Here’s a question for playwright/performer William Shuman:
What’s a genteel little play like yours doing in a place like the New York
International Fringe Festival?
The play in question is a one-man show called En Avant! An Evening With Tennessee Williams. It is a
loving tribute to the great playwright, with none of the quirkiness or
metaphysical meanderings associated with many of the Fringe offerings.
Fans of Mr. Williams will find much to admire in this
75-minute monolog (directed by Ruis Woertendyke)—in turns informative,
insightful, gossipy, and introspective—as Mr. Shuman takes on the persona of
Mr. Williams, who, according to the program, is joining us from a world he
inhabits somewhere “between here and heaven” three decades after his death.
The set is simple: A
wicker chair, a table with a decanter of liquor that gradually diminishes in
volume during the course of the play, and another table holding a typewriter
and copies of some of Mr. Williams’s work.
When first he appears, dressed in a white suit and blue
shirt, Mr. Shuman as Mr. Williams is somewhat diffident, seemingly surprised to
see us and even more surprised to learn that we still remember him. “I’m gonna fix myself a little drink, then we
can spend some time together,” he says, and then proceeds to pour the first of
many such little drinks that will fuel the conversation.
He starts with the safe stuff: something about his early
life, a tidbit about an ancestor named Preserved Fish Dakin, how he underwent
the name change from Tom to Tennessee, his early writing efforts and successes. This all feels like well-honed audience
material, something for the talk shows and public speaking engagements.
But as he warms to the task (and as the
alcohol begins to provide that famous “click” he talks about in Cat On A Hot
Tin Roof), he opens up about his difficult father (“the man in the overstuff
chair”), whom he says treated him contemptibly and referred to him as “Miss
Nancy.” He also speaks of some of the
other men in his life—Kip, his first love, and Frank, whom he walked away from.
He admits that he was not able to commit himself to any relationship for very
long (“We fucked and we fought for a year and a half, and then I couldn’t take
it.”)
He talks of the actress Laurette Taylor,
struggling to overcome a 15-year drinking binge (“the longest wake in history”)
to take on the role of Amanda in the original production of The Glass
Menagerie. She was, he says, “constantly
ad-libbing in an accent I’ve yet to identify.”
Yet, in the end, of course, she gave a performance that has become the
stuff of legends.
He regrets the lack of public and critical appreciation for
his later plays, which were sometimes experimental in nature and served to move
him forward as a writer. Interestingly
enough, some of these are receiving a new hearing (e.g. the current revelatory
production of The Two Character Play, starring Amanda Plummer and Brad Dourif).
But, in the end, nothing matters to him so much as the
writing. Through all of the ups and
downs of his life, the struggles with failure and with success—and with the
booze, the barbiturates, and the boys—it is the writing that kept him going.
“If I could not write, I’d cease to exist,” he says, leaving
his posthumous appearance before us as evidence of the truth of this
statement.
En Avant! (the phrase, meaning “onward,” was Mr. Williams’s
motto) makes for a most companionable and intimate theatrical evening at its
Fringe venue, the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center in the Lower East Side. I’m guessing that, like his subject, Mr.
Shuman will continue to tinker with both the work and his performance of it
over time, but hopefully he will keep the tone conversational and relaxed as it
is now.
On a sad note, I would like to express my condolences on the
passing of Shirley Herz, the well-known theatrical press agent, whose firm Shirley
Herz Associates serves as publicist for En Avant! An Evening With Tennessee
Williams. Broadway recognized her many
years of contributions earlier this week by dimming its lights. We join in saluting her.
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