At this point, having seen probably 10 productions of “Waiting for Godot,” having read the play several times, thought about it, weighed the various merits of differing performances, and having gone so far as to give my son the middle name Beckett, I think I’m qualified to discourse on the play.

The acclaimed Gate Theatre production currently at UCLA Live! is no good.

I say this with no glee, mirrored only by my absence in glee seeing it.

Although the play is many things, one thing it is not or should not be is ponderous. But that’s what we have here. In fact, here’s how ponderous: It started around 8:10, and wrapped up just shy of 11 p.m., with a 20-minute intermission. Given that Act Two was 55 minutes (I clocked it), that puts Act One at about an hour and a half. Tooooo… slowwww….

My companion, the fiercely smart playwright and performer Trey Nichols, said that it was lacking in existential dread. Absolutely true. It was also lacking in comic rhythm. Beckett modeled the characters of Gogo and Didi after Laurel and Hardy; while I don’t expect Laurel and Hardy, I expect the comic spirit necessary to the parts. I also expect something to be at stake. Several years ago at The Matrix theatre in Hollywood, the late David Dukes, in addition to being a wonderful clown alongside co-star Robin Gammell, closed Act Two with a wrenching depiction of a man desperate to understand his place in the universe. The current Didi, played by Barry McGovern, seemed more like a man learning he might have to wait for the next bus.

Whom do I fault? Oddly enough, the memory of Samuel Beckett. Evidently his determination of how this play must be performed has been cast in stone at the Gate Theatre and with this director and at least two of the actors, all of whom he had personally worked with. This situation sounded hauntingly familiar, so when I got home I dug out my edition of Kenneth Tynan’s Letters , and there it was. (At the time, Tynan was the literary manager of the National Theatre.)

31 March 1964

To George Devine, copies to Laurence Olivier and William Gaskill, The Naitonal Theatre

Dear George:

Forgive me for writing, but I feel I must try to explain more clearly to you and Larry what is worrying me about “Play.” I wouldn’t do so if I didn’t feel that many of my qualms were shared by others.

To recap: before Sam B[eckett] arrived at rehearsals, “Play” was recognizably the work we all liked and were eager to do. The delivery of the lines was (rightly) puppet-like and mechanical, but not wholly dehumanized and stripped of all emphasis and inflections. On the strength of last weekend, it seems that Beckett’s advice on the production has changed all that — the lines are chanted in a breakneck monotone with no inflections, and I’m not alone in fearing that many of them will be simply inaudible. I suspect that Beckett is trying to treat English as if it were French — where that kind of rapid-fire monotony is customary.

The point is that we are not putting on “Play” to satisfy Beckett alone. It may not matter to him that lines are lost in laughs; or that essential bits of exposition are blurred; but it surely matters to us. As we know, Beckett has never sat through any of his plays in the presence of an audience: but we have to live with that audience night after night!”

Please understand me: I trust the play completely, and I trust your production of it, — up to the advent of the author. What I don’t especially trust is Beckett as co-director. If you could see your way to re-humanizing the text a little, I’ll bet that the actors and the audience will thank you — even if Beckett doesn’t!

Why have I seen “Godot” so many times? Because done well, it is an astonishing experience. The first time I saw it was as an undergrad, in a college production featuring my friend Joe Stafford as an imperious Pozzo. That was 20 years ago, but the performance has stuck with me — Joe embodied the comic boorishness of the role. And at the end, when the moon has risen and Godot has yet again not come, the lights drew down and pinlights of white emerged in the flies, signifying stars, and for a moment I lost my place in the universe. That’s an effect I’ve been swiping ever since, as with “Two Men Losing Their Minds” at Moving Arts in 2000.

Done right, with verve and with stakes, featuring characters who yearn for answers, “Waiting for Godot” is a transformational experience. Performed as a museum piece pregnant with significance, it’s a crashing bore.

Just because playwrights are sometimes asked to participate in “talkback” sessions after a developmental reading doesn’t mean they should heed any of the suggestions.

The other night I went to the staged reading of a friend’s play. Good play, good reading. It’s amazing what you can learn about a play when you see it on its feet, performed in its entirety, and by good actors under the capable guidance of a good director.

In this case, all of the strengths of the play became clear: an arresting subject matter, strong characters, deft transitions, sparkling dialogue. It also became clear to me (as well as to the audience, it later turned out) that we need a little more insight into why one character committed the heinous act that catalyzes the play. I’m confident that that additional bit of clarity will complete the play.

I was impressed by the feedback from this audience; this is a developmental theatre, and most of the people speaking are playwrights with productions under their belt and actors used to working on new plays. By and large, when it comes to what makes a play work or not, they seemed to know what they’re talking about.

