Stage Kiss - Goodman Theatre

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IN THE ALBERT RIGHT: Marilyn Monroe in the celebrated comedy Some Like it Hot. THE ICONIC KISS: FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953) The adulterous affair between an army sergeant and a captain’s wife culminated in perhaps the best-known screen kiss of all time: Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr locked in a fervent seaside embrace with the ocean’s waves washing over them. Although torturous to film, the scene was one of the most erotically charged couplings yet seen in an American film, and helped make the movie one of the blockbusters of its time. It also may have led to an offscreen romance between the two stars: although Kerr denied the rumors, Lancaster eventually confirmed the affair. THE COMIC KISS: SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959) Billy Wilder’s Prohibition-era farce—one of film’s most celebrated comedies—featured Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis (both donning outlandish drag as two-bit musicians fleeing a Mob hit) and the reigning sex goddess of the 1950s, Marilyn Monroe. In a movie dripping with innuendo, the most erotically charged sequence came when Monroe seduced Curtis (now disguised as a rich oilman) in order to “cure” his self-confessed impotence. Although tame by today’s standards, the scene inflamed moviegoers of the time, and helped make the movie one of the most successful screen comedies of all time. Alas, the onscreen chemistry between the two stars evaporated once the cameras stopped rolling: Curtis, impatient with Monroe’s habitual lateness and neurotic behavior, famously told one reporter, “Kissing her is like kissing Hitler.” THE INTERSPECIES KISS: PLANET OF THE APES (1968) The screen has also seen a host of memorable unconventional kisses: the tender smooching of the two canine leads in Lady and the Tramp, or the Sicilian “kiss of death” between brothers Michael and Fredo Corleone in The Godfather: Part II. But perhaps the strangest coupling came in the sci-fi hit Planet of the Apes, when the displaced human astronaut played by Charlton Heston bade farewell to a comely scientist-ape, played by Kim Hunter. Amid crashing waves (reminiscent of From Here to Eternity), the two engaged in a chastely romantic moment, sparked by Heston’s line, “Doctor, I’d like to kiss you goodbye.” Replied Hunter, “All right—but you’re so damned ugly!” THE SILHOUETTED KISS: BUGSY (1991) Lothario Warren Beatty is no stranger to offscreen romance spawned by onscreen liaisons, as evidenced by his torrid affairs with such leading ladies as Natalie Wood and Leslie Caron. But a more permanent relationship began when Beatty was “It was brief, swift, and then it was done. It was a professional job. I needed to be kissed, and I was kissed.” —Uma Thurman paired with Annette Bening in the 1991 film based on the life of mobster Bugsy Siegel. Among the first scenes filmed by the pair was a lingering kiss in a shadow against a movie screen. The screen lovers soon became an offscreen couple; today, they enjoy one of Hollywood’s most enduring marriages. THE REUNION KISS: BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2005) Although the past decade has seen a host of memorable cinematic pairings, perhaps none was as fervent as the tortured relationship between cowboys Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) in Brokeback Mountain. After an initial tryst in a secluded tent, the two go their separate ways for four years; when they finally come back together they share a kiss of almost unbearable passion and hunger. Although same-sex kisses were far from unusual in mainstream films, the romantic and erotic frankness of this sequence was unprecedented; it was voted “the best screen kiss of all time” by the European website LOVEFiLM.com, and immediately entered the pantheon of legendary screen romances. HAVE YOUR OWN FAVORITE SILVER SCREEN SMOOCH? Head to the Goodman’s blog (Goodman-Theatre.Blogspot.com) and tell us about your favorite Hollywood kiss! 8
Sarah Ruhl’s Comedic Cocktail By Neena Arndt BOTTOM: Alfred Lunt, Noël Coward and Lynn Fontanne in Design for Living (1933). Photo courtesy of the Ten Chimneys Foundation. A butler named Jenkins. Songs, dances and old lovers. Bubbly champagne and bubbly repartee. It’s the stuff of 1930s plays by writers like Noël Coward, George S. Kaufman, Moss Hart and Edna Ferber. It’s the stuff that cheered a nation in the wake of the stock market crash of 1929, keeping audiences entertained even as their bank accounts dwindled. And it’s stuff that often feels hopelessly dated now, in an era when many theaters aim to produce works with weightier themes. The characters, plot lines and dialogue can feel clunky and hackneyed in 2011, and while 1930s audiences were laughing with 1930s plays, 2011 audiences might laugh at them. Like all decades, the 1930s produced some memorable hits that represented the best of their genre—You Can’t Take It with You, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Private Lives and Design for Living, to name a few— but also produced thousands of forgotten flops by playwrights who lacked the verbal agility of Coward, Kaufman and other successful writers. Enter Sarah Ruhl. In her new play Stage Kiss, Ruhl creates a world in which two present-day actors are cast in a (fictitious) play called The Last Kiss that flopped on Broadway back in 1932. The actors are ex-lovers, but haven’t seen each other in years; in a coincidence worthy of a 1930s comedy, the characters they are playing are also reunited lovers. Realities merge and soon the lines between actors and characters are blurred; along the way Ruhl provides delightful glimpses of The Last Kiss, which she penned after reading a selection of plays from the era. (The Last Kiss does not exist in its entirety— Ruhl only wrote the select scenes that appear within Stage Kiss.) While the dialogue she creates may be slightly exaggerated, it is also hilariously accurate; with her characteristic wit and and sly humor, Ruhl creates a skillful parody of the kinds of plays that triumphed or—more often— bombed on 1930s stages. Depression-era comedies trace their roots at least as far back as the nineteenth century, when song and dance routines and smart-aleck dialogue ruled the vaudeville stage. Those vaudevillian elements, in slightly altered form, also appeared in melodramas, which used music and stylized movement to portray intense emotions. In vaudeville and melodrama, there was little attempt at realistic dialogue; rather, the language was heightened and ostensibly witty. As the nineteenth century came to a close, writers like Gerhart Hauptmann and Henrik Ibsen began working towards a new, more realistic aesthetic that would come to define much of twentieth-century theater, but the first half of the century still carried traces of the old genres. As any viewer of 1920s and ’30s films can attest, the accepted acting style at the time was more heightened and melodramatic than today, and filmmakers and playmakers alike still considered it acceptable to throw in a musical interlude that did little or nothing to advance the plot; they valued entertainment over storytelling. Goodman audiences will be familiar with such interludes from the 2009 production of Animal Crackers, the 1928 Marx Brothers Broadway hit. Although Animal Crackers, like many Broadway shows of its time, is a musical, there also exists a poorly defined genre called “plays with music”—that is, plays with only a few musical numbers, or plays with songs that were not originally composed for the theater. The Last Kiss, Ruhl’s play-within-a-play, falls within this genre. A prime real-life example of a play with music is Lynn Riggs’ 1931 play Green Grow the Lilacs, now best known as the play on which the musical Oklahoma! is based. Green Grow the Lilacs features traditional folk songs that enhance the atmosphere of the piece, setting it firmly in the western territory that would later become Oklahoma. They do not, however, move the plot forward or provide insight into the characters. Famously, Rodgers and Hammerstein adapted Riggs’ play into a musical that synthesized storytelling, song and dance into one cohesive whole—but that wasn’t until 1943. In the 1920s and ’30s, audiences were still accustomed to plays in which characters could inexplicably burst into song, and Sarah Ruhl takes full advantage of this, 9
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Stage Kiss - Goodman Theatre

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