Green Eyes

Ames Hotel 

Tennessee Williams’s little-known play Green Eyes — penned on the eve of his coming-out — was never staged or published in his lifetime. Perhaps that’s because the play’s racy, almost pornographic material (particularly some sadomasochistic undertones) didn’t quite jive with popular theater at the time. Not so in today’s world and, tonight, the erotically-charged “lost” play will be staged in a suite at the Ames Hotel. Unusual, to be sure, but the venue will serve to bring to life the story of young newlyweds battling the fall-out of both war and adultery in a New Orleans boudoir. Due to the venue, each show seats only 25 people, so order tickets for the Company One-produced graphic psychosexual thriller now. It comes to town tonight off of a sold-our New York run (at the Hudson Hotel) and runs through February 12.

Company One has checked into the Ames Hotel with New York–based the Kindness’s production of a recently discovered one-act written around 1970 by Tennessee Williams. The 45-minute piece is being played in a third-floor bedroom of the chic hostelry before audiences of 25 people. In Erin Markey’s Southern-steamed portrayal, the newly wed Mrs. Claude Dunphy welcomes us to her honeymoon, then sheds her panty girdle and dives into bed. When Mr. Dunphy (a threatening Alan Brincks) joins her, he is not a happy man. It seems he spent the night drinking on Bourbon Street, only to stagger home and find his bare-breasted bride a mass of “tooth and claw marks” and a used condom in his toilet. This exacerbates the mid-traumatic shock he’s experiencing on leave from a fictional Vietnam-like conflict. In Travis Chamberlain’s smack-down of a staging, the psychosexual tension escalates until Mrs. D. triggers a purgation, exultantly delivering a confession that may be real, her fantasy, or even a shared fantasy. But the truth is not the thing — nor is the play. It’s the flirtation with mayhem and the claustrophobic witnessing that are the elephants in this room.