Hellman's Autumn Garden

 I have almost got notes caught up with my reading.

Let me suggest that Lillian Hellman's Autumn Garden is both a more interesting read than her earlier plays and probably not representative of her plays. It is not melodramatic. It is not political. Ibsen's ghost may have hovered over her shoulder with The Children's Hour and the Hubbard plays; Bertolt Brecht may have been whispering to during The Searching Wind, Watch on the Rhine, and Montserratt; but Anton Chekhov feels to behind Autumn Garden.

Old friends meet, find out neither they nor their lives are what they wanted, and leave. 

Maybe my being 62, the life I have led, leave me  feeling an emotional attachment to Hellman's characters. Performances too languid might miss the quiet, steady emotional connections. Its music seems to me more Blood on the Tracks than Highway 61 Revisited.

The Autumn Garden review – Hellman’s unhappy guests overstay their welcome hits on a version that is 

...The problem with the play, which meanders along for three hours, is that you are never sure whether the characters are prey to the enervating romanticism of the American south or are victims of some larger, national malaise....

 The Autumn Garden Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, August, 2007 takes a different view

...But what was then scandalous and capable of ruining a life is now common place and generally considered acceptable. With the shock value removed, what you have left in The Autumn Garden are the characters, and they remain fully-formed and interesting....

The Autumn Garden, theatre review: Lillian Hellman play about longing and loneliness isn't afraid to take its time reviews the same play as did The Guardian

It does, admittedly, go on a bit, but Hellman has a skilful way when it comes to the sly deceptions of the human heart. Happiness, if it comes at all, is deeply compromised – but that feels like a true, if tough, conclusion.

Backstage's The Autumn Garden (2012) seems more spot on with my reading

...It eschews the moralistic lessons, narrative drive, and tidy resolutions that Hellman is known for in favor of a character-oriented ensemble play that vaguely recalls the works of Anton Chekhov. A surprisingly unsympathetic portrait of middle-aged Southerners coming to terms with the emptiness of their lives during a weekend gathering at a summer resort, "The Autumn Garden" offers incisive characterizations. Yet the diffuse script isn't entirely satisfying. Fortunately, two superb alternating casts in director Larry Biederman's intelligent rendition provide compensation for the three-hour opus's somewhat unfocused quality.

For anyone wanting to check out how the play sounds, here is a short clip:

 

One last thing, Hellman dedicated the play to her lover Dashiell Hammett and while reading the play I thought I detected Hammett in the character of Ned Crossman, but the only review I read making this connection was Lillian Hellman's 'Autumn Garden' is in full bloom -- once again:

Constance has a warm relationship with regular summer visitor Ned Crossman (Rufus Collins). The friendship has never flamed into passion, partly because Constance is still mourning the lost love of her youth -- dashing painter Nick Denery (John Benjamin Hickey), due to arrive this very evening -- and partly because Ned is committed to a numbing routine involving massive nightly influxes of alcohol. (It's as if Hellman had divided the persona of her beloved, Dashiell Hammett, neatly in twain.)

I think this ought to inform any interpretation of this play.

For what else I have written about Hellman, click on the "Theater" link below where it says Labels.

sch 5/23/22