It is true that Broadway has been in a slump for some time. Decent theatre has been replaced by government-supported "One Man Shows" exhorting the glories of deviant behavior and the evils of law-abiding church-going white male taxpayers. "Message" pieces (usually about AIDS, a real cheery topic), musical spectaculars, and revivals of 20 - 30 year old masterpieces which have already been seen in movie format are about all that currently runs for more than fifteen minutes. The only thing interesting about the typical rotten shows festering on the Great White Way at the dawn of the 21st century is the notion that someone might think another human being could care to see them.
Sure, attending a modern play is (usually) insulting, disgusting, and painful, but it doesn't drag you to real depths of depression like the great dramas of the mid-20th century. Yes, there was a time that Broadway's most depressing stuff was still functionally high art instead of stream-of-consciousness post-modern blither. I was reminded of this fact upon the February 11 death of the original maven of gloom, Arthur Miller.
Actually, I was more surprised on February 11, to discover that Miller had been alive as recently as the 10th. The worthless, self-righteous old fart had ceased to be "relevant" so long ago that his death seemed almost beside the point.
There is no real analog for creating intentionally depressing drama in any other nation besides ours. The British have tragedies, comedies, scary plays, musicals, music hall, etc., but have no real tradition for a play being depressing just for the sake of bringing you down. That kind of thinking is probably an outgrowth of the Puritan tradition, which explains why the Puritans got run out of the old world and sent to America.
But in the true Puritan tradition, the American drama of the mid-20th Century provides no resolution to its tragedy.
In Shakespeareian Tragedy, Hamlet dies, but his nation is saved. Romeo and Juliet die and their parent's feud ends. Macbeth dies, and carries away the evil he has wrought with his passing. But when Willie Loman dies, in fact, sacrifices himself, nothing is resolved, nothing is fixed, "no" is the word, zero is still the number, black is still the color, and everything still sucks. That said, "Death of a Salesman" is a million laughs compared to most of the rest of the American "Serious Drama" catalog.
The really cool thing about good depressing classic drama over newer depressing drama is that the classics stay with you and make you an intolerable intellectual bore for weeks.
You might be wondering, "Why should I read stuff that is going to bum me out?" Good question, especially when you consider some of my comments, but the fact is that like that big dish of boiled spinach your mother forced on you, these plays are actually good for you. They form an important part of the background of American literature, and when we were still educating people, it was assumed that everyone read this madness. News flash: the really smart people still read this stuff, and to be truly educated about the letters that have made up our nation, you should still know these plays. Just as importantly, for all the fact that these are depressing as they can be, they are still well-written drama...and if you're going to wind up committing sepuku, it might as well be over a good play...the bad ones aren't worth it.
Let me say before we go any further, that these are really great plays and I have loved reading them...I especially enjoyed them in my youth. On the other hand, as an older man, I am far more inclined to go see something that qualifies as "pure entertainment" than a "thought piece." This is called "growing up."
Note: these plays have the following in common: fabulously good writing, condescension (usually outright contempt) for the middle class, and high (though narrow and elite) ideals.
Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller)
A play about how salesmen live their lives written by a man who clearly knew nothing about salesmen. I've lived my entire life around salesmen, and I've been a salesman, and I've never yet seen anyone whose existence was this awful or futile. Manic depressives will particularly enjoy this play at the low part of their cycle's swing, but people who suffer from dissociative disorder or are in some other form of complete denial will also enjoy this baby. Will this play bring you down? Fer sure. Will this depress you so thoroughly that suicide will look like a step up? Yoo betcha. Still, this is probably the most important American play of the 1950's. NOTE: Miller was able to write this depressing monstrosity while married to Marilyn Monroe--more evidence of a truly sick mind.
Murder in the Cathedral (T.S. Eliot)
Sure, this gobbler was not written with the intention of ever being staged, but in the American theatre, a play this bleak just cries out for production. The incredible T.S. Eliot (a native of Saint Louis, Missouri) took time out from his busy schedule of writing of happy little ditties like "The Wasteland," and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (didn't he also write "2001 Totally Gross Jokes?") to create one of the least humorous and morose scripts ever penned outside of a psych ward. The play pretends to be about important questions of moral motivation, but it's actually about making the audience beg to be allowed out of the theatre before they bite through their own necks to get away from the drama.
The Glass Menagerie (Tennessee Williams)
Okay. Think about the point in your life when you most needed a date and couldn't get one. Then pile in all sorts of social, emotional, physical, and psychological baggage that you (as a normal, well-balanced person) will never ever suffer from. Then make certain that if you actually happen to get a date, it has to be conducted in front of your mother (who is far more twisted than anyone's mother could be in real life). Now, if that doesn't sound like an evil brew, imagine yourself as a healthy, well-balanced person having to watch the self-destructive wild'n'crazie shenanigans of this particularly demented family. [NOTE: people who only see this play miss out on one of the best parts of William's craft--stage directions. This man could write stage directions possessed of more angst than a Junior High PE dressing room.]
The Little Foxes (Lillian Hellman)
This is supposed to be a comedy, and if you find greedy people who hate each other and live to make each other miserable funny, then this is going to be a real laugh-a-minute for you. Okay, I get the joke, I just don't care. This is the only play on this list--besides "The Zoo Story"--for which I have never nursed at least grudging respect...you could say that I have nursed a grudging grudge against it though...
Long Day's Journey Into Night (Eugene O'Neil)
Except for Eliot, O'Neil is the best writer on this list. That said, five lines into the script are all it will take for you to know why the play wasn't called "Million Dollar Legs."
The Crucible (Arthur Miller)
This play was meant to be an allegory about McCarthyism but in the years since it's debut, we've lost sense of that strange episode of American polity, and it has morphed into a claustrophobic, paranoid, rabid-dog American tragedy. Set during the Salem Witch Trials this this hog was functionally the pace car for depressing drama for the rest of the 20th Century.
Zoo Story Edward Albee)
Oh. Man. This. Is. SO. Tragic.
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