Baby Doll
I have to confess that while aware of the Tennessee Williams one-act play (”27 Wagons Full o’ Cotton”) the 1956 film “Baby Doll” is based on, I have never seen the film that caused such a sensation when it was released that the costume Carol Baker wore became a staple of sexy women ever after. Condemned by the Catholic Church for obscenity (it isn’t, certainly by today’s standards), the film never made its investment back.
So the chance to see the full-length play version (attributed to Mr. Williams) was too interesting to miss. And because of the terrific direction (and mood-enhancing set-design) of Joel Daavid, it is more than a historical curiosity. Playing at the comfortable little Lillian Stage at the Elephant Theatre in Hollywood, the drama has vision and breadth, dealing as it does with Southern Gothic relationships, sexual and otherwise, between some low-IQ folk with limited futures.
Archie Lee Meighan (Tony Gatto) has married a simple nymphet, Baby Doll (Lulu Brud), in part because her father sort of sold her off to him, and in part because he’s in his 50s, a widower, and she was 18 at the time – I mean, c’mon, who wouldn’t? But he promised her father that he wouldn’t deflower her until she was at least 20, a birthday that comes up that week. He also has a cotton gin that is being pushed out of business by a foreign-born upstart, Silvio Vacarro (Ronnie Marmo). As was, it seems, the common action of the usurped in those parts of Mississippi, Meighan sets fire to the gin, and in retaliation, the handsome Vacarro seduces Meighan’s virgin wife. Etc.
Just this side of silly, Daavid’s gift is to use a small, silent Greek chorus to act out some of the more cinematic physical actions of the melodrama. It’s an amazing production, deserving of attention and awards, well-acted-out on a set of weathered wood. Brud, discovered asleep in a too-small crib-like bed, upstage on an upper level, has the sexual combustibility of the pent-up, fearing the old goat of a husband and preferring the more attractive, virile actions of the interloper; in addition, she makes her young gal real. Veteran actor Jackie Lynn Colton deftly manages to hold her own as the dotty Aunt Rose Comfort (no play set in the North would have such evocative names as does Southern Gothic literature) and Mr. Gatto and Mr. Marmo uphold their artistic ends. The supportive company, Josh Benton, Marie Burke, Ugonna Mbele, Dave Metz, Chloe Peterson, Bernadette Speakes, Carl Wawrina and Michael Wilke, are wonderfully committed to the important, if unheralded, work they do here.
It’s worthwhile making the trip to Elephant-land to see this.
At the Lillian Stage/Elephant Theatre Complex, 6322 Santa Monica Blvd, Hollywood, CA. through January 22nd, 2012. Tickets: 323.962.0046.