by John Guare
I had actually seen the notorious Alice in the flesh! In the sixties, the Women’s House of Detention occupied the weirdly shaped city block at West Tenth Street and Sixth Avenue. (Today the prison has new life as the Jefferson Market Library.) People lined up on Tenth Street around the clock to scream up into the turrets of the jail, trying to find an inmate, trying to have an intimate talk with a friend or relative who leaned out between bars five floors above the street. One day, I saw Alice Crimmins either getting out of the squad car to go into the jail or coming out of the jail to go to her trial. I loved reading about the sensational case. The papers reported her as saying, “They’re prosecuting me for my lifestyle.” Maybe she had a point. It was typical in these days with the injustice of Vietnam raging that society could go after somebody, hound her for being a waitress at a cheesy, semi-topless, faux-Playboy Club somewhere out in Queens. But here was Alice, who had lost everything— her kids, her livelihood, her freedom—and she was still defiant.
I had never said “I’m going to write a play about Alice Crimmins.” She just showed up and the play took off. Only now she had a sister and her name was Betty and she was from Bangor, Maine. And she had a fourteen-year-old son, Bert.
I was in the homestretch of writing and had taken the phone off the hook in Mecca on Bank Street when the doorbell rang and rang. Some kid bringing yet another token of adoration to John Lennon? Ring ring. I ran to the door to stop the ringing. Bill Gardner stood there. Bill ran the Academy Festival Theater in Lake Forest, Illinois, where I had done a play in 1973. The legendary production of O’Neill’s Moon for the Misbegotten with Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst started life at his theater. Irene Worth opened Sweet Bird of Youth there. Rip Torn and Geraldine Page did both A Streetcar Named Desire and Little Foxes there. Quite a summer theater. And Bill was a terrific guy to boot. He said, “I’m in town—your phone wasn’t working—have I come at a bad time?” I said, “Come in, I’m finishing a play.” I sat him down, gave him the first act of Landscape, and went back typing. He took the pages as I ripped them out of the typewriter.
I got to the end. If you lose everything, what remains? Rosalie the dead sister in the last scene of the play gives her sister Betty the worst advice I’ve ever heard—travel alone, don’t trust anyone—advice that I had previously built my life on. I ended the play on the hint that Betty might finally stop listening to the world around her and take a new tack. Yes, there might just be something inexhaustible in the human spirit that constantly says Yes once more.
I finished the play. I wrote the title page. I wrote a page dedicating it to Adele. I was exhausted. I was thirsty. I put the phone back on the hook. Bill finished reading the play a few pages after I finished typing. He said, “I’ll produce it.” “When?” “It’s May. Let’s do it in July.”
We went up to the copy shop and got it duplicated. I had seen Shirley Knight in Robert Patrick’s Kennedy’s Children on Broadway and wanted her for the lead. It turned out she lived a few blocks away. I got her the play that very day. She called back a few hours later. What were the dates? She’d do it. I had loved F. Murray Abraham in Terrence McNally’s The Ritz; he said yes when I asked him to play Holahan. Peg Murray, who’d won a Tony for Cabaret and was a great musical performer, would play Rosalie, the dead singing sister. Richard Bauer, a maniacally funny actor from Washington’s Arena Stage, would play Raulito. A remarkable musician named Wally Harper would supply the musical accompaniment.
Landscape of the Body opened in Lake Forest in July 1977. I don’t read reviews but Adele made me read the part of Richard Christiansen’s review in the Chicago Tribune that declared, “As 1975 was the year of A Chorus Line, so 1977 will be the year of Landscape of the Body.“
That sounded promising.
Joe Papp loved it and we opened in New York in October 1977 at the Public Theater. Thanks to A Chorus Line, Joe had the cash to give us an elaborate production. Was it too lavish a production? First of all, the set featured these two massive turntables. Annie, the big musical on Broadway, had one turntable. If I’m ever out of nightmares, I just summon up those two massive turn-tables, which were always breaking down or, better yet, groaning in their inexorable revolves. We ran our scheduled sixty-four performances. Was it the turntables?
