Customer Reviews

When You Comin' Back Red Ryder?.

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From the jacket of my hard bound copy of this book, it states, "... forces the reader to turn the pages quickly to satisfy his simple curiosity: What happens next? How does it end?". So true. This tense, violent suspense play had me doing exactly as predicted, but when I had finished, I felt as if I had been gawking at a horrendous car crash, and felt a bit guilty for my indulgence. Mark Medoff's 1973 Off-Broadway play about a violent armed assault in a New Mexican diner is indebted and infatuated with William Inge's play "Bus Stop", also concerning a diner, and the threatening violence which lurks unborn throughout Inge's play, erupts in a sensational, exploitative fury in Medoff's. The characters seem like twisted versions of Inge's characters, one even nearly shares the same name, but the inhabitants of Medoff's diner are never fully developed as real people before, during or after the violent surge. Still, there is much sympathy to be had for Medoff's strange anti-hero protagonist, Red, and the pace of the play is as swift as it would be witnessing a bank hold-up.

In the 1960s the Interstate Highway System invades rural America, transforming bucolic burgs into oversized truck stops with dispirited residents. In one such town in New Mexico, Stephen "Red" Ryder dreams of breaking out to become a big man, but never quite makes it. He works graveyards at a diner he theatrically hates and tries to pretend there's no sexual tension with the waitress who takes over from him. Then, one half-crowded Sunday breakfast, a menacing stranger comes in packing iron and changes everything.

Presaging the casual violence of David Mamet or Martin McDonagh, Mark Medoff's debut New York play pushes hard on the clash of cultures that was in high gear in the pre-Woodstock years and is still essentially underway. Red has a high opinion of himself, but doesn't act on it; he wants to be as powerful as Teddy, but when faced with that kind of might, he's defenseless. Teddy seems to be nerving himself up to be Nietzsche's superman, but can't quite make the leap.

Other characters include Angel, whose world is turned so inward that she doesn't realize how deeply she loves; Lyle, who loves so intently that he no longer has anything left to give away; Clarisse and Richard Etheridge, whose high-caste marriage is held up by secrets even they no longer acknowledge; and Cheryl, Teddy's hippie girlfriend, who believes in all the peace and love to which Teddy is the complete opposite.

Six blustery characters, incapable of action, are trapped in a small diner with a man who is incapable of shutting up. But which is more honest, more noble? When Red calls himself "Ole Number One," who does he hope to convince that he's lived a life he cares about? And why does it take such an act of violence to spur Red to act?

This largely forgotten gem of a play is a snapshot of time, of America adrift and capable of going many directions. It's about the people who see those choices, and respond by not making any choice. It shouldn't take trauma to make the possibilities real, but it does. And it's fascinating to see how the events that strip some people of their humanity forge others to greater heights.

This was a very interesting story. It was full of suspence. I could not put it down for one second. It makes you think, and it actually gives you a chance to feel what each character is going through.