Homework & Curtains

Ian C. Nelson is Assistant Director of Libraries, University of
Saskatchewan; and Director, Saskatoon Gateway Plays, Regina Summer
Stage, and La Troupe du Jour.

These two interconnected plays, with common characters appearing in or
alluded to in each, may also be produced as single one-act plays; they
gain a lot, however, in juxtaposition.

Homework for Men is a kind of cross-generational play—like
Tremblay’s Albertine in Five Times—in which a person may be talking
to himself at a different age. The script is a little confusing to read,
but the confusion disappears in reading it aloud and in the actual
playing. Since the play is about men, it is perhaps not surprising that
themes of father-son conflict and generational attitude changes are to
the fore. Likewise one is not surprised to find an exploration of myths
of teenage sexuality. While never obscene, Lazarus does not mince words.
An important passage about the meaning of “no” and “maybe” in
the arena of human sexual relations is somewhat problematic, but at
least raises the issue for discussion. Homework is a more overtly
philosophical text, with less action than, say, Lazarus’s famous Babel
Rap.

By itself, Curtains for a Crazy Old Lady might be taken as another
at-the-bedside-of-the-dying play. Lazarus uses as musical counterpoint a
Mozart theme and variations as Murray Greenspan revisits his Jewish
roots while attending his mother, who is dying of cancer in a hospital
ward. There are a lot of trenchant insights into surface and subsurface
denial in the face of the inevitable, but the play is in no way morbid.
The “crazy old lady” of the title illustrates, for the most part, a
remarkable strength and sense of humor that reveal her son to be
pathetically stuck in a mode of taking himself and life too seriously.

But the lady is fragile too: “she’s dying but she’s doing
fine.” The reality of old resentments rising to the surface, no matter
how nice one tries to be, is the centre of this play, which illustrates
the process of adjusting perspectives in the face of hard experience.
With bedpans, labor relived, and massages all part of this hospital
context, Lazarus is not shy of physical realities. He unerringly finds
the right theatrical representation for the stage.

These two plays make literate statements with sure dramatic sense. They
nourish the audience with food for lots of post-theatre conversation; it
is a pity they are not taken as models for the Plays For Living
movement.