I’m Writing The Mormon “Fiddler On The Roof”
By Marvin Payne

Tonight my very able understudy goes on as His Majesty in “The King And I,” and I feel a little lost, so this month I’m not writing my column backstage, wearing brocade pajamas, body mics, and earrings. My understudy is entitled to a performance, what with having shaved his head, chest, and palms, having grown three inches and aged fourteen years, but still I wonder what I can do with my time instead of thinking about the guy I’m not playing tonight. What would the theatergoing public like me to do with my sudden surplus of time and energy? That’s what a drama geek should ask, I think.

Well, there’s obviously only one answer. Write the Mormon “Fiddler on the Roof.” Everybody keeps asking for it. Really. I’m in the MacDonald’s in Cedar City and somebody will ask me one of two questions: Either “Aren’t you the guy in Saturday’s Warrior?” or “Haven’t you gotten around to writing the Mormon Fiddler on the Roof yet? We’re all kind of waiting, here.”

It shouldn’t be all that hard. I’ll start with a stalwart and upright father
who has three sons of marriageable age. The first son marries out of the temple, and the father is at first devastated, but finally (after maybe only two songs) accepts the daughter-in-law with open arms. The second son marries an agnostic, and after a little fuss and another song the father caves in and loves her, too. The third son wants to marry a neo-Nazi, and the father, in a big surreal production number, at first tears his hair (obviously, I won’t be starring in this one), then his heart softens at the heartbreak in his young son’s
eyes and he buys the young lovers a Volkswagen (invented by one A. Hitler) as a wedding gift. Coming soon to a stake center near you. (Oops, I forgot. This is theatre, so I should have written “stake centre.” This reminds me: When I wrote last month that really artful smartful people should spell “color” as “colre,” columnreader Shirley kindly pointed out that the truly artful need not step further out of the mainstream than to write “colour.” It rathour warms me to have such helpful readours, and for this I thank hour.)

But I’m looking through my journal, where lots of ideas for plays come from, and I’m not (yet!!!) finding anything exactly like the above scenario. But I did find an idea-generating photograph there. (What’s a photograph doing in a journal? Hmm... Getting any journal-enhancement ideas here?) It’s a sunny autumn morning in South Australia, where I am a missionary thirty-five years ago. A young Latter-day saint walks through the church parking lot. She is about
fifteen years old, long chestnut hair, white dress, and about the loveliest child I have ever seen. Her name is Christine Virtue. Or something equally unbelievable, but true. I remember at the time thinking that there should be a play about her, and I wasn’t even a drama geek yet.

Sometimes all you need is a name. This lady’s name is pristine to the max. (Hey, Christine Pristine! No, let’s stick with the facts.) The degree of virtue suggested by her name would be, in this day and/or age, offensive to a lot of folks. How dare anybody be as virtuous as that name suggests? It’s funny, but have you noticed that offending people has become kind of a crime? It used to be that I was perfectly content to be called a pasty-white American. These days, if you don’t call me an Anglo-Welsh-VariousundocumentedNorthern European-American, I might sue. And if you try to impose your antiquated and barbaric notions of morality on me and it hurts my feelings or, worse, makes me feel “marginalized,” pack your toothbrush and kiss your family goodbye, because you’re headed for Hard Time in the Big House.

So what if there’s a play in which some guy takes young Ms. Virtue on a date and she rebuffs his advances and he’s offended, even marginalized, by her imposing her morality on him. He calls in the gendarmes and she winds up in court. The play is “The Trial Of Christine Virtue.” A musical, of course. This would be a cross between “The Fantasticks” and “The Wiz” (with a little touch of
“Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, to guarantee a complete box-office bonanza), where the judge could, if properly motivated, spring up onto his desk and dance, and the jury could file, swaying, out of their little pen and get down like a gospel choir. This is in all the future, of course, but not very far, maybe next year. Congress, cracking down on crooked lawyers (Did I already say this is fantasy?), has legislated that if a defense attorney loses a case, he has to suffer the same penalty as his client--same fine, same sentence, same community service, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. (How’d that get in there?)

Well, the defense attorney comes up with lots of strategies: innocent by reason of insanity, innocent by reason of delusion, innocent by reason of she’s really sorry, et cet... (Nope, I’m not going there again. Let the understudy handle it.) But as he discusses these strategies with her, she won’t have a bit of it. She won’t let him try any of the ideas that might actually get her acquitted. Because she believes in the real reasons for chastity, which to her have to do with the creation and protection of family, and the faithful expression of a romantic love that will last forever and, well, ...so forth. Finally, he buys it and pleads the real case. Also he’s falling in love with her. As is the prosecuting attorney as well, but that’s a subplot. (This is a musical--you’re allowed one subplot, humorous.)

The judge and jury are moved by the power of the defense’s arguments (way moved, imagine Sister Gladys Knight and the Brothers Pip), but the law is the law, and ultimately the verdict (“vourdict”?) comes back “Guilty!” Oh no! Unhappy ending! (Hang with me for a moment, here. Remember, this is a musical.)

The sentence is clear, imprisonment for life plus 90 years, and then some. No chance of parole. But the kindly judge declares that it can be what we in the judicial industry call “house arrest.” Instantly the defense attorney is on his feet. “Who’s house?” he demands. “Haven’t worked that out yet” replies the judge. “How about mine?” suggests the attorney. “Done!” cries the judge, as the gavel raps down, reverberating through the halls of justice. (And the aisles of Broadway.)

