First Night review: Something Cloudy, Something Clear by Tennessee Williams @ Lower Depths Theatre

The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company's production of Something Cloudy, Something Clear, playing now at the Lower Depths Theatre (photo by Brittney Werner)

​First night: Something Cloudy, Something Clear
Review by Dorian Hatchett

​Tennessee Williams'  works come in two main flavors: the grand narrative, and the ghost play. His narratives are legendary for their deeply human story lines and near-universal appeal.  The ghost plays are trickier; non-linear collections of vignettes slide across the stage, like sand through an hourglass. Main characters are haunted from within the capsules of their own memories and actions; ghosts lay bare the pain and beauty of living, unencumbered by a sense of responsibility to the fragile egos of the haunted.

​Williams described Something Cloudy, Something Clear as his most autobiographical work. Set in the dunes of Provincetown in 1940, the play recounts a summer as a young playwright, looking both forward and backward into the supporting characters of his own life: those who shaped his voice as an artist. 

Matt Bloom is August. He is a writer both finding his feet (in the sand) and his place in the world (at the bottom, for now). Like so many artists before or since, the existential tug-of-war between truth and marketability is a source of heartache that colors all of his experiences. Bloom's search for authenticity takes no prisoners; he is a newcomer to the TWTC cast, but you would never guess that. He melts into the part of August like a second skin, and the audience can almost taste the way the salt air filters the urgency of his emotions. Heartache doesn’t stop for poverty or social faux pas, after all.  

Kip is played by Jordan Majeau. We learn that he is an undocumented immigrant, a draft dodger, a dancer...and then the secrets begin. With a real world history of professional dance, Majeau embodies Kip as a physical presence that is so strong and refined that the twisted reality of his situation, when it is finally revealed, strikes the audience like a physical blow. 

Nicole Francis Miller is Clare.  At first we see the facilitator; the social director. The deeper we move into the character, though, the more clearly we see the cracks in her veneer. There's grace and beauty, sure, but Miller's Clare is also possessed of a profound power that comes with the knowledge of the workings of the world, and all the psychic scars that come with that.  

The supporting cast, the ghosts of past and future, and the harsh realities of the present, light up with equal parts pain and elation on a tableau of the petty tragedies and joys that make a life whole. Nathan Arthur has once again created a set that is so much bigger than the stage it sits on. The production design is flawless, with the characteristic attention to detail that Tennessee Williams Theatre Company is known, and rightly admired for. 

The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company presents Something Cloudy, Something Clear through September 27th at  the Lower Depths Theatre at Loyola University. Click here for show and ticketing information