Tackling the Taboo
The Aquarian
March 21 - March 28, 1979
by Robert Santelli

  Jonathan Stuart leaned over his colorful plate of eggs benedict and remarked in a matter - of - fact tone about how he had come to write Mary Jane A Marijuana Musical Revue. "Writers who are good, write about things they know best. Aside from pot and the lifestyle that surrounds it, I could have written about prison life, rock music or any number of other things I know well. But one day I sat down and composed a song I later titled "Drugs are My Lady" which is about a person's relationship with the good and bad aspects of marijuana. From that point on, I just kept building on the pot theme, incorporating it with music. The result, after a couple of years work, was Mary Jane."

  Cheech and Chong always knew that marijuana - related themes and drug culture parodies were a marketable item. Stretching back to the early 1970s and culminating with the box office smash Up in Smoke, the duo's immensely funny satirical quips and often lurid accounts of drug dealers, junkies and plain old potheads, have registered millions of laughs. They singlehandedly de-emphasized society's code of ethics concerning drug use and made the use of pot a widely accepted vice.

  Stuart and co-author Zolton Soldgeroff take the satirical glimpse of marijuana use one step further than Cheech and Chong by presenting onstage some twenty-five musical sketches that depict just about every aspect of the pot culture that is imaginable.

  Beginning with "Caveman Orchestra," Stuart and Soldgeroff trace the history of pot use through quick sketches of religious and historical personalities who have smoked and cultivated marijuana, including George Washington. The act continues with more contemporary insights into the drug culture. "Shopping Bag Shuffle" is an amusing account of a drug deal transformation. "The Paraquat Trot" takes a look at how the US government pays Mexican pot farmers to poison pot-smoking Americans. "Cold Pizza" is a clever illustration of what happens when a young man's desire for pot is placed before his desire for his girlfriend. All these plus many more are portrayed with infectious melodies and often hilarious lyrics and sung by a cast of eight that are, for the most part, quite good. Act two provides more of the same.

  "Mary Jane is a combination musical revue and musical comedy. It reveals many of the hypocrisies concerning the straight and not - so - straight worlds, but it really doesn't make a social statement of any sort. Mary Jane is basically a non-moralistic humorous revue about pot. It doesn't advocate the use of the weed, nor does it harp on the hang-ups often associated with continued use. The idea of a playwright is to leave certain things open for audience interpretation. That's what I decided on when I originally came up with the idea. Mary Jane is a fun play that pokes fun at most everything about pot."

  Stuart is a ruffle-haired loquacious writer who was born in Pennsylvania some 32 years ago and later moved to the New England area. Much of his teens and early 20's were spent as an itinerant folksinger traveling around the northeast part of the country. In 1964, Stuart's musical career came to a precipitated halt in Westport, Connecticut where he was arrested for possessing less than an ounce of marijuana.

  "In 1964," recalls Stuart with a facial countenance that expresses hardened memory, "it was not fashionable to smoke pot. Westport wasn't exactly what I would call a liberal town, although it pretended to be one. What had happened was that some guy was arrested and turned in state's evidence and that state's evidence happened to be me. He told the police he bought all sorts of drugs from me, heroin, cocaine and pot. The fact is he didn't buy a thing from me, but when they came to my apartment they found my own personal stash. Because it was 1964, because I was a conscientious objector and refused to fight in Vietnam, because I had a liberal lawyer that was running for state senator and because it was the judge's first sitting on the criminal bench, I was found guilty of possession and sentenced to two years in prison. My sentence was later dropped to one year, but the judge told me he wished he could have sentenced me and all other radical hippie drug addicts to ten years in prison."

  Stuart spent the year in prison working in the print shop and reading plays in his spare time. It was there that he fostered ideas of writing for a living. His first play, Envelope, was produced in San Francisco where he also worked as an assistant director to Tom O'Horgan for Hair. During this time he also helped form The Barbwire Theatre, an ex-convict theatre company, and directed The Cage which later toured nationally before running for eight months off-Broadway at the Actor's Playhouse.

  "I loved the idea of creating characters out of my experiences with people and putting words in their mouths," states Stuart. "I began to listen seriously to dialogue wherever I went and thought about the theatre all the time."

  After working as a production stage manager for Lincoln Center, he wrote and directed The Second Hottest Show In Town, an improvisational revue in which all the actors and actresses appeared totally naked onstage. The show received good reviews and Stuart's name was associated with other promising young New York City playwrights.

  Stuart began work on Mary Jane and called on the services of Zolton Soldgeroff to help with the musical compositions that make up the revue. Soldgeroff, an accomplished musician and composer who played bass with the Dave Brubeck Quartet and Sky King, added valuable insight and the play was ultimately completed.

  "We had problems finding someone with enough confidence in our topic to produce the show. No one had done anything on stage devoted entirely to the mariuana culture. Although many people thought Mary Jane was well written, they still were a bit apprehensive bacause of possible nagative public reaction," says Stuart.

  The reaction to Mary Jane, produced by Tomi Inc. in conjunction with Joint Ventures LTD has been anything but negative. The show began preview performances on January 3rd at the Park Royal Theatre on 73rd Street in Manhattan and will probably open in either an off-Broadway of Broadway theatre in the fall. This summer the Mary Jane cast will move to San Francisco for a three month limited engagement.

  "Marijuana," concludes Stuart, "was a good thing to write about. "There's a ton of pot smokers in the US that will enjoy a chance to laugh at themselves and the underground culture they helped spawn. It should be a great high for them." Hmmm, I guess that's telling it like it is.