The 'Autumn' of Their Discontent

The Autumn Garden
Written by Lillian Hellman; directed by David Jones

Performances: Now through August 26, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Main Stage, '62 Center for Theatre and Dance, Williams College, 1000 Main Street (Route 2), Williamstown, Mass.
Box Office: 413-597-3400 or www.wtfestival.org

Lillian Hellman's unflinching and often bitingly funny examination of midlife angst in her 1951 play The Autumn Garden may have seemed powerful and even shocking 56 years ago, but in its current form at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Williamstown, Mass., it seems more pensive than penetrating. A stellar cast, led by the wonderful Maryann Plunkett, Allison Janney, Elizabeth Franz, John Benjamin Hickey and Mamie Gummer, all create interesting individual sparks, but collectively they only sporadically cause enough friction to make the play truly ignite.

The Autumn Garden, which Hellman considered her best play, depicts the aching discontent languishing beneath the surface of single, middle-aged boarding house owner Constance Tuckerman and her colorful, if somewhat dysfunctional, guests during the last days of summer on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana circa 1949. The return to the Tuckerman house of Constance's childhood crush, Nicholas Denery – a petulant, self-absorbed painter and boy of a man in search of artistic inspiration that abandoned him years ago – triggers confrontations and the admission of regrets by his wife, the house's residents, and all of its long-standing seasonal regulars.

With wit as stinging as the barbs exchanged by the siblings in Hellman's The Little Foxes and quiet desperation as painful as Blanche's breakdown in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, The Autumn Garden gives the talented Williamstown cast plenty of opportunities to shine. Elizabeth Franz as the elegant matriarch Mrs. Mary Ellis dryly delivers caustic zingers one minute and applies a philosophical healing ointment the next to her controlling daughter Carrie (Cynthia Mace) and easily controlled grandson Frederick (Eric Murdoch). Maryann Plunkett as the eternally child-like Southern belle Rose Griggs is first flighty and flirtatious when doing everything she can to avoid the reality of her husband, Ben's (Brian Kerwin), plans to divorce, then heartbreakingly unaffected when pleading for just one more year from him.

John Benjamin Hickey manages to be alternately charming and detestable as the immature, insensitive and much besotted artist Nicholas Denery, and Jessica Hecht strikes a nice balance between jealousy, anger, veiled pain and love as his long-tolerant but no-nonsense wife, Nina. As Constance, the capable heir of the Tuckerman family home whose independence and uncertainty have kept her from pursuing possible love with her friend and confidant Edward Crossman (Rufus Collins), Allison Janney shows fear, longing, acceptance and hope all in one captivating smile. As Sophie Tuckerman, Constance's homesick niece from Brussels who's come to live with her and make a better life for herself financially, Mamie Gummer is both duly respectful and worldly wise. It is through her young but not quite innocent eyes that we see the folly of the restless adults around her.

Despite these individually strong performances, The Autumn Garden never completely satisfies. Its climactic denouement in which Sophie's virtue is seemingly compromised lacks dramatic tension, perhaps because her situation seems trifling by today's standards, but also because director David Jones has taken too light an approach with his cast's commitment to the scene. Whereas proper Southern gentlemen and women in a small town post WWII should be frantic over the potential gossip and ensuing damage to their reputations, Jones' fine folks seem only mildly disturbed by their predicament. The pace of this scene, and of the play in general, is too calm, too languid. Yes, much of The Autumn Garden is introspective, but beneath the thin layers of good manners and civility, Hellman has scripted some painfully sharp edges that need to protrude a bit more forcefully through the veneer.

Sets, costumes, and lighting are all exceptional in this Williamstown production, each transporting us back in time and creating a sense of shortening days and cooler nights. The delicate translucent stenciling of Thomas Lynch's interior – hinting of once beautiful wallpaper now faded by time – is most notable. The see-through nature of his multi-roomed set suggests the fragile pretenses through which Hellman shines her insistently truthful light. It also provides a marvelously fluid playing space for the good sized cast.

The Autumn Garden closes out the Williamstown Theatre Festival for 2007. It brings a promising summer to a wistful conclusion.

PHOTOS: John Benjamin Hickey as Nicholas Denery and Allison Janney as Constance Tuckerman; Elizabeth Franz as Mrs. Mary Ellis and Mamie Gummer as Sophie Tuckerman; Brian Kerwin as General Benjamin Griggs and Maryann Plunkett as Rose Griggs

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