A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes by Kate Benson is an amusing, somewhat avant-garde retelling of a well-known story. The plot is familiar: an American family’s Thanksgiving reunion that disintegrates into chaos. As the variety of neurotic personalities move across the stage in close proximity, tensions begin to boil over. What makes Benson’s version of this story unique is her innovation in telling the story primarily through narration devices. The overall stage production was Spartan: props were absent, the dialogue was sparse and indirect, and, most notably, the story unfolded through the chattering of two sportscaster-type narrators located in a box above the stage. Furthermore, by the play’s end, the writing took a turn toward heavy-handed metaphor, becoming more of a dreary monologue than a unique exploration of the different ways in which scenes can unfold. Thus, while Benson’s play was amusing, it was ultimately disappointing.
The innovative storytelling device made this cliché story seem more avant-garde. The narrators, described each event in play-by-play detail, and while this form of narration is amusing and innovative, the play relied too much on this gimmick, diminishing the quality of the story itself. By using narrators who describe the actions of the characters in an arena devoid of props, Benson created reliance upon these narrator figures for the audience’s information. For example, when the characters become involved in setting the table for the meal, there is no table to be seen, or tablecloth, or china. The characters pantomime the usage of these items and it is through the words of the narrators that the viewers become aware that this is a meal.
Such reliance continued when it came to the designation of the actors’ roles. In one particular instance, there are two actors who play interchangeable minor roles. They do not change costume, but occasionally change mannerism, and we are informed of which character they are portraying by the narrators’ identification of them. This may be Benson’s way of pointing out that once an audience member assumes he/she is in a fictional realm where characters assume fictional identities and use fictional props, who is to say where the different lines of realism should be crossed? Once Jane Doe is playing any part at all, why should it matter that the color of her hair or her skin or her appearance or voice is different than that of her character? We are already suspending disbelief.
Because the events of the play are dependent on narration, there is an emphasis on language. The narrators commented on each other’s word choice, even occasionally correcting a syntactical mistake. The narrators would sometimes say the same thing twice, switching from active to passive voice (“she changed her plans; her plans changed”). The emphasis on syntax and language is literary, and allows a play with little physical distraction to appeal to an audience. The audience can suspend disbelief not because the actions of the characters are clear, but because the commentary on their actions is so vivid. This works as long as the story is believable and the tellers entertaining, but the audience is only willing to suspend disbelief when there is a competent narrator. In this case, the story relied so heavily on its narrators that as the play reached conclusion, the story-telling method crumbled and when the story tried to stand on its own weight, it could not.
At the play’s conclusion the family sits to have their Thanksgiving meal, all chaos of preparation subdued. The narrators then begin to describe the entrance of the great-grandbabies who had, until this point, been sleeping in the guest room. There are no actor props for these babies, and as though anticipating the ridiculousness of the story, the narrators give up, abandoning their vestibule. Instead of finishing their narration, they seem to look at the script and say, “We’re not doing this,” and leave. Left without narrators, the family of characters retreats behind a window. One of the main characters, Gumbo, then begins to narrate a gorily detailed description of babies cannibalizing their elders as the lights dim, and a red light is cast on the stage. As this is said in the serious drone of a monologue, it becomes obvious that the play has become a metaphor for generational ingratitude. But the metaphor, in its obviousness, loses all power. With the chess pieces behind a wall and the commentary gone, we are no longer able to suspend our doubt and believe in our characters. The play is no longer a story of family’s Thanksgiving, but a clear and overdrawn metaphor that is too obvious and too cliché.
Clearly, this play depends wholly on the power of its narrators, and in their absence, cannot stand on its own. It only worked when the narration was compelling, when the characters seemed to act out the commentary in a blissful, neurotic dance. Once the sportscasters leave and are replaced by Gumbo, the storytelling is no longer accompanied by motion and the play loses its luster.
Perhaps that is the true wit behind Benson’s play. It seems strange, after all, that she would unknowingly change the tone of her play so suddenly and obviously without intending to use the shift in storytelling to make a point. Furthermore, the fact that the story is such a told and retold classic—that of the overbearing family and the insufficiencies of its members that are highlighted as they converge for a holiday—one might wonder whether the point of the play is not to relay a metaphor to an audience, but to test how far a storyteller can go in handing over metaphors to the audience, before the audience revolts.
More importantly, Benson might be testing the limits of storytelling—how far can she stretch the imagination without compelling support behind it?
At what point will the audience simply reject what it is being told?