It's 1915 in Glorious Hill, Miss., the kind of insular small Southern town that Tennessee Williams was uniquely comfortable in exploring as he drank and furiously typed around the clock in a desperate attempt to shoo away his own haunting demons. Though the critical response to "Summer and Smoke" was lukewarm when it premiered in 1948 and the play quickly shuttered, Williams never stopped rewriting and refining it, until this 1951 version, retitled "The Eccentricities of a Nightingale," debuted in New York in 1974—where it too had a short stay, a mere 24 performances. Yet this is one of the great dramatist's finest plays, and its resident nightingale, Alma Winemiller, was the character with whom Williams identified most fervently. The result is a sometimes gentle, sometimes brutal indictment of how our unflattering instinct to marginalize and discard others different from ourselves can destroy a life or lives, including that of one Thomas Lanier Williams.
This version of the story presents Alma less as repressed spinster and more as complete obsessive, while the object of her misguided affections, young doctor-next-door John Buchanan, has been reformed from drunken womanizer to decent, well-behaved son with an earnest interest in his neurotic neighbor. Because Williams' connection to Alma was so intense, however, his demands on anyone playing her are equally daunting, especially as every other character endlessly notes her odd behavior and physical peculiarities, making the role chock-full of overwhelming traps. The wonderful Deborah Puette, while offering tender moments, is habitually buried in fluttery gestures and a deep Southern drawl so exaggerated it's often hard to understand her. Jason Dechert has more success creating a Dr. John grounded in reality, leaving the many scenes these two actors share conspicuously uneven.
The supporting players also vary drastically from subtle to cartoonish, making one wonder why usually spot-on director Dámaso Rodriguez has so blindly left his cast hanging out there without paying more attention to performances and less to fussy staging and bumbling scene changes. Especially considering the enormous talent Rodriguez had to guide, the scenes between Alma and John fall flat. With stronger directorial choices—and perhaps the inclusion of a dialect coach—two of Williams' most intriguing characters could have touched us profoundly with their sadly fragile humanity.
Presented by and at A Noise Within, 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale. March 19–May 28 (in repertory). Schedule varies. (818) 240-0910, ext. 1, or www.anoisewithin.org.