by Augustin J Correro
Thanks to everyone who's been following our blog during our Inaugural Season. We're kicking off season two in the same vein as our very first post back in August of 2015. This is the first of a three-post series about the critical reception of Tennessee Williams' plays, focused specifically on reviews.
There's something that happens to writers when reviewing Williams plays that can only be described as a phenomenon. Whereas in most situations, a production will be considered by its own flaws and merits, reviewers almost reflexively beat up on the playwright if that playwright is Tennessee Williams. This "Tennessee Williams Punching Bag Syndrome" is probably rooted in a multitude of factors: his iconic works being so widely known, his besmirched celebrity during the 1960s, his refusal to adhere strictly to one style as an artist, and perhaps the notion that attacking him is less of a low blow than attacking a member of any given artistic community (who is still living and needs to eat).
This isn't to say that reviewers and critics don't write thoughtful reviews, or even that a review can't be thoughtful and include some of these over-arching factors. What TWPBS does, however, is create a lopsided context for the reader. It creates a passively hostile environment in which it's vaguely clear that the playwright should have stayed in his corner instead of writing plays in a style less familiar to the reviewer. It invites the reader to dinner party with Williams but makes it *just a little* uncomfortable for everyone. If that sounds convoluted, that's because it is. It's systemic.
Picking out one of these micro-biases will help to illustrate. Tennessee Williams wrote The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and A Streetcar Named Desire. These are considered "The Big Three". Branching out from the Big Three, there's a slightly more expansive canon which (depending on the level of fandom) may include between five and seven other plays. It is widely accepted that the Big Three are the standard against which all Williams plays be measured. Returning to the dinner party metaphor, consider the awkward feeling you might have if the parents kept bragging on your date's ex-lovers while you try to enjoy your meal. This is problematic.
It's problematic because Williams wrote over a hundred plays, thirty-three of which were full-length, and only a handful of which are, or truly resemble, the Big Three. If these three are the standard, it's easy for a reviewer to downplay the virtues of other spectacular plays simply on the merit that they're dissimilar to Cat, Streetcar, or Menagerie. While this may strike the writer as particularly damaging (it's only one review, after all) — incrementally and over time, it has been extremely unhelpful in identifying and criticizing the hundred-plus other plays in a fair and balanced way.
This phenomenon began in Williams' lifetime, once his Big Three had already made their marks. Critics expected him to turn out more of the same. When he didn't do so, it became fashionable to berate him for it. Without a Blanche to cling to, critics felt duped and betrayed, and chose to take it out on Williams, the seeming perpetrator of this diabolical and un-Streetcar-ly ruse. This continued after his death, and few writers have dared to challenge the convention. What I hope to do here is to challenge the reviewers, present and future, to look at Williams' plays not exclusively as lesser versions of the Big Three, but instead on their own virtues and failings.
HEY! ARE YOU SAYING YOU THINK CRITICS ARE DUMB???!!!
I should probably take a moment here to point out reviewers and critics are vital to a theatre landscape. They are often unsung heroes who, amid deadlines, deluges of requests to see multitudinous productions, and paltry word count edicts, still commit to helping further the discourse on theatre and inform audience members about what's happening in their communities (read: get people into seats). With that said, many critics and reviewers welcome conversation about what they write, as art is an ongoing conversation.
As an example, below are some excerpts from a review of a production of Summer and Smoke from Richmond, Virginia, in which I am boldfacing every overt comparison to Cat, Menagerie, or Streetcar or the style thereof, and underlining the less apparent comparisons, or comparisons to other plays. Fred Kaufman, whose astute review neither pulls punches nor shows any intention of detraction from Williams' brilliance, is a great example of a mindful review which is still informed by a climate of underlying bias toward the more canonical works.
Virginia Rep’s ‘Summer and Smoke’ is a masterful production of a troubled play
by Fred Kaufman
After becoming the toast of Broadway with the staging of A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams went to work on his next play, Summer and Smoke. Almost as soon as Williams finished the play, he realized that it was too diffuse, murkily metaphysical, and melodramatic. He ripped into the script, abandoning subplots and allowing the poetic tragedy of his heroine to emerge and to flower.
But this massive rewrite of Summer and Smoke was finished too late to use as a replacement—rehearsals for the London production were well under way—so the original play was doomed to hold the stage and, predictably, to fail. The rewrite was retitled as Eccentricities of a Nightingale. By the time he released Eccentricities, Williams’ star was on the wane and the play succumbed to disinterest. It has been thankfully revived in the years since and, for me, is the gem he was looking for when he originally sat down to write Alma’s tale.
