the making of blanche dubois
by Douglas Messerli
Tennessee
Williams The Eccentricities of a
Nightingale / filmed version of a production show on television on Great
Performances, June 16, 1976, directed by Glenn Jordan
The
other day I watched a filmed version of a production of Williams’ little known play
(based on a production at either the Louisville Actor’s Theatre or the Old
Globe in San Diego—both are named at different sites). The Eccentricities is a rewrite of his Summer and Smoke, but the characters behave quite differently than
they do in the former play and the tone is completely different, as Williams
himself noted, far less melodramatic and certainly less symbolic that Summer and Smoke, first performed a year
after his great A Streetcar Named Desire.
One recognizes immediately, in fact, this
play’s close relationship with Streetcar,
whose central character, Alma Winemiller (Blythe Danner), shares many
similarities with Blanche Dubois, and perhaps gives us a glimpse of some of the
forces behind the over-the-top figure of Williams’ earlier play (Summer and Smoke, in earlier versions,
however, predated A Streetcar).

What is also apparent is that the still
beautiful but virginal Alma is— in a word the play itself uses to describe
her—almost hysterical, using any reason to swallow down the small white pills
the doctor has prescribed for her (probably just placebos). Her father, in
fact, attempts, to have a heart-to-heart talk with her in the very next scene,
now Christmas, about her fluttering hands, her exaggerated gestures and speech,
and—the most comical of accusations—her penchant for feeding birds in the town
square. She is getting the reputation of an “eccentric.” Despite her father’s
stern warnings, however, Alma stands up for her own behavior quite strongly,
and we realize that despite the tensions of her home life, she has attempted to
play role of a supporting daughter quite ably. Yet she is hurt, feels shunned
by the local community, particularly when local carolers visit the Buchanan house
but turn away from the Winemiller home. Alma seeks solace in a small gathering
of town would-be intellectuals, odd people who mostly have inflated egos,
confusing Blake with Rimbaud, and writing endlessly long verse plays. Only Alma,
of the group, seems to know anything about poetry or literature.
She invites Buchanan—who has again
returned for a stay in Glorious Hill—to the gathering which ends in unpleasant
bickering among the group and, once more, the young doctor’s being led off by
his mother, who has a very different view of whom her beloved son will marry.
The scene with the two of them, mother and
son, in the Buchanan home is as close to love scene as the young doctor ever
gets. Mrs. Buchanan clearly is the smothering type, who continues to control
his life. Yet despite his mother’s interference, he has managed to make a date
with Alma, whom he admires for her intelligence and the exciting flashes of
change that run across her face. Her very eccentricities, he observes, is what
makes her so special, so different from all the other women he has met and
certainly sets her apart from any woman his might wish him to marry.
Langella plays this scene, as well as
others, with a kind of gentle passivity that almost angered me: why doesn’t he
speak out, speak up for what he sees in Alma? Why can’t he show some anger at his mother’s bourgeois
visions for his future life? Instead he merely answers with quiet irong and, we
later perceive, coded phrases that make him appear detached.
Alma is fearful when evening arrives for
their date that he won’t show, and when he does she is almost overwhelmed with
a kind of energized force, telling him after the movie of her life-long love
for him. She even suggests that they go someplace for sex, to which he demurs.
Alma admits that she does not except this friendship to any further, but if she
only she might have one night, a whole evening to remember… Again he demurs,
but finally agrees to take her to a hotel that specializes in just such
encounters. Once there, however, it becomes apparent that nothing will happen.
What doesn’t get said is quite obvious: the young doctor is gay, disinterested
in sex with a woman. Alma perceives the situation immediately. And in the last
scene of the play, described as an epilogue, we see her seated on the same park
bench where she sat early in the play. She has aged. When she encounters a young
salesman, she begins a conversation, suggesting that they visit the same hotel.
Apparently, she has now found regular companions for the one- night encounters
she had sought out.
This might almost be a reincarnation or
glimpse of an earlier Blanche Dubois, the young woman of entitlement, given to
romantic notions of the world, but also desirous of the pleasures of sex. Like
Blanche, her first love turns out to be a homosexual, unable to give her what
she desires. Alma has already begun on the long downward spiral where Blanche
ends, in the arms of a teenage boy in a similar seedy hotel.
Danner’s performance as Alma is splendid,
and her stunning portrayal of Williams’ “eccentric nightingale” brings this
play to life in a way that Summer and
Smoke, with its smoldering old maid at the center, never achieves. I might
even go so far, after watching this excellent TV production, as to suggest that
Eccentricities of a Nightingale is
one of Williams’ best works.
Los Angeles,
October 6, 2012.
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