Seen @ the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival
The Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, which just wrapped up their sixth season on September 25, continues to astonish: it pairs talented actors and directors with the playwright’s often unproduced or under-produced works, and, over the course of four days, stages them in unusual settings throughout Provincetown.
This year there were reprisals of productions from previous seasons, world premieres of works unearthed from Williams’ prolific canon, organized tours of locales within Provincetown where Williams found his theatrical muse, a cavalcade of one acts set in hotel rooms, workshops, and parties and more parties.
Due to the compact nature of the festival, it was impossible for me to attend all the shows. Here are reflections on shows I did see.
Now the Cats with Jewelled Claws
Directed by Jonathan Warman and presented by Creative Concept Productions in association with LaMama at Paramount at the Crown and Anchor, the play (it’s difficult to term it a one-act, since it seemed more like a writing exercise) focuses on two women Bea (Regina Bartkoff) and Madge (Mink Stole) as they sit and order (a mostly liquid) lunch at a restaurant in Times Square.
The production was reminiscent of the theatre work of the late Julian Beck, of the Living Theatre in New York in the 1970s, who pushed the theatrical envelope by incorporating cruelty as a method of shocking audiences. There was plenty of shock value in this production, too, in word and deed. Consider the cast, (in addition to the aforementioned two women): the on stage presence of an oversized plush toy rabbit; a manager (Everett Quinton) dressed in a tux and wearing makeup and a Liberace wig; a pregnant waitress sporting a black eye (Erin Markey); two male hustlers (Max Steele and Joseph Keckler); and a "hunched man" (Charlie Schick).
The play is hallucinatory, with no discernable storyline. Mink Stole, best-known as a cast member in several of John Waters’ films, entered dressed as a society matron, complete with a pillbox hat. Madge arrives shortly afterward, holding the oversized plush rabbit, whose ears she will later masturbate and who, even later, she’ll straddle, in the 69 position. The banter between the women is cryptic, and nonsensical, as is the dialog throughout the play. Here are snippets: "The chicken supreme is a supreme"... "He has the perfume of a bitch in heat" ..."an albino rabbit for a mongoloid child"... "Would you prefer to kiss my ass or my hand?" Later on, one of the male hustlers retreats to a backroom to give/receive sexual servicing with manager, and he says, "I close my eyes and fantasize your ass."
In sum: this snippet was big on shock value, obscenities for obscenity sake, flamboyance to expose the rancid and sordid nature of life, with glitter and glam unfolding against the Parmount’s gold lame curtain. "Jewelled Claws" fulfilled the vision that the Festival producers promised years ago, that it is not "your grandmother’s Tennessee Williams." But this production was short on substance, and more of an experiment that might be better left on paper. One last note: LaMama is planning to present it in New York this fall.
Once in a Lifetime
Last year, the Festival produced a series of hotel-themed plays at Gifford House Inn on Carver Street in Provincetown, with the audience -- unseen and uninvited voyeurs -- crammed into tight-fitting spaces in the rooms. This proved to be a popular draw with audiences, and it was reprised, with different plays, for this year’s Festival.
"Once in a Lifetime" is a short play (given a world premiere) as well as the title of the grouping of the four plays, all of them wonderfully produced and directed, spread out in guest rooms and utilizing the porch and the bar at Gifford House.
The title play came to Provincetown by way of Albuquerque, New Mexico, where it was given a spirited production by the cast of the Fusion Theatre Company, under Fred Franklin’s direction. Two men, Mr. Crawley (Bruce Holmes) and Mr. Brown (Gregory Wagrowski), traveling with their families, meet in a hotel lobby. The dialog is pure Americana, sprinkled with references to the 1930s political landscape, the Depression, lives of privilege, and relationship nuances. Using the barroom as the stage, the actors sauntered around in full life, as if dropped there from a time capsule, delivering Williams’ work-in-progress as if it were a polished gem.
"Green Eyes," directed by Jef Hall-Flavin, took place in an adjacent first floor room where Girl (Jaimi Paige), and Boy (Matthew Rein) literally claw at one another and reveal the depths of their erotic depravities. The sexual tension between the actors - Ms. Paige appears completely nude, and sports scars etched by makeup into her flesh - becomes almost unbearable. She recounts an encounter (is it real or is she making it up in order to titillate Boy?) with a sailor who, she says, had his way with her multiple times. What was frighteningly effective about the play is the starkness of the private lives revealed by the actors, the seediness of their souls, and the unleashed and wanton natures of their lust, written with the unmistakable poetic cadence that only Tennessee Williams knew how to conjure. This production was near-perfect, and it burned, like the white heat that rises from a soldering gun.
"The Traveling Companion," directed by David Kaplan, was the third play in the hotel series, and it focused on an erotic relationship that may or may not transpire between two men, one an older gentleman Vieux (Jeremy Lawrence) and a younger man, Beau (Zachary Clause), who Vieux has hired to be his companion. Once again, the sexual tension - Beau is trying to avoid Vieux’s advances and suggestions of a tryst in this claustrophobic room - was wonderfully expressed, although there exists, in this short work, more of a sense of pathos.
"Sunburst," directed by Patrick Falco, the last of the four short plays, took the audience into another Gifford House room, this one occupied by Mrs. Sails (Beverly Bently), who has suffered a stroke. Two hotel attendants Giusseppe (Brian Pattaca) and Luigi (Beau Jackett) enter, proceed to quaff whatever alcohol is available, and work their bumbling abuse in an attempt to steal her "sunburst" diamond. In parts comedic and in parts Pinteresque, the short play, like the others in the series, sparkled.
Alma
Festival curator/impresario David Kaplan often remarked that his vision for the Festival was in some way to pay homage to Provincetown’s Portuguese roots. He found the perfect vehicle to do just that in a production, imported from Lisbon, titled, "Alma," which means "soul" in Portuguese. It was presented by Teatro Carbono, based on Williams’ "Summer and Smoke" and performed by a cast of four in Portuguese (and some English), using movement and music. For a production in another language, the audience must leave their comfort zones and let the music of the other language inform what they are seeing. This is not always an easy task. The cast, however, was so animated and engaging, and since there were no headsets to offer simultaneous translation, most of the audience seemed to flow with what was being presented. Kaplan is correct by insisting that Williams’ universality be represented at the Festival - this year there was also a production imported from the U.K. While it was not as immediate for audiences to grasp the meaning of the work, it was ultimately rewarding.
Scheduling conflicts prevented me from seeing "Orpheus Descending," which I attended last year, which again featured the cast from the Infinite Theatre in New York, and was again directed by Nick Potenzieri. I also missed "The Two Character Play," directed by Gene David Kirk from the U.K., which the London Telegraph, in their review, said had "the richness of a poem, at once delicate and unyielding." I missed a one-man comedy show by Jim David, where the actor performs the parts of 10 characters, and a production of "Something Cloudy, Something Clear," which took place on the wharf, under a tent, where Eugene O’Neill founded the Provincetown Playhouse, and a young Williams found theatrical inspiration when he summered in the town in the 1940s.
But that’s the special allure of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival, which is already setting its sights to 2012 when it will present another four days of Williams’ works around the theme of "jazz, blues, American songbook, art song and zydeco."