What do you think?

Well, I admit it. There’s no family here being driven out of their village
which was built on the foundation of their faith and culture. No Anatevka. No bummed parent abandoning their prejudice (or religious ideals) to the victory of love. Sorry.

But hey, what about my dad? According to his family history, which I am predisposed to believe, when he was a kid he was baptized in Mexico right after his eighth birthday (in an irrigation ditch), but confirmed in Utah. Why? Because in between his baptism and confirmation he and his family were driven out of Mexico because it was 1912 and there was a revolution on (actually, several revolutions--it seems that virtually everybody, Mexican and Mormon, was, tosome
degree, revolting). They were loaded into boxcars and hauled off to a refugee camp at a lumber yard in El Paso. Dude, is this Anatevka, or what?

A SCENARIO FOR “AS THE CROW FLIES”:

It is 1912 in the Mormon settlement of Colonia Dublan, Mexico.

A woman, Elizabeth Merrell, is hanging out the clothes. A young boy, Jude, whittles or helps, and asks her, “Why do we keep on living in Mexico, when the Mexicans hate us?”
 
“They don’t all hate us.”

“But they killed my Dad.”

Jude’s father was killed while resisting Mexican rebels when they abducted Aunt Rosalia, the other wife of Jude’s father. The family came to Mexico because in 1890 it became illegal in the United States to have more than one wife. The family must stay in Mexico because Rosalia may come back.

Juan Ramirez, dark and young, comes to the gate, and Elizabeth, suspicious and protective in these days of revolution, pulls out the pistol that’s slung in her apron and blasts a crow out of a nearby tree. Juan gets the message and leaves. Jude, fascinated, runs to inspect the crow.

(Hey, would you like to know just how much of this play is directly from my family history? E-mail me.)

But Juan loves Elizabeth’s daughter Mary Ann, whom he has been meeting in secret. He wants to embrace Mary Ann’s faith. He is particularly moved by the notion of being married forever. Mary Ann tries to get him to understand that accepting the faith has to be for better reasons than to please a lover.    Juan is baptized, but not accepted by the Mormon colonists, especially not by Elizabeth. When Juan is introduced at church, Jude calls him “Mr. Ramirez.” Mary Ann corrects, “Brother Ramirez.”

“He’s not my brother.” Jude is learning more lessons from Elizabeth than she had intended.

Someone visiting from another colony has discovered that Rosalia is dead, and consoles Jude, “I’m sorry son, about your mother.” Jude is astounded to realize that Elizabeth is not, in fact, his mother. Rosalia was. Jude is doubly wounded, by the loss and by the lie.

“Jude, you needed a mother. I knew how to be one.”
 
“So what do I call you now? ‘Aunt Elizabeth’?”

“Call me ‘Mother.’”

“My mother is dead!”

“Only for a time. Let me represent her here.”

But the tentacles of prejudice have taken a firmer hold on the boy’s heart.

The Mormons are ordered by the warring Mexicans to gather tomorrow night at the railroad station and load into boxcars, to be driven out of Mexico, to a refugee camp in El Paso. Juan and Mary Ann decide they must be married immediately. Knowing that Elizabeth would stand in the way of a Mormon wedding (or any
wedding), they go to Juan’s uncle, a Catholic priest, and ask to be married by him. After earnestly warning the lovers of their inevitable ostracism from both Mexican and Mormon societies, he agrees to a secret wedding.

The deadline for the exodus arrives, and Mary Ann goes with her mother to the station, not yet having dared to reveal that she’s staying behind in Mexico. Juan appears out of the dark on the railroad platform and embraces Mary Ann. Jude, thinking that Juan is attacking her, a chilling echo of what happened to his mother, grabs Elizabeth’s gun and shoots. But it’s Mary Ann who falls. Jude is horrified. Juan grabs the gun, and we wonder if he will shoot Jude,
himself, or Elizabeth. But he hands the gun to Elizabeth. “This is yours, I think.” She drops it on the platform. Bystanders lift Mary Ann’s body. Jude remains frozen at the center of all this action. Juan takes Mary Ann’s body from the bystanders. “Let me. This is my wife.” He hands her up into the boxcar.

Elizabeth, broken hearted, asks Juan to come north with them. He answers, “What is there for me in El Paso?” She says, “No, further north, Salt Lake City, to the temple where you can be sealed forever to Mary Ann.”

“Mary Ann is dead.”

“Only for a time. Let me represent my daughter across the altar from you.”

Juan doesn’t answer. He turns to the silent Jude, lifts him up into the
boxcar, where Elizabeth embraces him. The train begins to pull away. Juan watches for a long moment, then walks alongside, then resolutely swings up into the boxcar after his new family.

(Then the train is overtaken by Pancho Villa’s troops, who blast the
Merrell’s boxcar off the tracks. Then King Lear’s fool hangs himself, and Lear dies of a broken heart. Hamlet drops in a poison haze and Maria takes the gun from Chino and blows him away this time. The King of Siam, just before dying, hands the keys of the harem over to Pancho Villa, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Just kidding--the play ended at the last paragraph.)

What do you think?

Boy, I wish I were playing the King tonight. You probably wish I were, too.