First steps in tackling American classics

By LINDA HERRICK Arts editor

Time magazine called it "just possibly the dirtiest American-made motion picture that has ever been legally exhibited". The American Legion of Decency denounced it as morally repellent. Nearly 50 years on, it's still not hard to see why Baby Doll caused such a fuss.

Written by Tennessee Williams and directed by Elia Kazan, the movie starred Carroll Baker as the spoiled, thumb-sucking child-bride to aged white-trash peeper Archie (Karl Malden).

The possibly impotent Archie had promised Baby Doll's late father he would leave her a virgin until she turned 20; that birthday is just two days away. But Archie has a rival: oily, macho business rival Silva (played by Eli Wallach in the movie), and the tomcat battle for Baby Doll is on.

Baker won an Oscar nomination for her work in the film, but the moral indignation across America was so strong that many theatres pulled its distribution. And although it is available on video, Baby Doll has rarely been staged as a play in New Zealand, unlike other vintage Williams' works such as A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie and Cat On a Hot Tin Roof.

However, an initiative by SiLo Theatre and a pioneering directors' mentoring scheme means Auckland audiences will get a taste of Baby Doll, albeit just 30 titillating minutes from the script. It will be staged along with two other 30-minute condensations of works by J.D. Salinger and Jack Kerouac in a programme entitled Restless Ecstasy: Deconstructing the American Dream, which has received $20,000 in funding from Creative New Zealand as well as assistance from Auckland City Council.

Restless Ecstasy follows on from the SiLo's first "Classic Adaptations" project, last November's Shakespeare's Shorts; the goal, to help a new generation of directors develop skills and confidence.

The brief in this case was to invite emerging directors to select a piece of text from the work of 12 seminal American writers from the period 1945-65, and pitch a concept that could be distilled to 30 minutes. Then, after three projects and directors were picked, they were matched with three director-mentors: the Auckland Theatre Company's Simon Prast and Oliver Driver, and Gary Henderson.

Caroline Bell-Booth, who graduated from Unitec's writing and directing course at the end of last year, has worked with her partner, the comedian Dai Henwood, aka P Funk Chainsaw, and on "lots of young fresh New Zealand text" but this is the first time she's wrestled with a master. She's relieved it's only for 30 minutes.

"In terms of my development as a director, it's pretty fair to say heavyweights like Williams are out of my league. They will be writers I'll be moving into as I mature as a director, but it's great to be able to focus on a small part and take a baby step."

She has cast Michelle Langstone (of Spin Doctors) as Baby Doll, with Stan Wolfgramm as the libidinous Silva and Bruce Hopkins as the pathetic Archie. "Excellent casting, I thought," sniggers Simon Prast, who is Bell-Booth's mentor.

"When I made the adaptation I was looking at the cat and mouse game," says Bell-Booth. "It's very sexually loaded, there's a lot of tension and frustration, so I wanted to focus on a small section of that and hopefully whet the audience's appetite to see the whole story."

Prast came into the picture through an email dialogue about the logistics of rehearsals, and has been "looking over her shoulder" since the rehearsals started earlier this month.

"Simon came along to see where we were in the early, shaky rehearsal stages and it has really helped," says Bell-Booth. "You're working a lot on instinct and learning to articulate ideas and it's great to have a more experienced director to come and help you clarify and condense those ideas."

"I haven't heard about mentoring in the theatre in Auckland before," says Prast, "but I said yes to this because I have a great love of the American writers from this period and I want to help the up-and-coming professionals, make contact with them and hopefully pass on my love so it's kept alive for them.

"And," he continues, "how appropriate for the times - deconstructing the American dream. As early as the middle of last century the great writers like Williams and Arthur Miller were making commentary on the dream as being a myth. They were people with great humanity and brains who loved America but said, 'not this America'."

The other two works of the programme are The Holden Caulfield Interviews, taken from Salinger's Catcher In the Rye, and starring Edwin Wright and Anna Hewlett, with Colin Mitchell directing under the eye of Oliver Driver; and Beautiful Losers, from Kerouac's On the Road, with Ian Hughes and Scott Wills, with Gary Henderson helping out director Margaret-Mary Hollins.

* Restless Ecstasy, SiLo Theatre, October 2-26.