Hazel
28th March 2008, 10:20 AM
This was McCarthy's first published dramatic writing, though he had written a screenplay before this. A play in 5 acts which details the lives of the Telfair family over a period of three years.
At the centre of the play is Ben, son of Big Ben, and grandson of Papaw. There are actually 2 Bens present on stage the whole length of the play. And McCarthy who seems reluctant to give up his prose authorial control, provides quite detailed stage directions. He states that both Bens should look very similar but notably distinct. Not speaking at the same time for instance. So, we have Ben 1, who stands to the side of the main dramatic space, at a podium, and gives lengthy monologues mostly on the topics of masonry and his beloved grandfather. And we have Ben 2, who is the Ben of the onstage scenes.
The Telfairs (a telling name if ever there was one), are a middle-class black family - though race has very little to do with the scope of the tale. Ben, has recently given up University to take up stonemasonry with his grandfather, who he absolutely idolizes. It is the relationship between these two on which the whole play hangs, unfortunately at the expense of the other characters. While not much actually happens between Ben and Papaw, the peripheral characters have turbulent lives; Carlotta, a broken marriage and missing son, Big Ben, debt and isolation, and Soldier, a drug addiction. And these characters are fairly sketchy in comparison to Ben and Papaw.
It reminded me very much of Death of a Saleman; American family life, falling apart, a reliance on sons and of course, the illuminated Ben 1 occasionally interrupting. Papaw and his stonemasonry are the keystones of this family, Ben is primed to take over that position, but so rooted are they both in the craft and solidity of the trade that they forget to attend to the peripheral building of the family. There is more a sense of Ben picking up the pieces and repairing rather than building a solid foundation. And you get the sense that Papaw understood that about families and so invested heavily in Ben as a successor.
Very enjoyable, and I would love to see it performed.
At the centre of the play is Ben, son of Big Ben, and grandson of Papaw. There are actually 2 Bens present on stage the whole length of the play. And McCarthy who seems reluctant to give up his prose authorial control, provides quite detailed stage directions. He states that both Bens should look very similar but notably distinct. Not speaking at the same time for instance. So, we have Ben 1, who stands to the side of the main dramatic space, at a podium, and gives lengthy monologues mostly on the topics of masonry and his beloved grandfather. And we have Ben 2, who is the Ben of the onstage scenes.
The Telfairs (a telling name if ever there was one), are a middle-class black family - though race has very little to do with the scope of the tale. Ben, has recently given up University to take up stonemasonry with his grandfather, who he absolutely idolizes. It is the relationship between these two on which the whole play hangs, unfortunately at the expense of the other characters. While not much actually happens between Ben and Papaw, the peripheral characters have turbulent lives; Carlotta, a broken marriage and missing son, Big Ben, debt and isolation, and Soldier, a drug addiction. And these characters are fairly sketchy in comparison to Ben and Papaw.
It reminded me very much of Death of a Saleman; American family life, falling apart, a reliance on sons and of course, the illuminated Ben 1 occasionally interrupting. Papaw and his stonemasonry are the keystones of this family, Ben is primed to take over that position, but so rooted are they both in the craft and solidity of the trade that they forget to attend to the peripheral building of the family. There is more a sense of Ben picking up the pieces and repairing rather than building a solid foundation. And you get the sense that Papaw understood that about families and so invested heavily in Ben as a successor.
Very enjoyable, and I would love to see it performed.