As with Streetcar Named Desire, I've seen this twice now, and still can't say I'd recommend it, except for James Michael Bobby (the Cowboy) as its seductive, off-kilter Blanche Dubois. Whether he's pursuing his fate by lolling, cavorting, or chopping wood in desert heat, the Cowboy is an odd, heartfelt portrayal of a tender, lost boy on the edge of crazy, especially in scenes with Elyse Mirto as the crazy, lost Mrs. who's still tender, despite being crazed by Gregory Christian as her manipulative, cowardly, deceitful Hubby (imagine Jeff Goldblum without charm).
Still, the second time I watched it I rewound the last 5 minutes and finally figured out that this is a fairy tale right from the opening scene, where a hustler lets us know that money can't buy him. Since the entire show could be put on under a big tree in the back yard, the words matter most here, so that the performances have characters to inhabit in telling their story. But the story settles for the tinsel of a fairy tale rather than their timeless truths, sometimes dark, that make the great ones memorable.
Dialogue develops the role of the Mrs. as a woman who's been cruelly convinced it's her fault she's been denied even affection for the last year, doing her best to set things right. Her fantasy is that things ever were. The script is good in showing that Hubby, who calls her a bitch at her least expression of frustration, does so as a cruel excuse for his stunted humanity. Hubby's fantasy is that he can stuff married respectability down his wife's throat and still have a piece of its expected decency to tempt the Cowboy. But rather than tempt, taunt, and twist, as Hubby is clearly born to do, he's rushed by the author's fantasy into surrendering to the Cowboy, who's wish for a fateful, fairy tale romance is at least granted in a fairy tale's traditional trickster manner.
Too bad this surrender to tinsel rather than truth slams the door on the potential dynamics for tragic tension, leaving a melodrama limply collapsed like the deflated bosom of a disheveled belle in a dim parlor, teasing her damp wrist with a letter opener.
Still, the second time I watched it I rewound the last 5 minutes and finally figured out that this is a fairy tale right from the opening scene, where a hustler lets us know that money can't buy him. Since the entire show could be put on under a big tree in the back yard, the words matter most here, so that the performances have characters to inhabit in telling their story. But the story settles for the tinsel of a fairy tale rather than their timeless truths, sometimes dark, that make the great ones memorable.
Dialogue develops the role of the Mrs. as a woman who's been cruelly convinced it's her fault she's been denied even affection for the last year, doing her best to set things right. Her fantasy is that things ever were. The script is good in showing that Hubby, who calls her a bitch at her least expression of frustration, does so as a cruel excuse for his stunted humanity. Hubby's fantasy is that he can stuff married respectability down his wife's throat and still have a piece of its expected decency to tempt the Cowboy. But rather than tempt, taunt, and twist, as Hubby is clearly born to do, he's rushed by the author's fantasy into surrendering to the Cowboy, who's wish for a fateful, fairy tale romance is at least granted in a fairy tale's traditional trickster manner.
Too bad this surrender to tinsel rather than truth slams the door on the potential dynamics for tragic tension, leaving a melodrama limply collapsed like the deflated bosom of a disheveled belle in a dim parlor, teasing her damp wrist with a letter opener.
