TALK TO ME LIKE THE RAIN AND LET ME LISTEN and
Watching Tennessee Williams one-acts is like flipping through an artist’s sketchbook: they’re filled with simple, evocative jottings that explore a dramatic or poetic idea on a small scale. Such works often gain strength from simple stagings: the spare production of two of Williams’s pieces on view at Cafe Voltaire highlights the works themselves–though these one-acts only hint at the talent of this great modern dramatist.
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The brief The Lady of Larkspur Lotion is a somewhat obvious bit of melodrama, interesting mainly as a study for Williams’s masterwork A Streetcar Named Desire. In this bleak snapshot Mrs. Hardwick-Moore, a fading beauty in an alcoholic tailspin, has resorted to prostitution. To make matters worse, she still cannot make rent on her roach-ridden room in a seedy New Orleans boardinghouse. When her landlady threatens to evict her, Mrs. Hardwick-Moore insists she’s only waiting for a dividend check from her Brazilian rubber plantation. Like Blanche DuBois, she’s romanticized her past not only for the sake of appearances but to make the present livable. Just as she’s about to be thrown out, a writer and fellow alcoholic who lives across the hall comes to her defense. His support of her delusions also supports his own about himself: to comfort himself in his sorry state, he boasts about all the great works he’s created.
This desperate dramatic poem draws intensity from its elemental structure: the characters and their sad relationship are powerfully defined in two simple speeches. The script is realized with quiet despair by Daley and Vanasse, and director Chris Velasquez’s easy style serves the language nicely.
