Jerusalem: I Don't Think I Got It? — Page 4

Overall, this is a great thread about a play that obviously inspires varied responses.

But it brings up something for me. Lately I've noticed that in general, a lot of people seem drawn to a polarized opinion of something - love it or hate it - with out a lot of room for tolerating the in between, seeing the good in something while casting a critical or uncertain eye on other aspects of it. Of course, we all have experiences where we feel an unqualified rave or condemnation is completely justified, but this seems to me to be the norm for a great many people lately.

I'm in no way drawing any specific conclusions that no one has given "Jerusalem," specifically, a fair viewing according to their personal taste, but this thread has gotten me thinking that, as I've said, lately these polarized responses - and I have them myself at times of course - seem to be the norm rather than the exception. When, in truth, few things are all out joy or torture, allowing for the fact that people will disagree about the specific merits of any single work.

This polarized approach seems to be on the rise IMHO. Curious if people agree or disagree with that.

I feel like this is a play that I "have" to see since so many are divided about it. I want to see what all the hype about Rylance is also.

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Exactly. A bunch of friends and I went to see "A Free Man Of Color" this past season, and I wasn't into it. I loved the enormity of the production and the direction, but I thought the play itself was a bit of a mess. My friends laughed and said that I just didn't get it. Which is offensive. I don't understand why you can't like something. I love "arty" theatre, which is why I went to see Jerusalem. I wanted to get drawn in and like it, but I just didn't it. No harm done. I'm glad I saw it. I wouldn't lose sleep if it became a hit and ran for 5 years. I could careless.

I agree, themysterious...

Certainly, sometimes things are lost on us because our experience doesn't permit us to relate to them. And although sometimes this possibility is suggested to us as an excercise in elitism by elitists, or in any events in an elitist manner, it isn't necessarily the case.

I myself know that there are things I didn't appreciate until I saw them on a second viewing after I had been exposed to something in my life. For instance, I saw Alan J. Pakula's film Starting Over when I was very young and it didn't really work for me. Seeing it later, in my 40s, I was surprised what a funny and touching film it is. And given that the theme is second acts among mature adults, it isn't really a surprise that now its a much more affecting movie for me.

On a different note, does anyone think that, as we've discussed, this tendency, among some, to be or claim to be dazzled or utterly unengaged (or even revolted) by any given piece of theater, is a function of economics?

Even at highly discounted prices, going to see a play or musical is a huge expense, relative to what it once was. Because of that perhaps we demand that our very high expectations are completely satisfied, or, if they are not, we are ready to trash the show because we feel ripped off, and, in turn, become pissed off. This might also engender an intolerance for other people disagreeing with us about any specific show, a "how can you possibly defend that piece of crap" or "how can you possibly not think its the greatest thing since Thespis stepped out of the chorus" - a my way or the highway - approach.

Again, curious if this lands with folks.

Sorry, Scripps, I've got to disagree with you here. My high-school drama teacher (who was really the World Cultures teacher) gave me this list many years ago, which I keep close to my heart. Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce her charmingly scribblous scrawl with the fonts available at BroadwayWorld.com, but allow me to transcribe --

"Dearest Maxwell, here are the things a good play must be:

1. Entertaining
2. Not vulgar
3. (I can't read this one; it looks like "Marielito," but that doesn't make sense)
4. Should not contain information not everyone might have when they sit down
5. Should not contain allusions to things not everyone stands a chance of "getting" (though we don't use that word)
6. Have an identifiable, unambiguous message that can be summed up in, say, about three sentences
7. Its content should be discussable in polite company
8. Written sometime before the year in which it was written"

I'd say the strangest thing about her note is that she introduces the list as a series of appositives, when clearly each object does not follow, grammatically. But that is not the strangest thing. My name is not Maxwell.

Now I'll just say "Thank you very much" and go.

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Updated On: 7/19/11 at 02:21 PM

Myster, I don't agree with your prof on a number of points. I don't think that there is anything wrong with a play presenting vulgar characters or situations or a play not being something that can be talked about in polite company - depending on how your prof was using those terms. Strictly, speaking all plays contain information people don't have when they sit down, at least the people who haven't seen the play before. More importantly, many fine plays inform us about things we don't know anything about. I'm sure, for instance, that many people who go to see Lynn Nottage's very fine play "Ruined" have no idea that there is a civil war going on in the Congo. And many people going to see "The Normal Heart" probably don't know anything about the facts, socially and politically, of the first few years of the AIDS crisis.

Finally, many great works need to be explored and analyzed beyond just a summation of a three sentences, in order to scratch the surface of their power and appeal. Many, great plays are not "message" based in the facile sense. Of equal importance, many of the greatest works for the theater depend on ambiguity as a value. If you ask a group of people who love "Doubt" what the play was about, and what underlying facts about the plot were and whether it is important to unravel them as if it were a whodunit or whether the underlying facts are left powerfully ambiguous, I'm sure you would get a variety of responses, some of which might be diametrically opposed to one another. This is exactly how it should be; a testament to "Doubt"'s success and not its failing.

