GRACELAND and
At first these two one-acts seem to ridicule women. Here We Are, adapted from a Dorothy Parker short story, is about a woman married less than three hours who keeps picking silly fights with her new husband as they ride the train to New York for their honeymoon. And Ellen Byron’s Graceland is about two Elvis worshipers camped out in front of the dead singer’s mansion on the day it’s scheduled to open to the public, fighting over who will be the first to set foot inside.
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In Graceland both women have turned Elvis into a Christ surrogate. They literally worship him. “I have loved him with the purest and truest love possible since I was 15,” says Bev, the older of the two. “I have dedicated my life to this man, to preserving his memory, to showing the world there is only one true singer and that’s Elvis.” Rootie, who has fled to Graceland after being cruelly humiliated by her husband, actually believes Elvis might rise from the dead. “I’m gonna make him come back,” she announces. “If you love somebody enough, you can. I was watching this movie yesterday and it was called Brigadoon, and Gene Kelly made a whole village come back just because he loved the girl so much.”
Reading between Rootie’s lines, one soon discovers that her husband, Weebo, is cruel and self-absorbed. She eats almost nothing because “My Weebo always says that if a woman ain’t got a shelf, then she should at least be as thin as a sideways door.” He also says that “the only things a woman should make are dinner, the beds, and out.” By the time she reveals what he did to her that caused her to flee to Graceland, Weebo has become a malevolent presence in the play.
