Dark play made some uncomfortable

By Kari Quill

“How far do your memories go back?” Lemon (Paige Pulaski) asked the audience of Wallace Shawn’s 1985 dark play, "Aunt Dan and Lemon."

Instantly, this frumpy, sickly woman had me uncomfortable with her constant intentional eye twitching and head nodding. The rhetorical questions she asked from her lemon-colored armchair quickly merited a response from me. Although I refrained, I wanted nothing more than to tell her that her explicit approval of the German Nazis was unsettling. Following this conviction was her admission that she would be “fine with dying,” after a life spent almost entirely void of human interaction.

Eventually, I realized Shawn, a playwright notorious for provoking controversial arguments, had mastered the opening scene with Lemon’s contestable monologue. Anxious to hear how the protagonist would support her beliefs cemented by her unproductive life, my ears were fully attuned to the University of Georgia student production.

After Lemon’s lecture, I was grateful for the introduction of a new character named Freddie (Matthew Bowdren), the father of Lemon. His wit and strident voice awakened the audience as he shouted about the Darwin characteristics of the working class in the 1960s. Once he finished his rant, the execution of the play became obvious: flashbacks that don’t pertain to a plot. Luckily, not every character is as abrasive as Lemon’s father, whom Lemon says resembles “a caged animal” after overhearing a quarrel between him and her passive mother (Chelsey Horn).

While the play continues with limited props and lengthy monologues, some redeeming qualities emerge. I am stunned by the consistency of the casts’ English accents combined with their memorization skills. Most engrossing are Aunt Dan’s stories she recites to her 11-year-old worshipper, Lemon.

As one of the two American-born characters in the play, Dan is equally as captivating with her American accent as she recounts her trysts in London and obsessions with Henry Kissinger and public policy. While her parents are oblivious to the intimate relationship between Lemon and Aunt Dan, her father’s best friend, Lemon tells us: “[My parents] had me, but I only had Aunt Dan.”

It seemed that each time members of the audience yawned during a speech, at least one of the characters started to undress, regaining their attention. Mindy (Spencer Tootle), the money-hungry call girl, demands attentiveness from every male member in the audience as she struts around in lingerie. However, it was the unexpected bloodshed that regained my interest an hour and a half into the performance.

The beastliness Lemon claims to be innate in every human proves to be a major theme of the play. Some characters reveal this trait through action while others only vocalize it. As Lemon gleefully preaches with pursed lips, her brutish opinions resonate with the audience. The similarities she draws between civilized people and the Nazis are enough to elicit a response from an individual only vaguely aware of the unjust treatment of Jews during World War II.

As she sat drinking her daily supplement of lime and celery juice, I couldn’t help but equate the liquid to her slimy personality. Her admiration for the “truthful” Nazis, whom also lacked compassion, elicited my firm rebuttal. This in mind, I commend the show and its talented cast, but wouldn’t consider a second viewing.

Even now I wonder how Lemon sat confident and comfortable in her armchair as I squirmed in mine, noticing that she never missed a blink.

Studio Series at UGA puts on another performance

By Kelundra Smith

UGA’s University Theatre recently produced Aunt Dan and Lemon written by Wallace Shawn as a part of their studio series. Studio series productions use minimal sets and technical elements to focus on acting and directing.

In this witty, controversial play, Wallace Shawn invites the audience into Lemon’s reality. Most of the play takes place in 1960s England at the height of political unrest due to the Vietnam War and the sexual revolution. We find Lemon, a troubled young woman, reflecting on her adolescence, particularly her summers with Aunt Dan.

The play, directed by UGA professor Farley Richmond, had a set consisting of an arm chair, lamp, side table and two rugs downstage right, and a long table and five chairs at center stage. The play starred UGA sophomore Paige Pulaski as Lemon and UGA MFA student Jennifer Schottstadt as Aunt Dan.

Aunt Dan, short for Danielle, is an American who Lemon’s parents befriended while studying at Oxford. The entire family grows fond of Aunt Dan, but this fondness quickly changes. As Lemon’s father’s health starts to fail, and Aunt Dan and Lemon’s mother have political disagreements, the dynamics change. This causes Aunt Dan to draw more toward Lemon, and they develop an intimate relationship.

I must admit I went into the play with my own opinions about the production, because I read the play a few years ago. I was particularly curious about how they were going to keep such a wordy play engaging for an audience. The play consists mostly of monologues where Lemon and Aunt Dan are speaking to each other or the audience. And the show has a run time of two hours without an intermission.

The actors worked hard to make sure that monologues were manageable for the audience by infusing humor and using inflection. Lemon speaks candidly to the audience, which could have been boring, but it was engaging. And despite a recent obsession with the Nazis and their usage of genocide, she is rather charming. The actors were also working with British and Spanish accents. And though these accents were not very good, they did help to give the long speeches some life.

Shawn never reveals Lemon’s exact diagnosis, but it is implied that she is a schizophrenic. The audience watches snippets of selected stories from Lemon’s past play out. Lemon inserts herself into the scenes as she narrates them. Ironically, Lemon seems in control of her opinions, which are very controversial, but seems out of control of her life and relationships.

