BEVERLY HILLS — It’s always a pleasure to write about a fellow Gordon—not from the Scottish Highlands, but one descended from Eastern European Jews. Incidental intelligence: Many Gordons came from the Vilnius area (Yiddish name “Vilna”). Jewish names often reflect a geographical origin—Pollack, Berlin, Mintz, Pinsker, etc.). Gordon likely stems from the city of Grodno.
Now that the genealogy lesson is dispatched, let’s talk about the late Edie Gordon, who just so happens to have been the mother of playwright Leda Siskind. Her latest work, Beatnik Girl, in its world premiere engagement at one of my favorite venues in town, Theatre Forty, is a freely constructed 90-minute version of her mother’s early life in New York as a budding writer, literary editor, and member of the Beat Generation. The other principal characters are modeled after Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Barry Miles, a close friend of these writers who became their chronicler in a wealth of later projects devoted to the Beat era.
Anyone interested in that time and its revolutionary impact—not only in literature—should make it their business to check out this play But though Edie Gordon may be a minor figure (nothing about her crops up on an initial internet search), and who knows, might be almost entirely a fictional creation, clearly there is much truth to this coming-of-age tale about a smart young woman who defies convention in the 1950s and finds her way to self-esteem and success. (Kerouac had been married to an Edie Parker from 1944 to 1948, but this is a different, subsequent Edie.)
Premiering as it is in Women’s History Month, Suskind’s play opens up the world of male-dominated writing, both in the literary world in general and in the burgeoning field of Beat poetry and fiction. Some publishers simply would not open their doors to female writers.
In her play the Ginsberg character (author of “Roar” here in lieu of “Howl”) is called Nathan Goldman (Alex Scyocurka), the Kerouac character is called Kurt (Bradley James Holzer), and the Miles character is called Paul (Steven Dawson Hart, who also plays a Philadelphia abortion doctor and Edie’s boss at the publishing firm where she works). Edie herself is played by Rebecca Del Sesto.
A second female cast member, Nadine (Andrea Geones, who also plays Edie’s mother, a secretary, and the new tenant who takes over Edie’s run-down Lower East Side apartment), may be partially based on another hanger-on of the Beats, Joan Vollmer. See here for a detailed, illustrated survey of the Beat Generation women.
As Kerouac’s lover, Edie survives his alcohol problem, his primitive estimation of women, his belief in the precariousness of “living in the now” without lasting commitment, and his impetuous decisions to take off on the road trips across America and other parts whose accounts would make him world famous. He would show up unannounced after weeks or months away, in the middle of the night and stinking from booze, and expect Edie to welcome him back with open arms. The playwright portrays Edie’s maturation of consciousness in one scene after another, gradually losing patience with him.
Nadine, her next-door confidante who is also part of the Beat circle as a waitress at the Firelight Café (a stand-in for hangouts such as the Minetta Tavern or Caffe Reggio), where they all convene and present their latest work, is so addled with admiration and love for these talents, especially for Nathan, that she’s convinced herself that he has a serious interest in being her lover. One scene of what was to be a wild, uninhibited three-way with her, Nathan and Paul, turns sour when the two men are only interested in each other, and she is humiliatingly ignored.
Siskind can hand out her criticism of women as much as of men, particularly the mothers of Edie and Nadine, and unfortunately in both cases they come across as manipulating and demanding, expecting traditional normative lives for their daughters (Nadine’s mother is only spoken of, but Edie’s appears as a live, caricatured character to whom Edie declares, “I want my own life!”).
The oppression of women comes out in other ways as well. For one thing, Edie is a highly skilled editor whose contributions are poorly rewarded both in pay and status. For another, if she is to receive a positive referral to a better-paying position at another house, she will have to pay an openly transactional price—seduction by her married boss. And when she does show up, fully expecting to be hired at the new firm, the secretary, obviously trained for such circumstances, trains her interview questions on the name Gordon in order to suss out the truth—that Edie is not a daughter of the Highlands but a Jew, a “kind” decisively unwanted at this prestigious publishing firm. (Perhaps her boss cynically even anticipated this would happen.)
Thus Siskind hits many of the touchstones of the era as she unfolds her story. When she first arrives in the decrepit apartment, Edie covers an ugly crack in the wall with a ban the bomb poster. The short scene at the abortionist’s office is a lesson in 1950s horror. While the author doesn’t focus on anti-communism, the Blacklist and the witch hunt per se, the Beats were, for youth, every bit a deeply appreciated force of resistance to consent and complacency. Ginsberg’s mother Naomi had been an active Communist Party member who took her two sons to party meetings, though she was later disabled by severe mental illness; the poet does not shrink from acknowledging her convictions in what some critics call his greatest work, Kaddish, dedicated to her memory.
The play is set in New York’s Lower East Side in 1957, with some forays uptown to scenes in publishing house offices. Siskind incorporates original poetry evocative of the styles of her literary models. Edie’s work, based on the roughshod treatment she’s been given by the men in her life, emerges out of concern for Little Rock school integration and the implications of Sputnik to turn powerfully feminist, citing the “silence of compliance,” as the play proceeds. After all the excitement of her new Beat milieu, all the highs and lows, the wine and drugs, the unmet expectations and disappointments, Edie grows into her strength and confidence, as we hoped and knew she would. Her friend Nadine, though, doesn’t fare so well.
The play is not complete without the music of the period, and we have the talents of Adam Zilberman on saxophone to introduce the play and punctuate each scene, covering the change of props, with his intoxicating free-jazz riffs. His contribution sets the mood and tone perfectly. It was a brilliant stroke to include him in the show.
Ann Hearn Tobolowsky directs sensitively, making sure to elevate the talents of these writers as she shows their profound human weaknesses, many of them demonstrably a product of their time even as they rebelled against it. The set design is by Jeff G. Rack. David Hunt Stafford produces for Theatre 40.
Beatnik Girl runs through April 20, with performances Thurs. through Sat. at 7:30 p.m., and Sun. at 2:00 p.m. Theatre Forty is located at 241 S. Moreno Drive, in the Mary Levin Cutler Theatre, Beverly Hills, CA 90212. The venue is on the campus of Beverly Hills High School. Free parking is available in the parking lot beneath the theatre. To access parking, enter through the driveway at the intersection of Durant and Moreno Drives. For reservations call (310) 364-0535, or go online to the Theatre 40 website.
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