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Yesterday I saw [ai] a new adaptation of Anthem playing in New York City. All I can say about my evaluation of it was that it could have been worse, but not much.
I would say the first 3/4 of the performance was consistent with the novel and done somewhat tolerably (despite the audience giggling during scenes that weren’t humorous). One particular scene that was played really wrong (intentionally) was the scene in which Equality takes the name Prometheus. When he announces the name he has chosen, the actor portraying Liberty grimaced her face as if that was a horrible name for him to take because it is odd-sounding, and Liberty replied “His name was Prometheus?”
However, the last 1/4 of the play completely destroys almost any small virtues it possessed.
After Liberty and Equality discover the word “I,” the play takes a bizarre turn–the play is described as including an “extension” of the novel.
The events that occur during this portion of the play center on International and Unity being tried for Equality’s “crimes.” International is portrayed as a second-hander more afraid of independence than Peter Keating could ever be. He explicitly rejects the concept “I.” The dialogue continuously equivocates and package-deals around the concept of “community.”
The worst part of the play–which undercuts the entire theme–is the last scene in which Liberty and Equality are alone in their house and Liberty states that she feels that the more they discover the more alone and invisible she feels. The play ends with Equality alone with his books.
From reading some of the press regarding this performance, it is clear that its purpose was not to portray Anthem but to illustrate that “community is a human need.”
The only benefit of the play, to me, was that it might provoke people to actually read Anthem. But that might be too optimistic, as evidenced by the fact that one of the audience members was wearing a shirt that stated “All Surplus is Immoral.”
This is the second adaptation of Anthem for the stage that I know of (the other one was reportedly bizarre as well), following Jeff Britting’s remarkable version. This fact at least shows there is some interest in Ayn Rand’s works.
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Following a link provided by Amesh A. in his comments, I concur that Amesh accurately described the playwright-director of [ai] as having “extended” Anthem to inject into it a theme advocating “community.” From the linked story:
“Individualism is important, and as long as you make decisions based on how it will affect others, it’s okay,” she [the playwright-director] said. “But community is a human need. If socialism has that as a goal, then I’m all for a communal identity as opposed to being isolated on your own.”
To do this, she ignores or overrides the depiction of chosen relationships described by Ayn Rand in the closing chapter of the novel:
I shall steal one day, for the last time, into the cursed City of my birth. I shall call to me my friend who has no name save International 4-8818, and all those like him, Fraternity 2-5503, who cries without reason, and Solidarity 9-6347 who calls for help in the night, and a few others. I shall call to me all the men and the women whose spirit has not been killed within them and who suffer under the yoke of their brothers. They will follow me and I shall lead them to my fortress. And here, in this uncharted wilderness, I and they, my chosen friends, my fellow-builders, shall write the first chapter in the new history of man.
It’s probable that Equality 7-2521 never thinks of as workers the two who cry and call for help, that both will experience debilitating shocks as they first adjust to life without regimentation and irrationality, that Equality instead considers them victims of the miserable order under which he himself had suffered, that they are values to him as friends, as persons whose consciousnesses respond in ways much like his own. Thus, Ayn Rand has in this brief passage has addressed the value a couple would attain from having others in their lives.
The playwright who left this out so as to instead depict Liberty feeling lonely and invisible has distorted Ayn Rand in disregard of the evidence provided in Ayn Rand’s writing. Of course, this is par for the course among Ayn Rand’s critics.
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