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Published on 7/23/08
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Not every playwright gets a do-over. But when Tennessee Williams was unhappy with his 1948 Broadway flop Summer and Smoke, he took a knife to this romance about a lonely, nonconformist young woman and a seductive physician, performing what he called some “radical surgery” of his own. The retitled The Eccentricities of a Nightingale opts for more delicate character study and romantic comedy than its relatively sultry and sensational source. Like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” variant of the earlier play, the circumstances remain the same while characters and conflicts shift: The formerly promiscuous Dr. John Buchanan turns into a well-behaved mama’s boy, and the misfit heroine, Alma, becomes less pious and more aggressive in pursuit of her needs.
The Actors Company Theatre’s revival of Eccentricities (which reached Broadway in 1976) certainly deserves attention from Williams enthusiasts. But this tepid production, with its stiff formality and low-stakes tenor, doesn’t make a strong case. Todd Gearhart is a charmless, indifferent Dr. Buchanan, and by rendering Alma’s tics so flighty, Mary Bacon conveys more surface mannerism than deep disturbance—setting a light, comic tone for the whole production that lessens the impact. (Only Nora Chester delivers much needed soul as Alma’s ghostly, mentally deteriorating mother.)
TACT may claim that the emotionally cooler Eccentricities was Williams’ preferred version. But without the earlier play’s more overt sexuality and wrenching conflict between spirit and flesh going for it, this production conveys little Smoke and less fire.
