Hamlet put it simply enough in his advice to the Players: “Speak the speech trippingly on the tongue.” What he meant was, speak it naturally.
Two recent off-Broadway plays — Craig Lucas’ “Stranger” at the Vineyard Theater and Tom Donaghy’s “The Beginning of August” at the Atlantic Theater Company– almost lack reality, simply because of the way the authors have their characters talk to one another.
In these days of movies, TV and ever-present camcorders, we have acquired new standards of natural dialogue, standards exemplified by playwrights as diverse as Harold Pinter, David Mamet and Tom Stoppard.
The Donaghy play, a preposterously told story of a wife who leaves her husband, is supposedly a straightforward narrative comedy.
But what it’s meant to be about is far from clear. Presumably, in some fuzzy-muzzy way, it’s an appeal for tolerance and the acceptance of extended families.
Still, it’s so dimly executed that, among an otherwise modestly talented cast, even the excellent Mary Steenburgen makes little impact.
And always there was this question of completely phony dialogue.
The same problem of credible conversation also plagues “Stranger,” though here there is at least a certain justification, for Lucas has written a dramatic fantasy.
This play, staged by Mark Brokaw, who did a masterly job of realizing Lucas’ last, and far superior, work, “The Dying Gaul,” features a superbly controlled David Strathairn at his very best and an out-of-control Kyra Sedgwick. He’s just been freed from a long prison term; she has her own secret.
But the story line is so purposefully bizarre, unlikely and, most important, unilluminating, that Lucas’ poorly contrived tale lapses into almost comical Grand Guignol melodrama.
And, again, the dialogue is hardly fit for robots. It has very little in common with the way anyone actually talks.
For all the unlikelihood of Lucas’ story, it is presented in a perfectly commonplace fashion, so some regard to everyday parlance is surely called for.
What is “Stranger” meant to tell us? Possibly, it is simply intended as a morality tale, or even an immorality tale, alerting us to the fact that even psychopaths have enemies.
Thanks for the news.