Suddenly Last Summer

It seemed like nobody in our Berkeley Rep subscription group wanted to see a Tennessee Williams play. We wound up swapping tickets around our friends. Dave Nee and Scott Marley took Lyn Paleo's and Doug Faunt's tickets. D. Potter got Lisa Hirsch's. Kimberly Appelcline stayed home, so her husband, Shannon, passed her ticket along to a friend of his. The extra ticket went to Sabyl Cohen (who showed up in a dream I had the other night). The only original subscribers to go were Shannon, Debbie, and I.

The play Suddenly Last Summer is terrific, but the Berkeley Rep's production was problematic. I dozed through far too much of Violet's opening monologues — maybe I was just too sleepy, but our consensus afterwards was that the actress, Randy Danson, just wasn't up to the role, which demands much more presence, piss, and vinegar than she was able to deliver. Likewise, Joey Collins didn't give enough to the role of Dr. Sugar. The bright spot of the cast was Michelle Duffy, playing Catharine, who eclipsed everyone else in the cast every moment she was on stage, showing herself in a vivid technicolor compared to the other castmembers' pastels. She wasn't overplaying; Catharine's role demands it. But Violet's role demands it also, and what the audience got from her was pastel.

In the curtain call at the end, Duffy was visibly drained. Taking her bows seemed to take effort.

Scott Marley had scathing things to say afterwards about the set design and the direction. I rather liked the set myself, but could see what he meant. And I strongly agree with what he said about the lighting: that there were enough unsubtle changes in lighting early on that when the lights hit their bright peak during the climax of Catharine's final monologue the impact was lessened. The earlier lighting changes should have been much more subtle.

We had dinner beforehand, all of us except Shannon and his friend, at the Taiwan Restaurant, on University, just to the west of Shattuck Ave, and after the performance the whole group talked the play to bits at Coquelet over coffee and dessert. I can complain about the production, but the evening as a whole was rich and satisfying.