Theatre in Review: One Arm (The New Group/Theatre Row) So far, the Tennessee Williams centennial year has yielded little more than a series of curios and oddities -- among them a very low-budget version of the early-'70s barroom confessional Small Craft Warnings and The Wooster Group's deconstruction of the late-'70s memory piece Vieux Carré. Coming later this summer is The Pretty Trap, the original one-act version of The Glass Menagerie. Continuing this trend is One Arm, which began as a short story by Willams in 1948, and was later developed by him into a screenplay that was never filmed. Now Moisés Kaufman has adapted it for the stage. Williams' works grew bleaker as he aged - by the '70s, any possibility of love or transcendence in his works has been replaced by quick sexual transactions, usually in the tawdriest of circumstances - but, even so, One Arm stands out as an exceptionally forbidding piece of writing. The title refers to Ollie Olsen, once the lightweight champion of the Pacific Fleet and now an occupant of Death Row. Ollie lost his arm in a car accident, a grim turn of fate that cost him his place in the world. (His affliction is ingeniously represented by having one of his arms tied to his body.) Discharged from the Navy, he drifts into a career as a hustler, allowing himself to be preyed on by a procession of pathetically lonely and unattractive middle-aged men. Ollie feels nothing during these encounters, although, in Claybourne Elder's carefully calibrated performance, he suffers from a percolating rage that will, sooner or later, assert itself, with disastrous results. It finally does when, after being paid to make a stag film, Ollie beats the director to death. Somehow, news of his incarceration gets around the country, and he receives hundreds of letters from his ex-johns, professing their devotion and best wishes. (This is the narrative's weakest point -- how did all these men find out about Ollie's arrest? Would they really remember him, let alone try to be his pen pal?) In any event, the letters have a transformative effect on Ollie, the effect of which is revealed in the climactic scene, set on the eve of his execution, when he is visited by a stranger, a seminary student who believes he can offer some kind of spiritual support. Like everything else in One Arm, this encounter does not go well. In fact, the relentless sameness of the narrative's incidents is the main reason why One Arm ultimately becomes an oppressive experience. Whether streetside customers or wealthy patrons, Ollie's customers more or less amount to the same person; it's telling that two different pickup scenes feature the same lines of dialogue. Then again, Ollie barely exists as a character; he's really only a beast of burden onto which Williams (and Kaufman) can place loads of suffering. Williams' frankness about one aspect of the gay scene is notable for its time, but the one-note nature of the writing means that One Arm too often appears to be a study in squalor for its own sake. Not helping in the least is the presence of a narrator who stands around editorializing, making points that would be far more effective if dramatized. (If he was in the screenplay, he would have been the first thing to go in any in any film version.) Kaufman, who also directed, has an inherently theatrical sense, and, perhaps to emphasize the script's fable-like qualities, he has provided a strikingly stylized production -- perhaps too much so. Derek McLane's bleakly industrial set - all black walls and menacing-looking trussing overhead -- does provide a sense of confinement, but one begins to yearn for a little visual variety. David Lander's lighting makes use of a number of unusual techniques, including handheld units carried by the actors and an overhead bank of bay lights that rain down floods of stark white illumination. Many of his tableaux are striking, but they are often achieved at the expense of face light, an unfortunate choice that further distances us from the action. Shane Rettig's sound design and original music, however, go a long way to fill in the different locations and time frames. Clint Ramos' costumes have a nice feel for the mid-'60s time period. Aside from Elder, who remains the focus of attention throughout, nobody else gets much of a chance to make an impression, although Christopher McCann has a couple of good moments both as Ollie's jailer and as the predatory yachtsman (and filmmaker) who becomes his murder victim. But for all the thought and good work that has gone into One Arm, there's nothing about it that makes a case for it as compelling theatre. What may have been gripping in a few pages of prose becomes ponderous when expanded to a full-length theatre piece. The result is monotonous, mechanical, and relentlessly downbeat.--David Barbour 
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