NYT's Ben Brantley [Re]Reviews 'Reread Another,' a Play Inspired by Stein

"Reread Another" is a new play based on the writings of Gertrude Stein. What would Stein think? The play, which debuted in January at Bushwick Starr, re-opens at the Brick. On the occasion of this second production, NYT republishes Brantley's initial thoughts on the production. More:

Words seem to be plucked from the air, with great care and wonder, in “Reread Another,” a charming Target Margin Theater production based on the writings of Gertrude Stein. They are simple words, said with savor and, occasionally, apprehension.

There’s probably not one you haven’t heard before. If you listen with half an ear, they sound, in combination, like the ordinary sentences you overhear every day.

Listen more carefully, though, as these words are assembled into the exacting forms of declensions and syllogisms, or quaint questions and answers that suggest foreign language phrase books for travelers. Why, it’s all gobbledygook.

Except that something kind of wonderful has happened. These very pedestrian words seem to have sprouted wings, and resonate with surprising novelty. No wonder that the three people speaking them seem so delighted and perplexed. It’s as if they’d been born again as speakers of English.

Stein, a modernist American writer who presided over one of the great avant-garde salons of all time in early-20th-century Paris, has rarely been anyone’s idea of light entertainment.

But this 40-minute play from 1921, seldom seen or read outside academia, has an exhilarating air of discovery that finds the fun — and the sense — in her seeming nonsense. Its full title, “Reread Another A Play to Be Played Indoors or Out I Wish to Be a School,” offers an accurate idea of what to expect. [...]

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