The McCarter's much-anticipated production of Williams' "Baby Doll" stars Hollywood hunk Dylan McDermott
On December 16, 1956, Cardinal Francis Spellman had a message so urgent that he ascended the pulpit of St. Patrick's Cathedral for the first time in over seven years to deliver it. There he warned his congregation against a "corruptive moral influence" that "has been responsibly judged evil" and is "a contemptuous defiance of the natural law."
The terror in question was "Baby Doll," a new film written by Tennessee Williams. The film -- a seamy love triangle about a broke Mississippi cotton gin owner (Karl Malden), his "under twenty" virginal wife "Baby Doll" (Carroll Baker), and a handsome gangster (Eli Wallach) -- was rated "C" for "condemned" by the National League of Decency. Cardinal Spellman forbade all Catholics from viewing it "under pain of sin."
Perhaps not surprisingly, such a public censure only helped "Baby Doll" become one of the year's top grossing films (it also earned four Oscar nominations, including one for Williams' screenplay). Sixty years later, "Baby Doll" is back, in a newly adapted stage version at the McCarter Theater that might provoke its own kerfuffle, though not necessarily for reasons of decency.
The show was co-adapted and directed by Emily Mann, the McCarter's longtime artistic director. The buzz of a "new" Tennessee Williams play grew only louder with the news that Hollywood star Dylan McDermott would star in the show -- his return to the Princeton theater after a twenty-five year absence.
"For me, McCarter is a safe place," says McDermott, who performed in the theater's 1991 staging of "The Glass Menagerie," also directed by Mann.
He added, "The opportunity to work with Emily Mann, who I trust implicitly ... it's a dream come true."
The gamble here is a considerable one: Mann worked with her co-adaptor, Pierre Laville, drawing on material from the film, and from Williams' earlier and later treatments of the characters, in order to create a an entirely new piece.
The goal, says, Mann, was "find the best of what he wrote and create one arc."
Yet "new" work by deceased playwrights doesn't always result in triumph: In 2012, The New Yorker published Eugene O'Neill's "lost" play "Exorcism," prompting the Guardian to suggest that it probably should have remained lost. Earlier this summer, "Off the Main Road," a previously unstaged play by Williams' contemporary William Inge, was slammed by critics after its premiere earlier this summer at the Williamstown Theater Festival.
Patricia Conolly and Robert Joy also star in the show, directed by Emily Mann (Matt Pilsner) In the case of "Baby Doll," the question that lingers is whether Mann has finally pushed the Williams envelope too far. Although her McCarter productions of "The Glass Menagerie" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1992) were praised for their ability to capture the essence of those Williams plays anew, a 2012 multi-racial production of "A Streetcar Named Desire" which she directed, starring Blair Underwood and Nicole Ari Parker, was mostly lambasted and proved a box office flop.
Now she's taking perhaps the biggest leap yet: staging a Tennessee Williams play that Williams did not actually write.
Mann stresses that the language and characters in this version are entirely Williams'. And she's confident that "Baby Doll" remains relevant. She says that Williams's deep concern about racial tension emerges strongly, especially in the language of Archie Lee.
"Archie Lee is a type of redneck that Tennessee Williams knew well and was terrified of," she says. The play itself, she notes, illustrates Williams' "love and hate for the South."
The story of "Baby Doll" certainly has all the elements that make Williams's work so mesmerizing: desire, betrayal, and eroticism. Archie (played in this production by Robert Joy) has been driven out of business by a gin syndicate run by McDermott's character, Silva Vacarro. When Archie tries to strike back, Silva retaliates, making Archie's wife (Susannah Hoffman) a pawn between the two.
For his part, McDermott says he was drawn to the darkly seductive elements of Vicarro.
"He's fun to play," says McDermott. "The revenge factor really appeals to me."
So might we be looking at the next great Tennessee Williams play -- more than twenty years after the writer's death? At the very least Mann promises something "juicy and sexy"-- if probably not a play that will rankle our current Archbishop.
Patrick Maley may be reached at pmaley@njadvancemedia.com. Find NJ.com/Entertainment on Facebook.
