Whatever Passes for Love is Love
John Stoss’ Whatever Passes for Love is Love is a primer for anyone who wonders what it is like to be part of the fabric of New Orleans. The drama unfolds inside the Maple Leaf Bar and into a few pages you begin to imagine you are sitting there on a tottering bar stool, smelling smoke and ash, listening to the droning of those intent on living their couch potato lives as public fixtures. But there is a twist. Commanding the bar is Everette Maddox (or rather Madden), the poet laureate of the Maple Leaf. Andrew Codrescu wrote, “Everette was the perfect master of ceremonies over a dying dance that took a few happy, booze-soaked years to play out . . . . The South, New Orleans, decay, poetry, wit, crippling nostalgia, and carpe diem–all of these things wafted off Everette like the smell of whiskey and cigarettes . . . .” And so it is that reading Stoss’ script evokes New Orleans more than a whole season of Treme has ever done, because Stoss gets what’s going on here, as Maddox did.
The dialogue, “I can remember when people ate possum,” the scene descriptions, “PIANOBOY, THE GREATEST BLUES PIANO PLAYER EVER, A YOUNG BLACK MAN, WAITS AT OAK ST. AND CARROLLTON FOR A STREETCAR. IT ARRIVES AND HE GETS ON. WE WALKS PAST TWO BLACK MEN WHO ARE HOLDING WINE BOTTLES, ONCE SEATED, WE HEAR HIS PIANO PLAYING AND THE TWO MEN DRUNKENLY DANCE TO HIS MUSIC, AND THE DRIVER PARTICIPATES WHILE DRIVING,” and the characters, “ENTER JOE. HE IS A NEW ORLEANIAN AND HAS AN EASTERN ACCENT, AS MANY DO. HE IS VERY FAT, IN SUIT AND TIE AND AS TASTELESS AS A HUMAN BEING CAN BE” are all uniquely New Orleans but the tenderness with which Stoss depicts these ne’erdewells and this ethereal, moribund city is his very own brand of what could only be described as love. Or whatever passes for love.