Presented by Turtle Shell Productions at the Little Theater, West Side YMCA, 5 W. 63 St., NYC, Feb. 27-March 13.
Alma Winemiller in Tennessee Williams' "Summer and Smoke" is a role to challenge any young actress. Alma starts off as sexually repressed—affected and "standoffish." But there's also an edge of hysteria to her. As Dr. John Buchanan (the man she subconsciously longs for) diagnoses it, Alma has an inner "doppelganger": a libidinous alter ego. Alma "swallows air," Buchanan says, which reputedly puts pressure on her heart. She erupts with frequent spasms of nervous laughter.
The actress who plays Alma as a total snow queen will fail to capture her full essence. And it's easy to overdo the hysteria, too, turning the character into a genteel hyena.
To compound the challenge, Alma undergoes a transformation during the play, coming finally to acknowledge the "body hunger" in her.
At points in Turtle Shell Productions' new staging, Sally Conway locates in Alma the ironic knowledge and self-deprecating humor that keep the character from being an insufferable neurotic, a laughing loon. (Asked whether she's ever witnessed a cockfight, for instance, Alma replies dryly, "Perhaps in another incarnation.")
By and large, though, we don't glimpse much here of the conflicted inner life of the protagonist. Conway plays the role close to the surface; her Alma seems mechanical and shrill.
We do see the tortured inner life of John Buchanan (John Wesely Cooper). Cooper is talented, but he's not ideally cast as the boldly rakish lothario who fires up the libidos and indignations of the populace of Glorious Hill, Miss.
Director Shawn Rozsa coaxes good performances out of some of the supporting players (especially Rebecca Welles as Alma's piano student, Nellie). Someone should have insisted, though, on finding background music that better served the play's pre-World War I setting. The modern jazz we hear seriously warps the mood of the piece.