Orpheus Descending is one of Tennessee Williams’s lesser-known plays – and when you go and see it, you might understand why.  It isn’t just complicated – it is Very Complicated.  It is A Very Complicated Play.  So much so, that you come out scratching your head and biting your bottom lip – just what, exactly, was it all about?

Günther Grosser’s staging of Orpheus Descending has been simplified for a Berlin audience. Characters have been cut and subplots have been slashed so that the play stays efficient and lively. Probably necessary when you consider the multi-kulti theatergoers that the English Theatre Berlin attracts.

The play focuses on the tragic figure of Lady, who runs a shoe shop and is trapped in a desperately unhappy marriage to Jabe.  Years ago, Lady was in love, and happy – but that was before her father was burned alive in his wine garden for having sold liquor to “niggers.”  Race is a huge theme here, underlying but ever-present. Another, perhaps less political theme is the idea of being an outsider – of belonging to the “fugitive kind.”  Just as Lady’s father refused to listen to society’s rules about who he would and would not serve, so too does Lady refuse to join in with the town boycott of the town slut – the drunken, chaotic, slippery Carole Cutrere.

Happiness returns to Lady’s life briefly, in the shape of Val Xavier, a.k.a. Snakeskin.  The sexual chemistry between actors Priscilla Be and Rob Lyons was enjoyable to watch – although I couldn’t help feeling that Rob Lyons was too attractive for the role.  He looks like the boring guy in a Disney film, the one the heroine is meant to marry but doesn’t want to.  There’s nothing serpentine about him. He’s not rough, he’s not dangerous and he’s not frightening.  But it doesn’t really matter, because the sexual chemistry works anyway, and one is left with the impression of Val as a naïve, vulnerable boy who’s trapped by his love for an older woman.

It’s interesting that Val is meant to be snake-like, when it is actually Samantha Coughlin’s Carole Cutrere who is positively reptilian – slippery yet dry, tempting but laden with pain.  Carole isn’t the main character, but understanding Carole is surely the key to understanding the whole play.  Why did she align herself with the “negro cause?”  Did she really care?  Or did she just want attention?  The end of the play suggests that we, like Val, have ignored her – ignored her desperation, her pleas for acceptance, her desire for kindness and also her warning.

But whatever Carole’s significance, it’s Lady who’s the most important person in this show.  And Priscilla Be is beautiful to watch.  There is one scene, in particular, where she tells Carole’s brother David what happened the summer he left her, which is just about perfect, in my opinion.  Spine-tinglingly perfect.  For a few moments, this Very Complicated Play is very simple indeed.  For a few moments, you really think you understand.

English Theatre Berlin,
Fidicinstrasse 40,
10965 Berlin (Kreuzberg)
Orpheus Descending run untill January 25

Jacinta Nandi-Pietschmann/Expatica