"Tennessee Williams' Camino Real" Chicago -- Really??

As so often happens, I'm with you, Eric. I don't mind the play being adapted: Williams himself was famously unhappy with Elia Kazan's original production.

But inserting the playwright's name into the title is false advertising, as it seems to imply an authenticity that simply isn't there (no matter how much the dramaturge imagines they have been true to Williams' intention).

Eric: not sure how familiar you are with calixto bieito's work, but he is well known as an enfant terrible in the world of opera (mostly in europe, particularly france and spain). while they generally are regarded as high-concept and with flawless execution, his productions are controversial -- even by the generally far more tolerant local artistic standards -- due to their graphic depictions of sex and violence. in perhaps his most notorious work, a setting of mozart's abduction from the seraglio, he employed real hookers as supernumeraries (the seraglio really being a brothel, not a harem, he reasoned); in one scene, one of the male leads urinated in a glass and force one of the hookers to drink it.

scandale!

that said, bieito's work is admired even by most of his critics for its high standards, intellectual integrity, and (again) flawless execution. it was widely regarded as a major coup for the goodman to land him to direct what is billed as his first original US stage work.

i've never seen his work live myself, but from what i've seen on dvd and the interwebs, my advice to anyone with enough interest in this would be: bieito is one artist you have to experience for yourself ... no review(s) can be a substitute for your own informed judgment for a talent this singular.

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that's the one!

not having seen it, it's tough to know whether/how far he's colored outside the lines. i agree there's a tipping point, though, most definitely.

(i'm not sure how mozart would feel about being associated with severed nipples and water sports, for that matter.)

i keep wanting to draw some analogy to the brou-ha-ha around these parts (and elsewhere -- paging dr soundheim!) a few months back over "the gershwins' porgy and bess" ... but i'm just too tired to come up with anything insightful. having actually seen that production, i think the billing, while vulgar, was accurate.

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ack -- double post!

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Updated On: 3/28/12 at 08:25 PM

I believe that DQ and his sidekick weren't in the original Ten Stops on the Camino Real, but it's been a while since I watched the DVD of the PBS broadcast, so could be wrong. He's also added an opening character, and seems to have gone out of his way to remove the hopeful subtext behind the more darkly surreal elements (which it sounds like would be in keeping with Bieto's sensibilities, from the very little I now remember about him). Adding songslike I Put a Spell On You actually isn't all that out of keeping with Williams' original intentions, and at least the poem by Williams he added in, "Old Men Go Mad at Night" has some similarities thematically, but adding in well known speeches from Summer and Smoke and Streetcar seems kinda obvious and random at the same time.

I'm always very mixed on these kinds of appraoches to something--Lahr does praise much of the staging, and it sounds like as a theatrical event anything by Bieto would be worthy of seeing. I guess it's more the fact that it's not advertised as a new interpretation. I did think of "The Gershwin';s Porgy and Bess" but am not eloquent enough right now to try to compare or contrast the two approaches. But both do, by their title alone, seem to want to both claim authenticity, and then go against that...

ANd Williams isn't Mozart. I assume none of his plays would be in the public domain, but I don't know how strict whoever holds his rights are--maybe they didn't mind with Real because it's still relatively unknown, and rarely performed.

(Whatever, in my last post I think I came across as kinda snappy or rude--I was being sincere that I really appreciate you giving some context to this... And whenever I hear about that opera I have to wonder--I assume the on stage urination was staged and not real? LOL Maybe he should stage an opera version of Salo).

I saw this a few weeks back and had very mixed feelings. I'm not the biggest fan or all that familiar with the piece itself. I remember it being a bit of a slog to get through in my modern theatre lit class so many years ago in undergrad, so I went in fairly fresh to it.

The staging itself is absolutely fascinating, surreal and a bit frightening, but also tinged with some moments of sadness. The inclusion of some of the music, such as "I Put a Spell on You" worked quite well, in my opinion. The cast was phenomenal.

