Is He Dead? sponsored by Select Ford Mercury
Is He Dead? by Mark Twain, was long forgotten about until recently, when the play was rescued from some archives by Shelly Fisher Fishkin. Although it is very different from anything that could be considered Mark Twain's "typical" style, it recently opened to rave reviews on Broadway. The following excerpts are taken directly from the script of Is He Dead? and should give you a clearer idea of how the script was discovered, modified, and eventually produced on Broadway.
The following excerpts were taken directly from the script of Is He Dead?
Foreword:
Bringing Mark Twain's Is He Dead? to Life
Mark Twain wrote Is He Dead? in 1898 as he emerged from one of the darkest periods of his life. A crippling bankruptcy had forced Twain to give up his home in the U.S. and embark on a world-wide lecture tour to pay back his creditors, and while he was abroad, in 1896, his youngest daughter had died suddenly. It would not be surprising if Twain had wondered whether he'd ever manage to laugh again. But by 1898, Twain had come out of the gloom that had enveloped him and found himself ready to transform death and debt into the raw material for a hilarious, over-the-top comedy.
The London Times reported in 1898 that Is He Dead?, the high-spirited romp of a play that Twain composed while living in Vienna, would be produced simultaneously in London and New York. But a combination of bad timing, bad luck, and perhaps, the irrelevance of placing one of France's greatest painters at the center of a zany, cross-dressing farce conspired to foil Twain's plans. The play was never produced.
When I came across the manuscript in the Mark Twain Papers at UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library in 2002 and found myself laughing out loud in the archives, I decided that this delightfully ebullient play - from a period when Twain was known for much darker work - deserved to be rescued from the obscurity in which it had languished for over a century. University of California Press published the play as Twain wrote it in 2003. The extended afterword I wrote to Is He Dead? A Comedy in Three Acts by Mark Twain, provides background useful to anyone performing the play today. It suggests why Twain may have been chosen to write a play about the painter Jean-François Millet, perhaps the most famous 19th-century European painter in America in Twain's day, and an artist who showed a respect for ordinary people in his art that resonated with Twain's own work. It also looks at what the play has in common with other writing by Twain, sets the play in the context of popular theatre of the day, and examines Twin's attitudes towards art and towards the French.
A mutual friend urged me to contact veteran producer Bob Boyett with whom I worked to bring the play to Broadway. Twain had enormous fun writing Is He Dead? But he knew that staging it would be a challenge. Over a hundred years later, Twain found the ideal collaborator in David Ives. In Ives’ brilliant adaptation Twain’s words are still there – as are his trade mark satirical wit, his unforgettable characters, and his ingenious plot. But Ives put Twain’s play on a much-needed diet, compressing three acts to two and whittling a play that would have required some 35 actors down to a play that can be produced with as few as 11. He staged scenes that Twin had left off-stage, and while eliminating several characters and plot elements, he also developed others. Ives did what Twain hoped someone would do: he tightened the play and adapted it for today’s stage, while keeping it in the spirit of what Twain wrote. Twain’s Is He Dead?, adapted by David Ives and directed by Michael Blakemore, had its world premiere at the Lyceum Theatre in New York on December 9, 2007 with a stunningly talented cast. Its Broadway debut met with great critical acclaim.
Twain believed in his play – but, discouraged by his failure to get it produced in London or New York, he filed it away with his papers and for the most part forgot about it. Nearly a hundred years after Twain’s death, Is He Dead? came to life – gloriously – on Broadway leading the world to conclude that reports of its death had been indeed, greatly exaggerated.
-Shelley Fisher Fishkin
Stanford University
Afterword
I am inevitably asked: What is Twain and what's Ives? What did I "do" to Twain's original play? Just what do those words "adapted by" on the title page actually mean?
The incurable curious can find out the answers by picking up Shelley Fisher Fishkin's superb edition of Twain's original text, published by University of California Press. Her notes and supplementary materials and of course Twain's play will reveal all.
Short of that, I can say this. The first scene of my adaptation is a drastic redaction of Twain's whole first act. In Twain's original, Millet doesn't appear till the middle of the first act; I brought out hero in earlier. In Twain, Millet has a circle of friends as wide as the United Nations. I reduced the circle to Chicago, Dutchy and O'Shaughnessy. In Twain, there are several art buyers; I cut them down to one.
But these are just mechanical elements of the adaptation. In a larger sense you might say that Twain provided the plot, I provided the subplots, he the set-ups and I the payoffs. For example, Twain is responsible for Cecile Leroux, Papa Leroux, and a "gorgeous flunkey" for the Widow. I am responsible for Inspector LeFaux, Inspector Monnet, and Papa Leroux's crush on the Widow. Twain wrote a long monologue for Dutchy about how the King of France wanted to look inside the coffin; I brought that scene onstage. Twain wrote a great joke about a chimney sweep leaving his outline on a cloth. I kept the cloth, cut the sweep, and put the joke elsewhere in the play. A hundred little things like that.
Certain scenes are here almost as Twain wrote them. The tea scene in the first act, for example, is largely Twain, though I added the tea to the scene. The physical deconstruction of the Widow toward the end of Act Two is also by and large Twain, with a few additions. Maybe the best way to demonstrate how I adapted Twain's original is by show-and-tell. Here is a section from Twain's original:
CHICAGO
. (Holds up the pants - exposing the patch - views his work critically. Aside:) Failure - too loud - can't wear them - distract attention from the rest of the exhibition - make a person look like a lightning-bug---
Here is what I did with that:
CHICAGO. Notices a large, yellow patch on the backside of O'Shaughnessy's pants.) Wait a minute. You can't face the public in trousers like that. You look like a lightning bug. I've got an idea. Bend over.
(Takes a palette and quickly paints the patch black.)
I knew all those lessons would come in handy. We can't have you distracting attention from the rest of the exhibition.
DUTCHY. Maybe a little grey in here.
O'SHAUGHNESSY. Don't forget to sign it.
CHICAGO. There, that's first-rate. We'll call it "The Pantgelus."
Mark Twain is of course a great American master, and if I ever doubted it I knew it when I read his original play, which had the genius of not one but two great comic ideas: not only a man faking his own death, but passing himself off as his own sister to cover up the plot. In everything I did as an adapter, I took it as my fob not to replace Twain but to complete his work, to do to the original what he himself would have done had he had 97 more years to think about it and a few more plays under his belt. He turned out to be a superb collaborator. Except for the cigars, we got along just fine.
-David Imes