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(More customer reviews)Thank Heaven for Broadway Theatre Archive. For the past few years, the company has been releasing older television productions of great stage works, as well as a select number of theatrically staged videos (such as the Shakespeare-in-the-Park productions of "King Lear" with James Earl Jones and "The Pirates of Penzance" with Kevin Kline and Linda Ronstadt). Some of these television productions are truly legendary: Jason Robards in "The Iceman Cometh," and Robards and Colleen Dewhurst in the landmark production of "A Moon for the Misbegotten." The present DVD edition of Tennessee Williams' "Eccentricities of a Nightingale" deserves to join their ranks.
"Nightingale" is Williams' revision of 1948's "Summer and Smoke" (my favorite Williams play, incidentally). It tells essentially the same story of the spinsterish minister's daughter whose consuming love for her next-door neighbor remains unreciprocated. "Nightingale" is less allegorical than its predecessor and more tightly focused on the fascinating central character of Alma Winemiller, who Williams once claimed was his favorite character of all those that he had written.
All the roles in this production are in eminently capable hands, with particular pride of place among the supporting players going to Louise Latham as the mentally unbalanced Mrs. Winemiller, Tim O'Connor as Alma's well-intentioned but misguided father, and Neva Patterson as the two-faced Mrs. Buchanan, oozing both Southern charm and venom. As the object of Alma's affections, Frank Langella plays the most warm and romantic John Buchanan I have ever seen. Other Johns have seemed cocky or cold, but Langella seems to genuinely care about Alma rather than merely tolerating her. Played like this, it is quite easy to see how Alma could fall in love with him.
However, this is Alma's show, and in that role Blythe Danner is a raw, exposed nerve-ending, alternating between lyric melancholy and barely concealed hysteria. It is an exquisitely shaded performance, full of rich colors and nuance, and it is on a par with the sublime Geraldine Page's performance of the same role in the film version of "Summer and Smoke." Both actresses capture the character's need to burst forth from her own skin, of being strait-jacketed by the social mores of the period, and of being on the precipice of a dangerous emotional drop-off point. If Page owned the role of Alma in "Summer and Smoke," Danner clearly owns the Alma of "Eccentricities." She is simply stunning.
Don't expect stunning picture quality -- the production was filmed in 1976 on video, so it is roughly akin to watching a mid-1970's soap opera. However, the performances are what matter here, and they truly deliver. If you love Tennessee Williams, Blythe Danner, or if you simply enjoy great drama, don't let this one pass you by.
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Eccentricities of a Nightingale (Broadway Theatre Archive) (1976)Tony Award-winning actress, Blythe Danner, portrays the sensitive spinster Alma Winemiller in Tennessee Williams' 1948 drama. Frustrated with longing for the socially prominent young doctor next door, the eccentric, highly emotional minister's daughter decides to settle for one night with him in a rented hotel room. The Washington Post wrote: "Blythe Danner's Alma is as much of a television event as Katharine Hepburn's Amanda in The Glass Menagerie. Frank Langella is such a warm, dreamy-eyed Dr. Buchanan that the role is reimbursed for the loss of its cynical edge with a smooth romanticism that complements Danner's determined honesty splendidly." "How many different emotions do you expect in two hours?" --The New York Daily News. With Tim O'Connor, Louise Latham, and Neva Patterson.
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