ORPHEUS DESCENDING
by Tennessee Williams
Peter Hall neither writes plays nor acts in them, yet no history of the postwar British stage could run much longer than a paragraph without mentioning his name. Founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960, successor to Laurence Olivier as director of the National Theater from 1973 to last summer, he is the embodiment of the subsidized institutions that make Britain the envy of most U.S. drama fans. Even shows that bring Hall to Broadway -- including The Homecoming (1967) and Amadeus (1981), which won him Tony Awards for best director -- often originate in the nonprofit houses.
To the surprise and skepticism of many, Hall resigned from the National as of last September to launch a commercial venture. Its aim: to revive classic and modern plays, particularly little-known or lightly regarded ones, in direct competition with the subsidized theaters. This month he unveiled his first production in London's West End, and the ranks of doubters deservedly diminished.
The vehicle he chose was Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending, a nightmare vision of the playwright's native South. Its Grand Guignol events -- religious hysteria, racial confrontation, abusive law enforcement, Klan night-riding and a climactic murder by blowtorch -- seemed at the 1957 debut to arise from Williams' inner demons. Three decades of civil rights struggle compelled a whole nation to see those demons as its own. Yet if the descent into lynch-mob madness echoes grim headlines, Hall has scrupulously avoided the common error of toning down Williams' expressionistic excess into unsuitable realism. In the first scene, the lighting changes with every few sentences of dialogue, to underscore shifts in mood and to cue the audience that it has entered a realm of symbol and ritual. Pickup trucks outside a storefront sound as loud as jets. A half-demented Southern belle wears makeup reminiscent of a clown's.
Hall's choice of Vanessa Redgrave for the central role, which requires mingling Southern U.S. and Italian accents, is unlikely but inspired. She plays a woman whose immigrant father was, unknown to her, murdered by her husband with the connivance of the town's whole power structure. The aggrieved woman dreams up a poetic revenge: to re-create within her dying husband's general store a semblance of the festive grape arbor where her family sold wine until they made the mistake of selling to blacks.
Her partner is a seductive newcomer to town, captivatingly played by film star Jean-Marc Barr (The Big Blue). Redgrave's competitor for the young man's attentions is the dizzy belle (Julie Covington). All three are compelling. Redgrave, her heartbreaking vulnerability ever mingled with steely determination, reinforces her reputation as perhaps the greatest actress in the English-speaking world. Williams said that the theme of all his plays is how society destroys the sensitive nonconformist. In Hall's gifted hands, that destruction becomes unforgettable.