[In the following essay, Kane compares Wilson to Anton Chekhov in terms of their preference for realism in their works and their characterizations of solitude.]

In contemporary drama we have become accustomed to the drifter, the loner, the single—a character who is emotionally detached from others and who quests, usually with little success, for connections. This problem of isolation is not a new one, nor is it a peculiarly contemporary one. The agony of isolation and the efforts of characters to mitigate that agony received empathetic treatment in the drama of Anton Chekhov. More than any other dramatist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Chekhov was cognizant of ontological solitude. He knew, suggests Robert Corrigan, that “each man is alone and that he seeks to maintain his solitude,” but “he also knew that for each man solitude is unbearable.”¹ Chekhov's experimentation with dramatic form, content, and linguistic methodology is a function of his intention to convey realistically the struggle of his characters to maintain privacy and the need for his characters to share their pain. In the twentieth century numerous dramatists, particularly J. J. Bernard, Beckett, Ionesco, and Pinter, have focused upon existential loneliness and experimented with techniques which would underscore the difficulty—or impossibility—of communication. But unlike Bernard, who reveals the pain of isolation through one reticent character; Beckett, who situates his characters in surrealist settings; and Ionesco and Pinter, who defamiliarize reality, the contemporary American playwright Lanford Wilson, closely paralleling Chekhov, situates his loners in realistic settings to expose authentically both their need for privacy and their desire for connection.

Both playwrights are noted for their authentic portraits of reality—their realistic settings, speech patterns, communal activities, seemingly arbitrary landscapes, character details, and aimless dialogue. Yet, on closer scrutiny we observe that Chekhov and Wilson subtly balance clearly delimited specificity of detail, psychological time, and anthropocentric chronicity in order to achieve emotional realism: the reality of isolation.

Typically in these plays we find families, whether literal or extended, gathered in confined settings. Communal reunions of the clan are characteristic of both playwrights. In Chekhov's Uncle Vanya the family has gathered to spend summer holiday, in The Three Sisters to celebrate Irina's birthday, in The Cherry Orchard to forestall the sale of the homestead. Similarly in Wilson's Rimers of Eldritch townspeople come together to identify a criminal and purify their town, in 5th of July to participate in the burial of Matt and to negotiate the sale of the house, in Hot l Baltimore to share a cup of coffee, pick up a game of checkers, commiserate about eviction. A device employed by both playwrights, that of restricted settings, underscores the fact that characters in close physical contact are rarely, if ever, in emotional contact. Attempts to forge connections are frustrated. On this subject Millie in Hot l Baltimore sadly muses: “there are very few people living here whom I would remember a year after they left.”²

In order to portray life as it is Chekhov and Wilson define characters by their solitude and estrangement from life, not by their participation in it. “Private people,” as Matt Friedman terms them in Talley's Folly,³ although ostensibly united for a communal purpose, remain a community of strangers irrevocably separated by personal needs, disappointments, and fears. Isolation is not mitigated by commingling; rather, it is intensified. In Chekhov's drama efforts to break out of the imprisonment of isolation are foiled or gently mocked: confidences are ignored, confessions fall on deaf ears. For example, in The Three Sisters, Andrey, once an accomplished musician, respected professor, and happily married man, finds himself a failure in life and in love. He is surrounded, indeed suffocated, by his family; yet he is in desperate need of a confidant. Ironically, the man to whom Andrey finally confides is the deaf old man, Ferapont. Similarly in this drama Masha, devastated by news of the imminent departure of her lover Vershinin, seeks to share her pain and confess her love to her sisters. To impede communication Olga quite literally gets up, goes behind a dressing curtain, and rejects Masha's confession: “Whatever stupid things you say, it doesn't matter. I'm not listening.”⁴ Olga seeks to deny knowledge of Masha's adulterous affair, but in so doing she intensifies Masha's agony and her own.

