{"id":44588,"date":"2017-10-14T22:35:58","date_gmt":"2017-10-15T04:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=44588"},"modified":"2017-10-14T22:35:58","modified_gmt":"2017-10-15T04:35:58","slug":"how-to-fight-loneliness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2017\/10\/how-to-fight-loneliness.html","title":{"rendered":"“How to Fight Loneliness”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"nature<\/a>
Just above Cedar City. Theater and nature and good food, in close proximity to one another. (Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

We\u2019re just back from a very good Italian dinner at the\u00a0Chef Alfredo Ristorante Italiano<\/a> in Cedar City with a friend who lives there in town. \u00a0Again, I\u2019m amazed at the good restaurants and good theater that can now be found in southern Utah.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Before going to our friend\u2019s house and then, with her, out to dinner, we watched a matinee performance of Neil LaBute\u2019s play How to Fight Loneliness<\/em>, directed by the Utah Shakespeare Festival\u2019s longtime co-artistic director David Ivers, who has just taken a position down in Tucson, and with\u00a0a cast of three (Tessa Auberjonois, daughter of\u00a0Ren\u00e9 Auberjonois<\/a>;\u00a0Corey Jones; and the local favorite and now-sole Festival artistic director, Brian Vaughn).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The acting was superb.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I have mixed feelings, though, about the play itself.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Neil LaBute<\/a> is an award-winning playwright and film director who, for whatever it\u2019s worth, converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> while a student at Brigham Young University but who has since resigned his membership in the Church.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m certainly no authority on either Mr. LaBute or his work, but I seem to recall that one of the reasons for his departure from Mormonism was that he felt that Mormonism constrained him, that he could not fully mature as an artist while a Latter-day Saint.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

So I was curious to see\u00a0How to Fight Loneliness<\/em>,<\/em> wondering whether I might be able to detect what in it might have been impossible for a Latter-day Saint to write. \u00a0Mr. LaBute has the reputation, I think, of being \u201cedgy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Well, the most obvious thing is the language. \u00a0I didn\u2019t arrive intending to do it, but I found myself counting the f-bombs. \u00a0My final total, which I think is pretty accurate, plus or minus one or two, came to 89. \u00a0And that\u2019s not counting various other profanities and obscenities.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The small theater in which the play was performed was only about half full, and I can well imagine that Utah Mormon sensibilities represent a significant factor in the low attendance.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But ripe language, in my judgment, doesn\u2019t constitute real \u201cedginess.\u201d \u00a0(Anyway, I grew up working with construction crews in southern California, and particularly with a mechanic whom I regarded as the Shakespeare or Milton of profanity, so I\u2019m pretty impervious to, and unfazed by, swearing.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

What I was looking for, I guess, was intellectual<\/em> \u201cedginess.\u201d Adventurous ideas. \u00a0Provocative thinking. \u00a0Profundity. \u00a0And, I confess, I didn\u2019t see much of that in\u00a0How to Fight Loneliness.<\/em> \u00a0For me, in theater, the gold standard for that kind of conceptual richness or philosophical depth might be \u2014 beyond obvious examples like Hamlet<\/em>, King Lear<\/em>, Othello<\/em>, and so forth \u2014 something like T. S. Eliot\u2019s Murder in the Cathedral<\/em>, which, sadly, I\u2019ve never seen (and may never see) performed. \u00a0Or, perhaps, Michael Frayn\u2019s Copenhagen<\/em><\/a>, which my wife and I saw brilliantly done in London a number of years ago.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I hate to spoil the plot, but\u00a0How to Fight Loneliness\u00a0<\/em>deals with euthanasia. \u00a0My wife found the story predictable (except for the insertion of a distinctly melodramatic element in the third scene), but points out that the real drama of the play consists in the (very) emotional and sometimes surprising interaction of the characters. \u00a0There were a few points that both my wife and I found rather moving.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Predictable<\/em> isn\u2019t the word that came to my mind, but the play is unrelentingly (and, therefore, a bit wearyingly) intense, and, I thought, somewhat wordy. \u00a0And there were a couple of places where I found it incoherent or, perhaps, to be more precise, self-contradictory. \u00a0But it did do a good job, I think, of portraying the difficult issue of suffering from a hopeless, incurable, and fatal disease. \u00a0The sheer pain of it. \u00a0And the ways in which such suffering hopelessness can strain\u00a0a relationship. \u00a0Moreover, I should in fairness point out that the audience gave the cast a standing ovation.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you can handle very rough language and a whole lot of loud and raw emotion, you might find\u00a0How to Fight Loneliness\u00a0<\/em>thought-provoking and interesting. \u00a0But there were no ideas in it, so far as I could tell, that would be beyond the reach or outside the range of a serious Latter-day Saint writer or thinker.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own,\u201d prophesied Elder Orson F. Whitney (who would serve 1906-1931 as member of the Quorum of the Twelve) in 1888. \u00a0\u201cGod\u2019s ammunition is not exhausted. His brightest spirits are held in reserve for the latter times. In God\u2019s name and by his help we will build up a literature whose top shall touch heaven, though its foundations may now be low in earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Elder Whitney\u2019s hope hasn\u2019t yet been fulfilled. \u00a0And I wish that Neil LaBute were still with us to help us move toward the fulfillment of that prediction. \u00a0But I believe that the prophecy will someday come true.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Posted from St. George, Utah<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 We\u2019re just back from a very good Italian dinner at the\u00a0Chef Alfredo Ristorante Italiano in Cedar City with a friend who lives there in town. \u00a0Again, I\u2019m amazed at the good restaurants and good theater that can now be found in southern Utah. \u00a0 Before going to our friend\u2019s house and then, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"How to Fight Loneliness"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    We're just back from a very good Italian dinner at the\u00a0Chef Alfredo Ristorante Italiano in Cedar City with a friend who lives there in town.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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