BY TRAV S.D. | It’s been over 30 years now since the great American playwright Tennessee Williams passed away. Little did anyone (least of all him) suspect in 1982 that the early 21st century would be a time of reevaluation and elevation of his late works. Most efforts from his last two decades were uncelebrated, to put it mildly. Most were unproduced in his time. Those that did see the light of day were panned by critics, unfairly compared to his early masterpieces like “The Glass Menagerie” and “A Streetcar Named Desire.” But that has been steadily changing. In recent years, New York has seen critically acclaimed productions of such late Williams works as “In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel,” “Green Eyes,” “Clothes for a Summer Hotel” and “In Masks Outrageous and Austere.”
One key player in this Williams Renaissance has been Romanian-born stage director Cosmin Chivu. Among his credits are a revival of the 1981 play “Something Cloudy, Something Clear” in the 2011 Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, and his 2013 hit production of Williams’ 1966 oddity “The Mutilated,” starring Mink Stole and Penny Arcade.
Two years ago, Chivu sat on a Tennessee Williams panel sponsored by the Playhouse Creatures Theatre Company. This lead to his directing a Sept. 2015 staged reading of John Guare’s “More Stars Than There Are in Heaven” for the company, which resulted in Playhouse Creatures hiring him to direct “Tennessee Williams 1982.” The production — which features the late-career one-acts “A Recluse and His Guest” and “The Remarkable Rooming-House of Mme. Le Monde” — is running at Walkerspace through Mar. 13.
“A Recluse” is a Scandinavian-flavored parable about an outcast woman who briefly finds love and safety in the arms of a half-witted, skittish hermit. “The Remarkable Rooming-House” is a punk-era black comedy, with detectable overtones of Samuel Beckett, Joe Orton, John Waters, and Derek Jarman. Miraculously, Chivu and his set designer Justin West have built a space for both plays to live in that is at once warm, cluttered, elemental, and timeless.
“These two plays work together on stage surprisingly well,” says Chivu. “Though set in very different worlds they have extraordinary things in common. ‘A Recluse and His Guest’ is unique and unprecedented, unlike anything else Tennessee Williams has written. It may surprise the audience. It’s written like a fable or a folk tale, set in an unspecified Northern Europe — we’re imagining it somewhere north of Norway. ‘The Remarkable Rooming-House of Mme. Le Monde’ is a rough political commentary, seen through the eyes of characters in an attic in London in the 1980s.”
Each work is set in a location that, Chivu notes, is “unusual for Williams,” with a tone that is “far from realism. Both plays have the recurring theme of life in imposed exile and fear of accepting love. And at the bottom of both is a familiar theme from Williams’ work: how a woman survives. Each of the two plays complements the other. They are like windows into Tennessee Williams’ soul.”
With European training in the experimental theatre and a master’s from the Actors Studio, Chivu sees the late work of Tennessee Williams as “a perfect combination requiring both approaches. It’s written with experimental precision, but very well-structured. It’s full of ideas and free imagery, which excites me as a director. All these challenges. You read it on the page and you say to yourself, ‘How am I going to do this?’ He has a character hanging from a hook for 45 minutes and then falling down. How do you do that without compromising the voice of the playwright? As a director, I think hard about how to honor what the playwright wants first and try to stay focused on that. At the same time, I’m not afraid to make changes that bring his visions to fruition, to create a three-dimensional experience, to give it flesh and bones.”
Chivu also embraced an opportunity to explore “these bigger than life, juicy characters” found in the pair of one-acts that comprise “Tennessee Williams 1982.” That element was always to be found in his plays, says Chivu, “but he stopped apologizing for it in his later work and just went for it.”
Two of the actors to watch out for in the present production are Ford Austin and Kate Skinner. Austin recently fought his way back from a near fatal accident and a prognosis of total paralysis in 2013, to give an amazing, moving performance as Ott, the titular “Recluse.” Skinner demonstrates tremendous range as both Ott’s sweet, needy “Guest,” as well as the sexy, serial-killing Mme. Le Monde, underlining the evening’s thematic throughline.
It’s a thought-provoking and moving evening of theatre, and this observer intends to continue watching Chivu’s work with great interest.
“Tennessee Williams 1982” plays through Mar. 13. Preview performances Thurs.–Sat., Feb. 18–20 at 7:30 p.m. Opening Sun., Feb. 21 at 7 p.m. Regular performances Wed.–Sun., Feb. 24–28, Mar. 2–6 & Mar. 9–13 at 7:30 p.m. Sat., Feb. 27, Mar. 5 & Mar. 12 at 3 p.m. At Walkerspace (46 Walker St., btw. Broadway & Church St.). For tickets ($40 general, $50 premium), visit playhousecreatures.org or call 800-838-3006.
