Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

A week or so ago we saw a play by Steven Dietz called Halcyon Days at a little theater down by Greenlake, a couple miles’ walk from the house. We’d seen a play of his about 10 years ago called Lonely Planet, a two-man play about dealing with the AIDS epidemic. I remembered the snappy dialogue and droll humor, and so looked forward to seeing something else by Dietz. As an example, here’s a speech from Lonely Planet by a guy named Carl, who claims to have several occupations, each of them a total fantasy. What he really does with his days out in the community, we eventually learn, is a much more sober mission. Here he is talking about one of these fantastical occupations, a reporter for a tabloid newspaper:

Yes. Just crazy. No one understands, Jody. They really don’t. There are all these so-called “reputable” journalists who walk around bitching and moaning how hard it is to cover the news. How taxing it is to look around and put into inverted pyramid form something that happened. I should be so lucky, Jody. Do you think I can get away with just typing up stuff that happened? Please. When you work for a tabloid, you have to create the news. And believe me, that is taxing.

Many’s the day I wished I could walk out my door, see a little fire across the street, go to work and type it up: “A little fire happened yesterday across the street.” How sweet, how simple. But that little fire is not a story at my paper unless an elderly woman with a foreign accent was washing dishes, and she looks down at the white plate she is scrubbing, and there, there on the white plate she is holding is the face of Jesus, Jesus himself, all beatific and covered with suds–and the face of Jesus speaks to her. The face of Jesus says: “Drop. The. Plate.” And the woman is frozen with fear. And again, Jesus says: “Drop. The. Plate.” And the woman speaks. The woman says: “It’s part of a set.” Jesus stands firm. “If you want to be with me in heaven, you will drop. The. Plate.” The woman is shaking with fear. She tries to explain that it was a wedding gift some forty years ago from an uncle who suffered from polio and died a pauper–but Jesus doesn’t give an inch. It’s as though he’s gone back and read the Old Testament. “I’ll give you one more chance,” he says, “then I’ll have the fire of hell consume your soul.” The woman, tears streaming down her face, tries to quickly submerge him under the soapy water–but the water is gone. The sink is gone. Only the plate, and the face, remain. She stares at him, trembling. He says, “Well?” She has a realization. This is not Jesus. This is not her Lord and Savior. This is an imposter. This is the spirit of Satan entering the world through her dishware. She looks the plate squarely in the face and says: “I renounce you.”

Within seconds, she’s toast. So is the building.

The firemen do not find the slightest trace of her. But there, in the midst of the smoking rubble, the dinner plate shines white and pristine. And burned into it forever is the image of the woman’s final, hideous expression. The last face she made before she became a china pattern.

My paper can run story like that.

Halcyon Days is a play about political operatives in and around the Reagan White House up to and during the invasion of Grenada, the Caribbean island thought to be falling under Cuban and, by proxy, Soviet influence. Much was made, leading up to the invasion, of intelligence regarding the incipient construction of a large airstrip, and of the danger to a group of U.S. medical students studying there.

The main characters are a Karl Rove-like White House operative, a newly-hired speechwriter, a couple of medical students on the island, and a couple of rural-state senators just coming into their own and thus thought by the Rove-guy to be vulnerable to some influence-peddling in exchange for support of the invasion. As added spice, one of the medical students is the son of one of the senators.

The play isn’t really an anti-Reagan screed, although The Great Communicator comes up for some oblique jibes. It’s more a skirmish between expedient cynicism, political ambition and inconvenient, but insistent, idealism. In case you ever see the play, I’ll just say that the outcome uncannily presages the current administration’s modus operandi.

While I thought Lonely Planet was finely crafted, with its chatty, breezy foreground plot taking your attention while a crescendo of melancholy quietly builds, Halcyon Days was a little broad in spots. Overall, though, I liked it a lot. Obviously, I own a copy of Lonely Planet, from whence the lengthy quote. One good line I remember from Halcyon Days, though - the Rove-guy is discussing tactics with the new speech-writer, and posits that the purpose of the press, to them at least, is “to mountain our molehills”.

Ultimately, a very satisfying play. I’ll keep my eye out for more Dietz.