The tragic decline of Pulitzer-prizewinning playwright Tennessee Williams, who suffered flop after flop during the last twenty years of his life, is the inspiration for this new drama in which theatre eats itself.
Canadian actor-writer Daniel MacIvor dramatises one of the lowest points of Williams’ life. After his play, The Red Devil Battery Sign, had been panned in London, Williams went to Vancouver for the Canadian premiere.
We don’t know what went on in Williams’ hotel room before and after the (again disastrous) opening night. But MacIvor imagines that the jaded playwright dumped his companion of fifteen years (a former rent boy) and made a pathetic play for the younger man he hired for the night.
We’ve seen a lot of plays set in hotel rooms and this one also uses a familiar confrontation between tired old man of the world and eager but naïve young acolyte. His Greatness doesn’t tell us much about the reasons for Williams’ fall from grace and nothing at all about Frank Merlo, the lover whose death seemed to rob Williams of inspiration.
But it does provide us with a finely observed and grimly funny portrait of a great artist struggling to cope with final defeat. (Williams was to die three years later in another hotel room). When Williams is clutching at straws in his rage at the dying of the light, the play borders on the searing. Too bad the ending – a soliloquy about the durability of theatre – is weak. We don’t need it.
As Williams’ longtime companion, Russell Bentley has just the right amount of world-weary stoicism. Toby Wharton, as his possible replacement, nicely captures the peculiar wisdom of the dumb ass. (He thinks Williams’ new play is brilliant. It’s not fair that someone who doesn’t like it gets to write a review).
An unusually languid seduction scene crackles with electricity. But as good as these two actors are, we find it hard to tear our eyes from Matthew Marsh in the title role. Marsh not only does a creditable impression of Williams’ distinctive drawl, he plays a thoroughly plausible drunk, bitter and maudlin one minute, fired up with inappropriate excitement the next.
Producers looking for a first class character actor should get down to the Finborough immediately. Except that, as with so many of this theatre’s West End standard shows, they might have difficulty getting a seat.
• His Greatness, Finborough Theatre, 118 Finborough Road, SW10
• Runs to 19th May
• Box Office: 0844 847 1652 or www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk
• 4/5
