New Haven Independent

The Independent had a chance to talk with Edelstein during a brief break in rehearsal.

Independent: So what is this new vein you are mining in the play?

Gordon Edelstein: Ever since I read the play, I’ve sensed that that the act of writing the play was an act of survivor’s guilt for Tennessee Williams. I’ve thought about that for 30 years and said that if I ever get a chance to direct it, that’s what I’m going to bring out.

Independent: And you’re doing this precisely how?

GE: In most productions, Tom, the narrator and authorial, that is, the Tennessee Williams voice, is portrayed, you know, smoking a cigarette near the apartment in St. Louis where the family drama unfolds. When I did get the chance to work on this, and did my research, I read that after Williams left St. Louis, he went directly to a hotel room in New Orleans, where he arrived with a typewriter and sat down to write the play.

Independent: And so you’re setting the play in that hotel room?

GE: Yes, that’s how the play will begin. When he arrives in the hotel room with three things: a suitcase, a typewriter, and a phonograph.

Independent: So the memories will come to him there, in the act of writing?

GE: Yes, instead of being in St. Louis, where the memories reside, he’s going to be in New Orleans, and the memories are going to come to him. That is, the ghosts of his past, that is the play, will walk right into his hotel room.

Independent: Wow! Is the conceit one that you maintain throughout the play?

GE: Well, you’ll have to come to see it, won’t you! It’s no conceit, or rather the conceit does indeed become a commitment, and there is, yes, throughout, an interaction between the writing of the play and the memories coming alive.

Independent: We will come to see the play, but do you have time to answer a few more brief questions?

[Sound of voices in the background, furniture being moved, a general badgering of Edelstein to put down his cell phone, stop talking to the press, and come to rehearsal …]

GE: Sure, but I really have to go soon.

Independent: How does this play avoid being about just a dysfunctional family and rise to the universal?

GE: Surely, the play is about a narcissistic mother, Amanda, who is by the way one of the great roles in American theatrical history, and a crippled daughter, and a closeted homosexual son, the Tom character. So, yes, there’s that for the dramatic effects. But, look, I’ve never thought the play was anything other than about your parents and mine. I’m a parent. I do the best I can. I have loving parents who, yes, parented me imperfectly. Oh, the play is surely about the complicated love of parents for children, and children for parents.

Independent: Yes, that’s about as universal as it gets. Finally, one thing I’ve noticed about the play is that the language Amanda speaks is full of nostrums and cliches. Also, the language of Jim, the gentleman caller, is also full of his very American suggestions for him, at least, that the high point of life well might be high school.

GE: That’s interesting. Amanda is part of the Southern culture that is fading and gone, a theme Williams always deals with. And Jim is the emerging post-World War Two expansionist culture. The culture of boosterism. Amanda and her culture are dying, and Williams mourns Amanda’s passing in the play, the way he mourns all his faded heroines.

Independent: Thank you for taking time from your rehearsal, and break a leg.