Houdini: A Musical (Paris Press) - Hardcover

Rukeyser, Muriel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1930464045 ISBN 13: 9781930464049

Publisher: Paris Press, 2002

Synopsis

Houdini is an exploration of freedom and imprisonment. This cross genre musical unlocks time and reality―on the page, in a box, under water, onstage

This previously unpublished work offers readers the musical that was performed once in 1973 in Lenox, MA, with Christopher Walken playing Houdini in one of his earliest roles onstage. Houdini presents the spectacular life of world-renowned escape artist, Harry Houdini. Part biography, part fantasy, Houdini unlocks Rukeyser's worlds of illusion and reality as she leads us from Houdini's childhood in Appleton, Wisconsin (picking up pins with his eyelids) to his acts under water and onstage. We meet his wife Bess, his mother, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the poet's own Marco Bone, vehicle of voices, spirits, and songs. Rukeyser presents Houdini's shocking congressional testimony against spiritual mediums. She shows his great feats of escape, his complex relationships with his mother and his wife, and his ironic, untimely death.In addition to revealing the story of this country's tantalizing icon, Houdini offers a new understanding of Rukeyser's own work and life. Written at the height of the women's movement, the musical gives us Rukeyser's most famous lines, spoken by Houdini's wife Bess: "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open." Houdini's response, "It has. Now I am going after all the pieces." With subtexts of desire, race, grief, and love, Houdini presents Rukeyser's gorgeous, reaching language and her brilliant observations of the human psyche. The musical will appeal to young readers as well as Houdini devotees, poetry fans, theater people, and escape artists everywhere.

About this title

About the Author

Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) is the author of fifteen collections of poems, children's books, plays, translations, and several prose works, including The Life of Poetry and an Irish memoir, The Orgy.

Reviews

Rukeyser (1913-80) wrote clarion poems that illuminate the interface of the personal and the political, children's books, plays, biographies, and one strange and beautiful verse drama, this metaphorically lush and wryly incisive interpretation of the psyche and art of Harry Houdini. Her musical was performed once in 1973 with Christopher Walken playing the title role, and then was set aside, unpublished until now. A powerfully provocative figure, Houdini inspires Rukesyer to ponder our love/hate relationship with the body, our desire for magic and acceptance of illusion, the link between exhibitionism and exorcism, and the eroticism of bondage and the myth of escapism. Rukeyser's Houdini is simultaneously a jaded performer who bamboozles his audience and a mystic, a man who vehemently attacked phony spiritualists yet who pined for communion with his dead. And then there's his wife, Bess, emblematic, for Rukesyer, of longing and stoicism, who utters one of the poet's most resounding lines, "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open." Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

A noted social and political activist and writer, Rukeyser (1913-80) is best known for her powerful poetry, e.g., Book of the Dead, which focuses on West Virginia coal miners dying of silicosis. Previously unpublished, this verse drama was performed once in 1973 at the Lenox Center for Performing Arts. Here, we see the great escape artist and his wife, Bess, fall in love, marry, and face fear and death together. In the play, Bess speaks one of Rukeyser's most famous lines, which has been adopted by the women's movement: "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open." Rukeyser's poetic dialog and songs effectively contribute to the dreamlike quality of the play. An interesting addition to Houdini lore, this is recommended for large contemporary theater art collections, as well as collections of women writers.
Howard Miller, Rosary H.S. Lib., St. Louis
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Paris Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1930464045
• ISBN 13: 9781930464049
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160