. Moore has
realized his primary intentions; reality is subverted; the audience perceives
the difference between what is being said and what is truly happening;
finally, use has been made of one of the 'seven forms of ambiguity' - the
pathetic fallacy.
If, as seems likely, Moore is referring in his introduction to William Empson's book The Seven Types of Ambiguity, it is interesting to observe the use he makes of the pathetic fallacy, a now seldom-heard critical term, which Empson analyses as '(tricking) the reader into a primitive or irrational mode of thought under colour of talking about the view' ('Annex on Dramatic Irony,' 38). Today, the term 'commanding image' would be used to convey the same effect. Moore's development of the skunk-owl image is just such a device: unnatural acts, violence, a nasty smell and a whiff of the ludicrous are served up for our subconscious to feast on. Thus primed, we are able to sniff out the action under the dialogue, which is just what the playwright intended. It is a measure of Moore's craftsmanship that he can deliberately base a play on a literary concept and make it work. In less skilled hands it might have emerged as a theatrical exercise.
The dramatic action in The Store is repeated in The Argument, published here in its stage version but presented first as a radio play in 1970 and later in television versions by the CBC and BBC. Here, an after-dinner argument pits a wily woman against a blundering man in what appears to be a merciless battle over another woman, but is in reality a series of tactical manoeuvres by the woman to get her own way over a trip she wants to take. Having goaded the man into striking her, she achieves victory since she is now able to dominate him through the guilt he feels over his brutal behaviour. Although the resolution of The Argument differs from that of The Store, the two plays follow the same pattern, slowly building to a violent climax, when the tormented turns the tables on the tormentor. Once again, Moore makes use of ambiguity, in his use of language this time, as in this exchange when the two characters war over the meaning of the words 'some affection':
W. You remember her with affection.
M. I said some affection. Don't put words into my mouth, and don't take them out either.
W. Some affection means affection, doesn't it?
M. Some means any amount - could be very little - It's ambiguous.
W. And that's how you intended it.
M. No-!
W. I'm supposed to think "not much" while you think "plenty."
Moore extends his use of ambiguity to the relationship between the
two characters, suggesting in his directions that 'the dialogue could take
place between husband and wife, lovers, brother and sister, father and
daughter, mother and son.' Given the strong component of sexual jealousy
in the 'Argument' it would be difficult to present it as a sibling or parent-child
conflict, without a convincing context. Lacking the texture and evocative
power of The Store, despite some shared characteristics, The
Argument appears to be more suitable for a reading or as a dramatic
exercise than as a fully staged performance. That it had its genesis as
a radio play seems right and natural. In this medium it could still succeed,
but it is doubtful that, in today's social climate the CBC would present
a play which contains an episode of domestic violence which the victim
not only 'provokes' but turns to her advantage.
The aura of radio also clings to the third play in this collection, The Pile, first produced in 1970 in the radio series 'CBC Tuesday Night,' with Mavor Moore himself as one of the two protagonists. Although written 21 years ago, this short drama, based as it is on the search for a solution to a gargantuan waste disposal problem, could hardly be more timely. It could almost be termed a NIMBY allegory. In this stage version, the two characters, X and Y, contemplate The Pile, an immense heap of unidentified and unsavoury material that cannot be burned, buried, recycled or carted elsewhere. It is simply and irrevocably there. Since There is where the audience is sitting, it perforce becomes part of the game, analogized, as Moore tells us in the play's introduction, in the play's title. Cryptic clues are dropped: the pile will soon begin to stink; it is rotting in full view; it could represent 'what has been piling up all their lives'; it could even represent a divine judgement on the seedy activities of the two men. Appropriately, the ending is a simple abdication of responsibility as the actors abandon the Pile, shifting the onus for its disposal to the owner of the land. The Pile is an elaborate joke, with the audience as the fall guy. Its success on stage depends on a high degree of acting technique and sensitive responses to audience reaction. As a radio play, which lacks this tension between performer and 'the house,' it would have a more abstract, whimsical quality. A television version, as Moore himself points out in his introduction, simply would not work and has not been attempted. The dimension which a live audience provides was obviously what Moore had in mind when he first conceived the play - as he tells us, it was originally written for the stage.
