Eccentricities of a Nightingale
The Eccentricities of a Nightingale
Theater Scene.net
Diedre Donovan
May 7, 2008
There may not be any second acts in American life, but there may be second chances for failed American plays. The Actors Company Theatre has bravely remounted Tennessee Williams?s Eccentricities of a Nightingale at The Clurman Theatre in Theater Row. And the good news is, the old play sings miraculously well.
Eccentricities is a radical reworking of Williams?s1947 memory-mood play, Summer and Smoke. The author wrote it at the height of his talent, and obsessively honed the piece for 25 years. Even so, when the play finally reached Broadway in 1976, it ran for a total of 24 performances. And it left hardly a chink in the theatrical landscape. Greatly overshadowed by both A Streetcar Named Desire and Jose Quintero?s Off Broadway revival of Summer and Smoke that made Geraldine Page a star, Eccentricities was eclipsed by historical productions and plain bad timing.
But times change, which is one of the reasons, perhaps, why The Actors Company Theatre felt that Eccentricities needed to be reconsidered. The success of the production, and of its success there is no doubt, is due to the fact that the entire acting ensemble brings utter conviction to the stage. They seem to know the idiosyncrasies of the play from its first page to its last, and then some.
She-dramas made Williams a premier playwright. He earned his reputation in the pantheon of American playwrights with the likes of A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie. The playwright demonstrated, time and again, a true penchant for writing works about damaged woman in extreme situations. And, yet, the scribe wrote that Alma ?may well be the best female portrait I have drawn in a play.? He preferred this work to Summer and Smoke, and also believed that Alma was strongly autobiographical, a surrogate for his complex psyche.
Mary Bacon is terrific as Alma Winemiller. Bacon?s Alma superimposes the sensitive soul on the sensual woman. It?s a real achievement for any actor to play ?the
nightingale of the Delta.? But Bacon shows you precisely why Alma is alienating and endearing at once. She is the epitome of nervous energy: singing an octave too high at recitals, fluttering her hands, fussing with a plumed hat, engaging in small talk. She elicits our sympathy in the end, however, with her naked honesty. She hungers for human love. Even if its brief as the passing hour.
The action takes place in Glorious Hill, Mississippi, shortly before the First World War. The fable begins and ends at The Fountain, where an angel named ?Eternity? is carved in stone. Other scenes take place in the Rectory, where Alma lives with her father, the Reverend Winemiller (Larry Keith) and her neurasthenic mother (Nora Chester). A few spicy interludes occur in the Buchanan House and the Hotel. But the genuine setting is the human heart.
The story is one of longing and rebellion, revolving around Alma (Spanish for ?soul?), who?s branded the ?peculiar? one. She?s relentlessly corrected by her Episcopal father for social infractions, including her ritual of feeding crumbs to the birds in the Square. But hypocrisy comes full circle here. And we have plenty of time to see the other characters acting equally strange in Glorious Hill, ?walled in? by their own affectations, self-importance, and moral judgments.
In a quietly compassionate performance, Todd Gearhart plays Dr. John Buchanan, Jr., the young medical doctor who?s home to visit his widowed mother for the Christmas holidays. Grown-up, and no longer the boy-next-door, Gearhart?s Buchanan rekindles Alma?s romantic yearnings and need for human intimacy. Indeed the best scene of the play, their one-hour tryst at a honky-tonk hotel, is profoundly touching. ?How few people in this world dare to say what?s in their hearts,? Gearhart says. And though his character doesn?t love Alma, there?s clearly the ring of honesty in his words.
Other acting parts are well played by Darrie Lawrence, Francesca Di Mauro, Cynthia Darlow, John Plumpis, James Prendergast, and Scott Schafer. If there were time, this review would gratefully include all the fabricators of illusion. For they all must realize that, under the fine direction of Jenn Thompson, they have revived a forgotten play of the master, and given it new legs.