The Seven Descents of Myrtle
Tennessee Williams is a regional playwright in a far subtler sense than that of merely creating bizarreSouthern characters. Until recent decades, the mind of the South hadbeen haunted by the disastrous defeat of the Civil War and by memoriesof pre-bellum graciousness, leisure and glory. The hab it of viewinghuman beings as wound ed by life, just as the South was wounded byhistory, permeates Williams' plays.
From the beginning his characters have been great reminiscers. In TheGlass Menagerie Amanda cherishes the "one Sunday afternoon" sheentertained "17 gentleman callers." Blanche DuBois reveres the beautyof her father's plantation, Belle Reve. Dying of cancer, Big Daddyrecalls his power as king of the Delta. In his earlier plays, Williamswould rip apart this Chekhovian mood music with staccato drum bursts ofviolence. But in recent years he has virtually abandoned violencewithout discovering a substitute. Drive has succumbed to drift.
Tense Trio. His latest drifting drama The Seven Descents of Myrtle, ismiddling-quality Williams at about the level of Period of Adjustment.The three characters who constitute the cast are scarcely welladjusted. Lot has come home to the Delta to claim thedecayed house and rich land bequeathed to him by his mother. He bringswith him his two-day bride, a jittery ex-showgirl named Myrtle , without having told her that they will confront his halfbrother Chicken . He is partially of Negro blood, and has livedin the house and slavishly farmed the land for years.
They make a very odd trio, indeed. Lot is impotent, a transvestite, andfacing imminent death from TB. Myrtle is a sometime prostitute, andChicken is a cut below Neanderthal man. A flood is in the offing, andChicken gets his nickname from the fact that in a previous flood, heclimbed to the roof with a few chickens and subsisted by biting theirheads off and drinking their blood. Who will drink whose blood beforethis latest flood? Chicken is furious at losing the property to Lot'swife, and he has in his wallet a previously signed agreement willing itto him. Lot assigns Myrtle the task of getting that piece of paper anddestroying it.
Sleepwalking Tour. The tension should build, but instead it isdissipated. This is partly because the playgoer knows from the firstskitterish-tigerish encounter that Chicken and Myrtle are fated to besexmates. The dialogue is surprisingly colloquial for Williams andlacks the requisite venom or eloquence. Most damagingly of all, theplay becomes a sleepwalking tour of the dusty attic of memory. Betweencoughing bouts, Lot recalls his Oedipalsy life with mother, and Myrtleshuffles through an account of her showgirl days with the Five HotShots from Mobile. The actors are uniformly admirable, and EstelleParsons is more than that asshe makes of Myrtle a tender, vulnerable woman of tattered gallantryand frail flesh.
As usual, Williams polarizes his males —the sensitive soul and thebrutal stud —and the division is as unconvincing as ever. He alsopreaches his favorite doctrine of physical redemption: "There's nothingin the world that can compare with what's able to happen between a manand a woman."
The evening ripples with laughter, a renewed credit to Williams' fluentcomic sense. Yet the undertone of the play is prevailingly sad. Thecharacters are sterile in their neurotic self-concern, people whocannot feed each other the simplest joys of life because each is sobusy devouring himself.
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