Theater Review : ‘Suddenly’ a One-Act Reality Check

Sometimes you go to the best theaters and see not a play but a walking, talking, well-dressed illustration of a play, fleshed out not with the vivid details of life so much as sketched in with notions of the picturesque. I’ve seen two productions of that sort recently--”Jekyll & Hyde” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center and “She Stoops to Folly” at South Coast Repertory.

Happily, Tennessee Williams’ “Suddenly Last Summer,” a melodramatic one-act being revived by the Vanguard Theatre Ensemble, has more to do with reality and less with quaintness--although, as the playwright noted in his stage directions, “the set may be as unrealistic as the decor of a dramatic ballet.”

It would have been better if the Vanguard had the resources to design what Williams envisioned: the partial interior of a Gothic New Orleans mansion “blended with a fantastic garden, which is more like a tropical jungle . . . in the prehistoric age of giant fern-forests when living creatures had flippers turning to limbs and scales to skin.”

But no matter. Robert Mumm’s functional set, surrounded on four sides by the Vanguard’s comfortably seated audience (air-cooled, too), gets the job done back-yard-style with green indoor-outdoor carpeting and white wrought-iron patio furniture to suggest the ornate.

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It’s too bad that first-time director Wade Williamson’s in-the-round staging makes you wonder what he had in mind for the actors. To present their backs to the audience is acceptable, even necessary for such a production, if it’s done briefly, but not a row of backs for whole scenes at a clip.

When I wasn’t peeking over the actors’ shoulders, I had an unobstructed view of a hard-working, largely amateur cast trying to plumb the tragic pathos of Williams’ desperate Southern characters. He has noted in his memoirs that “there are passages in ‘Suddenly Last Summer’ which are perhaps as well written as anything I’ve done.”

Certainly, he must have been referring to Catharine Holly’s lengthy monologue about her cousin Sebastian’s degrading death at the hands of urchins whose poverty and hunger have turned them into cannibals--characteristic Williams symbols for the general run of humanity.

Prodded to tell the tale by Dr. Cukrowicz--a handsome, young brain surgeon (“Call me Dr. Sugar”) with sleaze-bag ethics--the drugged and soon-to-be-lobotomized Catharine describes the ugly details of what happened in Cabeza de Lobo.

Her wealthy aunt Mrs. Venable, Sebastian’s selfish mother, as well as Catharine’s avaricious brother George and their mother listen grimly, each disgusted and shamed less for Sebastian’s sake than their own.

Mrs. Venable, who sees herself as Sebastian’s poetic muse, cannot accept his fatal escape from her. (Her overweening mother-love in fact had smothered him long before.) She hates Catharine with an irrational witchiness, and wants her put away forever to keep her quiet. And as Mrs. Venable rages, her poor relations, Catharine’s brother and mother, see the money Sebastian has left them slipping out of their grasp.

Each of them is prepared to sacrifice an innocent young woman on the altar of their greed. The surgeon’s last line, which is meant to end the play on a somewhat ambiguous note, actually underscores the cynical corruption that prevails in them.

Two other short plays by Williams are offered as curtain-raisers on alternating nights: “The Lady of Larkspur Lotion” and “Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen.” On opening night it was “Lady,” a thumbnail portrait of a prostitute with airs, which served Williams as a rehearsal for Blanche in “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

Though the actors were by and large out of their depth, individual members of the ensemble rose to the occasion at key moments in both plays--chiefly Lucy Grey Wilson, Tony Masters, Laurel Kelsh and Sharon Samples--bringing their characters alive on sheer guts.

* “Suddenly Last Summer” and other plays, Vanguard Ensemble Theatre, 699A. S. State College Blvd., Fullerton. Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 5 p.m. Ends Oct. 7. $12-$14. (714) 526-8007. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes, no intermission.

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“Suddenly Last Summer”

Laurel Kelsh: Mrs. Venable

Tony Masters: Dr. Cukrowicz

Alexandra Robertson: Miss Foxhill

Bonnie Mikoleit: Mrs. Holly

Joe Bowman: George Holly

Lucy Grey Wilson: Catharine Holly

Sharon Samples: Sister Felicity

“The Lady of Larkspur Lotion”

Sharon Samples: Mrs. Hardwicke-Moore

Bonnie Mikoleit: Mrs. Wire

Jon Dolton: The Writer

A Vanguard Theatre Ensemble production of plays by Tennessee Williams, directed by Wade Williamson. Producer: Jill Cary Martin. Scene designer: Robert Mumm. Costume coordinator: Brenda Parks. Lighting designer: D. Silvio Volonte. Sound designer: Garth Hemphill. Stage manager: Sunshine Miller.