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Culture Theatre

The Wooster Group’s Version Of Tennessee Williams’ Vieux Carre

THE WOOSTER GROUPS VERSION OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS VIEUX CARRE directed by Elizabeth LeCompte (World Stage/Harbourfront Centre). At the Fleck Dance Theatre (207 Queens Quay West). To Saturday (March 31), 8 pm. $45. 416-973-4000. See listing. Rating: NNN

The Wooster Group’s Version Of Tennessee Williams’ Vieux Carre lives up to its title : it’s a unique interpretation of the play.

Williams’ lesser-known script was first produced, unsuccessfully, in 1977. This current reinvisioning in the hands of the New York troupe and director Elizabeth LeCompte presents the text faithfully but gives it a new spin in terms of emphasis and staging.

The memory play follows its autobiographical central character – simply called The Writer (Ari Fliakos) – through his days in a New Orleans rooming house as he comes out sexually and as an artist. Presided over by the controlling Mrs. Wire (Kate Valk) and her helper Nursie (Kaneza Schaal), its residents include a pornographic photographer who is accused of holding orgies in the basement (Daniel Pettrow, who in this production films much of the play’s action), the gay, tubercular painter Nightingale (Scott Shepherd), the outwardly tough but internally fragile Jane (Valk) and her partner Tye (Shepherd), an addict who works at a strip club.

The Wooster Group adds lots of video (by Andrew Schneider), both live and prefilmed, and a soundscape by Matt Schloss and Omar Schneider that moves us through this troubled but at times delicately beautiful world. Occasionally the action is like a three-ring circus, but LeCompte and her skilled performers know how to focus our attention on character, motivation and desire.

That last is a theme of the play, as is the loneliness that everyone in the play suffers from “loneliness is an affliction,” notes the Writer early in the show. Frequently banging away on a contemporary computer keyboard, he exists both “today” and in the past, watching himself be created and helping in that creation by composing words and stage directions for all those in his world.

The visuals are particularly strong and often inventive: Schaal’s Nursie steps behind a video screen and the actor, who previously sounded like a contemporary Valley Girl, becomes a 30s black cartoon character from the waist up prefilmed porn imagery and live video fill out the Writer’s cravings even when he’s not clearly articulating them two of the other characters in the play (both women and both played by Alan Boyd Kleiman) have life only on the screen.

And there are some wonderful performances, notably in the double turns by Valk and Shepherd. Given the costume and wig changes and some visual tricks of having others stand in for a character briefly, you might not even be aware that the actors are playing two different – very different – roles.

Fliakos makes an impressive transition from the shy, withdrawn narrator to the artist discovering his talent, clacking away at the keys (later in the production the words appear overhead, often as they’re spoken onstage) and showing the fire and drive he’s uncovered within himself.

But as fascinating as the production is, it rarely lights up emotionally. There’s an intentional flatness in the way lines are delivered in the early part of the play, but that doesn’t change much as the Writer grows and moves on. The staging techniques don’t bear a two-hour, intermissionless presentation we get the point way before the final blackout.

By its end, this clever take on a Williams play is something to admire, though it doesn’t linger hauntingly in the memory. A good Williams production – even if the writing isn’t always first-class, as is the case here – should.

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