Word: marler
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...narration proceeds at a leisurely pace, as Marler recounts one non-earth-shaking episode after another: a failed date, a concert, his studies. The climax of the play is the day of his exam; Marler cleverly intertwines his own anxiety with a radio documentary about Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, finding inspiration in Kennedy's growing resolve. We even get to hear some of what Marler said during his exam, recited while a passage from The Four Seasons is played...
...play begins with Marler ambling on stage and announcing casually that he is going to talk about his recent life. His preoccupation has been his impending oral exam in English, which would test all of his knowledge about literature. The strain of this make-or-break test induced constant nausea and what he calls "social phobia," a fear of performing in social situations. Things were only made worse by roommate Oswald, an anti-social computer programmer with a bad habit of urinating in a glass jar in various parts of the apartment. Oswald is both comic relief and a warning...
...Marler recounts these events with distinct charm and skill. He uses a breathy, confidential tone for most of the narration, and his stylized hesitations lend a note of naturalness without seeming awkward. When he does assume another voice, as in one monologue imitating a conversation which he overheard at a restaurant, he is equally at ease, building from ordinary chitchat to frantically dramatic pronouncements with subtlety...
...When Marler attempts to ennoble ordinary episodes, however, he usually resorts to self-conscious high-culture references that are merely self-indulgent. When Marler recalls a day when Cambridge was buried in an inexplicable shower of white flowers, he is borrowing from Gabriel Garcia Marquez (as he explicitly states in the program) for no other reason than to borrow from Gabriel Garcia Marquez. By the time the play ends with a quote from The Waste Land, despite its near-irrelevance to what has come before, we are not surprised; the temptation to play with his literary knowledge, and stroke...
Which is not to say that there is no pleasure to be had from these references; any audience likes to be stroked. There is no question that Marler is witty, and fellow English majors will no doubt enjoy jokes like "Discuss any references to aquatic mammals in Moby Dick." But the pleasure we get from these kinds of jokes is like the pleasure at hearing Marler name three well-known English professors as his examiners; much of the monologue would be of little or no interest to anyone outside Harvard, if not outside Harvard's English department...