October 2018 - Ryan Collett

I finished reading Stoner by John Williams the other day. It’s been having a prolonged renaissance in publishing lately—it’s been reissued several times since its was first published in 1965, it’s been called a “perfect novel” by the New York Times, its author was made the subject of a book literally called The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel, it’s been blurbed by Tom Hanks for some reason. All of these things both attract and repel me, of course, because how could you not read a “perfect novel”? And a blurb from Tom Hanks is basically a blurb from the Goodyear blimp.

And it’s not a Goodyear blimp novel, I’m happy to report—whatever that would mean. It’s not in over its head, it’s not syrupy, it’s not inflated. It’s a strange little book that’s not really sitting with me the way I want it to sit with me and I can’t quite make my mind up about it.

On one hand, it’s a classic campus novel that illustrates a slice of post-war American life in the sort of quiet, effortless style of William Maxwell (one of my all time favorite writers). But then on the other hand, it’s a classic campus novel in the worst sense—it trips on its own sense of entitlement, narrow worldview, treatment of women, etc. It’s both a very modern, but also very 60s novel, cancelling itself out, making me just want to read William Maxwell instead. Still, it’s a moving book.

Stoner is about the life of the fictional William Stoner, a mediocre professor at the University of Missouri and that’s about it. His entire life spans the course of the novel and therein lies one of its biggest foibles. Near the end of the book and of his life I stopped recognizing the Stoner from earlier chapters, and I would be fine with that if Williams had somehow made note of that in the text, but he doesn’t. Stoner simply evolves—from quiet farmboy to quiet student to quiet teacher—without much introspection, and every time he’s given the chance to really come alive on the page, he comes off feeling like a completely different person from the last iteration.

The thing that makes this book stand out the most is its examination of a life in education. I’ve never read a book that so perfectly captures the feeling of the joy of learning—and a special kind of learning at that, not for the purposes of creating something, not for gain, but simply for the sake of learning. The first few chapters cover this brilliantly as they describe Stoner’s bleak family history, their eternal servitude in manual labor, and then the lucky break that whisks Stoner away to university and his position between those two worlds.

Perfect novel? Stoner has moments of perfection, sure, but I don’t think such a thing as a perfect novel exists—and I’m sure Stoner would be the first to agree.

Company has blown every other show I’ve seen this year out of the water. I didn’t expect it to! It’s a blockbuster musical with championship pedigree running through its cast, director, and history, and somehow, through a confluence of hype and burnout, something like that can work against a show, but not at all in this case.

Company is an abstract musical with a fluid structure and virtual plotlessness. On the night of her 30th birthday, Bobbie (not Bobby due to a timely gender swap for this revival) navigates a cavalcade of her closest friends, all of whom are coupled up and personify different facets of marriage in all its ups and downs. With hysteria, cynicism, detachment, and over-attachment, each couple interrogates Bobbie on her singledom, leaving her to step aside and analyze the company she keeps.

Something special happened on the night I saw it, one week into previews. The superstar director Marianne Elliott got up on stage before the start to give a slight disclaimer about them still being in previews and that due to illness, the lead actress would be replaced for the night by Jennifer Saayeng, a cast member who already plays the role of Jenny, and that the role of Jenny would be covered by another actress. The curtain rises and Saayeng, who has had literally only hours of rehearsal for the lead role of the biggest new show on the West End, takes the stage.

First staged in 1970, Company is an interesting time capsule of a play. With the institution of marriage as its centerpiece, and adjoining dissections of divorce, drug use, and career ambition, a lesser production would run the risk of feeling dated. Here, the topics are more current and vital than ever, used as tools to uncover the greater ills of modern life. A joint shared between a couple is less about paranoia and legality than about uncovering a new dimension to how much they thought they knew about each other. A riff on pre-marriage jitters (played with expert, cartoonish precision by Jonathan Bailey) becomes a hilariously apt disassembly of gay marriage. Ultimately Company isn’t about these trappings of modern life, but about what life still manages to be in spite of them. It’s about loneliness in a crowded room.

Enter Saayeng, who takes the stage as Bobbie with that singular fear etched into her face. Theater is magical because it’s a live wire for empathy. Automatically, the audience is latched onto her performance, reading into and feeding off of every wince of insecurity she exhibits throughout—it’s a rare moment where character and actor merge into one. Race brings a startling new dimension to the show. Saayeng is Black and spends large portions of the show pushing her way through riotous crowds of mostly Whites. Even in this bonkers, off-the-wall musical comedy, the reality of what we see is palpable and current. Whether Bobbie is standing on her own in defiance or in dismay, we believe her and we feel it too.

At the end of the night, there were standing ovations, as would be expected. Crowds shot up for Jonathan Bailey’s hilarious turn. Even more shot up for Patti Lupone because well, Patti Lupone. But the entire theater shot up and absolutely erupted for Jennifer Saayeng, who burst into tears along with many in the audience. She nailed every beat of the performance against insane expectations.

Rarely does a play totally transport me—at least not in the way a movie or a book does. The obvious, inherent artifice of a stage can both serve its purpose of delivering a message and alienate its own audience, sometimes at the same time. With Saayeng’s vulnerability laid bare, there was a very real throughline that sucked me right into it, crushing me with the musical’s themes and ideas like nothing else ever has.

So… it was great! Incredible! Complete bliss. I wonder if it would have had the same power over me had the actress swapping not occurred. It probably would have, but definitely not as easily. Either way, what I thought was just going to be a night out at another blockbuster West End production actually ended up being exactly and perfectly that.