A taste of vicious humour, drama
DISCONCERTING and stimulating in equal measure, this amalgam of cruelty and absurdist humour characteristic of Tennessee Williams’ later work is staged in masterly fashion by the Abrahamse/Meyer partnership.
An evening of quirky theatre and gourmet food leaves patrons satisfied physically and intellectually: the dinner’s three courses are punctuated by short plays which complement each other like the dishes on a well-devised bill of fare.
A Perfect Analysis Given by a Parrot is as bizarre as its title suggests. The curtain rises on an intimate set in which two unprepossessing females engage in mutual hostilities over a couple of beers, the acerbity of their exchanges in no way mitigated by a veneer of chumminess. They are portrayed by muppet-like creatures masquerading as Joan Crawford and Elizabeth Taylor, both performers in Williams’ mid-20th century masterpieces.
The authority bordering on insouciance with which Meyer impersonates Taylor, and Balie, Crawford, is key to the success of a production that strains audience credulity to the limit. Body language is finely gauged as head and hand movements effectively convey a gamut of emotions roused by catty comments while the pair keep a predatory eye out for male talent to the strains of Cole Porter’s music.
This play seems relatively lightweight in comparison to the second one, which has Williams at his most outrageous, deliberately flouting conventions of propriety and taste in a vicious drama that unites black humour with callousness.
In The Remarkable Rooming-House of Mme Le
Monde, a penniless and crippled youth named Mint is abused by a landlady from hell and her coarsegrained son, as well as his visitor in the shape of an old friend from the evocatively named school Scrotum-on-Swansea which they attended as lads.
The cast of four shine under impeccable direction from Abrahamse. Balie as Hall, Mint’s visitor, is odious in every way; Tilbury, in fussy gown and dishevelled wig, effortlessly dominates the action as Mme Le Monde; Meyer is all sinister brutality in the single-minded pursuit of sex with Mint, and Baldwin manages to be both vulnerable and despicable, the latter quality countering audience sympathy to justify Madame’s contemptuous dismissal of his existence at the end of this atrocious comedy.
Few will forget an evening as thought-provoking as this.