Likewise, in Wilson's dramas, confessions, often long-winded and highly emotional, are intentionally short-circuited. In Talley's Folly, for example, Matt confesses his love for Sally and his desire to marry her. Sally's initial response to the proposal is an outright denial and rejection: “You didn't say that. Don't say that. … Talk about your socialism, talk about your work or something” (46). Understanding that Sally's rejection of the words is a rejection of the emotional connection the words imply, Matt repeatedly asks, “What are you afraid of?” but receives no answer. While ostensibly complying with Sally's demand to talk about nonthreatening issues, Matt carefully engineers the conversation on economics back in the direction of the merger between himself and Sally. While she does not acknowledge his proposal in so many words, the circuitous confession of love is concluded with a kiss, a nonverbal implication of their future merger. In Wilson's drama confessions do not always end resolved on a conciliatory note. In Hot l Baltimore, for example, Suzy's champagne farewell party is interrupted by the untimely arrival of her taxi and bulldozers barking at the door. A few sharp words elicit her hasty departure, but within moments she is back in the lobby bawling, “I know you love me, I can't leave like that. … We've been a family, haven't we. My family” (135-36). Her confession of need is punctuated by a “stupefied gawking silence.” In striking contrast to the noisy bulldozers, no one confirms, denies, consoles.

Characters who are of obvious concern to Chekhov and Wilson are the loners, the outcasts, the social aliens. In The Cherry Orchard we observe that Gaev is alienated from the group because of his age and anachronistic ideas as is Treplev in The Sea Gull for his iconoclastic artistic values. Those differing in lifestyles, sexual preference, religious and political beliefs are similarly separated in Wilson's drama. In Rimers [Rimers of Eldritch] Cora and Skelly are branded by the townspeople because of their sexual attitudes and behavior, in Talley's Folly and 5th of July we learn that Matt, the “no-good Jew,” was not only barred from acceptance into Sally's family because of his religious affiliation, but in Sally's words, caused her “to be thrown out of the family” as well.⁵ In 5th of July Ken's homosexuality and service in the Vietnam War serve to underscore the disjunction between him and former associates. Wilson suggests that these social aliens, having developed protective shells in what Matt terms a “Humpty Dumpty Complex,” find themselves unable to get close to others for fear that they will risk vulnerability and exposure (49).

Physical impairment of characters is a dramatic device used extensively by Wilson to reinforce the impression of alienation. In Rimers we observe that Eva's crippled back sets her apart from the activities and companionship of other young girls; in Talley's Folly that Sally's tuberculosis and subsequent pelvic infection have rendered her a sterile and neglected old maid; in 5th of July that the paraplegic war veteran permanently confined to his wheelchair is similarly cut off from relationships and aspirations.

Disjunction between characters and within characters, central to both playwrights, is communicated to the audience through a series of rhetorical techniques, such as contrapuntal speech, unanswered questions, choral repetitions, and the use of silent characters, all of which expose and enforce an impression of isolation. Choral and contrapuntal speech, whereby two or more characters are speaking concurrently, is frequently employed by Chekhov to indicate separation. In the arrival scene of The Cherry Orchard, for example, the thoughts and emotions of M^me Ranevsky, Gaev, Charlotta, Pishtchik, Dunyasha, and Varya overlap and cut across one another. Exhausted from the long trip and the lateness of the hour as well as the trauma of returning from Paris destitute, Ranevsky is nevertheless exhilarated by the sight of her beloved nursery. Memories of her childhood and her son flood her mind. Amid the cacophony of Gaev's complaints about the rail system and Dunyasha's chatter about her love life, Ranevsky is alone in her thoughts and in her pain.

Like Chekhov, in Hot l Baltimore Wilson sharpens our awareness of the disjunction between people by extensive use of cacophony. In the stage instructions to this play he specifically indicates that actors chosen for these roles should represent a wide range: baritone, thin-voiced, high and cracking, mezzo, alto. These sounds are orchestrated into a cacophonous response to eviction. Impotent against expulsion and dispersion, boarders nonetheless give voice to their fear of separation by verbally striking out against one another and the flophouse which has become their home. Cacophony is used more frequently in Wilson's plays to impede communication. Interruption of speech and speeches which cut across one another create an impression of disjunction rather than unity. An excellent example of the dramatic effectiveness of this technique occurs in the trial sequences of Rimers, scenes which are themselves juxtaposed with those of ritual and prayer.

