2 by Tennessee Williams


Tennessee Williams’ dialogue is naturalistic inasmuch as we can feel the southern heat in its details. It’s nearly expressionist in its evocativeness. It’s quintessentially American. Williams is served very well in 2 by Tennessee Williams, a pair of Williams’ one-act plays, 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Kingdom of Earth, produced by Fabco Productions at St. Luke's Theater.

Williams called 27 Wagons Full of Cotton “a Mississippi Delta Comedy”.  It’s comprised mostly of a seduction scene. Jake has burned down Silva’s cotton gin so that Silva has to contract the work ginning out the cotton to him. Left alone with Jake’s wife, Flora, for the afternoon while Jake is doing the work, Silva figures out what Jake has done from things that Flora says. He retaliates by methodically seducing Flora. That evening, when Jake returns and Silva has left, Flora tells Jake that she expects Silva to return with more orders.

Kathryn Luce Garfunkel gives us marvelous work as Flora. Flora is intellectually vapid and temperamentally a child, and not a precocious child. “You’ll have to excuse me from thinking. I’m too lazy,” she says to Silva. She’s hardly puts up resistance to the seduction: “My knees are so weak. They’re like water.” But Williams’ characters are never stereotypes and Ms. Garfunkel succeeds through her own belief in the character. We accept Flora on Williams’ terms because the actress expresses her so honestly. She has a flawless, unaffected acting technique. With little to do in the last scene except give little laughs, she’s totally believable. 

Jake is hardly any brighter than Flora, too dumb to know he’s being deceived, and Mike Keller does a great job portraying him. Justin Holcomb is suitably masterful as Silva.

In Kingdom of Earth (not to be confused with Williams’ full-length play of that name) Lot brings Myrtle, his wife a one day, to his farm where his brother, Chicken, lives. The river is rising and they’re going to have to go up to the roof.  Lot spends the play offstage, upstairs, dying, and Chicken and Myrtle are left to themselves. Chicken convinces Myrtle to tear up her marriage license so that he’ll inherit the farm and Myrtle is happy to do so.

Williams creates a surreal personal landscape in this Mississippi Delta farmhouse. Referring to the low sound of water in flood, Chicken says “If God had a voice, it would sound like that.”

The play works through Williams’ dialogue and the formidable talents of Mike Keller, who plays Chicken,. Through solid analysis and technique he gives us a complex and sympathetic portrayal of this lonely farmer who sees in his brother’s death merely an inheritance. “Chicken is king,” he shouts at the end of the play, after Lot’s death. Judy Jerome is satisfying as Myrtle.

The actors in both plays flourish under the direction of Marilyn Fried. Her direction succeeds in being simultaneously dynamic and subtle. It never calls attention to itself; it serves the playwright.

The company does great and careful work with dialect. The southern accents are a delight to hear.

John Lant’s and Sam Figueira’s set for 27 Wagons consists almost exclusively of a swing large enough for two. The set for Kingdom of Earth, a farmhouse, is more fleshed out, and handsome.

Williams’ attitude toward the seduction of women is unfortunate. Flora tells Silva not to follow her into the house although she has clearly been enjoying the seduction. And Myrtle tells Chicken that when she was younger her employer “took me by force,” yet she developed a romantic relationship with him. For Williams, there’s a fine line between seduction and rape.

Congratulations to Fabco Productions. 2 by Tennessee Williams is a terrific show.

Steve Capra
July 2016

Popular posts from this blog

Anouilh's Antigone

There is a moment in Fusion Theatre’s production of Jean Anouilh’s Antigone (at Theatre Row’s Studio Theatre) when Creon says to Antigone “Don’t annihilate me with those eyes.” And indeed, Antigone’s unrelenting stare does seem to be annihilating him, as it’s been annihilating everyone. As Antigone, Eilin O’Dea motivates Creon’s line so well that it seems Anouilh has written it in response to the actress. Anouilh’s play, as this production makes clear, is an important drama. Anouilh reworked Sophocles’ play keeping the ancient Greek names and keeping the action in Thebes. The characters, however, mention tobacco, blood tests, film and cars. The dissonance reminds us that Anouilh’s message of courage and moral responsibility is ageless. Anouilh has created a raisonneur in a character called simply The Chorus. Tragedy, he tells us, “has nothing to do with melodrama”. “In tragedy, argument is gratuitous,” he says, but this is a very strange line; Antigone and Creon will soo
Read more

C.S. Lewis on Stage: The Most Reluctant Convert

C.S. Lewis lived between 1898 and 1963. He’s best known for his works of fiction such as The Screwtape Letters and The Chronicles of Narnia , although his non-fiction work is arguably more important. He ranks among the foremost 20 th -century Christian apologists and theologians. Max McLean has written a terrific solo show in which he presents Lewis in his study at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1950, C.S. Lewis on Stage: The Most Reluctant Convert . Mr. MacLean is the show’s actor, and he’s co-directed it with Ken Denison. The script details Lewis’ conversion from atheism to Christianity, delineating the transformation in discrete steps. Lewis begins with his childhood in Belfast: “Mother’s death produced in me a deeply engrained pessimism,” he tells us. And “At 13 I ceased to be a Christian. At that age one scarcely notices.” He was confirmed in The Church of Ireland “in total disbelief.” The script presents us with the structure of Lewis’ life – his time at Oxford, his enli
Read more

A Blanket of Dust

Image
Photo by Sharon Kinsella In Richard Squires’ play A Blanket of Dust, presented at The Flea Theater by Delphi Film in association with Alfonso Ramos and Eve Pomerance, a woman, Diane, looses her husband in the 9-11 disaster. She’s convinced that the government is responsible for the catastrophe, and campaigns to uncover the conspiracy. She’s a Senator’s daughter, so the issue becomes a family affair. Years later, she becomes involved with Andrew, a book store owner active in the dissident movement. Andrew is also at odds with his parents on political issues (his father is in government but it’s not clear what his position is.) In frustration, Andrew commits suicide - he sets fire to himself - in protest. This is all pretty grim, but, well, it’s a grim world, and it’s good to see issue- committed theater.   Mr. Squires’ keeps his script as lean as the WTC towers. The characters have no identity aside from their attitudes toward the issue, aside from the sketchy romance. Ther
Read more