Theatre Review: Vanity Fair, Pearl Theater Company, New York City

How do you take an eight hundred page 1840s novel and make it digestible in two and a half hours for the modern stage? According to playwright Kate Hamill and director Eric Tucker, through multi-roling, pointed exposition and random inclusions of dances like the Macarena and Michael Jackson’s Thriller. The result is, ironically, the theatrical equivalent of a novel that needs a good edit, skipping from entertaining to irritating to downright perplexing in the course of a scene.

What the production gets right

Scene Selection:
Hamill shows an adept adaptor’s eye in her choice of scenes from Thackeray’s original. Those who had not read the novel were never in danger of losing the train of a complex plot and the emotional pacing allowed for more character development than you might have expected, given the role hopping of most of the cast. The moment Emmy (Joey Parsons) and Rawdon (Tom O’Keefe) share, discussing how much they miss their children, is a great example of the lightness of the script’s touch here, boiling down Thackeray’s lengthy prose into tight and relatable dialogue.

Becky Sharp:
Hamill herself takes on the role of the infamous Becky Sharp and outshines the rest of the cast, contorting her expressions to resemble those of Thackeray's illustrations and bringing out the character’s humanity as well as her manipulative nature.

Staging:
The cast-operated curtains and wheeling furniture makes for rapid scene transitions and is ideal for a play that covers multiple locations and years. The staging evokes the swirl and momentum of the fair – the literal fair Becky and co. attend early in the novel and the fair of society, everyone wanting something, everyone selling something, all clamouring to be heard.

What was less successful

Crossdressing:
The play’s actors took on many roles, playing not only cross-gender, but once cross-species with Parsons taking a brief turn as the Pitts’ cat. This worked for the most part but took a turn for the pantomimic in the male actors’ depiction of women. In this modern retelling with a clear feminist agenda, men playing women for cheap laughs felt out of place and awkward. Debargo Sanyal as Briggs, Brad Heberlee as Miss Jemima and Ryan Quinn as Miss Pinkerton were the main culprits. I couldn’t help but wish the cast had just played their roles with total commitment and realism.

Dancing:
The crossdressing fit a wider pattern of the cast being too reliant on, and almost desperate for, audience validation and laughter. At several junctures, as mentioned above, they broke out their twentieth and twenty first century dance moves, which added little to the production beyond a confused tittering from the crowd. It looked more fun for them than it was for us and bewildered the audience, rather than making Vanity Fair more accessible. Somebody should have told them to cut it out in rehearsal.

The ‘Moral’:
Thackeray’s Vanity Fair has no hero and no moral, facts which this product was keen to remind us of. But Hamill does introduce a moral of her own – that we should not be too quick to judge those who have gone before us, as one day others will look back and judge us. The idea is good, the delivery heavy handed and the point belaboured. It made me wish, as with many parts of the show, that the production team and cast would only trust us — trust the audience to ‘get’ it, to find humour without slapstick, to remain engaged without being spoonfed.

Do you know of any other NYC plays you think the Secret Victorianist should review next? Let me know – here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

Quiz: Match the subtitle to the Victorian novel

You know the title. But do you know the subtitle?

A Master Class in Unsatisfactory Endings from William Makepeace Thackeray

Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?—come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.

So ends Thackeray’s 1847-8 Vanity Fair, a novel that defies our desire for happy endings and near resolutions. When we think about novels we may divide them into two categories, those with tear-jerking endings and those with endings that satisfy in their neatness in a way that is rarely replicable in real life. Or we may reject unhappy endings entirely and agree with Oscar Wilde’s joke: ‘The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.’

The final illustration in Vanity Fair

Yet, after nearly 900 pages, Thackeray’s ending doesn’t subscribe to either of these models. As in many Victorian novels, we are presented with a picture of domestic serenity after preceding drama—the Dobbins and Crawleys live side by side with hope of further marriage ties between the younger generations. But the complete happiness we have longed for with readerly naivety is not forthcoming. Rebecca will not be punished, Amelia will remain insipid, even when freed from the tyranny of her dead husband’s memory, and the fair will play on, with its falsehoods and frivolities, even if we abandon the particular characters we have toyed with.

Nowhere is this dissatisfaction more obvious than when in comes to Dobbin. Vanity Fair is ‘a novel without a hero’ but the Major has all the qualities we might associate with such a character. He is a military man of outstanding morals, a loyal lover and a just friend. He protects Amelia for years without hope of her reciprocating his feelings and the culmination of their relationship in a marriage (and child) is the ending we are encouraged to look forward to.

