Theatre in Review: The Gentleman Caller (Abingdon Theatre Company/Cherry Lane Theatre)

	Daniel K. Isaac and Juan Francisco Villa. Photo: Maria Baranova

Philip Dawkins has written a play about Tennessee Williams and William Inge, and, having seen it, I'm wondering why. The Gentleman Caller treats two of the twentieth-century American theatre's most towering and tragic figures in terms that are almost entirely frivolous and free of insight. He has also apparently agreed to a production, by Tony Speciale, that substitutes sitcom boisterousness for anything like real feeling. This one is a head-scratcher.

Williams and Inge had a long and complex friendship, shaped by shifting fortunes and personal demons. They met in 1944, in St. Louis, where Inge, working on a local newspaper, interviewed Williams, who was waiting for The Glass Menagerie to go into production. Inge attended the play's Chicago opening, and it moved him so inexpressibly that he vowed to become a playwright himself. Williams encouraged his ambitions and helped him secure a production for his first play, Farther Off from Heaven. Later, when Williams' career hit some bumps, he was openly envious of Inge's run of Broadway successes. And, in an event that John Lahr, a Williams biographer, calls "a seismic bow that ended the most important theatrical collaboration of twentieth-century theatre," Elia Kazan pulled out of directing Williams' bound-for-Broadway Period of Adjustment to direct the film Splendor in the Grass, written by Inge. One must also wonder if Inge, a deeply closeted homosexual who struggled with depression and alcoholism, was envious of the hard-partying, promiscuous Williams, who also enjoyed a years-long relationship with his partner, Frank Merlo.

Only some of this is dealt with in The Gentleman Caller, partly because of the script's narrow focus and partly because it has so little to say. In Act I, Williams arrives at Inge's home for the interview; the latter is clearly nervous, downing an entire gin rickey in one gulp. Williams apologizes for being late. "Oh, that's fine, fine," Inge says. "You're the only thing I have to do this afternoon." Inge asks for Williams' autograph, for his nephew, and Williams signs a photograph: "Dear Boy, You're a hot piece of ass. Regards, Tennessee Williams." Inflamed by this moderately risqué remark, Inge jumps on Williams, furiously pulling down his pants and trying to have his way with him.

Williams' helpless giggles have a deflating effect on Inge, who instantly retreats into mousedom. And yet, only a few pages later, Inge asks Williams, whom he had basically tried to rape, "But you're not...you're not...one of those? Are you?" This sets up a laugh line for Williams ("Honey, I'm a whole bunch of those!"), but already The Gentleman Caller, populated by two characters who are subject to their playwright's extreme whims, isn't making any sense. And, as the gin rickeys give way to Manhattans, Inge turns increasingly prim and Williams toys with him; the action includes plenty of physical business, including a farcical slow-motion sequence in which Williams is bit on the leg by Inge's dog. This is done in mime; we never see the dog. As Williams informs us up front, "The black Scottie dog will not make an appearance in our play, however, since one should never work with children or animals. Or Bette Davis, who is both."

Ayway, they both end up on the couch, Williams without his pants, so Inge can tend to his leg wound; instead, Williams, using his bare foot, manages to remove Inge's belt and open his zipper. I can believe that the initial meeting between these two soon-to-be-great playwrights was an awkward, sexually charged affair. I sincerely doubt that Inge, who was terrified of being found out, would make a forward pass at one of his interview subjects. And I feel quite certain that they didn't carry on like the characters in a period sex comedy.

Act II takes us to Williams' hotel in Chicago on New Year's Eve. The Glass Menagerie is "a hugely moderate success," the playwright wryly claims, "despite all obstacles, including fall-down drunks in three of the four roles." Inge shows up, stunned by the play and ready to worship Williams like a god. Williams is already bemused by acclaim and is more interested in tying one on and fooling around a little. This act is basically more of the same: Williams tries to jolt Inge out of his self-lacerating Puritanism in a bit in which they use binoculars to watch a lesbian couple across the street making love. Inge makes a shocking admission, but before the night is over, both are on the paths that will lead them to enormous acclaim and killing spiritual dissatisfaction.

The main trouble with The Gentleman Caller, aside from the fact that it dawdles badly, indulging itself with too many coarse jokes, is that neither Dawkins nor Speciale have much feeling for the characters. Juan Francisco Villa looks remarkably like Williams, although his accent comes and goes, and when given a halfway decent line, he gives it some zing. When Inge indicates that he doesn't like men who are too feminine, Williams dismisses the remark as a case of "the pot calling the kettle blanche." And when Inge complains that he is getting ulcers, Williams replies, "Lucky you. Ulcers are treatable. Success is terminal." And handling a line that sounds like it could have come from one of his plays -- "We destroy ourselves fashionably, and it is the only thing that keeps the world from destroying us" -- one has the momentary illusion of being in Williams' presence. But the performance is pitched too high, noisily pushing for laughs, so we get almost no sense of the conflicts and compulsions that, even at an early age, were driving Williams in such a self-destructive fashion.

Still, Villa has a much easier assignment, as Williams was a celebrity, his personal style well-documented. Inge, who was painfully shy and introverted, lived in the shadows in more ways than one. And there's nothing in the writing, direction, or Daniel K. Isaac's performance that indicates any understanding of the terrible psychological prison in which the playwright lived. (In one tantalizing detail, Inge says that his mother fled home on her honeymoon, horrified to discover what was expected of her on her wedding night; he sadly concedes that he suffers from a case of like mother, like son.) Isaac tries hard, but he can't get below the character's surface; he is especially at sea in a lengthy monologue about the macabre doings in the zoo in his hometown of Independence, Kansas. His Inge is just a fussy, aging bachelor, and he isn't aided by having to deliver mawkish gestures like the one where he pulls out a page from Williams' typewriter and reverently kisses it.

Audiences looking to pass the time at The Gentleman Caller can amuse themselves picking up the many Easter eggs hidden in the script. Williams sets the stage in an opening monologue that is a near-perfect parody of the opening speech of The Glass Menagerie. Inge's dog runs away, and he keeps insisting that it will come back, not unlike little Sheba. Following an accident, Williams stalks around his hotel room on a crutch, as does Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. And many of Inge's monologues are underscored, which may be an allusion to a similar technique employed in his 1963 flop, Natural Affection.

The production is lifted by some creative design contributions. Sara C. Walsh's set is dominated by towers of manuscript pages, each of them topped by a lamp; it's a visually arresting and appropriate way of signaling each man's obsession with his work. Zach Blane provides some attractive uplighting effects on these set pieces; he also creates a varied series of wash looks indicative of different emotional states. Hunter Kaczoworski's costumes tellingly contrast Inge's thoroughly put-together ensembles with Williams' helter-skelter approach to dressing, with the exception of a knockout of a tuxedo for the opening of Act II. Christian Frederickson's original music doesn't make much of an impression, but he also supplied an array of effects, including a rendition of "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire," by either the Mills Brothers or the Ink Spots (I'm not sure which).

Near the end, Dawkins tries to wrap everything up with one of those monologues in which a character predicts everything that is going happen in the next several decades, an approach rapidly becoming the lazy playwright's way of concluding a show. In this case, it only serves to remind us how little has happened in the preceding two hours. Williams describes himself and Inge as "two lonely souls rubbing against each other for an evening, and the friction sets the world on fire." Based on what we see here, this is overstating the case to a massive degree. -- David Barbour