“Vanya and Sonya'' was a big hit, but some of the characters are plagued by ennui, others by sheer stupidity, and the show follows Vanya, who has indigestion, in modern times. It culminates in an epic monologue that rails against society, but somehow Grandpa Simpson is shouting at a cloud that Grandpa Simpson can't see. That's pure Duran, and that approach was already all there in the first time I saw him play in the 1990s. It was a one-act parody of “The Glass Menagerie”, “For Whom the Southern Bell Tolls”, replacing Tennessee Williams' frail Laura with the highly sensitive and hypochondriac Lawrence. He collects cocktail stirrers rather than animal figurines and gives them names. (“I call this guy Henry Kissinger because he wears glasses and he’s made of glass.”) A combination of references, affection, and mean satire, as well as a parody of Williams. What Williams fan doesn't love this? — It was like candy with arsenic in it.
When David Hyde Pearce conceived the role of Vanya, he said of Durand, “She was always very good at incorporating pop, contemporary elements into her plays.” When writers do it, it often feels cheesy or like a quick laugh. He always has a very keen ear. And he can see exactly what's going on. ”
Yes, all of these references do Pepper Duran's job of flavoring the dish without overpowering it. But that wasn't all. As I watched more Duran over the years, I realized just how Ur-Duran the seemingly thrown-off bonbon “For Whom the Southern Bell Tolls” was. His handling of existential malaise, depression (which he suffered from), and questions of faith and morality was masterful and often brilliantly funny. (In 1986, he also appeared on “Saturday Night Live” as a guest/antagonist of Our Lady.)
I watched some of Duran's early famous shows, such as his breakthrough Sister Mary Ignatius Explains Everything (1979) and the unfortunately timeless classic Beyond Therapy (1979). 1981) etc., I am not very interested in them. Robert Altman starred in the 1987 bad movie. While some playwrights hit the mark when they were young and then relentlessly try to hit the mark again as years and decades pass, Durand actually improved as he got older. His plays became looser, more extreme, angrier. Perhaps it's because our world has become more and more absurd in its madness, or perhaps it's because we have become more and more absurd in its absurdity.
Duran's 1999 play, “Betty's Summer Vacation,” takes a humorous look at what he called “the 'tabloidization' of American culture,” humorously portraying the country's collective spiritual and moral apocalypse. I turned it into a sitcom. Ten years later, he made an even more pointed point in “Why Torture and the People Who Love It,'' in which a young woman begins to suspect that her new husband is a terrorist. (In very Duran-esque terms, they were married by “a pastor guy who also makes porn.”)
The show uses a combination of madness and surrealism, exemplified by the presence of Duran regular Kristin Nielsen in the Public Theater cast, to catalog the people who consumed the country during the War on Terror. I considered obsession and paranoia. Its unique combination of trashiness and pathos captures much of his sensibility.
At one point, Nielsen's character says: That's one of the reasons I go to the theater. To learn it. ”
Oh, how much we will miss Duran's normalcy.