Personal Growth in Christopher Durang’s Beyond Therapy and Oscar Wilde’s The Lion in Winter

Individual growth is a staple of humanity, Throughout a person’s lifetime, one is bound to encounter success, failure, and obstacles, and no matter who a person is, they are never the same at age sixty as they were at age six. To this rule, American playwright Christopher Durang is no exception, The difference between writers like Durang and an everyday citizen, however, is that the former’s thoughts, viewpoints, values, and belief structures are penned and preserved for all history—documented and analyzed for years to come It is because of this that we are able to read and interpret the ways writers change and the ways they stay the same, Durang is fairly consistent with his writing style, but it is important to also realize how it develops.

The theatre is often used as a source of humor to convey a strong thematic presence With their whimsical sense of urbane humor, writers such as Oscar Wilde and plays such as The Lion in Winter are remarkable for their blithe and lighthearted tone while at the same time conveying serious and oftentimes dark subject matters, The same is true of Durang’s plays Beyond Therapy (first produced in New York in 1981) and Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (first produced in New Jersey in 2012} The former focuses on two romantic characters who each rely on their therapists for help finding relationships, with much of the humor originating from the fact that the psychiatrists come across as more troubled than their patients.

The latter revolves around three middle-aged siblings and their bickering about love and life, and much of its significance is found in its homages to—and, arguably, parodies of—Russian playwright and theorist Anton Chekhov. Both are set in the modern day (1981 and 2012 respectively), which offers a historical inspection into the culture of the time periods as well as an insightful look into the current mind of the author. While to the unobservant viewer, many of his pieces may come across as nothing more than meaningless farces, the alert reader is able to notice that they could in fact be  interpreted as dramas deliberately masquerading as comedies. One interpretation of Durang’s work is that he oftentimes draws an audience or a reader in with comedy and uses humor and outrageous dialogue to hide his more serious intentions.

Through a critical analysis of these two playsflne early in his career and one late in his career—it is possible to determine the way Durang has changed as an individual throughout his lifetime, Specifically, through the lens of certain characters, it is possible to witness the gradual personal change of his values, as Durang becomes more nostalgic and a bit more serious as the years go by This comparative argument will seek to define both sides as independent entities and then bring them together in an analytical comparison with a specific focus on Durang’s development as an individual and how it affects his works, We will examine the ways in which he uses absurdism and farcical elements to indicate his personal growth and to communicate his usually controversial themes of homosexuality, family, therapy, and religion.