THE STORY: As recounted by Walter Kerr of The New York Times: “In a television studio, three very normal workers glance at the monitor now and then, where busy performers with striped faces—they look like so many up-ended zebras—go through all the violent, cloying, synthetic motions that pass for companionable entertainment on the national airwaves. But there is no relation between the workers and the work; a yawning gulf, big enough to drown us all, has opened between the real concerns of real people and the imaginary concerns of our imaginary archetypes. One of the real workers nearly strangles to death on a bone in his chicken-salad sandwich. But the burly chanteuse who pours affection across the land as though she were an open fire hydrant of boundless goodwill goes right on beaming her thousand good nights. Disaster is irrelevant in a time of eternal delight.” And suddenly we become aware of the desperate futility of our efforts to shield ourselves from coming to grips with what is by simulating a cozy escape into what might be. The spectacle is funny, sad and alarming, all at the same time.
Winner of the Vernon Rice Award.
This second of the three plays comprising
America Hurrah, which the author has subtitled “3 views of the U.S.A.” In this case the view is of a television studio, and of the hollow, unreal world which is contrived there as an anodyne for the pains of true life.
“…outlandish humor and a wildly imaginative sense of theatre.” —New York World Journal Tribune.
“…steadily and savagely sardonic in its view of national tribal customs.” —New York Post.
“…so superbly done that it provides porcupine-quilled social comment.” —Time Magazine.