The ending is there, the marriage comes to pass and the child is forthcoming so why isn’t this resolution as happy as we had hoped? Dobbin’s kindness, constancy and frequent romantic gestures do not win his bride. Instead he can only woo Amelia when he recognises the folly of wanting her at all:

“Have I not learned in that time to read all your feelings and look into your thoughts? I know what your heart is capable of: it can cling faithfully to a recollection and cherish a fancy, but it can't feel such an attachment as mine deserves to mate with, and such as I would have won from a woman more generous than you. No, you are not worthy of the love which I have devoted to you. I knew all along that the prize I had set my life on was not worth the winning; that I was a fool, with fond fancies, too, bartering away my all of truth and ardour against your little feeble remnant of love.”

Our desire for a happy ending is shown to be as delusional as Dobbin’s unrequited love. Instead of the passionate climax we have hoped for we are given a marriage based on the submission of one party and the tolerance of the other. Dobbin loves the child (little Janey) now more than anyone (presumably Amelia included) and, even then, she is only slightly more important to him than a history book.

Ending such a sweeping novel is hard, and, with masterful skill, Thackeray chooses to draw attention to the device’s artificiality while wrapping up all loose ends. If you’re writing an ending it might be worth thinking outside the binary of happy/sad and interrogating the possibilities of the unsatisfactory ending. After all, it’s always good to leave your readers wanting more…

What would you like to see the Secret Victorianist read next? Let me know—here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

Quiz: Victorians on Women

Can you match the quote about women to the Victorian novel? Let me know how you do by tweeting @SVictorianist!

Writing Drunkenness: A Master Class from William Makepeace Thackeray

Performing drunkenness is difficult. Ask most people to pretend to be intoxicated and they will stumble around, lurching far more dramatically than they ever have when actually drinking.

Writing drunkenness is similarly challenging. Readers must be aware that a character is inebriated, without the scene appearing unnecessarily exaggerated. If your POV character is drunk, you face even more problems. You can’t rely on wobbly camerawork as you might in a film but the narrative must still be filtered through a warped perspective.

In today’s blog post I’m going to examine three techniques Thackeray employs in Chapter VI of Vanity Fair (1847-8) to tell the story of Jos Sedley being a little the worse for wear at Vauxhall. Thackeray’s omniscient narration makes writing such a passage simpler than it might be to execute in a close third person, but writers in all POVs could employ these same techniques.

'Mr Joseph in a state of excitement'; illustration to Chapter VI of Vanity Fair

1. Name your Poison 

First up, remember that readers of novels are primed to read for ‘clues’ to future plot developments.

If heterosexual couples have sex, readers look for potential pregnancies. If a gun is mentioned, readers anticipate that it might go off. In the same way, any mention of alcohol will make readers more observant of any symptoms of intoxication.

That’s why Thackeray is specific about what Jos orders for the party at Vauxhall:

‘He made the salad; and uncorked the Champagne; and carved the chickens; and ate and drank the greater part of the refreshments on the tables. Finally, he insisted upon having a bowl of rack punch; everybody had rack punch at Vauxhall. "Waiter, rack punch."’


2. Concentrate on the Reactions of Others

Next, rather than describing the behaviour of the drunk person himself/herself, experiment with outlining the reactions of those surrounding him/her.

Drunk people are prone to creating something of a spectacle and often remain ignorant of how they are upsetting their companions. This is the sensation Jos causes at Vauxhall to the consternation of Osborne, Becky and Amelia:

‘[Jos] talked and laughed so loud as to bring scores of listeners round the box, much to the confusion of the innocent party within it…volunteering to sing a song (which he did in that maudlin high key peculiar to gentlemen in an inebriated state), he almost drew away the audience who were gathered round the musicians in the gilt scollop-shell, and received from his hearers a great deal of applause. "Brayvo, Fat un!" said one; "Angcore, Daniel Lambert!" said another; "What a figure for the tight-rope!" exclaimed another wag, to the inexpressible alarm of the ladies, and the great anger of Mr. Osborne.’


3. Show Progression

Finally, when you do come to describe the drunken character make sure there is some progression in his or her behaviour.

Drunk people are inconsistent. They can veer from exuberantly happy to miserable in a matter of moments. Make your character more volatile and emotionally susceptible than he/she would be usually.

Jos becomes a more aggressive lover when under the influence:

‘"Stop, my dearest diddle-diddle-darling," shouted Jos, now as bold as a lion, and clasping Miss Rebecca round the waist.’

