Roger Bloomer

Roger Bloomer Comments

A play by John Howard Lawson

1923

History

Roger Bloomer was the first of nine plays by John Howard Lawson to be performed on Broadway. It opened on March 1, 1923 at the Equity Forty-eighth Street Theatre, New York City. Two weeks later Roger Bloomer was performed at the Greenwich Village Theatre, a performance which Lawson considered far superior to the first. This play is considered a prime example of American expressionism.

Cast

Roger Bloomer

Mrs. Bloomer

Everett Bloomer

Mary, the maid

Mr. Poppin

Eugene Poppin

Emma, the stenographer

Louise

Another Salesgirl

A College Examiner

A Landlady

Miss Burns

Elliott T. Rumsey

Office Assistants (4)

A Ragged Man

A Street Walker

Drug Clerk

Another Drug Clerk

A Detective

A Judge

Prison Attendant

Tall Old Woman

Small Old Woman

Settings

Act I- Excelsior, Iowa (the Bloomer home, a road, Mr. Bloomer’s department store, the College Examiner‘s)

Act II- New York (a boarding house, Miss Burns’ flat, the offices of Rumsey, a street, a drug store, the Bloomer home)

Act III- New York (a gentleman’s club, Miss Burns’ flat, the offices of Rumsey, a street, a court house, a jail cell, Roger’s nightmare)

Plot Summary

Act I- Act I opens in the Bloomer house hold. The family is eating dinner. They discuss Mr. Bloomers successful business and their son Roger‘s life ambitions. Roger excuses himself to his room, a common occurrence, and his parents express concern for his odd nature. Mr. Bloomer decides to try to befriend and influence his son. He decides that he should send Roger to Yale University to be made into a man. The Neighbor’s son, Eugene Poppin is already in attendance at Yale and agrees to take Roger under his wing. Mr. Bloomer, in an effort to bond with his son, brings Roger to work at the department store. There Roger is introduced to the obedient shop girls. This is where the audience is introduced to the leading female, Louise. She complains about the mundane, lifeless nature of the department store job. Roger is not enthusiastic about being in the store either. Later, Roger goes to take his college examinations. He decides not to finish them and thus forfeit his education, despite the threats of the overbearing judge. Roger returns to the department store to inform his father of his decision. Louise, still discontent with her job, raises her fists and reacts to the not so fair treatment the women of the store receive. She quits her job and sets out for New York City to stay with her aunt, Miss Burns. Roger speaks with her briefly as she is leaving the department store. He is fascinated by her independence. Roger, after viewing his books and finding a desire for first hand life experience growing inside of him decides to run away from home. He steals some of his father’s money and climbs out the window, into a great storm.

Act II- Roger has run away to New York City and is living in a tenement house. He has been spending his time writing and is almost out of money. The landlady enters and talks to Roger about surviving in New York. She tries to convince him to kiss her and tells him that one must take what one can get. Roger is bothered and leaves with his sparse belongings for the streets. Meanwhile Louise has procured a decent office job and is supporting herself and her aunt. Roger pays them a visit. They feed him. Louise and Roger talk about how difficult it is to survive. Louise offers to help him get a job in the office where she works. They go to the offices of Rumsey where they find workers in cubicles acting in unknowing unison. Louise introduces Roger to Rumsey, but Rumsey does not give Roger a job. Roger is on the streets again. He meets a Ragged-Man who tells Roger about the horrors of living on the streets. A Street Walker then tricks Roger who is naïve to such a profession into thinking that she loves him. Then when he touches her, she demands money. Roger is upset and confused by the idea of selling love. Feeling hopeless, Roger goes to the pharmacy and tries to buy poison, the pharmacist catches the plan and sells him a small amount of rat poison, just enough to jostle Roger. Roger injests it and doubles in pain. He is found by the Ragged-Man who takes him to the adress found in his pocket, Louise’s, to be cared for. During the course of this act Louise and Roger have been growing closer and are beginning to love each other. Back in Iowa Mr. And Mrs. Bloomer are growing more and more concerned for their son. They ask Eugene to find him and help him. Eventually Mr. Bloomer leaves for New York himself in hopes of finding his son.

