Last season,
Zeitgeist Stage presented an evening of character sketches and stories by
Tennessee Williams which he would later shape into his celebrated plays. This
spring Zeitgeist returns to Williams with a vehicle called DESIRE (six plays by
noted playwrights based on his short stories), running through May 20th.
Beth Henley, Elizabeth Egloff and John Guare are among the writers who were
invited by Hartford Stage to create adaptations of Williams’ lesser known source
material.
David Miller is a
consummate director (and stage designer), as evinced by these six pieces… and
he is fortunate to have a remarkable cast to animate them. Each actor has the
chance to showcase his or her skills by inhabiting an entirely different role,
depending on the play. It’s certainly a treat for the viewer to witness these
actors’ versatility.
Beth Henley’s THE RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN A VIOLIN
CASE AND A COFFIN is a wonderfully evocative portrait of Southern Gothic
matriarchy. Father is gone, (perhaps he fell in love with long distance)
leaving mother and grandmother to preside over the children: An impressionable
young girl (a sweet and sensitive Margaret McFadden) who spends her days
practicing piano and devising highly melodramatic religious theatricals; and
her slightly challenged brother (a wildly intense John Vellante) who happily acts
them out with her.
When a dashing young
man (Sam Terry oozing sophistication) bicycles by with his violin (delightful
wheel imagery indicating a bicycle), she is more than happy to turn her attention
to him. Then her piano teacher (a marvelously severe Margaret Dransfield)
suggests they practice a duet (more clever imagery to indicate an instrument)
at which point the brother is consumed with jealousy. Henley’s
dialogue fairly drips with shadowy, tragic allusions.
ORIFLAMME by David
Grimm conjures up visions (for me) of Geraldine Paige as Williams’ quintessential
fragile seductress, a temptress one moment, a puritan the next. Lindsay Beamish
gives a powerful performance as the “lady in red” (elegant costumes from
Elizabeth Cole Sheehan) whose “romantic notions” are lost on the men she
chooses to engage. Damon Singletary is superb as the man in the park (think
Stanley Kowalski) who doesn’t stand on ceremony and doesn’t hesitate to take
her up on her offer. Like Blanche DuBois, Grimm’s shatterable creature recalls
her love of an idealized “beautiful boy.” It set my mind flooding with images
from quite a few of Williams’ plays.
John Guare’s YOU LIED
TO ME ABOUT CENTRALIA conjures up scene after scene of THE GLASS MENAGERIE.
(Guare based his play on the “gentleman caller” who comes to dinner not
realizing that mother plans to turn him into a suitor… until she learns he has
a fiancé.) Guare imagines the fiancé (a flinty Katie Flanagan) as a grasping,
opinionated racist, leaving us to conclude that the gentleman caller (Eric
McGowan) would be much better off with the crazy Wingfields.
So far so good. Even
though Elizabeth Egloff’s ATTACK OF THE GIANT TENT WORMS left me scratching my
head, trying to figure who was more insane, the wife (Dransfield) or her buggy
writer-husband (Alexander Rankine). I was still interested in the story either
way. But the last two plays of the evening gave me the creeps. More than
creeps.
Although it was
flawlessly performed, Marcus Gardley’s DESIRE QUENCHED BY TOUCH is an exercise
in torture which I wouldn’t watch if I didn’t have to (middle of the row, no
escape from the theater). If it had been on television, I would have changed
the channel. If it had been in a movie, it would be a snuff film and I wouldn’t
be there in the first place.
The masseur
(Singletary, vilely macabre) complains that he feels dirty, satisfying the
masochistic needs of his client (Terry screaming and writhing). We, my
companions and I, were the ones who needed a shower after watching it (against
our wills, I should add). Certainly Williams has touched upon the subject (at
the very end of the play which I won’t give away) in SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER but
his prose is poetic and Gardley’s is not. That’s why this felt like
sadomasochistic porn… which brings me to Rebecca Gilman’s THE FIELD OF BLUE
CHILDREN.
I had little patience
left by the time we got to Gilman’s tale of bizarre sexual fulfillment (nevertheless
well acted by Vellante and Dransfield). The vacuous woman never shut up during
an interminable sexual encounter, droning on in horrific detail about a roast
pig at a barbeque, thereby undercutting any sympathy I might have had for her. It
might have been funny… but it wasn’t. (Contrast this artless effort with the
exquisite scene in COMING HOME when Jane Fonda’s character experiences sexual
ecstasy for the first time.) Gilman, I’m sorry to say, missed the mark.
