Requiem for a Marriage: And Other Last Chance Dramas

By J.B. Edwards

Thoreau once said, Live the life you have dreamed. The plays in this
book are the dreams in the life that I have led. By that I mean that I have
drawn upon a lifes full experience to construct a fictional story. But
these are stories that are meant to entertain, because thats the first
responsibility of the theater; but also to explore the dreams and hopes
and failures of real people living in our time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: May 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466920330

J.B. Edwards

J.B. Edwards is an American playwright and a member of the American Writers Group at Third Avenue Productions, where he has developed a number of plays, including A Family Reunion, The Sanctuary, Einstein's Secret Letters, Three Women Dating Henry, William's Last Chance and A Delicate Matter. Mr. Edwards is a New York native who often sets his plays in the Gramercy Park section of the city. Twelve of his plays have been produced in New York, and many have been performed around the country. Requiem for a Marriage premiered at the Main Stage of the Abington Theatre in New York in July 2009. Edwards’ first play, William’s Last Chance, was most recently presented in Pennsylvania in 2010 after its premier at the Blue Heron Theater in New York in 2003. His comedy, A Family Reunion, was first presented at the National Arts Club in New York and then later at the Blue Heron Theater. The Spanish version of this play, Una Reunion Familiar, was performed at Nyrican Spanish Theater in New York in October 2004. Edwards’ play, Einstein’s Secret Letters, had its New York debut at the SoHo Repertory Theater's Walker Space in October 2005, and continues to be played to audiences in New York City and around the U.S. The play Three Women Dating Henry was recently adapted for the screen. The short film was written and directed by J.B. Edwards. Most recently, he has written The Best of Everything (2007), A Delicate Matter (2008) and Sister Stories (2009), all presented at the National Arts Club in New York. Edwards was born in The Bronx, New York City, and after earning a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, did a stint in the Army. Coming back to New York for good, Edwards began a career as a writer, poet and novelist (China Dreams). Ironically, his first artistic success was as a painter with his first shows in New York in the eighties. He continues to be a prolific painter of edgy abstract art, and his paintings are represented in several galleries and corporations in the U.S. Later in his career, Edwards began to write plays, and enjoys a continuing success in the Off-Broadway theater scene. He recently ventured into film work, writing and directing the movie version of his play Three Women Dating Henry. Edwards’ works are a study of typical American lives in the late twentieth century, and were influenced by the great American playwrights Arthur Miller and Edward Albee. J.B. Edwards is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the National Arts Club, and the Players of New York. Edwards continues to write new plays for the New York theater scene.

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© Copyright 2012 J.B. Edwards.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Printed in the United States of America.

isbn: 978-1-4669-2035-4 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4669-2034-7 (hc)

isbn: 978-1-4669-2033-0 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012904911

Trafford rev. 05/22/2012

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Contents

Foreword

Introduction/

Volume I

THE PLAYS

CAST OF CHARACTERS

ACT ONE

William’s Last Chance

Praise for J.B. Edwards

from the Directors

Reviews

Requiem For A Marriage

A Family Reunion

About the Author

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Foreword

I first met J.B. Edwards after a performance of Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward at the National Arts Club in New York City over ten years ago. I was playing the role of Madame Arcati. He was waiting for me to come off stage and immediately asked if I would be interested in reading one of his plays as a prelude to working with him. Since that evening I have been reading, performing, directing and now editing a book about his plays. As a result, I have formed a close artistic relationship with J.B. and the people in his plays.

I believe that J.B. is a very unique playwright. The intense passion for his characters is reflected in his devotion to their survival and well being. He can sit for hours discussing the fine details of his plot lines, focusing on how the arc of his characters’ lives influences their perception of themselves and those who are closest to them. He is adept at depicting how their fears and ambitions drive their actions and reactions. This writer has a respect not often found for the plight of the older woman’s place in the world. His women are still very passionate in their desire for love and acceptance. Their families form the emotional center of their lives. The audience struggles along with J.B.’s women while watching each one attempt to reframe the nature of the failures that are consuming them in later life. J.B. empathizes with the angst of the older man as his characters reexamine their lives and how they have become ensnared by their beliefs and desires. Can a man reinvent his life even though his family needs him to stay the same in order to meet their needs? Is this all there is left for him in the world, just more of the same? Is it ever too late for just one more chance at life? J.B. loves the idealism of his younger characters and gives them the respect they deserve as they climb the hill toward what they will become as a result of their decisions and life choices.

Family Reunion, William’s Last Chance and Requiem for a Marriage all involve characters that are in the throes of making decisions that can change their lives so radically. The plays in this book all have marriage as their common denominator. This institution is the framework and driving force behind the dilemmas of all the characters. Within this context, all of the plays contain twists and turns that are sometimes surreal but always engaging.

Rarely, do actors find such amazing roles that ask the questions that we need to answer in life. It is the way that his characters answer these questions that fully engages me in the reading and performing of these plays. And as J.B. always says, It’s a play. It’s supposed to be fun!

Memory Contento

Editor, Actor, Director, Producer

Ridgewood, New Jersey 2011

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Introduction/

Volume I

Thoreau once said, Live the life you have dreamed. The plays in this book are the dreams in the life that I have led. By that I mean that I have drawn upon a life’s full experience to construct a fictional story. But these are stories that are meant to entertain, because that’s the first responsibility of the theater; but also to explore the dreams and hopes and failures of real people living in our time.

