“Square in the Eye” - Jack Gelber

“Square in the Eye” – Jack Gelber

Jack Gelber was born on April 12, 1932 in Chicago, Illinois. He belonged to an immigrant Rumanian stock, and the family trade was limited to primitive metallurgical operations. Along with his two younger brothers, Mike and David, Gelber attended local public schools, and at John Marshall High School. He appears to have taken keen interest in the college band and the basket-ball team. At the University of Illinois, although he intended to take major in chemical engineering, he soon changed his mind and earned a B. S. in Journalism in 1953. After drifting from place to place and doing a variety of odd jobs, Gelber discovered his true metier as a playwright, mainly due to the encouragement he received by tile Living Theatre in New York. At the end of the Second World War, America entered a new phase in the development of its social consciousness. Gelber, as a highly sensitive artist, has not only recreated the mood and the ethos of the period, but has provided new perspectives in his dramatic compositions.

Gelber’s Square in the Eye (1966) is yet another straightforward and honest attempt to survey the post Second World War social scene in the United States of America. Amidst a plethora of surrealistic montage effects presented with a bewildering and unpredictable kaleidoscopic twists and turns, the playwright has succeeded in recreating the total effect of a society under the thorns of transitional changes. After exploring the hush-hush underworld of dope fiends in The Connection and studying the ontological overtones of damnation in The Apple, Square in the Eye stares squarely in the eye of mid-century American cultural and social scene. In a play that seemingly violates all known rules of dramaturgy and shames into insignificance the most progressive of avant garde drama, Gelber studies a variety of social problems such as the collapse of marriage as an institution, the fragmentation of the family as a Unit, the much discussed generation gap, the evils of a permissive society and several of the fashionable fads and fetishes which include among other things psychoanalysis, the venerated cults of surgery, health, cosmetics and finally the death industries. The entire play is a scathing expose of the social ills that beset American life and a vitriolic caricature of the unmindful acceptance of mechanical rituals that have ceased to have any relevance. Square in the Eye is a provocatively strong and funny and sad commentary of the eroded values of a society that has become effete for want of faith in the traditional centripetal forces such as religion and love and a shared communal life.

At the centre of the play the theme concerns itself with the visible disintegration of a marriage that is saved from further calamities by the death of the wife called Sandy Stone. The Stones couple Ed and Sandy enter into a matrimonial alliance that would not have been possible in an earlier era. Ed Stone is a Christian by birth and Sandy is Jewish. Ed is a failure both as a teacher and an amateur painter, and Sandy books him on the rebound from a failed marriage and bears a child called Sarah to Ed Stone. Even as the tremendous guilt-feeling is tearing apart the matrimonial bonds and subtly involving the couple in the inescapable thoughts of an extra-marital trap, the very domineering and orthodox Jewish parents of Sandy interfere in the domestic affairs of the family. The explosive animosity that transformed the in-laws into outlaws, the unabashed use of those unmentionable four-lettered Anglo-Saxon monosyllables, the daring scenes of permissive sex, and the Freudian deathwish that is transformed into reality, provide the play its contextual support. This tenuous plot-structure is the basis on which a series of broadsides are fired at other peripheral concerns with a bizarre and phantasmagorial sense of abandon.

In this twentieth century comedy of manners, Gelber uses all the theatrical tricks that are known to the trade, and invents and adds some more resources from the cinematic world. Added to the experimental distortion of chronological sequences, we have the new complications of a hybrid art-form where the make-believe world of drama gets enmeshed with flashs and flashforwards in the form of short screenings of movies and the projection of slides from time to time. Gelber out-Faulkners Faulkner in creating a telling sound and the fury about virtually nothing more than an abnormal couples’ inability to find compatibility within the frame-work of ordained matrimony. In the process the scenes are shifted without much attention being paid to the reasonable man’s sense of time as a durational unit or coherence as the conditioned reflex of a sane human interaction. For example, the final scene of the first act takes place six weeks after the action in the final scene of the second act has ended. Even to those who are familiar with the theatre of the absurd and its esoteric techniques, the tricks and effects employed by Gelber appear to be rather unconventional.

