Broadway Theatre Archive Tennessee Williams Collection (Eccentricities of a Nightingale/Ten Blocks on the Camino Real/Dragon Country) - Amazon.com Exclusive

Rating:
Summary: Two great & one so-so Tennessee Williams play
Review: If you're a fan of Tennessee Williams this triptych is a great bargain. The strongest of the three is "Eccentricities of a Nightingale" (a reworking of "Summer and Smoke" and one which Williams preferred to his earlier effort). Danner and Langella are brilliant. The sexual frankness these two characters exhibit may seem implausible for their social setting and the era being depicted, but somehow it works. It's as if Williams is presenting us with a hypothetical: "What if people could be honest with one another about their sexual desires and what if they were willing to engage one another in fulfilling these desires without burdening each other with unrealistic expectations?" Watching Danner's Alma is like seeing what might have become of Blanche DuBois if she had not lost her connection to reality and if Stanley had loved her and not just used her. "Dragon Country" is two short plays about conflicted couples. The DVD is worth the purchase price just for Kim Stanley's subtle performance in part 2, "I Can't Imagine Tomorrow." It's easy to see why she was such a major stage actor; it's a pity she didn't make more films. The only disappointment in this set was "Ten Blocks on the Camino Real," which feels like an amateurish high school production. The story is told on a mythic level which makes it difficult to take any of the characters seriously--in trying to present them archetypes Williams has created wooden stereotypes. This one will probably be of interest only to the person intent upon seeing everything Williams wrote. Even so, the cost of the set is less than buynig any two of the DVDs separately.