You may recognize ECCENTRICITIES OF A NIGHTINGALE more readily as “Summer and Smoke” by Thomas Lanier Williams III, who you may recognize more readily as “Tennessee.” Geraldine Page and Jose Quintero reputedly began the Off-Broadway movement with this production. ECCENTRICITIES is an improved re-working of the original script. This play was made into a film in the 60’s, with Page playing the main character of the preacher’s daughter Alma Winemiller in one of those atmospheric Williams’ treatments of the time, opposite exceedingly handsome, sexually-ambiguous Laurence Harvey. ECCENTRICITIES is playing now at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre on Addison St.
If a company is unearthing a minor 50-year old play of a major playwright, they’d better bring some fireworks to the production. Outside of the very good Fourth of July pyrotechnic lighting by Jim Cave, there are only three flashes of brilliance here. The first is an object lesson in how to play a Tennessee Williams' diva given by Amy Crumpacker who plays Alma’s deranged mother. She makes us see the images of a horrendous happening in a “musee mecanique” (Remember the one at the Cliff House? It moved to Pier 45!). She makes palpable the soul-less symbolism of the mechanized puppets. She does this while making us fear for her sanity. If only daughter were more like mother, we might be more engaged and fear for our heroine’s soul and her sanity, and her arc would have so much more meaning. The second highlight is a loud, brash, and entertaining cameo of an overbearing widow by sexy songstress Leanne Borghesi in a straight and dowdy role. The final scene is the third, which parallels the scandalous tales the traveling salesman told Stanley about the Blanche in “Streetcar” and gives us a shot of Mississippi back-alley sex.
Beth Wilmurt is a terrific actress who knocked me out in “God’s Ear” as the neurotic, abandoned wife. Under the direction of Tom Ross, she delivers a modern, articulate, woman rather than a fragile, older virgin with hysterical tendencies in the Mississippi Delta circa 1910. Tennessee describes Alma, our heroine, with words he puts in the mouths of other characters: affected, lyric soprano, dramatic, talking wildly, laughing hysterically, with arms flying about. Ms. Wilmurt’s Alma is none of these, and does none of these. There is nothing bi-polar or neurotic in her demeanor that sets up the high drama or the tragic resolution. Her accent maintains the final “r” but drops the final “g” in “-ing” words; this seems the opposite of a conservatory-trained music teacher/minister’s daughter’s way of speaking in that time and place. She speaks with machine-gun cadence, which may have been mistaken for instability in that age and place, but her performance seems far too grounded for the role. Even her defloration is played as just another occurrence in her life without the assumed accompanying angst; although the young Williams’ sometimes-puerile symbolism pops up in this scene when their passion sparks and sputters in time with the log fire.
It seems that Tennessee’s story is always infused into that of both male and female in his plays; he was reared by his Episcopal minister grandfather and his over-protective Southern Belle Grandmother (good program notes by M. Mansfield http://auroratheatre.org/show_notes.php?prod_id=76#29). All of Williams’ plays are about our dark ids and sexual repression and abuse, and a first version of this play was first presented the same year he received the Pulitzer for “Streetcar.”
Charles Dean as her censorious and oppressive minister father delivers a believable, dominating figure whose worry for his daughter’s future seems outweighed by concern about society’s view of her as unstable; he has borne the embarrassment of an unbalanced wife for too long. Thomas Gorrebeeck as Dr. John Buchanan Jr. does not mine the psychological gold in the plum role of Dr. John Jr., who is smothered by his overprotective mother played by Maria Pizza with sexual overtones like a young Mrs. Venable in “Suddenly Last Summer.” His attraction and ambivalence to Alma is played as a grounded young, caring physician who does his familial duty but is unaffected by his maternal situation, which seems to this lifelong fan of Tennesee’s as missing the dramatic point. The constant interruptions of Alma and Dr. John’s meetings by his mother are repeated so often as a plot mechanism that it borders on humorous.
Laura Hazlett’s Gibson-girl era costumes and Liliana Duque Pinero’s set are lovely, and perfectly period; however, the set changes sometimes take up to 40 seconds, which breaks the flow, even when covered with the soundtrack of songs from that time period.
Half the house at the Sunday Matinee stood to applaud, which made me scratch my head. Regarding recommendations, I’ll have to pass on “Eccentricities” because it’s just not eccentric enough.
ECCENTRICIES OF A NIGHTINGALE at Aurora Theatre through May 8 http://www.auroratheatre.org/show.php?prod_id=76&ref=seas
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