'Underneath the Lintel' at the Lantern

Despite my feelings of guilt, I always knew there was something special about those books. They had been purchased to be shared, and so when I accumulated enough books, I created my own library, with scraps of paper for cards, and lent them out to my friends, who, fortunately, returned them within the allotted lending period.

A mighty fine fine

The Librarian of the Hoofddorp Library (played by Peter DeLaurier in this production) in Glen Berger’s Underneath the Lintel has an even more obsessive relationship to books. When an 1873 Baedeker’s travel guide is tossed into the return slot 113 years overdue, the Librarian is at first delighted by the size of the fine he can collect for the library. Little by little he begins to be curious, then fascinated, by who the mysterious borrower, listed only as “A” in the library’s records, might be.

So begins his quest, which leads him to Germany, London, New York, Paris, China, Australia, and eventually back home. Along the way he gathers clues, including a pair of dirty trousers. He labels them exhibits, as if in a court of law, and takes them from a battered suitcase to display for his audience, whom he has for one night to prove his story. In addition to his suitcase, he carries the date stamper he stole from the library the day he was fired because of his gallivanting. It contains, he says, all the dates that ever were or will be, making him, essentially, the keeper of history.

All his wandering leads him to another wanderer, the Wandering Jew, also known as Ahasuerus. The myth of the Wandering Jew began as an anti-Semitic story about a cobbler who, standing underneath his lintel, his doorframe, refused to help Jesus as he passed by. This play version of the story asks questions about what it might mean to live forever, to never be able to rest, not even to sit down or to lean against a post — what it means to observe history as it passes by, though no one knows you’re there.

The Librarian muses about the many ways we die. Millions die in war while a woman dies from being hit by a block of frozen urine and 14 are killed by falling vending machines. He muses about the miracles we miss when we’re not looking. And he finds that almost everyone has a need to say, “I was here,” in one form or another.

An entertainment or an impressive presentation?

DeLaurier played this same role in 2003, also at the Lantern. I didn’t see that production, so I found myself instead relating this show and performance to Greg Wood’s recent appearance in Shipwrecked, another play about a man’s quest for meaning and adventure. Shipwrecked is described as an "Entertainment," Underneath the Lintel as an "Impressive Presentation." Both characters want to convince us that their lives were meaningful, one by engaging us in his adventures, and the other, the Librarian, by showing us tatty bits of paper that he thinks prove his point.

DeLaurier’s Librarian is not totally comfortable with his life, nor with his presentation, and he keeps us feeling slightly uncomfortable as well. The character in his worn jacket and plaid bow tie and trousers is a nerd. He’s serious about his quest, and yet he retains a sense of humor about it all. While Wood’s de Rougemont is all bravado and optimism, the Librarian is beaten down but determined. And yet both plays end on a positive note — de Rougemont rides a sea turtle and the Librarian wants to “begin to learn to dance.”

Some consider scrawling graffiti on a monument the ultimate statement of “I was here,” while others, more articulate, write books that live on after them. What does it mean to mark the spot with a statement? Do we all need to be remembered in some way? Is it enough to write the words, or must someone read them for them to count?

For most of us, all we have as proof of our existence is the bits of paper we drop along the way, though today it’s even more ephemeral. We no longer have letters and documents; we have cyber trails and messages written on air. Our way of saying “I was here” is a website, a Facebook page, a Twitter account. When technology changes, do we become obsolete? How would the Librarian of cyberspace track us down? Or do we just have to learn to dance to our own tune?