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Metropolitan
Playhouse
The American Legacy 220
East
Fourth Street ~ New York,
New York 10009
Office: 212 995 8410 ~ Tickets: 212 995 5302 "One
of
my favorite downtown theaters"
~ Martin Denton, nytheatre.com
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André
Colonial Enemy Combatant
 Theater has always been a
forum in which a culture examines
its
greatest challenges. It is the sacred space, where taboos are
transgressed, traditions
are
challenged, gods are revealed, and values are affirmed.
Metropolitan is devoted to exploring American theater's capacity
to
turn such lights on our own culture, and nowhere
do
they shine brighter than in William Dunlap's André.
In 1798 a new American poet tackles, in a distinctive American blank verse, one of the most divisive and defining events of recent history. His play challenged the motives of loyalists and patriots alike, speculated on the rationale the most revered leaders of the new nation, and made a sentimental hero of an enemy of the young state. Today, we marvel at the still-bright gleam of the currency of Dunlap's concerns. Writing about the building of a new democracy-- our own-- the stuff of his drama includes the just treatment of prisoners of war, the use of hostages for political gain, the duty a leader has to guide or follow the will of the citizenry, and the responsibility each citizen has to heed, to protest, and even to disobey the will of the leaders. The history that informs André was only 18 years past when Dunlap wrote his drama, and it was very much alive for his audience: In the spring of 1780, British Major John André used promise of money and power to coax to defection an able American general who that summer was to take command of West Point: Benedict Arnold. Doing so would put in British hands the cannons that controlled the Hudson River Valley and, ideally, split the rebellious colonies in two.  In September André traveled up the Hudson (on
HMS Vulture!) to seal the arrangement, and then returned overland to
British controlled New York City wearing civilian clothes and carrying
secret documents in his boots. In a no-man’s land between the American
and British lines near Tarrytown, he was stopped by a trio of
“Cowboys,” ruffians who preyed on travelers in this area where there was no sure authority. Whether or not
they knew the worth of their prize, they turned him in to a Continental
officer stationed on the river, and his fate was sealed. Had André
remained in uniform, he would have been made a prisoner of war; in
civilian clothes he was a spy. Washington ordered a General Court to
convene, and André was condemned to ignominious death by hanging.Benedict Arnold has lived in history as the great traitor of American history, but the fate of André has had a far more ambiguous resonance. He was the beau idéal: dashing, handsome, intelligent, popular with his superiors and with society, a frequent participant in theatricals in British-occupied New York. To hang him was a poltical decision, but not only the British considered his execution unjust. Washington’s own aide-de-camp secretly attempted to save André by encouraging the British to hand over Arnold. In his words: "Never perhaps did any man suffer death with more justice, or deserve it less." Sympathizers were horrified at the ungentlemanly treatment, but a political point was made.  André’s execution may have been a sad necessity forced on Washington, but Dunlap makes Andre a sympathetic figure. The play focuses on a (fictitious) loyal friend who petitions high and low to spare the gentleman’s life. And over the course of the verse play of morality and ideals, Dunlap articulated issues surrounding draconian actions in wartime. Just as the oldest Greek drama extant, The Persians, looks on a decisive battle with ambivalent sensitivity to the vanquished, so this first American tragedy looks on the decisive event of the American Revolution with love for the traitor at its center. And also at that center is a dilemma (faced by none other than George Washington, a demi-god on the early American stage) that is worthy of Sophocles' Antigone: to condemn a man on principle for the good of the republic, or spare him out of respect for his private worth. Indeed, antecedents to the play may be found throughout the Western canon, but its embrace of both love and justice, defines uniquely American values. Strikingly, these same values resonate with unlikely power in 2007. - Alex Roe and Peter Judd |
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