A friend who saw both productions twenty-nine years apart said the big difference was in 1977 one spent two hours and fifteen minutes in this grim world and then left the theater and walked out into the exact same grimness. In 2006 the city had been transformed, reborn now for many years. When Rosalie told her adventure of making her porn movie back in 1977, she only had to say she went to a motel on Forty-second Street, way over west, to define the epitome of sleaze, the ultimate bottom of the barrel, the place where you went when you wanted to go as low as you could go. In 2006 that line got a terrific laugh. By then, Forty-second Street, way over west, was lined with a Starbucks, a health club, a supermarket up the street, shiny high-rise apartments down the street along the Hudson—and the Signature Theatre.
After Landscape of the Body closed at the end of 1977, I happily left Bank Street and all its dreams and dreamers and found a real life with Adele in another part of the Village, where we still live. But Landscape of the Body kept on as part of my life.
The Dramatists Guild awarded it the Hull-Warriner Prize as Best Play of the 1977-1978 season.
Sam Spiegel, the movie mogul who had made On the Water-front and Lawrence of Arabia, bought the movie rights. He wanted to make a quick picture the way he had with Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly, Last Summer. Yes! Remember Liz Taylor in that white bathing suit? I was thrilled. Sam said in his guttural basso, “First of all, you cannot have the dead singer telling the story. That belongs to the theater. You must cut Rosalie and the songs and tell the story unvarnished.” I took his advice. So long, Rosalie.
I loved working with Sam in his Park Avenue penthouse under his Cézannes. I spent 1978 and into 1979 working on the screenplay with him. I also had written a new play called Bosoms and Neglect that was going to be done in Chicago at the Goodman Theater and might come to New York. Sam said, “If the new play is a success, I want you and Adele to come to Cannes and be my guests on my yacht for a Mediterranean cruise.” I said, “Suppose it gets bad reviews?” Sam: “Then you cannot come.” “Suppose it gets mixed reviews?” Sam: “Then you and Adele can come to the dock and watch us sail away.”
The new play opened. We did not go on the cruise.
When I finally gave Sam my screenplay for Landscape of the Body he read it and sighed: “You’ve done everything I asked you to do. The only problem is if we make this movie, it will be so depressing the only place we can open it is Jonestown.” I looked at the Cézannes for the last time and left.
The lesson was simple: Theater is essentially poetry. Film is essentially documentary, passively recording whatever data flow in front the camera. Is the enemy naturalism, which says if it looks authentic then it is authentic? For me, the very essence of theater is to reveal to the audience the invisible forces that shape and color and carbonate our lives. Write that on the blackboard a thousand times. Because I wanted to please Sam, I removed all that was theatrical from my play—all the songs, all the interplay between stage and audience. I cut the theatrical heart out of the play and delivered the ashen residue of a sordid little tale. How to make sure I keep my theater a place for poetry became my mantra. I began my war against the kitchen sink.
In the summer of 1979 the French film director Louis Malle called me and asked if I was the guy who had written the play about the mother suspected of killing her kid that he had seen at the Public Theater a year and a half before. Yes. He had money for a movie but nothing to shoot. Did I have any ideas? As a matter of fact I did. I took him to Atlantic City the next day. Working with Louis on the movie Atlantic City began one of the great friendships of my life.
People always lament what the city used to be, or what a neighborhood once was. That’s what I love about New York City—
it’s always being reborn, it’s always reinventing itself. And it demands the same of you—that you keep readjusting to time. You can’t live in the past in this city, you can’t lament and say, “Oh, oh, oh.” It’s just not there anymore. New York forces you to do the most challenging thing: accept reality.
Over the years Landscape of the Body has had a number of terrific productions with splendid actors such as Christine Lahti and Laura Linney playing Betty. But none of the elements ever came together as they did at the Signature Theatre in April 2006. We opened. Adele burst into tears and said, “It’s taken twenty-nine years to get it right.”
