Word: fiske
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Playwright Timothy Mayer's saga isn't very pretty. Fisk began as an itinerant peddler, Gould as a dirt farmer: together they built their lives from nothing, built a legend, a part of Americana. Chronicling this tremendous growth, Mayer knowingly reminds us of the incredible amount of destruction involved. We are reminded twice in the third act by references to Sherman's campaign of destruction "from Atlanta to the sea" that Fisk's initial capital was made from war profiteering. The brilliant and terrifying second act finale takes place in a palatial banquet hall overlooking a crowd of thousands...
Throughout the play, letters, money, and clothing are destroyed, thrown carelessly on the stage where pieces remain for the duration of an act, becoming part of Fisk's legacy. Fisk reacts to his first financial triumph by destroying his Jersey City hotel room. The scene is reminiscent of Charles Foster Kane destroying his wife's room when she leaves him. But in Welles's film, Kane's sole object is the furniture; in Prince Erie, the finite playing area itself cramps Fisk, and he becomes undisciplined energy trying, I suspect, to break the walls down, also Jersey City, anything that...
Gould and Fisk are super anti-heroes, playing for the highest stakes with little to gain but gain for its own sake; in one of Prince Erie's finest scenes, a shipboard dialog between Fisk and Gould, Gould reveals that his only interest in life is the satisfaction derived from having things, and Fisk laments quietly that he will never have a child. Though giants, both men are essentially impotent, and to Mayer--as to Welles--this is not a small part of the American myth, for their impotence is both a driving source of power and an ultimate source...
...stage in-recent years. Mayer's speeches combine formal rhythms and precise images with deliberately chosen colloquialisms and small mistakes in grammar, both creating characterization and recreating the formal journalistic idiom of the period. Reporting the market crash, the Heraldreporter ends his news story with, "Threats against Fisk are freely indulged in." Fisk's early employer Daniel Drew prays, "Deliver me from the House of the Harlot, Lord, and from the rest of this here lewd company who don't give two bits for Thy commandments...
Mayer's inversions are often tragically funny in context; Drew again, on being excluded from the business operations: "Them boys is getting a damn sight too cute." Fisk's dialog masterfully combines bad grammar and vernacular with innumerable phrases from the Bible. "Poor suffering bastards," he yells at the crowd he has cheated, "You want your money? It has gone where the woodbine twineth...