Interesting remarks having seen another production in the August Minnesota Fringe.
I have questions for Tennessee Williams.* This show is a quick 25 minutes, with a post-show discussion (which yours truly skipped out on because I was worried about travel time to my next venue). But it packs a punch in those 25 minutes. These two characters are so vulnerable and so violent and so hard-headed and so manipulative for the entire time that I don’t think the play could be any longer. It would collapse under its own weight. Plus, there is something wonderfully galvanizing about the lingering questions after the sudden ending.
My only wish for this production is that Matt Rein was a little more of a Tennessee Williams man. You know the type – think Stanley in Streetcar. The kind of man you are afraid of and also want to fuck. Rein is a great performer, and holds his own opposite Jaimi Paige (who is stellar), but I wanted him to be sexier. More powerful. More virile, more angry, more confused, more everything.
Maybe that seems nitpicky, to complain about the sexiness of one of the actors, but so much of the show depends on the chemistry, the toxicity, between these two characters that when one of them doesn’t feel quite as fleshed-out as the other (no pun intended), it’s a big deal.
But not big enough of a deal that you shouldn’t see this. And then come find me and talk to me about it.
* look for my one-woman show at next year’s Fringe: “Questions for Tennessee Williams: One Woman’s Epic Journey Through A Series of Drunk Southern Men”
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markbringelson reblogged this from fringefamous and added:
Interesting remarks having seen another...August Minnesota Fringe.
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