So do you rewrite a play when it’s revived?
I did make one change at the Signature. I moved the song that opened Act Two to the end of Act One, and that’s where it always should have been.
But do you rewrite a play?
You can’t. Every play is a landmark in a playwright’s life, telling you where you were, who you were, what you were, for better or for worse, when you wrote the specific play. While writing this play I was incredibly happy. The happiness now is no less profound; it’s just a different, deeper kind.
What is it like to revisit this play now? I’m not revisiting it. I never left it.
Landscape of the Body
Landscape of the Body was first produced by William Gardner at the Academy Festival Theater, in Lake Forest, Illinois, in July 1977. It was directed by John Pasquin; the settings were by John Wulp; costumes were by Laura Crow; and the lighting was by Jennifer Tipton. The stage mechanics were by Robert Giffen; the production pianists were Rod Derefinko and William Snyder; and the stage manager (in both Lake Forest and New York) was Steven McCorkle. The cast, in order of appearance, was as follows:
BETTY
Shirley Knight
CAPTAIN MARVIN HOLAHAN
F. Murray Abraham
ROSALIE
Peg Murray
RAULITO
Richard Bauer
BERT
Paul McCrane
DONNY
Anthony Marciona
JOANNE
Alexa Kenin
MARGIE
Bonnie Deroski
MASKED MAN
Jay Sanders
DURWOOD PEACH
Rex Robbins
DOPE KING OF PROVIDENCE
Jay Sanders
BANK TELLER
Jay Sanders
Landscape of the Body was then presented in New York City by Joseph Papp at the Public Theater (New York Shakespeare Festival) on October 12, 1977. It was directed by John Pasquin; the settings and costumes were by Santo Loquasto; lighting was by Jennifer Tipton; musical arrangements and incidental music were by Wally Harper; and the associate producer was Bernard Gersten. The pianist was Rod Derefinko. The cast, in order of appearance, was as follows:
BETTY
Shirley Knight
CAPTAIN MARVIN HOLAHAN
F. Murray Abraham
ROSALIE
Peg Murray
RAULITO
Richard Bauer
BERT
Paul McCrane
DONNY
Anthony Marciona
JOANNE
Alexa Kenin
MARGIE
Bonnie Deroski
MASKED MAN
Raymond J. Barry
DURWOOD PEACH
Remak Ramsay
DOPE KING OF PROVIDENCE
Raymond J. Barry
BANK TELLER
Raymond J. Barry
Landscape of the Body was again presented in New York City, on April 16, 2006, by the Signature Theatre Company (James Houghton, founding artistic director; Kathryn M. Lipuma, executive director) at the Peter Norton Space. It was directed by Michael Greif; musical direction and additional music, Michael Friedman; sets by Allen Moyer; costumes by Miranda Hoffman; lighting by Howell Binkley; sound by Brett R. Jarvis; fight direction, Rick Sordelet; dialect coach, Stephen Gabis; production stage manager, Cole Bonenberger; artistic associate, Beth Whitaker; production manager, Chris Moses. The cast, in order of appearance, was as follows:
BETTY
Lili Taylor
CAPTAIN MARVIN HOLAHAN
Paul Sparks
ROSALIE
Sherie Rene Scott
RAULITO
Bernard White
BERT
Stephen Scott Scarpulla
DONNY
Paul Iocono
JOANNE
Jill Shackner
MARGIE
Colby Minifie
MASKED MAN
Brian Sgambati
DURWOOD PEACH
Jonathan Fried
DOPE KING OF PROVIDENCE
Brian Sgambati
BANK TELLER
Brian Sgambati
THE PLAY TAKES PLACE ON A FERRY TO NANTUCKET AND IN GREENWICH VILLAGE.
ACT ONE
The deck of a ferry boat sailing from Hyannis to Nantucket.
