Customer Reviews

Broadway Theatre Archive Tennessee Williams Collection (Eccentricities of a Nightingale/Ten Blocks on the Camino Real/Dragon Country) - Amazon.com Exclusive

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you're a fan of Tennessee Williams this triptych is a great bargain. The strongest of the three is "Eccentricities of a Nightingale" (a reworking of "Summer and Smoke" and one which Williams preferred to his earlier effort). Danner and Langella are brilliant. The sexual frankness these two characters exhibit may seem implausible for their social setting and the era being depicted, but somehow it works. It's as if Williams is presenting us with a hypothetical: "What if people could be honest with one another about their sexual desires and what if they were willing to engage one another in fulfilling these desires without burdening each other with unrealistic expectations?" Watching Danner's Alma is like seeing what might have become of Blanche DuBois if she had not lost her connection to reality and if Stanley had loved her and not just used her. "Dragon Country" is two short plays about conflicted couples. The DVD is worth the purchase price just for Kim Stanley's subtle performance in part 2, "I Can't Imagine Tomorrow." It's easy to see why she was such a major stage actor; it's a pity she didn't make more films. The only disappointment in this set was "Ten Blocks on the Camino Real," which feels like an amateurish high school production. The story is told on a mythic level which makes it difficult to take any of the characters seriously--in trying to present them archetypes Williams has created wooden stereotypes. This one will probably be of interest only to the person intent upon seeing everything Williams wrote. Even so, the cost of the set is less than buynig any two of the DVDs separately.

This was an Amazon.com special deal, with three television productions of Tennessee Williams's plays: "Ten Blocks on the Camino Real" (a very early PBS production, in black-and-white, from the mid-1960s); "Dragon Country" (two one-acts, done on PBS in 1970); "The Eccentricities of a Nightingale" (a "Great Performances" production from 1976). Quite frankly, the technical aspects of the DVDs are only fair, they have not been "boosted" and show the broadcast standards of television in other periods (1960s-1970s); nevertheless, these are exceptional productions, with superb acting, and the great writing of one of America's premiere playwrights. A young Martin Sheen is an amazingly callow and touching Kilroy in "Camino Real", confronted with an array of characters including Lotte Lenya, Carrie Nye, Hurd Hatfield, Albert Dekker, Janet Margolin... one of Williams's most imaginative plays, and it gets a classic treatment. "Dragon Country" has Lois Smith, Alan Mixon, the legendary Kim Stanley and William Redfield giving touching performances in two short plays about people trying to connect but lost in their own dreamworlds (almost archetypal performances from Smith and Stanley). The finest production is the last: "Eccentricities of a Nightingale" is Williams's reworking of his "Summer and Smoke", and it features Blythe Danner and Frank Langella at their very best. In Danner's case, it is a bold performance, because she is not afraid of the character's silliness, the off-putting affectations, and she makes you see the wrenching sadness and loneliness under the nervous gestures. This was definitely a bargain, and i can hardly wait for the upcoming boxset of Tennessee Williams films (including "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", "Sweet Bird of Youth", "Baby Doll" and "Night of the Iguana") which will be released by Warner Home Video.