Writer: Charles Bukowski
Director and Adaptor: Anya Viller
Time Magazine once called Charles Bukowski the ‘laureate of American lowlife’ who wrote ‘paeans to booze and broads.’ These celebrations of drunken masculinity are perhaps why the Los Angeles chronicler is so overlooked in the present day. But ART Theatre’s adaption of a handful of Bukowski’s short stories suggests that it’s time we re-evaluated his work.
Five actors perform six mini-plays in 90 minutes, and yet a sense of loneliness ensures that the stories mesh into one whole. The first play is perhaps the bleakest wherein a woman sees a sign stuck to a car on her way home. The sign is like a Lonely Hearts ad in that it proclaims ‘Woman Wanted’. The list of requirements, one being that she should be fat, matches Edna’s description. When she gets home, she calls the number, and very soon she is at his house, drinking the alcohol he offers. When she tries to leave, he attempts to kiss her. Nowadays this action would be seen as an assault. Maddie Goldberg’s Edna is obviously lonely, but still so optimistic that she wonders if she should return to him, holding the telephone undecidedly to her chest when she gets home. Bukowski’s stories are full of men who exert power over women.
In another story, two drunks shoot the breeze. Constance sees George as a friend while George only sees her legs. Constance is forced to flirt to keep him at bay but this only riles him further. He makes it clear that the microcosm they live in – trailer parks and bars – is a man’s world. She tries to get by the best she can. Eileen Duffy is a tremendously flighty Constance and her growing fear of what George could do, is ominously played. James Viller oozes menace as George, looking lazily into the distance as he gets drunker.
Viller also plays Robert in ‘Love for $17.50’ about a man who falls in love with a mannequin that he buys from a store. He names her Stella (a suitably passive Victoria Valcheva) and, when he’s not having sex with her, keeps her in a wardrobe. In the original story, Robert slaps and assaults the mannequin, but in Anya Viller’s adaptation this violence is omitted, making Robert’s fetish seem more quirky than dangerous. And while this omission conceals Robert’s toxic masculinity, Anya Viller discovers a queer reading in the story that is illuminating.
Other tales are less misogynistic. Andy Buzzeo plays Larry, a classical music aficionado who, through poverty is forced to sell his records. Buzzeo is also the family man who goes out every night to work although he never tells his tomboy daughter that his job is to hold up bars with a pistol. Only the last story, taken from Bukowski’s autobiographical novel Post Office details a period of happiness, but even this ends with a woman regretting her actions. Her writer husband can use the experience for copy.
With a few props, the actors brilliantly conjure up this underworld of waifs and strays who struggle to survive. The only problem is that sometimes the music is too loud and the actors have to shout above it in order to be heard. Fortunately, however, this doesn’t distract from the inventive storytelling and the fact, that despite the subject matter, Bukowski’s tales are perfectly crafted.
Reviewed on 23 December 2023