On the positive side, Gelber’s penchant for daring innovations could be counted as the new American dramatist’s sense of adventure propelling him to reach a point that has not been explored earlier and to provide the reader and the audience a series of intellectual thrills and also stimulate a sense of curious wonder at the possibilities of drama as a vehicle for self discovery, and social comment. Indeed, although his infatuation with experimentations is a source of some difficulty for the common reader, he often manages to sustain our interest by being frequently very funny and by generating a genuine delight in the machinery he employs and the anti-realistic stage effects and the unpardonably candid use of profane expletives.

The play begins with a finely modulated encounter between two couples, one recently divorced and the other wanting to emulate the lucky ones. The zooming mid-century American rate of divorce which worked out to one divorce or annulment for every four marriages becomes the butt of artist’s mordant dramatization. The divorced couple Al Jaffe and Jane Jaffe with their free-wheeling and uninhibited exhibition of sexual freedom and candour set an example for Ed and Sandy. The Jaffes could afford the luxury of such a freedom on account of their financial security and professional success. But the Stones have two children as encumbrances and the additional liability of not having enough money to be really independent or even the satisfaction of doing a job that would restore ones pride or self-confidence. And yet they try to shed their middle-class morality to play the sedulous ape to the untenable and the juvenile customs of the hipsters.

There are several thematic similarities between Square in the Eye and T. S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The theme of marital discord and a sense of spiritual vacuity dramatized by T. S. Eliot is echoed in the problems of the Stones. The role of Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly the psychiatrist-cum-father-confessor is represented in Gelber’s play by an eccentric doctor simply called Doc who assumes myriad Avatars of a surgeon, a priest, social critic, a mortician and a skeptical observer of the human race. And because of the shuffling of time sequences the playwright even succeeds in briefly bringing to life in the second act, Sandy who is already represented as being dead towards the end of the first act. The Alcestis myth is smuggled into the drama to parody the archetypal story used by many a recent dramatist. On the structural similarity with The Cocktail Party is superimposed the virulent love-hate relationship of George and Martha the middle-aged faculty couple of Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? This thematic and technical mix effected by Gelber in Square in the Eye becomes explosive in its own characteristic way and the cascading torrent of expletives, vulgarity and the shocking effects shake and excoriates the audience with an abandon seldom seen on recent American stages. For example, much of the first scene takes place in the studio of Ed Stone where the two couples the Stones and the Jaffes are present. The entire scene is devoted to their quarrels and mutual recriminations and is mixed with a liberal dash of sexual suggestions and open invitation to break the seventh commandment, and all this is carried out in the presence of the young and embarrassed Luis, a student of Ed who was invited to dinner. Not content with his own sordid adult preoccupations, Al Jaffe attempts to educate the poor student Luis.

Al: Do you have a girl friend? Oh, I asked you that already, didn’t? Do you make it with her? Oh, man, you don’t have to hide it. It’s no shame. I’ve got a reason asking. Nothing personal. I want to see if my theory will hold up.

Pause: Anyway, all there is to sex is friction. Like two sticks rubbing together. Luis s up again. Logically you don’t need women. (Luis takes another step.)*

Well, this sort of a language was rather new and at first shocking, but Albee’s verbal avalanche bestowed on George and Martha has made many of those taboo words, represented in an earlier time by asterisks, fairly tolerable now-a-days, and Gelber employs this variety of rhetoric to evoke the verisimilar vulgarity of his off-beat middle-class characters. And the same effect designed to shock the squeamish ones is repeated with a vengeance later on. In a situation that resembles John Osborne’s Look in Anger, where Jimmy Porter excoriates and physically assaults his wife, we have here Ed and Sandy Stone berate each other in salacious language in the presence of Al Jaffe.

