The Line of Least Existence, and Other Plays. With an Introd. By Richard Gilman

by Rosalyn Drexler

1) Home Movies, 2) the Investigation, 3) Hot Buttered Roll, 4) Softly and Consider the Nearness, 5)The Bed Was Full. Back cover "Written in the tradition of the Marx Brothers and the Beatles, Rosalyn Drexler's plays aim at upsetting some of man's hallowed applecarts. As Richard Gilman writes in his introduction, "[Her characters] have been invented only in order to rush madly around, armed to the teeth with language and also with the capacity to be quick-change artists, con men and false profits, wolves in sheep's clothing and the reverse, so that they might do nothing esle than establish an atmosphere of freedom. Continually causing one another to lose footing, slipping on each other's banana peeols, turning up in each other's beds, clothes, baths, mirrors, they make up new worlds of farce whose highly serious intention as in all true examples of the genre, is to liberate us from the way things are said to be.'"

242 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Rosalyn Drexler, a painter, playwright, and novelist, has been on the scene in several arts for many years. She is well known in Soho art galleries, infamous off-Broadway, and highly regarded as a fiction writer.

Reviews

[Rand]

Droll excursions in camp from a buried alive writer. Very Marxist (as in the Brothers) overall.

Some of the shorter ones were quite good and innovative, particularly the one where a woman dialogues with her TV. The TV offers such wisdom as Warm is the temperature that keeps fragile things from dying, and soft is the fragile thing when it yields itself to warmth.

The longest play—the titular one—did not sustain my interest, mostly due to its length. Maybe if it were read aloud by various persons it would be more fun.

Overall Drexler's use of language is pleasing—lotsa repartee, effective use of cliches, some original turns of phrase.

Many of the characters are "zany" —in one a gay man plays the "straight man" in the comedic sense. One of the shorter plays involves a call girl and a billionaire & was likely rather controversial at the time but it did not seem so to me now.

Worth picking up if one is doing a Sixties revival festival for a community theater (doing these with some of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's stuff would be fun) . Most of the plays are just a few scenes.