Kenneth Lonergan’s 2009 play The Starry Messenger is about to open at
the Wyndham’s starring Matthew Broderick and Elizabeth McGovern. Longergan’s
work has enjoyed a series of Tony nominated revivals in New York over recent
years: his 1996 play This is Our Youth ran
on Broadway in 2014, followed by Lobby Hero (2001) and The Waverly Gallery (2000) in 2018, all
three of which featured Michael Cera and the latter the then 86 year old Elaine
May. But productions of his plays remain sparse in London. It’s a pity, as he
is adept at creating subtle, character-driven dramas about moral dilemmas and
everyday crises. Here, I write about three of his works, This is Our Youth, Lobby Hero
and his 2016 film Manchester by the Sea.
In This is Our Youth – *Klaxon*
one of this month’s #ReadaPlayaWeek choices – Lonergan is interested in three fucked-up
young people in Reagan-era New York City. The detail and complexity of the
characters is shown in the stage directions. Dennis, for instance, is described
as ‘a very quick, dynamic, fanatical and bullying kind of person; amazingly good-natured
and magnetic’ along with about 6 more lines that gives any actor plenty to get
their teeth stuck into. When the buzzer goes in his Manhattan bedsit at the
start of the play Dennis is too cool to answer it straight away. When he does,
it’s his friend Warren, having had stolen $2000 from his dad, a lingerie mogul-cum-gangster.
Neither seemingly have jobs, degrees or many prospects, and they spend most of
the play either doing or talking about getting drugs. Dennis is more
resourceful in this way, putting together a plan that would help Warren pay his
dad back, and leave enough left over as profit. Mostly a two-hander, the play
is largely a character study into the lives of these two dumb-ass kids
negotiating their friendship and this supposedly intermediate time in their
lives where all they’re seemingly expected to be is dumb-ass kids.
Dennis’ bullish confidence is
balanced by a lofty sense of entitlement. He’s fine with tossing a football
round his own apartment but when Warren does it and breaks his girlfriend’s
sculpture he kicks off. Likewise, he’s happy to play the more superior one but
resists and bemoans any sense of responsibility over Warren. Warren, although
more likeable with his ‘aw-shucks’ personality, is frustrating because of his
apathy and stupid decisions. And any attempts to fix those are either
short-lived or result in more foolishness. The two play off of each other
resulting in an Odd Couple-esque
comedy. Stuck in this apartment, the two would be trapped in a destructive cycle
of youthful naivety and privilege.
What begins to help them out of
that is the play’s third character Jessica. In the second act, Warren and
Jessica see each other again having spent the night (and his dad’s money)
together in a hotel penthouse. He, typically, has already relayed the evening
to Dennis, whereas she is unsure how she feels. There’s an excellent sequence
of about five pages leading up to her exit full of convoluted deflection,
negotiations and contradiction where they talk around the subject of how they
feel. It’s painful to see how far Warren goes with wearing his heart on his sleeve.
Throughout the play, he has a suitcase full of old collectables from the
fifties: old toys, a rare toaster(!) and a memorabilia baseball cap that his grandfather
gave to him. It’s supposedly all worth a lot of money but, although Warren is
passionate about it all, he is also seemingly indifferent about their disposal.
Things like the toaster, and why he’s bothered to lug it across New York with
him, have a comic effect, but the baseball cap carries more emotional weight.
After he offers this as a token to Jessica, he says he’ll burn it if she doesn’t
take it. It’s a signal of how he’s changed and yet stayed the same throughout
the play; he’s wanting make a meaningful connection to Jessica but still knows
the true value of nothing (financially or emotionally). The reason why he
initially likes her is because she’s attractive and he’s desperate but there is
more substance to their time together. In fact, one of the reasons he likes her
is because she challenges him: ‘Like right now you’re all like this rich little
pot-smoking burnout rebel, but ten years from now you’re gonna be like a
plastic surgeon reminiscing about how
wild you used to be’. It is her maturity that makes him want to grow up and do
something productive with his life. The play has a socio-political interest outside
of the single room setting – all seeping into the world of the play by osmosis
through the characters. It’s 1982 and a different world to the one their
parents grew up in, but whereas these ‘lost souls’ may have the ideas, they
have no idea about how to put them to any use. It’s a quirky, funny, and gently
heart-breaking play.
