Centenary retrospection this year seems,
to British sensibilities, to have been kinder to Terence Rattigan than
Tennessee Williams; I suppose this is only to be expected given the
choice between the disciplined English reticence of the former and the
often unruly floridity of the latter. Williams’
Kingdom Of Earth (which premièred in 1968 under the awful, directorially imposed title
The Seven Descents Of Myrtle,
and has its origins in a 1942 short story) has not been seen in London
since 1984, the year after the playwright’s death. It shows the defiant
extremity of much of Williams’ later work, and the almost self-parodic
Williams-ness.
Floodwaters are rising
around an old house to which Lot, “an impotent, one-lunged sissy” in
his own words, returns with his new bride Myrtle, a former showgirl in
both the literal and euphemistic senses. His mixed-race half-brother
Chicken, who has been running the farm on Lot’s behalf, is equal parts
Stanley Kowalski and Caliban, and begins to work on Myrtle for
possession of both her and the house. Sexual, tubercular and inundal
climaxes all more or less coincide towards the end of a long night.
Ruth
Sutcliffe’s design sets a number of slow water drips falling onto a
stage which is dominated by a huge mudslide, as if the house had
already been half-buried after the levee broke. This is seldom more
than half-lit, so even in the studio setting of The Print Room the
three players’ acting in Lucy Bailey’s production needs to be bodily
and vocal rather than facial. The combination of southern American
accents sitting erratically in British mouths, and grappling with some
of Williams’ most untamed language, is not a propitious one: “The moon
is out like the bleary eye of a drunkard,” declares Lot, or as the
twanging vowels usually render him, Laot. Joseph Drake in this role
seems far less at ease than he was as another inhabitant of the same
region, Vernon God Little, a few months ago at the Young Vic. David
Sturzaker broods and roars as Chicken, and the descents of Myrtle are
certainly not into lower vocal frequencies in Fiona Glascott’s
portrayal. It is a challenging work, certainly, but I am unpersuaded
that it is a challenge worth facing.
Written for the Financial
Times.