When family arguments kill all of their love
theology, which brings us to the final word in the play’s title, scriptures.
It’s complicated. But then families are. Everyone here is known by their nicknames. Greig’s character is Empty, which is not a comment on her mind but a corruption of her real name. And picking your way through the play’s pertinent facts is like untangling one of the Mecantonio family’s epic arguments.
In Michael Boyd’s superbly performed production, which largely takes place in designer Tom Piper’s white, multi-storey skeleton of the house, the rows become a recurring cacophany, like the motif of a musical.
The Mercantonios’ most urgent issue — the one which has united a family seemingly on the verge of perminent estrangement — is Gus’s apparently irreversible decision to kill himself. A disillusioned 72-yearold widower, he feels the brownstone, which has been occupied by his family for three generations, is now ridiculously over-valued and has become a symbol of the capitalistic values he so despises. But the play also embraces the lovelorn condition of Gus’s two gay, grown up children. The elder son (Richard Clothier) is trapped in a marriage characterised by “beddeath”, so he seeks expensive solace with a rent boy, the smart, vulnerable Eli. More hilariously, Empty’s relationship with her partner Sirine — the one impregnanted by Empty’s heterosexual brother — hasn’t prevented Empty from indulging in sex with her former husband.
What this all amounts to takes much of the play’s three and half hours to emerge. There were walkouts on the night I saw it, one complaining that the arguments are too realistic, which is possibly the most complimentary criticism I have ever heard. There are, it is true, exchanges here that utterly defy even the most attentive ear, either because they are lost in the realism of verbal combat or because you need a degree in theology to understand them. But when you can hear what is being said — which is most of the time — Kushner’s themes are explored in thrillingly articulate, if unremitting, style. Though the play is often very funny, the undertow is tragic. This is a family whose love of argument has been so distorted, that the love has gone. What’s left is strife alone.
It’s worth remembering that Kushner — a Jewish writer who is as fearless in his criticism, and occasional support, of Israel as he is about gay civil rights — is the author of
Soon to be revived at the National, this is the play that might well be the greatest American drama to be written in the final third of the last century. Since then he has become an A-list screenwriter for Spielberg with movies such as
(about the Mossad) and The sweep of this much later work, first seen in 2009, since when each each new production has been revised by the author including this one, is less defining of the period in which it is set.
Setting the play — informally known as iHo — in Brooklyn and with a Willy Loman-like father figure centre stage, it evokes Arthur Miller’s
and at the same time. In that sense iHo is the spawn of a literary titan. Perhaps two. For in the often fevered familial truth-telling, there’s something of O’Neill here too. Which is not to say that Kushner is claiming a place on that Mount Rushmore of American drama. But his determination to grapple with a topic that means something to everyone is monumental.