136
LIONEL
ABEL
My judgment would be that it
is
not. But what is the view of the
author? At one point in the play
we
have the following absurd
and
yet revealing incident: when the junkies are finally getting
their
shots of heroin and are being photographed by the cameramen,
who are presumably to make a film about dope addiction, the
writer of the script rushes on to the stage and begs for a shot, too.
He, who can create something, needs the "flash" like the others.
Who, that cannot create, doesn't need it?
A play is essentially a game but a game played with something
sacred. A play
is
seldom made badly simply because the playwright
doesn't know the game-dramaturgy
is
not as difficult an
art
as
is
generally thought, and most playwrights, even hacks, are able
to
pick up at least the elementary rules, occasionally even some of the
finer points. What makes most plays bad is the fact that the play–
wright does not genuinely feel as sacred the particular value or ex–
perience which he pretends to so regard for the sake of his play's
structure. For actually, the question of the sacredness of something
is intimately linked to the very form of any play. I always notice
in
bad dramatic works the moment when the
dramatis~
begins to pre–
tend to have an enthusiasm for some value which his whole work
belies. The falsely sacred-that is the bane of the theater. Whatever
be the faults of
The Connection,
it does not give us that. In this
play something really is at stake: our estimation of our pleasures,
their occasionalness and their worth, our estimate of our health
too, for what good
is
it unless we can be enthusiastic about some–
thing else than merely retaining it? There is nothing delightful
in
The Connection,
little poetry, and a degree of pain; but from the
fact that we are shaken up, disturbed and self-questioning when
we
leave the theater,
we
know that we have seen a good show.
