Summer and Smoke: Sex and the Delta

Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke certainly got a bum rap when it premiered on Broadway in 1948, while Blanche DuBois was still disembarking that famous streetcar in its original run.  (Daily News critic John Chapman famously referred to it as "A Kiddycar Named Desire")  But its three month long premiere production was shortly followed by a hit 1952 Jose Quintero-directed Off-Broadway stint that made a star out of Geraldine Page.  And though Williams himself gave the script a total rehash in 1964, renaming it The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, the play in its original form is nevertheless one of the strongest and most engrossing of his not-quite-classics, giving a leading actress a complex and passionate role that is not especially familiar to most audiences. 

 

The Paper Mill's handsome new Michael Wilson-directed mounting of Summer and Smoke (a co-production with Hartford Stage where it premiered) has the glowing heat of Amanda Plummer deftly putting a non-traditional spin on the third of Tennessee Williams' "Southern Trilogy" ladies.  Rather than sipping lemonade in the shade with her sister belles Blanche DuBois and Amanda Wingfield, Plummer's Alma Winemiller, from the pre-World War I Mississippi Delta town of Glorious Hill, is more the type who'd be engaged in spirited conversation over cosmopolitans with television's Sex In The City clique, trying to figure out why guys are so impossible to figure out. 

 

The bad boy this smart woman makes dumb choices about is her childhood to adulthood crush, John Buchanan, Jr. (Kevin Anderson), the boy next door who grew up to become a doctor but is more interested in living it up with hard booze and hot women than taking over his father's practice.  The daughter of a stern minister, Alma had to take over the social responsibilities as lady of the house early on, as her mother has mentally digressed into a childish dementia, though she isn't above sneaking excited peaks at her heartthrob from the window.   

 

Most of the action takes place during the brief time where John, in his own obtuse way, was showing Alma a bit of attention; a period in which each would affect major life changes for the other.  Neither Anderson nor Williams make it clear exactly what he's looking for.  Is he attracted to her?  Does he just want to chalk up another conquest?  Looking for something different?  Anderson's casual elegance and emotional aloofness mixes well with Plummer's forceful quest to nab him with her spirit and intelligence.  Their chemistry bubbles in a scene centered around a diagram of human anatomy, where Alma insists that John look beyond the physical organs and consider the soul. 

 

Following Tennessee Williams' notes, Tony Straiges provides a skeletal set that only suggests interiors, dominated by a big blue sky that frames a fountain mounting a statue of winged eternity.  Creamy summer whites highlight David C. Woolard's attractive costume scheme and Rui Rita does a fine job with mood enhancing lighting. 

 

The supporting players are uniformly good with Stephanie Beatrizas as John's sexually adventurous fling and Marta Reiman as the daintily pretty and genteel girl who is looking to land him giving especially effective turns. 

 

But it's Amanda Plummer who fully dominates the proceedings, giving a performance of power and sympathy that adds gritty sparks to an elegant production. 

 

Photos by Gerry Goodstein:  Top:  Amanda Plummer

Center:  The Company

Bottom:  Amanda Plummer and Kevin Anderson 

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