Two for the Seesaw by William Gibson

First published: 1959, in The Seesaw Log

First produced: 1958, at the Booth Theatre, New York City

Type of plot: Tragicomedy

Time of work: The late 1950’s

Locale: New York City

Principal Characters:

• Jerry Ryan, an attorney from Nebraska
• Gittel Mosca, a former dancer

The Play

At the start of Two for the Seesaw, the contiguous spaces onstage, each representing a room belonging to one of the two main characters, contrast sharply, foreshadowing the insurmountable differences between Jerry and Gittel. His space is drab and disorderly; it has the feel of a temporary stopover. Hers is crowded but cozy; it has the look of a permanent abode. Using the excuse of wanting to buy a used icebox (refrigerator) from her, Jerry telephones Gittel, and although she tells him that she has given the box away, Jerry asks her out for dinner and a show. From the outset, it is clear that both characters have problems: Gittel, as Jerry tells her, is a “born victim,” whereas Jerry constantly berates himself for his sly way of asking for handouts without acknowledging that fact.

When they return to Gittel’s at the end of the evening (in scene 2), Jerry tells her that he is an unemployed attorney (since his Nebraska license does not allow him to practice law in New York). He also says that he is married but has left his home because his wife is divorcing him to marry someone else, and, last, that it is his birthday. Gittel tells him that she is divorced, that she makes her scanty living by sewing dance costumes because she cannot afford a dance studio, and, most important, that she has an ulcer which periodically hemorrhages. Gittel decides to break her rule of not sleeping with anyone on a first date and asks Jerry to stay; however, he decides to avoid “a handout” and leaves while she is getting ready for bed.

Scene 3 begins at five o’clock the next morning with Jerry telephoning Gittel, assuring her that he did not leave because she was unattractive and offering to bring over an ice bag to forestall bleeding after she has a tooth extracted—his way of letting her know that he cares about her welfare. Then, as she settles back in bed, Jerry reads aloud the telegram he has received from Nebraska: “I called to say happy birthday you stinker don’t shut me out God help both of us but will you remember I love you I do Tess.”

Act 2 begins a month later. Jerry’s room has been transformed in what the playwright describes as “the peasant style of Gittel’s garb,” and the result is pleasantly warm. As Jerry enters, Gittel is getting their dinner on the table, complete with candles and wine, and the feeling is that these two have come together happily. Jerry has good news: He has been to see an attorney friend who has given him a job preparing briefs. Now he is ready and anxious to financially back Gittel’s dance studio. With Gittel’s bright announcement that Jerry’s wife has telephoned and will call back, however, there is a definite change of mood. As the conversation goes on, Gittel suggests that Jerry “study up” and take the New York bar examination, and she senses that his reluctance to do so may mean that he does not intend to remain in New York permanently.

Finally, the telephone rings; Jerry refuses to answer, and when Gittel picks it up, he is furious. It is not Tess, however, but Gittel’s dance partner, Larry, calling to talk about the dance studio. Misunderstanding Jerry’s reluctance to talk to his wife, Gittel says, “What did that bitch do to you?” and is surprised at Jerry’s response: “Bitch? Married me, helped put me through law school. Stood by me in pinches. Loved me, if anyone did or could. She was never a bitch, don’t call her that again.” At this point, Gittel accuses Jerry of running away and suggests that he talk to Tess and face facts, which in turn evokes his evaluation of Gittel. He tells her that she is “on the edge of a nightmare” and all alone, that she always gives, never makes her needs known, never makes a real claim on anyone; she is always used rather than cared for. As their exchange escalates, so that Gittel is in tears, the phone rings again, and this time Jerry answers it.

His conversation with Tess is very revealing: He does not want to be friends with her and her fiancé; he has a job, he has a girl, and he is beginning a new life. His final statement, however, costs both him and Gittel dearly. He says, shakily: “I’m not unfeeling, I don’t want to be haunted either; my God, you made a choice, get your hand out of my bowels!” The scene closes when Jerry asks Gittel to need him for something, if only to rent the studio, and Gittel agrees, but she says softly, “I’ll never hear you tell me that I got a hand inside you.”

