As I Lay Dying
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But the tune sounds different this time–and to these ears much, much better. It’s not only that William Faulkner’s twisted Mississippians and bitter, absurdist irony are about as far as you can get from the populist nobility of Steinbeck’s heroic Okies. As I Lay Dying is also a markedly better show than its predecessor–more honest, more interesting, more alive. Visually much leaner, it’s less inappropriately expensive-looking. Where The Grapes of Wrath was a lumbering technical feat whose obvious costliness unintentionally mocked the desperation portrayed, As I Lay Dying generally eschews the infatuation with design technology that also marred Galati’s slick but sterile 1991 adaptation of Anne Tyler’s Earthly Possessions as well as Terry Kinney’s overproduced A Clockwork Orange and John Malkovich’s deadly Libra. More important, the focus on visual effects seems to have been replaced by a greater attention to the quality of the acting. As I Lay Dying isn’t a perfect work–but as Steppenwolf’s first effort under acting artistic director Martha Lavey, it’s a hopeful sign for the troupe’s future.
Why should a great book, which can be perused at leisure, be brought to the stage? Too often with Steppenwolf’s literary adaptations the answer has seemed to be: to create an impressive event. As I Lay Dying offers a better answer: to speak the words in a way that helps us understand them better. Faulkner’s dense prose, which on the page often seems too artful for uneducated farm folk, comes to believable life on the Steppenwolf stage. The cast at their best make the sometimes stilted monologues sound like the spontaneous stream of consciousness the Joyce-influenced Faulkner intended. The actors’ vocal technique and psychological interpretation are not perfect–they tend to mistake loudness for intensity, and to substitute volume for articulation as they fill the auditorium with their thickly accented soliloquies. But the text’s ideas and emotions are rendered clear and fascinating, giving both literature and drama their due and allowing the characters’ universality to transcend the idiosyncrasies of their speech.
