Forty people last Saturday entered the Vineyard Hotel in Newlands to eat dinner and watch Two by Tenn – two plays by Tennessee Williams. (Seating only allows for 40 patrons).
The plays are being presented by by Abrahamse-Meyer productions and star Marcel Meyer, Dean Balie, Matthew Baldwin and Lady Aria Grey (aka the actor Callum Tilbury). Direction is by Fred Abrahamse.
It is an enthralling and riveting evening of theatre and food.
Two by Tenn follows the huge success of the inaugural season last year of Tennessee Williams’s “hotel plays”, also presented at the Vineyard.
The first play is A Perfect Analysis Given By A Parrot. The second, The Remarkable Rooming-House of Mme LeMonde. In-between watching the plays in a hotel suite upstairs, one dines downstairs in the hotel. Each course is paired with wine.
Both plays fall within the ambit of Williams’s “hotel plays”. Williams spent much of his time in hotel rooms and wrote over a dozen short plays set in hotel rooms - or featuring or referencing something to do with a hotel - a bar, for example. These plays have become known as “hotel plays” and theatre makers have been selecting two to three of these plays and presenting them in hotel settings.
The Vineyard provides an evocative space to stage the “hotel plays”. It was built as the country estate of Lady Anne Barnard in 1799 (imagine, all these rooms to entertain the colonials in the Cape) and has been a hotel from the 1890s.
Last year’s “hotel plays” at the Vineyard featured protagonists in bed. The audience watched like voyeurs. This year, the bed and fittings in one of the suites have been removed and a mini theatre created. Elements of the room peek out - and used in the second play.
In the Parrot play - we see two “mature” women, Bessie and Flora, hanging out in the 1930s, in a juke joint in St Louis, on the hunt for men. They speak informally about life, weight, bad skin and golf. The title of the play refers to a parrot which has pulled out a piece of paper from a jar and proceeded to “analyse” Flora’s life (based on what was written). It’s bitchy, funny and fabulous.
While rehearsing, the characters reminded Abrahamse and Meyer of Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Crawford. They had puppets constructed which provide impressions of ageing, overblown Crawford and Taylor. The actors – Meyer and Balie – manipulate the puppet heads with their fishnet clad legs dangling from the bodies.
There are moments of revealing and concealing the actors, like a peep show, but enough said as I don’t want to spoil the plot. Masterful. It gives new resonance to a “puppet play”. This production premiered in the US last year to rave reviews.
The second play, The Remarkable Rooming-House of Mme LeMonde is set in a rooftop garret in a London rooming house. Or is it a bordello or a house of S&M? The Madame in a fabulous white lace dress - boned and corseted (designed by Meyer) - is played by Lady Aria Grey, the alter ego of actor/drag artist Callum Tilbury. Abrahamse and Meyer are presenting Lady Aria as playing the part, rather than Tilbury- like saying Evita Bezuidenhout
is in a play but not stating that
Pieter-Dirk Uys is performing.
We see Mint (Baldwin), the Madame’s tenant - dangling from hooks on the ceiling as he cannot use his legs. Meyer said: “In Williams’s work, sex is almost always a commodity. Because Mint can no longer sexually satisfy the Madame he has been banished to the
attic and his rations of food and drink cut off.”
Meyer plays the Madame’s brute of a son who abuses Mint. To top that, Hall (Bailey), an old school mate, visits Mint and reminisces about their school days. Hall drinks tea and eats biscuits while poor Mint looks on, ravenous.
The play is replete with blood, bondage/submission and buggery and dripping in darkly edged mirth.
Afterwards, a few in the audience spoke – or gasped – about the language (lots of F-words) and images. They were shocked. This is not a piece of fluff theatre.
Williams provides a penetrating view of the hooks that bind and tether us to each other. It resonates in terms of abuse on many fronts - physical and emotional. Chilling. The stylised staging (using elements of the hotel suite furnishings), lighting and performances are knock-out outstanding.
We must rave. Two by Tenn is an immersive site responsive theatre/dining experience and not to be missed.
Two by Tenn is on at the Vineyard Hotel, Newlands tonight, tomorrow and then July 29 and August 4, 5, 12, 18 and 19. The evening starts at 7pm. Cost is R650 and includes tickets to see both plays; three course dinner, paired with wine. The Vineyard Hotel Plays Stayover package includes tickets to the plays, dinner, coffee and breakfast. Packages from R2150 for a single room; R3000 for a double room, available on show nights only. To book, e-mail [email protected] or call 0216574500.