Word: murph
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Some people say that the only good freak is a Dead freak. Murph's a Grateful Dead freak-he thinks they're the best rock-and-roll band in the world-and when he heard that the Dead were going to play at Boston University on November 21st, he started making plans. He arranged to get his tickets as soon as the box office opened ( the concert was sold out in a day ) and when the 21st finally came, Murph was at the door of B.U.'s Sargent Gymnasium, with food and friends, at one in the afternoon, ready...
...when the doors to the Sargent Gym opened., there was a broad line of ticketholders stretching up the block and around the corner. Murph and Frank got in. The gym began to fill; first-comers went right up to the stage; the crowd spread over the gym floor from front to back, and reached up into the bleachers along the walls...
...playing together-not frenziedly ecstatic, not necessarily beamishly, outwardly scstatic, but nonetheless in a state of continual ecstasy. Their intense pleasure comes through in their music, in the way they combine. What the source of this ecstasy is, what the cause is in the musicians, is open to question. Murph asserts that one of the drummers is up on cocaine most of the time. Another fan who has lived with the latest Dead album, American Beauty, since its November release, suspects that the Dead, in the course of their earlier experiences and perhaps as a result of earlier drug...
This time Horovitz came down hard on these themes. The boys discover the Indian's identification card and torture him with the possibility of calling his home. Joey is torn between sticking with his buddy Murph or saving the Indian from this cruelty. However, the conflict of this kind must be subtle, but is no more subtle than anything else in the play. The play occasionally smacked of the "East Side Gang," the only difference being its slight political edge...
Joey chooses to side with Murph and pins down the Indian as Murph calls his son. The Indian is put on the phone, but to no avail, since Murph has cut the cord and stabbed his hand. The Indian is left reciting "Thank you," the only English words he knows, a receiver in one hand, a wound in the other. This time the play is much more to the point, a grotesque reminder that it is no more grotesque than what it documents. Why guerrilla theatre if it already happens on the streets...