The production of Tennessee Williams’ “In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel” that opened last night at New World Stages is so brazenly, so amateurishly ghastly that we decided not to formally review it. On its own, the show’s wretchedness isn’t enough to disqualify it — Lord knows I’ve reviewed plenty of terrible productions.
What’s going on here is more pernicious, and I felt that a review would be giving the benefit of professionalism toward a production that displays anything but. Actors’ Equity may want to look into this; everybody else, stay away.
Late-period Williams has enjoyed a surge of interest over the past three years or so, and I was curious to see this particular 1969 curio. The rococo piece, overflowing with Williams’ obsessions about sex and mortality, takes place in the titular location and centers on the relationship between Miriam, a ravenous woman of a certain age, and her husband, Mark, a dying painter. The hotel’s “Bar-Man” and Mark’s gallery dealer, Leonard, also intervene.
Director/choreographer Maria Torres certainly had big plans, according to a note on the show’s website:
“First, we will stage the play in concurrent streams, alternating between the hotel bar where Miriam spends her time and a projected video feed of the room in the hotel which Mark uses as his make-shift studio. Second, we will introduce Mark’s body of work as a central character in the dialog through dancers’ movement and 3 Dimensional projections.”
There wasn’t any video feed or “3 Dimensional projection” at the performance I attended on Monday. The official lead, Reiko Aylesworth, wasn’t there either, having left the show — likely right before Saturday’s performance (go here for an eyewitness account.)
So on Monday Licia James Zegar went on despite being too young for the part, as well as too inexperienced and too unprepared.
First, the production didn’t even have the decency to give her a regular program insert: All she got was a 1″x3″ scrap of paper listing her as Miriam. Needless to say, there was no space for a bio.
Second, that poor woman was thrown to the lions. This was her first proper performance and invitations to critics should have been rescinded. She bravely went on, at times battling what felt like real tears of humiliation.
Unfortunately, courage was all she had. She repeatedly called lines — Miriam is a big, verbose role — and by the time the final speech rolled along, Zegar was actually reading from the script. But even if she had memorized the whole damn thing, there’s no avoiding the fact that she can’t act. I found myself frequently averting my eyes to avoid watching her downward spiral. I ended up reading every single last line of the program, where I learned that that dancer Alycia M. Perrin was in the fitness video “Booty Slide.”
(Not that I needed confirmation, but this is where bad theater is infinitely worse than bad cinema: You watch real live people going down in flames in real live time.)
That an unprepared, inexperienced actor be sent out like this is an unconscionable act. For this I find it hard to forgive Torres and executive producer/actor Shashi Balooja — who gave himself the part of Mark, blithely disregarding the fact that he can’t act for nuts, and also called for lines despite the fact that he wasn’t a last-minute replacement. What these two lack in talent, they certainly make up for in delusional hubris.
As of writing, Zegar’s name still isn’t on the website. Either it’s one more slap in her face, or she’s requested to be kept out. That would be the only thing to make sense in this sad, sad mess.