Redgrave Theatre
It was hot and humid in Bristol on Thursday night; the mercury was pushing 85 and the theatre was recommending loose fitting clothing and iced water. Just the thing to get us in the mood for an evening of rarely produced Tennessee Williams playlettes. (<c> Theatre-Buddy.)
The two plays which make up the first half of the evening felt like sketches, in both senses of the word. The first Ivan's Widow (1982) is a dialogue between a woman (Helen Fox) and her analyst (Massimilliano Acerbi) -- designated in the programme simply as She and He. As the title suggests, "She" has just lost her husband: she wears an unfashionable black veil while simultaneously talking about him as if he is still alive. "He" is initially clinical and detached, but ends up inviting her out for lunch and questioning her about her underwear. There is a suggestion that she's a prisoner in the consulting room; and it isn't clear how much time passes between the short scenes. For some reason the doors keep changing places around them. We start to wonder if maybe He is gaslighting Her and that Ivan is alive, or even that we are watching a game which husband and wife are playing. The resolution doesn't answer the questions; and one feels that Williams was possibly roughing out an idea for use in some future work.
The second, Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let It Listen (1953) is if anything even slighter, although more recognisably in the Tennessee Williams universe. A Man (Codge Crawford) lies on a sofa in his long underwear and talks about being drunk and waking up in unlikely places. His wife, (Helen Fox, again), gives a long monologue about wishing she could live for the rest of her life in a far-away hotel under an assumed name. There is a faint whiff of Beckettian hopelessness in the relationship. Neither of them is actually going to step away from the situation. Where Ivan's Widow feels like an exercise in theatrical structure, Talk To Me Like the Rain... seems to show us a glimpse of two characters we would willingly have learned more about.
27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1946), which makes up the whole second half, is a much more substantial piece of work, and feels like encountering a new story from the world of Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. There's a certain lilt and rhythm and tone to all three of the plays which draws you in; you feel you could get lost in Wililams' language and stay there forever. It's 1930s Mississippi; a cotton gin has just burned down. Jake (Codge Crawford, again) violently warns his wife Flora (Helen Fox, again again) not to tell anyone that he was not at home when the fire broke out. He physically twists her arm at one moment, and engages in silly, lovers' baby-talk the next. In case we miss the point, when Silva, the owner of the gin (Massimilliano Acerbi, again) turns up in the second scene, he is carrying a horsewhip. Jake has profited substantially from Silva's loss, and Flora either carelessly or deliberately reveals that he was the probable arsonist (while claiming not to know what the word "arson" means.)
I am not sure if I correctly understood a plot point here: I take it that a gin is a mechanical apparatus which processes newly harvested cotton; and Silva, having lost his machinery, has to employ Jake to separate his twenty seven wagons of cotton in the old fashioned way, by hand. So the story is partly about the mechanisation of agriculture.
In the third scene, Flora's clothes are ripped and her body is covered in bruises; but Jake fails to notice or acknowledge this, instead talking about the hard day he has had processing cotton and saying that the new relationship with Silva is a good one. Again, we are left wondering who has been complicit in what and where the power lies: did Jake intend Flora to reveal his arson to Silva? Does Flora consent to and enjoy her abusive relationship with Jake? Has Silva simply exploited the situation, or was there some kind if implicit transaction between him and Jake?
The three plays are carried off extremely well; all the actors are strong, but it is clearly Helen Fox's evening. Having played three different victims of three different kinds of psychological and physical abuse in the course of an hour and a half, she looked understandably shattrered as she took the bow. And it was, as has been mentioned, extremely hot.
Flora uses the n-word, twice, and the world noticeably fails to come to an end.
Hi,
I'm Andrew.
I am trying very hard to be a semi-professional writer and have taken the leap of faith of down-sizing my day job.
If you enjoy these reviews, please consider leaving a tip on the Ko-Fi platform.
If you can afford it, please consider becoming a Patreon, by pledging £1 or more each time I publish an essay on the main blog. (I don't charge for these little reviews.)
Please do not feed the troll.
No comments:
Post a Comment