Page 65 - TheGoldBug1971-72

"Camino Real" in rehearsal nIt is inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone" by La-rry Lazopoulos "Blue is the color of distance. Distance we have gone and distance we have yet to go." And are symbolic of the worst in contempor~ry society. word "brother" is forbidden and even wild birds It is a world where the power of money makes sometimes this distance can be a dream or a . sincerity, love or kindness impractical. All that is have been tamed and put into cages. nightmare. Camino Real. by Tennessee Williams, decent is destroyed. Past the eyes of the spectator - But within all the desperation and hopelessness becomes the dream of Don Quixote, deserted by his goes "the world as spectacle," a "panorama o~lost there is an 'answer. Though the play is not a companion Sancho. Faced by the plaza of this message play, there is something said. To avoid back - walled town, Quixote senses the loneliness and legends." Tennessee the Williams brings Jacques the Camino Real, to seep some order in life Marguerite Camellia; Gautier, depravity and speaks ... " When so many are lonely Casanova, the lover; Lord Byron, the poet; and to avoid the desperation, Williams tells us to be as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish Baron de Charlus, the decadent aristocrat; and romantics. The fountain of humanity can flow by to be lonely alone." Quixote lies downto sleep and Lord Mulligan, the 20th century tycoon. Each of honor, tenderness and compassion. This is the way dream and choose someone from the shadows of his these figures are an era of Western history-a to survive and the way to escape the Camino Real. dream to be his new companion. world view. With the passing of these characters, Tennessee Williams had said of Camino Real, In Quixote's dream, the Camino Real begins a Williams projects the rise and fall of heroes, the "My desire was to give audiences my own sense of new day. The grotesque street people hawk their passing of time and history in theatrical ab- something wild and unrestrictive that ran like wares, jewelry, dead flowers and sex. stractions. water in the mountains, or clouds changing shape in These people merely reflect the grotesqueness of On the Camino Real, the rich suffer from fatigue a gale or the continually dissolving and trans- the Camino. For Camino Real is like a dead end and boredom, asking questions as though fingering forming images of a dream." The play is done street-a beautiful avenue that has deteriorated- pornographic pictures, a poor man wanting w~ter within theatrical language-that is, gesture, sound, where its occupants are desperate transients in is shot by guards, the courtesan who has outhved music, dance, light, color, action, and design. limbo. In limbo because they have reached that her dogs wanders in a dream. Death, symbolized Besides the text of the play, that which enters the terminal stretch of the road in their lives that used by giggling and rasping Streetc1eaners with their spectators' senses is enhanced. Characters and to be royal, and now is empty and desperate. barrel, is viewed with indifference or cynicism. their musical themes weave in and out of the plaza, Camino Real is a lonely world, its components There is no compassion on the Camino Real, the the streetpeople dance in a fit of excitement and-. [continued on page 4J