The Baltimore Waltz is a play by Paula Vogel. It revolves around a brother and sister who appear to be taking a European trip and is based on Vogel and her brother Carl's real-life experiences. The play had a workshop at the Perseverance Theatre in 1990, it was first staged at Houston's Alley Theatre in 1992[1] and made its off-Broadway premiere later that year.
Essentially a series of comic vignettes underlined by tragedy, the farce traces the European odyssey of sister and brother Anna and Carl. They are in search of hedonistic pleasure and a cure for her terminal illness, the fictitious ATD (Acquired Toilet Disease) she contracted by using the bathrooms at the elementary school where she teaches. Knowing her life is nearing its end, Anna is driven by a lust that compels her to have casual sex with as many men as possible during their travels, a passion shared by her gay brother. Assisting the pair is the mysterious Third Man, a reference to the classic suspense film starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, to which Vogel frequently alludes in detail.
The play actually takes place in a hospital room in Baltimore, Maryland, where Carl has a terminal illness, and Anna is imagining the trip that the two never took
Plot
Anna, a single school teacher in Baltimore, finds out from the doctor that she has contracted Acquired Toilet Disease from the toilet in her classroom. In an attempt to find a cure, she, and her brother Carl, plan a trip abroad to see Dr. Todesrocheln in Vienna. At the airport, on their way to Paris, Carl makes Anna hold his stuffed rabbit as they walk through security.
Once in Paris, the pair visit the Eiffel Tower and Anna notices a man in a trench coat and beret carrying an identical stuffed rabbit that Carl has. She feels convinced they are being followed. Carl waves the suspicions away and they continue to a French bistro. After their meal Anna sleeps with the Garcon, while Carl wanders the Louvre.
Anna spends the rest of their trip in Paris afflicted with the six stages that affect terminal illness patients. It is after Anna reaches the sixth stage, Hope, that she feels the desire to continue their trip to Vienna to see the doctor.
In Holland, Anna sleeps with The Little Dutch Boy at Age 50, a reference to Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates. When Anna returns from her trip, she spots Carl on the Magere Brug. Carl meets the man in a trench coat and sunglasses. Both hold stuffed rabbits. Upon meeting in the middle of the bridge, the two stroke each other's stuffed rabbits before parting in opposite directions. That night, Carl refuses to explain what happened and says that they must leave for Germany immediately.
On the train, on the way to Germany, Anna and Carl show the audience slides from their trip. However, their descriptions of the German countryside are combined with pictures that do not match. For example, when Carl speaks about Neuschwanstein Castle, the slides show a picture of the castle at Disneyland. The pictures are primarily of Baltimore or the Johns Hopkins Hospital. In Germany, Anna continues to sleep around as tensions rise between her and Carl. Carl feels frustrated that Anna is not spending time with him. Once he and Anna make up, Carl convinces her to go to Vienna to meet up with one of his college friends, Harry Lime, because he might be able to get them medicine.
Upon arriving in Vienna, Carl meets Harry on a ferris wheel. Harry Lime sells blackmarket medicine that he makes in his kitchen—he is a self-proclaimed businessman who sells hope. Harry Lime and Carl fight over Carl's stuffed rabbit.
Meanwhile, at the doctor's office, Anna and Dr. Todesrocheln discuss his work with urine. While they speak, Dr. Todesrocheln fights with himself over drinking Anna's urine sample. He drinks it and Anna recognizes him as the Doctor from the first scene. Anna rushes back to the hotel room to find Carl laying stiff in bed with a white sheet over him. She gets him to stand up and they waltz before the Doctor pulls a white curtain across the stage.
