Outraged Hearts: “The Pretty Trap” & “Interior: Panic”

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It is always interesting to see an author’s early drafts or a painter’s sketches which led up to their best work. Playwright Tennessee Williams was well-known for writing short stories and one-act plays that he later adapted into his major full-length plays. The Fire Weeds theatre company has unearthed two rarely seen Williams’ one acts that were later turned into his two greatest plays and are presenting them on a double bill: Outraged Hearts is made up of “The Pretty Trap” which was the source of The Glass Menagerie and “Interior: Panic,” an early version of the story that became A Streetcar Named Desire, each with a different ending than the full-length play. Ironically, these two seemingly different one-acts can be double cast with several of the same actors appearing in both.

Unfortunately, The Fire Weeds’ production directed by Jaclyn Bethany (who appears in both plays) is very uneven. An attempt at expressionism handled differently in each does not work for these Tennessee Williams’ plays. While “The Pretty Trap” eschews props for pantomiming, in “Interior: Panic” lighting designer Zoe Griffith has taken the stage direction “the light is normal” and literally bathed the stage in pink-red light periodically to suggest Blanche’s hallucinations. However, this is both distracting and intrusive. Of course, theatergoers are likely to know the longer more famous versions which are more fleshed out and have pertinent information not in the one act versions.

With the audience seated on three sides of the stage, scenic designer Teresa L. Williams has enveloped all four sides in an opaque off-white linen type curtain which remains closed as each play begins making it both difficult to see or hear the opening lines. The cluttered set design makes the sight lines from various angles blocked by furniture. Sound designer Amara Skinner has not done her job properly: if you are seated on stage right (from which this review was witnessed), when the actors turn away to the other side of the playing area they become completely inaudible.

“The Pretty Trap” is basically Scene Seven of The Glass Menagerie in which the Gentleman Caller (here called Jim Delaney), Tom Wingfield’s best friend from the shoe factory in which he works, has been invited for dinner to meet his stay-at-home sister Laura. Although we learn almost nothing about Jim, we are told that his nickname for Tom is “Shakespeare” who has lost five jobs writing at work and that Laura has dropped out of typing school which made her sick. Mother Amanda, a former Southern Belle, is voluble and animated, revealing to Jim the many jobs she has had to work in order to bring up her children as a single parent.

Bethany’s direction makes the play move in fits and starts so that it seems like a series of vignettes. (The Off Broadway production at the Acorn Theatre in 2011 demonstrated that this was not necessary.) Chris Ghaffari’s Tom is more cynical than he is usually played in The Glass Menagerie, while the underwritten Jim as played by Jacob Storms is charming and amenable. As Amanda, Megan Metrikin is animated and never stops talking, both pushy and nagging, the bane of her children’s lives. However, she dominates the play in the same way she does in the expanded, longer version. The fragile Laura (who does not have a physical disability in this version) is played by Bethany as very shy and retiring.

The title “Interior: Panic” is intended to represent the state of mind of former school teacher Blanche Shannon, who has come to visit her married sister Grace Kiefaber in New Orleans. When we meet her she is already hearing voices chastising her for unacceptable behavior in her home town (revealed to be in Mississippi in A Streetcar Named Desire) which has gotten fired from her job. She pines for George, a friend of her brother-in-law Jack, who she has been dating and hopes to marry but who has dropped her the last two weeks. Like “The Pretty Trap,” this play has a different ending than the later Streetcar. Here Jack and she have gotten along very well until recently, unlike Streetcar in which Stanley says he has her number from the very beginning and she and he are at odds from the moment they meet.

Bethany as a disheveled Blanche with matted hair does a great deal of ranting which makes her long speeches incoherent, a real problem for understanding the play. While Lauren Guglielmello’s Grace has obviously been a caretaker for Blanche for quite a while, particularly while her husband has been on the road as a salesman, her performance is extremely low-key and subdued, rather than weary and compassionate.

Ghaffari returning as Jack, Blanche’s virile and muscular brother-in-law seen shirtless for much of the play, makes a greater impression as her raging nemesis. However, in this version of the story he is completely confused by his sister-in-law rather than like Stanley in Streetcar understanding her but not willing to put up with her. As the bill collector in this 1947 story, Sarah Schuler seems to have wandered into the wrong play. However, it is Grace who has the scene with her rather than the flirtatious Blanche as in Streetcar where she attempts to seduce the male Evening Star newspaper collector.

While “The Pretty Trap” and “Interior: Panic” make a fascinating double bill if done well, Outraged Hearts makes so many errors in staging and acting that it does not give these rarely seen plays their best shot. While there are moments that work, overall the approach appears to have been a failure.

Outraged Hearts: The Pretty Trap & Interior: Panic (through May 30, 2025)

The Fire Weeds in association with Houghton Hall Arts Community

Astaire Ballroom at Houghton Hall, 22 E. 30^th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.thefireweeds.org

Running time: 90 minutes including one intermission