Scene 2 takes place some weeks later. Jerry is in his room, surrounded by legal papers, talking to his boss on the telephone, and the audience learns that he is contemplating taking the bar examination, with Frank as sponsor. Gittel is in her room on the telephone with her friend Sophie; from her conversation, all seems to be going well with Jerry. However, he makes a call to his former father-in-law because of concern for Tess, who now seems to be devastated since learning that Jerry has a girl, and when he tells this to Gittel, she breaks their dinner date.

The final scene of act 2 takes place late on a Saturday night several months later. Gittel enters alone, drunk, and dials her doctor, leaving an urgent request for him to call her. Jerry then enters and immediately confronts her with an accusation. He had been to a party at Frank’s (Gittel had not been included in the invitation), and when he went to pick her up at Sophie’s, he had seen her leaving with a man and followed them, watching outside the man’s basement apartment for an hour, drawing unpleasant conclusions. There are harsh words on both sides, but what finally comes out of the fray is that Gittel has realized that she is not a dancer, while Jerry has concluded that he cannot ask his former father-in-law for the documents he would need to enter law practice without taking the bar examination. Furthermore, Gittel knows that he has been calling Tess; his defense is that she has now decided not to remarry and is “having a very rough time.” Finally, Gittel tells Jerry that he shortchanges people, which he acknowledges, saying, “You mean I want a—complete surrender. And don’t give one.”

It is an epiphany for Jerry, seeing himself as he was with Tess and as he is with Gittel, and he finally tells Gittel that she is wonderful as she is. He starts to leave, but comes back when she tells him that all she did in Jake’s basement was to faint, because her ulcer is bleeding, and that she is very frightened. She says she did not want to “trap him” with her illness, but he insists that she needs him now, and she admits that she does. The act ends as he is calling her doctor.

At the beginning of act 3, Jerry’s room looks unused because he has moved into Gittel’s to take care of her. She is really enjoying the unaccustomed care she is getting, but, more significantly, she is afraid that when she has fully recovered, Jerry will leave. He assures her that he is not cramming for the bar in order to leave New York, and Gittel is somewhat reassured when she learns that he is giving up his room.

Scene 2 finds both characters in Jerry’s room, packing his things for his final move to Gittel’s. There is a sense of something unspoken between them. Jerry has passed the bar, and Gittel now plans to take shorthand and act as his secretary, and she actually asks him to marry her. He tells her it is not possible until the divorce from Tess becomes final, but as she is packing, Gittel comes across the final divorce decree. Incensed that he had not told her, Gittel asks him if he has told Tess about the hemorrhage. Jerry admits that he has, explaining that Tess needed him and he had to explain to her why he could not come. At this point, Gittel asks him point-blank if he will ever marry her, and when he admits that he will not—that he still loves Tess and considers that a lifetime promise—Gittel decides that she will let him go, that she will not accept a half-commitment, from a man who cannot even say “I love you” but who is willing only to be around in case she needs him.

The final scene is a short telephone conversation between Jerry and Gittel, during which each tells the other how the “affair” has helped them to grow into better human beings. Jerry will not return to his father-in-law’s office; he will begin an independent life, but he vows that he will not shortchange Tess. Gittel, too, has learned to value herself more. At the very end of their conversation, Gittel says, “I love you, Jerry! Long as you live I want you to remember the last thing you heard out of me was I love you!” Jerry answers, “I love you too, Gittel.”

Dramatic Devices

In addition to a split set, William Gibson has illustrated his title by having the two characters in an almost constant state of flux—first one is up and the other down; then in the next scene, the situation is reversed. As a means of emphasizing the comic aspects of the play, there is an almost constant effort to contrast the social backgrounds of the two protagonists, frequently by making Gittel unable to understand the subtleties of Jerry’s conversation, while at the same time giving her lines which supposedly typify a Bronx-born, first-generation Jewish girl. Gittel is a “free spirit,” as audiences would have understood that term in 1958, and everything from her gaminelike appearance to her New York accent is meant to convey that impression.

As might be expected in a two-character play, the telephones of both Jerry and Gittel act almost as additional characters. Jerry’s reluctance to talk to Tess and then his many calls to Nebraska, as well as his conversations with his attorney friend, Frank, are mandatory expository devices. Gittel’s conversations with her unseen friend, Sophie, serve the same purpose. These conversations via telephone also serve to let the audience know what the characters are thinking about their lives and their relationship when they are not face-to-face. Ultimately, the end of the affair between Jerry and Gittel takes place over the telephone.

