The Tittering Tribe
Jonathan Lynn is hard at work directing A Mother, A Daughter and A Gun, the new off-Broadway comedy. His stage credits include writing and performing in Cambridge Circus, which went from off-Broadway to the Great White Way. He also directed the one-night-only Broadway production of The Moony Shapiro Songbook. His numerous London credits include The Glass Menagerie, Songbook Society of West End Theatres Award, Evening Standard Award for Best Musical, Anna Christie, A Little Hotel On the Side, Three Men On a Horse, Loot, Arms and The Man, Tonight at Eight, The Unvarnished Truth and Pass The Butler. Lynn has directed many films throughout the years including My Cousin Vinny, The Whole Nine Yards, The Fighting Temptations and Clue, which he also wrote. He is now ready for the laughter to begin with this new production, written by Barra Grant and starring Olympia Dukakis and Veanne Cox. The dark comedy centers on… well, see the title. Lynn believes all good comedy has something serious at its core. Here, the director discusses his feelings about laughter, drama and tribal activity.
A couple of years ago, working with Barra Grant on a screenplay in L.A., I asked if I could see anything else she had written. She showed me this play. I'd been reluctant to return to the theater unless I found a really exciting new play written in a unique and original voice. This was it. We sent it to the great Oscar-winning actress Olympia Dukakis. She immediately accepted the role, and it was full steam ahead.
This new comedy, which is profound and ferocious, hilarious and poignant, centers on the fractured relationship between two people: a mother who is disappointed in her daughter Veanne Cox, and a daughter who is disappointed in herself. Both of them, by the way, are equally disappointed with their husbands.
The situation comes to boiling point on the night that the play takes place, and results in a hilarious attempted murder as the two warring women finally manage to come to some tolerance and understanding for each other.
This play, like all the best comedies, is about something serious. The more serious the issues, the better the comedy. You can treat any subject as tragedy or comedy. You just make different choices as you write it, and in the way you stage it.
When we laugh, we bare our teeth and emit a barking sound. Such behavior in all other species is a sign of aggression or alarm, of hostility or madness. Yet we humans associate laughter with warm, happy, relaxing experiences. It's therapeutic--we're told--for physical as well as mental illnesses. Beneficial biochemical changes apparently occur when we laugh.
Laughter is a group activity. As my friend Tony Jay once asked he and I wrote the British TV series Yes Minister together: "What do you do if you're sitting in a train or a bus and you see someone laughing, out loud, all by themselves? You get out at the next stop." But when we all laugh together, it becomes perfectly normal. That's why comedy goes better in a full house than an empty one. Why do we laugh more with others? Because laughter is a form of tribal activity.
Tribal behavior changes people, whether the group is an army, a violent mob, a teenage party… or a laughing audience. The original purpose of drama, anthropologically, was religious and educational. It was about survival. Drama acted out dangerous situations that threatened the safety or existence of the tribe. If the play ended tragically, the audience was being asked to empathize with the protagonist. If it ended comically, the tribe was being asked to laugh At the protagonist. The sound of laughter is indeed the sound of aggression.
A play said to the tribe: "These are the terrible things that will happen to you--and to society--if you break our rules, rituals and taboos." Oedipus committed incest, so he suffered and died. Why was this lesson necessary? Because incest threatened the future of the tribe. It was an essential message. If, in a French farce like those written by Feydeau, the hero commits adultery, he will be exposed and ridiculed. Why? Because that society wanted to discourage adultery.
So--where do you look to create a comedy? Start with the Ten Commandments--thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife--fertile stuff. Or you need look no further than the Seven Deadly Sins. I keep a copy of them on my desk. Greed, envy, sloth, wrath, pride, lust… What else do you need for a good comedy?
In my opinion A Mother, A Daughter and A Gun fulfills all the requirements for great comedy. Furthermore, it is an ambitious play for off-Broadway today, with 11 characters and two sets. It is the kind of play that would have been on Broadway not so long ago, before people stopped daring to produce ambitious new plays there. Even when new plays are presented on Broadway today, they seldom have a large cast or more than one set. This play harks back to the good old days.
And it not just physically big: it deals with a big theme, the conflict between mothers and daughters that has so seldom been addressed in the history of drama, perhaps because most playwrights have been male.
The supporting cast includes one Tony winner the great George S. Irving and the design team is first-rate and includes more Tony winners and nominees The producers are Brian Reilly, a successful movie producer making his first venture into theater, and Nelle Nugent, one of Broadway's greatest producers, with no less than five Tony awards.
We were able to gather a superb team because of the play itself. This is Barra Grant's first play. I hope you'll agree that it's an extraordinary achievement.