Farcical 'Melancholy Play' questions American tradition of happiness

"Melancholy Play" was written by an American who has seen far too many subtitled films from unspecified European countries. But this is not a bad thing. If the popularity of filmmakers like Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini have declined over the years, this should not be taken as a sign of their inability with the film medium. Instead, playwright Sarah Ruhl argues that it is a sign of our failure as viewers to appreciate them. Americans are simply too vague and ignorant for Fellini, too fast-paced, too self-contented, or as Ruhl might say, too happy.

"Melancholy Play" is a meditation on these themes, but, contrary to the implications of the title, it is anything but somber. It is a light farce, at times cheerful and clever, at times ridiculous and wicked, and at many points laugh-out-loud hilarious.

The plot concerns a group of cheerful Americans living in Illinois, who, content with their lives and comfortable with their positions in society, are shaken up by a mysterious, beautiful, inexplicably melancholy young stranger who works at the bank. Tilly, she's named, and the way her aura of sweet sorrow draws these other characters inexorably towards her forms the backbone of this play.

Laura Breckenridge '06 plays Tilly with grace and wit. Her longing gazes out of open windows onto gray rainy days and large, heartfelt sighs express with just the right amount of irony that hopelessly romantic condition of yearning melancholia that her character is meant to portray.

And it's unfortunate that Scott Eckert '03 will be graduating this spring — the general quality of theater at Princeton will suffer for it. I've seen him in some other performances on campus, such as Theatre Intime's production of The Real Inspector Hound last year, and he's always extremely funny.

In "Melancholy Play," Eckert plays Lorenzo, a European from an Ünspecified European City who, denounced by his mother as an American ('Look at those eyes! Those are smiling American eyes!') is abandoned in a candy shop and eventually, through a strange set of circumstances, ends up in Illinois. Being naturally cheerful by nature — and therefore, according to Ruhl, American — he is quite happy in the Midwest, and apparently forgiving towards his mother.

Eckert plays Lorenzo with elastic energy and European swarthiness, and can squeeze a laugh out of the smallest gestures. Watching his comical descent into obsession with Tilly is one of the joys of this play.

The rest of the cast does an excellent job maintaining a comic and fantastic feel as well. John Doherty '06 plays Frank, an uptight and socially upright tailor, Melissa Galvez '05 plays Frances, a hairdresser, and Maura Cody '04 plays Joan, an taciturn and overbearing nurse à la Ken Kesey's Nurse Ratched. All of these characters, initially so cheerful and content with their social usefulness, eventually succumb to an obsession for Tilly and her charismatic fits of emotion.

The cleverness of Ruhl's plays derives mostly from its mocking of European films and theatre and its tendency towards tremendous gravity, bittersweet sadness, and fantastical images that apparently appear out of dreams, memory, or the subconscious. Lines like, "Why are you like an almond?" are meant to be self-mocking, giddily absurd, and yet possibly, strangely and unexplainably meaningful.

This, however, does not mean that you have to be a connoisseur of European theatre and films to appreciate "Melancholy Play." The play is fact-paced and clever and survives on its own without depending on reference to other elements. The audience I saw it with was in stitches, not because they were all ardent devotees of the Felliniesque, but because "Melancholy Play," on its own, is extremely funny.