THE SEA HORSE
Moore, who in 1974 won the Vernon Rice Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Playwright for this play, based it on the old comic courtship scenario, in which two equally imperfect models of humanity find love and happiness together. (Shakespeare explored this same theme in The Taming of the Shrew, and Chekhov in several short farces.) One of the unlikely lovers is Gertrude Blum, who became proprietress of the Sea Horse, a waterfront tavern, after her abusive husband deserted her. She has decided to arm herself in 200 pounds of flesh. “Couple of guys slapped me to the floor . . . Can you imagine anyone trying that now?” she asks defiantly. “Look at me! I’m a fat pig! Nobody can beat on a fat pig!” Harry Bales is a salty old sea dog whose thoughts are turning landward, to dreams of home, wife, and children. A shipboard vision, induced by Cupid or faulty machinery, has convinced him that “Two-Ton Gertie” is the woman to share that life with him, and he has come therefore to ask for her hand in marriage. The first hand she gives him holds a “peacemaker” club, for Gertrude is reluctant to place her trust in another man. But after the obligatory fucking and fighting, Jolly Jack Tar and his fat, fair, and 40 Jill are united. Amor vincit omnia.
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At the very beginning of the play, when Harry was pounding on the door of the closed and shuttered Sea Horse and Gertrude was debating whether or not to open up, a man in the audience called out, “Don’t let him in!” Of course, if she had heeded this advice, there would have been no play–but then maybe the cast could have found the time to go down to Calumet Harbor and study a few real mariners and the women who love them. It might have helped.
