Revolutionary Road: A Play in Two Acts
It’s no wonder that Revolutionary Road begins with a terrible, failed play about love and despair.
The Laurel Players presentation of The Petrified Forest was supposed to be a lifeline, pulling April and Frank Wheeler out of their dreary suburban lives, proving that they are different – smarter, more talented, more ambitious – than their neighbors. Though their life together has been “a succession of things [they] hadn’t really wanted to do,” they struggle “to keep from being contaminated” by “Hopeless Emptiness,” and they believe they are succeeding.
The play, and even more the theater company – “the brave idea of it; the healthy, hopeful sound of it” – is a crucial part of this struggle. April is the star, of The Petrified Forest and of the Wheelers’ life on Revolutionary Road, and in both productions she longs for escape. April, and her counterpart Gabby, see themselves as elegant, beautiful, misunderstood women, better than their circumstances and destined for greater things.
In the shadow of The Petrified Forest’s failure, April lobbies Frank to throw off “the great sentimental lie of the suburbs” and move to France. They will redefine themselves completely – wife as breadwinner, husband as soul-seeker – far away from the expectant, judging eyes of their peers. April frames this plan as Frank’s just reward for humoring what she now sees as an impossible combination of suburban stability and individual liberty; it is her gift to him for being “the most valuable and wonderful thing in the world… a man.”
Frank’s obsession with fulfilling his role as a man keeps him from embracing the new life April imagines. Like the failed writer Alan in The Petrified Forest – “a dull, defeated man” – Frank defined himself as an intellectual and cannot imagine another way to prove his worth. He pursues a promotion; he begins an affair; he lobbies for a third child; he undermines the Europe Plan at every turn.
Faced with the choice between suburban parenthood and intellectual expatriation, Frank and April find no middle ground. Finally, they are rescued by the same bleak solution that ends The Petrified Forest. In that play, Alan escapes his nagging failure through death, and the life insurance policy it delivers, frees Gabby to leave for Europe and to begin again: “Living, I’m worth nothing to her. Dead – I can buy her the tallest cathedrals, and golden vineyards, and dancing in the streets.”
April’s suicide by way of a botched abortion allows her to escape her self-pronounced failure as suburban wife and mother without compromising Frank’s manhood. Her final note is benevolent, insisting “Whatever happens please don’t blame yourself,” and Frank trusts her note in a way he never trusted her in life. He really seems not to blame himself, and, like Gabby, he escapes his reality to begin again. Frank loses his swagger and his arrogant confidence that he understands himself and the world; he plunges into introspection and therapy; he moves to the city and pursues a now-promising career. He loses his wife, sends his children off to relatives, and finally becomes a man.
The couples that survive on Revolutionary Road do so shrugging off the failures of their lives the way they shrugged off the failure of The Petrified Forest. They refuse to question, to struggle, or to change. They continue to prop each other up without trusting or loving or even truly listening. The Wheelers, however, take The Petrified Forest to heart. It’s failure shakes them deeply and prompts them, for the first time, to stop playing their comfortable, unsatisfying roles and to finally become actors in their own lives.