The theme of moral responsibility picked up again in Getting In, a surrealistic interview between an anxious applicant and an inscrutable official, has a distinctly existentialist flavour reminiscent of Huis Clos, Sartre's dramatic interpretation of hell for the uncommitted. The atmosphere of menace distilled by the play is also reminiscent of Kafka and Pinter. We are never told the location of the windowless room which is the setting for Getting In, but it is obviously not of the world. It is tempting to see the male characters, P., an official of the mysterious institution, and T., an applicant, named once as Mr. Thomas, as ciphers, the one being St. Peter, keeper of heaven's gate, and the other, the uncertain St. Thomas. But Moore means to keep us guessing here, as elsewhere. What does become clear is that T., despite having completed all the formalities for acceptance, is not going to make the grade, because of his narrow, self-serving and fearful view of life. In the end, he fails the interview and is not allowed to enter a place which, as the play goes on, seems less like heaven and suspiciously like life itself, a place inhabited by untidy, disorganized and sometimes criminal people.
The interview provides both form and action for the play. With his seemingly irrelevant questions, the Official provokes the Applicant into making damaging revelations about himself and his opinions, as in this Socratic exchange about T.'s beliefs:
P.... what do you believe in?
T. Well, I guess I believe in God.
P. Which? Whose?
T. Same one as everybody else. I mean, when you get right down to it, everybody has the same idea.
P. What same idea?
T. Well ... you know, a mysterious force ... whatever runs things.
P. ... then why does he allow things to go wrong?
T. Maybe it all comes out in the wash. I mean, maybe it just looks that way now, but all the time He knows what He's doing.
P. Then you wouldn't object, say, if God were to punish you?
T. No, I don't think so. I've done ... well, I expect some punishment.
P. And if his servants were to punish you, you wouldn't object?
T. You mean here? Is that your idea? Is that what I'm getting into?
The cat-and-mouse game being played here is a familiar pattern, common to this play and to The Store and The Argument. The game is not confined to the action on the stage: as in The Pile, Moore plays with the audience here too, forcing it to attempt to decode the play in terms of the situation, characters, time and place. This raises the question of how far a playwright should go in tantalizing his audience. If the audience's attempt to guess the omitted information becomes its major preoccupation, rather than the action of the play, then the game has gone too far. Using ambiguity to create audience involvement can be an interesting but occasionally dangerous challenge, but Moore pulls it off, skirting the divide where drama ends and mere puzzle-solving begins. Getting In is the most profound of the plays examined so far, satirizing the absurd nature of the criteria human beings have invented to torment themselves with, and the whole process whereby we spend much of our life trying to meet undefined standards set by unidentified 'others.'
It is tempting to see in Moore's use of Socratic dialogue form in Getting In, a reflection of his abiding interest in the Greek gadfly. As early as 1961, he included a script about Socrates in his series of radio plays for the Ontario School Broadcasts, and in his introduction to the present collection he speaks of his fascination with the essentially dramatic structure of Plato's Apology. Moore's version, The Apology, distills the dramatic essence from Plato's account of Socrates' trial and death, and presents Socrates as an endearing character who speaks in unadorned, homely phrases. The play, in two acts, takes the form of a long soliloquy, introduced by a brief list of charges by Meletus, Socrates' accuser, and enlivened by a few minutes' dialogue with the same Meletus. Like Getting In, it argues the case for an examined, committed existence and rejects the shallow, comfortable life.
Once more, Moore involves the spectators, this time in a straightforward manner, by seating Socrates' judges and accusers in the audience and by having Socrates address it directly, as spectators at the trial itself, as in this passage:
I'm a gadfly. A nation is like a horse. Oh, I know: I don't look like a gadfly and you don't look like a horse, but we are! Athens is a noble stallion that moves so slowly he needs to be stung into action every so often ... Of course you resent it! You'll snarl like any hibernator roused from sleep, who spots a gnat and says "kill the little bugger!"
