The Modernity of Absurdity in George Villiers's the Rehearsal

I can hear Ulla (Uma Thurman) in her bodice stretching white satin dress answering the Broadway phones of Bailystock and Bloom stretching out the ooooo of the Bloom in her thick, staged Danish accent. As I read The Rehearsal, Mel Brook's The Producers is playing in the background for what has to be the 100^th time in my house. The down and out Max Bailystock (Nathan Lane) is in a dramatic slump opening a string of shows that close on opening night. Enter one Leo Bloom (Matthew Broderick) an ambitious, yet somewhat, straight-laced accountant with a devious plan to make money on a flop and, hence the making of Springtime for Hitler-an absurdly flamboyant musical about Eva and Adolph's Bavarian romance.

The Producers, like The Rehearsal is an involution, or a play within a play. However, where the director and playwright of Spingtime for Hitler is trying to create a flop, the ambitious Mr. Bayes thinks he is directing and writing a masterpiece. Sadly though, as Mr. Johnson and Mr. Smith watch on in utter confusion, the players of the production act with equal disconnect and disarray.

The modernity of The Rehearsal is striking, however, what is most surprising are the allusions to future drama styles. As I read The Rehearsal, I was astonishingly reminded of the Theatre of the Absurd movement. Villers's The Rehearsal does a few things that makes the drama prescient of the tenets that will meld the constructs of the Theater of the Absurd; the use of involution, the circular direction of the dramatic narrative arc where the play essentially ends where it begins, a lack of plot, a transvaluation of word meanings, and gallows, or black humor.

The use of involution has become anathema to American cinema and drama. Villiers's use of the play-within-a-play is masterful and groundbreaking. Yet, its use to satirize the heroic drama, and here directly launched at Dryden, is hilarious. When he accuses Bayes, Dryden, of stealing, or plagiarizing himself, the play really launches itself into a new realm of funny.

The most revealing aspect of the Theatre of the Absurd tenets is The Rehearsal's use of circular arc. Much like Beckett's Waiting for Godot, the play runs haphazardly, if you will, without a linear direction from point A to point B. Although Bayes's vision of his masterpiece apparently has a cathartic moment, in actuality Johnson, Smith, and the players, at wit ends with the lack of character development and plot, decide dinner is more relevant than the play and cut out to get dinner.

The lack of specific plot is also very reminiscent of much of the Theatre's style. The lack of plot lends to the satirization of the heroic drama. The wide, flamboyant flourishes of the hero's speeches, actions, and conquests are comical and The Rehearsal points this out as its two Kings of Brentwood declare or disavow their respective loves for the ladies of the play and their great undefined and victorious battles. Without character or plot development, Villiers's play runs in a linear arc through the rehearsal of Bayes's master work. Yet at times, as Johnson and Smith point out, the audience, and at times the director/writer himself, are not quite privy to what is going on in the play. The players are at a loss and do not know rather to dance, sing, or act.

Most pointedly, and the closest relative to the Theatre of the Absurd is the plays use of trans or devaluation of a words intended meaning. The death scene of the great closing battle de-synthesizes death and the players stand up and breaks into dance. The break of traditional death meaning is transposed into a devaluation of the words finality of meaning. Death no longer means death. Plus, the use of the epi and prologue that can equally be transferred between the beginning and ending of the play, and for the fact any play, devalues the worth and meaning of the logues (?).

The final most striking and poignantly defining tenet that reminded me of the Theatre of the absurd is use of gallows humor. The death and fighting scenes are absolutely laughable and the King's lack of interest in the young lady is his interest in the monetary value of the whale's blubber versus her interest in him. The irreverence of the characters of the mock play's opinions of love, war and death are dark and funny. The true laughable nature of the satire is very modern.

Springtime for Hitler is now going through it's high legged kicking routine and Will Ferrell, as Hitler, is as riotous as ever. Villiers's work lead to the expert involution that led to such great and laughable Broadway successes. I wonder why his play has not gotten more traction from modern, mainstream audiences.