MUZEEKA
Guare seems to have used this same passive-aggressive strategy in his 1968 play Muzeeka, which is being staged by the Strawdog Theatre Company. It appears to be friendly, good-natured, and playful, but beneath the surface it churns with anger and anxiety.
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Hiding hostility behind a charming facade is an adolescent gesture of contempt, one that says, “I’ll give you smiles and good manners, you fool, because you couldn’t possibly understand the pain I am in.” And many of Guare’s plays are steeped in an adolescent sensibility. They revolve around characters who are adolescents at heart, engaged in that painful adolescent task of forging an identity for themselves. Bosoms and Neglect, for example, is about a grown son’s difficulty separating from his ailing mother. The House of Blue Leaves involves a zookeeper who fancies himself a talented songwriter and whose son plans to achieve fame by assassinating the pope. Even Guare’s most recent play, Six Degrees of Separation, is about a young man who tries to achieve social acceptance by pretending to be the son of Sidney Poitier.
Muzeeka anticipates the adolescent concerns that Guare later returned to; but instead of seeming childish, it provides a wonderful reflection of the rage and uncertainty of the late 1960s. By hiding his anger behind Muzeeka’s fanciful dialogue and playful plot, Guare seems to be saying, with bitter irony, “Sure, American society stifles creativity and simple human decency in the name of economic progress, but no need to get upset. Let’s just laugh and be silly.” By having the play’s flippant tone contradict the anguish he feels, Guare manages to avoid the preachy accusations so prevalent in the 60s.
