Before the brilliance of STREETCAR or SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER or
any of his full length masterpieces, Tennessee Williams collected characters:
crazy, genteel ladies, kindly doctors, coarse, greedy brutes, tormented
alcoholics, failed writers and absent men who “fell in love with long
distance,” to name but a few of his recurring themes. It’s clear he abhorred
men of “force and power” and vain, domineering women. He certainly wrote what
he knew best, basing many characters on his own mother and sister.
Zeitgeist Stage Company’s EIGHT BY TENN (playing through Oct.
8th) presents eight One Act plays with characters you will recognize
at once from his exceptional full lengths: the women committed to mental
institutions, the compromised women reviled by society, husbands ejecting their
wives’ relations, characters living by the parliamentary “code” of the old
guard, characters grappling with their sexuality, the colorful residents in the
close quarters of New Orleans’ Vieux Carré, and the woman-child he calls “Baby
Doll.”
What EIGHT BY TENN ends up confirming is the power of those
full length dramas, not so much his shorter works. What I wish I had learned
from EIGHT BY TENN is how the luminous full lengths evolved from these flawed
character studies. To me, many of the short plays seemed disjointed and
overblown. Where did he learn the rich narrative form which burns like a fire
in NIGHT OF THE IGUANA or CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF? Was it simply the fullness of time
or experience?
Director David Miller embraces the exaggerated, outsized tone
(of a good many) of the One Acts by presenting stylized, larger than life
portrayals for the characters. This is punctuated by Matthew Good’s very loud,
bombastic music from the classical canon to introduce each one, like Saint-Saëns Danse Macabre for the vulnerable, doomed MADONNA of the
evening’s last play. A few of the vignettes are more accessible, in my opinion,
because they feature more naturalistic acting. (One of Williams’ women
fittingly delivers a line condemning “abstract expressionism” as passé.)
I’m afraid I think it’s awfully difficult to relate to
characters who are lurching about and practically screeching their dialogue. (They’re
not “real” enough to identify with… and what’s more, I don’t understand why some
actresses raise the pitch of their voices to “grating” in order to portray
Southern belles.) I do understand the concept of matching the production to the
hysteria of the writing but it’s just so distracting when it’s over the top.
The style which I think works best for Williams, and worked best for Zeitgeist
(alas, employed only in a couple of the pieces) is “heightened realism.”
For heightened realism to work, however, you need actors the
caliber of Michelle Dowd and Damon Singletary. It was a master class in
suspense and restraint when they were on stage. The material worked through
them and you were focused only on their dialogue, only on the horrific tragedy
about to take place.
