The King’s Head revival of Tennessee Williams’ Vieux Carré is a close encounter with the eccentrics who populate 722 Toulouse Street in New Orleans. The intimate theatre of the Upper Street institution sits you inches away from the guests at Mrs Wire’s boarding house.
What unfolds in front of you is the story of a landlady trying to protect the long since gone respectability of her establishment. Through the eyes of the newest guest in the house, an aspiring Writer, you get close to the delusion of a terminally ill gay artist, a witchlike landlady concocting soup late at night, a fallen New York belle fighting her brutish partner and two starving old ladies reminiscing their heydays, among others.
The Writer shares his first experience of life away from home in St Louis with this eclectic bunch. He is the hesitating but directing link between these broken people. We watch him come out and rise up to his desire for adventures as others in the house fight, play dangerous practical jokes and face death.
Vieux Carré is in turn poetic, witty, sarcastic, funny and moving. Williams’ tragic- comic take on life is thought provoking but thoroughly entertaining. With dialogues that ring a modern tone sometimes through excess swearing and other times when a
young woman refuses to be called a girl.
Despite the lack of actual stage space at the King’s Head, director Robert Chevara recreates the whole pension in one place that is alternately filled with cigarette smoke, haunting Southern songs, swearing broken souls and the occasional young male nude as Tye – Paul Standell – and Jane’s – Samantha Coughlan – relationships takes a turn for the worse.
Chevara’s revival of Vieux Carré is the first in London since 1978 – a year after its New York debut and flop. In this autobiographical play Tennessee Williams explores the theme of cohabiting loneliness. Though he is said to have started writing the play at the time when he lived at the actual 722 Toulouse Street, he finished it much later in his career. The play therefore carries his vision of mankind from the perspective of both the young and old.
Tom Ross-Williams, who plays the young Writer carries the character’s gentle nature well. His retro black curls and boyish face give the Writer the naïve and troubled look required after a gay encounter with his cubicle neighbour.
Cubicle neighbour Nightingale – David Whitworth, is a key character in the Writer’s journey: first he is an uninvited coming-out assistant, then an anti role model. Whitworth’s deep voice and dishevelled look contrast beautifully with the Writer’s soft touch.
Nancy Crane as Mrs Wire is the matron of this mad house dressed in tatty old red robes. Alternatively described as a bitch and a witch by her tenants, Crane is very moving as she alternates between motherly care and downright cynicism.
If you are prepared to turn a deaf ear to the not-so-consistent American accents through the play, Vieux Carré at the King’s Head is a real treat. Tennessee Williams will not allow the audience to be bored. His dark view of humanity is propped up through the play by enough tragic comic scenes that you will leave the theatre as haunted as Williams by Toulouse Street’s dark shadows.