This hasn’t always been my experience, either as the playwright or as a member of the audience. I go into these things figuring that if they could have written the play better, they already would have done so. More than 10 years ago I decided that my personal mission in these instances was to be funny and entertaining, so that the theatre was glad it had invited me and so that no matter what anyone thought of the play they would at least see that I could be fun to work with. (Because, by and large, who comes to such readings? Actors, directors, producers, writers — people somehow or other connected with producing plays.)

This particular play deals with a court case — although, as one astute attendant noted, refreshingly, it does not take place in a courtroom and thereby avoids the procedural scenes we’ve seen cooked up on television six nights a week. My least favorite idea from the house the other night was this one: to remove all question of guilt or innocence, begin the play with a declamation of guilt, and work backward to investigate motive, a la “Equus.” An intriguing idea — but not for this play, not at this stage. This play is finished (almost).

When I was a teenager I remember reading a thick collection of Isaac Asimov’s stories, each with an introduction by Asimov (modeled perhaps after the Dangerous Visions series edited and interminably introduced by Harlan Ellison). Asimov said that after he had written a story, while he might do light revisions, that story was done — and to rework it and rework it would be like chewing second-day gum. It was an image that stuck with me.

Rewrites are necessary. Almost always. In every first production I’ve had, I’ve wound up doing at least minor rewrites because in working with good actors and a good director I’ve found new things — things that work, things that don’t, and sometimes opportunities that were missed. Twice, I’ve found new and better endings, but I went into each of those productions knowing that each play needed a new grace note to truly finish it.

To rewrite is good. To get stuck in rewrite and restructuring would mean not only not completing your present project — it also means not working on your next one.

Restructuring an entire play, one that already works? That sounds like chewing second-day gum.

The premise of the biography Franz Kafka: Representative Man is that more than any other individual, Kafka truly represented the 20th century in his personal alienation and with his portrayal of the faceless menace of bureaucracy. A fascinating viewpoint and one that becomes more compelling daily, given stories like this one (forwarded to me by good friend Tom Boyle):

Feds Want To Keep Torture A Secret

“If you feel you must give the Bush administration credit for its latest legal pivot in the war on terror, give it credit for having the cojones to actually tell a federal trial judge that the “interrogation methods” (what some reasonable people call “torture”) it has used on terrorism suspects is so vital to “national security” that the recipients of it may not tell their own attorneys what’s been done to them. ”

Click here for the rest.

Max Brod wrote that when Franz Kafka read his own stories aloud, he howled with laughter.

Whether or not he was a humorist, he was certainly a prophet.

Click here for a nice profile on Harry Shearer in today’s LA Times. (And do it fast, while the paper is still in business.) I’ve been a Shearer fan for a long time. I can’t think of anyone who qualifies as the Steve Allen of this generation, but Shearer probably comes closest in having the ready wit and penetrating intellect. (But not, I understand, the avuncular charm.)

The best opening in contemporary drama is this one, from “True West”:

“So, Mom took off for Alaska, huh?”

Look how much it tells us:

1. Because we see two men on stage, and the one refers to “Mom,” they must be brothers.
2. This character who says it, Lee, didn’t know Mom was gone, and now he’s asking about her. So clearly, he’s been away.
3. Not only was he away, he’s been out of touch with Mom. In general, middle-aged women don’t take off for Alaska on a moment’s notice. Lee knew nothing about it, so, unlike many of us, he doesn’t give Mom a courtesy call once a week.
4. He’s also been out of touch with his brother, Austin. Austin knows Mom’s gone, so he probably knew Mom was going, too. Yet Lee didn’t.
5. Because she took off for Alaska, Mom’s probably not coming back soon. It’s far away. (Although she does show up unexpectedly late in the play, we are led to believe that she won’t. This provides backdrop for her sons’ actions throughout the play. If she were coming home any minute, they might behave very differently.)
6. Mom’s gone, and Austin is there in the house. Everything seems in order. This tells us that he probably has a good relationship with Mom. She trusted him.
7. It also tells us that she was probably right to do so. Everything looks to be in order. It seems that Austin is a responsible person, so Mom’s trust is warranted.
8. Lee, on the other hand, seems belligerent, right from this opening line. There’s something snotty about the way the question is framed: Mom didn’t “go” to Alaska, she “took off” – as though someone or something is being left behind. And the “huh?” hardly seems casual.
9. Lee’s resentment is palpable, both at Mom because she’s not there…
10. …And at at Austin because he is. Lee went looking for Mom, and instead found Austin in her place. Or, more appropriately given what we know of sibling rivalry, in Lee’s place.
11. Given his upset at finding Mom missing, Lee probably came seeking Mom or help of some sort. Why is he there? Because he needed something.

