‘This house was occupied once. In my mind it still is, but by shadowy occupants like ghosts.' Tennessee Williams Read more …
722 Toulouse Street, New Orleans is a squalid rooming house where a young writer makes his home amongst restless young malcontents and elderly eccentrics. As he becomes entangled with their lives, his own fate reveals itself.
In this production, the New York-based Wooster Group forges a new mode of expression for Williams's lyric voice. The influence of Elia Kazan, who defined a style for Williams in the 1940s, is inescapable. But the Group counters the pull of Kazan by drawing stylistically from the seamy improvisational films of Paul Morrissey, produced with Andy Warhol in the early 1970s, and the recent media work of Ryan Trecartin, known for his wildly stylised performances, rapid-fire editing and digital manipulations.
It is we who are left unhinged and alone in the darkness when it ends.
There's still something slightly coy about the depiction of sexuality here.
At the centre of the show is Ari Fliakos' memorably quiet and subtle performance as the writer.
A freakshow that is in turns arch, manic and impossibly languid.
You leave after the two hour intermissionless production impressed with the technical aspects and bold theatricality, but utterly unmoved.
It becomes impossible to connect with any of the characters.
This striking production seems truer to the wild spirit of Tennessee Williams than many more conventional productions of his work.
Their stories may have lit a flame in Williams, but they only smoulder here.
Technically sophisticated and an extremely clever way of exploring the blurry line between reality and imagination.
New York stories
Novel approaches
Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh from Saturday August 21, 2010, until Tuesday August 24, 2010. 7.30pm. Tickets: £10-£27. More info: www.lyceum.org.uk
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