|
|
Elliot Eustis (dancing) is the not-quite-unobtainable object of desire in Tennessee Williams’ “The Parade.” The Williams-like character Don is played by Ben Griessmeyer. |
|
|
Tennessee Williams finds his voice
By Susan Rand Brown
Banner Correspondent
Like Eugene O’Neill a quarter century earlier, the young Tennessee Williams arrived in Provincetown in 1940 to hike the dunes and swim, to see and be seen, and to write. Both writers were intensely autobiographical, setting characters loose on stage to wrestle with inner demons resembling their own.
Williams spent four different time periods in Provincetown, the first when he shared quarters with a young dancer at Captain Jack’s Wharf. Williams was 26 that summer, just starting to taste professional success, suffering shyness and insecurity. The affair was intense, its break-up equally so. When the dancer abandoned him for a woman, Williams poured out his pain, his fury, his pride and especially his poetry in “The Parade, Or Approaching the End of a Summer.”
The one-act gem played to sold-out houses when it had its world premiere in Provincetown last fall, the capstone to the first Tennessee Williams Festival. Now back in town as one of two summer productions by Shakespeare on the Cape, the company affiliated with the University of Minnesota /Guthrie Theater BFA Actor Training Program, the match of script and cast remains perfect.
Unlike the plays by the young O’Neill, whose characters can barely speak, “The Parade” is evidence that Williams was gifted with a silver tongue. Excitement over its production is less for its novelty as an apprentice piece from a playwright who went on to lasting fame (today Williams is read and produced more frequently than O’Neill) than it is for its emotional impact, honest discussion of sexual attraction, and of course for those flights of poetic fancy Williams spins out like no one else.
Shortly after scribbling “The Parade” into one of his many notebooks, Williams tossed it aside; a friend rescued it from oblivion and held on to it. Two decades later, Williams agreed to finish the script, leaving intact the sounds of spontaneous speech and the candor with which he approached gay identity. In “The Parade,” Williams can be seen shaping but not censoring his often outrageous persona.
Returning in their Williams Festival roles, Shakespeare on the Cape veterans Ben Griessmeyer and Elliot Eustis are a joy to watch. As Williams’ alter ego, the lovesick poet Don, Griessmeyer turns on a dime between lassitude, self-directed humor, and charm. Expressiveness is one of Greissmeyer’s strengths: watch him bat his eyes and flash a turned-up smile to be smitten by Williams’ own charisma.
As the narcissistic dancer who preens for Don while keeping him at a distance, Elliot Eustis is convincing as the aptly named Dick. It’s a challenging role: Dick is a closeted, deluded youth with limited talents, and Eustis endows him with the supreme confidence of the foolish. He flaunts his girlfriend Wanda, a small role played with flair by Whitney Hudson, until the heartsick Don can take it no more. In the role of the nurturing urbanite Miriam, Elizabeth Stahlmann creates a sympathetic sounding board as hopelessly gaga over Don as Don is over Dick.
The parade in question is, of course, shorthand for the peak moment that never seems to arrive. When Griessmeyer’s Don utters his final words about the dying of the light, we can’t help but project ahead to the arc of Williams’ life, its triumphs and periods of despair. In “The Parade,” he may be looking for love in all the wrong places, but the journey is still ahead. This is a play, and a production, not to be missed.
“The Parade, Or Approaching The End Of a Summer,” performed by Shakespeare on the Cape, plays at the Provincetown Theater, 238 Bradford Street, Provincetown, Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. through September 5. Tickets are $25, $22 for New Provincetown Players members, students, and seniors. For tickets, call 508-487-9793, or 1-800-791-7487.
|
‘Taste is the Enemy of Art’
Galleries, galleries, galleries
|
|
|
|
|
Jul 19th, 2007