Martin Guerre and Artistic Honesty
Mar. 4th, 2005 01:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naomikritzerBack in 1999, the musical Martin Guerre played at the Guthrie. I was really excited to see it. It's by the same team as Les Miserables, a musical that I really, really, really love, for all sorts of reasons that I'm not going to enumerate here. Suffice it to say that I think that Les Miserables is genuinely good in an artistic sense; it functions on multiple levels, and the music, lyrics, and staging all work together to support the thematic stuff that's going on. It's what Cats and Phantom and lots of other musicals should be but mostly aren't.
So anyway, I was really excited to go see Martin Guerre, and Ed and I got tickets and went. And... it was really not impressive. Well, when they set fire to the set at the end, that was impressive, but in a "boy, that was almost -- though not quite -- as cool as a huge crashing chandelier!" kind of way, rather than a "what an amazing musical" kind of way.
The thing is, I think the musical suffered from a lack of artistic honesty on the part of the writing team.
Martin is a young man in a rural French village who is married off, at a young age, to a girl he's friends with but does not want to marry. The girl fails to get pregnant, and when confronted, confesses that Martin has never consummated the marriage. Martin is taken to talk to the priest. We don't see what he tells the priest, but the priest concludes that Martin is possessed by demons, and performs an exorcism, during which Martin is beaten with a whip. Furious at his entire village, including his friend/wife, Martin leaves.
He then goes off to join the army, where he meets and bonds with a young man named Armaud. At some point he tells Armaud all about his past (it's actually told in flashback -- the play starts with the two men serving in the army together). Then he gets shot, and, dying, tells Armaud to go back to his village and tell them what happened to him.
So, at this point in the musical, I have reached the really pretty obvious insight that Martin is as queer as a three-dollar bill. He never consummates the marriage because he is GAY. The priest freaks out and decides he's possessed because he's GAY. All the male bonding stuff is about the fact that he is GAY.
The thing is, in the rest of the play, this is never acknowledged. This theme is never developed. It's there, but it's this elephant in the living room. They don't address it, not even in an oblique, appropriate-to-the-era sort of way (it's not like I expected a rousing chorus of "We Are Family!" for the curtain call, you know, but it seemed so clear to me that this was what the play was about that I wanted SOME kind of acknowledgement of it). Instead, there was lots of stuff about Protestantism that didn't get developed very well, either. And in the end, Armaud dies and Martin (who turned out not to be dead) and his wife (who conceived a baby with Armaud) are apparently going to live happily ever after. Well, except for that minor detail that Martin is STILL GAY.
Here's the thing. I think that the writing team was absolutely aware of this. I mean, how could they NOT be? But they didn't want it to be about Martin being gay. They wanted it to be about something more palatable and commercial and uncontroversial, so they refused to address it. If they pretended it wasn't there, the musical could be about something else. (Like Protestantism!)
Except they were turning away from the heart of the play. Because of their denial, the musical never came together. The reviews were unenthusiastic. The tour was supposed to be the prologue to a Broadway run, but after the run at the Guthrie, it quietly closed.
It's too bad, because there was a really compelling story hiding in there that they could have told.
Sometimes, when I have a story that is just refusing to come together, it's because there's something that I am stubbornly refusing to see. Once I acknowledge whatever it is, suddenly I have a worthwhile story.
I was thinking of this because of a post on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pegkerr's LJ, where she talked about some key point of her ice palaces novel that she has yet to figure out. I suggested that she think about what she DOESN'T want the answer to be, and then try using precisely that answer. Not that I think that Peg is in denial about some facet of the story that will miraculously bring it all together. And I certainly do not think that she is artistically dishonest. But in my comment I also said I'd provide my Martin Guerre rant in my own LJ, rather than going off on that tangent in hers, so voila, here it is. Who knows, maybe it will jar something loose for someone else.
