For their adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s 1953 flop Camino Real, Calixto Bieito and Marc Rosich received permission from the playwright’s estate to futz around with the script to their hearts’ content. As if determined to make the estate regret this decision, the adapters have inserted into the proceedings a figure called “the Dreamer” who resembles Williams at his absolute worst. In Bieito’s staging for the Goodman Theatre, he’s played by Michael Medeiros, who speaks with a southern drawl and has Williams’s round face, thin mustache, and drowsy expression. He stumbles into a spotlight at the top of the show, wearing a rumpled overcoat and dragging a suitcase full of manuscripts. After scarfing down some painkillers and vomiting up some liquor, he chokes on a bottle cap—a tasteless reference to the way Williams actually died—and passes out. The rest of the play takes place in his dark and twisted psyche.
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Having asphyxiated the playwright (who nevertheless serves as a chorus throughout what follows), Bieito then turns to the play with the same gruesome intent. Though this is Bieito’s first major U.S. production, the Catalonian director has been making jaws drop across Europe since the 1990s with radical interpretations of classic operas, staged with graphic depictions of sex and violence.
The Broadway production, directed by Elia Kazan, received terrible reviews and closed after less than two months. This could be because audiences in the 50s weren’t ready for its experimental nature. Or it could be because the play is a big mess with too many characters, too many ideas, and too many symbols. Williams never manages to get all of these elements to coalesce around an emotional center. He comes closest in scenes involving Kilroy, a bighearted American boxer who, of all the characters, is the most eager to escape and suffers the most degradation.
Through 4/8: Check with theater for showtimes, Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, goodmantheatre.org, $25-$79
