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CHEWING THE EXISTENTIAL CUD:

THE TRANSFORMATION OF TRAGEDY IN

*THE DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS.*

David Johansson..page6

And here we find a wild irony, for given Hollywood's predilection for sugar-coated endings, Inge gives us what has to be renamed: not a bona-fide "happy" ending, but – and here one of Emily Dickinson's favorite words: an "adequate" ending – equal, erect, and filled with purpose. But now the kicker. Inge gave us this " adequate" ending, perhaps most poignantly in Splendor in the Grass, along with, and this is the stunning part, the brilliant combination – a happy ending in addition to a catharsis. Now, this can only be achieved when the audience senses a real, palpable, archetypal danger – the nightmare terror and fear of tragedy.

For example – in Dark, Rubin slaps Cora. The family explodes, falls into tumult, dissolution, despair, and so Inge coveys the total horror which children experience when faced with abandonment by a parent. It is the end of the world. The terrifying mysterious dark at the top of the stairs. Yet this is also the black vacuum of loneliness later reassuringly filled by the father's naked feet as he beckons his wife to bed at the close of the play.

Sonny, Rubin's son, sulks over his father's taking his place in his mother's bed and tells his sister Reenie, "They always want to be alone." To which she replies, "All married people do, crazy." What a beautiful image – The sixteen year old's innocent assessment of married life, and yet we find some happy optimistic truth in it. So Inge rescues us from the dark at the top of the stairs – which is loneliness and isolation – but not with the ersatz contentment of Hollywood, or the idiocy of TV sitcoms, but with believable solutions to emotional and psychological problems. In short, he tells us that we'll have to work at it. So we leave the theatre feeling cleansed, renewed, as freshly polished as Aristotle could've wanted us – but we had to risk something of ourselves to get there – that terrible blow which Rubin inflicts on Cora.

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