Lonergan has no more so mined the
depths of a character than in his Oscar-winning Manchester by the Sea.
Its protagonist Lee (Casey Affleck) is someone who has a huge load of new
responsibility thrust upon him. Lee has already hit rock-bottom, punishing
himself by living in self-imposed purgatory after losing his children in a
house fire which was, at least partly, his fault. He’s now lost his brother and
is tasked with the guardianship of his teenage nephew. At one point, Lee, yet
again unable to cope, snatches a gun from a policeman’s holster and, with no
thought, raises it to his mouth in an attempt to shoot himself. It’s interested
in how someone can even begin to move forward when faced with life’s tragedies.
After the fire, Lee has lived in isolation in a basement apartment working as
the janitor. Now, talking to his nephew – whether that’s about his estranged
mum or sex – is just one of the many processes he has to (re)learn in his acquired
role. Others include him organising a funeral and having financial
responsibility. Lee’s complicatedness and stubbornness is subtly wrought by
Affleck as he finds himself learning the ropes of parenthood again.
Lonergan’s dialogue is interested
in a failure of communication. Much of the scenes between Lee and his nephew
are made up of silences, awkward questions, interruptions, and overlay. Lee is
despondent and has an inability to make small talk. How does someone without
the emotional capacity and articulacy, or even the strength, begin to climb a
mountain of responsibility? And as in life, amongst the tragedy there are
everyday hiccups. These moments become typical in a film where there are no
easy answers or pat conclusions in the narrative. Such moments as not having a
clicker for the garage door or not remembering where they parked the car provide
offbeat comedy. Darkest of all, in a flashback to the fatal fire, the legs of a
trolley don’t fold correctly when the paramedics load Lee’s wife (Michelle Williams)
into an ambulance as he watches their house and life burn. Such quirks
epitomise the realistic details with which Lonergan fills his work.
The setting, Manchester, Massachusetts,
is arguably another character. The film’s title implies a seaside place and, as
an early scene shows, is strongly linked to Lee spending time with his brother
and nephew fishing on their boat. But now its winter and Manchester acquires a cruelty
in the cold weather. Most brutally, the ground is too frozen to allow burial to
take place. But, as in many other works of literature and popular culture, the
sea has a mystic quality. (Funnily, the two examples that come to mind are an
episode from the first series of Mike Barlett’s Doctor Foster and The
Simspons’ episode ‘Kidney Trouble’). The sea, and the coast, is a place of lost
souls; of both peaceful contemplation and haunting memories; a place that can
cleanse and torment.
In Lobby Hero, moral dilemmas
are at the core of four people in a New York apartment lobby. Michael Cera played
Jeff, a character not dissimilar to the one he played (Warren) in This is Our Youth. Jeff is a lobby security
guard, naïve and perhaps a shirker who has now turned a new leaf: ‘I just don’t
want to be one of those pathetic guys in lobbies who are always telling you
about their big plans to do some kind of shit you know… they’re never gonna do’.
Determined to be better at his job, he finds himself roiled in a number of
Catch-22 decisions, such as whether to assist his supervisor in giving his
brother a false alibi.
We saw Lobby Hero at New York’s Helen Hayes Theatre last year. Trip
Cullman’s production was sometimes dwarfed by the revolve that it was played
on, but all four gave actors gave top performances. A moustached Chris Evans as
a womanising cop and Bel Powley as his wide-eyed New-Yoiker rookie were
especially good. Furthermore, it’s probably the first play I’ve seen where I’ve
come close to understanding people’s comparison of drama to music. Like a
quartet, there’s intrigue and enjoyment from seeing each of the four characters
on their own, and then how each one interacts with one or two others. And when
all four come together, it creates something which can set light.
Like those in This is Our Youth and to a lesser extent than what Lee has to face
in Manchester by the Sea, Jeff is confronted
with a call to action. Throughout these works, Lonergan shows everyday folk in
positions where they could or need to commit to doing more. But what is it Jeff
could do? In the closing moments, he confides in someone, ‘I was kind of hoping
this whole experience would encourage me to rise to greater heights’. But is
the whole thing a convenient anachronism? And would one answer have definitely been
the morally correct one? What could make him that titular lobby hero? Would he
have played the bigshot with the moral high ground and would it have given him
a sense of satisfaction?
The Starry
Messenger is playing at the Wyndham’s until 10th August. For more information, please visit
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