Review: In Kowalski, Tennessee Williams and Marlon Brando Have a Fateful Meeting in Provincetown

Styles of acting, like clothing and interior decor, are subject to fashion. What is considered tasteful one year is destined to be hopelessly outdated a decade later. But the stage and screen arrival of Marlon Brando in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire wasn’t just significant for its introduction of Brando’s then-revolutionary style of acting—the mumbling disinhibition that has often been described as “real.” It was a jolt of raw masculine sexual energy aimed directly at a mannered culture that still dominated the commanding heights of Broadway and Hollywood, but had not yet realized it was passé.

That seems to be the assumption undergirding Gregg Ostrin’s new play Kowalski, which is now making its off-Broadway debut at the Duke on 42^nd Street. A playful and highly watchable tribute to both Williams and Brando, it has some surprisingly astute things to say about the tectonic cultural shifts happening in our own time.

The story takes place in 1947. Already celebrated for the success of The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams has retreated to Provincetown to meditate (and self-medicate) on his forthcoming Broadway play, A Streetcar Named Desire. His companions are director Margo Jones (an underutilized Alison Cimmet) and problematic boyfriend Pancho Rodriguez (Sebastian Treviño, who does a fine job playing a gay brat). When Margo learns that she will not be directing Streetcar (that honor goes to Elia Kazan), she decides to accompany Pancho to Atlantic House, where he intends to get drunk and pick up a sailor. This leaves Williams all to his lonesome.

That is, until a handsome stranger named Marlon Brando (Brandon Flynn) barges into the house and helps himself to the cookie jar. Brando has traveled from New York to audition for the role of Stanley Kowalski, Stella’s brute of a husband (and brother-in-law to wilting Southern flower Blanche). Williams wants to cast John Garfield—but that doesn’t mean he has no use for Brando, whose skills as a handyman are just the tip of his potential usefulness. The late arrival of Brando’s female traveling companion, Jo (Ellie Ricker), offers the esteemed dramatist (and America’s preeminent girl’s gay) an opportunity to further toy with the young actor as he dangles friendship and the prospect of an audition before her. But as the evening progresses, we begin to wonder who is really steering this ship.

While the helmsman might be uncertain in the world of the play, it is unquestionably Colin Hanlon in our world. His tight direction keeps this 90-minute drama moving at a steady clip, accentuating the intrigue and drawing out stellar performances.

Taylor makes a convincing Williams, a whiskey-born smokiness coloring his southern drawl. Occasionally rattled as he attempts to cut an impressive figure, this is a man still settling into the role of celebrated playwright, always a bit worried that someone will detect the fraudulence in his performance.

Flynn’s Brando suffers from no such insecurity. His unbothered swagger is Stanley Kowalski, a man of great appetites and no compunction about wiping his greasy fingers on his magnificently fitted T-shirt (the excellent period costumes are by Lisa Zinni). Most impressively, Flynn embodies a character who will do anything to get the part but somehow never comes across as desperate.

David Gallo has re-created a Provincetown beach house onstage, complete with retro tiles and crockery. A small bar occupies a place of prominence stage right, making this the ideal terrarium for a midcentury game of cat and mouse. Jeff Croiter’s lighting instills a sense of intimacy while ensuring we never miss a subtle expression, even when the power cuts out. The radio crackles to life under Bill Toles’s sound design, underscoring Williams’s attempted coup and inevitable defeat.

Because we all know that Brando will get the part and leave an indelible mark on American drama. Only Williams seems to be in the dark on this point. As Ostrin tells it, Brando didn’t become a legend by waiting his turn and paying his dues. He came up to Provincetown with a plan and took what he wanted—no consent necessary. Ever the method actor, he became Stanley, the unapologetic American man of our past, present, and future.