And Scripps, a couple of things. Jerusalem seems to have landed successfully at The Music Box, a very good theatre for it IMHO, which happens to be on Broadway. Also, while we can all agree that we have different feelings and thoughts about the play - hence the excitement in this thread - I personally found the play very entertaining and wouldn't put it in the category of plays that have value in spite of their value as pop entertainment. Jerusalem has boisterousness, comedy, vulgarity, a variety of broad characters, action, and many of the elements that we usually look for in an "entertainment." Whether it succeeds as an entertainment, or overall, is a different issue, and obviously it didn't exceed on that level for many posters here (btw for me it succeeded brilliantly in certain respects, much less so in others).

But I don't think anyone could make a persuasive case for Jerusalem being "dry" as opposed to an entertainment.

Henrik,

I don't know if I agree with you regarding the polarization of opinions expressed here.

As far as Jerusalem is concerned, yes, some think it's a masterpiece, and others hate it, but there have been many posters here who have expressed mixed feelings about it. And that I have found to be the case with most shows discussed here, a full range of opinions. The most vehement negative opinions i've read recently are .... my own! But that's the plays' fault, not mine. :)

And I don't know if the cost of theatregoing has that much of an influence on one's opinion. I would have hated Jerusalem or The Mother if I had seen them for free.

Just reread your posts, and yes, I can see we have different thoughts on this, esp on the $ theory. I mostly wanted to make clear my post wasn't based specifically on this thread and the views expressed therein. And I didn't mean to say that you weren't genuinely reacting to these plays.

However, I still think a lot of people are, more than ever before, prone to be hyperbolic in their unqualified praise or condemnation for a piece of theater. Moreso perhaps than for other artistic endeavors, and that this might be a question of the economics.

That's cool, themyst, as I said, just a theory I have. I certainly could be wrong.

However, the fact that you express it as "hands down, the most ridiculously overstated and absurd thing that I've ever heard in my entire life."
And the fact that my theory is one of hyperbolic proclamations.

Both of these facts can't help but make me wonder.

Is your irony unintentional or deliberate?

Sorry, Ripped, to interrupt your wanting to step back to the main point of the thread, but I take huge issue with your stating "the purpose of the theater...is to be entertainment." Even if one accepted this to be wholly true -- which is a pretty tall order, considering that even the Greeks', when inventing modern drama, were following using the traditions of ritual, dance as spiritual expression, and the recording and enacting of culture history as a method of preservation and communication -- one eventually has to concede that definitions shift, and it's been about 2,500 years.

I can think of plenty of art not made with "entertainment" -- and I'm not even sure what you mean by that, entirely -- as its primary purpose, not to mention books, visual art, music. Art may engross, compel, fascinate -- even in vulgarity -- but is simple engagement the same as entertainment? What might engage you might leave me bored to tears, and vice versa. My sister loves the "Twilight" book series. I read a chapter of "Eclipse" and thought it was the most unengaging and tedious drivel I'd ever read and couldn't imagine a person spending hours upon hours with it. But millions and millions and millions of people -- some highly educated, oh, yes -- devoured it like candy.

I've probably watched "Un Chien Andalou" 30. Something tells me -- and I may be wrong -- that film was not borne out of Dali and Buñuel's saying, "Let's make something that'll really entertain the hell out of them!" It sucks me right in every time. My mother barely made it through once, and it's only 16 minutes long.

You just can't pigeonhole art -- any art, even theater -- into having a single or even primary purpose. I have trouble seeing how that's even an opinion. Someone insisting that the primary purpose of drama is to entertain or to do any one thing -- even if it's true of 99.9999% of all theater that gets produced -- is, to me, the equivalent of plugging your ears with your fingers and going, "Nah nah nah! I can't heaaaaaaaar you!"

It may be a primary requirement for you, but it is most definitely not for me and, I promise, many, many others. It just... isn't.

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"I'm so but that makes no sense to me at all. The purpose of the theater, at its core, is to be entertainment. That's why it was created, etc. Now, a show can be BOTH entertaining and a thought-provoking, and I think that's what makes a show the best."

As others have, I too disagree that the purpose of theatre is to be entertaining but that can be qualified by how you define entertainment. Is a Sam Beckett play entertaining? I personally don't think so but they certainly make me think. And sometimes they bore me to tears but I wholly assert the playwright's right to express himself.

"It needs to be entertaining, but also have something to say. If not, then what's the point of me listening to it? I'm positive Butterworth wrote Jerusalem with a point of view in mind, but, being a non-Brit, I'm sure it was lost on me. Now, back to the point of the thread. Let's discuss the play. What does it all mean?"

Here's where the Brits discuss it. As you can see, I didn't think I got it either but with the help of other WestEnders I began to see what the playwright achieved, with the play being a prism for his ideas and coaxing a tumultuous reaction from his audience.

https://www.broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.php?boardid=2&boardname=off&thread=1011512#3931905

I should add that one common misinterpretation of the play is that it is a state of the nation rant borne of a nostalgia for an image of 1950s England. It is more of a cry of anguish for what we may have lost touch with as we grew out of the Dark Age (approximately 400AD to 800AD) into civilisation. But since there is so little history from that period we can't be sure of what the cry is for. Maybe it is Rooster's cry that he was born 1300 years too late, into a society that tries to contain and neuter him when he may otherwise have been a king.

Updated On: 7/20/11 at 05:11 PM

"Maybe it is Rooster's cry that he was born 1300 years too late, into a society that tries to contain and neuter him when he may otherwise have been a king."

1300 years ago he would have been the same dirtbag that he is today. King, indeed.