CONOVER:
I want the people to make the choice.
MARY: That's
awfully big of you!
Directed Democracy
The trouble with democracy
is the People. Even Madison1 knew they
can’t be trusted with it. A freely elected
government is all to the good, so long as the governed
aren’t trusted to pick their governors. Who knows
whom they might pick?
But is the answer a cadre of élites, such as a political
party? Who runs it? Who funds it? Who
knows whom IT might pick?
Lindsay and Crouse wondered aloud in 1945 with their State
of the Union, a comic love story that won the
Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1946 and became a much loved
Tracy/Hepburn film featuring Angela Lansbury and directed
by Frank Capra, in 1948. Their hit still sparkles
today with the snappy dialogue for which they are famous,
while their answers are affirming, surprising, and
provoking in 2019.
Having lost the last four presidential elections to the
same Democrat,2
the Republicans need a winner in 1948, and aircraft
magnate Grant Matthews could be the answer to their
prayers. A dynamic embodiment of the American Dream, he
has the charisma and populist instincts to win a broad
following. He’s gained national attention for his
contribution to the war effort. He’s a Washington
outsider, known for standing up to politicians and special
interests. And his lack of political experience appeals to
the political operators who want to mold him to the Oval
Office. But, rumors of his affair with the publisher
of a national newspaper chain may be this Achilles’s
heel. So, to test his viability, Party players urge
him to take a speaking tour of the country . . . provided
his nearly estranged wife, Mary, joins him for
appearance's sake.
As the tour goes on, the Party finds their dark horse is a
maverick—especially as time on the trail together
rekindles the flame between the earnest Grant and the
principled Mary. Working as a team for the first
time in their married life, they (re)discover shared
passions and values they’d overlooked in their tired
union. To the party’s chagrin, they also share
intolerance of political compromise, disdain for the party
line, and commitment to the good of the country, whatever
might be good for the Republicans.
Representative
Sample
The
play's revival brings valuable perspective
from the past to challenges that out country
continually revisits. In the 1945 of State
of the Union, the Second World War has
just ended, and nationalism has torn Europe
apart. America is reeling with newfound
power, enjoying unprecedented wealth, swelling
with an influx of new immigrants, and
adjusting to changing roles of women and men
at home, in the office, and in the
Capitol. Managing these circumstances is
central to the play’s action, and
correspondences in today’s world are familiar
indeed. So, of course, is an outsider
businessman’s catching a wave of popular
dissatisfaction with the system.
Revivals also illuminate how times change. In
1945, Vermont was reliably Republican, the
South belonged to Dixiecrats. National press
syndicates exercised outsized control over
available information. There was no real rival
to the United States’ global power. Immigrant
communities represented diverse interests with
little individual clout, while organized labor
had the power to cripple an industry.
Comparing this world to our own delivers
laughs and insights, both.
Meanwhile, Grant and Mary Matthews break the
mold of today’s public figures in both eras. A
profit-driven businessman, he stands up for
fair pricing and the rights of his
workers. A proud American, she asks how
the country’s wealth and power can serve to
unite the world.
The effect in a 2019 staging of this 1945
comedy is affirming and disconcerting. As many
times as the play’s quandaries and arguments
hit our current political turmoil right on the
nose, others catch us off guard and give us a
chance to see our world anew.
Lindsay and Crouse’s portrayal of this America
flexing its muscles poses a fundamental
question of responsibility: Should a powerful
and wealthy nation seek to use that power to
increase its wealth, and its wealth to
increase its power? Or should it seek to share
its riches with the less fortunate and
leverage that power to protect the interests
of the less powerful? In its answers, at
once familiar and strange, the play is both
brightly funny and remarkably urgent: it
affirms and indicts the state of our Union.
Domestic Policy
The other union at the
center of the play is a struggling marriage, and
that the fortunes of one bear on those of the
other is key to the play’s wit. If Grant has
a tragic virtue, it is a confidence that makes him
a born leader and an independent thinker.
Yet (according to his wife), it also makes
arrogant and deaf to the appeals of those around
him. Meanwhile, Mary’s greatest virtue may
be her generous regard for others…unless she
thinks them a little too full of
self-regard. If she does, her moral largesse
turns into intemperate rectitude—not the most
endearing approach to a husband with dreams of
grandeur, nor the most politically effective
posture for a candidate’s wife.
If the two would just allow each other’s strength
to temper their own, these tragic flaws have the
potential to become heroic powers. This
marriage of rooster and hen makes for a winning
comedy, one with a valuable lesson in compromise
for the politicians, as well.
In many ways, the play's basis for posing these
questions is shrewdly cynical. Its answers,
though, right through to its third act surprises,
are optimistic and refreshing. In the final
tally, State of the Union is a barb and a
tickle for both Right and Left in 2019.
This award winning comedy of values that will not
die, whatever soil they’re planted in, is the
third production of our 27th Season, the Season
of Perseverance.
1 Federalist 10
2 That would be Franklin Delano
Roosevelt.
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Lindsay and
Crouse
Writing
and producing partners Howard Lindsay and Russel
Crouse enjoyed one of the longest collaborations in
Broadway history, from 1932 to 1967. Introduced by a
mutual friend, their first project was the rewriting
of the book to Anything Goes (1934),
which was quickly followed by the librettos for both Red,
Hot, and Blue (1936) and Hooray for What!
(1937). Switching to a non-musical vein in 1939,
their dramatization of Clarence Day's
semi-autobiographical stories, Life with Father,
featured Lindsay and his wife Dorothy Stickney in the
leads. The production ran seven yearsn
and remains,
2019,
the longest running non-musical play
in Broadway history.
Life with Mother, further adventures of the Day
household, had a respectable, though by no means
comparable run in 1948.
With the success from Life with Father, the
partners bought the Hudson Theater, where they
premiered State of the Union in 1945,
and which they continued to manage until 1950.
Meanwhile, their further writing collaborations
included the book to Call Me Madam
(1950, with score by Irving Berlin) and Happy
Hunting (1956, score by Harold Karr and lyrics by Matt
Dubey). 1959 saw their best
known triumph: the book to Rogers and Hammerstein's The
Sound of Music, while 1962 brought their work
together to an end, with the book to Irving Berlin’s Mr.
President (1962).
Howard Lindsay was born Herman Nelke in
1889. After graduating from Boston Latin School and
spending a year at Harvard, Lindsay changed his name
and joined Margaret Anglin’s company as an actor,
debuting on Broadway in Billeted 1917. After
serving in the actual army in World War I, he returned
to Broadway as a director, whose notable productions
included Dulcy (1921) and his own play, Tommy
(1927), a collaboration with Bertrand
Robinson. Further collaborations with Robinson
included Your Uncle Dudley (1929), and Oh,
Promise Me (1930), before he began his fruitful
partnership with Crouse. Married to actress Dorothy Stickney for 41
years, Lindsay died of
leukemia 1968.
Russel Crouse, born in 1893, served in the Navy
during World War I and held many positions in media
before coming to New York and making his Broadway
debut in 1928's Gentlemen of the Press. He contributed the book to Oscar
Hammerstein II and Morrie Ryskind's
musical revue The Gang’s All Here in 1931, and
with Corey Ford, wrote Hold Your Horses,
both play and musical, in 1933. Meanwhile, he
became the head of publicity for the Theatre Guild in
1932. Crouse and his wife Anna Erskine had two
children, Timothy and Lindsay, a well-respected film,
television, and theater actress in her own
right. Russel Crouse passed away in 1966 of pneumonia.
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