Still another way in which Chekhov and Wilson reveal the pain of isolation is through the use of pauses. Pauses which typically indicate a hesitation to find a word, meditation on spoken dialogue, developing tension, and continuing thought processes are often employed by these playwrights to indicate some painful emotion intentionally left unsaid and unshared. In The Three Sisters, for example, Tusenbach intends to duel Solyony and suspects that he will not return alive. He hesitates before departing and we think for a moment that he will confide his fear and his love to his fiancée Irina. Instead, he off-handedly requests that she leave instructions to have coffee ready for his return. The unspoken in this situation exposes the essential estrangement between them. In 5th of July we are presented with a situation in which those gathered for the spreading of Matt's ashes are quite vocal on the subject of cremation, in general, and the spreading of Matt's ashes in the river, in particular. Sally's failure to remember where she deposited the ashes causes her to cancel this group activity, but we may suspect that her absentmindedness, while realistic and authentic, may in fact be a device to cut off conversation about a subject of great pain to her. Interestingly, we eventually learn that Sally, having retrieved the ashes from the refrigerator, quietly accomplishes her mission assisted only by Jed, Ken's reticent lover.

As these scenes illustrate, forging linguistic links is difficult, if not impossible. To dramatize this point Chekhov and Wilson often employ silent characters who are mute or intentionally reticent. They communicate their isolation in life by their linguistic withdrawal from it. In Chekhov's Three Sisters Masha rarely participates in conversations, in Uncle Vanya Sonya admits little about her love and loss, in The Cherry Orchard Varya will not comment on the proposal never forthcoming from Lopachin. In Wilson's plays characters like Bill in Hot l Baltimore and Jed in 5th of July serve in great part as silent listeners who absorb the pain of others while revealing little of their own, while Eva in Rimers retreats into silence to protect herself and her secret.

Characters in the plays of Chekhov and Wilson have well-developed, authentic, and appropriately convincing defenses to protect them against the agony of isolation. Chekhovian characters escape isolation by the relative security of memory or the relative promise of philosophy in order to forge a link in time or meaning, if not in relationships. In Uncle Vanya Astrov passionately involves himself in planting and protecting forests. For Gaev it is mental billiards, for Vanya work, for Tchebutykin drink, for Vershinin speech making, for Treplev playwriting.

Similarly in Wilson's plays we note elaborate devices to detract from the pain of loneliness: in Rimers Eva takes long walks in the woods with Robert, in Hot l Baltimore a young call girl helps a stranger try to locate his grandfather, in 5th of July Gwen buys music groups, copper mines, and male companionship.

In the plays of Chekhov and Wilson the pain of isolation determine both the subject and the dramatic structure. Chekhov is a master of subtlety; his plays of indirection are impressionistic, relying upon nuance, inference, tone, and repetition to implicitly convey alienation. Beginning with reunion and concluding with dispersion, beginning with spring and concluding with fall, Chekhov conveys a pervasive mood of loneliness. For all their talk about the future and about the past, about culture and about politics, about themselves and about others, few Chekhovian characters directly address the topic of isolation. This omission of the obvious is purposeful. We sense Gaev's pain when he talks to bookcases but is silenced by family, Andrey's when he eschews his family and opts for a deaf confidant, Treplev's when he chooses suicide. The agony of these characters is apparent and in the view of minimalist Chekhov would be diminished by verbalization.

Writing seventy years after Chekhov, Wilson paints a chaotic, noisy world, a world ringing with interruptions, obscenities, and angry confrontations authentic to a post-World War II, post-Vietnam America. Neither subtle nor impressionistic, this contemporary playwright directly addresses the issues of our time: alienation, dispersion, disconnection. In place of the family units we observed in Chekhov's plays, we find characters brought together by chance and by circumstance: they board in the same hotel, they live in the same town. They are strangers who pass on the stairs, friends who have no basis for friendship. But, as in Chekhov's plays loneliness is the basic condition of their lives and its pain has made them bitter, disillusioned, irritable, vulnerable. They seek out companionship even if it is temporary; they engage in conversations even if they are superficial. The passage of time in these plays does not take place leisurely; abruptly we are made to see disruption and disjunction.

In drawing us into a world in which those who are alienated contribute to alienation, Wilson, like the nineteenth-century playwright may indeed be suggesting that we are too comfortable with isolation. Like the wheelchair which supports and traps Ken, isolation is a defensive mechanism less threatening than connection. In isolating ourselves we hope to diminish the pain and risk of involvement, but, he seems to feel, agony is unavoidable.

