CLOTHES FOR A SUMMER HOTEL A REVIEW

There is no doubt that Tennessee Williams has always been considered a giant among American playrights, but most of his great works were created in the 1940s and 1950s. After The Night Of The Iguana in 1961 Williams started a decline so severe that none of his plays [after Iguana] fared well, and some of them were outright disasters.

For the last couple of years the excellent White Horse Theater Company has been revisiting some of his rarely seen works. What they are up to at the moment is an evocative and sometimes wonderful revival of Mr. Williams' last Broadway attempt CLOTHES FOR A SUMMER HOTEL, and I wish that the play was nearly as good as the production it is getting now.

This is Mr. Williams' self described "ghost play" in which he imagines a final meeting between F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda at the gates of the asylum where she was institutionalized until her death in 1948, but even with two larger than life characters at it's center the play seemed [to me] a fascinating but cloudy, murky and unsatisfying work.

Still,there are good things here,starting with the remarkably fluid staging of Cyndy A. Marion. Ms. Marion is one of the better directors working in New York at the moment. She really under stands Williams' plays and has managed to make even this dark, dour play more animated and palateble than it has any right to be, and she has gotten fine performances from a first rate cast.

The production values are beyond excellent, and the set by John C. Scheffler and Randall Parsons is one of the best designed and executed sets that I have seen all season.

CLOTHES FOR A SUMMER HOTEL closed after only 15 performances in 1980 after a severe critical bashing. I did not see that production so I have no idea if the bashing was deserved. This revised version doesen't work either, but it is worth looking at again and the superior production values and Ms. Marion's expert staging may make it up to you.
At THE HUDSON GUILD THEATRE 441 WEST 26th STREET N.Y.C. THRU FEB. 21ST.