Opposed Glimpse of Alice James, Garth James, Henry James, Robertson James and William

James
Author(s): Anne Carson
Source: The Threepenny Review, No. 85 (Spring, 2001), p. 25
Published by: Threepenny Review
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4385027 .
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THEATER
Later
Wendy Lesser
The Late Henry Moss
by Sam Shepard.
Magic Theatre, San Francisco,
November-December 2000.
A BOUTTWENTYyearsago, True
I L West premiered at the Magic
Theatre and I reviewed it for this maga-
zine. The play began with two brothers,
a "csmooth" one and a "rough" one,
sitting together in a crudely furnished
shack owned by their sole surviving
parent. Something mysterious and
threatening was at stake between them,
and as the play developed, the dynamic
of the threat altered, with the smoother
brother eventually, and surprisingly,
turning out to be the more violent and
angry one. Their mother made a brief,
stick-figure appearance and expressed
her surprise that Picasso was dead; she
had planned to see him at the local art
museum. The language was richly
musical and eccentrically comic and
sometimes piercingly sad, and the act-
ing, by Peter Coyote and Jim Haynie,
was beyond reproach. It was a terrific
evening at the theater (Sam Shepard
himself was in evidence in the lobby),
and the resulting review was headlined
"True Shepard."
One must, I believe, grant a play-
wright-or any writer, or indeed any
artist-the strength of his obsessions.
Without his obsessions he has nothing
to say, and if he is in control of them,
they are not really obsessions. But there-
comes a point when one wants...not
prbgress, exactly, but something new,
some further twist on what we've
already seen, in order to justify our
repeated putting-up with these obses-
sions. (Because they are tiresome as
well as gripping.) This has not hap-
pened in The Late Henry Moss. We are
back in the same old Shepard territory,
with a vengeance, and so no amount of
beautiful language or wonderful acting
can make us believe we are in the pres-
ence of something newly created-
which is perhaps the experience we
most want from live theater, even (or
especially) from a good production of
Euripidesor Shakespeare.
The Late Henry Moss begins with
two brothers-a rougher, older one
played by Nick Nolte, and a smoother,
younger one played by Sean Penn -sit-
ting together at a table in the shack that
has, until recently, been inhabited by
their estranged father. Behind them, on
a bed in an alcove, lies the mummy-like
body of their father. They talk together
about their distanlt past and their
father's recent death, and something
mysterious and threatening informs the
dynamic between them. Their conver-
sation is punctuated by visits from
strangers: the Hispanic next-door
neighbor (played by Cheech Manin), a
manic taxi driver (Woody Harrelson),
and two Spy-vs.-Spy undertakers (Rod
Gnapp and Dennis Ludlow). We also
get flashbacks of the father (James
Gammon) and his Mexican-Indian girl-
friend (Sheila Tousey) as they carouse
SPRING 200010
anything to us about the brothers. But something really special. And he is. But
in The Late Henry Moss too much he couldn't do a thing with the part of
hinges on this ridiculous figure of the Ray Moss, Henry's younger son.
father's girlfriend;she is the source and Whether he was badly directed by
symbol of the violence and death-wish Shepard or simply defeated by the role
at the play's core. And because she is is a moot point; I suspect it was a bit of
ridiculous (I felt sorry for the actress, both. Actually, I think the real problem
who had to loll partially clothed in a was that Sean Penn is a great method
bathtub, eat a raw fish in one gulp, actor-he gets inside a character,
dance seductively, and giggle maniacal- becomes that character, and knows
during his final hours, and we get a how to act him as a result-and you
ly, sometimes all at once), she is a very
great deal of discussion about the dif-
weak fulcrum for the tense male-male just can't get inside Ray Moss. He
ference, if there is any, between being
relationships that Shepard is trying to doesn't have an inside, as far as I can
alive and being dead. At the end of the
balance on her. tell. Like all the smoother, younger
play, the smooth brother, who has pre-
The men are another story. The real brothers in Shepard's plays, he's a
viously been punched to the floor, gets
reason to see The Late Henry Moss, as repressed lunatic, a violent man dis-
to loom threateningly over the rough
everyone realized who bought tickets guised as a normal one, with no clear
one, who has been brought low by the
to the instantly sold-out run, was the motivation for his rage or his repres-
revealed truth. What is the revealed
cast. And to a certain extent the cast sion. He is odd bits and pieces of
truth? It's hard to say, exactly, except
delivered. Nick Nolte was consistently behavior all strung together: sometimes
that somebody was lying about the
good, James Gammon did a persuasive he is super-rational,and sometimes he's
past-the recent past and also the very
(if at times overly theatrical) drunk, downright eccentric; sometimes he
distant one. In a Shepard play, some-
and Cheech Marin worked some true seems purposely funny, and sometimes
body is always lying about the past: the
feeling out of his thankless latter-day- he doesn't have a sense of humor at all.
