THEATER
CHRONICLE
be
a drunkard (this in itself is plausible) ; she must also be a notorious
libertine who has been run out of a small town like a prostitute, a
thing absolutely inconceivable for a woman to whom conventionality
is the end of existence; she must have an "interesting" biography, a
homosexual husband who has shot himself shortly after their marriage,
a story so patently untrue that the audience thinks the character must
have invented it; and finally she must be a symbol of art and beauty, this
poor flimsy creature to whom truth is mortal, who hates the feel of
experience with a pathologic aversion-she must not only be a symbol
but she must be given a poetic moment of self-definition; she who has
never spoken an honest word in her life is allowed, indeed encouraged,
to present her life to the audience as a vocational decision, an artist's
election of the beautiful, an act of supreme courage, the choice of the
thorny way.
In the same manner, Joe Kowalski, the husband, who has been
all too enthusiastically characterized as the man who wants to pee, the
realist of the bladder and the genitals, the monosyllabic cynic, is made
to apostrophize sexual intercourse in a kind of Odetsian or tin-pan
alley poetry. Dr. Kinsey would be interested in a semi-skilled male who
spoke of the four-letter act as "getting those colored lights going."
If
art, as Mr. Williams appears to believe, is a lie, then anything
goes, but Mr. Williams' lies, like Blanche's, are so old and shopworn
that the very truth upon which he rests them becomes garish and ugly,
just as the Kowalskis' apartment becomes the more squalid for Blanche's
attempts at decoration. His work reeks of literary ambition as the
apartment reeks of cheap perfume; it is impossible to witness one of
Mr. Williams' plays without being aware of the pervading smell of
careerism. Over and above their subject-matter, the plays seem to
emanate an ever-growing confidence in their author's success. It is this
perhaps which is responsible for Mr. Williams' box-office draw: there
is a curious elation in this work which its subject-matter could not
engender. Whatever happens to the characters, Mr. Williams will come
out rich and famous, and the play is merely an episode in Mr. Williams'
career. And this career in itself has the tinny quality of a musical ro–
mance, from movie usher to Broadway lights, like
Alexander's Ragtime
Band
or
The ]olson Story.
Pacing up and down a Murray Hill apart–
ment, he tells of his early struggles to a sympathetic reporter. He remem–
bers his "first break." He writes his life-story for a Sunday supplement.
He takes his work seriously; he does not want success to spoil him; he
recognizes the dangers; he would be glad to have advice. His definition
of his literary approach is a triumph of boyish simplicity: "I have always
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