first night review - penny dreadfuls: The Remarkable Rooming-House of Madame Le Monde

Dreads or tales...
PENNY DREADFULS: THE REMARKABLE ROOMING-HOUSE OF MADAME LE MONDE 
Review by Dorian Hatchett

Tennesee Williams never stopped writing.  His most popular pieces stunned Broadway audiences from the 1940s through the 1960s, but his body of work spans his entire life, as wildly diverse as it is prodigious. The three plays performed in Penny Dreadfuls: The Remarkable Rooming-House of Madame Le Monde are among his most esoteric, and for good reason.  

Williams’ work is entertainingly clever and complex, the characters deeply flawed in all the most (and least) relatable ways. There’s never just a story happening on the stage, though. Williams was a gay man who lived in some of the worst times to be gay in America.  He was a sickly child in a dysfunctional family. He had a schizophrenic sister and puritanical family. He saw first hand how humans treat the people who they consider “other” and it informs every word.  

His most popular work was a delicate balance of artful plot and social commentary. The escapism of theater was maintained, and one could enjoy the production and then dissect the deeper narrative at their leisure (or choose not to, and remain entertained by the characterizations alone). Later in his life, though, the critical acclaim was more sparse, and Williams sank his entire might into the power of the stage to deliver that societal critique.  

Instead of subtle, unspoken undercurrents, his stories became morality plays screaming from the rooftops of the pain and mistreatment of society's most maligned, most oppressed, most overlooked. These shows are meant to make the audience uncomfortable; to pour misery directly into your hands and make you sit with it, squirming in the reflection of stage lights and the smell of plywood.

The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company (about to start their 10th season) has a sterling reputation for their candor and sensitivity when interpreting this work. In their hands, these pieces are treated with respect bordering on veneration, the audience becoming their beneficiary.  

Truly appreciating this writing demands the correct application of dark humor, and the Penny Dreadfuls are apex gallows comedy. The audience writhes internally, and nervous laughter is the near constant over quiet contemplation or rapt attention, the small cast of actors radiating unhinged savagery from their pores. 

The laughter is genuine at first. The show’s master of ceremonies is none other than Jigsaw from the Saw horror movie franchise. The action on stage descends with furious speed, to the limits of what an audience can silently accept, and their discomfort is the most high praise a show like this can receive. 

Monica R. Harris (Madame Le Monde, Mrs. Yorke) commands the stage with her facial expressions, and the other actors' apparent distrust of her is so palpable it may be genuine. Adrienne Simmons (Lily, Jigsaw) is physical theater personified. Her shoulders offer entire soliloquies. Cody Keech (The man with the size 11D, the Boy) seduces more than Miss Simple with his promises of a life fully lived, with all its messy imperfections. 

Accolades must be given to the set design, and its brilliant geometry. Backdrops that fold into themselves is a masterful use of a tiny space, transforming in the blink of an eye. The interaction between stage and audience is effortless, as if the fourth wall simply does not exist. We are acutely aware that they, and their suffering, are part of the show as much as Mint’s mobility hooks, propping up the dialogue with reflected energy.  

I was not immune to the uncomfortable silence, the awkward shuffle of my feet, the nervous laughter, the awareness that I didn't know what to do with my hands. Like many audience members, I made uncouth jokes as I filed out of the auditorium. 

With a declaration that the characters in the rooming–house were none other than Clive Barker’s cenobites, if they were portrayed by tubercular victorian children, I unintentionally reasserted that horror as a genre is rooted in a human need to explore hell as a place we have manufactured, through our own faults. Sartre was right, and it is indeed other people.

PENNY DREADFULS: THE REMARKABLE ROOMING-HOUSE OF MADAME LE MONDE runs at The Lower Depths Theatre @ Loyola University through Sept 28th. Click here for more information and ticketing
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