Act III- Eugene has found Roger and takes him to a millionaire’s club where the two stick out like a pair of sore thumbs amongst the aging wealthy. Eugene hopes that this will inspire Roger to embark on a more steady path of manhood and monetary success. Eugene also excuses Roger’s lack of “success” on the fact that he is distracted by his interest in Louise whom he insist on meeting. Upon meeting Louise, Eugene tries to convince her to vacation at the beach with him in Roger’s absence. She declines, having never wanted to be a sex object. Roger and Louise decide to get married, but face the obstacle of having no money. Louise, not wanting to wait for Roger to find employment after attending technical school, steals three thousand dollars from her work. She and Roger decide that the stolen money must be returned, so she returns to the office to put it back. However, Rumsey, her much older boss is still there. He insists on speaking with her and asks her to marry him. He offers her many luxuries, but she is appalled and refuses. He fires her, insisting that she leave immediately. She is unable to return the money, so she and Roger rip up the bonds and leave them in the gutter. Roger tries to find a job. While he is out, a detective comes to investigate Louise about the missing bonds. She excuses herself, saying she feels ill. She poisons herself. Roger returns and tries to get help for her, but it is to late. She tells Roger that she is tired of being seen as a sex object and dies, a virgin. Roger is taken by the court and held as a witness and possible suspect for Louise’s death. His father comes and assures him that he will be released soon. While in the jail cell, he slips into a nightmare sequence. During this sequence he approached by all of the characters of the play who are now dark, winged demons, representing grotesque exaggerations of the flaws Roger had seen in them. Some are over sexed, some consumed only with money, all try to convince him to conform. Louise, like an angel, stands out among them and helps Roger through the nightmare. When he finally wakes, he is freed from his cell.

Themes

The Opposition of Societal Standards and Individual Desires

The idea of needing to make the grade, and filling the shoes of peers and elders appears strongly throughout this play. We first see this when Roger is encouraged to either attend a prestigious college in order to be “made a man” or to take over his father’s business. But, Roger finds money repulsive and has no desire to strive for wealth. This pressure to conform is seen again through the negative feedback Louise receives from her coworkers when she complains about her not so great job as a shop girl and through her continual struggle to remain a self sufficient, unmarried woman, an ideal which was not the social norm of the times. Both of these youths strive to hold true to their individual desires. However, both feel faced with insurmountable opposition. Roger decides that in order to support himself he must go to school. Louise decides to marry Roger, who wants to take care of her as one would a pet, just like all of the other suitors. Upon realizing that she has fallen for the very thing which she detests, she kills herself. Roger is then forced to face his decisions of conformation in a nightmare sequence from his jail cell. Seeing the standards of society in such a horrific way as he had before, he is freed upon waking.

Oppression of the Poor

Throughout Roger Bloomer the wealthy assure that the poor remain less privileged and the poor strive to survive. The first scene at the Bloomer’s dining table introduces this theme. Over dinner Mr. Bloomer discusses how he is able to make more money by paying his employees much less than he could afford to. Louise realizes this and quits her job in search of something better in New York. She lands a decent job in New York, but when she refuses to marry her aging boss she is promptly fired because he feels she is worthless as a worker. Roger also fails to find employment because of his not so wealthy appearance. None of the impoverished ever transcend into a more comfortable financial situation during the play by legal means. The Street Walker has made a decent living by selling her body, a crime which the cops, who are considered privileged by the poor would prevent her from continuing if they caught her. Thus she and the Ragged-Man live in continual fear of being found by the officers. This theme is mirrored visually by the heightening and prominent stage positions possessed by the wealthy in contrast to the stooping seen in many of the poor and the scenes between the homeless which all occur in front of the outer curtain, forcing a sense of being shut out.

Devices

Series

The use of series increases the sense of conformity that exists in the business world throughout the show. This is first seen in the offices of Rumsey. The stage set for these scenes is that of six identical cubicles in which six actors act in unison, answering phones and taking notes at the exact same instant. The use of series appears again at the millionaires’ club, where a row of arm chairs containing cigar smoking rich, white men covers the stage.

Type Character

Many of the characters in Roger Bloomer do not even have names, but instead are titled by occupation, such as Street Walker, Drug Clerk and College Examiner. This is used to make them more universal. Also, each of the main characters is designed to be more of an everyman than an individual. The audience never receives any background information about them to distinguish them as individuals. Their dialogue is exploratory as opposed to direct, they seem to be searching more than they are fighting. This allows the audience to be less biased based on their feelings toward personal motives.

Kaleidoscopic Sequence

This occurs when the scenes melt into one another. For example, in Roger Bloomer, it is often noted by Lawson that a curtain is moved and the actor or actors step just a few feet into the next scene. This device affects the flow of the show. It is also intended to help the audience remember that the action of the previous scene is still affecting the characters.

Source

Fulton, A.R. Drama and Theatre Illustrated by Seven Modern Plays. 1946. Henry Holt and Company. New York City.