With empathy and with sensitivity, rather than with cynicism and judgment both Chekhov and Wilson applaud our tentative, sometimes successful efforts to communicate and connect. More often, they commiserate in our pain.

Criticism on Lanford Wilson—the little that currently does exist—has somehow missed seeing the strongly similar techniques of Chekhov and this modern American playwright. With few exceptions serious scholars have largely ignored Wilson, while theater critics have generally dismissed him as derivative and imitative.⁶ “Only Chekhov can write Chekhov”, quips Edith Oliver in her review of 5th of July,⁷ and Robert Brustein, echoing a similar refrain in his review of the same play suggests that 5th of July is a “kind of Cherry Orchard for the tourist trade.”⁸ Ruby Cohn's treatment of Wilson in New American Dramatists: 1960-1980 is superficial; a mere four pages in length, it yields little more than chronology, plot summary, and passing reference to the similarity between Tennessee Williams and Wilson.⁹ This comparison is intriguing because parallels may also be drawn between Williams and Chekhov, but Cohn neither pursues nor develops this line of thought. Of more substance is Henry Schvey's essay, “Images of the Past in the Plays of Lanford Wilson.” Identifying the portrayal of the outcast as the thematic link in Wilson's drama, Schvey draws parallels between O'Neill and Wilson and Chekhov and Wilson, particularly in their use of setting as metaphor. But, again, these parallels are not developed. In what Schvey himself terms “a simple comparison” between Hot l Baltimore and The Cherry Orchard, the critic in one sentence judges Wilson's play as “overly schematic” and Chekhov's as “complex and double-edged.”¹⁰ Far more satisfying is the fine critical chapter on Lanford Wilson in American Playwrights: A Critical Survey. Gautam Dasgupta rightly observes that Wilson's plays lack resolution, focus on the passage of time, human fragility, and the nature of love, are nostalgic in spirit, distinguished by the subtlety of their characterizations, and generally comic in orientation, but tinged with sadness.¹¹ What this critic, too, has overlooked is that the elements characterizing Wilson's drama similarly characterize Chekhov's.

It would seem, therefore, on the basis of strong similarities that Wilson's debt to Chekhov is implicit in his techniques, characterizations, themes, use of symbols, affirmative rhythm, and compassionate tone.¹² Instead of minimizing Wilson's drama as a less satisfying copy of Chekhov, we would do better to apply our critical energies toward recognizing his talent, innovation, and contribution to American drama.

Notes

1. Robert W. Corrigan, “The Plays of Chekhov,” in The Theatre in Search of a Fix (New York: Dell, 1973) 126; 133-34.

2. Lanford Wilson, The Hot l Baltimore (New York: Hill and Wang, 1973) 67.

3. Lanford Wilson, Tally's Folly (New York: Hill and Wang, 1979) 35.

4. Anton Chekhov's Plays, trans. Eugene K. Bristow (New York: Norton, 1977) 142.

5. Lanford Wilson, 5th of July (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978) 112.

6. See, for example, Stanley Kauffmann, “How Sincere Can You Get,” Saturday Review (Sept. 1981): 46; John Simon, “Likable but Unlikely Transparent,” New York Magazine 15 May 1978: 77-80.

7. Edith Oliver, “The Theatre: The Fifth of July,” The New Yorker 8 May 1978: 90.

8. Robert Brustein, “The Limits of Realism,” New Republic 23 May 1981: 25.

9. Ruby Cohn, New American Dramatists: 1960-1980 (New York: Grove, 1982) 22-26.

10. Essays on Contemporary Drama, ed. Hedwig Bock and Albert Wertheim (Munich: Hueber, 1981) 229.

11. Gautam Dasgupta, “Lanford Wilson,” in Bonnie Marranca and Gautam Dasgupta, American Playwrights: A Critical Survey (New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1981) 27-39.

12. Although the playwright was unavailable for comment on his indebtedness to Chekhov, I have learned through the Circle Rep, where Wilson is resident playwright, that Wilson has just mastered Russian in order to translate and direct Chekhov's The Three Sisters. This suggests to me not only Wilson's continuing interest in Chekhovian drama, but a desire to capture subtleties available only through the original.