Accidental Death of an Anarchist
Rating:
I give this play 5 maniac emojis because it was surprisingly entertaining. I will admit to being more than a little reserved when I was handed the book because I honestly thought it was an old enough play that it would be boring and the message outdated. The idea of an anarchist falling out of a 4 story building didn’t exactly have me jumping out of my seat to read it. In addition to this it was a play first performed in 1970 yawn. I will admit to having been very wrong about all of this. About 3 pages in i was already captured by the intriguing character of the maniac. Even his long monologues are entertaining and there never seems to be a lack of action in the play even with the dialogues being extensive. The play is definitely a comedy but it has a strong political message about the justice system, as well as the media. The play displays the corruptness of the police system through the eyes of a crazy person who is incredibly crude in his statements. There is a light air about the play but the messages are definitely heavy and this seeps through in specific moments that I will mention forthcoming. The strongest part of the play was without a doubt the character of the Maniac not only did he mock the system and express messages that way but he also helped pass along messages about the treatments of patients with mental health and also the idea of acting and taking upon somebody else’s life as a costume. The humour in this play is crude and dark but also slips into simple silliness at moments like when it came down to physical violence and little tropes like blowing a raspberry and losing a glass eye etc. Now onto directorial choices i would make when it came to our greatly beloved acronym TEAM which one of these days is really gonna get old but i diverge.
Tension
For me this moment was the easiest to find as it stood out to me from the first read. The moment happens well into Act 1 Scene 2 in which the Maniac uses rather unconventional methods to show the Inspector and the Superintendant the role they played in the Anarchist’s supposed suicide. He begins to use all the same methods of ‘psychological warfare’ they admitted to using on the anarchist. I would establish this moment of tension through the use of lighting and stage positioning. I would have the main action happening center stage at a desk and upstage left I would have the window facing the audience there would be a ledge about knee height and then the window which would be wide open. I would have the lights slowly dim during the conversation as the Maniac convinces the Superintendant and Inspector that there is no way they can win this case. I would have glum music playing in the background as this happened. Then I would have the Maniac take both of them over to the window. When their raised onto the window ledge the rest of the stage would go completely dark with stage left being the only thing left lit. The audience would be seeing them as if from outside the window. After the maniac’s last line ‘the raptus will let us go’ all music will stop there will be a moment of complete silence where the Superintendant and Inspector look like they are about to give in and jump. After a pause the Constable will walk in and deliver his lines all lights would once again snap on and the scene would continue.
Emotion
For Emotion the choice was quite obvious to me as well. It consists of the transition between Act 1 and Act 2. In this moment the Maniac is working on reconstructing the story of the night they questioned the anarchist. I would have this scene take place both as a memory and the present. In order to do this I would make it almost as if the Superintendant and Inspector were in a play and the Maniac was the director. They would be standing stage right speaking with an unseen anarchist who they interact with as if he was actually there even going as far as patting the cheek of an imaginary anarchist and put an arm over his imaginary form later when they all break into song. Stage right is lit strongly while the lights are dimmed over the maniac who sits calmly at the desk center stage. As he speaks the scene takes place stage right stopping only when one of the ‘actors’ has a disagreement about what happened in this case they step out of the ‘stage’ which is actually simply an area of the actual stage and the light on the rest of the room returns as the ‘actor’ argues with the maniac on what happened. As the maniac convinces them otherwise the ‘actor’ returns to the scene and it happens as the Maniac makes them recall. When the Maniac mentions singing a song the light music of a protest march begins softly and it rises in volume as they continue to discuss. The Maniac is the first to begin to sing as he steps next to the Superintendant and Inspector in the ‘stage’ that is lit stage right. As the Superintendant and Inspector join in the Maniac places their arms hugging over the shoulders of an imaginary anarchist between them almost like a puppeteer. The Voices of all three men amplify as they sing more animately and the Maniac joins the row of hugging men. The lights dim and they continue to sing. They are still singing as the light comes up on Act 2.
Atmosphere
The moment I chose for Atmosphere I chose because it involved a change of scenery without actually changing locations at all. It is the moment in which the Maniac begins to pretend that they are all in a game show. I would at this moment bring the action upstage completely. A game show board would be rolled in sporting a phone number. The Maniac would be seen to change his demeanour completely a backstage person would arrive and take his coat and another would help him into a nice suit as a third hands him a microphone. The voice of the Maniac is now amplified reverberating through the theatre. Meanwhile the other characters who have been handcuffed to a bar in the back would be rolled forward bar and all where other members of the backstage crew have brought out four podiums with scores written on the front. The lighting beams on the rest of the stage leaving only the game show decorum. At the end of this when everything goes dark all signs of the game show get rolled out and as the lights come back up the other characters are once again chained to the back wall.
Meaning
For meaning I chose the moment in which the actors break the fourth wall by referring to the audience. In this moment the Superintendant assures that he has informants even in the audience here. With the claps lights would go on in the audience where people would stand up and exclaim Yessir etc, the Maniac would then deliver his next line towards the audience as well about how those are just actors and the real informants are trained to stay seated and silent. The lights would go off in the audience again as the Maniac mentions how the informants carry out atrocities to give excuses for police crackdown. Involving the audience in a moment like this really brings them into the plot and it emphasises the idea that the police is everywhere and they cause more harm than good. By breaking the fourth wall the message stops being hypothetical and is instead a direct warning to the audience. If i could choose an ideal audience for this play now days I would perform it in the US or maybe simply make it set in the US and address the problems of police brutality simply by making the anarchist a young black man.