Did Sam Shepard know all this before he wrote the line? Probably not. Was this the first line as he wrote it, or did he find it later in the rewriting process? I have no idea. But this one line achieves a near miracle in launching the play. It sets up a stark conflict between two very different men, united by blood but divided by need, still waging their sibling war decades into adulthood against the placid backdrop of Mom’s kitchen and, later, the unseen terra incognita of Dad’s desert wasteland.

I think “True West” is a masterpiece. Not a word I toss around lightly.

That first line tells us a great, great deal, without any resort to exposition. It seems effortless. Moreover, because it’s clearly the response to a previous line – one we don’t get to hear because it happened before we got to enter their universe – we feel that we’re dropped directly into the action of the play. This play doesn’t just start when it starts, it starts a moment before it starts. That would be a problem if our initial reaction were one of confusion – who are these guys? Where are these guys? What’s going on? – but Shepard addresses all that with this very first line.

Unlike “True West,” too many plays start long after they start.

My wife, who originally hooted at my admiration at The Road (and my preference for it over “World War Z”), now says that she keeps thinking about it and “may have to read it again.”

And one of my grad students, Lindsey, took my recommendation to read it and said she thought it was stunning but that it “gave me nightmares.”

I think this book is going to be with us for a long time.

My whole life I have been someone who runs to get the mail. In it I might find checks or magazines or submission acceptances (or submission rejections) or misdelivered mail of someone else’s that I can look at with conjecture. (“Hm. The people one street over get Sanitation Monthly. What does this say about them?”)

Now, even though I’ve had a postal meter for years and generally use email or the internet rather than snailmail, I might actually use more stamps — just so that I can further share my love of these delightful images, which the Post Awful is releasing in 2007.

I do have some quibbles about the selections. In fact, they’re more than quibbles. I’m thrilled to see John Buscema represented with that beautiful and iconic Sub-Mariner #1 cover, and Gene Colan with Iron Man #1. And I’m actually just glad to have this set of stamps to begin with.

But… where’s Thor? When did Thor become a less important Marvel character than Sub-Mariner or, for Pete’s sake, SPIDER-WOMAN? If it’s about diversity — in this case showing a female superhero or two — then why not a black superhero? A case could certainly be made for Black Panther or Blade. Where is Dr. Strange? Certainly he’s a more important character than Spider-woman, and Steve Ditko did stunning visionary other-worldly work on that character — any number of covers or scenes would have made for a terrific scene. Ditko is represented solely by the cover of “Amazing Spider-Man” #1, and that’s in concert with Jack Kirby. Why not a purely Ditko cover to give Spider-Man’s co-creator his due? Or, again, a Doctor Strange cover?

The Daredevil cover selected is nothing special — and clearly was chosen because of the appearance of Elektra; when did Daredevil become secondary to Elektra? I guess when his movie did even worse than hers. And while the Hulk portrait depicted is in what I’ll call “The Trimpe Style,” it’s by Rich Buckler and (according to Mark Evanier) John Romita. I grew up on Trimpe’s work and I think the guy got a raw deal from the industry. (After 29 years with Marvel, and at age 56, he got summarily dumped.) It would have been a nice touch to finally give him a stamp of approval.

Ninety-nine pages in, and the zombie war is not going well — at least for me. As an “oral history,” the book constantly shifts interviewees — we’re listening to a former Pakistani now in Iceland, or a mercenary who high-tailed it out of Long Island, or a doctor in mainland China. This makes for a travelogue of adventures you weren’t invited to. With every new interview, I wish the book had been written as a straightforward novel, so that we could follow a handful of people and not only witness the events from their perspective — but also grow to know them through their experiences. Instead, this book is like speed dating: Just when you get to know someone, the bell rings.

If you’d like to see if you disagree, click here.

If only there were disaster movies about giant talking ducks! (As seem to exist in “Mark Trail.”) What city is that being attacked? Will Jake and Snake be able to evacuate that bear in time? Who is “Jack Elrod” and why is his name on a bowling ball?

Well, I’ve checked Funky Winkerbean every day since, and there’s been no further mention of “the day I’d never forget” (and no further appearance of that character), so I’m chalking it up to an acid trip by the artist.

In the meantime, I’ve talked myself out on the Funky junk — brought it up in my class at USC on Monday night, brought it up last night in my workshop (and I think I’ll spare my Saturday workshop), and generated alarmed stares from my family, who somehow don’t see the incredible importance of correctly depicting the timeline of comic books as cultural markers.

But it is important. Verisimilitude is part of what lends power to literature. Art doesn’t have to be literal — witness Guernica — but it benefits from being specific. Funky may not be art (clearly), but it even fails as pop art because its interior universe is so wrong that everything is called into question.

It’s better to get it right. Asking the right questions — who, what, when, where, why, how — of the universe you’re creating leads you to new and interesting answers. Not asking the questions leads to cliche, sentimentality, and weakness.