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The Beginning of August and Other Plays: The Beginning of August, The Dadshuttle, Northeast Local, Minutes from the Blue Route
These four plays prove The Village Voice's acclaim that Tom Donaghy has "mastered the Chekhovian tactic of having people say everything except what's on their mind." From the story of a young man trying to find order in a world in which he's had an affair with another man days after his wife left him and their infant daughter, to the emotional undercurrents of quiet, hard-working families faced with the reality that the lives they had envisioned for themselves are vastly different than the ones they are living, The Beginning of August and Other Plays showcases Donaghy's exceptional ability to bring to the surface the emotional undercurrents of everyday people. "Tom Donaghy has that marvelous ability to be acutely funny and moving at the same time. Tom Donaghy's plays reveal a truth not only about good writing but why good playwriting reveals a complexity impossible in any other form. These are masterful works." -- Wendy Wasserstein, author of The Heidi Chronicles; "Donaghy is a genius with fragmentation, with details so small that it comes as a shock to discover how sufficient they really are. Like the wiry pins piercing a grenade's shell, his scenes have similar -- and far more dangerous -- energy." -- The Boston Globe; "Tom Donaghy's plays are tender and lyrical: he has an acute eye and a sharp ear. He explores the everyday lives of ordinary Americans and makes them glow. His work is often moving and always beautiful." -- Andre Bishop, Artistic Director, Lincoln Center Theater.
256 pages, Paperback
First published October 13, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 26, 2022
All of Donaghy's plays have merit; I will focus on the one I know best in this review, which is the titular play, The Beginning of August.
What Donaghy does in this deceptively ordinary backyard drama is capture, with astonishing acuity, the way real people are. His characters are maddeningly, frustratingly alive, behaving in the sometimes well-intentioned, and sometimes self-defeating, manner that we all do. We're conscious in this play, much more than usual, of the author's selection process: that he has chosen to reveal to us particular events of a particular day, involving these five people. Because these people seem to have lived lives before the play started, and will go on living after we leave; indeed, Donaghy has shrewdly constructed The Beginning of August so that its inciting incident--the event that starts the thing in motion--has occurred before the play begins; and his story's ending, similarly, will happen sometime after the play ends.
For a while, we get to observe them--and that's all. The genius of The Beginning of August is, our observing really does provide us with insight into the human condition.
At the center of The Beginning of August is Jackie, a young man whose wife has suddenly abandoned him and their infant daughter. Jackie has invited his step-mother Joyce to watch the baby while he's at work. Today is the first day of this arrangement, and although Jackie and Joyce's relationship is more than a little strained, both are clearly interested in making it work, more or less permanently; or at least until Jackie's wife Pam returns from wherever she is.
As the day wears on, Joyce meets Ben, a young house painter who idolizes Pam; and Ted, a neighbor who winds up telling Joyce something totally unexpected. Jackie arrives home with a fax from Pam, who says she'll be back home by dinnertime. And, while Jackie dozes (for he's narcoleptic), the baby disappears.
Donaghy alternates trivial details with earthshaking revelations almost randomly, so that we never see what's coming in this play, and we never finally or fully understand what any of the five characters are about. Which is not to say that we don't understand or empathize with them; indeed, Donaghy's triumph is that we do, almost too much. But we do not--cannot--know them any better than they know themselves.
The Beginning of August cuts no breaks for either its characters or its audience: there's a palpable feeling of unfinished business when it ends. But I found that my vague dissatisfaction was replaced, soon, with warm regard for the less concrete but more profound way that Donaghy's play lingered in my memory. In this genuine slice of life, what's been pared away is finally inconsequential as we savor the zest and flavor--bitter and sweet--of what we've been served.
What Donaghy does in this deceptively ordinary backyard drama is capture, with astonishing acuity, the way real people are. His characters are maddeningly, frustratingly alive, behaving in the sometimes well-intentioned, and sometimes self-defeating, manner that we all do. We're conscious in this play, much more than usual, of the author's selection process: that he has chosen to reveal to us particular events of a particular day, involving these five people. Because these people seem to have lived lives before the play started, and will go on living after we leave; indeed, Donaghy has shrewdly constructed The Beginning of August so that its inciting incident--the event that starts the thing in motion--has occurred before the play begins; and his story's ending, similarly, will happen sometime after the play ends.
For a while, we get to observe them--and that's all. The genius of The Beginning of August is, our observing really does provide us with insight into the human condition.
At the center of The Beginning of August is Jackie, a young man whose wife has suddenly abandoned him and their infant daughter. Jackie has invited his step-mother Joyce to watch the baby while he's at work. Today is the first day of this arrangement, and although Jackie and Joyce's relationship is more than a little strained, both are clearly interested in making it work, more or less permanently; or at least until Jackie's wife Pam returns from wherever she is.
As the day wears on, Joyce meets Ben, a young house painter who idolizes Pam; and Ted, a neighbor who winds up telling Joyce something totally unexpected. Jackie arrives home with a fax from Pam, who says she'll be back home by dinnertime. And, while Jackie dozes (for he's narcoleptic), the baby disappears.
Donaghy alternates trivial details with earthshaking revelations almost randomly, so that we never see what's coming in this play, and we never finally or fully understand what any of the five characters are about. Which is not to say that we don't understand or empathize with them; indeed, Donaghy's triumph is that we do, almost too much. But we do not--cannot--know them any better than they know themselves.
The Beginning of August cuts no breaks for either its characters or its audience: there's a palpable feeling of unfinished business when it ends. But I found that my vague dissatisfaction was replaced, soon, with warm regard for the less concrete but more profound way that Donaghy's play lingered in my memory. In this genuine slice of life, what's been pared away is finally inconsequential as we savor the zest and flavor--bitter and sweet--of what we've been served.
February 18, 2015
This playwright was getting some attention in the late 1990s, and I once heard a very interesting radio version of one of his plays on the BBC. I don't know what he has been up to in recent years - a look at his website said nothing about any recent productions. Donaghy works in a low-key, realistic mode - it almost seems like he was influenced by Raymond Carver. His characters are regular, lower middle class folks going about their business. There is not a lot of drama, except for issues quietly percolating in the background - what is this character going to do with his life? Is this young man gay? Are these two going to get married? Often the characters discuss banal things, and keep their real feelings under wraps. Occasional moments of humor are similarly muted, and there is a slight weirdness that pops up in spots. Overall, I am sorry to say that this collection did not really grab me.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews