Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
A play on playwrights
‘Billy and Me’ deftly explores lives of two theater titans.
Terry Teachout, the Wall Street Journal’s drama critic, is a prolific writer with eclectic cultural interests. As of this month, he is the author of two produced plays.
The first, “Satchmo at the Waldorf,” premiered in Orlando in 2011 and went on to have multiple productions, include one off-Broadway and another directed by Teachout at Palm Beach Dramaworks in 2016. The second, “Billy and Me,” is now getting its world premiere at Dramaworks, where it runs through New Year’s Eve.
Staged by producing artistic director William Hayes, the play about the friendship of Pulitzer Prizewinning playwrights Tennessee Williams and William Inge features Carbonell Award-winning actors Nicholas Richberg as Williams and Tom Wahl as Inge, along with Carbonell-nominated Cliff Burgess as a waiter who finds Inge delectable, then as a doctor who must help pull the playwright back from the brink of death.
Teachout has done his research, as well as drawing on his knowledge of the men and their work. In the end, though, he has used his creative imagination to craft a play about two great dramatists who shared an agent, a friendship and perhaps more. In other words, the Williams and Inge of “Billy and Me” are Teachout’s interpretation of the two, their conversations his invention.
Structured as a two-act memory play narrated by Williams from somewhere in the great theatrical beyond, “Billy and Me” begins on a snowy New Year’s Eve 1944. Williams, on edge about what he sees as his last shot to make it as a playwright, is waiting for Inge in the Twin Anchors, a Chicago gay bar. The unseen gents partying in another room sometimes break into ironic song — “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” “One for My Baby” — but the (sometimes literal) dance between Williams and Inge is all about art born of pain.
Teachout explores the differences and similarities between the men. Williams is comfortably out, a Type A personality who lives life large and has a knack for homing in on others’ vulnerabilities. Inge is closeted, deeply conflicted about his sexual orientation and already knows he can’t handle booze.
Their wide-ranging conversation touches on the family tragedy Williams shaped into art, his worries about leading lady Laurette Taylor, and his anxiety over the way Chicago Tribune critic Claudia Cassidy might wield her considerable power to determine his play’s future.