By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“)
The producers from the Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans had already planned for a major opening night on March 8 at Marquette Theatre on the Loyola University campus. But what they could not have been prepared for was an afternoon tornado warning, torrential downpours and street flooding that greeted their audience for Kingdom of Earth (The Seven Descents of Myrtle), a Tennessee Williams play that also deals with threatening thunderstorms and probable flooding from a breached levee.
While director Augustin J. Correro, Jr. and his co-artistic director Nick Shackleford may not have been prescient to have envisioned those outside elements for opening night, the elements they prepared on the stage through Correro’s direction and Shackleford’s sound designs proved to be essential ingredients in this very satisfying production.
This is the beginning of the company’s eighth season and the first time they have ever revived a work of Tennessee Williams to whom they have been almost exclusively devoted. The very first work they presented was Williams’ Kingdom of Earth in August of 2015 at the Metropolitan Church on the corner of Henry Clay Avenue and St. Charles Avenue, only a scant distance across the street from Loyola University’s Marquette Hall.
Kingdom of Earth is an unusual work, but it has many aspects of sexual yearnings and tension that had piqued interest in A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Born out of a short story of the same title first begun in 1948 but not published until 1954, Williams worked on a one-act play that was published in 1967 before expanding the work to seven scenes and two acts, retitling it as The Seven Descents of Myrtle for a 1968 Broadway production. When the work was published in 1968, it once again was named Kingdom of Earth with the subt`itle (The Seven Descents of Myrtle).
The set is designed on several levels, thus the veiled reference to the stairway that leads from the upstairs bedroom to the kitchen, the two primary areas of the stage in which the action takes place.
Casting this three-hander was a major consideration by Correro. Playing the role of Chicken is Edward Carter Simon, the versatile actor who dominated the stage previously as Hedwig in the Rainbow Carnage production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. In the case of Chicken, he is firmly entrenched in his masculinity unlike his half-brother Lot, played by Benjamin Dougherty, a veteran of three previous TWTC productions. Lot is a terminally-ill effete, who brings Myrtle into the home as his new bride.
Myrtle, delightfully played by Rebecca Elizabeth Hollingsworth, is the pivotal character in the drama, an object of desire and a means to an end for both half-brothers. Chicken, whose dark complexion betrays his biracial parentage in Jim Crow Mississippi, wants to inherit the home and land on which he has lived his entire life. Lot, having had the benefit of being a product of a legal marriage is the sole heir. He elects to marry Myrtle as a way of leaving behind a widow and putting Chicken’s claim on the property into question.
The character of Myrtle is introduced as a down-on-her-luck, marginally talented former member of the Four Hot Shots from Mobile. Her questionable past and the speed with which she married Lot suggest she is capable of going wherever the prevailing wind may send her. She is opportunistic, but not an opportunist. Myrtle lacks insight into the dynamic between Chicken and Lot when she arrives on the scene. Her intent is to bring the doomed Lot back to health and enjoy the benefits of a marriage. But after meeting Chicken and being used as a pawn by both of the half-brothers, she is forced to make several difficult decisions to save herself and survive.
Hollingsworth vacillates between an unsure, tentative and frightened woman into an assured and lusty object of Chicken’s desire. At times she appears to be ignorant of the other two’s intentions, but it isn’t long before she begins to realize the two are playing her for their own devices. The reference to the seven descents of Myrtle is to the number of times she descends from the upstairs bedroom to the downstairs kitchen. If one counts the number, it is only four times she actually executes such a stage direction. In the annals of stage history some 45 minutes was excised from the earliest Williams script by producer David Merrick. It would seem she made at least two other trips during that period, but the portions that were cut no longer remain for scrutiny. In one other scene, another “descent” of sorts is made by Myrtle as she is propositioned by Chicken. (“You don’t have to cry fo’ it, it’s what you want and it’s yours!”) As the light is extinguished, there is little doubt that both of them will enjoy each other’s company.
While Chicken has concerns regarding his mother’s bloodline, Lot is secure in knowing as long as he is alive his status as the progeny of a legal marriage will always make him the primary landowner. But tuberculosis has ravaged his respiratory system. He has already lost the function of one lung and his remaining lung is in the end stage of the disease. He is dying and he acknowledges it quite often and quite loudly. His marriage to Myrtle puts a fly into the ointment for Chicken and so he scrutinizes how he, a man with mixed blood, can successfully navigate this potential hazard to his succession.
The tension between Hollingsworth’s Myrtle and that of Simon’s Chicken is palpable. There is menace in his approach and she reacts accordingly at first, eventually warming to him in fits and starts. The two actors complement one another on the stage, a ying and yang that elicits humor, anxiety and fear.
Dougherty is also quite good in revealing Lot’s true self, which he does bit by bit. Eventually, the dying figure is presented in a most unexpected fashion to the horror of his wife and the delight of his half-brother.
Presenting the play in Marquette Theatre gives Correro and the other creative team members an opportunity to showcase an exceptional set by Mina Perkins. Correro turns in double and triple duty as the dramaturg and in charge of props. Diane K. Baas also provides excellent lighting for the show. Hollingsworth also served as the costume designer for the show to great effect.
Audience members should remember this play was written at a time when racial epithets were much more commonly used. Williams does not shy away from using these offensive words in the context of realism, but attendees should not be shocked when they are uttered by the stage characters. The play also presents adults in adult situations that are not advised for children.
Kingdom of Earth by Tennessee Williams (2 hours and 30 minutes with a 10-minute intermission) continues its run at Marquette Theatre on the Loyola University campus, 6363 St. Charles Avenue. For tickets click here.