Anna stands in the hospital lounge as the Doctor delivers the news that her brother Carl is dead. It is revealed that they did not travel abroad and Anna did not have ATD.[2]
Background
The play was Vogel's response to the 1988 death of her brother Carl, who died from complications due to AIDS before they were able to enjoy a long planned European vacation.[3][4]
Vogel wrote the play during summer 1989 at the MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire. The play is dedicated To the memory of Carl - because I cannot sew. This is a reference to the AIDS quilt. The printed script contains a letter from Carl to Paula, dated March 1987, discussing his funeral ceremony.[5]
1992 Obie Awards went to Vogel for Best New American Play, Jones for Best Performance, and Bogart for Best Direction.[8]
It was staged at the Yale Repertory Theater, New Haven, Connecticut in May 2003, directed by Stan Wojewodski Jr. By then it had become one of the most popular plays for regional theatres throughout the United States.[9]
An Off-Broadway revival produced by the Signature Theatre Company and directed by Mark Brokaw opened on December 5, 2004 at the Peter Norton Space, where it ran through January 2005. The cast included Kristen Johnston as Anna, David Marshall Grant as Carl, and Jeremy Webb as the Third Man.[4][10]
Critical response
Frank Rich noted in his review of the 1992 production in the New York Times that “Ms. Vogel has succeeded in creating that memorial is most apparent when she finally must burst the balloon, turning her enchanted accidental tourist back into a grieving schoolteacher, the rabbit back into a dying man's bedside totem, the mysteries of Vienna back into the cold, clammy realities of a hospital ward in Baltimore.”[7]
J. Wynn Rousuck noted in her review of the 1992 production in The Baltimore Sun that "...it becomes clear that the play's overriding -- and saddest -- fantasy is a fantasy of denial. Gradually, the truth about the disease, the European tour and even the identity of the patient begins to impinge on the wacky, offbeat tone..."[11]
Malcolm L. Johnson in his review for the Hartford Courant of the 1992 Off-Broadway production wrote: " "The Baltimore Waltz" sounds like one of those cutesy, self-indulgent, even tasteless new plays that can make theater-going a dreaded experience. Yet despite all those things—no, in large part because of them—Vogel's uproarious, searching and finally devastating creation adds up to the very best of theater. Even to say that this is the theater's most deeply felt and richly expressed response to the AIDS plague is to diminish its powers."[12]
Ada Calhoun wrote of the 2004 revival in The New York Magazine: "...the show succeeds as a loving tribute and political statement, as theater it's stuck in an odd realm between rollicking farce and whimsical melodrama."[13]
Beatrice Loayza noted in her review of the 2019 revival production in the DC Metro Theater Arts that the play is “an ambitious piece of theater, fusing melodrama with farce and wish fulfillment with stark reality, in an impressively short length (the play runs 90 minutes). With work so dense and conceptually challenging, and with a payoff after the final twist that will melt your heart…”[14]
Related Research Articles
Paula Vogel is an American playwright who received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play How I Learned to Drive. A longtime teacher, Vogel spent the bulk of her academic career – from 1984 to 2008 – at Brown University, where she served as Adele Kellenberg Seaver Professor in Creative Writing, oversaw its playwriting program, and helped found the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium. From 2008 to 2012, Vogel was Eugene O'Neill Professor of Playwriting and department chair at the Yale School of Drama, as well as playwright in residence at the Yale Repertory Theatre.
Mary-Louise Parker is an American actress. After making her Broadway debut as Rita in Craig Lucas' Prelude to a Kiss in 1990, Parker came to prominence for film roles in Grand Canyon (1991), Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), The Client (1994), Bullets over Broadway (1994), A Place for Annie (1994), Boys on the Side (1995), The Portrait of a Lady (1996), and The Maker (1997). Among stage and independent film appearances thereafter, Parker received the 2001 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her portrayal of Catherine Llewellyn in David Auburn's Proof, among other accolades. Between 2001 and 2006, she recurred as Amy Gardner in the NBC television series The West Wing, for which she was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2002. She received both a Golden Globe and a Primetime Emmy Award for her portrayal of Harper Pitt in the acclaimed HBO television miniseries Angels in America in 2003.
How I Learned to Drive is a play written by American playwright Paula Vogel. The play premiered on March 16, 1997, Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre. Vogel received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the work. It was written and developed at the Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska, with Molly Smith as artistic director.
