Roethke Goes Down Writing: First Class @ ACT
If you want to know what goes on in a particularly good creative writing workshop, the first half of First Class at ACT handily answers that question. As the brilliant bipolar poet Theodore Roethke, John Aylward delivers a blizzard of insights into the writing process, growling, stalking back and forth, and sounding like Team Poetry is down just by 10 at the half and ready to make a comeback. Poet/playwright (and former Roethke student) David Wagoner calls Roethke the most charismatic man he's ever known, saying, "...if I've been able to recapture some of that charisma here, I'll be satisfied." He has, but we're not.
We came to see a play, and First Class isn't one. It's got two really fine scenes -- Roethke exhorting his student troops in a "you-are-there" seminar (the audience sitting in for the students in a lecture hall), then shifting into a dumpy, foul-mouthed ("Hey, Angel Tits!") satyr at a faculty cocktail party -- but when Wagoner tries to catch Roethke in a manic phase, raging and gibbering alone in his office, dramatic tension exits the theatre and never comes back. We see Roethke feeling grandiose, placing phone call after phone call, trying to reach the governor, sending his books to the Supreme Court -- and then it really gets crazy.
The idea is to see what was going on in Roethke's office, finally, what all the shouting and thumping was about. It's just a bad choice. We're not in Roethke's head, hearing what he's hearing, seeing what he's seeing (except for some unscary, unremarkable light and sound effects) -- and we're not reacting to his freak-out via another actor's reaction. It's just Aylward flailing around, arguing with God the Father or Father the God, shadow-boxing, falling to the floor. Then that's over and he's back in class, doing a bang-up job. Goodbye, Mr. SuperChips.
We kept thinking how much more chilling it would have been to have felt like we were listening through a door, not knowing what was going on. As it is, it's neither a persuasive manic episode nor a dramatic way of touching on Roethke's family history, and it robs the play of its momentum. Which is a drag, because Aylward's bearish roars and frogish peering about capture that charisma and vitality -- his Roethke's not glib or handsome or all that likeable. No "Oh Captain, My Captain" gushing here. But he cares deeply about teaching, even if it steals time from his poetry. It helps that Wagoner has salted that first act with plenty of genuine Roethke: his emphasis on the link between the sound of words and what they mean to us, his fondness for strong rhymes and rhythms, his focus on the specific near-at-hand, his belief that poetry is fed by a primal sincerity. You can learn a lot about poetry in just that one act. But as for the genius-and-madness stuff, as for the passionate martyr, give us a fucking break. He was bipolar. It's a shitty experience to be manic, and the opposite of meaningful. The great thing about Roethke is it didn't shut him up before he'd had his say.
First Class runs at ACT through August 26. Tickets are $10 (25 and under) to $54.