Because these stories are written to be performed in theaters by living actors, they are perforce the dialog of life, just as it is used for communication between people in every day intercourse. In these lines, there is no back story, talk over or even music. The words are meant to be spoken unadorned. As such, the written lines are enhanced by actors as they bring to the production the action, the pathos, the anger, the frustration, the love and the longing, which are meant to be conveyed by the playwright to the audience.

The featured play in this book, A Requiem for a Marriage, set in a penthouse in the white shoe Gramercy Park section of New York City, tells the story of the lives of four deeply lonely people willing to go to unimagined lengths to secure happiness. A mutual need—and mutual loneliness—has inspired Jean and Adam Smiley to endure a long lasting but terribly fragile marriage. Adam, an over the hill writer, pretends to be working on his grandee oeuvre, while seducing his young associate, Margot, who herself is stringing the old man along for a chance at publishing her first book. Therapist and spurned wife Jean Smiley is lost in an imaginary world to assuage her guilt ridden conscience, while consistently alienating her forlorn husband. Erica, Jean and Adam’s young adult daughter, appears suspended in her own struggle with her feelings of isolation and abandonment.

Adam longs for the quiet and inspiration he needs to write a book that will help him recapture his former glory; Jean longs to connect with him, but the only words that ever escape her mouth are critical. A lack of laughter drives Adam into Margot’s arms and apartment, leaving Jean and Erica alone once again. None of these pairings, however, is more prone to lasting happiness than the one that just ended.

A blistering fight between Adam and Margot and a truly surprising and thought-provoking finale, in which mother and daughter confront a life- and death-altering deception, creates a bloody, dramatic checkmate.

The story portrays sexual realism with shockingly violent overtones, which allows the play’s rapid pace to accelerate to a surprise ending. The stretches of riveting business—as Adam drinks too much and becomes aggressive and sexually belligerent and later, sober and contrite, as he prostrates himself before Jean—lends pathos to the story of his pathetic, little life. But when the girlfriend cum assistant Margo confronts Adam, the tension in the sexual triangle builds quietly and inexorably. Finally, Jean sees her situation clearly and takes astounding action to resolve her wrecked life.

Jean Smiley reveals in small, startling moments the dark currents of rage and bitterness that drive her to desperate lengths to resolve a dramatic decision that she has chosen to make in her marriage. Behind the calm manner of a therapist, she is a calculating mind, plotting the next move. And yet the character of Jean Smiley never leaves her morally corroded humanity in doubt. In her own way, Jean is also a victim of the political and moral deficits of modern day marriage. Almost nobody who is in a relationship today has escaped the taint of that poison.

The characters are used to illuminate social or psychological problems troubling current day marriages.

The echoes of Edward Albee throughout this play are not unintentional. From the opening lines between Jean and Adam Smiley that refer to a bit about the kid to their rapidly dissolving marriage and their struggle to discern the difference between actuality and fantasy, the playwright has intended this play as both a modern analog to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and a warning about all that can go wrong in short-sighted and long-running marriages. Although I have compared it to Albee’s, this play is intended to stand on its own.

A Family Reunion is a two-handed play with a very small third role. The main character, Bob Hauseman, has been called unexpectedly to the memorial service of his ex-wife Judy. She has suddenly passed away from a heart attack. Bob and Judy were married for twenty years, right out of college. They raised a family, lived in the suburbs, had two cars and a dog, and argued all of the time. In their early forties, they divorced and went their separate ways in life. They were always loosely connected to each other by the children. You know, the usual: birthdays, graduations and trouble. But over those twenty years of divorce, they harbored secret feelings of resentment, relief, freedom, loneliness and failure. But they never talked about it. They were always the perfect divorced couple: cordial, distant and wondering how the other one was doing on their own. Now, Bob finds himself at the wake of his long estranged partner and he wonders out loud, Where did it all go so terribly wrong… ? . . . or did it.

The play opens with Bob arriving at the memorial service. He purposely goes late to avoid seeing anyone from the old days. The undertaker meets him at the door and tells him that the service is concluded for the evening but agrees to give him a few minutes alone to pay his respects. Bob walks up to the memorial table and picks up the framed picture of Judy and begins talking.

He says how sorry he is to see her die at such a young age. How he did really love her back then. How he missed her and thought about her for all of those years that they were divorced and how he had fantasies about getting back together someday. At that point, a woman enters the room and stands behind Bob. At first he doesn’t know she’s there, and he continues on with his ranting about how wonderful everything really was, while she just listens.

Finally, she can stand no more and says to him, Why didn’t you say those things to her when she could hear them? This startles Bob and he turns around to talk to this woman. He tells her of all of the wonderful things that he and Judy had together and how it all went wrong, mainly because Judy was impossible to live with.

As the play goes on, the woman questions Bob’s statements and gradually brings the dialog into a more realistic and balanced picture of their married life. The two of them explore all of the issues that eventually made them grow apart and which ended their marriage.

By the final scene, it is still not clear whether the mysterious woman who has visited Bob is really the ghost of his ex-wife Judy or an apparition. Maybe he is there alone, and it’s his guilty conscience talking. Whatever it or she is, at least they are finally saying all the things they couldn’t talk about in life.

The underlying intellectual content of this sexually charged melodrama is written to stimulate audience members to question themselves about their beliefs concerning marriage, divorce and forgiveness well after they have left the theatre.

The play, A Family Reunion, brings to mind how an unexpected production development can transform a character in a play. During one of the productions of this play in New York, an actress was hired to play the role of Judy, but there was a problem, the actress was too young. The part describes a woman who was married for twenty years and divorced for a similar amount of time. This would make the part right for a woman in