SOMETHING CLOUDY, SOMETHING CLEAR. To 14 June.
London
SOMETHING CLOUDY, SOMETHING CLEAR
by Tennessee Williams
Finborough Theatre To 14 June 2003
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed 2.30pm/Sun 3.30pm
Post-show discussion: 27 May
Runs 2hr 5min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7373 3842
Review: Timothy Ramsden 25 May
Intimacy suits this late Williams play with its mix of memory and sharp experience.A lifetime's a long-time in writing. How can somebody formed in the early part of a century, and become a success, continue at the same pace when new times, and generations, come along to start afresh?
The appearance of Tallulah Bankhead, the lightly-covered reference to Eugene O' Neill: how could these be expected to play, as they had to in Tennessee Williams' 1980 play, on the generation of Sam Shepard or David Mamet?
Yet Tamara Harvey's sympathetic revival (for Bright Angel theatre company) shows a major writer's someone whose minor works still hold intense interest. There may not be the force and scope of a Streetcar or a Cat, but this play's no more small-scale or personally obsessive than The Glass Menagerie.
Impoverished young August squats in a hut amid Provincetown sand dunes in 1940, squaring up to the tricky business side of playwriting (the theatrical manager's named Fiddler). But his main dealing is with Kip and Clare, a draft-dodging Canadian dancer in Nijinsky mould and his adoptive sister, a Firefly (1940's version of a lap-dancer?) in thrall to gangster Bugsy to pay for Kip's medical treatment.
Clare's congenitally diabetic; Kip has a brain tumour. Both are to die, we know, as August/Tennessee's consciousness time-flips, speaking with a 1980 knowledge shared only by Clare. These two haunt August: the gay writer is in love with Kip, while the subtle-minded Clare questions his conscience.
Kate Sissons stepped late into the part of Clare: not only word-perfect, she's pretty nigh perfect all-round, while Bruce Godfree, sketching steps to Pavane pour une Infante Defunte is suitable other-worldly – half out of this life, and a creature of graceful perfection to August.
James Hillier does well in this role, though the portrayal (by play or production) is rather soft-focused; he shrinks from violence but isn't entirely innocent. The glamour worlds of stage and crime come over well.
Bigger stagings could exploit more theatrically the title's idea of clarity and the fanciful (it also refers to a cataract in August's eye), but this tiny thrust staging moves you like anything, as it builds – aided by Rilke and Ravel - to its climax.
August: James Hillier
Kip: Bruce Godfree
Clare: Kate Sissons
Frank Merlo/Merhcant Seaman: Derek Hagen
Nurse/Hazel/Caroline Wales: Nikki Leigh Scott
Maurice Fiddler: Matthew Hendrickson
Celeste Fiddler/Tallulah Bankhead: Susan Bovell
Bugsy Brodsky: James Wallace
Director: Tamara Harvey
Designer: Soutra Gilmour
Lighting: Emma Chapman
Sound: Richard Lace
Choreography: Sian Williams
2003-05-26 13:04:40