Playwright: Tennessee Williams. At: Artistic Home, 1376 W. Grand Ave. Tickets: 312-243-3963; www.theartistichome.org; $28-$32 suggested donation. Runs through: May 5
The cheap and easy analogy in Tennessee Williams' 1961 drama is that of a clueless bachelor, enslaved to both his intellect and his appetites, forced to choose between a ballbusting woman-of-the-flesh and a frigid woman-of-the-spirit. The loftier classroom interpretation is a crisis of faith precipitated by the ideological conflict between animal brutality and enlightened charity. Both shine the spotlightthe playwright sometimes literallyon an ambivalent male hero beset by female archetypes whose sole purpose is the subjugation of his body and his soul.
A closer reading, though, reveals that the Reverend Shannon isn't the only pilgrim who has, as he loudly proclaims, "reached the end of his rope" at this shabby Mexican seaside hotel. Its proprietress has been recently widowed. The servants were hired following their ignoble discharge by previous employers. An itinerant artist and her poet grandfather see their livelihood and independence waning. The sole paying guests are a family of expatriate German Nazis. Even the bus drivers and the American tourists they carry must mind their budgets to the last centavo. Each one of these people occupies a chaotic world lurking just offstage, from which they emerge to speak their minds before returning to adventures beyond our purview.
Director Kathy Scambiatterra thinks that we are smart enough to recognize this dynamic. By casting the virginal Hannah and her nonagenarian companion across racial lines, piquing our curiosity over the story behind their lineage, she allows Kelly Owens and Walter Brody to project a spun-steel resiliency at odds with their external fragility. Shannon's tormentorsa clingy nymphet and her chaperone, the vulgar Farhenkopf clan, the sweaty travel-agency personnel, the native roustaboutsare conventionally reduced to comic relief, but in this production, each command their place, however briefly, in Williams' panorama of despair and resurrection. Miranda Zola's Maxine likewise offers us glimpses of the matriarchal compassion beneath the hard-boiled veneer she projects. The diversity of this group portrait, in turn, encourages us to view John Mossman's Rev. Shannonnot in isolation, as he views himself, but as part of a universe teeming with social interactions. His final acceptance of its complexity is not a capitulation, therefore, but a choice freely embraced.
Scambiatterra declares the Artistic Home's relocation to have been a search for a place where "as an actor, you cannot hide." Her ensemble's attention to text and character analysis, coupled with the intimacy of the company's new West Town quarters, creates a focused intensity making for riveting suspense despite the unexcised script. The actual running time is two and a half hours with one intermission; however, after the first few minutes, you'll barely notice.