Reading Plays

This weeks play – The Baltimore Waltz by Paula Vogel. The play was recently produced by Acting Out at the Harbour Playhouse in Dublin, and we’re joined by the cast Michael J. Kunze, Niamh Denyer and Brian Graham Higgins.

The Baltimore Waltz was first produced off-Broadway at the Circle Repertory Company in 1992, and first published by dramatists play service that same year. It was awarded Obie awards for Best New American play, Best Performance, and Best Direction.

The play is an allegory about the aids crisis, and the death of the playwright’s brother. Despite the heavyweight subject matter Baltimore Waltz is a highly stylised, cinematically referential comedy with an unconventional structure. Three actors, Anna, her Brother Carl and a chorus ‘The Third’ (playing a variety of roles), travel across an imaginary Europe, tracing the trip the playwright regretted never taking herself. The play tackles the tragedy and impossible uncertainties of the very early days of the aids crisis with a lightness of touch, and a playful approach to symbolism that creates a space for poignancy to naturally emerge.

Anna is ill with Acquired Toilet Disease, a sly wink to Gay Related Immune Deficiency (GRID), the original diagnosis for HIV / AIDS. She leaves her job as a grade school teacher, as does her brother, fired from his position as ‘the head librarian of literature and languages at the San Francisco Public’. Together they cross Europe, in search of a cure, pursued by a mysterious ‘Third Man’ trafficking something in stuffed rabbits, and finally meeting ‘the doctor’, an eighty year old urologist Strangelove type figure, who ‘uriposia’ therapy is based around the enthusiastic collection and imbibing of urine .

Download: Reading Plays – Episode 3 – Baltimore Waltz

‘Reading Plays‘ is a discussion show, featuring Gareth Stack and James Van De Waal. Each week we do a close reading of a modern play, discussing it’s merits, themes, issues raised, and so on. You can play along by reading or watching a production of the play before you listen to the show.

Next weeks play – Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller.

Music – Amor & Psyche – by Bitwise Operator.

This weeks play – Lonesome West by Martin McDonagh.

Lonesome West is part of Connemara triology, along with Beauty Queen of Leenane and A Skull in Connemara. Published 1997, Methuen Drama. First performed Jun 11th, 1997 at Druid Theatre in Galway, in a coproduction with London’s Royal Court Theatre. Went on to Broadway in 1999, where it was nominated for Tonys for Best Play, and Best Actor.

Set in the post-apocalyptic town of Leenane, with the apocalypse in question being the destruction of the mythological Irish West, and its explication on stage in particular.

McDonagh’s play captures something of the grim reality of the gravity hole of Ireland. This is a desecrated space, a world in which the rare old characters of post colonial Ireland, collide with a Tarantinoesque modernity drenched in stylised violence, substance abuse, and sexual possibilities both intriguing and forever denied to it’s protagonists.

Download: Reading Plays – Episode 2 – The Lonesome West

‘Reading Plays‘ is a discussion show, featuring Gareth Stack and James Van De Waal. Each week we do a close reading of a modern play, discussing it’s merits, themes, issues raised, and so on. You can play along by reading or watching a production of the play before you listen to the show.

Next weeks play – Baltimore Waltz by Paula Vogel.

Music – Amor & Psyche – by Bitwise Operator.

This weeks play – Oleanna by David Mamet.

First produced 1992 (stage), 1994 (film) starring William H. Macy & Rebecca Pidgeon. Oleanna was controversial on release and remains so, as it deals with issues of sexual harassment and rape. Mamet’s interest in these themes arose out of the media circus surrounding the nomination of American Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. The play features two characters John and Carol – a university lecturer and his student, whose mutual misunderstandings and power plays descend into dark accusations and violence.

This is the first in a new series for Radiomade.ie. ‘Reading Plays‘ is a discussion show, featuring Gareth Stack and James Van De Waal. Each week we do a close reading of a modern play, discussing it’s merits, themes, issues raised, and so on. You can play along by reading or watching a production of the play before you listen to the show.

Next weeks play – ‘The Lonesome West‘ by Martin McDonagh.

Download: Reading Plays – Episode 1 – Oleanna

Music – Amor & Psyche – by Bitwise Operator.