You and Mrs Groucho

Abstract

You and Mrs Groucho is a play about the meeting that occurred between the most famous Marx Brother, Groucho Marx, and the poet T S Eliot.
Though its core is dramatic, the play is suffused throughout with an anarchic humour. The ‘spectres’ of the two recently deceased Marx Brothers, Harpo and Chico, do their best to ‘narrate’ the play, but become lost in it as they go, absorbed in the action.
The first part of the play shows the two protagonists in their respective home environments and the tensions they face—Groucho’s brothers have both died, and he is left alone, unsure of his own identity, with unresolved tensions playing on his mind between him and his recently deceased brother Chico, and immediate tensions with his wife and son. Eliot is dealing with a letter he received from the disgraced Ezra Pound asking for friendship, and dealing with accusations of antisemitism. The second part deals with the dinner they share, where personal and public tensions come to a head. The coda presents Eliot’s wake, where Groucho comes to terms with not only what Eliot meant to him, but also his own unresolved issues.