She’ll be fine: Summer and Smoke at the Duke of York’s
Summer and Smoke
Almeida Theatre
Duke of York’s Theatre
Upper Circle C2, £13
14 December 2018
ATG page
The early Tennessee Williams Summer and Smoke is more interesting than successful, even in the Almeida’s largely excellent production. It’s odd to think that the play post-dates Glass Menagerie, far more effective in its creation of drama around a similar cast of characters, but then perhaps that does have a consistency with the rest of Williams’s peaks-and-troughs career. Either way, while certainly no turkey and full of beautiful writing, Summer and Smoke is a victim of its own eloquence, and never convinced me that the ghastly doom of Williams’s greatest works was remotely nigh.
Director Rebecca Frecknall introduces us to the main character Alma, played by Patsy Ferran, as a familiar Williams basket case: terrified by her own nerves, unfairly put upon by all and sundry, cruelly restrained by her own embarrassment. The rest of the play (spoilerz!) will show how her failings rob her of her one true love and lead her down a Blanche Dubois-path of iniquity. Except… Alma is very feisty; she speaks her mind; she rejects other’s people’s interpretations of her truth; she has invincible self-respect; and she seems to have grown out of all the nerves and embarrassment by the end of the play. Also her one true love is clearly an idiot, even if a handsome one. When at every moment the play looked to me despairingly, asking me to wring my hands with the horror of it all, I could only think: ‘She’ll be fine.’ She will be, unless she gets run over by a bus or something. End of story.
The main interest, therefore, that the Williams provided was the opportunity for Ferran to hold forth beautifully. Otherwise the evening provided slightly too much time to admire Frecknall’s production. Designer Tom Scutt has created a hemispherical wall from seven naked upright pianos that are variously played, strummed and bowed by the cast throughout. That’s pretty cool. The music by Angus MacRae and sound design by Carolyn Downing often makes entertaining use of this setup, although with not a lot going elsewise it gets pretty old in the second half. It’s helped along that road by a bizarre musical theatre excerpt in which the murdered Dr Buchanan, played by Forbes Masson, breaks into falsetto song – with no offence meant to Masson’s singing, an episode I could have well done without.
Ultimately I feel I could have read Summer and Smoke and paid less in time and money for the same effect, which is to acknowledge again that Williams can write well even when the drama falls apart. What a luxurious position to be in!
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