Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play

Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play

The poster for the original off-Broadway production at Playwrights Horizons
Written by Anne Washburn
Date premiered May 2012
Place premiered Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington, D.C.
Genre Dark comedy

Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play (officially stylized Mr. Burns, a post-electric play)[1] is an American dark comedy play written by Anne Washburn. It premiered in May 2012 at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., and then ran from August through October 2013 at Playwrights Horizons in New York City. Mr. Burns tells the story of a group of survivors recalling and retelling "Cape Feare", an episode of the TV show The Simpsons, shortly after a global catastrophe, then examines the way the story has changed seven years after that, and finally, 75 years later. It received polarized reviews and was nominated for a 2014 Drama League Award for Outstanding Production of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play.

Plot

Shortly after an unspecified apocalyptic event, a group of survivors gather together and begin to attempt to recount the episode "Cape Feare" of the television show The Simpsons. The second act picks up with the same group seven years later, who have now formed a theatrical troupe that specializes in performing Simpsons episodes, with commercials and all. The final act is set an additional 75 years in the future. The same episode of The Simpsons, now a familiar myth, has been reworked into a musical pageant, with the story, characters, and morals repurposed to fit the artistic and dramatic needs of a culture still reeling from destruction of civilization and the near-extinction of humanity decades earlier.

Cast

Character(s) Original off-Broadway cast[2] Original D.C. cast[3]
Quincy, Businesswoman, Bart 2 Quincy Tyler Bernstine Erika Rose[4]
Susannah, Lisa 1, Second F.B.I. Agent, Itchy Susannah Flood Jenna Sokolowski
Gibson, Loving Husband, Sideshow Bob, Homer 2 Gibson Frazier Chris Genebach
Matt, Homer 1, Scratchy Matthew Maher Steve Rosen
Nedra, Edna Krabappel Nedra McClyde
Jenny, Marge Jennifer R. Morris Kimberly Gilbert
Colleen, First F.B.I. Agent, Lisa 2 Colleen Werthmann Amy McWilliams
Sam, Bart 1, Mr. Burns Sam Breslin Wright James Sugg

History

Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play was written by Anne Washburn.[5] For a long time, she had been exploring what it would be like "to take a TV show and push it past the apocalypse and see what happened to it" and while she originally considered Friends, Cheers, and M*A*S*H, she ultimately settled on The Simpsons.[6] Washburn held a workshop for a week in a bank vault beneath Wall Street which was being used as a shared rehearsal space in 2008 to see how much of any episode of The Simpsons the actors she had assembled, including Matthew Maher, Maria Dizzia, and Jennifer R. Morris, could remember.[5][6] Maher knew The Simpsons well and the group decided on the 1993 episode "Cape Feare", based on the 1991 film Cape Fear, itself a remake of an eponymous 1962 film which is based on the 1957 novel The Executioners.[5][7] He helped Dizzia and Morris remember the episode, then the two of them went on to perform it for an audience without his help; Washburn subsequently utilized recordings of this process in writing her play's first act.[5]

The play, a dark comedy, was premiered in May 2012 at Washington, D.C.'s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company by the theater troupe The Civilians.[1][5] It was directed by Steven Cosson who got confirmation from several lawyers that the play fell under the umbrella of fair use.[5] Cosson also directed the New York City production at Playwrights Horizons that premiered on September 15, 2013.[2] Maher and Morris, who had not appeared in the Woolly Mammoth production, returned for the New York staging.[2][5] At Playwrights, the show ran until October 20, 2013.[8] Samuel French, Inc. published the show's script and licenses productions of the show.[1]

Reception

In Time, Richard Zoglin characterized the reaction to the show as receiving "some rave reviews, a few equally passionate dissents and sellout crowds."[9] Ben Brantley of The New York Times compared Mr. Burns to Giovanni Boccaccio's 14th-century book The Decameron in which a group of Italian youths have fled the Black Death to a villa where they begin to exchange stories.[2] "At the end of Steve Cosson's vertiginous production, which opened on Sunday night at Playwrights Horizons, you’re likely to feel both exhausted and exhilarated from all the layers of time and thought you've traveled through", wrote Brantley.[2] Reviewing for Vulture, Scott Brown found "Cape Feare" to be "a perfect palimpsest" and commended the ending musical number as "equal parts Brecht and Bart, Homer and the other Homer".[10]

