McTeague - LIVE!

         This blog entry is a little more conceptual and imaginative in nature, but is based in my close reading of the text so bear with me.

           As we all saw in class last Monday, a silent film directly based on McTeague was created back in the 20’s called Greed, and while it was built up to be and was received as a critical success it was a failure in the box office. In my opinion, I think it could do better as a stage production or even an opera, where, unlike the director of Greed, one has more licenses to be lengthy and may create truly something truly artistic & inspired, which is much harder to accomplish in Hollywood. McTeague, or perhaps an alternative title of Animals, would take its cues directly from the major parts of the text and would be structured as follows:

               
Act I: Meet McTeague – lottery winner – the wedding night (Ch.1-9)

Act II: Start married life – start of poverty – Trina’s death (Ch. 10-19)
Act III: The mines – the wasteland – finale (Ch. 20-22)

The first act introduces us to the main characters and the primary setting of San Francisco, the dramatic premise starts to develop (greed and lechery), the inciting incident occurs (the lottery), and it ends with McTeague and Trina’s honeymoon scene. The second act begins with the two living happily initially but sharply spirals into poverty and madness, finally ending with Trina’s brutal murder at Mac’s hands. In this act we have the lowest valley of the novel and its greatest complications to the story (poverty, Trina in bed with her money, McTeague’s fall into animalism) and ends with the novel’s most damning and dramatic decision (Trina’s murder). The significantly shorter third act takes place entirely in the desert and the focus here is on McTeague as a runaway, digging for gold in the wasteland and dealing with his guilt, which gives the audience a false sense of denouement before his frenzied flight through the alkali flats and the climactic final confrontation with Marcus puts on the edge of their seats and them shocks them with its terrifying and absurd conclusion.
          The tone of the play is intense and gritty, dark without being gothic in nature, and ultimately tragic without being sympathetic. Think something in line with a Tennessee Williams or an Arthur Miller and you know the direction that I'm going for. This all to argue my point that it is better to reinterpret a novel onstage than on film, especially a naturalist novel.