Summer and Smoke
Tennessee Williams's angels vs. demons drama is overly schematic and explanatory (enough body/soul allusions to fill a treatise on the split). It privileges meaning over being. But Alma Winemiller, a preacher's repressed daughter, says Williams, "may well be the best female portrait I have drawn in a play." The New Village Arts staging is almost two different stories in contrasting styles. One's about Alma, played with roiling intensity by a terrific Jo Anne Glover. Wrapped so tight she finally unspools, Glover's a "flame mistaken for ice." Although Williams wanted John Buchanan to have "demonic unrest," John DeCarlo reigns in extremes with a tepid performance. Except for a fine turn by up-and-comer Aimee Burdette as Nellie, who grows from ingenue to adult, the rest of the cast tilts strangely to one-dimensional characters and comedy (Dana Case, for example, plays loony Mrs. Winemiller for laughs). Director Kristianne Kurner has done quality work before but here displays little sense of an appropriate style.
When
Ongoing until Sunday, June 20, 2010
Hours
| Sundays, 2pm |
| Thursdays, 8pm |
| Fridays, 8pm |
| Saturdays, 3pm & 8pm |