In some 50 years of theatergoing–starting in childhood with a matinee exposure to Jean Arthur and Boris Karloff doing “Peter Pan” of all things–I can count perhaps a half dozen times when I have found myself witness to a genuine moment of theatrical history.
By that I mean a cast and performance so perfect, a playwright’s intent and vision so brilliantly fulfilled, that I should never ever want to watch anyone else attempt it again. A production that everyone involved with seems to have been born to do.
One such moment for me was seeing Lotte Lenya in her late husband Kurt Weill’s “Threepenny Opera” at New York’s Theatre De Lys in 1959. Another was seeing Colm Wilkinson and Randi Graff on the (U.S.) opening night of “Les Miserables” at Washington’s Kennedy Center in 1986. Yet another was being privileged to witness the late Colleen Dewhurst and Jason Robards in Eugene O’Neill’s “Ah, Wilderness” at the 1988 New York International Arts Festival.
And, this summer, another such moment in spades was seeing Elizabeth Ashley as Alexandra del Lago in Tennessee Williams’ “Sweet Bird of Youth.”
The production, which closes Sunday at Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre after two by-popular-demand extensions, is directed by Michael Kahn, who runs the theater as well as New York’s Juilliard School of Drama. Suffice it to say, Kahn was born to direct Tennessee Williams (even though he inadvertently rolled down an entire flight of stairs upon first meeting the master).
The role of the doomed, washed-up Southern gigolo Chance Wayne is played by Michael Hayden, who starred with Chicago’s fabulous Sally Murphy a couple of years ago in the Tony Award-winning Lincoln Center revival of “Carousel.”
Hayden, who has to compete with memories of a young Paul Newman pioneering the role on Broadway in 1959, does so handsomely, in part because he understands what Williams is all about, why this purveyor of themes of promiscuity, homosexuality, drug addiction, alcoholism, castration, unrequited love and decay is considered America’s Shakespeare.
“He’s saying this is what much of humanity is all about,” Hayden said. “Lost dreams. People who stuff away the fear, anxiety and frustration in booze or sex or whatever–because they can’t measure up. That desperation in the human experience.”
But what enlivens, illuminates and electrifies this production most is Ashley, who as the fading movie star del Lago captivates us even when supposedly lying asleep beneath a hot, hotel-room sheet.
As has been discussed in this space recently concerning Madonna’s ill-advised and now dead plans to star as Maggie in a new London production of Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” not everyone is born to do Williams. Certainly limp, weak, wispy Jessica Lange didn’t belong up there as Blanche Dubois in the last New York revival of “Streetcar Named Desire.”
I cringe at the thought that it may someday turn Julia Roberts’ head to do Williams.
But the Florida-born, Louisiana-raised, chain-smoking, whiskey-voiced, thrice-married Ashley is living, breathing, walking, talking Williams. Not to speak of lying-down Williams.
As she said at lunch the other day, blinking at the sunlight: “I never get out of bed unless I’m paid to.”
She created an earlier theatrical historic moment with her own portrayal of Maggie in an epochal 1974 New York revival of “Cat” that Kahn directed and Williams himself collaborated in. She did Williams’ “Suddenly Last Summer,” “Red Devil Battery Sign” and “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore.”
On another recent afternoon, lying down on a shabby backstage couch barefoot and smoking, as Southern as red clay roads despite years in New York, Ashley explained Williams:
“He is an American voice,” she said. “The American South, it’s the earth. It’s the richest ground for the American voice, because Southern people are Americans to the max. It’s where conversation is a blood sport . . .
“Williams’ plays have to do with where they’re taking you. I remember my mother taking me to see `Summer and Smoke.’ I remember the scene with the family in the parlor. Children live in a world of secrets, a world of the unsaid. I remember sitting in the theater, in the balcony, and that scene–what was going on was what was going on every day in my house. Every day I was told, `Don’t ask.’ The secrets, the dark secrets, that your instincts tell you, `Don’t ask.’ And somebody wrote about it! You could sit there and see the secret stuff! You could see it made clear to you.This is the secret stuff! This is what the secret stuff is really about!
“And that was as thrilling as anything that had ever happened to me!”
New York’s Roundabout Theatre is reportedly thinking about bringing this entire “Sweet Bird of Youth” production to its stage next season–Ashley and all.
Why “thinking.”?