Ed: (To Sandy) I’ll call you when I need you. (To Al) I seem to bring out the best arguments in you. (To Sandy) Another drink, please!
Al: I’ve had enough for now.
Sandy: I’m not going to be spoken to as a servant.
Ed: Why not? You’re not married to a dentist anymore.
Sandy: If we are going to have a lot of people over I think someone will have to go out for more booze.
Ed: What’s that supposed to mean? You know we’re broke.
Sandy: I didn’t mean...(Not waiting for an answer) I work hard all day. Goddamnit. Don’t needle me. Go peddle your ass if you want more money. I can invite anyone I want. And if there’s nothing to drink I’ll let them worry about it.

The main plot of the Square in the Eye concerns itself with the difficulty and the confusion of modern marriage which has ceased to be meaningful and the secondary plots take off from there and dramatize the tyranny of Jewish parents, and the callousness and cupidity of professional men such as doctors, undertakers and Rabbis. Although Gelber understands why, normal men and women talk in and out of bed, his domestic plot which typifies the breakdown of personal, familial and social values needs a language capable of shocking the audience out of its normal complacency and a plot structure that the two move forward and wards in a zig-zig manner to project the general disorderliness of modern life and the duplicity that goes with it. If the displacement of the amenities of marriage by the anarchy of incompatible temperaments sears into the consciousness, it is by and large, the intensely satirical secondary plots that account for much of the enjoyable episodes. When the dead Sandy Stone is being eulogized by a Rabbi who never knew her when alive, her two children speak up in turn to expose the hypocrisy of insincere words and meaningless ritual:

Doc: Sandra Stone worked very hard as a mother, daughter, wife and not least for love between men. A sensitive girl, one who appreciated her husband’s painting and the rich meaning of life in all casual crafts, Sandra was at the beginning of a marvellous life. If you ask “Why?” I cannot tell you. Faith and belief will only help you. It won’t answer that question.
Bill. Jr: She wasn’t kosher.
Ef: Be quiet, son.
Sarah: She was a lousy cook anyway.
Ed: True, all too true.
Hy: Have you no respect for the dead?

In presenting such episodes, Gelber’s tone is that of good-natured apathy and he is not so much angered or outraged, but bored with such repetitive humbug. At the same time he uses a macabre variety of humour to send an electrifying shiver down our spine. The entire episode where the bungling doctor after informing the husband Ed about Sandy’s death attempts to sell the idea of a grand funeral.....“A funeral fit for a pharaoh”.....or at least a custom made funeral with a parade down town and in assured traffic jam so that people would notice the members of the funeral cortege is a caustic indictment of our love for the dead rather than the living. Finally, when Ed starts peddling his dead wife’s garments to a customer and soon sets about getting married to a rich lady called Doris the Rabelsisian gaucherie ceases to be funny and provides its own comment about human greed and cupidity. As in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying where a similar episode takes place, the duplicity and the self-centred human drives inherent in the situation suggests the regression of man to a lower order of primates under the inexorable pressure of an evident rat-race.

So far so good, and all the disoriented episodes could be justified as providing a fair comment on the inequities of modern life, its impersonality, its permissiveness and its cussedness. But it is with certain specifics that our normal capacity for perception fails to function. Even if the quick second marriage of Ed Stone to Doris could be put down to the triumph of hope over experience, still the total neglect shown towards the dead Sandy is somewhat inexplicable. Why do the other characters desert the dying women? Her parents and children leave her Jewish heritage. Others pull out because their relationships with her have been variously unreal, hysterical or mainly self-serving. This feeling that one is no longer cared for once one ceases to be useful to others, becomes egregious when all the characters crowd round Ed Stone and his new spouse and exuberantly shake hands with him and congratulate him. The trouble with this variety of situation which leaves us bemused and benumbed is that these phoney relationships have no point of reference outside the play’s own private ethical map. The characters have talked a lot about themselves and one another and have reached a point where they do nothing but deliberately insulting and prey upon each other like vultures. But still the question remains, and the trick is not to show people walking away from a dying friend or a relative but to justify ones own existence in a meaningful way.