Gittel’s illness itself could be considered a dramatic device because it provides Jerry with a reason for taking care of her. Even in the first scene of act 2, when Gittel has made dinner for them, he tries to keep her from eating fried potatoes— a “no-no” for someone with an ulcer. Later, when she has had too much to drink, he is concerned about the effect on her ulcer. Still later, after she has had the hemorrhage, it provides the motivation for his moving to Gittel’s. Her reluctance to “trap” him because she is in need of his succor adds dimension to her character. She may no longer be a “victim” in the original sense, but despite Jerry’s assurances that she can call him if she needs him in the future, it is highly unlikely that she will telephone Nebraska the next time her ulcer acts up.

Critical Context

William Gibson (he also used the pseudonym William Mass) wrote some one-act plays and Dinny and the Witches: A Frolic on Grave Matters (pr. 1948), published a book of poetry, and wrote a novel, The Cobweb (1954), but it was The Miracle Worker (pr. 1957), written as a television script for Playhouse 90, which really launched his career. As he writes in his preface to the published edition of Dinny and the Witches and the stage play The Miracle Worker (pr. 1959), he based the television script on letters written by Anne Sullivan that appear in the appendix to Helen Keller’s autobiography. When he adapted it for a 1959 Broadway production, it won the Tony Award for best play.

Before this time, however, Two for the Seesaw (originally written, but not published, under the title “After the Verb to Love”) had been accepted and successfully produced. Gibson believed that the tribulations involved in production were quite dreadful, and so he wrote The Seesaw Log (1959) as a narrative of the play’s journey from conception to its birth on Broadway, sparing none of the details of the difficult delivery. It is noteworthy that Gibson was particularly resentful of Henry Fonda’s insistence (as a well-known Hollywood star) on enlarging his role, which may have some bearing on the final characterization of Jerry Ryan.

With two commercial successes to his credit, Gibson was given the opportunity to do Dinny and the Witches Off-Broadway in 1961, but it did not enjoy a long run. Gibson also worked on the musical adaptation of Clifford Odets’s Golden Boy in 1964, when Odets was dying of cancer. The emphasis shifted when the protagonist was made a black man, thus raising the issue of race; the play starred Sammy Davis, Jr., as the musician turned prizefighter, and it was a popular success. A Cry of Players (pr. 1948), a period drama about the rebellion of a young Elizabethan (presumably William Shakespeare) against the pettiness of his society, found little favor with the critics.

During the 1960’s, Gibson also wrote screenplays including The Miracle Worker (1962) and A Cry of Players (1969). He also wrote a book, A Mass for the Dead (1968), dealing with his early life but concentrating mainly on his parents. Then came the musical Seesaw (1973), with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields, and direction and choreography by Michael Bennett.

The fifteen years between 1958 and 1973 were years of significant change in American society, a fact which becomes apparent when comparing the original with the musical version. For example, in the latter, when Jerry telephones Gittel before their first date, she is trying to remember him, since she had given her number to many men at a party the night before. She finally identifies him as “the WASP with the white shirt and narrow tie!” In the first play, Jerry does not stay at Gittel’s after their first evening; in Seesaw, he does. Despite the changes made to bring the script into line with the mores of the 1970’s, however, in this version, too, Jerry goes back to his life, and Gittel is left with hers. The theme of the play remains as it was: Two people from very different worlds can never find permanent happiness together. The seesaw cannot be balanced.

In 1984, Gibson wrote Handy Dandy, which was produced the same year, though not on Broadway, a play about the dangers of the nuclear age and the necessity of protest. That same year, his musical Raggedy Ann and Andy did open on Broadway but was not very successful.

Sources for Further Study

James, T. F. “Millionaire Class of Young Writers.” Cosmopolitan, August, 1958, 42.

Moe, Christian H. “William Gibson.” In Contemporary Dramatists. 6th ed. Detroit: St. James, 1999.

“On The Seesaw.” The New Yorker 33 (February 15, 1958): 23-24.

Plummer, William, and Maria Wilhelm. “An Activist and Her Playwright Husband Address the Nuclear Peril with His Words and Her Deeds.” People 24 (October 14, 1985): 65-66.

Saturday Review. Review of Two for the Seesaw. 42 (November 7, 1959): 28.

Time. Review of Two for the Seesaw. November 2, 1959, 30.