WORKS

Featured Work:
The Long Christmas Dinner (1931)

By Jacobina Martin

The Long Christmas Dinner was first published as part of a collection of Thornton Wilder one-act plays on November 5, 1931 by Coward-McCann in New York. Initially produced, along with four other one-acts, at the Yale University theatre by the Yale Dramatic Association and the Vassar College Philatheis, it went on to licensed productions at Antioch College and New York. An operatic version with a libretto by Wilder and music composed by Paul Hindemith was first produced in Mannheim, Germany on December 12th, 1961 and was heard in America in March of 1963 at the Juilliard School of Music.

The Long Christmas Dinner dramatizes the lives of eleven members and four generations of the Bayard family over a ninety-year span of family Christmas dinners in the Bayard house. The first Christmas dinner is given Roderick and Lucia Bayard, who have recently purchased the house and who invite Roderick's mother to celebrate the holiday with them. As the holiday tradition continues, Cousin Brandon, a heavy drinker, joins the group, Mother Bayard dies, Roderick prospers, and Roderick and Lucia have a son Charles and a daughter, Genevieve, named for Mother Bayard. Over a series of briefly dramatized dinners, the children enter their lives and grow up. Times change a bit. Roderick becomes sick, eventually dying from a drinking problem. Genevieve goes abroad to study music. Charles marries Leonora; the two of them have three children: the twins, Lucia and Samuel, as well as another son, Roderick. Samuel is killed in WWI, Lucia and Roderick leave town to seek their fortunes, and an elderly cousin, Ermengarde joins the Christmas table. The last dinner finds Ermengarde alone. She is reading a letter from Leonora, herself now an aging matriarch, preparing to go to the first Christmas dinner at the new home of her married children, who now expecting their first child. Thus, one family cycle is completed, and another one begins. At a different house.

The Long Christmas Dinner is astonishing in its stagecraft, the same simple, focused, and spare use of stage, scenery, and costume which Wilder developed brilliantly in other plays, such as Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth. His use of the stage, the telescoping of time, the minimal use of props became Wilder's theatrical trademark, influencing every playwright who followed him. Entrances and exits, set and props indicate the passage of time. The entrance, stage left, signifies a birth; the exit, stage right, a death. The entrance is decorated with garlands of flowers and fruits, signifying fertility; nurses and members of the Bayard family enter the stage through this door, usually with a baby in arms or pushing a carriage. The exit is hung with the black curtains of death; characters who exit through these curtains never return. A few characters are able, for a brief time, to cheat death. Roderick and Cousin Ermengarde, for example, head toward the door of death only to return moments later, indicating a temporary recovery. A third door, which leads to a hall, is neutral territory; exits and entrances to and from the hall indicate the passage of time. Although the audience can envision an elaborate Christmas spread on the holiday table, the stage directions dictate that the actors eat "imaginary food with imaginary knives and forks."

The Long Christmas Dinner, like all of Wilder's plays deals with multiple themes. Most importantly, the play is about family. Wilder shows his characters as they experience the universal family ritual of a holiday dinner. The dialogue throughout the generations is timeless and familiar, the good news, the bad news, the discussion of family issues, all the dailiness of all lives. As with his later play, Our Town, Wilder uses the small details of family life to represent its essence. Repetition, telescoped time, the use of similar names over the generations all show family life at its core.

Time is a second key theme. Time goes on, but slowly. Little changes. Three generations of Bayard mothers, all of whom lose a child, comment that, "Only the passing of time can help these things." The family's rebellious sons complain about the slowness and dullness of small town life. Their observations are in sharp contrast to the short length of the play: events pass in stage time. Family life encompasses generations of families; a brief play can sharpen our perception of this truth by the speed of its pacing. The minimalist set design and meager props also remind the audience that it is witnessing theater, but that theater can represent life at its most universal.

The Long Christmas Dinner speaks to all generations. It is a simple, profound reminder of what is important. Holiday dinners bring families together in one place for shared food and conversation. Although family members come and go over time, the family remains constant. Our own tradition and the artifice of the theater keep these truths alive.