Edmund Wilson- The Little Blue Light
Play debuted in 1950
This strange drama of ideas is a bit Sci-Fi (it even involves a ray gun). It would be fascinating to see it performed, as it likely has not been for around sixty years. The problem is the setting: Wilson places the action in small town America, but nearly all the drama is taking place elsewhere. What we have is five characters who talk about the despotic forces battling for control of Europe and America. An idealistic magazine publisher is constantly forced to revise or scuttle article because one faction or another objects. A philosophical guru arrives in town, seemingly so the publisher can bat ideas around with him. There is divorce and espionage, with metaphysical terror hinted at but left in a merely talky state throughout. The most baffling character is a gardener who swaps foreign accents each time he appears, finally stepping forward as “the Wandering Jew” to give a closing monologue about, uh, “What you trust in, for all your techniques, for all your mechanisms of industry and politics, is simply the brute vitality that animates the universe.” (5.5 of 10)