Theatre in Review: Kowalski (The Duke on 42nd Street)

	Robin Lord Taylor, Brandon Flynn. Photo: Russ Rowland

Kowalski is about the unkindness of strangers, in this case, Tennessee Williams and Marlon Brando, whose original meet-up, at least in this telling, was mighty unseemly. On a summer night in 1947, Brando drops into Williams' Provincetown cottage to audition for the male lead in the upcoming A Streetcar Named Desire. But he's three days late, he is unnervingly attractive, and his manner is markedly insolent; it's enough to make a neurotic, self-hating, alcoholic playwright act out. In this melodramatic account, both men are skilled manipulators, nursing grievances against the world, lubricating their sorrows with rivers of alcohol. (And not just them: Everyone in Kowalski drinks enough for any three revivals of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)

What follows is a name-dropping (Lillian Gish! Tallulah!), factoid-filled evening of emotional gamesmanship, slickly constructed, filled with self-referential gags, and building to a big twist. In other words, it's the kind of play that Tennessee Williams would have instantly dismissed. "I pour my heart and soul and blood and breath into every word that I write," Williams says early on; imagine his dismay at seeing a key moment in his career recycled into a facile boulevard entertainment such as this. Playwright Gregg Ostrin has done his research -- Kowalski is dotted with comments about actors, critics, and some of Williams' theatrical misadventures -- but the result is a slick, uninspired exercise, a Vanity Fair article without the juicy, gossipy amusement.

Perhaps the lives of writers, even great ones, are as banal as everyone else's: Kowalski certainly advances that argument. Ostrin's Williams saves his poetry for the stage: Informing his best friend Margo Jones that Elia Kazan, not she, has been hired to direct Streetcar, he says, "Kazan is hot stuff, and we need a surefire name to get in audiences." (Who knew he talked like a reporter from Variety?) In one of many instances of dramatic irony, he adds, "You have any idea what a ticket to a Broadway show costs? It is appalling. Six dollars!" Nor is he afraid to quote himself, drawing on the title of a famous essay to announce that he suffers from "the catastrophe of success." At times, he sounds like a parody of Williams: Called "a pathetic old drunken queen," he responds, "I am 36, which makes me neither pathetic nor old. Drunken and a queen, well, I suppose that's a different story."

In the play's true-to-life setup, Williams reluctantly agrees to meet Brando, a more-or-less unknown who has impressed Kazan in the flop Maxwell Anderson play Truckline Cafe. (Offering another broad wink at the audience, Williams says, "His name is something strange. Marion, Marley...Here it is, Marlon. Marlon Brando." Jones adds, "Marlon Brando? Definitely needs to change that.") The so-called audition -- we never get to a reading of the script -- is more like a tense flirtation. (It isn't especially illuminating, being packed with standard bits of biographical information, including Brando's alcoholic mother and the lobotomy forced on Williams' sister Rose.) Before long, the men are obviously acting out a modified version of Stanley Kowalski and Blanche Du Bois' fraught relationship. When, in a moment of near-assault, Brandow growls, "We had this date with each other from the beginning!," you'll see where Kowalski is headed.

Under Colin Hanlon's direction, the two leads offer fair copies of these legends' personas. Robin Lord Taylor, making free with the vodka bottle and waving his cigarette holder, captures Williams' iron-butterfly qualities. (Carrying a candle during a momentary blackout, he giggles, "I feel rather like Lady Macbeth.") But he is innately ruthless in business matters, whether cutting out Jones from Streetcar -- while kneeling before her, hugging her legs, and calling her indispensable -- or cutting Brando down to size by announcing he may audition for the role of Stanley's understudy. (At the time, John Garfield was everybody's choice for the role.) As Brando, Brandon Flynn makes a strategic entrance, walking downstage and cheekily blowing a wad of bubble gum. Each of his provocations -- whether helping himself to a cookie jar or gulling Williams with a false story about his first sexual experience -- is carefully calculated. He also recites a passage from Hamlet by way of suggesting he isn't the vulgarian Williams sees before him; with him, withholding is an art form.

Others in the cast perform their limited tasks with gusto. Alison Cimmet's Margo Jones exists only to provide expository information. ('You begged me to step in and save Menagerie. If it wasn't for me, it'd have a happy ending!") Sebastian Trevino is equally handsome and menacing as Pancho Rodriguez, Williams' rough-trade lover of the moment. Ellie Ricker is vivacious as Jo, Brando's girlfriend, a football kicked around by the men as they skirmish. (In what takes the crown for the cutesiest moment, Jo flees the cottage in a fury, followed by Brando bellowing her name -- just like Stanley running after his wife, Stella. You see the light go on in Williams' eyes.)

We don't get too many David Gallo set designs these days -- he has many other projects to keep him busy -- but one of the most enjoyable things about Kowalski is his incisively detailed cottage interior. Lisa Zinni's costume designs are exactly right for each character. Jeff Croiter's lighting, which begins with a burning orange sunset look, and Bill Toles' sound design, which includes several period tunes ("Drop Me Off in Harlem," "Dream a Little Dream of Me"), are also solid.

It's hard to know for whom Kowalski is intended. Fans of Williams and Brando will already be familiar with the story, most of which can be found in John Lahr's magisterial biography Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh. They're also likely to be put off by the play's too-obvious role-playing conceit. But will the uninitiated care about the story of a casting choice -- even, admittedly, a famous one? In any case, Williams spent his career in revolt against conventional theatre; it hardly seems appropriate to memorialize him in a contrived exercise that adds nothing to our understanding of these major twentieth-century talents. --David Barbour