Joseph Mantello is an American actor and director known for his work on stage and screen. He first gained prominence for his Broadway acting debut in the original production of Tony Kushner's two-part epic play Angels in America (1993–1994) for which he received a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play nomination. He has since acted in acclaimed Broadway revivals of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart (2011) and Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie (2017).
Anna Deavere Smith is an American actress, playwright, and professor. She is known for her roles as National Security Advisor Dr. Nancy McNally in The West Wing (2000–06), hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus in the Showtime series Nurse Jackie (2009–15), and as U.S. District Court Clerk Tina Krissman on the ABC show For the People (2018–19).
Tracie Thoms is an American television, film, and stage actress and singer. She is known for her roles in Rent, Cold Case, The Devil Wears Prada, Death Proof, and the Fox television series Wonderfalls.
Pamela Isaacs is a California-born American singer and actress.
Margaret "Maggie" Edson is an American playwright. She is a recipient of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Wit. She has been a public school teacher since 1992.
The Normal Heart is a largely autobiographical play by Larry Kramer.
Rosalind Harris is an American theater and film actress. She is best known for her portrayal of Tzeitel, the eldest daughter of Tevye, in the 1971 film version of Fiddler on the Roof. She also starred as Tzeitel in the Broadway musical, having replaced Bette Midler. Nearly 20 years after the film, Harris played mother Golde in a touring stage revival of Fiddler on the Roof; Topol, the Israeli actor who played her father Tevye in the film, reprised his role, now playing her husband.
Sarah Ruhl is an American playwright, poet, professor, and essayist. Among her most popular plays are Eurydice (2003), The Clean House (2004), and In the Next Room (2009). She has been the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for a distinguished American playwright in mid-career. Two of her plays have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and she received a nomination for Tony Award for Best Play. In 2020, she adapted her play Eurydice into the libretto for Matthew Aucoin's opera of the same name. Eurydice was nominated for Best Opera Recording at the 2023 Grammy Awards.
Paula Kauffman Wagner is an American film producer and film executive. Her most recent credits include the film Marshall starring Chadwick Boseman, Kate Hudson, Sterling K. Brown, and Josh Gad as well as the Broadway, West End, and US Tour productions of Pretty Woman: The Musical.
The Long Christmas Ride Home is a one-act play written by Paula Vogel. It dramatises a road trip by two parents and their three young children to visit grandparents for Christmas dinner, and the emotional turmoil that they undergo. A significant element of the production schema is a Western contemporary employment of bunraku.
Margo Allison Lion was a producer for plays and musicals both on Broadway and off-Broadway, known for her role in producing the stage and screen hit Hairspray. Combined, the works Lion produced won 20 Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize.
Tina Landau is an American playwright and theatre director. Known for her large-scale, musical, and ensemble-driven work, Landau's productions have appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regionally, most extensively at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago where she is an ensemble member.
Intimate Apparel is a play written by Lynn Nottage. The play is a co-production and co-commission between Center Stage, Baltimore, Maryland, and South Coast Repertory, Costa Mesa, California. The play is set in New York City in 1905 and concerns a young African-American woman who travels to New York to pursue her dreams, becoming an independent woman as a seamstress.
Miss Witherspoon is a play written by Christopher Durang. It was one of three finalists for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play, a black comedy, was named one of the Ten Best Plays of 2005 by Time Magazine and Newsday.
Daryl Roth is an American theatre producer who has produced over 90 productions on and off Broadway. Most often serving as a co-producer or investor, Roth has also been a lead producer of Broadway shows such as Kinky Boots, Indecent, Sylvia, It Shoulda Been You, and The Normal Heart.
Tanya Berezin was an American actress, co-founder and an artistic director of Circle Repertory Company in New York City, and educator. She performed on Broadway and Off-Broadway, and also appeared in a number of films and television series.
Indecent is a 2015 American play by Paula Vogel. It recounts the controversy surrounding the play God of Vengeance by Sholem Asch, which was produced on Broadway in 1923, and for which the producer and cast were arrested and convicted on the grounds of obscenity.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