His early exuberance is soon replaced by tears of sentimentality and regret:

‘Seizing Captain Dobbin's hand, and weeping in the most pitiful way, he confided to that gentleman the secret of his loves. He adored that girl who had just gone out; he had broken her heart, he knew he had, by his conduct; he would marry her next morning at St. George's, Hanover Square.'

And we learn the next day that at the end of the night he becomes violent, and finally helpless:

‘"He wanted to fight the 'ackney-coachman, sir. The Capting was obliged to bring him upstairs in his harms like a babby."’

Think about the stages of drunkenness, what they’ll reveal about your characters and how they might advance your plot.


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Introducing your Main Character: A Master Class from William Makepeace Thackeray

The modern novel most often leaves you in little doubt as to who the protagonist is by plunging you into his or her perspective in the very first line and/or naming him/her in the opening sentence. The cry of agents and publishers everywhere is that the character, and the stakes for the character, must be firmly established in the opening paragraphs—that the story should start in the ‘right’ place.

But, whisper it, there is another way to provoke interest in your character—delay. This approach isn’t suited to close third narration but works well for an omniscient viewpoint and is exemplified in the opening pages of William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1847-8).

Becky Sharp leaving Chiswick illustration

Thackeray’s panoramic masterpiece opens in Miss Pinkerton’s academy for young ladies:

While the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour. A black servant, who reposed on the box beside the fat coachman, uncurled his bandy legs as soon as the equipage drew up opposite Miss Pinkerton's shining brass plate, and as he pulled the bell at least a score of young heads were seen peering out of the narrow windows of the stately old brick house. Nay, the acute observer might have recognized the little red nose of good-natured Miss Jemima Pinkerton herself, rising over some geranium pots in the window of that lady's own drawing-room. 

In these few lines we are introduced to an array of characters, giving us a good indication of the large cast to come. There’s a fat coachman, the black servant, a score of young ladies and two named characters, the Miss Pinkertons. But none of these people are our main characters. In fact, Thackeray tells us, a few paragraphs later:

Honest Jemima had all the bills, and the washing, and the mending, and the puddings, and the plate and crockery, and the servants to superintend. But why speak about her? It is probable that we shall not hear of her again from this moment to the end of time, and that when the great filigree iron gates are once closed on her, she and her awful sister will never issue therefrom into this little world of history.

William Makepeace Thackeray

A natural assumption might be that the soon-to-be-occupant of the large family coach will be our heroine, and, sure enough, she is soon introduced—Amelia Sedley. But again our expectations are confounded. After a letter detailing Miss Sedley’s numerous accomplishments (music, dancing, orthography, embroidery, needlework, religion, morality, deportment, although she is sadly deficient in geography), Miss Pinkerton adds a brusque postscript:

P.S.—Miss Sharp accompanies Miss Sedley. It is particularly requested that Miss Sharp's stay in Russell Square may not exceed ten days. The family of distinction with whom she is engaged, desire to avail themselves of her services as soon as possible.

The contrast between Miss Pinkerton’s glowing description of Miss Sedley and lack of detail about Miss Sharp interests the reader. We find ourselves wondering ‘what’s wrong with her?’, increasing the emotional stakes for us even without instant identification with the primary character.

This interest grows a few lines later, when we learn Miss Sharp’s full name and see Miss Pinkerton’s reluctance to give her a dictionary.

Being commanded by her elder sister to get "the Dictionary" from the cupboard, Miss Jemima had extracted two copies of the book from the receptacle in question. When Miss Pinkerton had finished the inscription in the first, Jemima, with rather a dubious and timid air, handed her the second.

"For whom is this, Miss Jemima?" said Miss Pinkerton, with awful coldness.

"For Becky Sharp," answered Jemima, trembling very much, and blushing over her withered face and neck, as she turned her back on her sister. "For Becky Sharp: she's going too."

"MISS JEMIMA!" exclaimed Miss Pinkerton, in the largest capitals. "Are you in your senses? Replace the Dixonary in the closet, and never venture to take such a liberty in future."

"Well, sister, it's only two-and-ninepence, and poor Becky will be miserable if she don't get one."

Becky Sharp then is a character who exacts strong responses from other characters, and one who other characters can misjudge. For Becky doesn’t care in the least if she receives a dictionary or not, as we learn when she hurls it out of the carriage window. A reader certainly doesn’t know her, or understand her motivations at this juncture, but is nevertheless invested in her and her story.

The next time you’re playing with an opening, or introducing an important character, consider: How can delay and enigma help me build a character? Can I avoid giving everything away instantly, while still remaining true to my narration? Instead of having them dive at once into the water, see if you can lead your readers out to sea.

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