Camino Real (1953) By Tennessee Williams; Staged at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago (2012)

You can count on one hand, with fingers left over, the number of playwrights of the stature of Tennessee Williams.  He’s written some of the classics of American theater, including A Streetcar Named Desire, and The Glass Menagerie.  But then, he also wrote Camino Real, a critical bomb when it opened.  When Chicago’s Goodman Theatre announced they would produce this play, written in 1953, the year I was born, I couldn’t resist.  Why were they doing this?

When possible, I will read the script of a play prior to seeing it, so I pulled out the Library of America’s collection of Williams’ work and began.  It took me only pages to realize why it was a bomb in the 1950’s.  Although Williams made a career out of characters with delusions, the entire cast of Camino Real, seems other worldly. 

Camino Real translates as the Royal Road.   It is set in an undisclosed town in the middle of tropical nowhere.  The plot, for lack of a better term, involves an American prize fighter named Kilroy, who has had to give up boxing for health reasons.  He left the U.S. on a merchant tub, hated it, and jumped ship.  When he discovers the town square, he gets robbed of everything but his championship belt & golden gloves – therefore joining the other residents at the end of their personal journeys.  The rest of the script is comprised of “Blocks” of how each of them got to this point in their lives.

Critics and biographers have explained that the play was written in “a dark period” of Tennessee Williams’ personal life.  Perhaps, but it reads to me as though “highly illuminated” by hallucinogens of one kind or another might be a more accurate description.

Not so, the stage production.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C90QtYssSa4

The Goodman recruited Calixto Bieito from Barcelona, Spain to direct this staging.  His adaptation is mesmerizing.   While remaining largely faithful to the script, Bieito has crafted this play into a fascinating work, featuring some rather spectacular individual performances – although the hint of hallucinogens remains in the tropical air.  The play runs through April 8^th, see it if you can.