A WOMAN sits writing notes on the deck. She is bundled up in layers of clothes against the cool. She has shopping bags around her feet. When she finishes one note, she rolls it into a cylinder and inserts it into a bottle she takes out of the shopping bags. She seals the bottle and tosses it overboard. She watches it go. She begins another.
A MAN is watching her. He is heavily disguised. Comic false eyeglasses and nose with mustache dangling beneath. Muffler wrapped high. Hat pulled down. He carries a little suitcase.
MAN That’s the Kennedy compound over there. I bought a postcard at the bus station in Hyannis and the postcard tells you whose house is who.
He proffers it. She looks at it briefly, looks at the shore, and resumes her note writing.
MAN That house is Teddy Kennedy’s and that house was where Jack lived and that house is where the parents lived and that house is where the sister Eunice lived and that house is where the sister Jean lived and that house— The postcard seems not to match up to reality. I get them all mixed up now, it’s been so long. Empty rooms. Open windows. White curtains blowing out.
She looks up, tosses another bottle over, and watches it go.
MAN I won a contest in grammar school knowing the names of the Dionne Quintuplets. I could rattle them off. Emilie. Annette. See. I can’t even remember. Yvonne. And the worst is nobody remembers the Dionne Quintuplets. You tell young people, younger than we are, about the Dionne Quintuplets and they don’t know who you’re talking about.
WOMAN Emilie was the left-handed one. Emilie was the only left-handed Dionne Quintuplet. What was the name of the doctor who delivered the Dionne Quintuplets?
MAN Dr. Dafoe.
WOMAN Dr. Dafoe.
MAN We could have a marriage made in heaven sharing information like that.
WOMAN I’m not in the market.
MAN I went down to Washington in 1960 for Kennedy’s inauguration. They were selling at the Union Station an entire set of dishes of china and every plate was a different Kennedy. The big meat platter was Poppa Joe. The other cake platter had Momma Rose on it. John-John and Caroline were on little bread-and-butter plates. You’re so open to talk to. Generally on trips of this nature—three-hour ferry trips from the mainland to an island—you begin talking to your fellow shipmates desperately leaping into conversational gambits, reduced to buying dusty postcards of abandoned compounds of families who once made all the difference in America. I begin talking and you pick right up on it. We could have a marriage made in heaven. We can talk. I think that’s why marriages fail. People can’t talk. People fight to have something to talk about. People kill each other, say, because the words don’t come into place. I think of murder, say, as a sentence that did not make it through the computer up here in the head. If people had a better grasp of language, of syntax, of the right word, of being understood, you’d hear that crime rate, you’d see that homicide rate plunge like those bottles you’re tossing over … Would they be sentences you’d be writing on that piece of paper?
She tosses another bottl
e over.
MAN What attracted you to me first? My confidence-inspiring voice? My ability to select the proper word out of the autumn air? A poll said what women notice most in men was their butts. Is that it? You liked my ass? Is that what attracted you to me? Are the polls right? My confidence is in bad disrepair and needs all the propping up it can beg, borrow, or infer.
WOMAN I saw you getting on the boat. I wondered if you were in disguise. I said to myself, Is this a masquerade cruise? Then I thought, This is a man with a facial cancer and his face has been removed and replaced by a necessary false nose to disguise the two gaping holes under there. A false mustache to cover the missing upper lip. False eyebrows to cover the grafted skin around the eyeballs which still function or he’d be tapping a white cane around this deck. He walks with a steady stride. No, I won’t have to be yelling Man Overboard. It’s a disguise.
MAN You recognized me?
WOMAN Captain Marvin Holahan. Sixth Precinct Homicide.
The man pulls off his disguise.
HOLAHAN What did you write in that note? A confession?
She throws sheets of small papers into the wind. They blow away.
BETTY A confession. A full confession. I wrote down everything that happened. And it’s all gone. There it goes! There’s your case.
They face each other. The lights go down on them. They both take off their coats. She wears a tight sexy dress. The light is harsh in this interrogation room. She sits in a chair. He circles her. He shines a desk lamp in her eyes.
