Down and Out in N.O.

By T.E. Kalem

VIEUX CARRE

by TENNESSEE WILLIAMS "Yes . . . I have things up my sleeve.

But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion. " --Tom's opening speech in The Glass Menagerie.

Tom, of course, is the thinly disguised stand-in for Tennessee Williams.

In his later, lesser plays, among which Vieux Carre belongs, the sleeve has grown emptier, the illusion scantier, the truths more repetitive. As he has had less to say, Williams has adopted an assertive, confessional way of saying it, as if the strength of his own voice would reestablish the dramatic authority that once resided in his compelling charac ters and arresting situations.

Vieux Carre is a memory flashback to a seedy boardinghouse in the old quarter of New Orleans in the '30s. The crone who runs the place is named Mrs. Wire, and Sylvia Sidney plays the role with the darting malice of a rusty hatpin. Her roomers are weirdos. Act I focuses on the encounters between an aging tuberculous homosexual known only as Painter (Tom Aldredge) and an eager neophyte of prose known only as Writer (Richard Alfieri). Painter inducts Writer into homosexuality, and Aldredge is particularly poignant in pleading for the younger man's love. Act II concentrates on two characters caught in the flytrap of passion. Jane (Diane Kagan) is a gen teel New Yorker, and Tye (John Wil liam Reilly) is a Neanderthal stud who works in a strip joint. Pale shades of Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski.

What was potentially strongest in this chamber-music play of time, place and memory has been botched by inept direction, wretched lighting and dissonance of mood. In some future production, the sense of Chekhovian stasis -- lapsed yesterdays, foreclosed tomorrows -- will be captured.

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