SMALL CRAFT WARNINGS. To 18 October.
London.
SMALL CRAFT WARNINGS
by Tennessee Williams.
Arcola Theatre 27 Arcola Street E8 2DJ To 18 October 2008.
Mon-Sat 8pm
Runs 2hr 15min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7503 1646.
www.arcolatheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 13 September.
A minor work of a major writer suggests heart and hurt as well as someone who’d missed the boat.
By 1972 Tennessee Williams’ glory-days were past, and while director Bill Bryden skilfully manoeuvres his strong cast to show this play’s human sympathies, he can’t conceal its static nature and timid experimentalism.
Eugene O’Neill’s ghost lies some way behind this collection of life’s derelicts gathered in Monk’s bar one dark and stormy night. Outside the surf crashes, while the radio warns of seas that could wreck small boats. But it’s the “vulnerable human vessels” inside who roll through the night, as tensions break in waves of anger and characters have a Strange Interlude-like chance to voice their thoughts.
But the major O’Neill parallel is The Iceman Cometh’s confessional drinkathon. Williams provides less psychological exploration than emotional parade of his characters. And he came late and clumsily to the new openness about gay themes.
Scriptwriter Quentin enters with an emotionally unsatisfactory pickup, a young man wanting love not money. They sit for ages, Quentin has his moment, then they disappear. Thankfully Greg Hicks asserts an interior life by his appearance as well as in his big scene. But, as in his reworking of Chekhov’s Seagull, Williams’ compassion for the hurt heart and psyche curdles into something lecture-like when approaching his own sexuality.
It’s the women who are most strongly written; both are splendidly performed here. Sian Thomas’s Leona, getting through the anniversary of her gay brother’s death with insistent emotional assertion, drops from screams to half-spoken regret in a moment, physically commanding the room whenever she wishes.
Meredith Macneill’s outstanding as Violet, a child in a damaged woman’s body, gloating or jumping for joy at a moment’s triumph, screaming or hiding in the toilet when attacked, and most usually registering fear or seeking comfort by covertly masturbating any man who’ll let her.
A frightening portrayal of a girl’s mind infused with sexual desire, it contrasts Jack Sheperd’s Monk, with the distant-sounding voice and careful movement of someone with physical heart problems, his alcohol-dispensing monastery the place where he, too, looks for peace.
On Hayden Griffin’s suitably modest, neatly-tabled decor, Bryden’s production is as good as this play is likely to get.
Doc: John Nolan.
Monk: Jack Sheperd.
Violet: Meredith MacNeill.
Leona: Sian Thomas.
Bill: Steve Nicolson.
Steve: John Guerrasio.
Quentin: Greg Hicks.
Bobby: Iain Robertson.
Tony: James Hutchinson.
Director: Bill Bryden.
Designer: Hayden Griffin.
Lighting: Johanna Town.
Sound: John Leonard.
Costume: Chris Cahill.
Fight choreographer: Stuart Hopps.
Assistant director: Fiona Morrell.
2008-09-15 01:59:57