Maria-Christina Oliveras, Steven Rattazzi, John Kurzynowski
and McKenna Kerrigan (clockwise from the left) in The Really Big Once
(Photo credit: Sue Kessler)
In 1953, director Elia Kazan and playwright Tennessee Williams collaborated on the Broadway production of the full-length, dreamlike play, Camino Real. They had been working on it since 1948 when they workshopped the earlier one-act version, “Ten Blocks on the Camino Real” at the Actors Studio.
Much was expected of them after their astonishing success with A Streetcar Named Desire. The production which opened on March 17, 1953 included Eli Wallach, Barbara Baxley, Hurd Hatfield, Salem Ludwig, Lucille Patton, Nehemiah Persoff, Frank Silvera and Jo Van Fleet. The resulting flop of Camino Real which lasted only 60 performances hit both men hard and they never got over it. Williams thought it was his best play; Kazan blamed himself for misconceiving the production.
Last season Target Margin Theater, the experimental theater group, presented the New York stage premiere of Williams’ Ten Blocks on the Camino Real. As a follow up to that experience, Target Margin is now premiering a company created project, The Really Big Once, staged by artistic director David Herskovits, which explores the five-year collaboration between Williams and Kazan on this material. The five-member cast features McKenna Kerrigan, John Kurzynowski, Maria-Christina Oliveras, Hubert Point-Du Jour, and Steven Rattazzi.
The text is based on letters, memoirs, notebooks, reminiscences and interviews of Kazan (known as Gadg), Williams as well as producer Cheryl Crawford, director Richard Foreman, playwright John Guare, director Michael Kahn, actors Salem Ludwig and Eli Wallach, Williams’ agent Audrey Wood, and two of Kazan’s wives Molly and Frances. In addition articles that have appeared in the New York Times and elsewhere are quoted. Occasionally, the actors hold up photos of Kazan or Williams or we hear their recorded voices from archival interviews. Short fragments from Camino Real are worked into The Really Big Once as rehearsal scenes.
The five actors take turns playing Kazan and Williams, or reading or declaiming quotes from the celebrities listed above. They also play both men and women indiscriminately. In addition, they incorporate moments from the backer’s auditions for Camino Real, and pages from the play performed as rehearsal scenes. The stage represents places all over the world as the men meet or write to each other concerning the developing script from Paris, Hamburg, Key West, and New York City. The title is taken from a letter of Kazan’s in which he wrote, “Nothing ever fills the void left by the really big once,” that is, the regret of what might have been.
The biggest problem with the material is that if you haven’t read or seen Camino Real recently you are completely at a loss. Characters from the play such as Kilroy, Esmeralda, Marguerite (Gautier, better know as Camille), Jacques Casanova, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are referred to or are depicted without explanation. As all the actors take turns playing various roles – those playing Kazan often wear a captain’s cap and those playing Williams often carry a martini glass – but not always – it is difficult to follow. There is no explanation that Molly and Frances refer to Kazan’s first wife and his widow, respectively. But who are Maria and Vivian?
There are amusing moments: Rattazzi dressed in drag as a gypsy, a frustrated Kurzynowski on toe for a dance rehearsal, the backer’s audition with the cast as mostly bored society women dressed to the nines, another a scene in which all of the actors line up to play Williams or Kazan alternately. Then there are unexplained remarks that are left unresolved: did Salem Ludwig get cast after all? Who created the sets if Jo Mielziner was found to be not passionate enough about the project?
As part of Carol Bailey’s costuming, the actors at times swathe themselves in colored veils, a references to the Gypsy and her daughter Esmeralda who are characters in Camino Real. At other times, Point-Du Jour puts on a boxer’s trophy belt and carries a gold globe, a reference to the play’s protagonist, Kilroy, a former golden gloves champion who may have lost his heart.
Camino Real is set in the central square of an unnamed Latin American country. In the center of her set for the new play, designer Laura Jellinek has created a gold tree from which hang documents and letters that the cast occasionally take off and read out loud. In addition, she has created an inner stage, kept hidden behind a pink curtain, for reenacting scenes from Williams and Kazan’s meetings in various places.
It is made patently clear that the chaos on stage is meant to reflect the dream-like nature of Camino Real. However, as the actors in Williams’ play remain the same people throughout his sixteen block journey, this is not quite the same problem that The Really Big Once offers a contemporary audience. Among the answers to the question whether the 1953 Camino Real was an artistic failure or an important breakthrough, Guare and Foreman are quoted as to how seeing the original production in their youth influenced the rest of their theatrical careers.
The Really Big Once is probably best for audiences who attended Target Margin Theater’s staging of the shorter version, Ten Blocks on the Camino Real, last season, performed in a similar style.
The Really Big Once (through May 8)
Target Margin Theater and the Ontological-Hysteric Incubator at the Ontological Theater at St. Marks’ Church, 131 E. 10th Street at Second Avenue, in Manhattan
For tickets, call 212-352-3101 or http://www.ontological.com