Criticism Masks Lack of Insight

In her review of John Steppling’s “Sea of Cortez” (“ ‘Cortez’ Explores Familiar Territory,” Calendar, May 1), Sylvie Drake says that it “is, yes, another play in Steppling’s lexicon, but not different enough from its predecessors to be called new in any but the most superficial sense.” Many find that assessment superficial.

It is a familiar and common tactic for reviewers--who have neither the heart nor the mind, not to mention the courage--to confront a daring and difficult play on its own terms, to evoke blurred memories of the artist’s past work and, in this dubious process, to cast the artist’s major virtues in a pejorative mold.

Tennessee Williams, for one, was plagued throughout his career by this kind of negative criticism: He was constantly accused of writing the same play over and over again (“Summer and Smoke” and “Orpheus Descending,” among others, originally received just such notices) and yet, if he changed tone, style or locale (“Camino Real” being the most famous example), he was told to return to subjects he was familiar with. It is essential to remind the reader that this Catch-22 was created not by Williams but by his critics, and that the plays have survived their detractors.

Artists are, by nature, obsessive. They are forever defining and refining the themes that preoccupy them and the passions that inform these themes. John Steppling has written 18 plays in a dozen years and, in each play, he has been attempting to locate the moral landscape of the cities of his private plain, cities very much in the American grain, although not necessarily the cities of other people’s plays.

Each of these plays has been very different--even if subtly so--and the inhabitants of one play are connected to the inhabitants of another play by virtue of the fact that their souls are in a state of erosion, that they are all struggling to make sense of the chaos that engulfs them.

The only thing that remains constant in all of these plays is the bleakness of Steppling’s vision. Steppling does not provide us, as most of his contemporaries do, with sophisticated people in drawing rooms celebrating life in the midst of adversity. He offers no pious bromides to satisfy the well-intentioned liberalism of his reviewers. He does not bow to their agendas of bourgeois sentimentality.

What he does do is internalize the pain of an experience, then tell us we go on living in spite of the pain. The nature of tragedy, as Steppling understands it, is in direct opposition to the American dream, as his critics want to see it.

Even Drake acknowledges the power of Steppling’s vision while remaining resistant to supporting it. But to ask Steppling not to be “terminally despairing” is like asking Beckett or Pinter to cheer up, like demanding Francis Bacon find prettier colors to depict hell.

Drake talks about the play being “virtually humorless,” but, ironically, there is much wicked comedy in the play, and many members of the audience, more keenly attuned to the absurd underpinnings of the work, laughed steadily and heartily, which Drake apparently did not hear.

Fine theater artists are drawn to Steppling’s universe, but the beauty of Kevin Adams’ lighting design and the haunting quality of O-Lan Jones’ musical score go unmentioned in Drake’s review. Director David Schweizer is recognized as a collaborator rather than as an artist who has taken the static movie of Steppling’s mind and transformed it into something approximating cinematic fluidity.

Additionally, Drake makes a serious error in comparing the dog breeder in “Standard of the Breed” to Dr. Cousa in “Sea of Cortez.” The dog breeder, for whom Steppling has great compassion, is one of his more taciturn creations, a man whose greatest triumph is dancing a few steps when nobody else is around. Cousa, a subject of Steppling’s derision, is a desperately self-involved man who cannot dance at all and always needs an audience.

And, finally, the theater is the last outpost for those of us still interested in language. Steppling is not merely a wonderful poet. He finds wrenching insights everywhere. But, in a culture more concerned with effect than cause, why should it come as a surprise to find his reviewers are more interested in the destination than in the journey?

I do not wish to make John Steppling either a martyr or a pariah, but one can’t help but wonder when our prophets will be able to walk with honor in their own country.