Toronto Star, June 24, 2005
Orpheus ascending in heat of the south
By: Robert Crew
Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending opens with two of the town's busybodies, Beulah Binnings (Fiona Reid) and Dolly Hamma (Brigit Wilson), having a good old gossip.
The play, which opened last night at the festival's Tom Patterson Theatre, is set in the Deep South and Beulah and Dolly quickly (and bitchily) fill in some of the gaps so that the story can get underway.
It's necessary exposition, of course, but it's also wonderful comic acting. Not only is it extremely funny but, more importantly, it deftly establishes the tone for what's to come.
Jabe Torrance, who runs a dry goods store, is dying and his wife, Lady, hires a guitar-playing drifter named Val Xavier to help out.
Val is proud of two things � his guitar, signed by people such as Leadbelly and King Oliver, and his snakeskin jacket.
The women of the town are immediately ensnared by his animal magnetism, especially the rebellious Carol Cutrere and Vee, the sheriff's wife who is a painter and a religious hysteric prone to visions.
And although she resists, Lady is also drawn to Val; she is locked in a sterile marriage after, in effect, being sold off to Jabe.
For all three women, Val represents escape and freedom. Lady has dried up after her Italian immigrant father was killed in a fire set by a racist mob. And now that he has turned 30, Val, too, is looking to change his life, shed his snakeskin and settle down.
The tragedy is that Val and Lady are forced, like Orpheus in the Greek myth, to look back into the past and that eventually destroys them in a savage, profoundly disturbing burst of violence.
Williams wrote the first version of Orpheus Descending in 1940 and revised it during the next 17 years.
It is a multi-layered play, over-heavy on symbolism and one that could disintegrate in the hands of a less than astute director. Miles Potter, however, orchestrates this work like maestro does a Mahler symphony, not shying away from the lush, overblown nature of the music yet finding detail and humanity in the most unexpected places.
And in Seana McKenna, who plays Lady, and Jonathan Goad, who is Val, he has two of the festival's very best to work with.
There's a key scene between them when you can actually see McKenna's sour-faced expression melt away as she realizes what Val can and will mean to her. Val talks about being "like a couple of animals, sniffing around each other" and a range of emotions � longing, embarrassment, yearning � pass across her face.
At another key moment, McKenna's finger taps nervously against a whisky glass as she makes the decision to re-enter life and give herself to Val.
The final scene, which is within a hair's breadth of being totally overwrought, is spine-chillingly convincing in this production.
There are some equally impressive performances elsewhere. Dana Green breathes full and complete life into the rebel Carol with sustained and truthful work, Sarah McVie shines in the difficult role of Vee, Michele Giroux is a stone-faced, ridged-backed nurse and Thom Marriott has moments that make your blood run cold as Sheriff Talbott.
If you are looking for a reason to visit the Stratford Festival this summer, Orpheus Descending could be it. It's a fine achievement.