@ the 2010 Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival

The Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, which completed its fifth season on September 26, has patented its own formula for success. Each year Festival organizers put together an artistic season of first-rate productions by visiting troupes from around the nation and the globe, a premiere of a Williams play unearthed from the vault of his prolific canon, and guest appearances by notable playwrights, actors, poets or directors.

But there are two other key elements to the Festival's success: Provincetown's quirky and artistic citizenry and its unique seaside performance spaces. The Festival succeeds mightily because Provincetown's residents want it to and because there's no other place with such charisma than the town itself.

This year, however, the marquee names were absent. Past seasons included appearances by award-winning actress Olympia Dukakis; playwrights John Guare and Lanford Wilson; stage/screen actor Eli Wallach, and others. These luminaries always bring with them a certain "buzz."

But this year Provincetown itself emerged as the star. St. Mary's Episcopal Church, the Boatslip Resort Hotel, the lawn of a historic Provincetown mansion, to name a few - were inspired choices. Festival devotees flocked - ticket sales were up, as were the sales of Festival passes and other package deals - and attendees had the pleasure of being the first to see works by Williams and others performed where theatrical works had never been staged before. Theatergoers used to a certain "buzz" from marquee names instead reveled in the performances by several local actors who got their moments to shine.

Due to the festival running over a stretch of four days, I was unable to see all the productions. But what follows are reflections of what I was able to take in during a weekend visit.

Orpheus Descending

Williams's Orpheus Descending, is a challenging, sprawling work he completed after 17 years of re-writing in 1957. It unfolds over three acts, and tells the story of good versus evil, of lust and betrayal, of a handsome drifter Val (Thomas Beaudoin) and the magnetic sway he has over two women and assorted others in a southern town haunted by the specter of the Ku Klux Klan. By assembling an audience in a church replete with religious iconography, director Nick Potenzieri and his cast from the Infinite Theatre in New York City exposed audiences to a heavy dose of solemnity. The setting proved to be riveting.

This production of Orpheus Descending was thrilling. It featured outstanding performances. Despite the challenge of swiveling around in the pew in order to see - and hear - as the cast entered from the rear, front and sides of the church (and missing several lines and scenes as a consequence), I was transported outside myself to Williams's haunting vision of a sacred and profane world. The strong performances by the two female leads, Beth Bartley, and Irene Glezos, drove Williams's message of life's fragilities and passions nakedly home.

Diff’rent

The theme of this year's Festival was "Under the Influence." Works were chosen to showcase plays Williams was inspired by, and, in turn, works of his that inspired others. One of those plays was Diff'rent, written in 1920 by Nobel laureate Eugene O'Neill, who lived and wrote in Provincetown in the 1920s.

Directed by Jef Hall-Flavin, Diff'rent was performed at the Boatslip, a popular resort on Commercial Street that hugs the harbor. The sound of surf hitting the pilings - the performance I attended took place at high tide - provided a hypnotic effect. It was one of those wondrous early fall Provincetown afternoons, with bright sunlight, warm temperatures, and boats entering and leaving the busy harbor. In the cast were Provincetown natives Beau Jackett and Tony Jackett, playing young and old versions of the same character, Caleb Williams, a whaling captain, who, in the course of the 30 years the play covers, never falls out of love with childhood sweetheart Emma Crosby (Ashlea Potts and McNeely Myers). Emma, however, has broken off their engagement when she discovers Caleb is not truly "diff'rent" than other men, and the play follows the downward spiral of their doomed lives.

A young Tennessee Williams attended a revival of this play in Provincetown 1940, twenty years after it O'Neill wrote it. Seeing it performed by a talented cast on a wharf near where it originally was produced and to contrast O'Neill's rough-hewn language with Williams's enraptured poetic voice, proved to be an outstanding theatrical experience. Both playwrights explored the depths of dashed hopes and sexual repression in dramatic works that accentuated human tragedy.

Bent to the Flame: A Night with Tennessee Williams

American poet Hart Crane, who died at age 32 in 1932, exerted a powerful influence over a young Tennessee Williams. Like Williams, he was gay, with a proclivity, we learn from Doug Tompos' one-man show, Bent to the Flame: A Night with Tennessee Williams, for liaisons with "handsome sailors." Performed at the Provincetown Theatre, Tompos successfully channeled Williams who muses on Crane's great gifts, quotes from a book of Crane's poems, gossips on the telephone, and shares insights into his own poetic nature.

Directed by Michael Michetti, and imported to Provincetown by way of Los Angeles, Tompos' monologue seemed more like an exercise in quiet reverence than the stuff of stimulating theatre. Seated beside a table, beneath a photograph of Crane, Tompos revealed Williams to be a man too full of life - and mischief - to emulate Crane's self-loathing. They did share a degree of self-abuse, however, only hinted at. Williams confesses that he has turned to Crane's work for its rapture, quoting from one of his poems, "Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand/Through much of what she would not understand/And so I stumble./And the rain continues on the roof/With such a sound of gently pitying laughter." It is this melancholic tone that Williams emulated in many of his plays. Unfortunately, I found Tompos' delivery to be too hushed, leaving me with a restlessness that detracted from an overall enjoyment.

Dance, Film, One Acts

This year's Festival also include dance performances, films, and shorter Williams's pieces, including a staged reading of Suddenly Last Summer (with Dana Ivey and Robert Bogue) and the premiere of American Gothic, which was performed on the lawn of an historic mansion on Commercial Street. Also, William Jay Smith, a former U.S. poet laureate who knew Williams as a young man and befriended him throughout his life, shared memories of the late playwright at the Crown and Anchor restaurant with editor Thomas Keith, who moderated. I was unable to attend these performances.

But there is more in the works. Next year, Festival organizers are planning "Tenn Turns One Hundred," and have launched a fundraising campaign to bring his "Hotel Plays," presented at Gifford House last year, to selected cities around the United States.

While the ambitions of the organizers look beyond Provincetown, they never lose sight of their roots in the town's beach sandy soil. They will return to the seaside town next fall with a new palette of colors and offerings, all emanating from Williams's rich reservoir, once again proving him to be a visionary writer whose works continue to have a profound hold on our collective psyches.