Theatre in Review: The Two-Character Play (New World Stages)The ad copy for The Two-Character Play states, "Reason and reality have left the building." They said it; I didn't. A product of Tennessee Williams' self-described "stoned age," when critical acclaim and commercial success had deserted him as he struggled with addiction and mental illness, it represents arguably the playwright's most definitive break from the poetic naturalism that informed his best work. Set in an unnamed theatre in an unknown country, it is populated entirely by Felice and Clare, siblings and stars of a traveling theatrical troupe. Abandoned near showtime by the rest of their company, they opt to perform The Two-Character Play, which, oddly enough, is about Felice and Clare, siblings trapped in the home where their father murdered their mother and subsequently killed himself. By the way, they still have the gun. The Two-Character Play is often impossible to follow, but is sometimes gripping for reasons that have less to do with plot, character, and dialogue than with its place in Williams' career. Positioned between the disappointing Small Craft Warnings, which managed to last a few months Off Broadway with Williams himself sporadically appearing in the cast, and The Red Devil Battery Sign, which closed out of town (an unthinkable first for Williams and a bellwether of future disasters), it was reworked so heavily that it exists in two different versions. (If you're keeping score, The Two-Character Play was first done in London in 1967. Titled Out Cry, it was staged in Chicago in 1971, then on Broadway in 1973, where it flopped after 12 performances. The Two-Character Play then appeared Off Broadway in 1975. The National Asian American Theatre Company took a flyer on Out Cry in 2008; the tone of that production was significantly different from what is going on at New World Stages these nights, for reasons that may have as much to do with direction as with differing texts.) Watching Felice and Clare, who are bereft of money, colleagues, or anything like a future, struggling to act out the drama of those terrified recluses Felice and Clare in front of an audience that doesn't understand a word of the play (there is a translator at the back of the house), it is all too easy to see The Two-Character Play as a portrait of the artist in a state of nervous breakdown. This impression is only strengthened when, midway through the play, Felice and Clare discover that the audience has bailed, leaving them alone and trapped in the locked-up theatre. They forge ahead, acting to an empty house, this drama of two lives brought to a crashing halt. Has any other playwright ever faced his demons -- age, illness, abandonment, failing powers -- in so brazen and public a fashion? It's a troubling question, and here's another one: Is the incoherence of The Two-Character Play intentional -- Williams was reportedly influenced by Albee and Pinter in his search for new non-naturalistic forms -- or is it because the playwright has lost control of his talent? Whatever the reason, the text is a dense thicket of poetic statements that are often impossible to parse. Here is Felice, right after he enters: "Fear! The fierce little man with the drum inside the rib cage. Yes, compared to fear grown to panic which has no -- What? -- limits, at least none short of consciousness blowing out and not reviving again, compared to that, no other emotion a living, feeling creature is capable of having, not even love or hate, is comparable in-what? Force? Magnitude?" A page or two later, Clare arrives, and the following dialogue ensues: Felice: Fear is a monster vast as night.
Clare: And shadow-casting as the sun.
Felice: It is quicksilver, quick as light.
Clare: It slides beneath the clown-pressed thumb.
Felice: Last night we locked it from the house.
Clare: But caught a glimpse of it today.
Felice: In a corner, like a mouse.
Clare: Gnawing all four walls away. Elsewhere, the rhyme scheme is abandoned, but throughout the script Williams, the poet, runs roughshod over Williams, the dramatist, spinning images and phrases at the expense of any clear meaning. Not that you can tell this from Gene David Kirk's production, in which Amanda Plummer and Brad Dourif are apparently competing to come up with the most bizarre line readings. Plummer, one of the most gifted and most eccentric actresses of her generation, is the dubious winner, creating a character entirely out of quicksilver changes of mood. In the space of a minute or two, she can be grand, terrified, furious, whimsical, or serene; sometimes she adopts an upper-class British accent and sometimes her voice drops to a basso profundo. Collapsed on a couch, wrapped in a ratty fur stole, a tipsy tiara blocking her vision, she appears to be sending up the entire production; drawing herself up to her full height, she utters a denunciation that all but opens the doors of hell. It's riveting to watch -- at first, before one is exhausted by the sheer effort of trying to make sense of it all. Dourif, dressed in a shirt adorned with astrological symbols, his wary eyes underscored with deep bags, his lengthy locks pasted to his skull as the evening wears on, doesn't try to outdo his costar, which is certainly a mercy. But they are clearly on the same undetectable wavelength, switching gears -- and emotions -- in the blink of an eye. They can be amusing, especially in those moments when the performance of the play-within-the-play breaks down into a power struggle between the two. For example, Clare, who has demanded cuts in the play, walks over to the on-stage piano and hits a C every time she intends to drop a passage, behavior that irritates Felice to no end. But most of the time, The Two-Character Play seems to be written in a language that only Williams understands, and its occasional moments of lucidity are powerful to the extent that they remind one of the terrible pass Williams had reached. The production's design has its own mysterious qualities. Alice Walkling's set consists of a collection of unfinished flats fronted by some ratty furniture, as if Felice and Clare are being forced to perform on a rehearsal set. Jake Fine's lighting comes in three parts: The first, when Felice and Clare prepare to perform, is so dark the actors are often hard to see; the second, which covers the bulk of the play, is a harsh, bright wash of warm white light; the final section features a heavy overlay of patterns on the set. Phillip Hewitt's sound design includes an effective, if mysterious, montage of sound effects near the end of the play. Lara de Bruijn's costumes seem intent on making Felice and Clare look like ragamuffins, and maybe there's something to this idea. With its air of confinement, its undefined circumstances, and its sense of energy winding down and of any meaningful communication being brought to a halt, one might see The Two-Character Play as Williams' homage to Samuel Beckett. This doesn't make it into a cogent, comprehensible work, but at least it keeps at bay the terrible suspicion that the playwright no longer had any idea what he was doing. -- David Barbour 
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