by Geoff Hoff

Editor’s Note: Full disclosure, this is an article about a new work being written and developed by one of LATR’s reviewers, David Jette.

Picasso wrote a play. Yes, that Picasso. It was called Desire Caught by the Tail. A reading of it was preformed one night at the home of surrealist Michel Leiris and his wife, Zette during the Nazi occupation of Paris. Others present at the reading were Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and his lover Simone de Beauvoir. A member of the Brimmer Street Theatre company found this play and his first reaction was, “We’ve got to put this on!”

David Jette, another member of the company, and a writer, had a better idea. “Let’s do a play about that evening, that reading.” He envisioned, I imagine, a dark, brooding contemplation of art holding the lantern of life up against the crushing march of ignorance and brute force. It is just the kind of thing a young writer would salivate at, the crowning glory of his young career.

And then he read Picasso’s play. It was so unimaginably silly, his dark masterpiece turned in to a farce. And a wonderful farce at that. It is still a work in progress. I saw a reading of it recently, in the lovely living room of a house in West Hollywood that used to belong to an opera singer.

The working title of Mr. Jette’s play is something longer than the original title of the Marat/Sade. At the reading of the play I attended they said what it was, but I didn’t have the time to write the whole thing down. Something in the vein of Caught by the Tail, a Play by Pablo Picasso as read by Camus, Sartre and De Beauvoir in the Living Room of Michel Leiris During the Nazi Occupation of Paris One Dreary Night (The actual title is much more elegant, I wish I had it to provide you.) In a satirical nod to Mr. Marat and Mr. Sade, the company calls the play Leiris/Picasso.

It is exciting for an older writer to be able to peek into the development of a new piece, with all the promise and possibility still viable and vital. It is doubly so when the piece is as delightful as Mr. Jette’s work. The play is intelligent, well written, extremely funny, dark, political, silly, sly and surreal. There are pieces from Mr. Picasso’s play lifted intact in the script. From those fragments, Picasso’s play seems ridiculous, more pretentious than portentous, and Mr. Jette captures perfectly the absurdity of taking it (and Picasso, I must say) seriously.

Yes, Mr. Jette’s play needs some work. The first act is too long and drags a little toward the end. The second act doesn’t yet quite live up to the first and needs tightening. That is the whole point of a reading - to give the company an idea if the play is feasible and to give the writer an idea what needs attention in his script.

I suspect, if Mr. Jette does the work necessary, and the company does a full production of it, this play could put him and them in a whole new category.

Mr. Jette’s characters are rich, but special mention must, of course, be given to the wonderful actors who brought this reading to life, especially Michael Bulger who read Michel Leiris as if he were, at all times, one step away from a complete nervous breakdown at having the Master (Picasso) and the Nazis at his door. Mr. Bulger’s comic timing was sublime, his understanding of the time, the setting and the words were exemplary. Jenny Byrd read his wife, Zette. At first I thought the role too driven by the cliche notion of a socially climbing wife, but as the play progressed, I realized with some delight that I’d been completely pulled in by it. As the farce develops with all the requisite door slamming and well timed entrances and exits and hidden bodies that aren’t where they should be (Mr. Jette read stage directions - this could be one pip of a play to stage) Ms. Byrd pulled off the dark silliness of it all brilliantly.

Ian Madeira read playwright Albert Camus as a “let’s all just get along and do this thing as long as I’m in charge”, and true believer in the French Resistance. Jean-Paul Sartre was read by Patrick Baker with a very funny whining self-importance. I could easily imagine this man writing No Exit, then berating anyone who didn’t understand what it meant. His lover, Simone de Beauvoir, was read by Amy K. Harrmon, who embodied a delightful existential angst and sparred wonderfully with both Mr. Baker as Sartre and Mr. Madeira as Camus.

Tyler Jenich read Pablo Picasso, Austine Syre read his lover, Dora Maar. Joseph L. Roberts read a Nazi thug, and Dan Gordon, a Resistance thug.

When new work is developed, it is exciting. When new work as promising as this one is being developed, it opens up in me the whole notion of what theatre and art must be. I very much look forward to the next iteration of the Leiris/Picasso. Perhaps then, we can provide you with it’s actual title.