The works of Tennessee Williams rank as some of the greatest and most iconic plays ever written. The images he forged are so powerful that they continue to cause dramatic and emotional ripples decades on; and the names of his most famous characters are loaded with the complex psychology they were gifted by their creator.
Thrums with a Southern Gothic suffocation
The delicacy and raw truth with which Williams crafted the fragility of the human condition continues to provoke an exquisite and intricate sadness: the recurring themes of forbidden love, rejection, frustration, betrayal and mental imbalance seeming to confirm the theory that he explored many of the difficulties of his own life through his scripts.
Whether this was a form of catharsis, or an opportunity to educate his audience matters little: his legacy remains heady with an emotionally heavy weight that permeates theatre history.
One of the major themes that Williams returned to time and again was that of mental health: a brave and potentially poisonous box office choice at a time when it was considered deeply shameful to admit living with such a condition. Famously, the character of Blanche DuBois cast such a long shadow over its most famous actress – Vivien Leigh – that she suffered one of her not infrequent breakdowns as a result of over-identifying with the faded and damaged Southern Belle she played onstage and screen.
It is thought that Williams (born Thomas Lanier Williams) based elements of Blanche’s personality on his older sister Rose; who was also a model for the shy and lonely Laura (The Glass Menagerie) and the terrified and traumatised Catherine (Suddenly Last Summer). And in this powerful new play by The Style Theatre, we can see glimpses of each of these women in the sad ghost of Rose we are introduced to in her care home towards the end of her life.
Anne Kidd gives a stellar performance as central characer Rose, a woman whose own mother authorised the lobotomy that promised to still her schizophrenic outbursts and socially unacceptable ‘imaginative’ ways. It was a brutal operation which Tom deemed to have ripped away Rose’s soul, and it would torment him until the end of his days. He obsessively revisited his old diaries to berate his own lack of understanding; used handsome theatre royalties to pay for Rose’s hospital care; and of course, immortalised her troubled soul for posterity in script after heart-aching script.
Kidd captures the older Rose’s confused state with subtlety and sensitivity; and there is a horrible poignancy in the wide-eyed vibrancy she displays in her earlier years. There is super support from Helen Katamba multi-rolling as the big-hearted Nurse Felicia and the Williams matriarch worn down by a disappointing husband and an unforgiving life; trying to do the right thing without knowing what on earth that might be.
Aron Dochard plays Tom with a discomfiting intensity which evokes the circular burden of anger and impotence he has been forced to navigate on behalf of his sister. He is effective too as Rose’s doomed love interest and a series of doctors who prioritise the ‘quiet life’ strategy above patient care.
Clare Cockburn has written a beautifully researched and well-loved piece, which is directed with empathy and sincerity by Patrick Sandford. The whole piece thrums with a Southern Gothic suffocation made all the more smothering by the knowledge that we are witnessing a true story. That of Rose herself, but also of Tom: bravely allowing others acknowledge to their own demons through his work, but never quite absolving himself of his own.
