T.S. Eliot Mixes an Angst-Ridden `Cocktail'

THE COCKTAIL PARTY

By T.S. Eliot

Directed by Massy Tadjedin '99

At the Winthrop JCR

April 10-12

Crammed into the elegant and (conveniently) parlor-like Winthrop Junior Common Room, HRDC's The Cocktail Party should be seen first and considered later. Party because actually seeing the floor-level set past twelve rows of upper-class attendees requires great skill and cunning and partly because the play is riddled with T.S. Eliot's innocuously cryptic language, no distinct message leaps forth from the play. Rather, various lines worm their way into the audience, reappearing days later as pertinent homilies for the daily personal lives of audience members.

The play is certainly not incomprehensible. Director Massy Tadjedin '99 clarifies T.S. Eliot's '12 1949 verse play in this production: lines are clear and the plot is crisp. But like any interesting play, the essence of The Cocktail Party is difficult to grasp. Drama can be frustratingly concrete. A painting or symphony may be sufficiently abstract to be immediately beautiful, but a play requires active sympathy and reflection. The domestic conversation that constitutes the action of The Cocktail Party, sans British accents perhaps, could be exchanged in any of our parents' living rooms, but because it is part of a play, the dialogue has been objectified, and thus is a mirror in which we see ourselves. But in this case, our reflection has been rearranged and ostensibly given some "design" and "meaning."

With her cast of eight, Tadjedin has built an effective rearrangement. The Cocktail Party is three acts of point-blank life, improbable yet familiar. It is straight drama, structured around the marital problems of one London couple, paced according to the speech of its eight-person cast and having in its three acts only two settings--a London drawing room and a psychiatrist's consulting room. Rising from this conventionally-British yet potentially-portentous setting, Eliot's language manages a tone of religious pronouncement and philosophical anguish that still sounds natural coming from the play's routine, middle-aged characters. It is just like when you read certain sections of The Wasteland over the phone to your mother, and your roommate notices that your speech is high-brow without noting that you are actually uttering sovereign metaphors for the emptiness of modern life. Thus, is The Cocktail Party's pro-found human philosophy slipped beneath the rug of Eliot's drawing room drama. Eliot's thought is incipient, but it is lent a certain credibility through its slippery resistance to categories of religion, modernism or classicism.

Working with such loaded lines, the cast still makes the play more comprehensible than it is on paper, loosening the free verse rhythm of Eliot's lines for the sake of a more conversational composure. Saadi Soudavar '00 in particular, in his enviable starring role as the "Unidentified Guest" delivers thunderingly philosophic lines with a disarming confidence that keeps the play from the brink of mental boorishness. He passes lumbering lines like, "There is certainly no purpose in remaining in the dark / Except long enough to clear from the mind / The illusion of having ever been in the light," through the head of a pin, completely self-assured. Soudavar's character comes closest to illuminating Eliot's text, but the volume and immutability of his pronouncements only thwart attempts at a comprehensive interpretation. Ultimately, the audience feels left out in the cold, unable to identify with the "Unidentified Guest."

It is also along these lines that the circumstantial humor of The Cocktail Party thrives. Reminiscent of latter-day sitcom standards, much of its humor is based on the sudden ironic entrance of various cast members. For example, in the midst of a weighty discussion between the "Unidentified Guest" and Edward Chamberlayne (Sam Shaw '99), the troubled husband whose marriage is the subject of the play, the hysterical, aunt-like Julia (Emily Stone '99) rushes in to retrieve her lost umbrella and maternally questions Edward about his seemingly drunken companion. We wish we could parrot her seeming naivete.

Julia's character, however, is independently comedic. Loud and shrill, she is always having everyone search for her glasses (once literally, but constantly figuratively), only to find that they were actually in her purse all along. Stone is thoroughly funny, assuming endearing drunkenness without lessening her character's dignity. She is complemented by the similarly aunt-like character, Alex, played by Mark Field-Marsham '99, who himself emanates a perpetual joke in the lilting updrafts of his scolding voice.

In the almost optimistic final scene, Alex, Julia and the "Unidentified Guest" successfully resuscitate the Chamberlaynes' marriage by teaching them that each person must be comfortable with their isolation and live with their ultimate life decisions. Shaw's Mr. Chamberlayne is perhaps the weakest link in the play, if only because his character is so demanding, bearing the brunt of the "Unidentified Guest's" whirling-dervish style of philosophy. But his reactions seem a bit overawed with the grossness of his situation. Ahanna Kalappa '01, on the other hand, plays an utterly confident Lavinia Chamberlayne with masterful posture. She takes advantage of a relatively late entrance by immediately assuming the dignified air of a whimsical aristocrat who has left her husband and then come back, without regret.

What do we do with this sort of theater? Even when it was hardly visible from the back row, The Cocktail Party filled the Winthrop JCR with an obscure imperative, neither calling for a systematic analysis of Eliot's intention nor a sympathetic internalization of Edward Chamberlayne's plight. Eliot's play glistens in space between gushing romanticism and total ironic self-deprecation. As still young and mostly un-betrothed audience members, we can only be glad that Eliot has asked his questions, and it is cathartic to see that the answers (to live in darkness, to honestly accept the costumes of those you would love) do not necessarily lead to happiness. (For example, Chamberlayne's discarded mistress is cannibalized two years later.) The working relationship that the Chamberlaynes develop under the guidance of the "Unidentified Guest" is tragically compromising.

We sit in Winthrop and see our fellow students act out a play by a poet who once seemed untouchably historical but who now seems like only another Harvard alum, and we realize that the play we have (barely) seen might actually be a reflection. The insolubility of Eliot's thought is not a result of Tadjedin's failure to properly direct The Cocktail Party. Rather, it is its greatest strength. It is comforting at least that the characters Eliot has created for us are just as bewildered as we are--yet, it offers no relief.