One senses that Moore had fun writing this play, the only one in
the collection conceived especially for the stage. The dialogue is breezy,
the mood relaxed, yet a tight dramatic structure underlies this simple
drama. It was not written, as were the plays already discussed, in a deliberately
cryptic vein, yet Moore's cherished ambiguity is not entirely forsaken,
since Socrates' search for the meaning of the Delphic Oracle's ambiguous
words 'There is no man wiser than Socrates' are at the heart of his defence.
In The Apology one senses a testimony to Moore's own convictions
about the importance of intellectual integrity and the questioning, ever-questing
spirit, as well as an identification with the aging philosopher.
The rapier-like exchanges and satirical atmosphere of the 'ambiguity' plays are lacking in Come Away, Come Away, the final play in this collection. Instead, an evocative, occasionally sentimental tone pervades this dramatised encounter between Death, symbolised by a little girl, and an old man at the end of his life. The old man, during one of his customary walks in a wooded park, meets a young girl, who is (rather obviously) gathering dead leaves and a dead bird in a basket. Prompted by her deceptively naive questions, he reminisces about his life in a long litany of regrets to a background of plaintive guitar music. One of these regrets relates to his earlier life as a lawyer, when he successfully defended a criminal, who, on his release, murdered his wife:
One fellow, bank robber, oh he was a tough customer - I thought they'd hang him sure. But I was able to get him the benefit of the doubt. Big fellow he was, with blond hair and hands like a blacksmith. By George! (pause) Later he killed his wife with a crowbar. Nice girl. (groans)
And again, as a grandfather he had warned, but failed to protect
his granddaughter against her abusive husband, in a remarkably similar
incident:
I had a granddaughter, name of Millie. (Pause). Crying. That fellow used to hit her. No good. Still, what could anyone do? I told him, right out. Said, you're piling up grief. Blamed everyone but himself. Tears streaming down her face. Do you love him, Millie? It killed her. (He groans).
In view of the fact that this play was first produced (on radio)
nearly 20 years ago, it is interesting to see that the CBC was already
broadcasting material which dealt with tragic violence against women. In
Moore's play, the problem merely becomes the focus for an old man's regrets;
much later, the CBC would place it front and centre in such dramas as A
Far Cry From Home (CBC TV, 1981) and In the Belly of Old Woman (CBC
Radio, 1986). The old man's sense of powerlessness and failure extends
to other matters, including his own neglect of his wife and his failure
to get to know his son, who died in the war. His only happy memories are
connected with the carefree time of his youth, when he climbed trees in
a park much like this one. Ironically, the little girl cheers him up with
her easy acceptance of his confessions, to the point where, responding
to her encouragement, he tries to climb the tree again. He falls, and the
little girl holds out her hand to lead him away, as the mournful guitar
builds to a climax and then falls silent. Although this excursion into
Symbolism, with a flavour of Maeterlinck's unseen world, seems dated today,
there is no denying the expertise which went into its creation.
Reading these plays, I was struck once again by the important role played by the CBC in shaping our national drama. Today, of course, the experimental quality of these examples of Moore's work would disqualify them from finding a niche on television. Anthologies such as Program X, which aimed at the small audience for serious new drama, and which aired a number of Moore's plays, have disappeared from our national network, replaced by programs aimed at a much more general public. Radio remains the last refuge for the quirky, original play. Perhaps the CBC will do us a favour one day by restaging some of Moore's work on the radio network. Six Plays, as previously mentioned represents only a fraction of Moore's dramatic writing. A few of his other plays, including Inside Out and The Roncarelli Affair, have appeared in print, but most of his work remains unpublished, and can be read only in manuscript form at York University, which houses his papers. In the light of Mavor Moore's influence on the development of our national theatre, it would appear right and reasonable to expect a much wider selection of his plays to be published in the near future.