When Tennessee Williams was writing "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore" in the early 1960s, the elevator wasn't going all the way to the top floor, if you know what I mean.
The psychically ravaged playwright was distracted, grappling not only with the lingering death of someone close to him but also with an attachment to all things Japanese. Because Williams lived most fully when seated behind a typewriter, the anguish of his soul gushing onto the page, it is only natural that this play would reflect those, uh, diversions.
Hugh T. Owen plays Christopher Flanders, a young man who seeks to take advantage of a dying woman, in "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore."
(Ray Gniewek)
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Critics like to refer to this drama (comedy?) as a great failure, usually pointing to the fabled five-performance Broadway run starring Tallullah Bankhead as an aging, terminally ill diva who repairs to an Italian seaside mountaintop to write her memoirs and die. A film version with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (with the unlikely title "Boom!") is equally ignominious, remembered mostly as a film so bad and unintentionally campy that it's fun to watch.
One problem for directors may be that it's unclear which character is Williams's alter ego, an undertaking much easier with his masterpieces. Does the diva facing her swan song represent the writer? Perhaps it is the young poet who trolls for a living among soon-to-expire older women, spending some quality time with them and, presumably, their checkbooks before their time and/or money run out. Or it just might be that Williams best expressed his point of view in the acid-tongued character he mischievously called the Witch of Capri, who flits through the story dropping spiteful gossip and acerbic observations. We can probably assume with some confidence that Williams didn't see himself as the black-clad, kabuki-like figures he has fluttering about as combination stagehands and extras, a nod to his Japanese phase.
Can't figure out whether this amorphous, rarely performed work is to be taken literally or as parody? Leave it to the agile mind of Washington Shakespeare Company's Christopher Henley to come up with a solution. The director puts Williams himself into the play. The playwright-as-guide affably steers us along, allowing the experience to be a visit with him just as much as it is a chance to meet his characters.
As "T.W.," Steve Wilhite puts voice to Williams's elegant, meticulously crafted stage directions and background musings. Slyly embodying the languid, self-absorbed Williams, Wilhite keeps the play's silliness and blatant symbolism from obscuring the pleasures of its lyrical language and enthralling explorations of morality and mortality. We see the characters through Williams's eyes, clearly and enjoyably.
It helps that the 10-member cast is a finely tuned ensemble, with Annie Houston as dying Flora Goforth and Hugh T. Owen as the young male interloper known in certain social circles around the Mediterranean as the Angel of Death.
They play off each other beautifully. Houston's Flora is a fading but still formidable and sporadically sensual presence, equal parts Norma Desmond, Margo Channing and Mrs. Robinson. Owen's Christopher Flanders is intense and enigmatic, the barest whiff of something sinister emanating from his gaunt presence. Diminutive Suzanne Richard adds a piquant dash of rococo burlesque, clad in fairy tale gauze topped with a pointy hat as the Witch. (Noel Coward played the role in the Elizabeth Taylor movie.) It's all quite theatrical, the kabuki affectation sometimes undermining a moment. The ambiance is alternately arch and dark, the humor caustic. In other words, it's a lot like Tennessee Williams, and that makes it fun.
One warning: As you peer through thick cigarette smoke hanging motionless over Eric Grims's extended multilevel set, you may find yourself twisted uncomfortably in your chair. Many seats are awkwardly set at oblique angles from the action, an incomprehensible error in a theater where seating can be arranged in many configurations.
"The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore," performed by Washington Shakespeare Company, continues through April 3 at the Clark Street Playhouse, 601 S. Clark St., Arlington. Performances at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, with 2 p.m. matinees Saturdays and Sundays. For tickets, call 800-494-8497. For tickets and information, go to www.washingtonshakespeare.org.
