Eccentricities of A Nightingale

?The makeshift stage is in the basement, and the sight lines are terrible; but Eclipse Theatre’s production of “The Eccentricities of a Nightingale” at the Chopin Theatre Studio is nonetheless one of the highlights of this summer season.

The play, a reworking by Tennessee Williams of his 1947 drama “Summer and Smoke,” has a direct Chicago connection, for it received its public premiere here in 1967 under the direction of Bella Itkin at Goodman Theatre, with the playwright in attendance.

At the time, it was ill received. Claudia Cassidy much preferred “Summer and Smoke,” which Williams thought inferior. The new version, she wrote in the Tribune, was “flabby, emasculated, cannibalized,” even though she detected “now and then a haunting echo of Williams’ original intuitive, unsparing brilliance.”

But under Steve Scott’s wise direction, and with a knowing portrayal of the steely sensitive heroine by Jenny McKnight, this “Nightingale,” though sometimes obvious in its symbolism and self- imitation, shapes up as a strong, highly playable piece of work.

Alma Winemiller, the fluttery daughter of a stern minister in Glorious Hill, Miss., is an obvious relative of the ultimate Williams heroine, Blanche du Bois, of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” She’s a wilted flower of the South, a church choir singer who loves art; and she is doomed to a Blanche-like fate by her consuming love for the handsome young doctor who is her neighbor.

Thanks to Steven Rishard’s intelligent portrayal, Buchanan never seems a sissy boy; he’s a handsome, put-upon fellow with a bad mama, and his inability to connect with Alma is as poignant a situation for him as it is for her.

Despite a lack of technical facilities, Nathaniel Swift’s lighting for the bare black playing area evokes flames, moonlight and fireworks. And the supporting cast offers a rich, colorful gallery of characters.

Williams’ dialogue often nudges into the rococo; but bits are sharp, satirical and wickedly funny. Who else, for example, could dream up a story about a blanket-eating boa constrictor and make it absolutely hilarious?? Richard Christiansen, Tribune Chief Critic, Chicago Tribune August 3, 1999

?Those uncertain about whether Tennessee Williams was the greatest poet of the 20th century American theater might want to hurry out to see the Eclipse Theatre Company production of ?The Eccentricities of a Nightingale,? now at the Chopin Theatre. All lingering doubts will vanish.

Only Williams could have a character talk about a winter in the deep South when ?the whole town was sheathed in ice.? And only he could have this same character ? endlessly thwarted in her romantic yearnings ? remind a listener that ?before you love your must learn to walk over snow and leave no footprints.? Such lines are unique to the heart of Williams.

Like many of Williams? plays, ?Nightingale,? a radical 1965 revision of his 1948 drama ?Summer and Smoke,? is the story of misfits. It also is the story of how, for better or worse, these misfits come to terms with their exceptional natures and find a certain degree of self-acceptance along the way. Although the world may not be ready for them, they will prevail in their singular fashion.

Alma Winemiller (played with exceptional radiance by Henny McKnight) is certainly not like most of the other young women in Glorious Hill, Miss., circa 1916, where a certain Victorian spirit still holds sway. The daughter of a rigidly conformist minister (played by Thomas McElroy) and a mother (Jody Wilson) whose unfulfilled passions have driven her to madness, Alma is known for her highly emotional gestures, her overwrought singing performances at public events and her membership in a little club of local dilettantes. A woman of considerable charm and beauty, she has no prospects for the future ? only a long-simmering crush on her neighbor, the handsome John Buchanan (Steven Rishard), who has just graduated from the John Hopkins Medical School and has come home for a brief family visit.

Despite his academic achievements, Buchanan, is not exactly Mr. Normal, either. Coddled and controlled by his obnoxious mother (Debra Rodkin), who wants him to have no part of Alma, he lacks the spine to rebel against the woman, even if he has the insight to see Alma?s loveliness and what he calls her ?gallantry.? There is a sense, too, as there is in many of Williams? plays, that John might not be interested in women at all in any sexual way.

?Nightingale? beautifully charts the complex and ultimately deeply loving relationship that develops between Alma and John over the course of a few brief holiday encounters ? from the Forth of July through New Year?s Eve. And it celebrates the bravery of these two strangely compatible souls who are nevertheless bound for different fates.

McKnight?s superb performance ? flickering between anxiety and determination ? is as musical and poetic and full of little fireworks as Williams? language. And Rishard moves deftly between weakness and inner strength, always with a fine sense of his character?s tentativeness. The play?s supporting roles are written and acted somewhat broadly, but when director Steve Scott keeps his eye on the play?s two pivotal characters the production is wholly transcendent. Nathaniel Swift?s ingenious lighting effects, Thomas Jones? sound design and Keith Schneider?s fanciful period costumes provide additional magic.

?Nightingale? is the second production of Eclipse theatre?s three-play season of Wiliams? work. Coming this fall is ?Suddenly Last Summer.? I?m already looking forward to it.? Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times August 3, 1999

?A few months ago the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis–one of the midwest’s most prestigious venues–dumped a lot of money into a slick, flashy, relentlessly uninteresting production of Tennessee Williams’s Summer and Smoke. Now Chicago’s scrappy Eclipse Theatre, holed up in the Chopin’s amenity-free basement, has spent about seven dollars on a clunky, uneven, thoroughly engaging rendition of The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, Williams’s inspired revision of Summer and Smoke. Sure, it’s a much better play, but Eclipse also proves it’s got heaps more brains and talent than the Guthrie.

Director Steve Scott wisely opts for an understated, semichamber performance of this easily overblown saga about sexual repression. In a town hostile to the slightest idiosyncrasy or unseemly emotional display, the excitable aspiring singer Alma and the mother-smothered young doctor John attempt to forge a romance. It ends badly–this is Williams, after all–but the vagaries of tortured love are exquisite, even as the playwright drops moral lessons like boulders and turns Alma into a ten-ton metaphorical nightingale.

Scott has moments of heavy-handedness as well: Alma’s circle of “eccentrics”–the town’s free spirits–have all the credibility of the therapy patients on the old Bob Newhart Show. But Jenny McKnight and Steven Richard as the star-crossed lovers turn in such skilled, nuanced performances that it would take a special effort not to become completely engrossed.?Justin Hayford, Chicago Reader August 6, 1999