Playwright: Tennessee Williams. At: Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark St.. Phone: 773-338-2177; $25. Runs through: Dec. 8
What does it mean to be at ‘the end of a rope’? In this Tennessee Williams play, that expression applies most obviously to the title reptile, tethered up to be later served for dinner. Almost as literal is its reflection of a 90-plus-year-old poet, lodged at a shabby resort on the Mexican coast in 1940, struggling to complete his final rhyme before dying. It also resonates with the uncertain futures of the other wayfarers—a rebel priest in spiritual crisis, the spinster granddaughter of the aforementioned bard, a family of German tourists devoted to the Fatherland, a busload of stranded Texas dowagers on holiday and the widowed proprietress herself. And it might even be the cry of a playwright whose store of inspiration has run low, leaving him no choice but to repeat himself as long as his audiences permit.
That this 1961 drama signaled the beginning of the end for one of the 20th century’s greatest American writers can be evidenced in the profiles of its personnel: The Rev. T. Lawrence Shannon can’t keep his hands off compliant teenage girls. Mrs. Maxine Faulk runs her business with unsentimental efficiency, but is willing to close an eye when expedience demands. Miss Hannah Jelkes is as platonic as her landlady is Darwinian, but also exhibits a steely resolve when it comes to the care of her grandsire, whose allegorical function is so apparent as to render his lyrical output little more than a literary leitmotif. The nazi vacationers are pigs, the elderly ladies are prigs, their adolescent charge is a nymphet, Shannon’s employers are emasculated wimps and Maxine’s native servants are cheerfully amoral as puppies.
Director Michael Menendian’s production is not intended for jaded scholars, however. The company assembled for this Raven Theatre production embraces its well-worn archetypes with intelligence, compassion and never a hint of condescension, bringing them to life with all the Chekhovian affection bestowed on them by their author’s hindsight. Lending vibrancy to what could easily emerge as ennui-soaked nostalgia is Paul Dunckel’s vigorous performance as the fevered Shannon, whose thrashing and bellowing foreshadows tension suggestive of verbal chiaroscuro during his confrontations with the icily composed Hannah, played with understated presence by Kristen Williams Smith. Flanked by a capable supporting ensemble of Raven regulars on a panoramic, precision-detailed stage picture, they maintain an unswerving candor generating suspense that belies the age of this too-often-ignored classic.