Emphysema: A Love Story

David E. Kemp, a former professor of drama at Queen’s University, is
the author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

Janet Munsil’s play takes as its starting point a meeting that took
place in 1978 between the brilliant theatre critic Kenneth Tynan and the
aging silent screen actress, Louise Brooks, who played the sexy,
man-eating, flapper Lulu in G.W. Pabst’s classic 1928 silent film,
Pandora’s Box.

Tynan wrote a profile of Louise Brooks for The New Yorker entitled
“The Girl in the Black Helmet.” It was essentially a journalistic
love letter, which is not surprising given that Tynan had long harbored
erotic images of Lulu that were both eccentric and juvenile. (In
Munsil’s play, a third character, Lulu, is introduced to represent
Tynan’s fantasy.) The play’s central conflict is that Tynan’s
obsession with the stylish and sophisticated Lulu is totally at odds
with the crusty, aged Louise Brooks he meets in 1978.

Overlaying the collision between reality and fantasy is the smoking of
cigarettes, which Tynan and Brooks do continually. The chain-smoking
takes on almost mythic proportions, signaling the self-destructive
tendencies of both characters.

Although uneven in its overall impact, Emphysema: A Love Story contains
moments of clarity that enable us to relate to both the characters and
the situation in which they find themselves.