[NoHo Arts District, CA] – A NoHo Arts theatre review of Dance On Productions’ West Coast premiere of Tennessee Williams’ In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, directed by Jack Heller, running April 9-May 18 at Hudson Backstage Theatre.
This is one of Tennessee Williams’s later plays and not one I am familiar with. Set in a hotel bar in Tokyo, the wife of a famous and fading artist has her own sad falling apart, as her husband in their hotel room wallows in his own psychotic break. Miriam, the wife, is played with excruciating nuance by the wonderful Susan Priver. She is older, overdressed and bored, trying her best to seduce the barman who is repulsed. Her husband Mark, played brilliantly by the utterly phenomenal Rene Rivers, makes the occasional staggering and brutal appearance and it is clear he is losing his mind. Does Miriam care? If she does, she hides it well beneath her annoyance and frustration with him. But in the end, I think there is a little more than that, some fear perhaps, and some loneliness, but a sense of loss as well. Age can make us all a little more generous with our illusionary memories of love.
This is a strange and sorrowful play. Miriam is almost desperate to be free of her husband, and yet she is there with him. Traveling from New York at his request. Dolled up in a bar on the other side of the world from anything remotely familiar. Her husband abandoned to his delusion and his fragmented mind, plastered in the paint that once made him great.
She writes his agent, asking him to come and either take him home or stay with him so she can leave. He comes as called. Mark was once a big earner for him, but it’s all too late for any destiny to be changed.
Everyone in this play is really wonderful. Paul Coates plays the agent, glib and unrepentant and Remington Hoffman is the stoic barman – handsome, young, and struggling with his instinct to comply and his instinct to run. The dialogue is classic Williams, the setting not so much. But the sadness, the melancholy and the resignation to deterioration and eventual collapse is sweetly and tragically true.
Why stage such a deeply forlorn play? Perhaps we need something sadder than what is all around us? Perhaps these characters, Miriam and her salivating over the barman, and Mark and his unravelling, are a distraction from the waste we see every day. Whatever the reason, this is a remarkable play. It stays with you. And these truly fine actors seem born to play their roles. There’s a coldness to it all. A separation of all these people by time, by distance, by language, by need. What we see is a collection of disparate souls who will never connect. The performances are absolute perfection. No one touches anyone unless it’s an assault. There is no contact emotionally or even physically until the end of a life. And that is a touch of brilliance by director Jack Heller. It’s not until I thought again of the play that I even noticed it, so subtle is it.
You should never need an excuse to see a play by Tennessee Williams. But I can absolutely provide you with one…this is a wonderful production with actors that know these roles so well they become them. Bravo!
Where:
The Hudson Theatre
6359 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles
When:
April 9-May 18
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8pm, and Sunday at 3pm
Tickets:
https://www.onstage411.com/newsite/show/play_info.asp?show_id=7352
In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel Cast
The cast will feature (in alphabetical order) Paul Coates, Remington Hoffman, Susan Priver, and Rene Rivera.
The Team
Set design is by Joel Daavid, lighting and sound design are by Matthew Richter, costume design is by Shon LeBlanc and graphic design is by Sharon March. Brian Foyster serves as producer for Dance On Productions.
*****
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