The basic tenor of the first act in spite of the family tensions and quarrels and death, is essentially comic. But the atmosphere of the second act, in spite of several hilarious quips and visible tricks is certainly sad and sombre. The final scene is very artificial and contrived when Ed forgetting all his earlier bitterness and venom tenderly promises to the dying Sandy:

Ed: I’ll find some one. Get married. Take care of Sarah. Try. (Ed is gone)
Sandy: I have you Ed.
Ed: I got all caught up in it. I don’t want to beg you now.
Sandy: Don’t go–Don’t, Ed.

But prior to this scene when an imaginary inquisition is about to be organized to adjudicate the worth of Sandy’s life, she has a memorable vision of a Utopia that she had dreamed of establishing. As she lay dying, towards her semi-conscious mind waft a series of shouted slogans in her own voice accompanied by the full-throated response of the crowd.

Sandy: Ladies, we are gathered here to do the job most men shun thinking about. We are going to plot against the idiots who want to blow up the world with their nuclear toys (Cheers) What do they care that they are poisoning generations to come? (More cheers.) Women stand up now and fight. (More cheers. Ed enters.)
Ed: Why the shouting? A test ban agreement has been reached.
Sandy: Alright, what about the DDT in our food? (More cheers.) What about the utilities monopolies? (More Cheers.) High prices? (Cheers.) Poverty? (Cheers.) What about funeral practices in America? (Cheers.) Civil Rights (Very loud cheers.) Are we going to be lulled into complacency? (Cries of “No.”) This time we’ll go after the big one. We’re going all out against double standard. (Cries of “Oooooh”.) Yes, I know it’s hard to believe. It’s not going to be easy. We’ve had some success in the past. Let’s not let it go to our head.

This is the time to strike and strike fast. Well, that is about as optimistic as Gelber can get in a world that he indicts to be totally effected and a society that is frequently unable to distinguish between illusion and reality, surface from essence. The play ends with Sandy’s inconsolable grief and a sense of loss, her unfulfilled desire for something more than she has had and all this makes for sudden sentimentality in the midst of sensational tensions. And the syrupy sweetness of the last scene is in glaring contrast to the gall of much of the play. The tickling of the ribs to stab the brain is performed with the uncouth and unsure hands of a surgeon with a surfiet of gallow’s humour and an inadequacy of manual dexterity.

His major play The Connection uncovers for us the frustrations that drive many young Americans to a self-willed Hell, where the pain of existence is sought to be erased by slowly injecting poisonous drugs into the system in order to deaden the consciousness that causes the pain. The play brilliantly depicts the meaninglessness of life for some people through the device of the point and counterpoint of reality and unreal psychic drives, existence and existentialistic nihilism; and all this is organized on a frugal pattern where the jazz quartet improvise spontaneous music on the stage but at the same time suggest the rich irony of their wasted efforts in playing to a group of people with unresponsive mental states. In other plays too, such as The Apple, The Cuban Thing, Square in the Eye, and Sleep, Gelber presents man as detached from the mechanistic world that surrounds him, and enduring a series of fixations that have frozen him from the baptismal currents of naturalistic life of yore. The Apple, for example, treats the race relations as an outcome of acute economic Darwinism. Square in the Eye, effectively displays the collapse of “family” as an institution under the pressure of alien forces that defy comprehension. As in Albee’s The American Dream, Gelber too projects the beginning of the end in the annihilation of the familial bonds, which in one course could lead towards the logical end of the “American civilization.” If The Cuban Thing traces out America’s Political hubris born out of the concept of “manifest destiny.” Sleep, in many respects his most prophetic play, literally puts man in a scientific capsule to be studied as a “thing” rather than as an individual. Essentially, Gelber makes use of contemporary social situations like drug addiction or race relations or the destruction of the American family to dramatize the failure of the American Dream. To that extent his art and artifice filter the myriad of experiences to sharply focus on the contemporary problems of life, and thus enhance our own awareness of social crises that complicate the human condition.

* Jack Gelber, Square in the Eye, New York. Grove Press Inc., 1966. Pp. 22-23