In his otherwise positive review, Brown noted that the play's "flabby middle act could use some tightening, to better dramatize Washburn’s talky deepthink."[10] Marilyn Stasio wrote for Variety that the "piece loses sight of its humanity with an overproduced pop-rap-operetta in the underplotted second act".[11] The Huffington Post's David Finkle felt that the play "could be contained in a 15-minute skit--if not quite a 140-character tweet" and that Washburn "stretches and stretches it through [its] three parts".[12]

The play is referenced in the 2015 The Simpsons episode "Let's Go Fly a Coot" as part of a list of recent post-apocalyptic films (despite the fact that it is not a film).

Accolades

Year Award Subject Result Reference
2014 Drama League Award Outstanding Production of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play Nominated [8]

Analysis

Julie Grossman examined Mr. Burns as an instance of multilayered adaptation. She wrote that the show "challenges audiences to embrace the imaginative (if strange and alienating) scions, or adaptations, of cultural matter."[13] In reference to characters in the play's second act bargaining for rights to and lines from other Simpsons episodes, she noted "That permissions and copyright have survived the apocalypse brings out the absurdity of owning the rights to artistic production and dialogue and the persistence of capitalism."[14] Grossman differentiated Mr. Burns from Emily St. John Mandel's 2014 novel Station Eleven, which also examines storytelling in a postapocalyptic setting, in how each work treats the catalyst for its respective apocalypse: a fairly random flu outbreak in Station Eleven versus the greed-driven nuclear collapse in Mr. Burns.[15] "Although the play's postmodern mash-up of television, film, and theater is highly entertaining, its powerful ethics resides in seeing capitalism and consumerism (symbolized by the greedy Simpsons character Mr. Burns) as the causes of civilization's decay."[16]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Mr. Burns, a post-electric play". Samuel French. Samuel French, Inc. Archived from the original on September 12, 2015. Retrieved October 3, 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Brantley, Ben (September 15, 2013). "Stand Up, Survivors; Homer Is With You". The New York Times. Retrieved July 1, 2014.
  3. ↑ Gilbert, Sophie (June 5, 2012). "Theater Review: "Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play" at Woolly Mammoth". Washingtonian. Retrieved October 18, 2014.
  4. ↑ Gunther, Amanda (June 5, 2012). "'Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play' at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company by Amanda Gunther". DC Metro Theater Arts. Retrieved October 19, 2014.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Grode, Eric (May 31, 2012). "'The Simpsons' as a Text for the Ages". The New York Times. Retrieved July 1, 2014.
  6. 1 2 Del Signore, John (September 27, 2013). "Excellent: Playwright Anne Washburn Talks Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play". Gothamist. Gothamist LLC. Retrieved July 2, 2014.
  7. ↑ Weisfeld, Miriam (2012). "Essential Narrative" (PDF). Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. p. 4. Retrieved July 2, 2014.
  8. 1 2 "Mr. Burns, a post-electric play". Lortel Archives. Lucille Lortel Foundation. Retrieved July 2, 2014.
  9. ↑ Zoglin, Richard (September 25, 2013). "When The Simpsons Rules the World: Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play". Time. Retrieved July 2, 2014.
  10. 1 2 Brown, Scott (September 17, 2013). "Apocalypse? D'oh! Scott Brown Reviews Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play". Vulture. Retrieved July 2, 2014.
  11. ↑ Stasio, Marilyn (September 16, 2013). "Off Broadway Review: 'Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play'". Variety. Retrieved July 2, 2014.
  12. ↑ Finkle, David (September 16, 2013). "First Nighter: Anne Washburn's "Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play" Does Go On and On and...". The Huffington Post. Retrieved July 2, 2014.
  13. ↑ Grossman 2015, p. 190.
  14. ↑ Grossman 2015, p. 184.
  15. ↑ Grossman 2015, p. 181.
  16. ↑ Grossman 2015, pp. 181–182.

Cited

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