Theatre review: Orpheus Descending

We've had the unofficial Arthur Miller festival, now it looks from my diary of upcoming theatre trips like it's the turn of Tennesse Williams. Orpheus Descending seems to be regarded pretty firmly as mid-tier Williams but the Menier Chocolate Factory's production - co-produced with Theatr Clwyd, where it played before the current run and whose Artistic Director Tamara Harvey directs - goes all out to put it up there with the better-known of his brooding Southern Gothic tragedies. A veteran of the playwright's doomed heroes, Seth Numrich returns to the UK to play Valentine Xavier, a drifter who's made a living playing his guitar in bars since his teens, but as he turns 30 decides to try and settle down somewhere - whether or not he's actually hiding from the law is never quite clear. He ends up in a small Tennesse town where Vee Talbott (Carole Royle) takes him under her wing and suggests a job at the general store.

Lady Torrance (Hattie Morahan) is in need of a clerk as her much older husband Jabe (Mark Meadows) is dying. Lady married Jabe when her father died, and seems to be the only person in town who doesn't know he led the gang that killed him.

Harvey's production has the scene-setting stage directions spoken by the otherwise almost-silent Uncle Pleasant (Valentine Hanson,) who becomes a kind of narrator, making for a powerfully anti-naturalistic moment as Val and Lady succumb to their obvious mutual attraction. This also means designer Jonathan Fensom can strip the stage back to the bare essentials of a crumbling wooden wall, behind which is the bar Lady plans to open as a new business venture and tribute to her late father's job selling bootleg booze.

Although there's plenty of comments about Val's good looks, there's something awkward about his charm - his attempt to present himself as literally hot and smouldering is to say he's "the same temperature as a dog" - that makes him loveable, and the townsmen's violent dislike of him, spearheaded by Vee's husband the Sheriff (Ian Porter,) all the more senseless. But if Val's treatment is a metaphor for racism, Orpheus Descending feels pretty bold, for a 1950s play, in the way it also makes that subtext explicit: Although Uncle Pleasant is the only black character, we see over and over again how even a white person showing a modicum of kindness to a black one will face a terrible punishment: Lady's father's moonshine business was popular in town until the one time he sold alcohol to a black man. And Carol (Jemima Rooper,) a prostitute whose sanity may be crumbling and who's been paid by her brother to stay out of town, was a respectable local until she started campaigning for equality.

There are hints of the Greek mythology referenced in the title, notably in Vee's religious paintings, whose subjects she claims come to her in visions that are gradually making her blind. And anyone familiar with the Orpheus story will know not to be too optimistic about Val's chances of rescuing Lady from her personal hell. Morahan and Numrich make a brittle central couple in this slow burn of a story, and the gradual buildup of their characters and surroundings pays off in a conclusion whose inevitability puts the play at home with the classical tragedies.

Orpheus Descending by Tennessee Williams is booking until the 6th of July at the Menier Chocolate Factory.

Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Johan Persson.