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Aria Da Capo

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
article in sidewalk.com by Belinda Taylor

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The final offering in Exit Theatre's wildly
successful Absurdist Season, Edna St. Vincent
Millay's "Aria da Capo" is at once a modern
harlequinade and an anti-war play. Done up in
commedia style, it features the stock characters
Columbine and Pierrot and — like any good
absurdist play — its meaning is ultimately left to
the audience. In this case, however, deciding
whether the play works as comedy or tragedy
may be moot. It's clearly both.

An opening farcical scene between Columbine and
Pierrot makes the point: These are children of the
materialistic modern world, decadent and wholly
self-indulgent. The story shifts to a pastoral scene
involving two shepherds and turns deadly when
they discover buried jewels and then kill each
other, exposing the consequences of unfettered
greed. Various scenes ensue with the action
finally shifting back to our decadent heroine and
hero.

What's it all mean? As director Jacqueline
Blackman teases, "Believing in the unbelievable,
being then tricked back into reality, you might
secretly doubt whether you know your
companions as well as you think." Absurd, no?
—Belinda Taylor

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