Ruined wins the Pulitzer

For the second year in a row, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama originated in Chicago. But this year, I didn’t bother seeing it.

Given what I heard from TOC reviewer John Beer and from theater editor Christopher Piatt, in addition to other friends who saw the Goodman production of Ruined, it sounded like a good but not great play. And considering that the Goodman had stashed Lynn Nottage’s new play on its second stage (as did Manhattan Theatre Club in its subsequent run), it didn’t feel like anyone here was considering Ruined a major new work.

Moreover, Ruined sounded like the kind of do-gooding play that makes itself inherently, and annoyingly, criticism-proof. Stories about the play itself get hopelessly conflated with stories about the play's subjects, or the playwright's process and intentions. I find that plays like Ruined (or The Ballad of Emmett Till, or Black Diamond, or Lost Boys of Sudan or The Laramie Project) lodge a nagging worry in the back of my mind that if I say anything less than glowing about what's on stage, it could be read as a dismissal of the real-life suffering that inspired it.

Was I wrong to take a pass on Ruined? Unless the play takes on a robust enough life to be remounted by another company in Chicago, I may never know. What I do know is this: its run at the Goodman, from mid-November to mid-December, fell during the weeks when I'm normally scrambling to catch up with the year-end plays that my fellow TOC writers think might be contenders for our top ten list. Ruined never came up in that conversation.

AT TOC: Nine new reviews today, including Sketchbook and Cut to the Quick, five stars for ATC's Hedwig and two for the touring A Chorus Line.

Comments

[Tony]

Kerry, when you frame it that way, " why it's good to have an editor who can say' . . ." I think it brings up an interesting dilemma. As the print model continues going wherever the hell it is heading, more and more folks will continue writing, and my guess is the traditional editorial board will no longer be around.

Few people are good at that on their own all of the time (or else publishers would have figured out how to get rid of those salaries a while ago.)

In the absence of editors, do y'all think that a function the community can do?

I think if one of the first comments was "All your examples of social-justice do-gooder dramas, except for one, have to do with black experience. Is that deliberate because you're talking about 'Ruined,' or would you like to broaden the scope a bit lest it be misinterpreted?" the discussion would have taken a different path. Yet as a whole we tend to come out swinging across the internet.

Or is that silly?

[Benno Nelson]

I liked "Ruined", and much more than I liked the disturbingly over-appreciated "The Overwhelming" at Next Theatre. No, it didn't break any barriers in Playwriting but neither did "August: Osage County" for god's sake. "August: Osage County" was just "Long Day's Journey" with an iPod. There, I said it.

Did "Ruined" benefit from its subject matter? Yes, just as "The Overwhelming" is benefitting now, but it also had the guts to back it up, and will have a longer shelf life than its immediately and surprisingly dated counterpart. Also, it doesn't exactly seem fair to both act as though its subject matter gave it a free pass in the critical eye, while rolling our eyes at the play necessarily, on account of its subject matter. I think it benefitted in the sense that it addressed a contemporary issue people are interested in (perversely also an issue people are interested in saying we aren't enough interested in) and that generated an audience.

But all in all, a worthy play. I say congratulations.

[Ed]

Apparently I need to not quote celebrities anymore. RIP Bea.

[Kerry Reid]

Ed, if ever there was a celebrity who could come back from the dead and kick all our asses, it's Bea Arthur. I think she'd be mad if we stopped quoting her.