Kowalski
A simple, short, wonderful play may be seen at the Two Roads Theatre, a pleasant store-front theatre buried in a residential section of Studio City, California. KOWALSKI is a play that has full resonance for us in the Theatrical Industry, adding gossipy bits of history to the making of an incredibly influential actor and the production of a great American play. The actor was Marlon Brando, the playwright was Tennessee Williams and the play they both rode to greatness was “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
What playwright Gregg Ostrin and director Rick Shaw have wrought is the best kind of bio-play, in which one small incident of history is made into an implausible-on-its-surface, but extremely tasty, meal.
If the Ostrin is to be believed, stage and film director Elia “Gage” Kazan wanted a vacationing Tennessee Williams (here called by his rightful name, Tom) to audition a struggling young 23-year-old, with one Broadway (flop) credit to his name, to audition for the pivotal role of mid-30s Stanley Kowalski in Williams’ seminal drama.
As the play opens, an increasingly drunk Williams is having a gay ol’ time with one of his best friends, Margo Jones, a Broadway director who assumes she will be directing his new and brilliantly-observed play, and his boyfriend-of-the-moment, the Mexican-American Pablo. Drowning in liquor and easy sex in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in 1947, they do not come across as particularly nice folk, setting off as they are for a night of debauchery at a local gaybar/brothel. Not long after the stage is cleared, a young man wanders into the run-down cottage Williams has rented for the summer, scaring the shit out of the suddenly-famous playwright. Their meet is not “cute,” nor does it look as though this arrogant actor will actually land this role, if Williams decides against him. But the brilliance of Mr. Ostrin’s conceit is that all is not what it seems on the surface and that one must never underestimate what a bi-sexual actor is capable of in landing a career-pivotal role.
Aside from Mr. Ostrin’s often funny and truly-perceptive play, much of the strength of the evening lies in the casting and the direction of Mr. Shaw. Curt Bennem is a remarkable look-alike as Williams: honey’d southern accent, medium-height, small moustache, nelly demeanor. His Williams is on a drunken tear, determined to not let bullying men do more damage to his increasingly fragile psyche, unless, of course, they are the sexual cat’s pajamas. Which Ignacio Serricchio’s Brando most definitely is. The by-play between the two actors, trading power back and forth, is astonishing. And the addition of Brando’s New York girlfriend, Jo (an astonishing Sascha Higgins), sets off many sparks between the clearly intrigued Williams and the scheming Brando. The Argentinean-born Serricchio is an incredible find, not unlike what it must have been trying to get the right macho actor for Stanley, opposite the fragility of Jessica Tandy, as Williams’ alter-ego, Blanche DuBois.
Obviously, the more one knows of “Streetcar,’ the more one will appreciate the subtleties in the play. But even if you’ve never heard of the play, or Williams, or even Brando, the action is lucid and bombastically entertaining.
The play is well set-up on Rand Sagers’ set and design: mid-century tackiness, wherein the cottage’s lights and actual construction are occasionally doomed. It’s not pretty, but much better: character-defining, with the master-playwright on his long, boozy road to self-destruction and the younger, vastly ambitious actor on his rise. And at 80-minutes, neither too short, nor too long (as only a bad play can be at 80 minutes), the evening whizzes by, leaving us both entertained, electrified and educated. What more can theatre do for us, anyway?
At the Two Road Theatre, 4348 Tujunga Avenue, Studio City, CA 91604, through October. Ticket information: 818,762.2282 or at www.tworoadstheatre.com.