What distinguishes Tennessee Williams from the other titans of his era (Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller) is his lyricism –
the poetry that lifts his dramas from realism to a dreaminess that envelops our innermost longings and anxieties. To our great pleasure, we find a healthy a dose of these qualities in Germinal Stage’s three current one-acts.
The two first-act plays from the playwright’s early work and the one second-act play from late in his career serve as telling bookends for a talent who, though maligned at the end by critics, retained his gift for melodic and theatrical invention.
“Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen …” serves as the opening piece’s title and wistful refrain. The scene is a languid studio apartment much like the setting in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” but The Man is contrite for his transgressions and The Woman a delicate flower.
Director Ed Baierlein’s pacing highlights the dialogue’s sensitivity, with Trina Magness luxuriating in Williams’ language and Tom Borrillo providing the rhythms underpinning a mood at the twilight of consciousness.
Williams’ characterization, expressed through The Woman, of “two strangers living together” carries us into the second piece, “Something Unspoken,” where grande dame Cornelia lords over her longstanding live-in secretary, Grace.
Sallie Diamond finds a trove in Cornelia’s affectations and delusional self-absorption. Laura Booze mixes temerity and conciliation in Grace, as the two wounded birds fend off the gray mediocrity of their lives.
In “I Can’t Imagine Tomorrow,” Williams revisits a Man and a Woman at the other end of their lives, measuring the dissipation of their faculties in ritual evening visits. Lori Hansen’s Woman embodies a compelling tension between physical pain and heartfelt understanding, while Baierlein’s Man is a conundrum of half-realized thoughts and dire honesty.
“Tennessee Williams in Three Keys” | *** 1/2 RATING
DRAMA|Germinal Stage Denver, 2450 W. 44th Ave.|THROUGH JULY 9|8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays|1 hour, 55 minutes|$14.75-18.75| 303-455-7108