family past, of course, which is what
Jose-Jimenez character. But the real He's a prig and a bit of a dandy, but
makes the lies telling and in a way
surprises were Woody Harrelson and he's also a slob and a potential drunk.
truthful. As one of the charactersin this
Sean Penn. He doesn't ever talk about his work,
play says, "If he doesn't have a family,
If the second act was thrilling, it was but whatever it is seems to set him off
he can't make it up. You can't make
because Woody Harrelson dominated from his brother, who's just a laboring
that stuff up. It's too complicated."
it. He was unexpectedly marvelous. schmo: he has the manner, but not nec-
The writer I tend to compare with
The way he moved his body, the way essarily the vocabulary and knowledge,
Sam Shepard, as I'm watching his plays
he used his voice, the manner in which of an educated man. He seems to be
and thinking about them afterward, is
he took over the stage all demonstrated riddled with some kind of guilt, but the
David Mamet. They are the two great
that he is a stage actor of enormous tal- only tangible effect of this is to make
language-usersof their American gener-
ent. And he understood his part to per- him point his finger repeatedly at oth-
ation of playwrights, and they are the
fection: he got inside the nutty Sam ers. He is, in short, a cipher, if a very
two stage writers who attract the best
Shepard lines and made them work as complicated one.
actors. They are both fixated on the
both comedy and pathos. His role was If I had to guess, I would say that the
power relations between men, and the
peripheral-he was just the taxi driver younger, smoother brother is in some
women in their plays, who are few and
who drove the old man on his last way Sam Shepard's stand-in. But of
far between, tend to be significantly less
drunken spree, and was therefore called course,the plays don't feel like this at
substantial. (This is not a criticism, just
on the mat by the younger brother- all. We are always much more sympa-
an observation. Later, in a specific
but he made it central, and only in the thetic to that older, rougher, working-
instance, I will make it a criticism.)
scenes with Harrelson did Sean Penn class, hard-drinking brother, and we
They are both, at their best, the best
seem to come to life. always think the younger one is a bit of
playwrights we have, and they both
If you've seen Sean Penn in Dead a creep. Perhaps Sam Shepard thinks so
seem to be fueling their work with their
Man Walking and Sweet and Low- too. Perhaps that's the secret he's hid-
intense, unresolvable obsessions about
down, you know he's one of the best ing, from himself and from us, in play
family. But the difference is that, over
actors we have. I've actually never seen after play. Is this such a terrible secret?
the years, I have come to have a sense
him perform badly before. From the We are all creeps, in the family context;
about what causes those obsessions in
first glimpse I caught of him, in Fast we all have things to feel guilty about,
Mamet. He reveals, through his plays,
Times at Ridgemont High, to all the even as we point our fingers at other
some of the secrets behind the plays,
supporting parts he's played next to family members. Enough already. The
and this in itself is satisfying. With
Robert DeNiro and other master- debt has been paid by now, or it never
Shepard, I still don't have a clue. The actors, to the movies he's carried pretty will be, which comes to much the same
same family drama is being played out
much on his own, I've thought he was thing. L
over and over again in his work, but
the secrets behind it aren't actually
being revealed to us, so we are left with
as much frustration as the characters
themselves feel. There is, I suppose, a
point to making us feel this way, but I
OpposedGlimpseof Alice James,
am tired of it. GarthJames,Henry James,Robertson
The Late Henry Moss is divided into
three acts: the first act is promising, the
JamesandWilliamJames
second is thrilling, and the third is a
as lively")
("tracesof somescenethatthe newspaperswouldhavecharacterized
vast disappointment. This is the wrong
order-if you have to have a bad act, it
should come in the middle. But why do
I am gladyou likeadverbs-I adorethem;theyarethe only
we have to have a bad act at all? Well,
qualificationsI reallymuchrespectand I agree... in thinking
mainly because Shepard is still not will-
thatthe sensefor themis the literarysense.
ing to give us the goods. He wants to
-Henry James,letterto a youngadmirer,1902
reveal something to us, but what he
ends up revealing is a story he tells him-
self to cover the real story, the one he
A Sunday terrible in all the little ways that Sunday is terrible news.
can't bear to look at. And the one he
Home gust of every hour settling sacredly into its custodiary bruise.
tells himself (about female angels of
Words like buckle-hole and bleat.
death, tango-dancing Mexican-Indians
The mind's eye.
with dark sexual powers and the ability
The mind has no eye.
to lure drunks to their sodden deaths) is
Aunt Kate sitting alone downstairs.
tripe, compared to what I imagine real-
Without any dinner, as she does not eat.
ly happened. This is where my observa-
tion about the women becomes a criti-
cism. It was okay for the mother in
-Anne Carson
True West to be a stick figure,because
her character
wasn't meant tO explain