What Holds It in Place, Part 1

"The Sign in Sidney Brustein's WIndow"

Dear Readers: Thank you for staying with me since my last post. I've attempted to capture the events and reflections of this busy period in the three newsletters that will follow in close succession. They are a series of perspectives on a single theme that I'm calling "What Holds It in Place." The "it" is the sexual abuse of women. Part One follows.

When my youngest son visits from California, we go to a Broadway show. In December, we saw Kenny Leon's Tony-winning revival of TopDog/Under Dog, by Suzan Lori Parks. This time, it was Lorraine Hansberry's The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window.

I wasn't sure why I chose this play, other than for the two principals, Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan; I had a general admiration for Hansberry, but mostly for her more noted works, To Be Young, Gifted and Black and A Raisin in the Sun. I knew little about this play. But in April, when the production made the unusual leap from Brooklyn Academy of Music to Broadway, I got interested.

In preparation, I read reviews of the original and of this revival, and still wasn't sure what to make of it. Critics said it was "bloated" and "unwieldy" and "not very good"; its main failing was the untimely death of Hansberry before she could make further edits. Other than the star power of the main performers and Miriam Silverman, who won a Tony for her role as the sister, there wasn't a lot to recommend.

Critics aside, we went. From the start, the action is loud and messy, whirling around Sid Brustein, an obnoxious idealist who loves the sound of his own voice. He specializes in oddball business ventures like a folk song night club and a Greenwich Village newsweekly, purchased on the installment plan. His wife Iris is the more practical of the two--and the apparent breadwinner--but she yearns for success as an actress. “I am 29,” she says, “and I want to begin to know that when I die more than ten or a hundred people will know the difference. I want to make it, Sid.”  For now, however, she works as a waitress and handles the household chores--such as they are in this tiny apartment--while Sid has no day job other than to entertain bizarre designs of the paper's masthead and weighing whether to help his friend Wally O'Hara, whose reform candidacy the titular sign proclaims.

What I hadn't read before going into the theater was that this play is funny. Sid is charming and garrulous, a Jewish wordsmith. It's also sexy. He and Iris sling one-liners at each other as verbal foreplay. They also engage in role playing, with Iris acting out Miss Appalachia, a character Sid has concocted out of what he knows of her childhood in Oklahoma. 

But the role is getting old. That the fantasy is based on a lie is the start of Sid's undoing and the play's deeper cut. Iris is one of three sisters, each of whom tells a divergent story of their upbringing. Frustrated with Sid's objectification, Iris quits performing the tired cowgirl routine. And the marriage starts to unravel. She leaves him. She draws on other resources, including friends with connections to show business. Sid doesn't try very hard to stop her. He indulges his pain by drinking to excess and exacerbating the ulcer that is no doubt the result of excessive rumination.

There's a lot going on, and at first it was difficult to sift through the comic moments to discover that this play is about the abuse of women. The Times critic suggests that one might "shift the kaleidoscope" away from Sid and see the women as the central figures--but their mistreatment is front and center. However likable, Sidney is a man-child who does not support his wife, financially or emotionally. Yes, he's hot for her, and he makes that plain, pouncing on her the minute she returns from work. But Sidney's real instrument is his words. At this point in his messed-up life, he resorts to verbal abuse, deep character insults that go beyond angry words. Is it any surprise? Sid is a failure as a man and as a husband, a non-provider who relies on a waitress's wages to support his lifestyle as public intellectual. It’s natural that he would abuse his wife. His self-loathing must cut her down to size.

The debasement of women is ubiquitous and takes multiple forms. In the play's most shocking scene, Iris's older sister Mavis pulls back the curtain on her own life. While sharing a drink with Sid. Mavis opens up about her marriage to the unfaithful Fred. It's a jaw-dropping, secret story that has been going on for years. The opposite of Sid, Fred is a successful businessman who has maintained another family on the side. When their sex life dried up following the birth of their first child, Fred took a mistress and installed her in an apartment where she bore his child. Mavis accepted all of it, a husband with a second family, eyes wide open; without his money, she would not survive. She has two more sons with Fred, who, in an act of uncommon generosity, gives money to Sid's newspaper.

The knockout punch is delivered by Gloria, the baby sister who works as a prostitute for high-paying clients in Miami. She arrives in New York, bruised physically but ready to marry Sid's friend Alton. But rejection is swift: Alton, a black man, rescinds his proposal upon learning of Gloria's profession. It's a matter of principle, he declares, in an impassioned speech defending his decision, of not wanting the white man's seconds. In a rare stand-up moment, Sid counsels compassion, but Alton is adamant. After hearing the news, Gloria reacts briefly but then suppresses her emotion; she does as she is trained, popping pills and playing with the men, Sid and the upstairs neighbor David. She puts on music, and they dance away the pain. But David too is a user who wheedles her for help in seducing his new lover, a younger man who likes it when someone watches. Gloria agrees, but at the last minute steps away. She grabs her bottle of painkillers and overdoses in the bathroom while Sid sleeps off his hangover. 

Watching the play unfold was a revelation. Yes, the storyline is complicated, but the point, of the degradation of women, is plain. It's a form of abuse for a man to withhold support from his wife, and no surprise when he attacks her verbally. The entitlement of the wealthy husband to humiliate his wife takes a long-term toll. The prostitution is killing them all.

The play ends on an unexpected hopeful note. The death of Gloria knocks some maturity into Sid, and he determines to turn his lame newspaper into a vehicle for good. He will use his words to stand for something, and to stand up to people like Wally, whom he helped get elected but who quickly sold out to the establishment bosses. Iris can live with this more promising version of her husband.

It was emotionally affecting, and at the play's conclusion, the audience jumped up to applaud the physical, musical, and intellectually powerful cast. I was shaking, in a kind of distress. I followed my son up the aisle, wondering if I could keep up, could hold it together. We got onto 48th Street and continued walking, toward 8th Avenue. I was panting, something boiling over.

We stopped at a light. I touched his shoulder. "There's something you don't know about me," I said. The words tumbled out. "I was sexually assaulted twice. When I was in my 30s," I said. He swayed backward. "Actually, the first time I was 29." His age now.

"I'm sorry that happened to you," he said. "Have you gotten professional help about this?"

Lots, I said. "I still am. And--did you read about E. Jean Carroll? The woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual abuse? And won?" He said that he had. "Well, I'm doing that too." We crossed 8th Avenue, unsure of where we were going.

I had planned to tell him on this trip but did not know how. On separate occasions in 2018, I sat down with his two brothers and their father and explained what had happened. Somehow, there was never a right time with him; after college, he had moved to the West Coast, and his visits home were for holidays and family occasions, like his brother's wedding. But Sidney Brustein opened a way.

While we walked, I sketched out some of the details. That the first time had been a stranger, but the second was a doctor. "You can think of him as the Donald Trump of gynecologists." He nodded.

To Be Continued.