Role reversal

One well-placed jab with the tip of that parasol, and Alma (Jo Anne Glover) will make short work of Dr. Buchanan’s (John DeCarlo) advances.

Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke doesn’t have the heft of his Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or A Streetcar Named Desire, but the author thought the role of Alma Winemiller, the play’s central figure, was his best female part. Alma “had the greatest struggle, y’know?” he told Playboy in 1973. “Her love was intense but too late. Her man fell in love with someone else, and Miss Alma turned into a life of profligacy.” That big word on the end describes a lack of sensual restraint—as the play concludes, there’s reason to believe the once-cloistered Alma quickly took to humping anything in slacks.

You can’t expect Alma to live and die by her wholly repressed, small-town Mississippi wits forever, not after she’s tasted love with the hunky young doctor across the way. This New Village Arts production makes that point well, thanks to Jo Anne Glover’s terrific turn as Alma. But pit Alma in a battle of wills against her would-be boyfriend, and the production’s imbalance begins to show. There’s a major miscalculation in the acting here, so widespread that it affects the other 12 performances. This is a good piece, but only to a point.

The sultry summer of 1916 off the Gulf of Mexico marks Alma’s rebirth—but just as she gives in to her lifelong passion for Dr. John Buchanan (John DeCarlo), he’s forsworn his rambunctiousness and is ready to settle down with another. Alma’s befuddlement registers gradually at times and in the wink of an eye at others, and Glover excels at both.  

But Buchanan needs an unfettered restlessness for his 180 to be believable, and Williams outfits him that way, with a set of wholesale eccentricities that fuel his drinking and his womanizing and his strained relations with his dad and his love of Dixieland foxtrots and his indignation at Alma’s button-down façade. But DeCarlo won’t have it. He’s playing John the way a gangly Navy cadet feels his oats—his character is far too repressed in his own frustrations, interminably wet behind the ears and devoid of the devil-may-care, fuck-you abandon John requires. He has got to give into John’s coarseness, and pronto. If he can’t see the problem, director Kristianne Kurner surely should.

Glover’s performance is a 2010 standout, as is Tim Wallace’s linear set design. But as great as Glover is, her Alma can’t carry by herself the emotional load Williams had in mind. Since John is so drastically under-acted, she’s mostly left to do just that. This entry has only a short way to go before it’ll suspend your disbelief, but don’t confuse “short” with “insignificant.”   

This review is based on the performance of June 4. Summer and Smoke runs through June 20 at New Village Arts Theatre, 2787 State St. in Carlsbad. $20-$40. newvillagearts.org. Write to marty@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.