Ashley on Sedaris' plays

To: whseminar@dept.english.upenn.edu
From: Ashley Hellinger 
Subject: Special Report- Sedaris's Plays

	To date, David Sedaris has written seven plays, six in conjuction with his
sister, Amy.  With the acclaim that his stories, essays, and readings have
received, it has been difficult to find a wealth of research about these
works.  With the exception of "Stump the Host," Sedaris's earliest play,
all of his plays have been co-written by Amy.  These include: "Stitches"
(1994), "One Woman Shoe" (1995), "Santaland" (1996), "Incident at Cobblers
Knob" (1997), and "The Little Frieda Mysteries" (1997).  I am waiting for
some information on their most recent play that was due to open in January,
but I wanted to get this out as soon as possible.  I will send the
information on this new work as soon as I can, or I will bring it to class
on Monday. 
	
	David and Amy Sedaris write under the name, "The Talent Family," and their
first play together was reviewed in the "New York Times" on January 11,
1994.  The "Times" claimed the play was "corrosively funny."  It was the
story of a pretty, popular high-school girl who becomes a television star
after her face is mutilated by the propeller of a power boat (how
touching!).  It was said to have portrayed an America in which life is a
series of media-conditioned reflexes.  Although the reviewer did not seem
to be particularly fond of the play, he admits that David and Amy are
gifted satirists.  In typical Sedaris fashion, people throughout the
country, from blue-collar workers to fashion models, are seen sporting
slashed faces in emulation of their new idol.  The commentary in the review
was pointed.  Ben Brantley sharply criticized the play and then praised the
siblings as is evidenced by the following excerpt:  "Ultimately, even at an
hour at 20 minutes, "Stitches" sags, like a blackout sketch waiting for an
overdue blackout.  By the play's last third, its comic energy has diffused
into excessive repetition (one could particularly do without quite so many
rectal jokes), and its film noir conclusion feels sdaly deflated.
Nonetheless, it's impossible to dismiss a comedy that bends all forms of
cultural cliches with such demented verve."

	Just over a year later, Brantley concluded that the pairing has a unique
gift for "melding the stuff of   
contemporary headlines into loopy pastiches of America's most beloved forms
of entertainment."  Their next play, "One Woman Shoe," tells what happend
when four welfare recipients learn that, under a new government program,
they are going to have to start earning their money.  While the "women of
color" have been assigned to groom border collies, the play's central
characters, white women who live in a shoe-shaped subsidized housing
project, must learn to perform one-woman shows.  Brantley claims that the
play "doesn't achieve the depraved heights of "Stitches"... but it's a
tighter and more consistently funny play that, unlike its predecessor,
doesn't seem to labor for shock effects."  

	Next up for the pair was an adaptation of "Santaland Diaries" in the form
of an hourlong monologue.  The review's words were harsh, as it claimed,
"The words are more or less the same; they remain choice words and they are
delivered well.  But the show somehow bears the same relation to its source
that freeze-dried coffee does to fresh ground."  It seems as though many
thought a reading by Sedaris was more effective.  

	Not much has been written about "Incident at Cobblers Knob," but their
other 1997 play received a lot of press.  Amy appeared in "The Little
Freida Mysteries" as Aunt Freida, a small-town miser obsessed with
doll-house furniture.  For this character, she wore a heavily padded
costume.  She also appeared as a foul-mouthed neighbor distorting her face
with a device that pulls her nose up in a piggish manner.  The narrator of
the play, Little Freida, has had her dreams of success as a hand model
dashed by an ill-advised joust with some balancing beams.  With both arms
in casts, she's dependent on her bizarre aunt for any number of basic
necessities.  

	The value in examining these plays is not so much in looking at how their
were received by the critics, though I found some of the comments to be
humorous, but, simply in the plots of the plays.  After reading "Barrel
Fever" and "Naked," these plots fall right in line with Sedaris's humor.
This research has been a difficult undertaking and many of the reviews that
I have found are from the same source, so I will continue to look for other
perspectives before class.  I will also have a full report about their most
recent collaborative effort.