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Ohio theatre lovers, director Lenny Pinna has a late summer gift for you. He has capped his new Ecclesia Theatre's inaugural season with the Midwest premiere of Tennessee Williams' remarkable play, "Something Cloudy, Something Clear". Written in 1980, suppressed for a decade after Williams' death by his literary executor, it's an astonishing work, and gorgeously rendered by Pinna and the Ecclesia company.
A powerful glimpse into autobiography in the form of a memory play, the main story involves a summer in 1940 Provincetown. It's the account of a doomed triangle between August, a young playwright, and two beautiful young dancers, Kip and his friend Clare, as he rewrites the play that may bring him his first Broadway production. What's cloudy and clear isn't merely the sultry summer by the shore, but the artist's vision and memory itself.
This late play by Williams is a masterwork: full of doubled visions, stylistically daring, leaping in time between 1940 and 1980, peopled with ghosts. One eye is clouded by nostalgia, guilt, and regret, the other sharply focused by a ribald unsentimentality. It's also a candid account of life as it unfolded for a gay artist in the 1940's, and all its gritty compromises -- where poetry and longing are juxtaposed with sex-for-hire, bashers, the closet, and the endless negotiation for a safe space to be. The way the metaphoric and carnal jostle side-by-side is stunningly contemporary, and as part of the Williams canon it's revelatory.
Pinna's clean direction and a vibrant cast allows many ironies to emerge. Stephen Vasse-Hansell's August is complex, both sympathetic and tart. In the process of being "bought" by Broadway producers, August is negotiating for a living wage and the right to create his own second act rather than working from someone else's outline. Simultaneously he becomes a buyer, when the observant Clare finds him mooning in a bar over her handsome "brother" Kip, and proposes he keep them both -- an act that spawns conflict and many layers of revelations.
The play echoes with other negotiations, past and present: from Williams' juicy confrontation with Tallulah Bankhead (Nan O'Malley) to a poignant hospital encounter with his dying companion Frank Merlo (a magnificent cameo by Paul Gothard, who is also striking as Clare's violent mobster lover Bugsy Brodsky). Especially strong is Molly McGinniss as actress Caroline Wales, a luscious, knowing vision in blue satin, who champions the young playwright's work and reads his sexuality clearly.
The two young leads are attractive and appealing even as they scheme. Cherie Panek hasn't a coy bone in her body as the fiercely protective Clare, and Stephen Tiderman is blond, hunky, and a hair less than innocent as the conflicted young Kip. Beverly Young Wykoff and Geoffrey Griggs shine in their brief but pointed appearance as the Fiddlers.
The production is a handsome one. Mike Butchek's set includes a expressionistic beach shack and a sandy beach with a dramatic high ridge. Scott Davis's light design is simply breathtaking, turning the sand and expanse of sky deep shades of purple, orange, and clearest blue.
In Ecclesia's inaugural season at Lake Erie College, Pinna has shown himself one of Cleveland's most risk-taking and talented director/producers. This play is a major event in the city's theatre season, and his excellent production deserves to be seen. Get yourself out to Painesville -- and let us hope that he is able to continue his fine work with Ecclesia in coming years.
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