Whether this "fixes" the script or not I would leave to others who know it better to decide. There is definitely a stamp on it that is Bieto's, that is undeniable. It definitely divided the audience, and there was a group of four who walked out about halfway through (they are performing without an intermission, and I think the run time was close to an hour and forty five minutes, I can't honestly remember).

All in all it was a production that I'm glad I saw. It may not have converted me into a huge fan of the script, but it was certainly a unique and fascinating take on the material.

I have vibrant memories of a production of Camino Real staged at Brandeis University's graduate theater program back when I was an undergrad there (around 1976-ish). Noteworthy for 2 things: the brilliant use of Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain for much of its score, and a dazzling performance by the young and stunningly beautiful Loretta Devine as the Gypsy Daughter Esmerelda (I hope I'm remembering the roles correctly.) Girl looked good in pair of harem pants!

I've seen the production twice now and think it is absolutely brilliant.

Bieito overstuffs the the production - what you get is graphic sex (Andre de Shields is anally raped in one scene), violence, gargantuan sets, a brilliant use of vertical space, off-putting images (the black Kilroy being forced to dress as a Patsy-clown, Marguerite's elegant dress and wigs being torn off by a teenage prostitute, Esmeralda's "virginity" being restored by a "moon" of disco balls and trash), and an extreme (from a purist's view) re-organization of Williams' original work, which includes some of his poetry, all thrown onto the stage with some of Chicago's very best actors fearlessly and selflessly acting their hearts out.

What results is a massive subversion of every expectation you had of a Tennessee Williams play (or a play in general, for that matter), and in doing so, Bieito points his finger at American excess, flaunting it in front of our eyes. What's stunning is that people are put-off and "shocked" - as if we don't live in a media-driven country where such "shocking" things are commonplace. (SPOILER) The kicker comes at the end, when Gutman (literally and violently) disects Kilroy's heart and La Madrecita, protrayed as a blind beggar woman who reaches for the wounded, accosts the audience - "this is your son, America."

Absolutely thrilling and terrifying piece of work. And for the record, Bieito has NOT cut Don Quixote, but has re-imagined the character as if it were Williams himself on the day of his death, forcing down barbituates with vodka. The final Quixote speech is replaced with a recreation of an interview with Williams.

The Chicago Tribune Loved it:
With the help of the very skilled Catalan writer Marc Rosich, who has added other Williams material to the original text, Bieito explicitly links "Camino Real" to the alcoholism of its author. Looking like a cross between English poet Philip Larkin in a raincoat and Gary Oldman in "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," the Williams-like actor Michael Medeiros (whose immersive performance is extraordinary) swills and vomits booze, speaking with Williams' signature cadence and seemingly conjuring all these shadows of desperate figures real (Casanova, Lord Byron) and fictional....

But this is still a show serious theater fans will not want to miss. Leave kids (and teens) at home, but be neither fazed nor overly distracted by the explicit content, which is no more intense than you can see from time to time in other Chicago theaters (albeit generally smaller ones), and mostly indicative of this great director's attempts to get to the heart of the matter and allow his actors to use every weapon in their arsenal. Because Bieito is so free-ranging, the set design, by Rebecca Ringst, is a thrilling melange of neon and soaring walls, offering both confinement and, perhaps, the chance to wake up and climb away. James F. Ingalls' pulsing lights are rarely soft focus; Bieito puts Williams' characters in a series of spotlights, as if forcing them to take responsibility, when they'd rather creep back into the shadows.

Williams himself always allowed them that escape. But Bieito's world is much less forgiving and here is a show that puts them, and the tortured dreamer who created them, in full glare.
Three & a half Stars

I saw this last week and could not stand it. Besides the visual effects, the show was a nightmare, and there were many visable walkouts during the show (especially in the boxes). There was even an awkward pause when a man 2 rows behind me said just a little to loud "Glad we paid to see this". For most people i can imagine that the plot is very hard to follow (There basically is none). I can't imagine it succeeding on broadway.