![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckro“On a moonless evening, a man brings his new girlfriend to a remote cabin for a night of trout-fishing. But before the night is over, it becomes clear that nothing is as it seems… and as memory collides with desire, the truth becomes the most elusive catch of all.”
My mother and I went to see The River, by Jez Butterworth, which Hugh Jackman is currently starring in. My mother, as most people reading this likely know, is a professor of English Literature. And this play begs to be deconstructed.
The jist of the show is that Jackman plays a fly-fishing enthusiast who brings a woman to his uncle’s cabin, attempts to teach her to fish, romances her, and then reveals that she’s not the first woman to be snared this way. This is demonstrated as the scenes switch between him and two entirely different women, with indications that the drawing of a woman in a red dress that they both find is neither of them.
My mother’s take was that this was an extended reference to Ted Hughes (who was married to Sylvia Plath) and the idea that Jackman’s character was a “cold fish” with intimacy issues, and that was the primary focus of narrative.
I was willing to accept that as the “why”, but I was much more interested in dissection the “what”—as in, what exactly was going on. Clearly, neither of the women were the first that he brought there, and by the end, the order in which those two dates happen is immaterial. I think the big revelations are in three things Jackman says: When he talks about his uncle bringing a long series of women to the cabin but claims he would only bring one; when he describes fly-fishing as being all about a lie (versus using real worms or gummy bears, which he describes as “poaching”); and when he talks about catching his first fish and it getting away when he closed his eyes.
I think the fishing style describes exactly what he’s doing: He’s craft a lure, a completely false persona with which to draw in these women, but he’s doing catch-and-release fishing. He’s in it for the hunt and the challenge, not (at least in my opinion) to kill and eat the fish. The character isn’t searching for a particular fish (he’s not Ahab), just the broad category of Sea Trout. He’s not looking for a single, specific woman; he’s looking for a category of women who could all, in theory, be that original “woman in the red dress” (who has no face, because she doesn’t need one—she might have never existed or might have been the “one that got away”, but he doesn’t need to specifically catch her again.) One of the women is told to leave specifically after an exchange of honesty, which is directly against the rules he’d set up for himself. At that point, she might have just stopped and stayed a little longer because of the truth provided, but he refuses to bait the line with gummy bears—with anything real.
There’s an entire thesis in this, if you’re feeling it.
Overall: This has some funny bits and was interesting to analyze, though my mother noted the biggest strike against it was that Jackman never once removes his shirt.
My mother and I went to see The River, by Jez Butterworth, which Hugh Jackman is currently starring in. My mother, as most people reading this likely know, is a professor of English Literature. And this play begs to be deconstructed.
The jist of the show is that Jackman plays a fly-fishing enthusiast who brings a woman to his uncle’s cabin, attempts to teach her to fish, romances her, and then reveals that she’s not the first woman to be snared this way. This is demonstrated as the scenes switch between him and two entirely different women, with indications that the drawing of a woman in a red dress that they both find is neither of them.
My mother’s take was that this was an extended reference to Ted Hughes (who was married to Sylvia Plath) and the idea that Jackman’s character was a “cold fish” with intimacy issues, and that was the primary focus of narrative.
I was willing to accept that as the “why”, but I was much more interested in dissection the “what”—as in, what exactly was going on. Clearly, neither of the women were the first that he brought there, and by the end, the order in which those two dates happen is immaterial. I think the big revelations are in three things Jackman says: When he talks about his uncle bringing a long series of women to the cabin but claims he would only bring one; when he describes fly-fishing as being all about a lie (versus using real worms or gummy bears, which he describes as “poaching”); and when he talks about catching his first fish and it getting away when he closed his eyes.
I think the fishing style describes exactly what he’s doing: He’s craft a lure, a completely false persona with which to draw in these women, but he’s doing catch-and-release fishing. He’s in it for the hunt and the challenge, not (at least in my opinion) to kill and eat the fish. The character isn’t searching for a particular fish (he’s not Ahab), just the broad category of Sea Trout. He’s not looking for a single, specific woman; he’s looking for a category of women who could all, in theory, be that original “woman in the red dress” (who has no face, because she doesn’t need one—she might have never existed or might have been the “one that got away”, but he doesn’t need to specifically catch her again.) One of the women is told to leave specifically after an exchange of honesty, which is directly against the rules he’d set up for himself. At that point, she might have just stopped and stayed a little longer because of the truth provided, but he refuses to bait the line with gummy bears—with anything real.
There’s an entire thesis in this, if you’re feeling it.
Overall: This has some funny bits and was interesting to analyze, though my mother noted the biggest strike against it was that Jackman never once removes his shirt.
