When Shel Silverstein passed away in 1999 he was remembered primarily as a poet - specifically a children's poet. The renowned author of such collections as Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic mixed the sweet with the absurd and the joyous with the ghoulish to create his very own genre of children's literature -call it cheerful dread- that earned him the plaudits of five year-olds and 55 year-olds alike.
But what few people knew was that in his nearly 70 years of life, Silverstein had become a veritable modern Renaissance man, and one with a wicked sense of humor at that. In the '50s, he got his start as a cartoonist for the military publication Stars and Stripes, and a few years later he was drawing for Playboy. He also wrote hundreds of songs, including the Johnny Cash-performed "A Boy Named Sue," and he released a number of jovial folkish albums like Freakin' At The Freaker's Ball and Drain My Brain. Oh yeah, and we shouldn't forget to mention the handful of motion picture soundtracks he composed, the screenplay he wrote with David Mamet, or the scores of plays, long and short, that he wrote over the years. Now that's a resume.
If you think about Silverstein that way, you might feel a sudden yearning to investigate the man's accomplishments beyond, say, The Giving Tree. Well, apart from reviewing four decades of Playboy or scouring dusty old racks of vinyl, you might have a difficult quest ahead. Fortunately, the folks at The Market Theater in Harvard Square have made life a little easier: Through the month they are running two programs of collected short plays written by Silverstein with adult audiences in mind.
Shel Shocked and Signs of Trouble both feature nine short plays. Alternating from evening to evening (you can catch them both on Saturday evenings), both last about 90 minutes. The Market Theater at Winthrop Square above Grendel's Den is quaint and comfortable, leaving no audience member more than ten feet from the stage and creating an atmosphere that's more like hanging out in a parlor room with a bunch of inebriated philosophers and drama students. Silverstein's plays bubble over with dark humor and playful, perverse deep thought. It seems as if the author started each play by stating to himself, "I wonder what would happen if..."
With Signs of Trouble, directed by Wesley Savick, you'll find plays ranging from chillingly honest and raw to simplistically silly. With a sort of manic mystic eagerness, the production drags its audience from highs to lows and back again. "No Skronking" features a young man eating at a diner who comes upon a sign that features the titular warning. "But what is skronking?" He doesn't know, we certainly don't, and when a waitress refuses to tell him, the escalating argument becomes a kinetic charade, equal parts raw emotion and drawn-out semantics. Meanwhile, another feature called "Duck" gives us Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds by way of a tutorial in logic.
Each play is the result of an author's demented but heartfelt consideration of humanity. More akin to goofy nuggets of humor, wisdom, and reflection than any kind of deep, dynamic drama, each typically ends with one or all of the characters in hysterics. While this sometimes verges on annoying, it serves well to keep its audience hooked, pulling us in and willing us to stay for whole ride.
'What will they do next?' we ask. Signs of Trouble is a sharp sustained burst of energy and absurdity; it is unsettling and all the better for it. The cast of six does a fine job giving life to Silverstein's words as they successfully jump from character to character, giving them each the unique personality that they deserve. The set, which rises and falls with each new play, is full of surprises despite its apparent simplicity. The same can be said of the production in general, which, thanks to the author's desire to leave us thinking, succeeds in developing an hour and a half of heartfelt, ever-so-twisted joy.