This is perhaps why she admires Aunt Dan, who seems to have an affair with everyone she encounters. Aunt Dan does not seem to have a past, because she is so much in the present, but she is a large part of Lemon’s. I must say Aunt Dan seemed more reasonable in script, no matter how controversial, but on stage she seems an over-educated, self-righteous, abrasive, idealist especially concerning Henry Kissinger.

This is obvious in a well-directed scene where Aunt Dan and Lemon’s mother argue about Kissinger’s policies during Vietnam. In a seemingly endless (but quite funny) rant, Aunt Dan cannot seem to understand why the media is criticizing Kissinger’s pro-American tactics.

However, the most engaging scenes of the show took place when Aunt Dan spoke about her swinger friends from Oxford. One specific scene involved a mysterious Spaniard, swindled by a beautiful, money-hungry woman named Mindy. The blocking in these scenes made me feel like I was peeking in on something scandalous, but I could not look away.

This production was OK overall, but the delivery of such socially and politically heavy material by such young actors was admirable. Lemon’s balance of innocence and controversy made her one of the strangest characters I have ever seen on stage, which fit the script perfectly.

Disturbing flashbacks give foundation for play

By Lauren Ellison

The University of Georgia’s theater department revived Wallace Shawn’s 1985 play, "Aunt Dan and Lemon," in the Cellar Theatre this week.

"Aunt Dan and Lemon" chronicles a series of disturbing flashbacks told through the eyes of Lemon (Paige Pulaski), a chronically ill woman whose joviality and pleasantly frank disposition often distract from the story’s core darkness. "Aunt Dan and Lemon" raises questions we ponder in our darkest moments, questions many of us never dare to ask aloud. Exploring and challenging the notions of compassion and morality, Shawn’s play, directed here by Farley Richmond, raises questions that that stuck with me for hours, even days, after leaving the theatre.

The play opens with Lemon seated contentedly in an armchair, surrounded by half-empty glasses of colorful fruit and vegetable juice concoctions. Makeup-free and hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, Lemon’s drab disposition paints an accurate picture of a reclusive woman living alone with the ghosts of her past.

Addressing the crowd with gentle ease, Lemon explains that due to her illness, which we never learn any particulars about, she was robbed of an adventurous life, never given any opportunity to see the world for herself. Instead she immerses herself in literature (books about the Nazis are her choice of late) while also living vicariously through the characters of her past. The most valuable lessons she’s learned about life stem from stories passed down to her by Danielle (Jennifer Schottstadt), also known as Aunt Dan, a close friend of Lemon’s parents. Aunt Dan captures the heart of young Lemon with her infectious passion and unapologetic outspokenness, and the two grow to need each other, and love each other, in a more twisted and complicated way than tradition would have it.

Lemon raises daring questions when speaking to the audience, at one point offering a shocking alternative point of view on the Nazi death camps. Are we really so different from the Nazis, she wonders? Killing is unpleasant, certainly, but what is so wrong with admitting that there is something inside of us that wants to kill? The answer: compassion. This emotion is beaten into our consciences from birth.

We are told that it is right to be compassionate, but Lemon wants to know why. I couldn’t help but shift uncomfortably in my seat when Lemon asked how the Nazis killing the Jews was any different from us poisoning cockroaches in our homes once they become an unavoidable problem. None of us would do it if it weren’t necessary, she rationalizes, but unfortunately, they felt that it was.

The play is an ongoing intellectual debate, stacked with extraordinarily drawn out monologues debating life’s most challenging moral dilemmas. Pulaski’s gleeful tone adds an unexpected lightness to the profound nature of her ideas, creating a chummy sort of camaraderie between the audience and herself. She embodies the essence of Lemon’s complex character to a tee, allowing a childlike innocence to bleed through her adult façade. Pulaski delivers extensive monologues flawlessly, nailing the English accent the entire show.

The standout performance of the evening came from Schottstadt as Aunt Dan, who is a dead ringer for Anne Hathaway in both physical appearance and natural talent. It is impossible to not be captivated by Schottstadt’s uninhibited confidence and raw emotion throughout the play. Schottstadt steals the show with her impassioned rants against anyone who speaks against Henry Kissinger, with whom she is almost humorously and psychotically obsessed throughout the play. Defending his honor and justifying his wartime decisions, (from this we can gather the story is set during the Vietnam War,) Aunt Dan becomes enraged at Kissinger’s critics. “What did YOU decide today?” Aunt Dan demands of them. Who are we judge his choices, as we sit in our comfortable homes, with our mundane lives that affect no one but ourselves?

Aunt Dan and Lemon dares to ask if we are actually as different from the Nazis as we prefer to think. Is compassion real, or is it a notion we think we feel because we know we’re supposed to? The painful honesty of the production made me both uneasy and unsure. Am I offended or intrigued? It’s something I’m still deciding.

Though the dialogue was compelling, all I could think the entire play was how much I’d prefer it to be a musical. Maybe I just thought the Nazi comments would have been a little less uncomfortable had Lemon belted them in an inappropriately upbeat ballad.

The script was indeed thought provoking, but long-winded and exhausting at times. The acting, however, was impeccable. The moral debates discussed in "Aunt Dan and Lemon" continue to haunt me days later, so despite the play’s occasional rambling moments, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make a surprisingly significant impression on me, and I’m a little irritated that I might be thinking about this play for weeks to come.