ORPHEUS DESCENDING
***1/4
(Reviewed on Broadway in October 1989 by David Lefkowitz. This review was first published in the Oct. 27, 1989 issue of Long Island Examiner newspaper.)
Casual theatergoers generally have a distorted image of Tennessee Williams’s plays. They think of delicate glass animals, Southern gentility, and smouldering passion—sort of like Dallas with poetry. One reason for the precipitous downfall of Williams’s commercial popularity was audiences’ unwillingness to accept the other side of his work. Rapes, sexual mutilations, cannibalism, and never-ending emotional victimizations all feed on the author’s profound pessimism, a much less saleable quality than a hunky, hollerin’ Brando in a ripped tee-shirt. The “world lit by lightning” Williams warns us of in his deceptively ravishing coda to The Glass Menagerie, is harsh and unnatural—hell on earth.
Light and shadow also pop into some metaphorical passages of Orpheus Descending, although here the meaning explicitly points to purity vs. corruption. It takes awhile for the play to get going and come into focus—the whole first half, in fact—but Williams eventually builds to a disturbing climax, in which the cherished ideals of individuality and sexuality are stamped out by old-world bigotry and hypocrisy.
Admittedly, act one wouldn’t hang together at all were it not for the fascinating backstory attached to the main character. A thinly disguised expositional scene opens the play, and we’re told the story of Lady Torrance, Italian owner of the town general store. When she was younger, the KKK burned her father’s store down because he sold booze to negroes. Not only was Lady Torrance’s father consumed by the fire, but she wound up married to a man partially responsible for the calamity.
When we finally meet Lady Torrance (Vanessa Redgrave), we encounter a repressed but tough old lady, by her own admission “already dead.” Her heavy accent and tragic past contribute to an isolation that she fights against only for business purposes—that is, until Val wanders into town with his snakeskin jacket and autographed guitar.
A handsome drifter pushing thirty, Val has a past as well, but he’s given up running with fast crowds and hopes to settle quietly, without commitment, in town. But though he can cease his drinking and carousing, Val can’t seem to keep the girls away. First there’s Carol, the town free-spirit and slut (Anne Twomey). Val rejects her advances, only to form an immediate kinship with Vee (Tammy Grimes), the vision-haunted artist. Their relationship is purely spiritual, but tell that to the Sheriff—Vee’s husband.
Loneliness, lust, and desperation—three vintage Tennessee Williams emotions—pull Lady Torrance towards the decent but insular stranger. No sooner does Lady Torrance agree to employ him in her store than both their protected worlds begin to be torn apart by outside forces.
Trying to avoid the pitfalls of the original stagings of Orpheus Descending (an embryonic 1940 incarnation called “Battle of Angels” never made it to New York; the 1957 Broadway production suffered from mixed reviews and audience apathy), director Peter Hall wisely heightens the poetic passages with music and dramatic lighting, instead of shoehorning into a realistic format. Lighting designers Paul Pyant and Neil Peter Jampolis deserve special commendation for their subtle evocations of mood, not to mention headlights and thunderstorms. When characters would open the shop door and step into the dusky street, I felt as if I were standing outside with them.
Playwright Williams falls into a mildly annoying habit of repeating thematic dialogue three times (Carol’s belief that when you find something you love, you should “hold onto it until your fingers break” is stunning the first time, less so the third), but his metaphors work, and he knows exactly what he wants life to wreak on characters who were never meant to fit in.
Over the past few years, Vanessa Redgrave has gone the Meryl Streep route of choosing ethnic characters with highly specific accents. Her work as concentration-camp survivor Fania Fénelon in “Playing for Time,” though politically offensive, earned the actress an Emmy. But Ms. Redgrave’s Lady Torrance is closer to her role as a nymphomaniacal foreign widow in the Terry Jones/Michael Palin-based film, “Consuming Passions.” The actress went, not unjustifiably, over the top in that wry comedy. But despite her thick Neapolitan accent, she is admirably restrained her. Like all great actors, Ms. Redgrave builds slowly, all the while hinting at the character’s full potential. The new celebrated “nude” scene is a perfect choice because of the freedom it represents while still conveying enormous vulnerability. And when Lady Torrance finally breaks out of her shell, we feel the excitement of someone discovering life again—not the joy, but the anger and pain, as well.
Kevin Anderson, though solid as Val, doesn’t quite exude the mysterious pull the character ought to. Granted, one could defend a weak Val by saying that the repressed townswomen aren’t looking for Paul Newman; they’re susceptible to any young, enigmatic visitor. Still, at some point, we must care about Val as a person or his final misfortune won’t strike as many levels as it might.
As Carol, Ann Twomey manages to be both sexy and maddening behind what is essentially a (death) mask. We see why her confused but sensually open woman is the only “positive” character to survive the play intact. Sloane Shelton excels in her small role, while Brad Sullivan chills the blood as Lady Torrance’s undying husband. Less impressive are a somewhat mechanical Patti Allison and an uncomfortable Tammy Grimes. Hypersensitive Vee, with her visions and longings, should be a pivotal role in the play’s construction, but Ms. Grimes tries too hard to too little effect.
As the black, spiritual rag-and-bone man, Doyle Richmond doesn’t quite rescue a thankless role bordering on risibility (although the character may be seen as a coincidental predecessor to the shinyman, so crucial to August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone). The remaining players are strong, especially the men.
Alison Chitty’s set is just right, notably her conception of Lady Torrance’s confectionery—gaudy enough to be humorous to us and aggravating to the town, lively enough to make the shop seem like a fun place to go.
I have serious mixed emotions about welcoming someone like Vanessa Redgrave back to New York theater, but her performance can’t be denied. Certainly, I have no reservations about Broadway offering a neglected Tennessee Williams play a reevaluation, and the work can’t be denied. That it took the playwright seventeen years to complete this piece merely indicates how deeply ingrained the themes of society vs. the individual remained to him throughout his tortured life. Though too unsure in its handling of the male protagonist—if he is a protagonist—to be called a lost masterpiece, Orpheus Descending takes its place as a major work in the Williams canon.
*
(Staged by Peter Hall, Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending ran at Broadway’s Neil Simon Theater, Sept. 24-Dec. 17, 1989.)
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