2024 - 7th Play - Life Sucks by Aaron Posner
Danielle Zuckerman and Penelope Walker in Lookingglass Theatre Company’s production in Chicago. Photo by Liz Lauren.
Having performed in Posner’s STUPID FUCKING BIRD last fall, you’d think I’d have read some of his other adaptations of Anton Chekhov’s plays. But I had not, so it was fun to dive in! Wish I had seen the Lookingglass performance!
Summary:“In this brash reworking of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, a group of old friends, ex-lovers, estranged in-laws, and lifelong enemies gather to grapple with life’s thorniest questions—and each other. What could possibly go wrong? Incurably lustful and lonely, hapless and hopeful, these seven souls collide and stumble their way towards a new understanding that LIFE SUCKS! Or does it? From the mind of Aaron Posner, author of Stupid F*#king Bird, comes this brash and revelatory reworking of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Never has unhappiness been so much fun.” From Lookingglass Theatre Company’s website, the majority of which was originally from Dramatists Play Service.
Laura’s thoughts in brief: Well, STUPID FUCKING BIRD is literally one of my favorite plays EVER. So, reading Posner’s take on UNCLE VANYA was a treat. Now, I will say that I saw SFB before I read it. I was literally BLOWN away by a production by Sideshow Theatre Company in Chicago in 2015. So when I read it, all the meta-theatricality made sense to me. Knowing that show very well, LIFE SUCKS seems to be kind of a repeat. However, it has been described as a love letter to Chekhov, and I definitely see that. Also, I think that this 21st century playwright pulls the most important and interesting parts of Chekhov’s plays and uses 21st century language to share those. It is a great gateway for many to the actual plays of Chekhov, which I love, but with some reservations. That all being said, the audience interaction is one of my favorite things about this play, and I’d love to see even more. When I sat down to write this, my mind blanked a bit - what actually happened in the play? Well, like Chekhov, LIFE SUCKS is more about ideas than action. There is a plot - things do happen, but it’s the conversation about them that is more important. I personally struggle with some of the conversation in actual Chekhov, but Posner is clever and his characters spout a ton of quotable quotes: “Do you think people in 100 years will care how hard we worked. I mean maybe a few great geniuses, an artist or two, maybe... But most of us? The normal people. Will anyone care?” “Move on… Move forward. Move further into life… It really is the most wonderful adventure.” “Spoiler alert: Most of us won't get everything we want.” All of these could be in a self-help book called Get Your Shit Together and Have a Better Life. Also, there’s an amazing quote about the ridiculousness of academia as a “vast conspiracy” that is dedicated to, among other things, “making the rest of us feel like uncultured boobs and morons because we don't give a shit!” As a practitioner who also plays in the halls of academia, and is wearied by the gatekeeping of people that seem to speak a different language than the rest of us, this rings true in many ways to me. I also disagree profoundly with certain parts of the quote: “arguing endlessly about esoteric minutiae so stunningly meaningless and rampantly unimportant that even they could not possibly care themselves” (oh, we really really do care!) and “generations of over-privileged eighteen-year-old sparrow-farts” (while “sparrow-fart” is an insult worthy of Shakespeare, the majority of the students I have taught were way more than that, and most of them NOT over-privileged, but incredibly caring about the world and the people in it!). But my quibbles with the character’s comments about academia don’t mean I don’t find the humor in it. Then there’s a section in the play where each character lists three things they love and a later one where everyone lists three things they hate, which is a GREAT character study (actors, pay attention - this is a FABULOUS exercise for you to flesh out a character!). Also, there’s an exercise (I mean a scene) called “What, am I supposed to feel sorry for you?” where each character argues for their life being “worse” than everyone else’s. While this could be depressing, it’s really a poke at Chekhov, for creating all of these dark, depressed characters, and it’s also a poke at humanity, as many of us play this game in life (out loud or in our heads anyway). And it’s played for humor, which works beautifully. Reading Chekhov, I do tend to come away feeling depressed, even if that’s not what he intended - he called his plays comedies. However, Posner mines the dark depression for comedy in a 21st century way that resounds, and is funny. I came away from reading the play feeling better, rather than worse. Despite the skeletal nature of the plot, I imagine that WATCHING this weird, funny, meta-theatrical play would leave me full of joy, or at least with a fun, self-mocking sense of humanity. Now I really want to see it! OK, I REALLY want to DO it. LET’S PUT ON A SHOW!
READ MORE! Here’s what others had to say about productions:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/theater/life-sucks-review.html
https://exeuntnyc.com/reviews/review-life-sucks-wild-project/
https://windycitytimes.com/2016/09/28/theater-review-life-sucks/