The Globe and Mail, January 09, 2007
Orpheus sings again
By: Kamal Al-Solaylee
The tale of a lewd vagrant, a bought woman and a stud for hire, Tennessee Williams's Orpheus Descending is a wild and unpredictable melodrama of the American South. When Miles Potter first directed it for the Stratford Festival in 2005, he brought out the play's lyricism and tragic power without sacrificing its baroque quality or hiding its rough edges.
The new production is disciplined and visibly more mannered. Its borderlines have been drawn and the text's delirious impact contained within the proscenium arch of the Royal Alexandra Theatre (where it opened Sunday). Gone are the wonder, mythology and primitive spirituality that hovered over the Tom Patterson Theatre in Stratford so hauntingly. The leading actors have stayed the same, but gone too is some of the subtler work of the supporting cast from the Stratford company. Many of the newcomers are straining, vocally as well as emotionally, to be heard and seen against Peter Hartwell's relatively sparse but large-scale set.
But proving that even the best can get better, Potter works a new kind of magic into the heart of the play: the indefinable hold that each of the central three characters has on the other. Traditional stage parameters that tame the feral setting now double as extra prison gates or, given the Orpheus myth in the title, the gates of hell.
On reflection, make that hellhole. That about sums up the town where Lady Torrance (Seana McKenna) runs her dying husband's dry-good store. She's the daughter of an Italian immigrant who was burnt alive for selling liquor to a black man. In walks Valentine Xavier (Jonathan Goad), a guitar-strumming stranger whose impact is best described by Williams himself as creating a "commotion of a fox in a chicken coop." Carol Cutrere (Dana Green) is the rich spoiled girl and self-confessed exhibitionist (like a Paris Hilton with a moral centre), who seeks salvation from a world of "corruption" in the free-spirited Valentine.
To the score of Marc Desormeaux's delicate music, Potter connects the dots in this emotional triangle with sympathy and understanding. Despite the larger stage, his direction is more intimate in scenes involving Valentine and Lady. What struck me the most about McKenna and Goad is how faithful both are to their original performances and how different they are this time. It's the little things they've added that make a big difference.
McKenna examines more closely the racial angst of her Italian character, thereby hinting at injustices that transcend the ones inflicted on her family. Her Lady burns with passion but has a wickedly wry sense of humour. Goad, on the other hand, allows the mercurial nature of Valentine to come to the surface with less apology and more swagger. He's a more rebellious and dangerous figure than ever before. Together, they've found more of what connects their characters in a world that succeeds in setting them apart -- and tragically so. A scene where the two share a bottle of Coke at the store beautifully underlines the moral complexity of their situation: illicit and natural.
Green's performance hasn't changed as much, but, to quote my own review, she was a sensation then and is a sensation now. Returning as Sheriff Talbot is the effortlessly imposing Thom Marriott, while Catherine Fitch as his wife, Vee, finds the humour but not the sexualized religious ecstasy of her character. Fitch's performance is another example of the little things that got lost in the transfer from one particular production to another. But given how much has been gained in the performances of Goad and McKenna, the production and the audience are the richer for it.