• "A Memory of Two Mondays" by Eclipse Theatre: Making time for everyday heroes (review published Sept. 8, 2010)
This week, I've been suffering through my usual Labor Day malaise. I hate the sudden end of summer — the arrival of ever-colder weather, the loss of that warm glow of freedom, the coming press of everyday obligations.
Worse yet, it's my birthday week. I'm another year older and not much wiser. Time, it feels, is now flashing by at a speed well outside my control.
I'm familiar with this feeling — I've had it for a good portion of my life — but I don't remember any other Labor Day weekend when I've been able to walk into a theater and see it so exquisitely expressed. It took Arthur Miller, a 45-year-old play and a fearless (and well-timed) production from the Eclipse Theatre.
Sometimes I think my job is bad for the psyche because I'm forced to examine the terrors of life so many times a week. You're probably more able to keep them unexamined. But sometimes there's a positive side — one of the most important benefits of the arts is the reminder you're not alone.
“A Memory of Two Mondays” is set in a Brooklyn auto parts store in the 1930s. But the time and place are secondary issues; the play is about the day-to-day grind and its tax on the soul. Everyone's soul.
“They tell me it's only the more intelligent people goes mad, y'know,” says Kenneth, one of the trapped workers in Miller's play. “But it's sixteen hundred a year, Bert, and I've a feelin' I'd never dare leave it, y'know? And I'm not ready for me last job yet, I think. I don't want nothin' to be the last, yet.”
Show me a working stiff who doesn't understand that little speech and I'll show you a working stiff not worth knowing.
Labor Day or no Labor Day, I don't want nothing to be the last yet. Do you?