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Even though Essentricities is a much better play, Summer and Smoke is still pure Southern Gothic Tennessee Williams.
The play takes place in turn of the century Mississippi. The plot concerns Miss Alma, an overly proper and overly nervous Southern spinster who lives with her harsh clergyman father and her mentally ill mother. She lives next door to young Dr. John who has just returned home from medical school to practice with his father. The stodgy Alma has been in a suppressed love and lust fantasy with the free spirited John ever since they were children.
We find out that John is more than carefree, he is self-destructive. He is addicted to alcohol and risky sexual behavior. Despite her own nervous condition, Alma makes excuses to spend time with him. Each episode ends badly with Alma resisting John’s boozy flirtations. John takes up with a low class Mexican tart in furtherance of his need for raw sexuality and risky personal behavior (no stereotypes there).
Alma seeks the aid of John’s father when she learns John intends to marry his tart. The tart’s father shoots John’s father in a pretty far-fetched scene. Of course this tragedy sobers John who does a 180, loses the tart and finds respectability.
By this time Alma, having been rejected and afraid of dying alone cloisters herself in her father’s house and refuses to see John for months. We can assume she has had a nervous breakdown. When she recovers she is stripped of her good manners and seems to have been philosophically and morally changed. She goes to John and attempts to seduce him, but it is too late. He is now the prim and proper gentleman engaged to a good girl. Their ships have passed in the night and Alma is devastated to the point where she displays risky sexual behavior at the end of the play. The roles have been reversed.
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Williams is never clear as to why John is so self-destructive. We know his mother died when he was a boy and can assume his father’s reputation is near impossible to live up to. Whether this justifies his behavior is speculative. Williams abandons John’s dilemma in Eccentricities but finally finds the answer to this character problem in his Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. We know why Brick self-destructs. We understand it is a mixture of repressed homosexuality and the inability to live up to his youthful glory football days.
We’re also are never fully satisfied with why John and Alma just miss being happy together. Their dramatic arcs overshoot each other, leaving both of them unhappy and unfulfilled. This is also Tennessee Williams’ style. No one goes home happy. But it doesn’t feel completely honest.
The job of making it honest belongs to the actor. Even problematic Williams is rich material to mine and an actor’s delight. And the actors in this production take great delight in playing Williams and as a result they are delightful to watch.
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Carolyn Demanelis is a wonderful Alma. She is a different Alma than I have seen before. She focuses on a stronger, less fragile and less “eccentric” Alma. It only half works. While I liked moments of that choice, she forgoes any indication of an emotional fragility which will lead to her nervous breakdown later in the play. Alma, like Laura in The Glass Menagerie or even Blanche in Streetcar all have a break-ability factor that makes watching them deteriorate very sympathetic and painful to watch. Ms. Demanelis finds the neurotic characteristics to play but they are the second best choice in terms of watching this delicate flower wilt. When she emerges from her house after a long hibernation, it is hard to justify her shift in character without seeing the vestiges of that breakdown.
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All of the younger actors succeed very well playing their age but not as well playing the older, commonplace people of this Mississippi. Such roles are more difficult as Williams imbues them with the prejudicial, stubborn, gossip filled characteristics that he hates. With one exception. Trace Coles is wickedly spot on as young John. You can see the genesis of all the problems that will plague John in his older years. He also hits the mark as a very awkwardly dull Roger, a very second rate suitor to Alma. This is a young actor to watch.
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The review goes on to praise what appears to be a very nicely executed production of a Williams classic, directed by Richmond theatre great, Bruce Miller.
What stands out in the paragraphs above is that that the only time the play is allowed to stand on its own without comparison is in its summation. Any critical reference to the play is almost exclusively in comparison to Cat, Streetcar, Menagerie, or Eccentricities of a Nightingale — a later play and a permutation of Summer and Smoke. Even as the author launches into his synopsis of Smoke, he prefaces with Eccentricities being a superior play. While comparison absolutely has its place in criticism, there could also be space to judge the play based more on the material itself.
Fred was a great sport and very gracious to allow me to use this review as an example, and for that I'm very grateful. He understands that Williams is not infallible, and that the play about which he's writing has some dead spots, potentials for pitfalls in production, and a capacity for being languid. You can read his full review here. He also recognizes the skill of Williams to create rich roles for actors, an ability to wield ambiguity masterfully, and a powerful ability to render emotional expression.
I thank Fred and his fellow critics and reviewers for the commitment to the communities which they serve.
In our next post on this discussion, I will be inventing a review of a production of King Lear in which I compare the entire production to Romeo & Juliet to highlight the incongruity in reviews of Williams when matched against other great playwrights who chose to write in different styles.