So anyway, I was really excited to go see Martin Guerre, and Ed and I got tickets and went. And... it was really not impressive. Well, when they set fire to the set at the end, that was impressive, but in a "boy, that was almost -- though not quite -- as cool as a huge crashing chandelier!" kind of way, rather than a "what an amazing musical" kind of way.
The thing is, I think the musical suffered from a lack of artistic honesty on the part of the writing team.
Martin is a young man in a rural French village who is married off, at a young age, to a girl he's friends with but does not want to marry. The girl fails to get pregnant, and when confronted, confesses that Martin has never consummated the marriage. Martin is taken to talk to the priest. We don't see what he tells the priest, but the priest concludes that Martin is possessed by demons, and performs an exorcism, during which Martin is beaten with a whip. Furious at his entire village, including his friend/wife, Martin leaves.
He then goes off to join the army, where he meets and bonds with a young man named Armaud. At some point he tells Armaud all about his past (it's actually told in flashback -- the play starts with the two men serving in the army together). Then he gets shot, and, dying, tells Armaud to go back to his village and tell them what happened to him.
So, at this point in the musical, I have reached the really pretty obvious insight that Martin is as queer as a three-dollar bill. He never consummates the marriage because he is GAY. The priest freaks out and decides he's possessed because he's GAY. All the male bonding stuff is about the fact that he is GAY.
The thing is, in the rest of the play, this is never acknowledged. This theme is never developed. It's there, but it's this elephant in the living room. They don't address it, not even in an oblique, appropriate-to-the-era sort of way (it's not like I expected a rousing chorus of "We Are Family!" for the curtain call, you know, but it seemed so clear to me that this was what the play was about that I wanted SOME kind of acknowledgement of it). Instead, there was lots of stuff about Protestantism that didn't get developed very well, either. And in the end, Armaud dies and Martin (who turned out not to be dead) and his wife (who conceived a baby with Armaud) are apparently going to live happily ever after. Well, except for that minor detail that Martin is STILL GAY.
Here's the thing. I think that the writing team was absolutely aware of this. I mean, how could they NOT be? But they didn't want it to be about Martin being gay. They wanted it to be about something more palatable and commercial and uncontroversial, so they refused to address it. If they pretended it wasn't there, the musical could be about something else. (Like Protestantism!)
Except they were turning away from the heart of the play. Because of their denial, the musical never came together. The reviews were unenthusiastic. The tour was supposed to be the prologue to a Broadway run, but after the run at the Guthrie, it quietly closed.
It's too bad, because there was a really compelling story hiding in there that they could have told.
Sometimes, when I have a story that is just refusing to come together, it's because there's something that I am stubbornly refusing to see. Once I acknowledge whatever it is, suddenly I have a worthwhile story.
I was thinking of this because of a post on
pegkerr's LJ, where she talked about some key point of her ice palaces novel that she has yet to figure out. I suggested that she think about what she DOESN'T want the answer to be, and then try using precisely that answer. Not that I think that Peg is in denial about some facet of the story that will miraculously bring it all together. And I certainly do not think that she is artistically dishonest. But in my comment I also said I'd provide my Martin Guerre rant in my own LJ, rather than going off on that tangent in hers, so voila, here it is. Who knows, maybe it will jar something loose for someone else.
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no subject
Date: 2005-03-04 12:55 pm (UTC)You may be right about the subtext of the story. I guess I didn't see it that way because I was thinking of it as a historical event (which it absolutely was) and at that time, there was just no cultural understanding of what we understand now about "being gay." (I don't want this woman because my sexual identity is gay. or even I'm only into boys.) You may be perfectly right, but the historical Martin didn't frame his thoughts of it that way.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-05 11:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-19 03:05 am (UTC)And yes, definitely gay. The "Live With Somebody You Love" song was pretty unsubtle. I liked the music in this play and was surprised it didn't last longer (although I was pretty young and easily impressed when I saw it, so I can't say much about the script), but your explanation makes a lot of sense.