Hartford Stage Production Is Broadway Material

By June S. April

HARTFORD – When one thinks of playwright/novelist Tennessee Williams, Street Car Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Glass Menagerie normally come to mind. Hartford Stage’s current production of Camino Real, written during the playwright’s middle years, has a vibrancy and spirit that sets it apart from Williams’ other works. It is colorful and stimulating.

With only a few days left to see it, this production is must-see for any dedicated theatre lover. (If time allowed, this reviewer would happily sit through another performance!)

The cast is outstanding and director Michael Wilson’s love and appreciation of Tennessee Williams shines through from first curtain to last.

A common theme to Williams’ plays is the exploration of human nature. The realism that marks Williams’ other works is alien here. There is a Fellini-esque quality, wherein fantasy visions and reality are interwoven and symbolic figures punctuate the drama.

Tennessee Williams seems to have donned Don Quixote’s mantle and followed his inner visions in writing Camino Real (which is pronounced in the Anglicized way, with the accent on the first syllable of each word.

In June of 1953, Williams noted that “more than any other work that I have done, this play has seemed to me like the construction of another world, a separate existence.” He felt it was ironic that when Camino Real had its world premiere at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, the film Peter Pan was showing across the street.

“I suppose it becomes an elaborate allegory…,” Williams observed.

Unfortunately, major theatre critics viciously panned the play when it debuted. Even with ongoing rewrites of it, the playwright never traveled that particular creative path again.

The dynamism Camino Real expressed was ahead of its time; it served as a release for Williams and he hungered to share that sense of freedom with the theatre audience. That “discomfort” with new artistic directions plaques the creative world unceasingly.

Williams once stated that symbols, “when used respectfully, are the purest language of plays.” Camino Real’s characters are lost and unhappy souls, caught in a surrealistic Casablanca-world. Among the colorful, disparate personalities that inhabit this fantasy South-of-the-Border town are historically familiar names: Casanova, the great Italian adventurer, author, lover, etc; Esmeralda, the heroine from the novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame; Lord Byron, the English Romantic poet; Don Quixote, the literary knight errant created by Cervantes; and the symbolic cartoon creation from World War II, Kilroy.

Swirled together with characters that are descriptive generalities (Bum, Pilot, Loan Shark, Dreamer), Williams also tossed in some aristocracy and miscellaneous townsfolk, military goons and assorted vendors. Camino Real has hints of the Theatre of the Absurd, and forged new theatrical directions in play construction. The characters are meant to stream through the audience, bringing them into the sense of urgency.

Hartford Stage’s production honestly reflects Tennessee Williams’ vision and can be proud of going beyond the usual “crowd-pleasing” theatrical production.

Director Wilson worked with three versions of Camino Real: an original one-act version, the rehearsal script from the 1953 Broadway run, and the New Directions edition. It works, very well.

(Playing through October 10, tickets and information are available by calling 860/525-5601.)